The Tangled Bridge (32 page)

But, in driving those pilings, they established the right through the current congressional authority to initiate real construction.

Each time the ferry crossed the river, its passengers would comment on the pilings that waited to support a “someday bridge”—even after the workers faded away and the job site had gone quiet for months, a skeleton of something that had never been born.

No wonder that, two years later, the project had halted. There was no money for this bridge. But now the people and the politicians shared a common idea—even though some doubted it could ever be a sound one—the point was that the idea existed for all to share.

Patrice shared it. She and her siblings had heard the commentators through the radio back at Terrefleurs. Some had been inspired, speaking of an innovative modern age. Others had criticized the effort as a frivolity that had no real hope of manifestation. Especially now, after the floods of this past spring of 1927, when the Mississippi River had roused and shaken like a dog, tossing away man-made adornments. It had taken their father's life, among so many others.

The bridge site had attracted men who came looking for work, even though it was common knowledge that construction had stalled. There was of course no work available now. But those who needed laborers knew they could come to the bridge site to hire hands, and so a kind of work camp had emerged of its own.

*   *   *

ROSIE'S TRAIL HAD GONE
cold. Even Trigger couldn't find her anymore.

Patrice didn't ask the thing that she feared most:
Did Mother kill her?

There was no one to ask.

But Rosie wasn't dead. She couldn't be. There remained a well of stillness inside Patrice's heart, one that kept reason despite the panic. If Marie-Rose were dead, then they'd be able to find her body. Their mother had concealed her somehow. It had to do with that scratch down the nape.

In many ways, Maman was no match for them. The children inherited the ability to walk the briar from Papa. This had always frustrated Maman. Maybe the jealousy she felt for her own children was what embittered her toward them. But though Maman might not be able to direct the briar the way her children could, she did have tricks.

“We gotta go after her,” Gil said.

Trigger said, “Where? All I know is where I saw her when she disappeared.”

“So that's where we go!”

“She was in an automobile, driving, and I don't know where she's goin.”

“So find her! You're the tracker!”

Trigger hesitated.

Patrice raised her hands to her cheeks and shook her head. “Even if we could find her, we wouldn't be able to get her back. Maman was there with a mess of crooks at her beck and call. If we go after Rosie now it'll be like last night, only it'll end badly. We can't face off against all of them. We're not even in their world right now. Our bodies are, but we're … here. In the briar.”

Trigger nodded. “I think Maman's laid a trap to try to get us all one by one.”

Gil's face had gone completely ashen, and he stared first at Trigger and then Patrice as though waiting for one of them to say something that would resolve it all. The cunning plan.

Patrice returned her brother's stare and then had to drop her gaze. Her throat had gone stiff. She didn't dare think of Rosie's face.

“Find Ferrar,” was all she could get out.

Trigger needed no further prompt. He turned to the wall and began the same method he'd used when he went looking for Rosie.

Gil said, “Criminy, Treese, what's Ferrar gonna do for us?”

“He'll help us. We need it. Especially now that we're stuck in the briar. He's the only one who'll understand what's happened to us. He can be our ears and eyes.”

“Treese! He's a lumen and we're surrounded by river devils! Don't you think there might be trouble?”

“We have to take that chance! Ferrar can help us get Rosie back and go hide. He knows all the little islands and coves along the entire Gulf from when he was running liquor for Maman.”

“Meanwhile we're just leaving Rosie behind! With Maman!”

“It isn't as though I want to! I'm all ears, Gil! Let's hear your better idea!”

His cheeks went dark and he turned away.

Trigger turned back to them and said, “I found Ferrar. A few miles away.”

Gil snorted. Patrice dearly wished they were not in the briar now that they knew where Ferrar was. She should have let Trigger do this right from the start instead of trying to walk some ridiculous line of morality.

Trig said, “He's at the bridge. Just like that man told Gil. Only, there's no bridge there.”

Patrice shook her head. “It's under construction. That's what they said on the radio.”

“Alright then. We just head in the direction of the Mississippi and then follow her curve for a few miles.”

“And how do we manage that?” Gil said. He had a pinch to his lip, and he looked like he was about to collapse from pure nerves.

“We walk!”

“Which? Our bodies or our minds? Remember last night? All those people trying to get at us? It'll be like that, only worse, because we're here in the briar and our stupid bodies are off on some dang daisy walk!”

Trigger took off his hat and rubbed his head. Patrice let loose her breath. Because Gil had a point—the physical world was holding solid for them only in glimpses. They couldn't traverse the distance because the briar held their ghosts, and their bodies would be walking blind and mad. Who knew what sorts of criminals might be lurking along that road? The children couldn't go after Rosie, and they couldn't travel to Ferrar. They were trapped.

The briar mist had curled away any sense of direct sunlight. Time was so difficult to track that there was no telling whether minutes had passed since Patrice and Rosie had been singing in the street—and it really only felt like ten minutes—or it might have been hours. Nighttime or day? There was only briar light now. River devils and other creatures milled about. The city had receded so far behind the thorns and the black pines and cypress and the mist, and that relentless river's flow—it seemed like the once-vibrant New Orleans boulevard had become like a long-abandoned antebellum home down a wooded lane.

Gil said, “I got it.”

“What?”

“We'll be missionaries again.”

Trigger lifted his head.

“I don't understand,” Patrice said.

Gil flung his arm toward the street. “We'll just do like in the rail yard. Hold the Bible and sing Christian songs the entire way to the bridge. They're all afraid of church people round here.”

“You make it sound like superstition!” Patrice said.

Trig and Gil said nothing.

Patrice said, “Using those songs to fool people into thinking we're doing the Lord's work, it's akin to using His name in vain.”

