Orleans Read online

  12

  MY KNEES BEND AND I BE ALMOST TO THE ground when Baby Girl start to scream. It sound like the Devil himself be screaming. A spike of fear shoot through me like lightning through a dry tree. This be Lydia’s baby. She ain’t mine to give away.

  I stand up and pull Baby Girl closer to me, bouncing her as I come awake, her screams clearing my head. She ain’t gonna die here. Ain’t gonna be one of Mama’s babies, sold for blood and sex and magic, any more than I am. So close to the circle now we almost in it, I can see they all be gone, carried away on whatever Mama’s religion done to them. Even Mama be gone, rattling in her throat like to beat a storm down, smiling up at the sky.

  When I duck under her arms, nobody try to stop me. Then we in the kitchen of the church, not more than a little room with a chimney hole over the cookstove, open to the night sky. And a door in the back. I open it real slow.

  A rope bridge lead from the tree house to a nearby tree and switch back three times to the ground. That be how Mama Gentille made it up here. I tug at the bridge, tied to hooks in the doorway. Easy up, easy down. They can cut it loose if need be, and tie it up again. I go back to the kitchen and find a knife, still smeared with sweet potato and bits of pheasant meat. I don’t bother to wipe it off, just stick it through my belt behind my back, where Baby Girl can’t reach it. Then I tie her on tight and grip both sides of the bridge as I make my way to the ground.

  Nobody waiting for us here. If there a guard, he at the rope ladder ’neath the tree. It be true dark now, and I know we be hard to see. If we keep quiet, maybe we get past them. The swaying of the bridge sound natural, like a cradle in the breeze. Then I be off the bridge with dirt under my feet instead of air. It feel good to be on solid ground again, even if the night be cold enough to bite after the warmth of the church.

  We lucky to be alive, I know. I don’t take it for granted. I walk a ways from the church, ’til I know no one will hear me, and then I run.

  • • •

  It be past midnight when I stop to find another hidey-hole, a foxhole like the one I avoided earlier in favor of the church. I won’t make that mistake again. Mr. Go’s place be better, but I’m like to fall down tired if I keep going.

  Baby Girl stop crying, my running done took her breath away. But she still ain’t been fed. Now that I stop running, she catching her breath, maybe to start up hollering again. Quick as I can, I mix another bottle to keep her happy, and it work. She drink and I burp her. She close her eyes. I draw my legs in under the side of the fallen tree, drag some leaves and moss in around us. That’ll make a good diaper for her in the morning. But not now. I be too tired.

  I watch her for a while, and then my eyes close, too.

  • • •

  I be at the cottage again, hidden in the woods. Lovely, dark and deep, like that poem Daddy used to read. I got a vine in my hands and I be skipping it the way Mama say they used to skip rope. She got me singing a song she taught me about a mama chewing tobacco. It make me laugh, and she laugh with me. Mama got a young voice when she laugh, but her eyes, they old. She use them when she look at Daddy, and he look at her the same way, and I wonder why. But now I know why.

  • • •

  I wake up. Nightfall come thick in the woods. Farther out there be starlight and the sky be almost white it so heavy with stars. I wish we be lying out beneath the stars now. I’d see if I could remember they names. But I be here in the dark with a crying baby what woke me. It ain’t safe to have a child crying in the dark when there be more than animals about.

  So I mix her another bottle of formula fast as I can, and I spill some of it ’cause I be moving too fast. It cold, but she take it anyhow. We both cold, too, and I can’t stop shivering. We might die out here, Lydia’s baby and me. I could make it on my own. I wouldn’t be so stupid if I didn’t have this baby. This little screaming baby that don’t know how alone she really be. ’Til I get this baby out of Orleans, we be freesteaders. And freesteaders don’t stay free for long.

  Like I called bad luck down on me, I hear a rustle in the woods, and another, and it be fast and low and I know they be dogs this time, real blood hounds, like the ones missing last night. Now they back to claim what be theirs. I stay in my foxhole, so scared I almost pee myself. My hands be shivering all over when I take away the baby’s bottle and put it in my waistband, ready to run.

  Lord, oh Lord, help me. I crouch there in a sweat, baby crushed against my chest.

