Fever Moon Read online

  As he got out of the car, the woman watched him, unmoving. It wasn’t until he put his foot on the step that she spoke.

  “If you’ve come to talk about Adele, I got nothin’ to say. My sister is a sick woman and needs medical help. She’s not responsible.”

  “I’m Deputy Thibodeaux.”

  “I don’t care if you’re Jesus Christ. I got nothing else to say about my sister, me. I got my hands full here with my young-uns. Adele wants to go and put on another circus freak show to ruin the family name, she can go right ahead. Me, I got kids to think about. These here and three more.”

  Raymond gauged the ages of the children. The girl and one of the boys were old enough to hunt or fish. The Matthews children would not be in school, of that he was certain.

  “Mrs. Matthews, I’m a representative of the law. I need to ask you some questions. Could we talk for a few minutes?”

  “Don’t expect me to ask you in.” She turned on her heel, a child dragging at her skirt, and strode inside. Raymond was surprised to see the door and windows screened. It was a touch he hadn’t expected.

  The sitting room held two rockers in a corner by the fire. Above a stove was a shelf that held a radio and a collection of delicate glass figurines. Pallets for the children, neatly made, were on the floor. A picture of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane hung with a rosary beside it.

  “You children go outside and play.” She pointed to the door.

  “Is Mrs. Bastion coming today?” the oldest boy asked.

  “Maybe later. To get me to work.” She waved them toward the door. “Go. Let me finish with the deputy.”

  The older boy took his brother by the hand and led him outside. Raymond, alone with Bernadette, took a seat in one of the rockers.

  Bernadette stood in the center of the room. “Ask your questions. I got supper to cook.”

  Raymond had hoped for some insight into Adele. Into the strange behavior of both of Bernadette’s sisters. “Do you believe Adele is possessed by the loup-garou?”

  Her lips curled. “I believe my sisters, both of them, wanted folks to notice them. Since the day they were born, they cried and whined, demanding everything. Of the two, Rosa at least believed in God. Adele is sick. She had those babies and then couldn’t remember to care for them. She’s always been off.” She tapped her head.

  He rocked slowly in the chair. Bernadette’s portrait of Adele contrasted sharply to that of Madame Louiselle. “Who fathered Adele’s twins?”

  “She gave herself freely. Perhaps one of the men she slept with bit her and made her believe she was the loup-garou. Adele was simple. Men influenced her in bad ways.” Bernadette leaned forward. “That doesn’t mean she’d kill a man, especially not Henri Bastion. She used to work for him.”

  “Do you know what man she was seeing?” He brought his notepad and pen from his pocket.

  Bernadette took a breath. “My sister slept with lots of men. When she worked for Henri Bastion, she was fired because she couldn’t stay away from one of the prisoners leased to Henri. A prisoner! She couldn’t find a decent man who would marry her, so she took up with a convicted murderer.”

  The practice of leasing prisoners from the state penitentiary at Angola had once been accepted all over the state. Now it was a special arrangement. The leaser provided food and shelter lowering the cost of incarceration to the state. Henri Bastion had been working a crew since before the war. “Do you know this man’s name?”

  “Armand Dugas. Adele spoke of him sometimes.”

  “And he was a murderer?”

  “So I’ve been told. Maybe he killed Henri and fixed it to look like Adele did it.”

  “Where is your husband, Mrs. Matthews?”

  The change in subject took her by surprise. “What business is that of yours?”

  “It would be helpful if you answered the question.” He didn’t want to threaten her, but her evasiveness made him suspect she might be abandoned. The cabin held small luxuries, though, and a single woman could never afford such things.

  “Bodine is hunting with Clifton. They took a rich man from Shreveport into the swamp to hunt the wild hogs.” She snorted. “This rich man wants adventure. Perhaps he would pay big dollars to hunt the loup-garou. We could turn my sister loose and let him track her through the swamps. Imagine her head on the wall of his Shreveport home.” Tears sprang from her eyes, and she dashed them angrily away with her fists. “Why must Adele do these things to shame me?”

