‘Goin’ fishin’ for alligators …’ Lamarr announced, ‘for our city friends.’
‘We’ll bring Beauty,’ Lovelace added.
The Labiche twins had exhorted Patrick and Oxy to return with them after the visit to the French Quarter, citing that ‘our sisters will cease to love us!’ if they returned alone, now that they had lost the company of Mr Joyce who had returned separately to New Orleans. Patrick was the more easily persuaded of the two. Oxy less so.
As they set out on their fishing expedition Patrick could well understand why almost half of all the wetlands in the United States were in Louisiana. It was the Mississippi. The river, majestic, meandering and muddy, half a mile wide, two hundred feet deep, everywhere enriched the soil and soul of Louisiana. It also brought the paddle-steamers to gawp at the undisguised splendour of the giant plantation houses – not to the displeasure of those who lived in them – whose back doors faced to the river.
‘Big Muddy there, all two thousand, three hundred miles of it from Minnesota to the Gulf, drains the land from two Provinces in Canada and thirty-one of the dis-united States,’ Lamarr explained.
‘Dumps all that down here in Louisiana.’
‘Yes – and we’re tired of being the piss-pot of America!’ Lovelace added, vehemently.
Behind each other the two pirogues moved silently through the swamp. In the lead, Lamarr, Patrick and the alligator bait. Behind them Lovelace, Oxy and the Catahoula.
‘What is the difference between a swamp and a bayou?’ Oxy, off on another tack, and as curious as ever, asked.
‘A swampland is the best kind of land you can get. Food and lumber – two things a man can’t do without,’ Lamarr answered. ‘A bayou is a shallow channel. Runs through a swamp – like a slow-moving road.’
‘All of New Orleans was a swamp when the Labiches first came,’ Lovelace interjected. ‘But “muck is money,” Grandfather Labiche would always say … and he was right. There are more millionaires from Natchez to New Orleans than in New York, New England and New Mexico all strung together.’ A fact, stated with such conviction, that neither Patrick nor even Oxy, felt qualified to disagree with.
Ahead, beneath a drooping blackwood a great blue heron, fresh from a watery dive, fanned out its wings to catch what drying breeze there was. Blue catfish, some three feet in length, contemptuously slunk beyond the arc of the pirogue’s pole. Then other colours; the red flash of mullet jumping; a tall great egret, still and white and waiting its long-beaked chance; the poked-out petals of the milky-toned bull-tongue. Everywhere were the swampy greens of Louisiana. The trees with their moss-green veils, and the sliced swamp, water parting before them, wrinkling back on itself like a sash of green slime.
They poled silently on in the twin pirogues, dugouts split from the same cypress tree. From time to time the Labiche boys told them of ‘watermouths’ and ‘cottonmouths’ and ‘diamondbacks’, chuckling to each other at the nervousness their conversation of snakes struck into their ‘citified’ guests. Then, some fifty feet ahead, something disturbed the surface. Lamarr motioned them towards a sheltering cypress.
‘This will do,’ he said.
Over a sturdy branch Lamarr cast the noose of a large rope. He then looped the other end through the noose and pulled it firm, securing the rope around the branch. To the free end of the rope, he attached what looked to Patrick like a small anchor.
‘The fishing rod,’ Lovelace explained.
On this anchor-like hook Lamarr impaled a slab of raw meat which now hung about six feet above the water.
‘We only want the big “uns” … boots for Lamarr and me and pretty purses for our pretty sisters,’ Lovelace explained.
They withdrew and waited.
Eventually, Patrick saw what looked like a broad-snouted pirogue weave its way towards the bait. He thought the bait set too high – the height of a man – but said nothing. Only watched.
The alligator approached in a circular swirling movement, gathering momentum, then propelling itself out of the water. It could not reach the bait. Again and again it tried – only once nipping the bloodied tail-end of the meat. It was big, but not big enough for Lamarr.
‘Wait!’ was all he said.
They came, drawn by blood, piroguing silently through the muddy water. Others ventured the six-foot jump and failed, then circled and tried again. It was then that Patrick understood the skill of the hunters. They wanted no small fry. They were after the best the swamp could offer.
