Part 30 (1/2)
T.O. crept even closer, crouching on the sodden ground just under the window at the side of the house, his boots caked with sticky, rust-colored mud.
Lola's voice was raised, wounded but crystal clear. ”I may have been deceived in the beginning by your a.s.surances of reform, but you are utterly incapable and indisposed to make a change in the manner of life you led before. It is only in the presence of your mulatto children and their shameless mother that you are civil, or so I hear. Is that where you were last night?”
”You never tried to understand me, making only the most feeble of attempts to live with me as a wife.” Joseph's voice was distracted, almost offhand, as if this were an old dance and he was duty-bound to perform the obligatory steps. T.O. heard the drink behind the words.
”The only reason you married me,” Lola said, control gone from her voice, ”was to protect yourself from the townspeople. You courted me, and married me just to better your position in a community that had rejected you for your wickedness.”
”It was my money you were after,” Joseph said. ”No other man would have you.”
”What good is the money to me? You are so stingy I never benefit. I don't even have servants.”
”You have no call for complaint. You don't sit to table with me, you have run off my friends with your airs, you never made me welcome in the bedroom.”
”Coward.” Lola dangled the word, thick and accusing, her voice slightly unsteady, and T.O. realized she too had been drinking. ”Using me because you are afraid for your own personal safety. You never meant to put aside your colored family.”
”You knew about the children from the beginning,” Joseph said tiredly. ”You pretended to take me, children and all.”
”How often do you sneak over to Cornfine Bayou to see that mulatto woman and her mongrels? Do you suppose you can use your money to place those children somehow into decent society? I married a fool. It can never happen.”
”I want them to inherit what it took my whole life to earn, the way any father would.” There was pa.s.sion building in Joseph's voice now. ”You are cold and uncharitable, unable to grasp flesh-and-blood needs.”
”Fidelity and support is your obligation under the law, and you have given me neither. Ten years as your wife means it is I who should inherit. You forced me to sign back the land donation you gave before we married, and I did so because you were my husband, ent.i.tled to obedience. No one explained my rights to me then. But your shameful conduct now forfeits all such respect.”
”You were never forced,” Joseph said quietly. ”You gave back the land donation in front of witnesses. It is far too late to change that now.”
Lola began to cry. ”I am alone and friendless in the middle of nowhere,” she said between sobs. ”I want to move into town. I cannot go on living in this house.”
”I built this house and made too many sacrifices to tolerate this contempt of your life in it. It wouldn't be proper for you to live alone in town, and I have no intention of moving.”
”There are people willing to help me,” Lola said thinly, tears gone. ”I am not as defenseless as you imagine.”
”Have you been putting our business before strangers, Lola?”
”The whole town talks about us, and what to do about the evil you have brought in their midst. I am a churchgoing Catholic woman, virtuous and honest, and I am tired of being exposed to the lowest creatures on this earth. I have been too shamed and too humiliated before now to publish to the world my unhappiness, and unwilling to give up my profound religious duty as a wife.”
”Other wives take care of their men. You could learn a lesson from that.”
”I performed for years as best I could under the circ.u.mstances, but the good people of the community are not going to stand by quietly any longer.”
”I will leave the land to my children, the only ones who bring me happiness.”
Lola's voice firmed. ”You seek happiness no place else, preferring the company of Negroes over decent people, trying to pull me down, too, but I will not let you do it.”
”You mean less than nothing to me.”
There was a pause between the two of them, as if the exhalation of the one's vicious breath needed time to provide fuel for the other's response.
”The children you set such store by are an abomination before G.o.d,” Lola said. ”The oldest girl, just like her mother, taking up with any Frenchman she could entice with her free and easy ways, producing babies without a husband, without decency. Too bad the little n.i.g.g.e.r b.a.s.t.a.r.d survived. And the oldest boy, timid, afraid of his own shadow, hanging off your every word. No wonder you are so fond of them all. They are the only ones who look up to you.”