  “No point in running when the dogs come,” Daddy told me. “They’ll only eat you alive.”

  Last time I ran, I didn’t get eaten. But that ’cause they been too busy eating someone else.

  I look down at Baby Girl, snuggled up against me. I want to run so bad, but she so tiny. Too tiny to hold the dogs off me for long. Then I close my eyes and feel hot all over, I’m so ashamed. Lydia ask me to look after her. I ain’t gonna throw her away.

  The dogs almost here, men, too. I climb out of our foxhole so they don’t let the hounds drag me out. I sit on the fallen log, and when the dogs come I stand up, waiting. They snarl and snap, but they know not to bite. Blood hounds don’t attack prey ’less it run from them too far. Blood hunters don’t waste blood.

  Baby Girl done eating and now she asleep up against me without a care in the world. I silently tell Lydia I’ve given her a few more seconds of life. Best I can do. A man step out from behind a tree, and there be three more with him, in long oilskin coats and low-brimmed hats. The first man, a big man, he got himself a whip and a length of chain. He grin at me around a chicory cigar, and I wrinkle my nose at the bitter stench of it. That make him grin even wider.

  “What have we here?” he ask his friends. “An O-Positive, if the dogs are right. That was an OP howl, weren’t it, Vancey?”

  Vancey, a skinny fellow with skin that look yellow even in the blue moonlight, nod and grin with teeth the same shade as his skin. “That right, Orvis. We’ll test ’er at camp to be sure.”

  “And a brat, too.” He shoo the dogs away and clasp the chains to my wrists where they be cradling Lydia’s baby. He peel my hands away and look into the sling. “A new one. Fresh blood. Maybe not even the Delta taint. We can sell that for twice the price.”

  “Three times,” Vancey say, excited.

  My mind be racing. Baby Girl ain’t got to worry about growing up in Orleans no more. They gonna keep her alive for two weeks, just to drain her dry.

  I don’t cry about it. I don’t scream. I don’t fight them, neither. Lydia told me to care for her baby, and look at me now. Good as dead, and sooner if I fight. So when they pull that chain, I walk after them. I follow and I stay quiet when they tie me to two others they found. In the dark, it be hard to see, but one of them a freesteader, sure as can be. He got a look, like he still surprised it finally happened to him. The other I don’t recognize. He wrapped all up in rags and look like a leper, like what the Ursuline Sisters tend to in the Quarter by the Market. I stay as far from that one as the chains will let me.

  Maybe we be dead in an hour, maybe in a week or two, but as long as I be healthy and upright, I can survive.

  I have to.

  13

  WE WALK OR GET DRAGGED THROUGH THE woods, dogs nipping at our heels if we stumble. Jesus help me, Jesus. My mouth be sour, but I pray anyway, like the Ursulines. Suddenly, I smell wood smoke and cooking meat and my mouth be watering even though I don’t want it to, and there be another smell beneath the charred wood. Baby Girl wrinkle her nose, even in her sleep, and I know she smell it, too.

  Blood. Sweet and hot, rotting and cold. Lots of it. I fall to my knees and vomit nothing but water. The hunters curse at me, but it still a minute before I move. I shake and shudder. Then I get up and they march me into the blood farm.

  The camp look like Hell. All Saints’ Day be starting early at the blood farm. They be cooking up a storm, a whole row of cook fires at one end of the camp. Fire after fire, and them cooks be the Devil’s handmaidens, stirring pots full of souls
. Uncle Romulus told me stories when I been younger. How the Devil live in these woods and he out hunting for people. Daddy tell me, too, but he say the Devil ain’t real. He say the Devil a man just like everybody else. But I don’t know for sure. Standing here seeing them faces, pale in the yellow light, maybe they ain’t all human. I know we ain’t human to them.

  It look like a real farm here—buildings made of wood, likely cypress. Most other wood don’t stand up to the weather here, and these look like they been here a long time. I know I be right when we pass a sign, half broken and lying in the weeds, that say, HENNESEY DAIRY FARM—DRINK MILK, IT’S GOOD FOR YOU!