‘Don’t they know they’re the lucky ones?’ Oxy whispered, as the smaller-fry alligators fruitlessly persevered. ‘Why don’t they go home?’ Then, what they had all been waiting for arrived. More a paddleboat than a pirogue. So large that Patrick wondered aloud ‘What if it thinks we, not that, are the real bait?’
‘Gators are not aggressive unless attacked or nesting,’ Lovelace answered, in a manner indicating the question should not have been asked in the first place.
Both Patrick and Oxy felt decidedly uncomforted by his assurance.
At the approach of the giant male the smaller alligators dispersed into the swamp’s many-sided corridors. Head out of the water, top teeth overlapping bottom, deadpan eyes, he gathered himself. Then, air and water displacing with the power of the surge, he hung gloriously in the air, great, scaled tail thrusting him upwards.
The giant jaws opened.
Snapped.
Locked over both meat and hook.
‘Got him!’ Lovelace shouted.
The alligator hung there, a creature helpless between two worlds, unable to sink or swim, or fly. This way and that he flailed, his thrashings awakening the swamps with shrieking and squawking and the scuttling of lesser beasts. Man, the interloper, and El Lagarto, giant lizard of the swamps, had engaged.
Patrick was mesmerised by the spectacle of the alligator, its head and upper body now like a pendulum, oscillating from side to side above the water. He wondered if the groaning cypress would hold? Half hoping it wouldn’t but rapt by the blood-pleasure of what they had achieved.
‘Pole – and pole steady!’ Lamarr instructed him, while priming his gun. Gingerly Patrick edged the pirogue towards the alligator, ready to push the pole off the swamp bottom at the slightest hint that the thrashing tail might catch them. Closer and closer they approached. The alligator, a grey and dark olive mixture, unable to bellow, exuded its musky smell at them in a last defiance. Lamarr stood behind Patrick, his eye cocked against the gun and emanating a strange kind of manic calm.
Even after he had shot the gargantuan at close range, it still lashed out at the savageness of the world it was leaving.
‘He must be nineteen feet!’ was the only eulogy its executioner accorded the beast when, finally its thrashings stopped. Nevertheless, Lamarr Labiche secured its jaws with the killing rope.
Beauty, who had remained in regal silence, eyes capturing the entire set of events, now began to get agitated.
‘She doesn’t like being so close to the alligator,’ Patrick suggested, himself experiencing the same sensation.
‘That’s not it!’ Lovelace declared, a tremble of excitement in his voice. ‘Runaways! She can sniff a nigger at half a mile.’
He slipped the collar from the war-dog. She never moved … awaited his command.
‘Go, Beauty! Get!’
Catapulted by his command, Beauty bounded over the side of the pirogue, the huge hunting haunches untroubled by cypress roots or the draping moss through which she sped. Vainly they paddled after her until she was out of sight. Not long it was till the sounds of close pursuit rang back to them. Then came screams and the curdling cry of the Catahoula.
Patrick, frantic with apprehension asked, ‘Will we be in time?’
‘They’re runaways,’ Lovelace Labiche answered, nonchalantly. It was the same as trapping alligators.
When they reached the spot where the hound had run its prey to ground, it turned and snarled at them.
‘Heel, Beauty! Heel!’ Lamarr ordered. Proudly the beast moved its massive body to sit beside him. On the ground, her upper leg almost torn from its joint, was one of the young field slaves.
‘Ah, it’s Jewel!’ Lamarr said in recognition. ‘Silly girl!’
Beside her, unharmed, but cowering in fear was a young male black slave. ‘Young Massa … don’ let dat dog get me!’ he implored.
‘Don’t worry, Cicero,’ Lamarr answered in soothing tones. ‘Beauty prefers her own gender if she has a choice. Jealousy, I suppose! Besides, you’re too valuable to have hobbling about on one good leg. A whipping will do you!’
‘Yes, young Massa! Please de whip and I ain’t nebber gonna run no more!’
Patrick ran to the girl who was helpless with pain.
‘She’ll bleed to death!’ He tore off his shirt, bound it around her leg. Immediately the blood seeped through it.
‘I ain’t goin’ back!’ she moaned. ‘Massa gonna kill me!’
Oxy and Patrick between them got her into the pirogue.
