Wading Home: A Novel of New Orleans (18 page)

And two weeks after his funeral, all the property he owned suddenly belonged to the developers who had tried to get him to sell his land.

“Scared the devil out of everybody around here,” Genevieve said. “Everybody afraid something bad might happen to them if they don’t sell.”

“My church friends got so worried for me, they said I ought to get away from my house for a little while. So Pastor Jackson here was kind enough to let me stay with him.”

Julian looked down at his hands, then ran a hand along the back of his neck. “Cousin G, I got something to tell you.”

At the news about the land, she stared at Julian in disbelief, then bowed her head, her eyes closed. She wrung her hands together, shook her head. “They can’t do that. They just can’t do that to us. This land has been ours for over a hundred years, way back since before slavery ended.” Her chin jutted forward, and there was a streak of fire in her eyes. “We got to do something. They just can’t take it away from us like that.”

Kevin put his empty pie plate aside and leaned forward across the table.

“I know how you feel ma’am. I’m hoping I can help out, help you keep your place.”

Julian explained that Kevin was a law student interested in the land. For the next half hour Kevin explained the “partitioning laws” and how families the law had been designed to protect from disputes had been ill served by them, and how the land often ended up in the hands of greedy developers.

Pastor Jackson brought in a pitcher of lemonade and filled everyone’s glasses. Kevin took a sip, then put his glass down, frowning thoughtfully. A streak of late morning sun from the window behind the sofa sent a shaft of angled light into the room.

Kevin rocked back in his chair, tapping his fingers lightly on the tabletop. “Miss Genevieve, do you have any relatives you haven’t heard from in a while who might have wanted to sell their portion of Silver Creek?”

Genevieve pondered the question a moment. Besides her and Simon, there were only a handful of cousins, descendants of her grandfather, Moses, who lived in California.

Kevin eyebrows arched up. “Are you in touch with them?”

Not really, she said. A holiday card now and then, and every year, a check to help pay the taxes on the land.

“That’s got to be it,” Kevin said. “We need to get in touch with them.”

Genevieve went to a bureau drawer, pulled out an address book and wrote down the number for one of the relatives, and handed the paper to Kevin.

“You say you a lawyer?” Genevieve asked Kevin.

“Yes, ma’am. Well, almost. Finished law school.”

“And how you know about all this stuff going on?”

He told her about Professor LeClaire, and Genevieve pursed her lips, frowning.

“LeClaire. Seem like he called me about a year ago. We kept playing phone tag, just couldn’t get connected. I guess he was trying to warn me.”

Kevin’s gaze fell to his shoes. “I’m so sorry we missed you, Miss Genevieve. That musta been around the time the Prof got sick.” He looked up at her. “Professor LeClaire died about this time last year. I’m trying to keep up his work. Trying to find ways to help folks like you keep their land.”

Genevieve’s eyes narrowed and she leaned forward, shaking her finger. “Well, they gonna half to drag me offa Silver Creek. My whole family is buried here. I’m not giving this place up without a fight, no sir.”

As they walked back out to the yard, the rooster still pecked around the front of the house, and a rabbit darted out from beneath the crawl space and disappeared deep into the grove of pecan trees. When they reached Julian’s car, Genevieve hugged Kevin and Velmyra before they got inside. Before Julian opened his own door, Genevieve pulled him aside.

“Now, baby,” she said in a whisper, “When you find your daddy, don’t tell him what you saw here.”

He gave her a confused look. “What do you mean, Cousin G?”

She looked back toward the house where Pastor Jackson was sweeping off the porch. “Well, you know, me and Pastor Jackson.”

Julian’s eyes glazed over, his face a question mark.

She cocked her head to the side, her hands on her hips. There was a slight twinkle in her eyes and a shy smile curling the corners of her mouth. “Child, you know, they used to call it ‘living in sin.’ But me and Pastor Jackson, we feel we been blessed by the Lord. Oh, I know it’s a little unusual with him being twenty-five years younger than me and everything, but that man just brings me more joy…I tell you.”

