Fever Moon Read online

  “You got your mama’s bitter tongue, cher, but you got your daddy’s Irish blarney.” His brows drew down. “Good thing, too, or I’d have to predict spinsterhood.”

  She laughed out loud, a sound that bounced off the wall of trees that defined the edge of the mud road. “There are worse things, Joe. Believe it or not, there are worse things.”

  Her gaze drifted to the men lifting something from the road, and she recognized Raymond Thibodeaux’s muscular back. She felt a pain beneath her breast, a sharp memory of the beauty of his body before he’d gone to war. He’d gone to Europe a lively young man with a quick smile and come home a specter. His dark hair was shot with silver, and some days he walked with a limp, his eyes daring anyone to notice. A bomb had exploded and sent shrapnel into his body. Gossip was that he might become paralyzed.

  Moving to the shade, she waited until Henri’s body had been loaded into a truck bed. When Raymond was left standing alone, she walked to him. “Mother and I would love for you to come to dinner, Raymond.” It was an invitation extended often, and always ignored. Others in town might accept his isolation, but Chula could not. The memory of his kisses, his hands so expert in touching her, would not be snuffed out by his anger. What they’d shared was gone, but never her affection for him.

  “I’m busy, Chula, but thank you.”

  “Raymond, we’ve known each other a long time. I know you grieve Antoine, but you can’t continue like this. Your brother wouldn’t want that.”

  She saw the fire snap into his dark eyes. So he wasn’t quite dead. At least not yet. “You don’t have a clue what you’re stepping into, Chula. Mind your own affairs.”

  He bent down to pick up Henri’s hat that lay sodden in the road.

  “You once loved the fact that I was smart and spoke my mind.” Her voice was soft as she remembered a summer afternoon in her shady backyard when he told her he was going into the army, that when he returned he wanted to be a journalist. “The war took your brother, but only you can let it steal your dreams.”

  His eyes, once a golden brown, bore into her. It was true that the color had changed to near black. “The past is dead, Chula. So is the man you knew. Leave what’s left of him in peace.”

  He took the hat to the patrol car, and Chula felt the gaze of the sheriff watching them. It would be best to walk away, but she couldn’t. She’d delivered two letters to Mrs. Thibodeaux, the first last November telling of Antoine’s death in a small town, a village of no consequence to either army. Antoine had been the youngest son, the charmer in a family of handsome men.

  Six months later, she’d brought the second letter on a beautiful May morning with robins calling from the wild hedges. Mrs. Thibodeaux had opened the door without expression. She’d ripped open the letter, read the words, and looked up into Chula’s eyes with an expression of furious anguish before she slammed and locked the door.

  Raymond had arrived home two months later, unable to walk without crutches. In a matter of weeks he was using a cane. When the cane was gone, he pinned on the deputy’s badge.

  “Raymond, there are people who’d care about you if you’d let them. I remember—”

  “Don’t. Don’t remember, Chula. The past is like a dream. It only exists in memory, and sometimes it’s best to let it go.” He walked away.

  Chula went back to her car, feet sliding in the thick cake of yellow mud called gumbo by the locals. She sat for a moment before she started her car, watching Raymond talk with the sheriff.

  Henri Bastion was dead, and from the sound of it he’d died violently. Such foolishness. If a man wanted a violent death, he could accomplish it easily by joining the army. There were still plenty of German and Japanese bullets. So why bring it home? That was a question without an answer.

  Raymond got out of the patrol car in front of the jail and watched as the sheriff followed Henri’s body over to the funeral home. Doc Fletcher would be there directly to look it over. For now, Raymond had a chance to be alone with Adele Hebert. He’d done a bit of digging, and what he’d learned showed Adele to be a hard worker who’d retreated into the swamps alone to raise twin boys. No one would hazard a guess as to the boys’ father. She’d shown up in town big with child and refusing to name the father. Doc had given her vitamins and caution to rest, but Adele had seen him only once. As far as anyone knew, she’d delivered the babies on her own.