  Raymond put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “Tell me about Rosa.”

  “What can I say?” She shrugged, gaining control of her tears. “On her knees from morning to night, praying, crying out for God’s mercy. It was horrible to watch.”

  “Did you see her hands bleed?”

  She stepped toward him. “I saw the blood, and I saw the wounds on her hands.” Her mouth hardened. “In her room, I found the hammer and spike, too. There was blood on the spike. What would a lawman call that? Evidence, maybe?”

  “You’re saying Rosa hammered a spike into her own hands?”

  “I’m only telling you what I found.”

  “Why would she want to do something like that?” A greater point was that she would have had to have help. She couldn’t hold the spike and hammer it, too.

  Bernadette shrugged. “Rosa was Papa’s favorite. When he died, she said she saw him standing in the yard, beckoning her. She believed she was destined to die soon, and when she didn’t, she believed God had a special purpose for her.”

  “And Adele?”

  “She always walked on the dark side, her. She was wild and willful, always running out at night. She told stories that scared us to death. She told my mother one time that she could fly. Mama believed Adele had special powers. It’s true Adele got around the parish. She’d be at one place dancing and then before the night was over at Breauxbridge or St. Martinsville.”

  Raymond could clearly read the jealousy in Bernadette’s face. They were alike, physically. The difference was in their expressions. Even burning with fever, Adele’s face had more softness. “Do you believe Adele’s possessed?”

  “Only by a need to be the princess, all eyes on her.”

  “What’s your relationship with the Bastion family?”

  “I work there some, when Mrs. Bastion needs me. I took Adele’s place when she was fired. They pay regular.”

  Raymond made a note. Bernadette’s life had been hard, made harder by the public spectacle that her sisters had each created, deliberately or not. “Do you know if Adele had a reason to want Henri Bastion dead?”

  “Why don’t you ask Veedal Lawrence, the overseer at the Bastion plantation, what happened to Armand Dugas? That might answer your questions about Adele and then you wouldn’t have to come here and bother me. Now you better leave before my husband gets back. He wouldn’t think kindly of a man sitting in his rocker in his home.”

  6

  JOLENE paced the small office, her face flushed with anger. “We drove all the way out there, and she wasn’t home. All of that food! We couldn’t leave it on the porch. There were ants everywhere. The high water had them out. We had to feed everything to the prisoners, and let me just say they looked like they hadn’t eaten in a week of Sundays.”

  Michael wanted to sigh, but he kept his expression neutral. “Mrs. Bastion has suffered a terrible loss. She isn’t herself, Jolene. You can’t hold her to standards of conduct when the situation is so difficult. Her husband was torn apart in the middle of the road, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Where in the world could she be? There wasn’t a trace of her. Do you think she’s okay? Folks are saying Henri was meeting the devil, walking so far from home on a stormy night.” Jolene’s pale brown eyes, almost golden, glittered with fear.

  Michael blinked. Even he was beginning to be affected by all the wild talk of werewolves. “Probably, he walked to assist his digestion. People with money …” He didn’t finish his thought, which went to ec
centricities.

  “There are those who say he traded his soul for wealth.” Jolene had stopped pacing and stood in front of him. “What do you think of that, Father Michael? Do you believe the dark master walks the night, his hooves striking sparks on the gravel?”

  Ever since Rosa, questions of belief had become difficult. Satan was a reality, and the line dividing angels and demons was clearly defined in his mind and bolstered by the rules of the Bible. When he’d chosen to enter the Dominican Order, he’d done so because he wanted to be a soldier of God, not a teacher or a scribe or a monk who spent his life tending animals and praying. He wanted to wage war against Satan and his demons, against the evil that afflicted mankind.

  “If only Satan showed himself with his forked tail and cloven hooves, my work would be so much easier.” He forced a smile. “He’s a master of disguise, Jolene, but you have nothing to fear. Not from Satan or the loup-garou.”