Now he got it. But his confusion was replaced with genuine shock. Cousin G’s face opened like a flower as she gazed at the man on the porch. Pastor Jackson looked up from his sweeping and grinned back at her.

“We got together ’bout a few months ago. It just happened. He used to take me home from missionary board meeting after I had my knee surgery and couldn’t drive. Well, we got to talking about this and that and one thing led to another. Turns out we both liked to go bowling over by Oak Meadows. And we started playing in the bid whist tournaments at the Y over in Percy around the same time. But that ain’t the best part.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper—“Child, that man is got some stamina, you know what I’m saying? Makes me feel like a young bride, don’t cha know”—and elbowed Julian in the side.

Julian felt his face flush.

“Why are you looking so surprised? Old women like me, we got our needs too! And I’ll have you know, I used to turn many a head back in my day.”

Julian wanted to laugh out loud. This was not the woman he imagined living a quiet life in the Louisiana backwater, Bible in one hand and tumbler of sweet tea in the other, rocking on a porch while the sun dipped into the pines.

“Your daddy, well, he just wouldn’t understand. He was always the most Christian of all of us. So just keep it between you and me, OK?”

“OK, Cousin G.”

She reached up and gave him a hug. “You stay at my place long as you want,” she said. “Come back soon as you know something about Simon, or Silver Creek, and bring your friends with you.” She shook her head for a moment, her mood sobered by a thought. Then she looked up again at Julian, her eyes brighter. “That young lady, my she’s a pretty thing! And look like she got a little fire in her, too. Like your mama. Don’t let her get away.”

He wanted to explain, but decided not to bother. If she wanted to believe he was involved with Velmyra, fine. He wasn’t about to burst a romantic old woman’s bubble.

On the way back to Genevieve’s, Kevin and Julian pieced together a plan: locate the other family members in California, find out who sold their portion of the land, then get a copy of the contract.

And then hope the buyers made a mistake somewhere along the way.

But as Kevin talked, Julian thought about his father. What would he have done in a situation like this? Simon was a stubborn, determined man guided by principle, and never surrendered once he decided something was unjust or unfair. If he’d been here, he’d never have let this happen to the land.

When they pulled up to the cabin, the sun had slipped behind linen-thin clouds and a cooling afternoon breeze stirred the leaves of the magnolias. On the ground beneath one of the trees, new tire tracks lay in the rain-softened earth and trailed away from the house toward the west, disappearing on the road toward the highway. Both Julian and Velmyra stared at the fresh tracks, then the door of the cabin.

Something wasn’t right. When they pulled even closer, they could see the huge iron padlock hanging from the doorknob.

Julian ran up the porch steps to the door and grabbed the padlock in his hand. “What the…”

Kevin and Velmyra were right behind him. Velmyra looked back toward the road. “Somebody was just waiting for us to leave.”

Kevin’s face was ashen. He muttered a name under his breath, then said, “No, no you didn’t.”

Julian’s ears got hot. He clinched his mouth, took three steps back, and with a running start, kicked the door in with his foot.

When the door jolted open, he examined the torn hinges.

“I’ll find some tools and fix this.” He turned to Velmyra and Kevin, who stared at him and the torn door in astonishment. “What are you all waiting for? Come on in.”

By the time Julian returned from the hardware store in Local with a hammer, screwdriver, new hinges, and screws, Kevin and Velmyra had finished off the dregs of the moonshine-cola and, on finding a mason jar of clear liquid buried deep in the cupboard, had launched into Cousin Genevieve’s supply of white lightning, straight and uncut.

They both sat, dazed, at the table, Kevin slouched in his chair, legs sprawled and head thrown back, as if he’d been dealt a body blow, and Velmyra bowed her head into her folded arms on the table, a half-empty glass of the corn liquor next to her elbow.

