Good Time Coming Read online

  ‘Where’s yor momma?’ he asked as the whomp, whomp of exploding shells shook the earth beneath them and filled the air with fire and dust.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a scratchy whisper.

  A cannonball landed in the street out front, and Finn clamped one crooked arm over his ducked head and threw the other around the girl’s shivering shoulders. They huddled like that for the longest time, bodies jerking with each concussion, until he thought his eardrums would burst. He opened his mouth and swallowed, trying to pop them, and realized the bombardment had stopped.

  Then he heard the tramp of heavy boots.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the little girl.

  ‘Landing party, I ’spect.’ Lifting his head, he edged forward so he could see. ‘Looks like a shitpot load of ’em.’

  Blue-coated men poured into the street, faces sweat-slicked, rifle barrels glistening in the harsh sunlight. They roved from shop to house, battering down any doors they found locked against them, laughing and jeering as they sent chairs crashing through windows and shredding drapes, bedding, and women and children’s clothes with their bayonets. One seaman pranced out of Sylvia Higginbottom’s millinery shop, a purple hat with ostrich feathers perched on his greasy red hair, one wrist limply cocked as he sashayed and cavorted to the cat calls and hoots of his comrades.

  ‘Why are they doing that?’ asked the little girl.

  Finn just shook his head, because he didn’t know what to tell her. From the looks of things, the officers had simply turned their men loose on the town. The air filled with shouts and screams, the crash of breaking glass and splintering wood. He saw one soldier run past clutching a bulging pillowcase from which poked the branches of a silver candelabra and the rounded dome of a mantle clock; another carried a massive, gilt-framed painting of an idyllic landscape with sheep grazing peacefully across verdant hills; another staggered beneath a keg of whiskey. Across the street, a sergeant had a woman backed up against the brick wall of the bank and was violently copulating with her, his trousers sagging down around his knees, the smooth café-au-lait skin of her fine-boned, heart-shaped face a mask of endurance. Finn dragged the little girl’s head to his chest and whispered, ‘Don’t look.’

  He didn’t know how long they crouched there, hearts pounding, ragged breath mingling as heavy boots thumped the floorboards overhead and the shouts of the men grew rowdier. ‘Sounds like they found the bars down by the Point,’ said Finn.

  He knew by the pinched expression on the little girl’s face that she understood what that meant.

  He saw two men disappear down an alley, dragging a woman by her arms between them. Her flaxen hair was a tumbled mess, her dress ripped, her face so contorted with terror that it took him a moment to recognize Eloisa Peyton, the woman who’d been running the butcher shop with the help of a half-blind, one-legged German ever since her husband Reuben went off to war.

  And then he heard the crackle of flames, smelled the familiar aroma of burning wood.

  ‘They done set fire to the town!’ said the little girl, her voice a tight squeak. ‘What we gonna do?’

  Finn reached out and grabbed her hand. ‘We gotta run. Come on!’

  They slithered out from beneath the porch and took off toward the edge of town, where a green curtain of cypress and oak trees lined the bayou. He could see black cinders swirling toward the sky as if pulled by an unseen hand; the street became a dark canyon through towering walls of hot flames. He heard someone shout at them, but nobody was much interested in a couple of terrified children. When the little girl started flagging, he scooped her up in his arms and kept running, her skinny arms wrapped tight around his neck, her bare legs dangling. He was only dimly aware of the darkness of the trees closing in around him. He felt the earth turn cool and soft beneath his bare feet; heard his own breath rasping in his throat as he kept running, running.

  The little girl said, ‘When you gonna stop?’

  He stopped.

  She slid down to the ground. The shouts of the men, the crackle of the flames came to him as if from a distance or through a strangely compressed tunnel. He felt lightheaded, took a step, and stumbled, so that he had to sit down.

  He sat with his elbows braced on his bent knees, his head hanging as he worked to draw in air. Then he heard a crackle of musketry in the distance. It came from above and to the right, and he realized that the Federals must be moving up the bluff to St Francisville. He thought of his mother and his younger brother and sisters left alone on their farm, and felt tears of frustration, fear, and rage sting his eyes.

