The Bridge Tender

By Gary P. Landry

The "Bridge Tender," a courtroom drama, is a smoldering tale of murder, intrigue, and suspense set in the town of Mandeville during the first fall of the Civil War. It is October 1861, and the town's acclaimed Bird Festival is about to begin, bringing many artists and travelers from as far away as Europe and the Far East to the little town just north of New Orleans. When the beautiful bridge tender of Mandeville, a slave, is arrested for murdering her owner, the town decides to give her a trial, an unheard of event for those times, and an event that brings out the best and the worst of the local citizens, who find themselves standing trial in the eyes of the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781624882548

Gary P. Landry

Gary P. Landry is an author and attorney who lives near New Orleans, Louisiana. In addition to "The Bridge Tender," he is also the author of "River Of Mist And Light," a contemporary thriller about killers hunting killers in New Orleans and the adjoining river parishes.

Book preview

parishes.

PROLOGUE

Wings Like Herons

1861

Some bridges are a mere wisp under the clouds, but even a small bridge can carry a splintered heart on a long journey. This is the story of the bridge tender, who, according to the fishermen’s tales, once grew wings like herons and flew off on the wind to follow the soul of a prince from the sea.

Surrounded by soft rivers and bountiful lakes, the town of Mandeville provided a long glance of beauty for weary travelers crossing the wetlands thirty miles north of New Orleans. The town survived the frequent spring floods only because it rested on a low bluff of piney woods, lush orchards, and great swaths of alluvial soil so rich with crops that neither crows nor bush hogs ever went hungry. A thin blue river ran through the center of town, and October mornings often saw the thirteen maples on the courthouse lawn surrender their leaves of red and gold to the gentle lake winds that swept in from the south.

The locals often dreamed of roses, for nearly every house had a front porch, and every porch had a trellis. Most folks grew corn and tomatoes in their kitchen gardens, while bell peppers the size of cat bellies usually sprouted along the walls of the old gray barns out back. According to an old Indian legend that reigned in the apothecary’s shop, autumn mornings in Mandeville were so lovely that the town once lost its atmosphere when the stars sent eagles down to carry it off on their wings. Except for the saloon keeper next door, whose youngest son was buried in a summer’s grave across the river, the folks in Mandeville had largely avoided the wounds of secession.

Carriage by the sea continued to bring a steady flow of visitors to the small town, even during the first fall of the war. In ordinary times, the main draw was the string of fall festivals that celebrated everything from oyster queens to the colorful flocks of waders and shorebirds seeking refuge from the cold blue winters of the north. As the visitors disembarked, they were greeted by an old oak carving along the docks that boasted that Mandeville ceded its crown of beauty to no other inland harbor touched by the sea. In the fall of 1861, a less ornate sign was added to a nearby river birch. The newly arrived guests were invited to also attend the upcoming hanging of the town’s bridge tender. A photographer, it further noted, would be available for anyone who wanted to pose with the corpse once her legs stopped twitching.

For the visitors, and those creatures of color fortunate enough to have been born with wings made of feather, the town continued to provide a lovely diversion during the first fall of the war. There was a picture shop across from the river, a gentle place many visitors thought too provincial for an art gallery, too sparse and narrow for an emporium. But a perfect place to watch the river traffic go by, most agreed. A handful of oils had long sat in the bay window out front - tall trees on water, the old draw bridge that connected the inn on one shore to the cemetery on the other, a lazy bulldog dozing among the shrimper’s nets, and bright mornings filled with fishing boats and graceful blue herons. The lovely pastorals in the box of leaded glass had long been the shop owner’s favorites. The visitors’ coins continued to fill her purse even though she politely declined every offer to purchase the special lures in her window.

For many of the locals who strolled out onto Rose Avenue, the oils in the bay window were images they associated with Jisel, the bridge tender of Mandeville. But most folks turned their gaze away from the bay window after her arrest for the murder of Captain Menhaden, the man who had owned her since she was two years old. By the first October of the war, the town was divided by more than just the bridge over the Tchefuncte River – it was bringing Tom Forrest home from the war to hang Jisel on the courthouse square, between the old crabapple tree by the hitching post and a lonely red oak near the river’s edge. But another gray traveler was riding up ahead of Lt. Commander Tom Forrest, a storm unlike anything the town had ever seen. The proprietor of the picture shop was the only merchant in Mandeville who boarded up her windows before the cold winds arrived.