Julian fixed the door in a few minutes and joined them at the table. He poured himself three fingers, and drank down one of them. He coughed once, his face contorting with the burn of the drink, then drank another finger and pulled his chair up close to the table to look Kevin in the eye.

“You know, man. I really appreciate all you’re doing, trying to help us and everything. But I’m just wondering if there’s something you want to tell us.”

As if on cue, Velmyra lifted her head from her folded arms, looking first at Julian, then at Kevin.

“Yeah. You said something, somebody’s name when we saw the padlock. It was like you weren’t surprised, like you expected it. We’re just wondering if—”

“If you know something about these people. The folks who bought, well,
stole
Silver Creek from our family.”

Kevin ducked his head, took a long slow swallow of the white lightning, and shifted his gaze from one pair of eyes to the other. He drummed his thin knuckles on the tabletop.

He smiled a sardonic half-smile. “Well, it’s not something I want to tell you. But I will. Hell, I don’t want to tell nobody this.”

He took another drink and ran his hand along the back of his neck.

“The man who’s doing this to y’all? You could say I know him.” He took a deep breath.

“The son of a bitch is my granddaddy.”

“
I
shoulda told y’all from the start.”

As Kevin talked, his complexion reddened, and water pooled in the corners of his glazed eyes. Julian couldn’t tell if it was from the truth that had finally been lifted from his heart or the residual burn from the corn liquor.

“I don’t know.” Kevin shook his head, looked down at the table top, and made wide circles with the flat of his palms. “Sometimes I think I must be crazy to take him on like this.”

Velmyra put a hand on top of his wrist. “Just tell us what’s going on.”

He nodded, pushed back the mop of blond hair from his eyes, then rubbed his fist in his eyes like a sleepy, innocent child. He leaned back in his chair, his eyes closed, his head tilted toward the ceiling.

His voice wavered. “I’m just so sorry.”

All three were silent a moment. Velmyra and Julian looked at each other. Clearly, Kevin was in a state, and needed a minute to gather himself. “You haven’t eaten a thing all day. You must be hungry,” Velmyra said. “You want me to fix you something?”

Kevin opened his eyes and looked toward her. “Yeah, actually. That’d be fine if it’s not too much trouble.”

When Velmyra returned from the kitchen with a bowl of leftover gumbo, Kevin stirred his spoon in it, then ate a mouthful. He didn’t stop until the bowl was empty.

He pushed the plate aside. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said quietly. Then looking at each of them, said, “I don’t know where to start, so I’ll just start at the beginning. First, I want y’all to know, he’s my grandfather, but that’s it. He ain’t nothing to me, and I ain’t nothing like him.”

Kevin explained that it was his grandfather, Nathan Larouchette, who had been responsible for Professor LeClaire’s family losing their land years ago. He learned about it when he was a first-year law student. One day in contracts class, the professor invited any student who was interested to travel with him around the parish as he went from one farm to another, schooling landowners on ways to protect their property from unscrupulous land grabbers. “Learn how to make the law work for real people,” he’d said, smiling, tugging at his trademark bright red suspenders. Kevin, enamored of the brilliant man he held in rock-star esteem, volunteered along with two other students.

With the professor’s rusted white van piled high with briefcases, greasy lunch bags of homemade shrimp sandwiches, a cooler of ice and soft drinks, and three eager would-be lawyers, the professor set out on sun-filled Saturday mornings for the gravelly roads and deep-wooded winding paths of Pointe Louree. The country folk of the mostly rural parish were friendly, so unannounced drop-bys and cold-call chats were greeted with hospitable smiles and iced sweet tea. In many cases, the families were living on land that had been passed down so many years they not only didn’t have wills, but had to be convinced there was even a need for them.

One rainy March morning the professor arrived late to class, one hand holding a steaming coffee cup, the other brandishing a copy of
The Advocate
, Baton’s Rouge’s daily, folded open to the real estate section. The students leaned forward in their seats, straining to see the photo of the balding, bespectacled, and bearded white man, looking to be in his late seventies, who filled up a corner of the page.