Property(38)

“I can’t lift my arm,” I said.

We heard a whining sound coming from the house, and in a moment Walter stumbled into the yard. He was holding his face in his hands, weeping. His hands and bare chest were stained with dark blood. He stopped, took us in, and held out his arms, tears mixed with blood streaming down his face. His forehead was so swollen his eye was closed up.

“Poor chile,” Rose said, going to him. “What they done to you?” She picked him up and he buried his face in her neck.

“He’s crying because his father is out there dead on the lawn,” I said.

There was a brief hush in which everyone noticed that I had spoken of my husband as Walter’s father. Delphine took the cloth from me and rinsed it in the basin. “Master killed,” she said softly.

“Rose,” I said. “Go down and find Mr. Sutter. Tell him to come to the house at once.” Rose put the child down, handed him a piece of bread, and went out, glancing about the yard nervously, starting at the chickens. Walter sat near my feet, chewing his bread from one hand and picking at the dried mud between my toes with the other. “Stop that,” I said, pulling my feet in under the chair.



MR. SUTTER WAS dead too. They had stopped at his house first, sneaked in a window, and cut his throat. When Rose got there she found the door wide open and Cato, the driver, standing on the porch. “Don’t go in,” he told her. “Just tell missus Mr. Sutter been murdered in his bed.”

“Send a boy for the doctor,” I told her on hearing this news, and she headed back to the quarter. Delphine was filling a tub with warm water. “Best I cut that dress off you with the scissors,” she said.

“Just get it off,” I said wearily. “I don’t care how you do it.” She had unknotted the skirt and was cutting it up the front when we heard heavy footsteps coming rapidly through the house. “Lock the door,” I said, but before Delphine could get off her knees, a deep male voice called out, “Hallo. Is anyone here?”

Blessed Providence, I thought. There are still white men alive. “In here,” I called out. “In the kitchen.”

One by one they filed into the yard. There were four of them, dressed in vaguely military coats, high boots, armed with swords and pistols. Where were they when I needed them? Their eyes grew wide as they discovered me, sitting in my kitchen, covered in mud, my face swollen and bleeding, my useless arm cradled in my lap. I recognized one, an acquaintance of my husband, a lawyer named O’Malley. “Mrs. Gaudet,” he said solemnly. “It is my unhappy duty to inform you that your husband has been murdered.”

I hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. It was as if I had been in a foreign country, a land where madness was the rule, and returned to find nothing changed but my own understanding. I glanced at Delphine. She looked dismayed, though her features were composed in an approximation of servility. She’s worried about what will happen to her now, I thought. We all are. Every minute of every hour. Mr. O’Malley stood waiting for my response. He was worried I might have gone mad and he would have to deal with it. “I know it,” I said calmly, to his obvious relief. “I was there.”



IT WAS HOURS before I spun together the threads of the various stories and produced a credible fabric. I hardly cared, but it was a kind of sewing, and I used it, as usual, to keep my mind off my own suffering, which was intense. First there was the pain occasioned by Delphine picking the bits of cloth from the wound in my shoulder and cleaning it with alcohol. When Dr. Landry finally arrived, he admired her nursing skills and my endurance, then set about determining the outermost limits of the latter. The shots of brandy I downed at the start had worn off by the time he’d dug out three lead balls and announced there were only two to go. “I can’t stand one more second,” I cried. “Don’t you have something stronger than brandy?” He poured another glass. “I’ve seen soldiers who could not hold up as well as you,” he said, a compliment for which I felt the greatest indifference. After what seemed an hour, he held up another ball in his tweezers and dropped it into the washbasin with a sigh. “I’m going to have to leave the last one in. I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s buried too deep in the muscle.” I raised my good hand to wipe the perspiration from my forehead. “That’s the best news I’ve had in days,” I said. Then he gave me the worst, which was that I would never recover the use of my arm. One of the balls had chipped a bone and severed a tendon at the top of my shoulder. “You’ll be able to use your hand all right,” he said. “Eventually you may be able to raise the arm a little.” While I reeled from this diagnosis, he took out his needle and thread and went to work on my face.