Suffrage (Excerpt)

“When I die, bury me in Tangipahoa Parish, so I still can vote.” -- Huey P. Long


I made my way along Buttermilk Creek at dawn, checking my traps when I heard cussing, somebody spitting words out like hammering a nail. I settled down in the brush, then snuck up the hill to our family plot, quiet pine straw under my toes. Their horses and tents was at sides of the flat hill. I counted eleven dirty white shirts and blue caps, and then I saw one more, head to toe in Yankee blue.

A scrawny one cawed, “Hey Sergeant, Eli Fox was born in 1824 and died in 1864. Change the two to an eight he was born in 1884, twenty years after he died!”

“That’s ten years from now,” growled the big Yankee in blue. “Doesn’t make good sense.”

“That’s why it’s funny!”

Sarge stood on Daddy’s grave. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the fun.”

Lightning crackled in my head. If I’d had our shotgun I would have blown their heads off. I waited until I caught my breath, and crept back down. My brother, Ernest, would know what to do.

When I jumped the gully, I ran right into a blue coat. “Ho, there, lad,” he said wrapping his arms around me, making me drop my sack with the two dead coons. He took me down hard.

“Easy, lad. Let’s chat, shall we?”

“Turn me loose, damned Yankee.” I almost sobbed, short of breath with him on top.

“We’re looking for the White League. I know a fine lad like you wouldn’t have nothing to do with murders, but maybe you know who would. Tell me and I’ll go about my business.” Irishboy Elliott’s whole family talked like this Yankee--I didn’t know there was Irish Yankees.

“Let me go!” I shot halfway out and grabbed a handful of red hair. He hit me so hard that my head rattled.

Yankees thundered down the hill, yelling. They drug me back up and tied my hands and feet, so that I was hugging daddy’s tombstone. It was a sandstone slab from Buttermilk Creek with nooks and crannies for their rope to seat down in, except for the face that Ernest had flattened out, where my chest and neck fit.

Sarge squatted on the other side of the stone and glared until I quit cussing. “What’s your name, boy?”

I clamped my jaw shut. I was madder than I had ever been.

“Not ready to talk? Well, I can cure that. Get my whip, Monihan,” he ordered the Irish Yankee.

Monihan puffed his cheeks out, stood there a second, and drug off. Sarge stared at me from under his Yankee hat and bushy eyebrows. “You know any White League around Muddville?”

I just stared.

“Traitors buried here, boy. You wouldn’t be one of them?”

Through my teeth, I said, “My Daddy wasn’t no traitor.”

He spit on Uncle Van’s grave. “Your Pa took arms against his country. And before you say Louisiana left that country, I’ll tell you that the Union voted--majority rule--for Louisiana not to leave, so they broke the law. Your Pa’s a traitor.”

Monihan brought a black bullwhip. These Yankees wasn’t herding cows so I knew Sarge liked to beat people. Ernest would never hear me scream way out here. I yanked up on the rope and felt my feet move, too--trussed. Salty sweat ran into my eyes and mouth, but I couldn’t wipe. Monihan handed Sarge the whip. I blurted out, “You never voted to whip me, you cowards.”

Sarge blinked. He smiled. “Nope, I never did. All right, let’s vote it.”

“I vote no, so it’s a tie. Let me go.”

He grinned. “We got thirteen here. You’ll have to submit to what General Blount calls the tyranny of the majority.”

Could I keep him talking until somebody could save me? “You Yankees got boys of your own. Why do you want to bullwhip me when I ain’t done nothing?” Tears leaked out of my eyes; my body was stinging on the sandstone.

Sarge said, “All in favor of me whipping this boy?”

Lots of “yes sir” from them.

“Against?” he said.

I said, “No!”

Monihan said, “No sir.”

Sarge looked like Monihan hit him. “What the hell?”

Monihan said, “Since we’re voting it, I allow that if we whip him we’ll make more enemies than we want. Free him and we’ll get just what we want, Sir.”

“Hrmph. Well, you lose. Since you like this traitor, you get to beat him.” He handed the whip to Monihan. I relaxed a little since Monihan didn’t want me beat anyway. Then Sarge said, “Three lashes. If some aren’t good enough, you’ll get those, plus one.”