  “I heard Henri Bastion was a wicked man—”

  “Jolene, let us not speak ill of the dead. It does no good.” He felt a prick of hypocrisy. Henri Bastion had sat in the first pew of the church each Sunday, his wife and children beside him, but Michael had never seen evidence that the Lord had been able to touch Henri. The prisoners working the fields were evidence of that.

  Jolene started to say more but continued her pacing instead. He could see the anger was dissipating, and he spoke softly. “I want to thank you for all the help you’ve given me this past year. I don’t know what I would have done without you. Especially with poor Rosa.”

  Jolene walked to the chair in front of his desk and placed her hands on the back of it. “Was she a real stigmatic, Father Michael?”

  He could so clearly see her desire to believe. In this land where superstitions were the principal religion, people wanted a sign. They needed God to show them that he’d not left them to rot in the mosquito-infested swamps. The months of the past year followed a series of nature’s obstacles, from the first spring plague of insects to the snakes and malarial infestations of summer, and on to the latest epidemic of fever that had claimed the lives of at least forty of his parishioners. Many of the young men were dead on the battlefields of France and Germany. The parish suffered daily.

  “I saw Rosa’s hands bleed. The manifestations of the nails had begun to appear in her feet.”

  “And her side? Did it bleed, too?”

  He shook his head. “Primarily the hands. The wound in her feet was a new development.” He closed his eyes to block the memories. The wounds had terrified him, and in his terror, he’d allowed doubt to grow. In his doubt, he’d failed Rosa in the most profound way. Now he would not fail Jolene.

  “You really wrote the Vatican about Rosa?”

  “I did.”

  “Were they considering Rosa as a saint?”

  “They were.” He wasn’t lying. The cardinals in Rome had taken Rosa Hebert’s case under serious scrutiny. What he didn’t tell Jolene was that the Vatican had cast a dim eye upon Rosa. His request that she be authenticated as a stigmatic had met with firm disapproval, and it was too late when he’d understood that the Vatican was not eager for a common American woman to be elevated to the status of miracle.

  “Just because she’s dead, does that mean they’ll stop trying to prove she was real?”

  He stood, wanting to pace the room himself, to enjoy the release of action. He forced himself to stand steady, calm, the picture of composed strength. “Because her death was a suicide, the Vatican won’t consider her case. Had she died under other circumstances, the investigation would have continued. Suicide is a mortal sin.”

  Jolene’s thin bottom lip slipped into a pout. “That’s hardly fair. If my hands opened in gaping wounds and started bleeding every Friday, I might have to consider suicide, too.”

  “That is a damning statement, Jolene.” He shook his head but could not shake loose the sadness. “Suicide is not something to joke about. You are God’s creation. You live by His choice, and it’s for Him to determine when it’s time to call you home.”

  “Sometimes God overloads the wheelbarrow.”

  He saw the pulse in her throat and knew she was aware of her blasphemy. In moments like this, he’d learned to review a person’s past. It gave him what passed for wisdom among his parishioners. Jolene was in an unhappy, childless marriage. Her waist was thickening and her looks were fading. She teetered on a thin line between doing the good works of the church and becoming a bitter, harsh woman.

  “As hard as it is to hear, God has a purpose for all that He puts in our paths. He knows the burden you carry, Jolene, and each day He sees your strength.” He hesitated. “My area of study was the history of the Irish church. My anticipation was that I would be sent to Belfast, to work with a country I loved and understood. A country engaged in a terrible war. I had no preparation for this culture in Iberia Parish. I don’t understand why God sent me here, but I have to trust that He has a plan.”

  “Your trust in God’s grand design intrigues me. How do you know it’s true?”

  He touched his chest and thought he heard an echo. “In here. Faith happens in the heart, not the mind, Jolene.” He knew the proper words, even if he’d lost his belief in them.

  She mimicked his gesture. “There’s nothing here but emptiness. I want to feel something, before I’m too old.”

  Jolene needed to be loved. She needed tenderness. He was moved by her emptiness, but he had no solution for her. “You must pray to God for faith. If you seek it, God will deliver it to you.”

