When they reached Sargent DeMille’s cramped little office, Amelia held to Al’s arm to keep from collapsing in the heat. The Justice of the Peace entered the room where every window remained shut and the curtains drawn. He glanced about like spies might catch him in a clandestine act. He nodded stiffly to the introductions, opened a small leather folder, and began reading the marriage vows.
Perspiration creased down her neck and between her breasts. It’s just like when I married Dr. Stein; I have no idea what’s being said. At some point, both she and Al said, “I do,” and the Justice of the Peace declared that they were man and wife.
She helped Al’s trembling hands guide the ring onto her finger and then smiled at his pale, sweating face.
His lips brushed hers and then he grinned. “I never thought this day would come.”
All the men, even the jittery Sargent DeMille, burst into loud applause.
“Let’s get out of this steam room,” Jerome bellowed and led the way onto a side porch where the carriage waited.
Madam Alciatore greeted them at the door of Antoine’s, smiling graciously at Amelia. “Al reminded me that you are the beautiful woman he brought to dinner when we operated our pension up the street.” She smiled wistfully. “When my dear Antoine enjoyed youth and health.”
“I am sorry to hear of his passing.” Amelia touched the frail woman’s arm and remembered that she had been a mere girl when they started this famous restaurant.
“My son Jules will care for you tonight. He’s still an apprentice, but you’ll see he’s mastered most of the techniques.” Madam Alciatore, walking with a regal air, disappeared beyond the sparkling chandeliers lighting the sprawling room.
Their table sat in an alcove, secluded from the bustle of the restaurant. Amelia felt Al’s knee pressing against hers. “This is so different from the cozy red interior of the old Antoine’s.”
“They moved down here on rue Saint Louis after the war. The menu’s the same,” Jerome said. “I recommend the pressed duck.”
Al reached into her lap and closed his hand over hers. “That sounds perfect.”
He remembers. “Do they still use a silver press right here at the table to crush the duck’s juices and marrow into the cognac?”
“I should have known Al would’ve brought her here,” Jerome spoke out of the corner of his mouth to Toby. “I guess we can’t shock our German guest with any of our customs.”
“You’ve made me feel very welcome.” Amelia held out her hand as the light from a nearby chandelier caught the glint of the emerald on the ring coiled the length of her knuckle. “I can never thank you enough for this.”
Jerome cradled her fingertips. “It’s lovely on your hand.” His smiled faded. “My wife lived in a dream of royalty. She read that Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria a coiled snake ring with an emerald head. The ring consumed her imagination for months until our jeweler made this. I gave it to her for our twelfth anniversary. Three months before yellow fever took her and our daughters.”
“Such a crushing blow. I don’t know how you’ve survived.” Amelia tried to keep the tremor out of her voice.
Jerome blew out a dismissive surge of air. “I’m finally getting a life. Built me a new house in the Garden District. Unpacked all the stored things. When I found the ring, I knew instantly who should have it.” His old smile returned. “You’ve made my oldest friend mighty happy.”
The next morning, Toby headed downstairs, drawn to the smell of Ruby’s coffee and beignets. She untied her apron and smiled, a devilish look in her eyes. “I don’t hear them two stirring yet. I’m done here, but I figured you’d be hungry. That little pot on the back of the stove holds regular American coffee, just for you.”
“You always remember.” He wrapped his arm around Ruby’s shoulders. “Hard as Pop and Peter tried, they never taught me to drink that bitter coffee.”
Ruby cackled. “I’ll never forget the face you made. I thought you’d turned into a monkey when you took that first big gulp.”
“I thought they had a conspiracy to turn me black.” He laughed and squeezed Ruby tighter. “I didn’t know I was already colored.”
Ruby’s face sobered, her eyes darkened. “You’re a mighty brave boy to do this. You didn’t need to. You is as white as any one of them.”
He patted her shoulder. I hear the anger. Will I ever feel that? “My steamer leaves early tomorrow. I’ll come back to see you and Peter before I go.”
The aging black woman pursed her lips and looked up at him through lowered lashes. “Have you been all right since you crossed over? Is them white folks treating you decent?”
Don’t let her see you cry, big baby. He pulled the thick body into his arms. “They’re decent enough. It’s easier up in Boston.”
“Why’d you do it? I’d never cross over if I could pass.” When she looked up at him, tears made her cheeks glow like polished black marble.