  The stench get worse as we get closer, but you’d think the hunters can’t smell it, they so pleased with theyselves. They be grinning as they pull us through the gates. We pass them cook fires so close, I see the meat roasting—rabbit and pheasant on spits, pots on the boil full of crawfish and shrimp. Enough food for a hundred people at least. More than our camp, even on a feast day. I wonder what they be celebrating, but I keep my mouth shut. The leper be the one who ask.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  I glance at him in spite of myself. He got a funny accent, flat like standing water. He not from the Delta. Not from Orleans, anyway. Maybe they sound like that down in Florida, or out Texas way.

  “The occasion?” the tall hunter ask, the one they been calling Orvis. “Shoot, we throwin’ a party for you!” He do a little dance then, like them beggars at the Market, and I’d laugh if I didn’t want him dead.

  A woman come out from behind the cook fires, a big old spoon in one hand and a chalkboard in the other.

  “Orvis, you late again.”

  “Sure am, Maylene. Saving the best for last.”

  Maylene look like she heard this from him before. She snort and push some blond hair out her face. She be bleaching it for sure. Her skin be too dark for blond hair.

  “What you bring me, a leper?” she say, scowling. “A leper and two skinny kids too small to fill a drip bag.”

  “Aw, Maylene. Use your imagination. Once you fatten ’em up, who knows how much sauce they’ll pump. And I got you something special, since you so special to me,” Orvis say. He yank me forward with a pull on the chain.

  “Look at that, wrapped up neat as a present.” Maylene come closer and squint at me like she need glasses. I stare her down, but she ain’t looking at me no more.

  “Girl, how old that baby?”

  I don’t say nothing. Why make it easy? They gonna test her blood, anyway.

  She snort at me and shake her head. “What’s with this one? She on drugs? Ain’t you look at her?” She yank one of my arms away from the baby and hold it up in the firelight. “Scorched all up and down. No good for blood, lessen you wanna take it from the throat and be done with her.”

  I swallow hard and pull my arm back.

  Maylene shrug and turn to Orvis. “Stable ’em and feed ’em. Bring the boy to the workhouse. We’ll build him up mucking the latrines. Have ’em test the girl for drugs, then stick her in the brothel. Take the baby to the nursery. We’ll handle ’em from there.”

  Brothel. My flesh crawl and my stomach clench tight. Once be more than enough for me. I feel the bile rise in my mouth again but I hold it down. Ain’t gonna do me no good. I just have to see what I got to deal with when I get there.

  Orvis tug at the chains and unlock the boy, but they still be cuffs around his wrists. The skinny hunter, Vancey, lead him away. That boy don’t look at me when he go, but I hope he able to escape somehow.

  “Where do you want the leper?” Orvis ask.

  Maylene shrug again. “He ain’t contagious long as you don’t kiss him. Put him in with the girl, lot seventeen. We’re full up this morning. You took too long.”

  Orvis nod and reach for Lydia’s baby, and suddenly, something snap in me. I be so cold and tired and scared, I can’t stop it. I start to scream.

  “What’s a matter with her?” Orvis ask.

  Maylene wave her hands and walk away.

  Baby Girl start wailing, too, ’cause I be holding her too tight. She be the last bit of life I got left to me. Tomorrow we both be bleeding or dead. I know it, and maybe she sense it, too. We be screeching like owls. The hunter haul off and slap me ’cross the face.

  I stop screaming then, but tears be coming as much from pain as from fear. He reach out and start to tug the baby from me, but then he stop.

  “Christ, this bitch is pouring milk all over the place,” he say. I know my shirt be wet from Baby Girl’s formula, but I let him think it.

  Orvis look at me, then Maylene, but she already gone back to her pots and fires. “Feed your damn baby,” he say to me in disgust. “We’ll take her later.”

  I clutch Baby Girl to me like she my lifeline and nod. He march me, the baby, and the leper toward one of the little barns, a dirty white block with a shingle roof and a number painted on the side: 17.

  14

  “The first rule of escape: Assess your situation.”

  Daddy be pacing the floor of the cottage like it a classroom. I ain’t been to the nuns’ school since I been tiny small, but now I listen to Daddy. He a good teacher and he be teaching me how to survive.

