Hidden Jewel Read online

  “Don’t.” I pressed my finger to his lips. “Don’t you dare explain anything.”

  I could see his look of surprise.

  “Je ne regret rien. I regret nothing,” I said quickly. He smiled and kissed me.

  We made love passionately, both sure of what we wanted. Without timidity and hesitation, it was a long, flowing stream of passion that climbed higher and higher until it burst in a waterfall, pounding rocks below again and again and again, each time punctuated with a bigger, happier Yes.

  Exhausted, we separated and lay next to each other, waiting for our breathing to slow, our hearts to stop pounding. I felt a warm glow over my body and closed my eyes.

  Jack found my hand and held it. “You were born in a hurricane all right,” he said, and I laughed.

  As my passion receded, however, my reason and logic returned, bringing with it the baggage of guilt. What was wrong with me? How could I behave with such abandon? I knew if I said one word, Jack would be filled with guilt, too, and I didn’t want that.

  Yet in the midst of all this turmoil and unhappiness, I had found such pleasure. It wasn’t right, was it? I turned my back to him and bit down on my lip.

  Jack, as if he were listening to my thoughts, turned to me and whispered, “It’s all right. It doesn’t mean you care less about your family or you’re not trying hard to help them. You can’t drive yourself at top speed without taking a break to recharge your batteries. You’re human, Pearl. I think maybe you forget that sometimes.”

  I turned to him slowly and smiled.

  “I won’t forget it anymore, Jack.” He smiled, too. He kissed me again and then cradled me in his arms, and I closed my eyes.

  Sleep came rushing in as hard and as fast as the winds of the hurricane. I could no more keep it away than I could the wind. In moments I was drifting.

  When I opened my eyes again, sunlight was pouring through the windows. It was hard to believe we had endured such a vicious storm the night before. In fact, the whole night seemed like a dream. Had Jack and I really enjoyed a romantic dinner? Did we really make love? When I turned to him, I found he was already gone. He had scribbled out a note and left it on the pillow.

  Didn’t have the heart to wake you. You looked like an angel asleep. I had to get up very early because of the storm. Come to the trailer when you get up, and I’ll fix you breakfast Cajun style.

  Love,

  Jack

  I sat up and looked at my watch. I had slept until almost ten. Panic seized me. I should have risen early and gotten to a telephone. I had to see how Pierre and Daddy were doing.

  I rose quickly and tried the sink in the bathroom. To my happy surprise, after a flow of brown water, clean water appeared. I had no warm water, but I was able to wash my face and go to the bathroom. Afterward I dressed and went downstairs. Jack had cleaned everything up from our dinner, but I saw the results of the storm’s invasion everywhere: shattered plates, broken windowpanes, soaked drapes and floors.

  It was terrible of the Tates to let this beautiful mansion fall apart, I thought. Why was it that people who had everything could be so wasteful and vicious? What possible revenge did Gladys Tate enjoy from watching her son’s pride and joy deteriorate? Did she just want to make sure no one else ever enjoyed the house? Even from the little I remembered about Uncle Paul and from what Mommy had told me, I knew he wouldn’t have wanted this.

  I started when I heard footsteps behind me.

  “Jack? Is that you?” I called. There was no response, but a floorboard creaked in the corridor.

  Slowly I turned. It’s Mommy, I thought. She has finally returned. My heart pounding with expected joy, I hurried down the corridor toward the kitchen. I would surely find her sitting there, waiting for me.

  “Mommy!” I cried as I burst through the doorway; but instead of Mommy, I found a tall giant of a man. His face was bloated so that his thick nose had nostrils big enough to inhale three times the air he needed. He had heavy jowls and a round chin with thick purple iips. He was unshaven, and his three- or four-day beard of gray and brown stubble was thicker under his lower lip. When he smiled, I saw he was missing a lower tooth and some back teeth. All the rest were nicotine-stained yellow.

  He was dressed in knee-high boots and torn jeans with a T-shirt that had a tear in the shoulder and looked as if it had been washed in rusty water.