  The little girl said, ‘What do we do now?’

  He raised his head and looked at her – really looked at her – for the first time. He figured she was closer to six than eight, with a small-boned, heart-shaped face and big brown eyes that stared at him solemnly. ‘What’s yor name?’

  ‘Calliope.’

  ‘Yor momma belong to anybody, Calliope?’

  She nodded her head up and down. ‘Mizz Walford. We was down here gettin’ some fish for dinner.’ Her face crumpled. ‘I wanna go home.’

  Finn nodded, although he wasn’t about to take her back to Bon Silence himself.

  And so he brought her to us.

  Finn told us all this while seated in a rocking chair on our front porch, a glass of Mahalia’s lemonade in one hand. He was covered in dust and black streaks of soot, his bare legs and feet scratched and bitten, his face gray with exhaustion. The little girl was playing with Checkers nearby on the grass. Mama’d sent Priebus up the road to tell the Walfords where she was.

  He’d come to us the long way around, by following the creek that curved north of the bluff, then cutting back up the slope. By the time he reached us, the Federals had already been driven back down the bluff from St Francisville by a dozen or so old men armed with muskets they’d carried in the Mexican War.

  The Essex sailed away, vowing to return with reinforcements and burn St Francisville to the ground.

  ‘Is there anything of Bayou Sara left?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I dunno. Maybe a few buildings here and there.’

  ‘What about Castile’s livery stable?’

  ‘I doubt it, Amrie.’

  My heart felt as if it were swelling in my chest, so that it hurt.

  ‘Reckon they’ll really be back?’ asked Mahalia from where she sat on the top step, her gaze on the child playing in the sun-spangled yard below.

  ‘I suppose that depends on why they did this,’ said Mama. ‘If it was in revenge for the Sumter, surely they should be satisfied?’

  We’d heard of other towns along the Mississippi destroyed in retaliation for some act of resistance in the area. Only two weeks before, Admiral Farragut had burned the city of Donaldsonville to the ground in retaliation for a nearby incident in which someone took a couple of shots at one of his gunboats. Once, Donaldsonville had been the capital of Louisiana; by the time the Federals were done, the only thing left standing was a walled orphanage run by an order of Catholic nuns. General Butler immediately evicted the children and sisters, and turned the building into the officers’ quarters for the new fort he planned to erect on the ruins of the town.

  But to my knowledge, St Francisville was the first town whose own inhabitants had taken up arms and fought back. They might have saved their city from the flames that consumed Bayou Sara today. But hadn’t they just given the Federals another excuse for revenge?

  ‘What happened to Calliope’s mother?’ asked Mama, her gaze, like Mahalia’s, on the child.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Finn. But I saw the tightening of his jaw, the way his eyes drifted sideways when he said it.

  And I knew he was lying.

  Rowena Walford came herself to collect Calliope, driving a pretty, high-stepping chestnut hitched to a shiny buggy with red wheels.

  Mama walked out to meet her and invited her inside. Miss Rowena smiled and shook her head.

  ‘That’s right kind of you,
Kate. But I need to get this child home. Josephine – that’s Calliope’s mother – is frantic with worry.’

  Priebus lifted the little girl up into the buggy, her eyes gleaming with the treat of a buggy ride – and in the exalted company of Rowena Walford, no less.

  Mama said, ‘Is Josephine going to be all right?’

  I realized then that she’d seen that look on Finn’s face, too.

  Miss Rowena sucked her lower lip between her straight white teeth. ‘We-ell,’ she said, drawing the word out into two syllables. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what those Yankees did to her.’

  ‘You want me to come take a look at her?’

  ‘She says she’s gonna be all right. I guess these things are different for them. I mean, it’s not like they need to worry about their reputations or social standing.’

  ‘Yet I’ve no doubt the fear and pain they experience are equally as intense,’ said my mother dryly.

  ‘At the time, yes; that stands to reason. It’s just that the consequences aren’t there.’ Rowena Walford gathered her reins and said to the child, ‘Tell Mrs St Pierre thank you, Calliope.’

