Dead Water Read Online Free PDF Page B

realizes he's being dogged. We need to know that you'll stand by us.”
    Granville rose, massive and only inches shorter than January himself, and held out his hand. “I'll stand by you,” he pledged. “And in addition to the thanks of the bank officers—most of whom don't know and won't know that there's a problem—you have my personal thanks. I won't let you down.”
             
    “And if you believe that,” remarked Rose, standing on the front gallery minutes later as they watched the banker disappear down the darkness of Rue Esplanade, “as your sister Olympe would say, you and I both deserve to spend the rest of our lives picking cotton in Tennessee.”
    Her voice was light, but he could tell she was still furiously angry, and he knew he could not say to her,
I won't let you come.
    Behind those words, if only in their hearts, lurked the reply:
It's your fault we're in this mess.
    Besides, he knew he'd need all the help he could get.
    Far off, thunder rumbled in the tar-black darkness and flashes of heat-lightning flickered over the lake. Here beyond the range of the French town's iron street-lanterns, the blackness was absolute. Across Rue Esplanade, where the small houses of Faubourg Marigny lay hidden among the trees, the roar of cicadas beat like a metallic sea.
    January took a deep breath. “Rose, I'm sorry.”
    “You're sorry that you disregarded me when I pointed a pistol at your head and said,
Put it in the Commerce Bank or I'll shoot
? We both made the decision, Ben.” She sighed, and put her arm around his waist. “It will, however, be some time before I can bring myself to be polite to your mother again.”
    Soft laughter shook him, and he cupped her face in his hands, kissed her gratefully, then again with slow, deep enjoyment of her lips. In the darkness she had an animal sensuality completely at odds with her daylight persona of a schoolmistress and scholar.
    A mosquito whined in his ear, and they parted while he slapped at it. “Will you do me a favor, Rose?” he asked as they retreated into their bedroom from the gallery and so through to the parlor. One of the candles had gone out, and the other was guttering again. Rose fetched the candle-scissors and January cracked his shins against Cosette's small trunk, waiting by the door.
    “Write to Dominique.” He named his sweet-natured younger sister who was so often in and out of the house. “Ask her if she'll take Cosette for a few days. You know they get along well, and that maid of Dominique's has her hands full with the new baby. Then write to Cosette's grandmother, Serafine Poucet, in Spanish Fort.”
    Taking the candle, he walked through to the dining-room and into the pantry, where a supper of cold chicken and bread waited for him in covered dishes. He ate a few hasty bites standing, knowing that it was nearly midnight already, and the later it got, the less safe he'd be in accomplishing his next mission that night.
    Safe
being, of course, a completely relative term when applied to a black man venturing into the rough dives and grubby gin-palaces that straggled out into the swamp at the back of town.
    “Tell her Cosette hasn't been well, and hint—without saying anything so vulgar—that you don't think she'll get particularly good care spending the summer at her mother's house.”
    “What, that awful old lady Poucet is Cosette's grandmother?” Rose leaned her shoulder in the pantry doorway. The daughter of a plaçée herself, she knew just about everyone in the free colored demimonde, by reputation if not by actual acquaintance.
    “Yes, and according to Dominique, Poucet hates Cosette's mother.”
    Rose began to chuckle, and followed January back out to the parlor again, where he collected his jacket, the disreputable old cap he'd worn to Congo Square, and a tin lantern. “God help the voodoo who tries to trespass on old lady Serafine's yard. She'll take Cosette in just to show up her daughter, won't she?”
    “It's what