  He smiled, the curve in his soft, thick lips cutting deep into those bloated cheeks and narrowing his dull brown eyes over which his thick, heavily wrinkled forehead protruded.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “It’s true,” he said. “You are Ruby’s daughter, ain’tcha?”

  “I am Ruby Dumas’s daughter, yes. Who are you?” I demanded more fervently. He stopped smiling.

  “Name’s Trahaw, Buster Trahaw. I’m a friend of your mother’s,” he replied. “Friends of mine told me you was here lookin’ for her, so I come to see for myself.”

  “Have you seen my mother?” I asked. I didn’t remember her mentioning a Trahaw, and I couldn’t imagine why she would ever be friends with someone who looked like this, but as Jack had said last night, there were people I never knew and Mommy could have gone to see them or stayed in their homes while she was here, especially if she had gotten caught in the storm.

  “Sure, I seen her,” he said. “Why do you think I’m here?”

  “Where is she? How is she?” I asked quickly.

  “She … she ain’t well,” he said. “She’s sick as a dog. When they told me you was here, she said, ‘Go fetch her quickly.’ So I come.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s at my mother’s house,” he said. “My mother’s a traiteur.”

  “Oh,” I said. It made sense. “Will you take me to her please?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Only we got to go quick. I got work to do and I can’t be wandering about long.”.

  “Okay. Let’s go,” I said, turning. “My car’s out front.”

  “We can’t go in no car,” he said, not moving. “My mother’s house is in the swamp. I come here in a pirogue to fetch you. This way …” He headed toward the rear door.

  “But …”

  “You coming or what, missy? I told you, I got work.”

  I hesitated. I should tell Jack, I thought. I took out his note and turned it over to scribble my own on the back.

  Dear Jack, Went with Buster Trahaw, who said my mother was at his house. Be back soon.

  Love,

  Pearl

  I left the note on the counter and hurried after Buster Trahaw, who had already stepped out of the house.

  He nodded toward the dock. “My pirogue’s just down here.”

  I followed along, looking back only once and regretting that I couldn’t have the time to see Jack. But maybe I would get to my mother and bring her back before Jack even found my note. Full of hope, I hurried along. Buster Trahaw didn’t wait for me. He practically ran to the dock and got into his pirogue. I hesitated. I couldn’t recall the last time I had been in one, or the last time I had gone into the canals.

  He reached up finally to help me, and I stepped into the canoe.

  “Good,” he said. “Finally.”

  He smiled, dipped his pole into the water, and pushed us away from the dock and into the swamps. I sat down hard and watched him anxiously. He never took his eyes off me, and he never stopped smiling.

  14

  Great Grandpere’s Debt Must Be Paid

  Buster Trahaw’s pirogue was so old and rotten that I was afraid it would simply come apart and dump us into the swamp water, which became the color of dark tea as we left the dock. Buster groaned and grunted as he pushed down on his pole. Soon beads of sweat as big as small marbles were breaking out over his forehead and rolling over his rough skin to drip off his chin and jawbone.

  “How far do we have to go?” I asked nervously. Pieces of sundried bait and worms littered the canoe floor, as did cigarette butts, empty beer bottles, and crushed t
in cans.

  “Not far, not far,” he said quickly.

  Instinctively I looked back toward the dock. I had a strong urge to ask him to return me there, but I couldn’t help being afraid he was telling the truth and Mommy really needed me. I would have felt so much safer and reassured if I had seen Jack before I left. Who knew how long it would be before he found my note, and what if he didn’t find it? I shouldn’t have run off like that, I told myself.

  “Don’t worry,” Buster said, still smiling. “We gonna be there soon. No one poles a pirogue faster than Buster Trahaw in these here canals.”

  I sat back. I really couldn’t recall being in a pirogue when I was just a little girl, but certain visual memories returned when I saw things that were once familiar. Off to my right, among the lily pads and cattails, bream were feeding on the insects that circled just above the water. It looked like bubbles popping. Sheets of Spanish moss draped over cypress branches rose and fell with the breeze. Dragonflies hovered inches above the canal until something triggered them to veer right or left and hover over another area. They moved like dots merging into one large fly.