  And she drove off, the small dark child sitting bolt upright on the seat beside her, a wide grin splitting her face and one little hand clutching the dash rail before her.

  Twenty-Three

  It took me three days of pestering, but I finally convinced my mother to let me go see for myself what the Federals had done to Bayou Sara.

  The morning had dawned hot and muggy, so that the stench of charred wood hung heavy in the air, along with a smell that reminded me of burned garbage. I made it as far as the edge of the bluff, then drew up, my breath catching in my throat as I looked down toward the river. I’d thought I was prepared for what I’d see. But nothing could have prepared me for this.

  Bayou Sara didn’t exist anymore. In its place stretched endless piles of rubble and charred timbers. Here and there, a blackened chimney poked up from the ruins, with an occasional stretch of brick wall, its gaping empty windows showing only more rubble beyond. I spotted maybe four or five structures that looked as if they’d escaped the worst of both the fire and the shelling.

  ‘Sweet Mary,’ I whispered.

  A dozen or so women, children, and old men were sifting through the ashes and debris. They moved slowly, shoulders slumped, as if despairing of finding anything useful and yet feeling compelled to look nonetheless. One or two turned to stare at me, vacant-eyed, as I worked my way down the hill.

  Without the familiar shops and houses to guide me, it wasn’t easy navigating through the jumbled ruins. The only reason I was sure I’d found the site of Castile’s livery stable was because he was sitting smack dab in the middle of the street in front of it, balancing precariously on a singed stool that looked as if it might collapse beneath his weight. His ragged trousers were streaked with black, and he had the sleeves of his homespun shirt rolled up to reveal a bandaged forearm.

  ‘Hey, Castile,’ I said softly.

  He slewed around to look at me, his dark face splitting into a grin. ‘Hey, Missy Amrie.’

  I stared out over the ruins of his stables. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Castile.’

  He shrugged his big, strong shoulders. ‘Leo and me can rebuild it, child. Don’t fret about us. There’s lots who’re plenty worse off than me.’

  At the far end of the street, I could see an old white woman with wild gray hair sitting on the brick steps of what had once been her home. She was just sitting there, her face blank, as if too stunned to even begin dealing with the ruins of her life.

  ‘The amazing thing is, there weren’t nobody killed,’ said Castile. ‘That’s somethin’ to be grateful for.’

  I nodded to his arm. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Jist got singed a bit. I had a couple of mules still in their stalls when the place caught fire, and they were right stubborn about comin’ out.’

  ‘You should have Mama look at it.’

  ‘I will, if’n it don’t get no better. Right now, I’m puttin’ the same salve on me and the mules, both.’

  I laughed. Castile had all sorts of salves and liniments he mixed up for his mules and horses, and he was always using them on himself, too. ‘Why you just sittin’ on this here stool, lookin’ at everythin’?’

  ‘I’m trying to decide if I want to rebuild here, or move up the bluff to St Francisville.’

  ‘You reckon the Federals are gonna come back?’

  ‘Oh, they’ll be back, child. Cain’t say when, exactly. But they’ll be back. Ain’t no doubt about that.’

  Late that afternoon, I was in the yard throwing a stick for Checkers when a man on a gray mule turned in our drive.

  I sent the stick tumbling end-over-end through the air, Checkers barking joyously as he pelted across the grass to retrieve it. I returned my gaze to the man riding up the drive.

  He wore a silk top hat and a rusty broadcloth coat, and had hitched his stirrups up so short he looked vaguely ridiculous. I knew only one man around these parts who rode like that: our schoolmaster, Horst Fischer.

  He reined in at the base of the steps and swung down with the sigh of a man for whom riding any distance is a discomfort. Checkers was frisking around me, trying to get my attention, first dropping the stick at my feet, then picking it up again in his mouth, wanting me to throw it.

  ‘Just a minute, boy,’ I said softly, dropping my hand to his head.

  As I cut across the grass toward the house, I saw my mother come out onto the gallery. The two talked for a moment; then both turned to look at me.

  I thought, Now what’ve I done? School wasn’t set to resume for another week yet, so how could I be in trouble already?