  “Look around you, Fen, know your situation. Then identify your assets. Anything that can help you escape.”

  I be looking to escape, to get outside in the sunshine to play, but Daddy say this ain’t a game. This be serious. It be serious all the time, and I don’t like it, so I say so. Daddy get real close and bend down and look me in the face, and his eyes so big and dark, I can see my whole head in them. He say, “Baby Girl, this is life or death we are talking here. I know those are big ideas for a little thing like you, but that’s what we are up against.” He pull me into a close hug then, so tight, it like to break my arms, and I hug him back just to get him to loosen his grip. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I start to cry.

  • • •

  Baby Girl be crying again, bringing me back to myself. She screaming in my arms, and I know I been hurting her. I tell myself to let her go, to relax my fingers from digging into her through the swaddling. It take a long minute or two, but I finally let her breathe and lay her down on the floor.

  My chest be so cold from her not being there that I start to shiver again. A song come to mind, one my mama used to sing me to sleep. I sing it now to calm Baby Girl, and maybe myself, too. We got to both keep it together if we getting out of here alive.

  I look around. We in a white room, maybe twelve feet by fifteen, maybe less. There be small windows in the shorter walls, set high and covered with wire instead of glass. The sky be turning gray through them windows. If I strain, it enough light to see by. Sunrise not too far away. There be one wooden door in a long wall, with a lock I seen on the outside and metal bars across. There be hay in the room, spread on the floor for sleeping. I be in one corner, on the floor with the baby. They took my pack, but I still have a bottle wrapped in my waistband. The leper be leaning his back up against the far wall, looking like he already dead. May as well be, with the disease in his blood. Hunters’ll kill him the minute the fire’s hot enough.

  Baby Girl stop crying. I turn my back so the leper think I be breast-feeding her. I give her the bottle and try to concentrate.

  The first rule of escape: Assess your situation.

  We in a room; but a room within a room, like a closet almost. They walked us through the main building when they brought us in here. It be like a hospital out there, beds set up three in a row, with silver stands next to each one. They be running the generators here night and day to keep that equipment running.

  A locked room in a building on a blood farm. And it close to morning. The hunters go out at night, so soon they be going to bed and nothing but a few folks be awake, the blood workers running they tests and sorting they catch. Technicians. Maybe we can get by them. And the dogs. Dogs got to sleep, too. And they be locking them up for sure, so they won’t go harassing the capti
ves.

  The second rule of escape: Assess your assets.

  I got two legs and two arms that work, so that be something. They took the chains off when they threw us in here. I got a half-empty bottle of baby formula. I got a shirt tied into a sling, and a baby. I got some hay, and that about it. Not a lot to go on.

  Then a cough come from the other side of the room and I remember I got one other thing. I got the leper.

  His coughing make me cringe, and I think maybe I can use him like a weapon. But he got to want to help me. If he know they going to burn him up, he’ll help. He got to know.

  “Eh,” I say. “Eh la bas.” Don’t know if he speak the patois or no, but he look up at me and his rags be coming off his face, and in the pale gray dawn I see what I ain’t seen by firelight. Now I know why his voice sound so flat. He not a leper. He a smuggler.

  I hiss at him. “Hey,” I call, quiet in case they be listening at the door. He ain’t been coughing ’cause he sick, but ’cause he been crying. His rags slide off his face and I see he ain’t got a nose showing because he in an encounter suit, filtering his voice and the air he breathing. I seen it with McCallan.

  McCallan. That old bastard supposed to bring me clean blood. If he had, maybe Lydia be alive now. The thought make my stomach hurt. I feel a tear drop and it hit Lydia’s baby on the cheek. She wiggle when she feel it. I wipe it away and don’t let another fall. Smugglers be users, people who know what we need and make us pay for it chère. Too dear, sometime.

  The smuggler quit his crying now, and it be sounding like static coming from his suit. He safe inside there, even crying like that and letting his nose run. Supposed to protect from the Fever, keep they blood clean, too, so they ain’t be detected by chemical sniffers along the Wall. They can smell Delta Fever in you, even through an encounter suit. Enough fools found that out trying to cross the Wall in earlier days. But if you ain’t got the Fever, the suit can keep you clean.