  Buster turned the pirogue a bit to the left, and we entered a narrower canal, passing first under a canopy of willow branches. When I looked back, it was as if a green door had been slammed closed behind us. As we continued into the canal, the overgrowth became thicker. At times the canopy of cypress over the water was so dense it nearly blocked out the sun. I saw an alligator sleeping under a fallen, rotting tree trunk and then another floated past us, its eyes glaring with suspicion or anticipation.

  Buster laughed when I cringed. “Ain’t nothin’ to worry ’bout,” he said. “I wrestle gators for fun.” He followed that with a cackle that echoed in the bush. “You’re a fancy lady now, ain’tcha? Betcha don’t even remember livin’ here, huh?”

  “No. But I’m not a fancy lady,” I replied. “Just where is this place?”

  “Yonder, ’round the bend.” He jerked his head to the left.

  I shaded my eyes and gazed in that direction. Flowering honeysuckle covered the far bank. Two snowy egrets paraded on a rock while bullfrogs leaped around them, but I saw no shack and no other human beings.

  The stillness got to me. Except for the sound of a dove or the cry of a marsh hawk, all I heard was Buster’s grunt and the rhythmic dipping of his pole. Along a nearby bank, I saw a couple of nutrias dash into their dried domes of grass and then a white-tailed deer lifted its head, gazed our way, and turned to trot off. It was as if everything in nature knew to be wary of Buster Trahaw.

  “What do you do?” I asked him. He had made little or no effort to start a conversation and had really volunteered nothing about himself.

  “Whatcha mean, do?”

  “Are you an oyster fisherman or a carpenter?”

  “I ain’t a lawyer,” he said and laughed. “I fish some. I hunt some. I sell Spanish moss to the furniture people to stuff them chairs and sofas, and I do odd jobs when I got to,” he said. “My daddy left me a little money, too. ’Course, most of its gone down the gullet,” he added and cackled again, his Adam’s apple bouncing against his sandpaper skin.

  As we made the turn around the bend, Buster poled as hard as someone being chased.

  “How did my mother get out here?” I asked suspiciously.

  “She come from the other end,” he said quickly.

  “What other end?” I asked.

  “Stop asking so many questions,” he snapped. “I can’t pole this pirogue and talk at the same time.”

  I felt my heart begin to thump. I spun around and gazed back. Cypress Woods was miles behind us. We entered another, even narrower canal. At times I could almost stretch out my arms and touch both sides. The mosquitoes looked bigger, and the clouds of them were thicker. The water was darker, too. Something slithered off a rock and slipped into the water just ahead of us. I cringed again.

  “I don’t like this,” I said. “We’re not getting anywhere. Take me back. I’ll get someone to drive me to the other end,” I said, but Buster didn’t look at me, nor did he slow down. “Mr. Trahaw, I said …”

  He turned and looked behind him.

  “There it is,” he announced as we broke out of the narrow canal and into a pond.

  I saw a trapper’s shack ahead. It sat about six feet off the marsh on pilings lined up in rows. The planks appeared to have been slapped together with chewing gum. Some dangled precariously over the windows. The railing of the gallery was cracked on the far end, and even from this distance I could see there were gaping holes in the floor. How could my mother ever go to such a place?

  “My mother wouldn’t be there,” I declared.

  “Why not? You know whose place that was?” he said with his lips in a tight smile. “That there was your great-grandpere’s shack, missy. That’s where the likes of you come from, so don’t sit up so high and mighty, hear?”

  “My great-grandpere’s?”

  “That’s right. Jack Landry. He was a trapper and the best hunting guide in these parts. ’Course, now I am,” he added. He poled faster, and I strained to see signs of Mommy.

  “Where is she?”

  “Lying on the cot inside, sick as a dog, I told ya. Happy you come now?”

  I didn’t reply. Cautiously I sat back and waited for him to reach the dock and tie up the pirogue. There was a very shaky stairway up to the gallery. He planted his foot against one step and reached for me.

