Drum (42 page)

Blaise picked up Hernandez and started for the door. Othon gazed wildly about. He reached down and grabbing

one of Big'un's arms started to pull the black body across the! flagstones, but made little progress. Blaise returned and tool hold of the other arm whose broken hand dangled awkward i ly. Together they dragged the black carcass across the stones and out the porte-cochere and lifted it up into the carriage beside the slumped figure of Pablo Hernandez. Once more the unconscious figure of Big'un heaved, and the black vomit from his mouth spurted over the immaculate white pantaloons of Pablo Hernandez.

"Take them back to the plantation," Othon cried out to the coachman, and started to run down the street.

Blaise walked back into the courtyard, shutting and bolting the street door behind him.

Dominique You was still standing beside Drum. Witt only Blaise for an audience, he raised Drum's right hand.

"Voild, le champion!" he said. "Take him upstairs anc tend to him."

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chapter xiii

Unable to sleep, notwithstanding the careful ministrations of Blaise and the loving care of Calinda, Drum lay stiffly beside the sleeping woman, listening to her breathing, the occasional whimper of little Drumson and the stentorian snores of Blaise. Every muscle in his body felt the effects of the pounding he had received and his nose and ear throbbed with pain. As soon as the weak sun, strained through the lowering clouds which presaged another rainy day, had lightened the room sufficiently, he forced himself out of bed, stepping with difficulty across the floor.

He hesitated, fearful. It took courage for him to look at himself in the shard of mirror which he had salvaged for his room. His first forced glance caused him to recoil in horror. Surely that battered visage regarding him through puffed and purple slits of eyes could not be his own. His nose, which had always descended in a broad Grecian line, straight down from his forehead, was now smashed flat, spreading over his face like an overripe tomato. A ragged fringe of bloody flesh dangled where his right ear lobe should have been, and all his features seemed to have melted together in a bruised, swollen mass. His body, such as he could see of it in the mirror, was covered with bruises and blotches of extravasated blood.

Drum was disheartened. Always vain, he had been proud of his comeliness for he realized that his good looks had been ^ his entree to popularity with women and almost equally so with men. Now, with a face like this one that stared back at him, who would ever want to look at him again? No amount of elaborate clothes could ever change him now. The swelling of his face would disappear, the clear color would return, the eyes would again appear normal and the bruises on his body would scab over and heal. But nothing, no, nothing could ever replace the ragged tatter of his ear or reshape his broken nose.

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He touched the malformed nose gingerly with his finger, hoping to mold it back into a semblance of its former shape, but the pain was too great. Suddenly his proud young world had collapsed. Aie, Veronique! Strange that the thought of her should trouble him at ^s time. Surely she would never want to see him again, nor Jeanneton. He glanced down at his body. Thank God, it had been only his ear that Bigger had chewed off and that he had not been able to carry out his further threat! Drum managed a wan smile through his cracked lips. Damne! He was still a man and he could still satisfy any wench, if she did not look at his face. But then, what woman was ever interested in a man's face when he was with her in a dark room? As for Calinda, she would still worship him even though he were faceless. No need to worry about Calindal And what about the little wench Yvette, whom maman guarded so jealously? Some night when maman was getting Madame ready for bed. , . . Aie! Things were not so bad after all. He was still tres male. Even Madame had not wanted him killed. Aie! He had heard her call out for him to be spared. Could that mean that he really meant something to her? Of course not! The old bitch only wanted him to keep on fighting and make money for her. Then he remembered how she had looked at him that day she had hung the silver chain around his neck. She had been almost human then—not like a white mistress with a black slave. Well, things were not so bad after all. Now he had a face like a fighter. Sure! Why not? That's what he goddamned well was. His flattened nose and missing ear would advertise his profession. Now all the world would know that the big griffe with the broken nose and the fancy clothes was none other than Drum, the champion. He stumbled back to bed, feeling better. So much better, in fact, that he allowed his hand to stray along the satin smoothness of Calinda's breasts before he dozed off to a dreamless sleej), which continued all that day and through the next nigh't. He was secure and safe in his own little world under the white mosquito baire while grim Bronze John flitted relentlessly through the city on tiny, transparent, humming wings.