  “I’ve spent hours on my knees.”

  The anger had returned to her voice, and he was suddenly weary. “God demands surrender. You should pray for the grace to surrender to His will.”

  “So that I can go home to Jacques and cook his supper and fetch his slippers.” Her voice rose with each word. “He doesn’t love me, Father. All I want is someone to love me.”

  Michael grasped her shoulders and held her firmly. “God loves you, Jolene.”

  “It’s not enough.” A dry sob tore at her throat. “I just want someone to hold me, to make me feel safe.”

  Michael drew her into his arms. He was violating one of his personal rules with the females of his congregation, but Jolene was on the verge of a total collapse. He felt her bitter tears soaking through the starch of his collar. He held her in his arms, an intimate embrace, feeling only compassion.

  He let her cry herself out, then assisted her into a chair. He poured a small measure of brandy into a lovely crystal glass from a set his grandmother had sent from County Cork. “Drink this.”

  She tried to resist but he pressed it into her hand.

  “If Jacques smells liquor on my breath …”

  “Send him here to talk to me. There is a duty to God we shall discuss.” He walked to the window and looked out. Plants grew lush and thick in the Louisiana heat and humidity. Even now, so late in the year, there were blooms on the roses in his garden. While the nuns labored over collards and other winter crops for the Victory Garden that would feed them, Michael had planted an assortment of mums that bordered his paths in bright golds, oranges, and russets—a sunset rush of color and graciousness in the middle of a brutal swamp.

  Beyond the garden was a wrought-iron fence, and beyond that a live oak with graceful limbs that swept the ground. He could recall in vivid detail the morning he’d looked out this very window and taken such pleasure in his flowers, his gaze sweeping up to the fence and the tree, and the dawning horror of Rosa Hebert swinging in a gentle wind.

  He didn’t hear the door close as Jolene left, her footsteps muffled by the vacuum of his private nightmare.

  The line of twenty prisoners, mostly Negro men, swung machetes in unison, then advanced and swung again, hacking their way into the purple rows of sugar cane. Behind them, another line of twenty men stripped the stalks and tossed them into the bed of a wagon for delivery to the refinery. In the distance, working another field, Raymond saw the migrant worke
rs, paid labor, hacking and stripping. Haitians and Puerto Ricans had been brought in to work for minimal wages for the harvest, but it was the convicts who interested Raymond. Henri had controlled their lives the same way a human determined the destiny of livestock.

  A breeze swept across the field, and Raymond caught the scent of the sugar cooking at one of the refineries. The odor was sickly sweet, nauseating. The men kept working as if they didn’t smell a thing. Raymond watched the process, the endless bending and hacking of the first row of men, followed by the quick stripping and tossing of the second. The cane had to be cut close to the ground, for the sweetest part was near the soil. Almost everyone who lived in southern Louisiana had worked the cane fields at one time or another. Such labor had taught Raymond as a young boy that he wasn’t interested in farming.

  The convicts moved in a steady rhythm across the rippling field of cane. The men would work until darkness stopped them and rise again at first light. The race was on to beat the first frost of the year, which would destroy any unharvested cane. Marguerite Bastion’s comfortable future rested on the backs of the convicts and imported poor who toiled in her fields.

  Even from a distance Raymond could see the skeletal quality of the men, hear the clank of the leg chains that bound them to the job and to each other. The chains were unnecessary. None of the men looked as if he could make it to the road if he tried to run. They were in pathetic condition. It was ironic that the slaves once used to grow and harvest the cane were better treated because they were financial investments. If half the prisoners never returned to Angola, it would be that many less mouths for the state to feed.

  He drove on to the house and parked. He was halfway across the yard when Marguerite stepped onto the front porch. Like Bernadette Matthews, Marguerite had a child clinging to her skirts. Unlike Bernadette, Marguerite was beautifully dressed. The cameo at her throat was expensive; the gold earrings that looped into a cascade of pearls were real.