[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
horse thundering across the earth behind him.
He turned just as the guerrilla leader bore down upon him, leaning from the
saddle, the point of hes hilted sword extended in frong of him.The sword's
sharpened edge knifed through the top of Willie's shirt, just above the
collarbone, and sliced across the skin of his shoulder as coldly as an icicle.
Willie crumpled his hat against his wound and collapsed against a rick fence,
the eggs breaking and running down his clothes. He stared stupidly at the
guerrilla leader, who disappeared in the mist, an idiot's grin on his mouth.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE two-story gabled house next to the Catholic cemetery had been built in the
1840s by an eccentric ornithologist and painter who had worked with James
Audubon in Key West and the Florida Everglades. Unfortunately his insatiable
love of painting tropical birds as well as Tahitian nudes seemed to be related
to a libidinous passion for red wine, Parisian prostitutes, gambling, and
trysts with the wives of the wealthiest and best duelists in southern
Louisiana.
Residents of the town believed it was only a matter of time before a cuckold
drove a pistol ball through his brain. They were wrong. Syphilis got to it
first. Just before the first Federal troops reached New Iberia, he gave all
Page 153
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
his paintings to his slaves, put on a tailored gray officer's uniform he had
worn as a member of the Home Guards, then mounted a horse and charged down the
bayou road, waving a sword over his head, straight into an artillery barrage
that blew him and his uniform into pieces that floated down as airily as
flamingo feathers on the bayou's surface.
The first night Federals occupied the town they tore the doors off the house,
broke out the windows and turned the downstairs rooms into horse stalls. After
the Union cavalry moved on up the 'I'echc into the Red Rivet country, the
house remained empty, the white paint darkening from stubble fires, the oak
floors scoured by horseshoes, the eaves clustered with yellow-jacket and
mud-dauber nests. The taxes on the house were not paid for two years, and on a
hot afternoon in late May, the sheriff tacked an auction announcement on the
trunk of the live oak that shaded the dirt yard in front of the gallery.
Abigail Dowling happened to be passing in her buggy when the sheriff tapped
down the four corners of the auction notice on the tree and stood back to
evaluate his handiwork. But Abigail's attention was focused on the gallery
steps, where Flower Jamison was sitting with two black children, teaching them
how to write the letters of the alphabet on a piece of slate. In fact, at that
moment, the broad back of the sheriff, the auction notice puffing against the
bark of the tree, Flower and the black children arranged like a triptych on
the steps and the vandalized and neglected house of a sybaritic artist, all
seemed to be related, like prophetic images caught inside a perfect historical
photograph.
Abigail pulled the buggy into the shade and walked past Flower into the
building, trailing her fingers across Flower's shoulders. She walked from room
to room, computing the measurements in her mind, seeing furnishings and
arrangements that were not there. Tramps or ex-soldiers passing through town
had scattered trash through the rooms and built unconfined cook fires on the
hearths, blackening the walls and scorching the ceilings. She could hear red
squirrels and field mice clattering across the roof and the attic. The wind
blew hot and dusty through the open windows and smelled of fish heads behind a
market and horse manure in the streets. But when she looked out on the gallery
and saw the two black children, both of them barefoot, bending down
attentively on each side of Flower while she showed them how to print their
names in chalk on the piece of slate, Abigail felt a prescience about the
future that was more optimistic than any she had experienced in years.
Wasn't it time to put aside anger and loss and self-accusation and live in the
sunlight for a while? she thought.
She went back out on the gallery and sat down on the top step next to Flower
and placed her palm in the center of Flower's back. She could feel the heat
and moisture in Flower's skin through her dress, and she removed her hand and
rested it in her lap. She looked at Flower's profile against the light
breaking in the live oak, the clarity in her eyes, the resolute tilt of her
chin, and experienced a strange tightening in her throat.
The two black children, a boy and a girl, both grinned at her. To call their
clothes rags was a euphemism, she thought. Their poverty, the dried sweat
lines on their faces, the untreated red cuts and abrasions on their black skin
made her heart ache.
"You were born to teach," she said to Flower.
"That's what I'm doing. Every afternoon, right here on these steps," Flower
replied.
Page 154
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Abigail touched Flower's hair. It felt as thick and warm as sun-heated cotton
in a field. "Yes, you are. Like an African princess inside a painting. One of
the loveliest, most beautiful creatures Our Lord ever made," she said.
She felt her face flush but knew it was only from the heat and the unnatural
dryness of the season.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]