  Adele’s parents had died, her father in the Gulf waters and her mother of infection almost eight years ago. It wasn’t much information, and none of it explained why Adele would think herself the loup-garou or why her sister would develop the wounds of the stigmata. Raymond walked into the sheriff’s office hoping Adele would be well enough to give him some answers to his questions.

  Pinkney Stole stood up from in front of the potbellied stove when Raymond walked in. The old black man stared at Raymond, waiting for a command.

  “She been mumbling,” he said. “Talkin’

  ‘bout the moon and such. None of it made a lick o’ sense.”

  Raymond pulled a quarter from his pocket. “Would you get us some coffee, Pinkney? Take your time about it. Tell Mrs. Estella to feed you some pie.” He flipped the coin to the old man who deftly caught it with a toothless grin. Pinkney hung out at the jail because he had nowhere else to sleep. Like an old dog, his presence could be comforting or annoying. Now, Raymond wanted to be alone with the prisoner.

  Adele lay on a thin mattress of cotton ticking. Her hand was cuffed to the bedsprings, but if she’d moved since he put her on the bunk the night before, he couldn’t tell. The gentle rise and fall of her chest told him she was breathing.

  “Miss Hebert?” He called her name softly, surprised at the desire he felt to be gentle. There were moments when the past crept up on him and caught him unaware, making him wonder what kind of man he might have been. Such moments always cost him.

  When she didn’t respond, he went in the cell with a dropper of the medicine Madame Louiselle had prepared. He gripped her jaw and forced her mouth open. The liquid gurgled between her lips, but she didn’t swallow.

  Afraid she would choke lying flat on her back, he lifted her head until he saw her throat work. Her skin felt cooler to his touch, but she still had a fever. He wet a cloth and put it on her forehead as his mother had done to him when he was a child. The cold cloth made her sigh.

  While Joe was captivated by the idea of a woman possessed by an evil spirit, Raymond worried about something far worse. Infantile paralysis. It came with a high fever, followed by the death of the limbs, and for some, the inability to breathe. Jail was not the place to be sick, but no hospital would take a person with polio, especially not a possible murderer.

  He wiped her mouth and stood. He would’ve been uncomfortable for the sheriff or even Pinkney to see him ministering to the woman. There was no room for kindness or compassion in the world he’d chosen. Those things had been stolen from him by his own actions.

  In the daylight, he studied Adele’s features. Dark, thick eyebrows grew with a slight curve over eyes set deep. Her skin was sallow, with grayish tints like old bruises beneath her eyes. The nose was sharp and clean. Spanish or French, he’d say. As he recalled, her eyes were gray, and fringed with dark lashes. If she gained about thirty pounds, she would be a comely woman. Someone had found her so and fathered twin boys on her. For all that she was alone now, she hadn’t always been.

  Her eyelids fluttered, and he thought of young birds in the first flapping of wings. There’d been a blue jay’s nest outside his bedroom window, and each spring, he and Antoine had watched the eggs hatch and the fledglings grow. They’d been careful never to frighten the mother bird, fearing she’d abandon her babies. He could almost feel his brother’s breath on his forearm as they stood at the window, watching so carefully. Antoine was often with him.

  Adele moaned, and Raymond leaned closer. “Adele?”

  She looked at him and lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun that came in the cell window. S
he struggled to sit up but was too weak to do so.

  “What do you remember?” he asked as he offered a hand for her to pull against. She swung her bare feet to the floor, unaware that she wore someone else’s nightgown.

  “Nothing.” Her eyes darted around the cell, and when she lifted her wrist and the handcuff jingled, she cried out in terror.

  “Last night you were on Section Line Road at Beaver Creek.” He saw the frown as she tried to comprehend this information. “Do you remember seeing a man walking on the road?”

  She shook her head. “I remember a storm.” Urgency touched her face. “I went to check on my boys—”

  “Your boys?” he interrupted.

  “To make sure the high water wouldn’t pull them from their grave.” Her gaze faltered, but when she brought it back to his, there was a dare in her eyes. “The moon went behind a cloud, and I lost my way. I fell. I was sick and lost.” She looked at the cuts and bruises on her palms. “When the moon came out again, it was red. Red light all around, bright enough to see.”

