Flags on the Bayou by James Lee Burke

Author:James Lee Burke [Burke, James Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical, Mystery, Fiction
ISBN: 9780802161703
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press; Grove/Atlantic
Published: 2023-06-28T13:29:59+00:00

26

HANNAH LAVEAU

We are inside New Orleans now and protected from the Confederates. The auction at the St. Louis Hotel and Exchange is shut down, and some windows in the building are broken and the pillars scorched, but no matter what happens to it, I will always remember the families that were sold off, one member at a time—a quadroon here, an octoroon there, a full-black Negro here, a child there, a mother crying so bad she was pulled behind the rotunda and slapped senseless.

Rich men and women dressed in their finery drank wine and ate off silver trays while they watched the sale. The devil ain’t down in a fiery pit. He’s right here.

Miss Florence and I have moved into a back room of my cousine Marie Laveau’s li’l house not far from the Place d’Armes. There are Yankees all over the square, and we don’t go outside in daylight. Cousine Marie brings us food and clean clothes and some roots and herbs for Miss Florence, because Miss Florence is looking awful sick. She says it’s the malaria or maybe yellow fever. It ain’t, though. She killed the Union soldier by mistake. The other four men she killed are not in her dreams. Yesterday, just before dawn, she got out of bed and ran both of her hands through a glass window and would have cut her wrists if Cousine Marie hadn’t wrestled her back into bed, with Miss Florence all the time saying, “Why didn’t you tell me who you were? Why were you in a brothel? Why didn’t you speak up? I am so sorry, young man.”

I cain’t convince her it was a mistake and nobody’s fault except the pimp who hit me in the face and almost knocked my eye out. See, this is what Miss Florence cain’t understand. You cain’t let bad people put the blame on you for their misdeeds. They bury others in guilt. That’s how they get power over you, too. Look at New Orleans. Trumpet vine like strings of gold bells and blood-red bougainvillea drip from the Spanish ironwork on the balconies; the French bread and café au lait vendors roll their carts on the cobblestones at first light, and the fog puffs cold and white off the Mississippi. Then you hear the Angelus ringing at the cathedral and think this is the best place in the world, like Eden was before the snake got loose in the tree, but it ain’t.

The executions are still held in the Place d’Armes while people watch. I got caught once in the crowd. There’s a smell on their breath you don’t forget. It’s like the gas you smell when the beetles clog the storm sewers in the summer. The prostitutes live down by Rue Bassin and put their red lanterns in their windows at night and open up their shirts so the soldiers can see their breasts. They sell absinthe down there, too. You can tell those who drink it. They don’t look human anymore.

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