Lola's words entered T.O. like poison, contempt and loathing so strong and thick that it pa.s.sed through the walls of the house on Billes Landing and directly under his skin, full strength. T.O. turned away from the house. Their fighting filled him with dread instead of soothing him. Soaked through, he retraced his steps toward Cornfine Bayou, stumbling repeatedly on the tangled undergrowth that pulled from below.
Distracted, he almost didn't hear the approach of hors.e.m.e.n coming through the woods at first, until they were almost on him. There were at least two riders, and he heard the nearby snort of a hard-ridden horse as one of the riders stopped in the path he had been getting ready to take. T.O. eased himself behind the base of a wide oak tree, pressing his back into the damp trunk, closing his eyes against the rain.
”Hold up. I don't want to go any farther. Can't we do this another way?” It was Antoine Morat. T.O. recognized the voice at once. He was careful not to move, willing himself invisible, slowing his breathing to drive the pounding from his ears.
”You've waited a little late to go soft.”
T.O. didn't recognize the voice of the other man.
”I tell you I can't do it,” Antoine said.
”What happened to your big talk? The old Frenchman brought it on himself, carrying on the way he has. That land rightly belongs in your hands, the right hands. Have you forgotten your own son's needs so quickly?”
”But Lola wasn't supposed to be part of this,” Antoine said.
”There's no other way, otherwise it all reverts to her. Do I have to remind you how much you need the money? And now, him making all this trouble about the inheritance, cutting you out entirely. He's laughing at us. There isn't a respectable man anywhere in these parts who would excuse his behavior with the colored woman.”
”I tell you I just can't do it. He's my cousin.”
”By the time you get your nerve up, there won't be anything left to fight for. I can't hold him off forever from finding a means to pa.s.s the land the way he wants. Meanwhile he's selling off bits and pieces of the property to the railroad, and Lola and the rest of the Grandchamps have their hands out, too, expecting a share.”
”Lola thinks she's in with us.”
”There's no helping that now.”
”I won't do it. We'll go and talk to him. Make him see reason.”
”The old fool is too bullheaded to reason, or we wouldn't have had to come this far. We're beyond talk. Let's go. We need to get it done.”
T.O. caught the sour odor of his own fear leaking out in his sweat. They were headed out to his father's place. He should follow them. And do what? This was a matter for the law, so only white could help. He couldn't get tangled up in white business without hanging himself somehow. He would have to explain why he was out in the woods, how he happened to overhear the conversation. He wouldn't be believed and would end up being blamed for something.
T.O. shook, wet and weak against the tree, caught in indecision long after the riders had gone.
At last he straightened up and began to move with as much of a sense of purpose as his legs would allow.
42.
T .O. was so jittery that he made Emily nervous as they worked side by side in the garden, tying back the string bean vines. High-strung, like his father. When T.O. had refused to go to the sawmill this morning with his brother, Joe, for the second day in a row, Emily put him to work around the farm, thankful he wasn't out snooping around Billes Landing. She was convinced he was keeping something from her. .O. was so jittery that he made Emily nervous as they worked side by side in the garden, tying back the string bean vines. High-strung, like his father. When T.O. had refused to go to the sawmill this morning with his brother, Joe, for the second day in a row, Emily put him to work around the farm, thankful he wasn't out snooping around Billes Landing. She was convinced he was keeping something from her.
The weekend had come and gone, she hadn't heard yet from Joseph, and she was worried. She had lived through Joseph's black moods before, and the sooner he found a new lawyer and proved to himself he was in control of his own affairs, the sooner he would break out of the grip of despair that held him fast.
Emily heard the horses before she saw them and was surprised to see her son Joe riding with the sheriff and several other men toward the house. Something was very wrong. They must have gone by the sawmill first to get Joe and bring him back to Cornfine Bayou. The men tethered their horses at the side of the house and dismounted. Emily threw Joe a questioning look, and Joe lifted his shoulders slightly, signaling that he didn't know what this was about, either.