Daddy whipped me some before he died at Mansfield when I was eight. Mama didn’t have the stomach for whipping me after Daddy died--she got pneumonia a year later. Ernest whipped me once, but he ended up crying halfway through. He had the gumption to take their place in most things, but not that.

I stared hate at Sarge and ran my fingertips over Daddy’s stone.

The whip whistled through the air and lashed me. Every muscle bent backward and I screamed like a girl. My muscles didn’t let go. I ran out of air, caught more, and screamed it out, too.

While my back still blazed, another lash burned across it. I couldn’t breathe. My muscles was so tight I was paralyzed.

Sarge said, “Wait. He needs to feel them all.”

When I caught my breath I pled, “Oh, please, damned Yankees, oh please don’t ...”

I begged until I whimpered and twitched like a dying squirrel. Sarge raised my chin with his hand. “Two hundred black men murdered in Colfax last week. Where is the White League in Grant Parish?”

I blurted the truth. “I don’t know, Ernest says we ain’t got time for such, we got to make a living, we ain’t no better off than black folks, we sell them chickens at their boarding house, we swim with them, we call them names but they calls us names too, I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

“Shut up!” He growled. “I don’t think the boy knows nothing. Still, we voted three lashes. Monihan.”

I sobbed, “No, oh please, no.”

Monihan leaned and touched me on the shoulder with the tip of the bullwhip. “That’s three, Sarge.”

“You Irish bastard! On your knees!” Two of them stripped Monihan’s jacket and shirt and shoved him down on the other side of Daddy’s stone, facing me. He put his hands on my shoulders and nodded.

Sarge’s first lash bent Monihan backwards and he fell over, trying to reach behind, screaming not nearly as loud as me. Four Yankees held his arms around the stone while Sarge lashed again. He screamed and cried, and in a while he was moaning and they let him up.

Sarge said, “Sorry you did that, Monihan?”

Between gasps, Monihan said, “Aye, Sarge.”

***

When I staggered home with my coons, Ernest was plowing behind the mule. I still had the shakes and whimpered when I took a wrong step. I could never sneak up on Ernest because he was always looking over his shoulder. Sitting on the porch one time, I asked, “What are you looking back at?”

He squinted at me and said, “Mansfield.”

“Why are you scared? You won at Mansfield.”

“Maybe somebody won at Mansfield. I sure didn’t, and neither did Daddy. And you didn’t win neither.”

When Ernest looked back he could see I was bowed up. “Jake?”

“Yankees, Ernest. At the graveyard.”

“What did they do?”

I’d start crying if I told him, so I just turned my back.

“Lord! Why, Jake?”

“The League killed hundreds of black folks at Colfax last week. Yankees thought I knew something.”

Ernest hugged my forehead to his sweaty shoulder, like when we prayed every night. “I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t your fault.”

He pulled back, looking me over. “Skint up ... all over.”

“They tied me to Daddy’s gravestone. One named Monihan took two lashes to save me from getting another. Don’t hurt him.”

Ernest swallowed hard. I had known we couldn’t fight Yankees, but I forgot somehow, because Ernest always set everything right for me. He was Daddy, Mama, and big brother, too.

“Let’s go see Irishboy,” he said.

Moonstruck

After Vinda put the corpse away and washed up, she wheeled her easy chair across the cement floor and sat back, looking out her little window at clouds passing before the face of the moon. She ate her peanut butter malt crackers and drank a Diet Coke, then opened her cell phone and called Arun.

When he answered, she said, “Can you see the moon?”

He paused and said, suspiciously, “Who is this?”

“You nabob,” she said, “It is seven in the morning for you. Is the moon visible?”

He laughed. “The moon is beautiful here. Half beautiful at the very least.”

“Like me!” she said.

“Only half like you; you are, quite naturally, all beautiful.” He continued without a pause, “Contracts should be signed next week, so I may see you next weekend. I cannot make reservations yet, but soon. It will be soon. How is your moon?”

She let her frustration show in her voice. “I could see it through my window now, if tonight were clear, as it was supposed to be. I would not even have to go up to the roof.”

“Scientific predictions gone awry? How could this be, oh Queen of Science? Oh! I forgot; you do not care for that name.”

“Queen of Science? No, you can call me that. I only object to ‘Queen of Death,’ Nabob lawyer.”