‘Lamarr! Lovelace! Cut the alligator loose, it’s going to slow us down!’ Patrick demanded.
‘No!’ Lovelace retorted sternly. ‘We must bring it back. Think of the disappointment my sisters will express.’
‘Jewel will be fine,’ Lamarr added. ‘Queen is able to work magic with them.’
Back at Le Petit Versailles, there was already a hullabaloo over the two missing slaves. Clinch was furious over the escape. Furious too that Beauty had been denied him for pursuing the runaways.
‘Taken on a hunting jaunt!’ the overseer said sneeringly. ‘When she had work to do here. You’ve cost your father dearly,’ he said, nodding at the damaged slave.
Patrick wondered at how meekly the brothers took the admonition from the overseer. But good overseers were hard to find and Bayard Clinch knew it. The Labiche plantation had prospered under his tenure. Word would spread, his stock rise among other plantation owners. He could afford to rein in the young massas.
That evening Emeritus Labiche summoned the household and all of the slaves for prayer. Patrick could not but help notice the number of slave children who were of less than full, high colour. The word had long been in New Orleans that slave owners saw it as their duty to improve their stock by introducing superior seed. Masters of plantations were thus obliged to breed with strong-backed female slaves to produce a smarter, if paler strain.
Bleaching the line.
The service began, Emeritus Labiche in his hickory-rich, prayer voice, announcing, ‘We are gathered here as one family in the sight of God, to ask forgiveness for our brother Cicero and our sister Jewel.’ He paused. ‘Forgiveness … for the betrayal of us all!’ He let the words fall, like Heaven’s brimstone smiting a sinful earth. ‘And the Hound of God has wreaked its vengeance on Sister Jewel … and’ – a longer pause – ‘the mark of the Lord shall purge the sin from Brother Cicero.’
At this, a great wailing arose from the slaves to a vengeful Lord.
Emeritus Labiche moved to comfort his people. ‘ “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away”.
‘The Book of Revelation, Chapter Twenty-One, Verse Four,’ he added, so that they knew it was not his voice that spoke – but God’s. Their black God.
‘Bring them here,’ he mournfully ordered his overseer. His wife, Lucretia he bade to ‘take your daughters inside!’
What was about to be witnessed was not for tender-gazed and womanly, white eyes. Only for the eyes of slaves. Black women and their children.
First was Jewel.
‘You, Jewel! You have been justly punished for your crime. Now you will be marked so all will know you have broken a sacred trust. Bayard,’ Emeritus Labiche then called, almost gently.
The overseer stepped forward as if summoned to perform a rite of the Church.
‘Plato, Cato … you know what to do!’ Bayard Clinch said. The two male slaves stepped forward and pinned the already prostrate Jewel’s arms to her side.
The overseer then held the hissing branding iron aloft so all could see, and yanked the girl’s hair so that her right cheek was exposed.
At this a keening cry arose from those gathered.
Quickly, methodically he branded the girl’s flesh with the letter ‘V’. ‘V’ for vengeance, ‘V’ for Versailles.
Patrick was forced to turn away but he could not escape the sizzling sound of the raw-hot metal against Jewel’s skin. Nor the agony of her pain which rent the plantation skies.
Next it was ‘Brother Cicero’. He, in addition to receiving the brand of Versailles, had the crown of each ear cut away with shears. What remained of his ears was then cauterised so he would not bleed to death.
‘Cropping,’ Lamarr dutifully explained to Patrick, ‘so all will know he was a failed runaway.’
After the ‘rites of penance’ had been completed, Emeritus Labiche again prayed forgiveness for his errant slaves, asking the Lord to ‘charitably guide the hand of my justice.’ He concluded with a beseeching prayer.
‘Lord, grant that I may always be right for Thou knowest I am hard to turn. Amen.’
‘Amen!’ the kneeling slaves echoed.
Afterwards there was no further discussion of the incident. Property had been recovered, branded with the mark of ownership, lest it again go astray. The business of Versailles had been attended to. Normality had been restored.
That evening, and for some while thereafter, Monsieur Labiche exhibited a marked disinclination to ‘go to the levee’.
Nor was any comment passed on this new found break with the family tradition.