Without speaking, he pulled out a handkerchief and pressed her cheeks dry.
She pulled back. “I just fresh washed that hanky.”
“I’m putting it to good use.”
“Good morning.” Al was dressed and looked happier than Toby could remember.
“Glad to see you rested, Mister Al. I’ll see you later, Toby.” Ruby hung her apron behind the door and disappeared into the backyard.
Toby poured Al’s Creole coffee and sat down with him at the old oak table, its smooth circular top polished with the same gloss as always, and yet it felt foreign. “I’m not so worried about leaving you this time, Pop.”
“I’m supposed to be telling you that I’m not so worried this time.” Al grinned, his lips puckering, holding back emotion.
“But you’re worried.” Toby looked at Al who was trying to appear positive. Had he been selfish? Crossing over––a startling way of saying it. A colored woman’s way. “I have no intention of leaving your life, Pop.”
“You sure Harvard’s going to accept this change? Did you get any kind of assurance?”
He’s not drinking his coffee, gripping his cup like it’s a wild horse. “I made a place for myself, Pop. By the time I cut my hair, I was top of my class and entrenched in the student body.”
“You sure you won’t change your mind?” Al’s voice broke. “You’ve seen how hard it is down here. I can’t imagine how you’ll build a medical practice.” He could see his son’s eyes almost flame in anger, and he couldn’t stop himself. “You’re throwing your life away.”
Toby leaned close, leveled his eyes at Al. “Understand this. It is my life. I just told you I wanted to stay in yours. Tell me now if having a colored son doesn’t suit you.”
Al felt the words punch his gut. He tried to draw in air. “Absolutely,” he whispered. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Toby patted Al’s hand. “Good. Then please drop it.”
Al nodded. “Forgive me?”
“Of course.”
When Amelia entered the kitchen, she felt the tension, knew from the slump in Al’s shoulders and Toby’s efforts to lighten the conversation that they must have had an argument. Toby’s departure clearly weighed on Al, and she wanted to cry when she thought of it. “Why don’t we pack a picnic. After Toby’s boat sails you can take me up the River Road to see your old family plantation.”
“Wonderful idea.” Toby sounded overly enthusiastic. “Last time we rode up there, the old house looked pretty bad. I wonder how it’ll look from the river.”
Their driver Reginald, a mulatto whom Al had known for years, sang a low, mournful song as the carriage creaked through the early-morning dark, passing yellowed street lamps outlining hunched-shouldered men making their way to pre-dawn jobs. When they rounded a corner, Toby craned his neck to see the steamer. “There she is. Looks like a jewel box.” The hubbub of scurrying passengers, mixed with the clumping of horse hooves, grew in intensity as they rode onto the wharf and pulled up to the side-wheeler––three stories of glittering lights.
Toby scrambled to unload his trunk and then grabbed Al in a fierce embrace. The two men hugged and kept beating each other on the back. Finally, Toby turned and pulled Amelia into their arms. “Don’t you two get so busy that you forget to write.” Toby swallowed and pulled back from the two people looking up at him. “Parents are the ones who’re supposed to beg for letters.”
“Well, I’m begging,” Al said. “I want to hear if you’re taking care of yourself. Don’t be a jackass. You know what I mean.”
“Yep, I do. And I will.” He hugged Al one more time and then loped up the gangplank just as the side-wheeler announced its departure with an ear-shattering blast of its steam whistle.
The Negro dock hands, bodies bulging in sweaty, sleeveless shirts, released the last of the mooring lines. The two smokestacks belched black clouds, blurring the early morning light. The wheel began churning oil-slick water into a dingy foam that billowed against the side of the white behemoth. Toby stepped to the rail, waving to get their attention. His straw hat sat at a jaunty angle, and his brown jacket hung open showing his silk vest and loose string tie.
“He looks so cocky. I hope he stays out of trouble.” Al spoke under his breath.
Amelia leaned close. “He reminds me of the fancy-dresser I met in Osterman’s Mercantile.”
“I surrender,” Al said. “Let’s find our carriage and chase that steamer.”
Reginald wore a top hat and a black morning coat with long tails that he arranged carefully over the back of the seat. He kept his carriage polished and the leather seats oiled. His horse gleamed from daily brushing. “You betcha I can catch that steamer. I know some back streets out to the River Road. Grab your hat, the wind’s gonna blow.”