They chattered for five minutes, as usual. When she hung up, she sighed in frustration. She had hoped for their supernatural connection tonight—both gazing at the moon as they talked. It was so rare that they could both see the moon. She finished her snack and pulled her chair back to her battleship grey desk, issued by the city of Charleston.

The buzzer sounded. When she opened the security door, a hairy young guy in a black windbreaker and jeans showed her his badge. “I’m Mark Patton. I need to talk about Chaney—shot last night.”

She led him in. The door banged and clicked shut behind him. “I am Vinda Sharma. I performed the autopsy on Ms. Chaney. Detective Darbone was assigned to this case. What has happened?”

She motioned for him to sit in the metal chair across from her as she sank into her chair. He said, “Darbone’s got the flu. We can’t wait for him.”

“I imagine not,” she replied. “What information have you received thus far?”

He opened his cell phone, pushed a button, and read from the screen, “Celedon Chaney, twenty year old black female. Looked like a single shot to the right forehead with a large caliber bullet. Found at The Battery by a retired couple taking a walk at 9:00 P. M.. Her roommate said she was supposed to meet her boyfriend there. We’re working on him.”

Vinda tapped at her keyboard and her printer came to life. “I have completed my report. You do not have a murder, Mark. She was struck by a meteorite.” She waited for the papers to print out.

“You’re kidding. That can’t be right.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Would you like to see the body?”

“Well . . .,” he said.

She picked up the papers from the printer, handed them to him, pulled on a pair of gloves from her pocket, and wheeled a cart to the tagged locker. She had not heard of Mark before, so he must be new to his job. He had to learn like they all did that medical examiners did not argue the facts of a case with the police—though Vinda understood that he was not really arguing. Autopsy evidence usually instilled respect in the new guys even though they had seen plenty of bodies when they were patrolmen.

She adjusted the cart’s height and slid the drawer out onto the cart. She wheeled the cart to the spot before the high window, hoping it would add atmosphere for Mark. She crooked a finger at him and he walked over. She went to join him on the other side, so as not to obscure his view of the half moon—if the clouds should deign to thin! The lighting was poor, but the ambiance was perfect. In a similar situation, she had goosed a young detective last year, who had literally wet himself. She had instantly regretted that, since she had not meant to so terribly humiliate the man. The thought of that incident bothered her so that she decided to take it easy on Mark.

As the scent of the body began to waft up, she pulled back the sheet. Just as Vinda had left the woman, the right side of the head was caved in from the force of the object. Mark mused, incredulously, “A meteorite.”

Vinda said, “The force crushed the skull.” She rotated her finger around the area. “The projectile proceeded through the brain and lodged in the top of the spinal column. A slightly different angle and it would have made an exit wound.”

“He spoke softly. “I thought it looked like an execution by her boyfriend. No one heard a shot there in the park, so I expected to find a silencer on a gun. You’re sure that wasn’t a big piece of lead in her backbone?”

“The rock was quite aerodynamic. The lab is analyzing it. Perhaps they have filed a report, but it should not contain anything remarkable—more remarkable than what is already before us, I should say. Let me check.”

She removed her gloves and dropped them on the sheet that covered the body. She went to her desk, pulled up the lab’s information files, and read from the report. “. . . the composition of the interior of the rock . . . igneous . . . complete lack of water . . . trace of basalt lava . . ..” She straightened and saw him looking up through the window, probably to avoid looking at Celedon Chaney. She knew he would not believe her when she told him the rest. She could not disguise the tentative note in her voice. “They suspect that it is a piece of the moon.”

Mark turned around and looked at her. “The moon?”

She nodded, pondering the progressively eerie character of the death. “It is certainly the oddest case that I have been presented with.”

Mark looked around the room, then looked down at his fingers, which he had stretched out as if examining them. He said, “Last year. Something pretty big hit the moon. Remember the news about it?”

Why had that not occurred to her? “I do! Many were frightened by that, but the object was not large enough to harm the moon and from the best estimates, it was not at all powerful enough to cause any material to escape from the pull of the moon. This is fascinating. The earth must have just passed through debris . . ..” She realized she was chattering. She stopped.

Mark said, “Yeah, my girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—said that it was a UFO crash.”

“Oh, I did not pay attention to any of those people. Someone will always say such things.”

As if in response, the clouds lifted. She pointed past him at the glowing whitegold face of the half moon, which now bathed the three of them in its light.

