Fever Moon Read Online Free PDF Page B

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