“Aw, come on, Treese. It
is
the Lord's work. Think of it like sayin a prayer, over and over. Put your heart into it and God won't pay mind to a little lagniappe.”

Trigger said, “We might as well try. People see our bodies walkin the road, they'll leave us alone.”

“But our bodies will just get lost.” Patrice said.

Gil shook his head. “We only have to concentrate on both worlds enough to keep our bodies following along the road. Don't strain too hard beyond that. We can move along a road, at least.”

How could she argue? With Rosie snatched from them and Ferrar the only one who could help, she would do anything to get to that bridge.

*   *   *

PATRICE RECALLED A LEGEND
told about a family friend, Jacob Chapman, who'd been mauled by an alligator long ago at Terrefleurs, and as a result his hand had had to be amputated. The country doctor hadn't been carrying any anesthetic in his bag. And so, legend had it that Jacob Chapman and Papa liquored themselves up and sang through the entire procedure.

This supposedly happened before Patrice was born, and Patrice wasn't sure she believed it. How could you keep singing during a thing like that?

But there was something to it. There was the off-handed kind of singing like when Patrice was trying to make chores seem less odious. And then there was the kind of singing where she was careful with every note, the quality of tone, exaggerating the formation of her lips, and taking deliberate shape of a sustained intonation that ended in vibrato. It didn't matter whether she was a good singer or not—it was the consciousness of the act. This was what transformed singing into a peaceful, powerful experience.

Maybe not enough to distract a man from having his gangrenous hand sawn off.

But to sing in the right way was to engage in the kind of place that Ferrar had once shown her. A pure, still lake. It dissipated chaos. Patrice was able to see beyond worry—a river devil's enterprise—and beyond her thoughts and the infinite distractions.

The three children walked for miles, singing hymns and holding Francois' Bible, which was now their only possession aside from the clothes they wore.

 

forty-one

NEW ORLEANS, 1927

IT WAS PROBABLY NIGHT
. Patrice guessed this because when she forced her concentration on the physical world she could smell campfire smoke. To concentrate in this way was like trying to swim while very, very tired. A few moments and then you had to stop and take a breath.

At the bridge site, near where the ferry ran, Patrice smoothed her hand over a post that held fresh carvings. They looked similar to those that she'd often seen in the briar.

Papa?

“It's how they find their way out on the road,” Trigger said.

Patrice looked again at the symbol. An open rectangle. She wondered what it meant, but then realized that Trig had said “they,” and she looked toward the clearing where the smoke originated. A smattering of camps with men cooking hoecake and soup.

“Ferrar,” she said.

Because he was probably out there among them. This thought was confirmed by the way the river devils looked: the tension, the predatory crouch. Patrice felt a coupled sense of thrill and dread.

It occurred to her how shocking she must look. She stepped out of her shoes and turned toward the ferry dock, splashing into the river.

“Treesey, hold up!” Gil said.

But he and Trig were already stepping out of their own shoes and following after her. The water brought her physical senses to life—the smell of mud and reeds, the feel of the Mississippi River crushing against her skin. She washed her face as best she could with bare hands, and then she rubbed herself from her neck down her arms, at her underarms, around her breasts and down her belly, between her legs, down her legs, finishing with her feet. She tilted her face toward the sky and scrubbed her hair in backward sweeps that both cleaned and smoothed. And she bobbed above and below the surface, in and out of the briar, in and out of the physical world. Until she saw Ferrar.

He was up on the dock. She recognized him in an instant though he was just a wavering shadow that might be a dream. But he came closer and in doing so grew larger, went down on his knee, reached straight toward her.

She reached up. They clasped their hands together and held, neither of them saying a word.

In the briar light, that lumen quality of his made him look like an angel, even with that scarred eye. It felt like he had one eye looking at her and another that was made of stars. His expression showed surprise and delight. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated.

She took a breath to speak but then stopped. Because anything she said would break this spell. It felt like something had opened up all around her. As though a light had poured through the lens of her body to the lens of her mind and converged to illuminate the spirit. Neither briar nor physical world. Just a vast, eternal something that she couldn't define.

“Hello there, old socks!” Trigger called.

It brought Patrice back to her surroundings. Or at least closer to them. She smiled at Ferrar and he grinned back.

Gil said, “We came a long way to find you!”

But Ferrar never took his gaze from Patrice, and never loosened his grip. He pulled her up from the Mississippi's waters and onto the ferry dock.

*   *   *

HE FED THEM SOMETHING
he called “bullets” but were actually just beans. Patrice kept stealing glances at him: black skin like hers, blood-shined eye, the crisscross over the throat. His appearance had frightened her when she'd first met him. Now it made him seem invincible. Everything about him was fascinating. She even loved the way he spoke: a French accent—not so thick as their mother's—laced with a soft, familiar, River Road twang.

The children ate every last bite and Patrice was mortified when Ferrar solicited some of the men from other campfires for more food. Despite the fact that they were camping by the river, no one along these banks seemed desperate. They were simply here to work where wages were competitive. Every day, farmers and foremen from three separate parishes crossed on the ferry or came up from the road to seek labor.

There were river devils everywhere. Everywhere.

Patrice tried to ignore them but they were agitated by Ferrar's presence. It took all of Patrice's concentration just to stay in conversation with Ferrar. She knew she wouldn't be able to sustain for long. And so she poured out their story, told him all about Maman's return and Rosie's disappearance. She told him about the stranger Trig had killed.

“What did he look like?” Ferrar asked.

Patrice told him. She remembered the blood on the man's lips and the gurgling he'd made when Trig crushed his windpipe with a stool. But mostly she remembered that hair. Not as she saw him in the fruit cellar. She remembered the patch that showed from beneath the horse blanket when Gil had opened the barn door. The brown hair tinged with red and gold in a single ray of sunlight.