  Her words touched Raymond like the fingers of a corpse. “The moon was full last night, but it wasn’t surrounded by a red halo. Maybe you were dreaming.”

  Confusion touched her features, and he saw that she was younger than he’d first thought. Twenty-three at most. “I knelt by my boys, me, and the light around us was red as the storm clouds blew past. I looked at the moon, so big and bloody. The Hunter’s Moon, my brother taught me.” Something alive slipped into her eyes and her features changed as he looked at her. Her eyes narrowed, her chin lifted, and the lips drew into a thin line. When she spoke again, her voice was deeper, rawer, and her body trembled. “Running.”

  “Running from what?” He kept his tone conversational. Her words had sent a creep of flesh along his spine despite the fact he didn’t believe in the loup-garou.

  “From—” A gout of blood rushed from her nose. It filled her lap, covering her hands, as if her head had exploded. The blood still pouring, her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell backward onto the bed.

  4

  HOLDING Adele in his arms, Raymond brushed past Pinkney as the old man tried to come in the door, cups of coffee chattering against saucers in each hand.

  “Tell the sheriff I’ve taken her to Madame Louiselle’s. Doc said he couldn’t help her, and she’s dying.”

  “Good Lord, look at the blood.” Pinkney shuffled from foot to foot, the dishes reflecting his unease. “Good Lord Almighty, there couldn’t be no blood left in her. Sweet Jesus, Mr. Raymond. She done gone.”

  Raymond ran to his personal car and put her in the front seat. “Remember to tell the sheriff.” He got behind the wheel and sprayed mud as he drove away. Adele had lost everything else—and he understood what that meant—but she wouldn’t lose her life. Not if he could help it.

  She was still alive. He could see her eyelids fluttering, and her hands made small motions, reaching out and falling back. He watched so many helpless people die, but Death would not win this time.

  “Adele?” He tried to call her back to this world. And he thought of a young nurse in Europe after the grenade blast. She’d frequented his bedside, demanding that he return to the land of the living. Now he did the same for Adele. “Stay with me, Adele. I know you didn’t kill Bastion.”

  She slumped against the door and he gave up. She was breathing and for the moment she was at peace.

  When he pulled into Madame Louiselle’s yard, the old woman was gathering herbs along a rickety wooden fence that could barely hold the weeds out. She showed no surprise, not even when he lifted Adele out, blood soaking her gown and him. She walked slowly to them and pried one of Adele’s eyes open.

  “Take her inside. You’ll have to leave her.”

  He didn’t argue. The sheriff would be angry, but what good was a dead prisoner? As he climbed the steep stairs, he was careful of the long shank of Adele’s legs and arms. Bones should weigh more. He had the disturbing notion that she was somehow hollowed out.

  He put her on the sofa and stepped back. Madame Louiselle’s hands grasped his waist, moving him away. She knelt beside Adele and touched her face, lifted her eyelids, opened her mouth, and examined her teeth and gums.

  “Can you help her?” Raymond asked.

  “The fever is burning her alive.” She rose with the grace of a sixteen-year-old.

  “What’s wrong with her? She’s almost lucid one minute and the next, she’s talking crazy.”

  Madame Louiselle walked to the door, turned and waited for him to follow. “She isn’t going to get up and run away, Raymond. Come outside and speak with me.”

  He followed her outside, taking the opportunity to pull out his pack of Camels. He offered Madame one and she took it, tapping it daintily on the wooden rail of the porch. When she put it between her lips, he lit it for her, then his own.

  “Do you believe in the sickness of a soul?” she asked.

  “You mean mental illness.” A series of images slipped into his mind, hot-pan flashes of bayonets, screams in the night, of frantic limbs clawing backward as a soldier clung to the damp earth of a foxhole and cowered from the gunfire that had driven him mad.

  She watched his face. “Not a broken mind. This is something else I speak of.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t believe in evil, not like the devil or a demon or the loup-garou. I do believe in greed and cruelty and meanness. And weakness. That’s the worst of them all.”