It could no longer be kept a secret that New Orleans was! seized by an epidemic that was claiming victims without distinction of class, position or color. Slaves were dying alongside their white masters. The proud Creole lady who wenti to bed one night, carefully attended by her slave, might awaken the next morning in a delirium of fever, her facei

darkened and blood oozing from lips, gums and nose. The Creole dandy whose valet helped him into bed might awaken in the morning to ring in vain for the slave whose corpse was already stinking in the gargonniere. Deaths were increasing. Two hundred and four one week, 559 the next, then leaping to 947.

The entire city was panic-stricken. Crowds milled on the levees, seeking accommodations on boats that would carry them away—anywhere, it didn't matter as long as it was away from the stricken city. But there were no boats, for all traffic by sea and river now shunned the city. Boats from New Orleans were flagged away from the ports of the country. Those who had horses had long since departed and the roads leading out of the city were choked with pedestrians, sinking beside the road and dying in their tracks, leaving behind a trail of abandoned valises, hat boxes and other impedimenta which they had thought so necessary and which had suddenly become so worthless. Death stalked the steaming squares of the city, unobstructed and unmolested, because nobody knew the cure. The best medical minds of the country, although certainly not admitting their inability to cope with yellow fever, had no idea what to do.

Fantastic explanations were offered and equally fantastic cures advocated. As soon as one cure had proved useless, another was promulgated and quickly became the fashion. Doctors ordered cold treatments, hot treatments; open windows, closed windows. It was believed that there was some mystical curative power in the juice of fresh oysters and the total supply of the city was exhausted in a single hour. People guzzled limewater, swallowed sulphur and purged themselves with violent cathartics. One school advocated quinine while another swore by opium. Bleeding was popular either by cups or leeches and many a poor soul who might possibly have recovered was so drained of blood he died anyway.

What caused Bronze John? Learned heads conferred with solemn waggings. It originated in rotting wood. RidiculousI It came from tiny specks in the air. Of course notl Any but the most abysmally ignorant knew that it was pestilential effluvia—a nice long name that sounded sufficiently awesome and professionally Latin to have an authoritative ring. Yes, they finally agreed, undoubtedly it was pestilential effluvia, arising from river bank, canal and swamp. They sniffed. They could smell it. The decision was made, notwithstanding the self-evident fact that New Orleans always

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stank of one kind of effluvium or another—putrefying animals, rotting vegetables, sweating, unwashed bodies, stagnant water, human excretions and oflfal. And so, it was officially! pronounced by the learned faculties of the medical schools,^ many of whom had never stepped foot in New Orleans, that' the cause of Bronze John, yellow fever, yellow jack—call it what one might—was pestilential effluvia. It sounded so damned nice, so tongue-rolling, so Aesculapian.

Thus, having discovered the cause, naturally there could be but one remedy. If Bronze John was in the air, then its infection must be taken into the body through the mouth or nose. Consequently anything that could purify the air, or pollute it with a stench sufficient to overcome its inherent poison, would, of course, be the sovereign panacea. It was a well-known scientific fact that thunder purified the air but as man was not Immortal Jove, with thunderbolts in his hand, he could only avail himself of the next best thing— cannons. So cannons boomed at street comers at regular intervals and the successive booming of the big guns caused the wretched fever victims to fall into convulsions and cover their eyes from the chips of plaster that fell from the ceilings. And tar! That could be burned and everyone knew that burning tar sweetened the air. After considerable scientific pondering, one learned physician decided that lime would sweeten the air and no sooner had he uttered his pronouncement than banquettes and courtyards took on the pristine whiteness of a New England winter. Alas, to no avail! Think again! Surely smudge fires would purify the air, and now everybody—at least those who were out on the streets— wandered around in a dense fog of smoke. (It is quite possible that the incessant booming of the cannons frightened a few of the mosquitoes and perhaps the smudge fires and the burning tar discouraged others, but the main cause of the yellow fever continued to bite and infect the people. Who could ever imagine a buzzing Httle insect to be the cause? Incredible!)