Amelia clutched Al’s arm as they bounced over ruts and skinned next to other carriages and vendors beginning to hawk their wares in the middle of the street. “Why are there so many colored flags and so much yelling? What’s going on along these docks?” Amelia called out to Reginald who removed his hat and morphed into a tour guide.
“It’s for the coloreds who can’t read. The dock foreman is shouting the color or the picture on the flags, so the longshoremen know where to tote those bags of coffee. Look yonder.” Reginald pointed at individual flags. “Do you see they have different pictures of stars, birds, or alligators?” He turned in his seat and waited for Amelia to follow his direction. “That’s how they get all the freight moved to the right spot.”
Al grinned indulgently as the driver pointed out boys whose skin ranged in shades from boot-polish-black to sun-blistered-white leaping into the river. “That was my favorite summertime activity. Them pale kids getting their skin scalded is the Irish. They crowded into these parts and took lots of our jobs.” He turned around and grinned a lop-sided smirk. “That’s when my pappy bought us a horse and carriage, and we started our own business.”
“This is a pretty rough section of the city,” Al murmured. “You can look over the top of the levee and see ships from all over the world unloading through here.”
Willows sprouted in claw-like green clusters and narrow roofs of shacks rising on stilts peeked above the levee. “Those belong to the batture, squatters living along here. They survive off selling fish and scrap wood.” Reginald snapped the reins again.
Amelia felt Al lifting his body, trying to see the river, searching for Toby’s steamer.
“Come on, Reginald. You gotta slow this buggy. That mare’s working up a lather.” He leaned back against her shoulder. “No sense being a fool. It won’t matter a hoot if we catch that ship. He can’t see us through all those willows.”
She stroked his jacket, encasing the withered shoulder.
He held tight—like a lifeline—to her hand. They watched the levee give way to open spaces where the broad river churned with boats of every size. The road pulled away, hiding the river behind fields of sugarcane standing higher than a man’s head. Large, sprawling rooftops peeped between the lush green stands of cane. Lanes lined with oak trees offered fleeting glimpses of big white houses.
“It’s not far to our old place,” Al said. “Don’t expect it to look like those fancy things you’re seeing down those alleys. It’s older. My grandfather, a French Acadian named Eau––the French word for water––grew up on Bayou LaFourche across the river. Family never knew when he changed his name to Waters. When Spain got all this land, they needed good farmers along the river to supply New Orleans. Ol’ Eau got one of the early grants. He kept buying small pieces of land from Acadians who died off or left for drier climes. Then he bought slaves and got rich.”
“You’re not responsible for your family’s slave holdings, my love.”
“I benefited. And here it is.” He directed Reginald to turn into a rutted drive canopied with blooming magnolias so thick that the earth beneath lay black with dried leaves and cones of former flowers. Away from the shadow of the trees, weeds grew thick, twisted between grapevines and clusters of white jasmine.
“The aroma’s so heady.” Amelia caught her breath as the dark hulk of a house took shape. It rose on wooden columns, rounded like fat legs to a second-floor gallery tucked under the high-pitched roof of faded shingles. Two dormer windows peered like hollow eyes draped in gray moss hair dangling from old tree limbs.
Al put his arm around her shoulders. “That space under the raised roof held loom rooms where slaves made all the cloth. The other rooms were garconnières for the bachelors to sleep. That’s where I stayed.”
“Even as a child? It looks spooky.”
“The whole place felt spooky to me. I can’t remember coming until after Mother died. I never liked it. It never felt like home.”
Reginald lifted the picnic basket out of the rear of the carriage and carried it to a leafy area near an ornate iron fence. He motioned to his own food box and insisted with great gallantry on going down to the river to water his horse and have his lunch.
“I wish we could go inside.” Amelia stared at the wide staircase ascending to the second floor.”
“Last time I came, I found rusty chains latching every door. I don’t know who finally bought the place. You can see the old sugar mill is decaying. Since the house is brick, I guess the roof will fall in before the house disappears.” He spread a blanket and then stood at the fence, his hand absently tracing the pointed fleur-de-lis topping the rusty enclosure. “My grandparents and parents are buried in this weed-infested patch.” He pointed to crosses so rust-covered that they blended into the knee-high grass.
