13

WE WALK OR GET DRAGGED THROUGH THE woods, dogs nipping at our heels if we stumble. Jesus help me, Jesus. My mouth be sour, but I pray anyway, like the Ursulines. Suddenly, I smell wood smoke and cooking meat and my mouth be watering even though I don’t want it to, and there be another smell beneath the charred wood. Baby Girl wrinkle her nose, even in her sleep, and I know she smell it, too.

Blood. Sweet and hot, rotting and cold. Lots of it. I fall to my knees and vomit nothing but water. The hunters curse at me, but it still a minute before I move. I shake and shudder. Then I get up and they march me into the blood farm.

The camp look like Hell. All Saints’ Day be starting early at the blood farm. They be cooking up a storm, a whole row of cook fires at one end of the camp. Fire after fire, and them cooks be the Devil’s handmaidens, stirring pots full of souls. Uncle Romulus told me stories when I been younger. How the Devil live in these woods and he out hunting for people. Daddy tell me, too, but he say the Devil ain’t real. He say the Devil a man just like everybody else. But I don’t know for sure. Standing here seeing them faces, pale in the yellow light, maybe they ain’t all human. I know we ain’t human to them.

It look like a real farm here—buildings made of wood, likely cypress. Most other wood don’t stand up to the weather here, and these look like they been here a long time. I know I be right when we pass a sign, half broken and lying in the weeds, that say, HENNESEY DAIRY FARM—DRINK MILK, IT’S GOOD FOR YOU!

The stench get worse as we get closer, but you’d think the hunters can’t smell it, they so pleased with theyselves. They be grinning as they pull us through the gates. We pass them cook fires so close, I see the meat roasting—rabbit and pheasant on spits, pots on the boil full of crawfish and shrimp. Enough food for a hundred people at least. More than our camp, even on a feast day. I wonder what they be celebrating, but I keep my mouth shut. The leper be the one who ask.

“What’s the occasion?”

I glance at him in spite of myself. He got a funny accent, flat like standing water. He not from the Delta. Not from Orleans, anyway. Maybe they sound like that down in Florida, or out Texas way.

“The occasion?” the tall hunter ask, the one they been calling Orvis. “Shoot, we throwin’ a party for you!” He do a little dance then, like them beggars at the Market, and I’d laugh if I didn’t want him dead.

A woman come out from behind the cook fires, a big old spoon in one hand and a chalkboard in the other.

“Orvis, you late again.”

“Sure am, Maylene. Saving the best for last.”

Maylene look like she heard this from him before. She snort and push some blond hair out her face. She be bleaching it for sure. Her skin be too dark for blond hair.

“What you bring me, a leper?” she say, scowling. “A leper and two skinny kids too small to fill a drip bag.”

“Aw, Maylene. Use your imagination. Once you fatten ’em up, who knows how much sauce they’ll pump. And I got you something special, since you so special to me,” Orvis say. He yank me forward with a pull on the chain.

“Look at that, wrapped up neat as a present.” Maylene come closer and squint at me like she need glasses. I stare her down, but she ain’t looking at me no more.

“Girl, how old that baby?”

I don’t say nothing. Why make it easy? They gonna test her blood, anyway.

She snort at me and shake her head. “What’s with this one? She on drugs? Ain’t you look at her?” She yank one of my arms away from the baby and hold it up in the firelight. “Scorched all up and down. No good for blood, lessen you wanna take it from the throat and be done with her.”

I swallow hard and pull my arm back.

Maylene shrug and turn to Orvis. “Stable ’em and feed ’em. Bring the boy to the workhouse. We’ll build him up mucking the latrines. Have ’em test the girl for drugs, then stick her in the brothel. Take the baby to the nursery. We’ll handle ’em from there.”

Brothel. My flesh crawl and my stomach clench tight. Once be more than enough for me. I feel the bile rise in my mouth again but I hold it down. Ain’t gonna do me no good. I just have to see what I got to deal with when I get there.

Orvis tug at the chains and unlock the boy, but they still be cuffs around his wrists. The skinny hunter, Vancey, lead him away. That boy don’t look at me when he go, but I hope he able to escape somehow.

“Where do you want the leper?” Orvis ask.

Maylene shrug again. “He ain’t contagious long as you don’t kiss him. Put him in with the girl, lot seventeen. We’re full up this morning. You took too long.”

Orvis nod and reach for Lydia’s baby, and suddenly, something snap in me. I be so cold and tired and scared, I can’t stop it. I start to scream.

“What’s a matter with her?” Orvis ask.

Maylene wave her hands and walk away.

Baby Girl start wailing, too, ’cause I be holding her too tight. She be the last bit of life I got left to me. Tomorrow we both be bleeding or dead. I know it, and maybe she sense it, too. We be screeching like owls. The hunter haul off and slap me ’cross the face.

I stop screaming then, but tears be coming as much from pain as from fear. He reach out and start to tug the baby from me, but then he stop.

“Christ, this bitch is pouring milk all over the place,” he say. I know my shirt be wet from Baby Girl’s formula, but I let him think it.

Orvis look at me, then Maylene, but she already gone back to her pots and fires. “Feed your damn baby,” he say to me in disgust. “We’ll take her later.”

I clutch Baby Girl to me like she my lifeline and nod. He march me, the baby, and the leper toward one of the little barns, a dirty white block with a shingle roof and a number painted on the side: 17.