Necklaces of garlic buds were declared a sure protectioni and the belles of New Orleans, such as remained in the city,' became as pungent as a Neapolitan housewife. Camphor gum would certainly banish the effluvium, so men and womenr sniffed the aromatic gum through their nostrils. Eating onions! Ah, that would pile effluvium upon effluvium and. prevent the poison from entering one's lungs. Now half of New Orleans was suffering heartburn along with the fever.

Hardly more fantastic and equally inefficient were the remedies of the conjure men—a live frog boiled in water and the liquor therefrom flavored with red pepper and drunk exactly at the stroke of midnight; poultices of goat dung, mixed with human urine; the tail feathers of a black, white and red rooster under the pillows of the stricken. The rooster feathers of the conjure, men were as efficacious as the cannon shots recommended by the medical profession. The rains fell daily and the mosquitoes continued to breed, undeterred by asafetida bags, crossed sticks at the doorways of houses, sprinklings of holy water from the cathedral and innimier-able novenas. The mosquitoes gorged themselves on infected blood and flew away to spread the infection. But to the worried New Orleanians, the mosquitoes were only a lesser plague—nothing could be done about them and it would be ridiculous to try.

There were no longer coffins in which to bury the dead; no longer even pine boards to make rough boxes; no longer priests to administer last rites, or sextons to dig graves, or hearses to carry the dead to the cemetery. The corpses, stark in their horrible corruption, were carried out of doors and laid on the banquettes where they awaited the arrival of pest carts, driven through the streets at night by frightened slaves who loaded the dead like cordwood and gave them a hasty burial in muddy ditches, unblessed and often un-moumed.

The only businesses that flourished in the city were the saloons and the whorehouses. Drink and fornicate today for tomorrow you die I Cram as much sensual pleasure into the fleeting hour as possible because you'll be a long time dead and there was damn little fun awaiting you in a muddy ditch. Have another Sazerac, mon ami, and don't worry if Uie bartender collapses while he serves you the drink. Get yourself an octoroon wench, mon brave, and if she is dead when you achieve your climax, well, c'est la vie or rather c'est la mort. Live today, mon frere, because tomorrow youll be"^ stinking corpse.

Brothel madams collected money with one grasping hand while the other fell in the inertia of death. All but Alixl For once her avarice was outmatched by her fear. No one was to leave the house! Lock the front doors and nail them shut! Only Rachel could leave by the back door and that only for a daily trip to the market. Yes, the two young slaveys could go with her to carry things if she needed them. But no

one elsel Alix dispatched all her white girls from the house turning them out into the streets to shift for themselves. Hei octoroon and quadroon girls, which were naturally her owr property, could not be disposed of so summarily, but thest{ she put to manual labor, hemming new sheets, mending oki ones and doing a multitude of household tasks while theji longed for the old days when they were above all menial work.

Drum and Blaise were forbidden to leave the house undei pain of punishment at the public whips. Drum knew tha: Madame was frightened and in her fright she was quite ca. pable of carrying outjier threats. Calinda must keep Drumsoi —it was felt that infants were particularly susceptible to thf disease—away from all the rest of the household.

There was not much use in Rachel's taking the two younj slaves to market with her for practically everything had dis appeared from the stalls. Fortunately the Academy of Musi< did not suffer too much from lack of food, owing td Rachel's acumen. There was a large supply of hams anc bacons hanging from the rafters in the kitchen, along witl braided strips of onion and garlic. Rachel had purchase( live hens, whenever she could find them in the market, anc instead of killing them for food, she kept them in the covurt yard until she had a sizable flock which supplied eggs whil they bespattered the flagging. A milch goat, who had ahead;: eaten all the flowers and herbage in the court, produced milk and the visits to the markets usually yielded a few yams turnip greens or coUards and occasionally a fish. When every thing else failed, they could always haVe beans and rice, witl pone, so they managed to live although their diet wa neither rich nor varied.