“It’s hauntingly beautiful.” Amelia settled on the blanket and began arranging their lunch thinking how nice it would be to have a bottle of wine. But no one drank around Al. Even Jerome DeHart had not ordered wine with their wedding dinner. Al’s drinking must have frightened those who loved him. She watched him turn slowly away from the fence, lean heavily on his cane, alone in his thoughts, memories of a past she did not share. The long, raw gap in the years—time when she didn’t exist in his life––brought another flash of hot-iron jealousy. She had to keep pushing aside the recurring thought of Al taking Rachel into his old Mallard bed.
Al lowered himself cross-legged onto the ground. “Samantha hated it here. She wanted out of this swampy lowland. And she wanted a grand house.”
“She certainly got the big house. It’s the largest I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s one of the biggest in the county. And she let everyone know. Before we married, she stuffed the place with visitors and week-long parties. Even during Charles’s last months, Samantha played hostess.”
They ate and watched Reginald water and then wash his horse, scrubbing her mane and then her tail. Finally, he wiped the dust from the entire carriage, including the spokes, before he began leading the mare back from the river. “If I’m going to get you home before the moon quits lighting the way, we better start.”
When they reached the main road, a buggy with a fringed hood blocked their path. “Hello there. I see you aren’t robbers.” The woman, shriveled to little more than child-size, wore a straw bonnet tied under her chin with an orchid bow. “I live up the road. I had Gerald hitch my carriage.” She waved the back of her hand at her Negro driver wearing a top hat, black coat, and white shirt over tattered work pants. “I hoped you might be buyers.”
“No, ma’am. We stopped for a picnic.” Al stood, bowed slightly.
“If you knew how to find the place, you must have known the Waters?” It was a question.
“Yes, I did.”
“Well, it’s too bad. Charles sold the place, and it’s never been the same.” She pulled a lace handkerchief to her nose. “The saddest, of course, was poor Mirabelle. Did you know her?”
“Yes ma’am, I did,” Al said.
Why doesn’t he tell the old lady who he is? Al’s hand felt sweaty.
“Then you knew how she grieved over not having more children after little Charles. That husband of hers was such a rascal. I was a child when Mother and I kept Mirabelle company. I learned plenty about dealing with husbands. He must have had his placée in that New Orleans townhouse. That’s where he kept that child.”
Amelia saw Al’s body tighten. “We need to bid you good afternoon, ma’am.”
“You didn’t say how you knew the Waters?” She called as her driver backed her carriage out of their way.
“I’m that boy he kept in his New Orleans townhouse.” Al sat down as Reginald snapped the reins, and their carriage bolted forward into the road.
“Mercy, Gerald, look at how white he is.” The old woman called to her driver.
Amelia held to Al’s arm. His right hand raked absently through his hair and then across his face. “She’s an old fool. A malicious gossip who says whatever pops into her crazy head.”
“It makes sense. I thought I had to stay out of the way because of being rowdy. I made Mother...or maybe I should say Mrs. Waters, nervous. She always ailed with something and rarely came to New Orleans. Father moved me up to the top floor. He called it my lookout post. I could stand on the little porch and see clear to the river––”
What can I say that doesn’t sound inane? “You told me Violet raised you. I remember how she loved you and cried when we left.”
Al kept her hand pulled tight against his chest as the carriage rumbled toward New Orleans, the late-day sun etching their shadow against the trees. Finally, he said, “I know how to find the truth. It’ll be in the ledgers. Grandfather kept every detail of his life—slave purchases and sales, who got sick and what he paid the doctor. My father, then Charles and Hébert continued the practice.”
“That’s what Hébert’s listing when he sits at the table and pays each worker?”
“Yep, he follows the same procedure. Funny part is, he even looks like Charles except that my brother would have never worn those baggy old work clothes. As Hébert completes each of the thick ledgers, he stacks them in a walk-in safe that Charles had built in the back corner of the bottom floor.” He leaned close. “Are you horrified at what you’ve married?”
“Albert Waters, please don’t insult me. I married the man I’ve loved forever.”
Amelia lay in the big Mallard bed, smiling as the light began outlining the trees beyond the wide-open French doors, and birds screeched their morning welcome in the courtyard.
“I see that smile on your lips.” Al nuzzled against her ear.
“I’m being happy. I’m remembering that this time, I’m not leaving.”
“Why don’t you wear my wrinkled shirt down to breakfast so I can look at your legs like before. With Toby gone, we can have one last bath in that big tub before we go shopping.”
She cupped his whiskery face in her hands, “Will you take me up to see your lookout post?”