He turned and said, “Cool. Spooky.”

Vinda giggled.

From the cart, Celedon Chaney’s hand shot up and locked on the lapel of Mark’s windbreaker, tugging him down to her.

Vinda screamed and backed up against the wall, trying to make her legs take her toward the door. She shakily said, in Hindi, “Na. Na. Na!”

Vinda woke to the sound of a cell phone’s buzz. The policemen in her hospital room told her that she had been found wandering in Battery Park. Mark Patton was dead. No forensic evidence pointed to her guilt.

She told them everything, but they didn’t believe her. They thought she saw something—a savage attack on Mark Patton—and hallucinated her story, based on that attack and on the fragment of the moon that struck Celedon Chaney. The police concluded that whoever had killed Mark Patton had stolen Celedon Chaney’s body. By the time she woke again, the police had told Arun about the attack and he was on his way from India.

Her doctor sedated her and ordered psychological counseling. They regularly woke her to take her vitals. The psychologist recommended that she remain in the hospital until the end of the week.

She woke to the sound of Arun saying, “Vinda? Love? Can you hear me?”

She lurched up and locked her arms around him. She sobbed and began to tell him everything.

He interrupted her, “Vinda, I cannot understand you. Let me pour you some water. Speak more slowly.”

“Yes,” she sobbed, and reluctantly let go of him.

He walked to the wheeled tray and poured some water from the grey pitcher into the grey glass. She watched his every move, so thankful that he was here. He paused at the end of the tray and opened the drapes, exposing the dazzling light of the three-quarters moon.

Throughout the hospital, orderlies’ trays clattered to the tiled floor, patients gasped awake in their beds, and nurses rushed to examine their monitors, as Vinda’s shrieks filled the halls.

Scythe of Silas Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Debt

When Riva opened her eyes she could see that Pa’s hand shivered as he held the iron key that usually hung round his neck. His voice shivered, too, when he said, “She died. I pulled her back.”

Riva shut her eyes tightly again. She could barely breathe, they hugged her so hard. Ma was crying. “Oh, girl. Oh, girl. Are you sure she’s alive, Jon? Are you sure?”

“She died. I pulled her back.”

Riva clutched at them as she started crying, too. Ma's kisses were hot all over her face. Ma murmured something in between kisses.

“Are you all right, girl?” Pa asked, louder this time.

Her voice was squeaky when she answered through the sobs. “I’m all right.” She opened her eyes. The big tree and the sky above them looked the same as before, except maybe brighter.

Pa asked, “What happened, Riva?”

She started to talk, but her breath caught in her throat. She coughed with a sob then managed to say, “I fell out of the tree. I’m sorry. I won’t climb it any more. I won’t.”

“You knew better, Riva!” Ma said, still scared.

“Do you remember anything after you fell?” Pa asked.

Riva said, “I had a dream. There was a man in a white room.”

Ma said, “It was just a bad dream. We’re here now, girl. You’re all right. Oh, I should have been watching you.”

“What did the man look like?” Pa asked.

Riva was shaking. “I’m cold.”

Ma said, “Let’s wrap her up. She’s cold. Take her inside, Jon.”

Pa’s strong arms reassured Riva as he carried her into the house and put her in her own bed. Ma covered her with the bear fur blanket and said, “I’ll get you some water,” gave her a powerful hug, and then hurried outside to the well.

Pa sat by her side and held both her hands in his. “You saw a man?”

“He was big, Pa. Bigger than you. He was a priest like you with a sword and the armor.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“Just the man in the room. The door—it was iron.”

“And that’s all?”

“He knew my name. He said I was his.” She let go of Pa’s hands, grabbed his neck, and hugged him close, starting to cry again. “I’m yours. I’m not his.”

Pa whispered in her ear. “You’re mine, girl. Mine and Ma’s. But we’re all His.”

“All his?”

“Jared’s. We all go to the Spirit World someday, through that iron door.”

“I don’t want to go back. Please.”

They stayed that way until Ma brought the water.

Riva must have gone to sleep after that. When she woke up she lay still, listening to Ma and Pa talking quietly. She snuck a peek and saw they were at the table. She moved her hand slowly up to her neck and felt the soft leather necklace, then trailed her hand along it until she found her doll. She had been lying on it. She slowly brought her doll to her cheek and nuzzled against her, barely whispering, “It’s all right, little sister. It’s all right.”

