CHAPTER
forty-two

Reed needed to occupy his mind. He grabbed a pick, sledgehammer, shovel, and work gloves from Si’s toolshed and headed for the ruins of the skating rink.

Most of the big timbers that once held up the roof had been consumed by the fire, but there were charred chunks of them scattered all over the place. He picked a corner and set to work, first pulling out any good tin left from the roof and stacking it in a clearing behind the rink. Then he cleared the remains of the timbers and studs, putting them in a big pile near the front of the rink so they could be hauled away or burned.

With the roof out of the way, he could see that Si had built the rink by gutting the horse barn of its stalls and corncribs, building a frame with floor joists to completely fill the space, and laying a wood floor for the skating rink on top. The fire had destroyed the floor but not all the joists, which created an obstacle course as they stuck up and out every which way. Reed took the sledgehammer and started slamming at one after another, finally breaking the floor frame apart. That would have to be enough for one day. He was hot, sweaty, and exhausted.

Wading into the lake to cool off, he splashed water on his face, chest, and back and then sat down in one of the Adirondacks on the porch to dry off. He thought about his conversation with Dolly and how long it had been since he’d had any contact with his own family. He would take a walk in the woods and pay his respects to a marble lamb. And then he would go back to Dolly’s and call his mother.

After supper, Reed, Daisy, Anna, and Jesse walked across the loop road to the porch of the skating rink and circled four chairs together. They enjoyed looking out over the water in the moonlight, and distance from the house gave them a place to talk without disturbing Dolly.

“There’s got to be a way to save the house,” Anna said.

“None of us has that kind of money or we’d give it to her,” Jesse said. “And it’s way too late to get a crop in the ground to make any more.”

“I tried to give her what’s left o’ my Army pay, but she wouldn’t take it,” Reed said. “I even tried to go down to the courthouse and give it to them, but it wouldn’a come close to payin’ those taxes.”

“Well, what about the journal?” Jesse asked. “Catherine said they were about to make an escape out of here—maybe there’s something useful in figuring out how they got away.”

Reed and Daisy stared at him.

“He’s been reading it at night to catch up with the rest of us,” Anna explained.

“I mean, I know it’s far-fetched, but what have we got to lose?”

“A whole lotta people have tried to find Andre’s stash—if there ever was one,” Reed said.

“Yeah, but they didn’t have the journal,” Jesse countered.

“Got a point,” Daisy agreed.

“I’ll be right back.” Jesse left the group for a few minutes and came back with Catherine’s second journal and a lantern. “Anna, think you’re up to it now?”

She took the journal while Jesse used a couple of old crates to rig up a table for the light. They all settled in as Anna began to read.

July 20, 1844

Dear Self,

Where do I begin? So much has happened. I suppose I should start with this: I know my husband’s real name. And now that we are beyond harm, I can say it. My beloved is Andre Chauvin.

“Oh my gosh!” Anna said. “Dolly will be thrilled! Well—at least, she would’ve been.” She continued reading.

I should also tell you that he might well read every word of this, as I no longer hide my journal from him. I no longer hide anything from him. Still, I have become accustomed to writing in my little book and find it helps me sort out my thoughts. Andre says I should do whatever I like whenever I like, so when he is out working on his boat, which he loves, I sometimes sit on a high rock overlooking the water and scribble on my pages, with Andre glancing up to wave and smile at me now and again. But I should back up to our wedding night.

It was a far cry from what Sister had led me to anticipate. I expected to spend it in fear and dread in a marriage bed with a stranger. Instead, I spent it swiftly sailing downriver under an Easter moon, with a man who completely fascinates me.

Jesse elbowed Reed. “Do we completely fascinate you ladies?” he said with a grin.

“We’re so dang fascinated we can’t stand ourselves,” Daisy said as the four of them had a laugh. “Go on, Anna. I’ll send Jesse to his room if he acts up again.”

Even though we are far away from Blackberry Springs, I do not think it wise to put in writing all the details of what drove us away. I’ll say only that an evil phantom was relentlessly chasing Andre, but it chases us no more. Ending its pursuit endangered someone dear. And so we had to leave.

Our escape was like a scene from the Coleridge poem that Andre and I love, “where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man down to a sacred sea.” An underground tributary of the Coosa River runs beneath the rolling green pastures that Andre purchased on the Tanyard. Can you believe it? A river flowing beneath the ground?

Long ago, during his “vagabond life,” he met a fisherman who traveled the Coosa and had spotted a strangely large opening in a high bluff. The fisherman couldn’t resist rowing in to investigate and found what turned out to be a cavern, which held an underground waterway. Andre was excited by its possibilities—for somewhat nefarious purposes at the time, he confessed—and he never forgot about it. Then, when he set about trying to find me, it turned out that his river cave and I were in the same place—little unassuming Blackberry Springs.