  “Come on. I’ll help you up,” he said. I stood up slowly, but the pirogue rocked and I nearly fell overboard. I cried out, and he laughed. “Reach out,” he demanded. Reluctantly, I did so, and the moment his hand found mine, he pulled me forward with such force that I lost my footing and fell into his huge arms. He laughed again, held me there a moment and then lifted me out of the pirogue as if I weighed no more than a baby. I found as firm a footing as I could on the stairway and walked up to the gallery. He followed close behind.

  Scattered over the gallery in a disorganized fashion were nets for oyster fishing, piles of Spanish moss, empty beer bottles, dirty bowls crusted with dried gumbo, and the only piece of furniture, a rocking chair tipped over on its side, the right arm snapped off. I paused. The planks dipped. I was sure I would step through one.

  “It’s all right. Go on inside,” he said, waving toward the door. I walked forward slowly and entered what he said was once my great-grandpere’s shack.

  It was only one room. There was a plank table directly in front of us, covered with old dishes and empty beer and whiskey bottles. To the right was a cot, the stained gray blanket dumped beside it, the sheet brown stained and torn. Skins and furs dangled off nails along the walls. On a long shelf near the table were jars of pickled frogs, snakes, and the ugliest water insects I had ever seen. Everywhere I looked, I saw strewn clothing and sacks. The two windows were both caked with grime so thick the light was practically kept out.

  “Where’s my mother?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Buster said. “Looks like she just up and left and didn’t clean up after herself neither.” He laughed, and I turned when I heard something rattle. He was standing in the doorway behind me, a long metal chain in his hand.

  “I want to go back immediately,” I demanded.

  “Well, that ain’t very friendly, now, is it? And after all I done for your mother?” He laughed again.

  “Right now,” I said and started toward the door. He laughed again and wrapped his arms around me, lifting me up and carrying me to the cot while I screamed. He slapped me down hard, wrapped the chain around my right ankle, and snapped a padlock before I had a chance to resist.

  “And the key’s right here,” he said, showing it to me before putting it in his right pants pocket. When I sat up to protest, he lifted his enormous right palm and threatened to slap me down. I took one look at the callused dirty fingers and that thick wrist and recoiled.

  “What are you doing?” I cried.

  “Getting what’s coming to
me,” he said and backed away holding the other end of the chain. He ran it to a big metal pin that looked like a railroad spike embedded in a floor beam and locked that end with a padlock, too.

  “What’s coming to you?” I asked, terrified.

  “A wife, that’s what. I paid for a Landry some years back, and she run off. Then, when she returned and I went to claim what was legally mine, she had me arrested. I spent some time in the clink ’cause of her, but Buster Trahaw never forgets a debt owed him. No, ma’am. Relatives of mine,” he continued, reaching for a bottle that had an inch or so of beer left in it, “told me you was here, so I come lookin’, and sure enough, there you was. Well, I ain’t particular which Landry I get, long as I get one that’s been owed.” He brought the neck of the bottle to his thick lips and sucked out the remaining beer, his throat contorting like the body of a snake. Then he flung the bottle across the room. It didn’t shatter, but it bounced off the wall and fell to the floor.

  “I figured since I was cheated, I could claim this shack, but it ain’t nothin’ near the payment owed me.” He smiled. “You make up the rest.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “Want?” He looked confused for a moment. “Why, I want a wife. You do what a wife supposed to do is what I want. First thing, you clean up this place. I give you enough lead on this chain so you can get around the shack. Right there,” he said pointing to a rusty pot in the right corner, “is the diddly. You can use them old newspapers I got piled next to it.”

  “You can’t do this,” I cried. “This is kidnapping.”

  “’Course I can do it. It’s what’s owed, and out here in the swamps, a debt is a debt, hear?”

  I started to cry. He stared at me a moment and then stepped toward me ominously. I cringed against the shack wall.

  “I don’t want to hear cryin’ I don’t want to hear yellin’. I want a quiet, obedient woman, just like my daddy had twice. Now I got you somethin’ to wear, somethin’ that ain’t fancy. You’re a swamp woman now.” He dug under the cot and came out with what looked like another sack. “Put this here on. Now!” he shouted, some spittle raining over me.