  With a lagging step, I trudged up the drive. To my surprise, Horst Fischer walked out to meet me. He held a slim blue book in his hands, and my gaze narrowed at the sight of it. It was my Candide.

  ‘Miss St Pierre,’ he said in his rough, gravelly voice. He always called the children in his class ‘Miss’ or ‘Mister’. I think he had the idea it encouraged us to be better behaved. Or maybe he just thought calling us by our first names was too friendly.

  Conscious of my mother watching from the porch, I dropped a small curtsy. ‘Herr Fischer.’ I was the only one who called him that – ‘Herr’ instead of ‘Mr’ – but I was no more certain of my own motives than I was of his.

  ‘I have brought your book,’ he said, and held it out.

  I took the volume, more puzzled than grateful, although I’d wanted it back for nearly a year now. I should have said, ‘Thank you’. Instead, I just shook my head in confusion and said, ‘Why?’

  He cleared his throat, uncomfortable. ‘I am enlisting.’

  I stared at him. ‘You? But … Whatever for?’

  He tugged at the hem of his shabby waistcoat. ‘It yoost seems the right thing to do.’

  ‘But … You’re Austrian! This isn’t your fight. You’ve always said so.’

  ‘Ja. But I have chosen to make my home here. After vhat happened to Bayou Sara, I cannot in all conscience sit at home like a – vhat do you call them? A fireside brave.’

  It sorely pricked my conscience to remember that we’d once hoped this poor man would go off to war, simply so that we could get out of school. I said, ‘No one with any sense will think less of you for not fighting. And those who do aren’t worth worrying about.’

  ‘This is not about vhat others think of me. Vhat matters is vhat I think of myself.’

  I stared at his plain, ruddy face, so earnest and serious. I tried to imagine him as a soldier in a homespun butternut uniform, marching all day, sleeping on the cold, wet ground, and eating nothing but hardtack.

  He wouldn’t last a month.

  But I also knew that he was beyond dissuading. I held the book out to him. ‘Here. Keep it.’

  I saw his eyes light up; then he shook his head. ‘Thank you, but no; I cannot.’

  ‘Please? I would like you to have it.’

&
nbsp; In the end, he took the book. I’d heard of men going off to war with Bibles in their knapsacks. I didn’t see any reason Horst Fischer couldn’t take Candide.

  After he left, I sat on the bottom step, my elbows propped on my knees, my chin resting in my cupped palms. Checkers finally gave up cavorting and trying to coax me into throwing the stick again, and plopped down panting in the dirt nearby. After a few minutes, my mother came to sit beside me.

  I said, ‘Horst Fischer is enlisting.’

  ‘I know. He told me.’

  I slid my hands down to wrap around my bare ankles. ‘I don’t understand it.’

  ‘I think it has something to do with what society expects of men. They need to be seen as strong, and protective of women and children and the old.’

  ‘But he said it isn’t because of how other people might see him.’

  ‘I doubt it is. I think it all comes down to how he views himself – his own sense of worthiness and self-respect.’

  ‘But he’s always been so contemptuous of anyone who ever said he should fight – for over a year now!’

  ‘Yes. But this week the war suddenly became personal, didn’t it?’

  I stared out at the yard. The shadows were deepening beneath the moss-draped oaks, the sky streaked with purple and gold-tinged pink clouds against a robin’s egg blue. I could see the darting flashes of fireflies, hear the droning croak of the frogs down by the creek. I said, ‘I don’t understand why they’re doing this. The Federals, I mean. Burning our towns. Stealing our stuff. They say they want us back in the Union, only, they’re acting like they hate us. And they’re making sure we hate them.’

  I heard my mother draw a deep breath, as if choosing her words carefully. ‘I think in the beginning, they expected the war to be short – most people did, after all. They thought they’d win a few battles and march south, and people would greet them with rose petals and three cheers for the red, white, and blue. Only, that didn’t happen. We’re into our second year of war now. They’re dying by the tens of thousands. And rather than greeting them as liberators, the people of the South see them as an invading army—’