“Good night!” Daisy said. “Reckon we’re sittin’ on top of a river right now? Sorry, Anna. Keep goin’.”

The night we fled, we left on foot. Andre had released all of his fine horses into their pasturelands, with a pond for drinking water. He said he would send someone for them as soon as we were a safe distance away. He carried the small grip Appolline had packed for me. Neither of them brought anything from the house, which puzzled me.

Through a trapdoor covered with hay, we made our way down a dark flight of stone steps, with Andre holding my hand and Appolline carrying a torch to light the way. I couldn’t imagine where we could be going, when suddenly, I caught the distinctive smell of river water—the dank muddiness of it, the humid air. And there it was, right before us. A river, or at least a canal—a flowing stream of water underground.

I stood in amazement, not just at the river itself but at the equipage I saw—a fine skiff moored at a small dock, jugs of water and other provisions, a large grip, and even an iron bench like the one by the Tanyard.

Andre loaded all of our supplies into a small boat tied to the skiff and covered them with a heavy canvas, which he tied down. Then he grabbed the iron bench and pushed it backward. When the bench tilted back, I could see that it covered yet another trapdoor, from which Andre drew as many bags as the large grip would hold before lowering the bench back down.

“If that ain’t money in them bags, I’m Scarlett O’Hara,” Daisy said. “Go on, Anna. Let’s see what they do with it.”

After placing the grip in the center of the skiff, he climbed in and held his arms out to me. “Come, Catherine,” he said. “We should hurry.”

I stepped off the dock and into his arms as Appolline climbed into the back of the skiff and untied it from the dock. Then we were off.

Andre seated me in the center of the boat, then lit a lantern, hung it on the bow, and took the oars in front. He and Appolline began rowing together, moving us steadily along in a channel that grew darker and darker as we moved away from the torchlight at the dock. The lantern cast just enough light for Andre to keep us centered between the banks.

On and on we went, through caverns that grew at times very close—I could reach up and touch the roof of them—only to open wide again. At last we rounded a bend, and I couldn’t stifle a gasp. Through an arched opening ahead, I saw the light of a full moon. How can I even describe it? A dark channel of water, hidden beneath the earth, flowing into a moonlit archway that opened onto the Coosa River. Imagine—river below and night sky above, all bathed in silver-white moonlight.

As the skiff floated onto the Coosa and under the moon, Andre stopped rowing for just a moment and turned to look at me. “Moonlight suits you, Catherine,” he said with a smile.

He and Appolline resumed their rowing, the spring river current so strong that they needed to do little more than guide the boat with their oars. I asked Appolline if I might rest her, but she refused.

At last the two of them rowed us into a narrow canal off the river. It opened into a small harbor, where a much larger boat than our skiff was moored, anchored there alone, its white sails gleaming through the night shadows.

As Andre tied the skiff to the dock and helped me out, Appolline began uncovering the supplies towed behind us. I hadn’t noticed the handful of fishing shacks built on high pilings, scattered around the dock, but as Andre started unloading, four or five men came out of the shacks and began shouting hellos to him. The men all shook hands and clapped shoulders, clearly happy to see each other, though I couldn’t understand what they were saying. They all spoke the same strange way as Andre and Appolline when they were talking with one another.

“Come.” Appolline motioned for me to follow her to one of the fishing shacks as Andre and the men began transferring our supplies onto the boat with the tall white sails.

Inside the shack, a woman who looked about the same age as Appolline poured us cups of strong, hot tea and then left us alone.

“Bébé thinks I will come with you on your journey, but I will not,” Appolline said.

I told her I didn’t understand.

“Bébé got the woman now,” she said. “He need to make a home, make the babies, make a life. He wander too long for the sake of others. He be still now for his own sake.”

I couldn’t understand where she would go if she didn’t come with us. But she said the people in the fishing shacks were also from Louisiana—like family—and would take her to safety.

We stared at each other across the table, and I just had to ask her, “Who are you?”

But she just smiled at me and said, “You trust Bébé. You love Bébé. He make you a happy woman.”

“Back up a minute, Anna,” Jesse said. “The journal said he took as many bags as his grip would hold. Sounded to me like he might’ve left some behind.”

“And they left on foot,” Anna said, “through a door that was covered with hay.”

“So the money’s not in the house,” Reed said. “And if they could walk to it, then it couldn’a been all that far away.”

“It had to be here,” Daisy said. “Andre built the horse barn that Si turned into a skatin’ rink, right? If they could walk to it from the house and it connected to the river, and hay was coverin’ up the door—sure makes sense for it to be here.”

“We’ll just have to keep clearin’ what’s left o’ the rink and see if anything turns up,” Reed said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Dolly sure could use some luck right now.”