Pa said, “I don’t know how, Claire. I shouldn’t have been able to.”

“Jared gave her back to you because you’re his priest, Jon. That’s all.”

“No. He didn’t give her. I took her. Riva told me that He said she belonged to Him. I shouldn’t have done it, Claire.”

“Well it’s too late now. She’s back where she should be.”

Nobody said anything for a while. Finally Pa said, “We have to give her back.”

***

Riva crawled on hands and knees, looking for a little hole in the ground, even too small for her finger. She was near the big tree when she saw Pa leave the tanning shed and go into the house to eat. She crept around the yard until she found a hole near the house. She looked over her thin stalk of hangweed, and then spit on the end. She put the wet end into the dirt and rolled it around until the stalk had a nice mud coating. She slid the muddy end of the stalk into the little hole and rolled the other end in her fingers. When she pulled the stalk out she saw the small white worm clinging to the muddy end. She lowered the worm to the ground. When he began to creep away, she jousted with him with the stalk.

She knew Ma would call her inside to eat soon. She heard Ma and Pa talking inside as he washed up from his morning’s work. Ma said, “I know what we have to do.”

“About the elk skins? I’m sending them to Pargamont. He’s paying well for them now.”

Ma said so quietly Riva could barely hear, “About Riva.”

Riva peeked up into the window at them, careful that they could not see her.

“I dreamed that she was a priest, Jon. She wore the mail and sword. I dreamed it for a week.”

Pa propped his elbow in the table and put his face in his hand. “Every night since she fell?”

“Every night. It won’t stop.”

“What do you think it means, Claire?”

“She should be taught as a priest, same as you. She should be educated.”

Pa smiled, but then Riva saw that it was not a real smile. “Just like you want to be educated?”

Ma took the bread off the fire and then sat opposite Pa. “Just like I want to be. Her husband should not be better than she is.”

Pa didn’t try to argue this time about how learning was not important for tanners and wives. He just stayed quiet.

“Is this a true sign, Jon? You know it is.”

“You want it to be.”

Ma said, “When you said that we’d have to give her back, I didn’t know what that meant. I was afraid . . .” Riva didn’t hear the last part, Ma had said it so weakly.

“The God is not so cruel to ask that. I was almost certain of that. But if she became a priestess—that would be hard.”

“It’s hard to pay debts. She would be one week buried if you hadn’t done saved her.” She reached over for his hand and drew it to her, squeezing it to her lips. “Jared’s priests will take her, won’t they?”

Pa sounded so tired. “They have had priestesses before. Not many, though.”

“It will settle the debt, won’t it?”

Pa said, “Maybe. I’ll think on it.”

But Ma didn’t give him time to think on it. She said, “She’s ten years old, Jon. We may not have her with us for long anyway. She could be married in four years.”

“I want her to marry. She would live in the village. We could play with our grandchildren. If she becomes a priestess, though . . . . life in the Order of Jared is not a good life for a child. She would have friends in the order. She wants friends. But there is no love, like you have for Riva.”

“It’s what’s best for her.”

Pa’s chin had been resting on his palm; now he hid his face in his hand. “Best for her? In the Order she would have a priest’s life—the God’s life—the way of the guardian—she would learn to kill.”

“Jon, you have told me yourself that Riva should not have a life with us now. That she has a debt to pay to Jared.”

Pa groaned, “I know, Claire. I know.”

“And a woman needs to learn to protect herself against men.”

“It won’t be that way for her.”

“You don’t know that. It is that way.”

He sighed heavily. “I won’t argue. I really can’t argue. I’ve had the same dreams that you did. I hoped they weren’t true.”

“You did?” Ma looked like someone had hit her.

Riva slumped down by the window. She looked at the white worm crawling around blindly. She herded him back into his hole with her muddy stalk. She crossed her legs and took hold of her doll with both hands, holding her out in front of her on the necklace. Pa had made her sister and the necklace, too. That way Riva could always keep her close by, even when she was working with Ma or Pa or playing.

Riva was pretty sure Ma and Pa were saying that she would have to go away—that they would make her a priest like Pa was. She thought about how Pa looked with his armor and sword. It was like he was a different person—like a hero from the stories he told her about Jared. Ma and Pa had those dreams about her wearing that armor, but Riva could not picture herself in it.