  She studied him. “I’m sixty years old. I’ve seen many things. When I was barely three, I went with my grandmère to treat the sicknesses of those who lived far back on the narrow bayous of the swamp. There were often fevers.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Often death. I learned from my grandmère that there are three kinds of illness. What attacks the body can often be cured with skill and herbs. What twists the mind can be addressed by a change in situation, a trip or a move.” She finally looked at him. “An illness of the soul is beyond my skill.”

  Raymond tried to weigh her words. “You’re telling me that Adele Hebert is sick in her soul?”

  Madame took another cigarette, bent to shield the match, and exhaled. “I examined her, Raymond. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. This is beyond my experience.”

  “Do you believe she’s possessed by the loup-garou?” He didn’t bother to hide his scorn.

  She looked over her yard. “She’s told me nothing. In my years, though, I do know one thing. If she believes she is possessed, what you believe doesn’t matter. She believes, therefore to her it’s true. We are all victims of our beliefs.”

  “Surely you’re not saying that because she believes she’s the loup-garou, she’s burning up with fever, shooting geysers of blood from her nose, and tearing a man apart with her bare hands.” He flipped the book of matches in his hand.

  “I’m not saying anything for certain about Adele. I was making an observation about human nature. There are forces at work you can’t see or touch. You know that. In your heart.” Madame was unruffled by his anger. “Families still practice the laying on of curses. Some even voodoo. Sometimes the darkness that cloaks the swamp is more than night. Because a woman … or man believes.”

  “Adele Hebert is physically incapable of gutting a man with her hands and teeth. I look at her lying in the cell, and I know, in my heart, that she’s innocent. Even if she wanted to do it, she isn’t strong enough. Henri Bastion was in his late thirties, a powerful man. From what I could tell, he wasn’t struck on the head and stunned. He wasn’t shot. He was knocked down in the road and bitten.” Henri Bastion’s body told a specific story. “That woman lying in there didn’t do that.”

  “And if she were not alone?”

  He nodded. “Now you’re thinking.” Raymond knew the shape of a murderer. He recognized the eyes of a killer each morning as he looked in his broken mirror and scraped the stubble from his cheeks. The small moments of death reflected in his eyes were missing in Adele’s.

  Ma
dame’s gaze was penetrating. She tapped his pocket for another cigarette.

  He offered the cigarette and then held a match, meeting her gaze. “I don’t understand the why of it, though. Why Adele? The question I have to answer is who would do this to her.”

  “Leave her with me.”

  “I don’t have a choice.” He flicked his cigarette over the side of the porch. “No one else will even try to help her, and if Joe doesn’t stop flapping his gums, the parish is going to turn into a lynch mob.”

  Madame drew on the cigarette and exhaled smoke. “Leave me the cigarettes.”

  He took the pack from his pocket and handed them to her. “I’ll be back tomorrow to check on her.” Madame didn’t have a telephone. If something went wrong, she’d be alone with the young woman. He waited to see if she might raise an objection.

  “Have you talked to Bernadette?”

  He knew the name of Adele’s other sister. There had been four of the Hebert siblings, a small family by most standards. Rosa was dead by her own hand. Clifton lived so deep in the swamps no one could find him unless he chose to be found. Bernadette was married and lived on Bayou Caneche, a small tributary of the Bayou Teche.

  “I’m going there now.”

  “Be careful, Raymond. Superstitions are dangerous, but sometimes it’s the lack of belief that puts one in harm’s way.”

  Marguerite Bastion pulled the shawl higher on her shoulders and poured the coffee. Father Michael knew the delicate bone china had cost a pretty penny, like so many other things in the Bastion home. Marguerite Bastion, née Mandeville, a New Orleans beauty, had brought culture and refinement to the wilderness. Even now, in her grief, he could appreciate her aristocratic features, the composure that was part of good breeding. She poured the coffee and offered him a plate of sweets.

  Michael wondered again at the match between her and Henri, a man reputed to be ruthless and violent, at least in his business dealings. Marguerite’s marriage to Henri had tied the Mandeville political power to Henri’s wealth and interest in the Gulf oil fields. It had also bound Marguerite to a life of isolation and hardship.