In those days, no one knew a storm was coming until it was practically blowing the shingles off their barns or the shells out of their pecan trees. Forecasting was pretty much the chancy province of the old folks who felt it in their bones, like Mrs. Cassidy, the shop owner, families with a cousin who worked in the telegraph office on the docks, or anyone who happened to see the town’s two thunder shy porch hounds, Otis and Po’ Edgar, hiding out under Mrs. Pondicherry’s front stoop. On most occasions, storms dropped in like the crabbers at the café, full of attitude, never when you wanted them, and rarely when you expected one. Unless boiled crabs for breakfast suited your fancy.

In that respect the October storm of 1861 was no different from previous autumn storms, although it had somehow dropped its thunder along the way. Arriving in parcels and splinters, it began with an old wind from the sea – what the trappers in the wetlands called a traveler’s wind – sweeping inland through the low river country south of New Orleans. A wind so light and gentle that the captains of the schooners and shrimp boats out in the Gulf had let it pass without bothering to roll in their nets.

Unlike the wind, there was nothing light or subtle about Edgar, who the townsfolk called Edgar or Po’ Edgar depending on the distance between saloons or homes he ambled between each meal. An immense, three-legged bulldog with a tongue big enough to lick Mississippi, he was judged by most of the people in town to be a hairy but reliable oracle of late season storms. But this one was brewing out in the Gulf, far beyond gentle Edgar’s formidable ability to pick up the subtle electrical currents that often rode up ahead of a storm. When the storm was a hundred miles to the south, its first wind was still too light to even jostle the tomato vines or put a full swivel into the metal rooster on the weather vane above the schoolhouse on the coast.

Only the schoolyard hens seemed to notice the steady influx of sea birds: the graceful brown pelicans gliding in to perch on the double brick wall in the rear yard; an osprey with a red fish in its bill standing jealous watch on the rim of the well; the scarlet ibises sharing the high limbs of the front yard poplar with weary black scoters. And the loathsome corn-thief gulls vying with the yard hounds for the best corners under the schoolhouse. The hens, a taciturn lot who often trotted among the boxwoods wishing for wings like herons, merely sat back and brooded over both the interlopers and their useless rooster.

The nose of the storm soon followed, coming ashore on a cold, rain free night in that first fall of the war. In the big marshes south of New Orleans, the most vibrant color bearers – the wild strawberries, the gracious red oaks, and the golden lacebark elms – had already lowered their sap and planted their roots deeper into the sweet alluvial soil that was itself a child of wind blown waters. Along with a fusillade of cold winds, the storm added its own palette to the wetlands: the slender wings of lovely blue herons and gray bellied albatrosses gliding through the canticle of the marsh, the pruning carnage of old roses that grew wild on the creek banks, and the long scrubbing spar of the sea. In the riverside saloons, the old trappers who lived in the marsh would later laugh that it was the kind of storm that had even sent shine peddlers and brown bears to scuffling over the finer caves of the salt mines beneath the marsh.

Further inland, the storm’s first wind began to pick up speed when it hit the cane fields and docks of Cocodrie. A querulous little river town along the shallow waters above the mouth of the Mississippi, Cocodrie was a place whose inhabitants had the eccentric habit of tossing everyone into the river who pronounced the town’s name as ‘Coco-dry.’ An hour before midnight, three Confederate gunboats pulled away from the town’s St. Helen Street wharf, raised their sea lanterns to full mast, and began their dark journey to Mandeville. Their commander was Tom Forrest, a native son who was coming home to prosecute Jisel. But he wasn’t on board just yet. Tom was on his final night of leave in New Orleans, pent up in a French Quarter hotel poring over a file on the slave girl charged with murdering the wealthiest man in Louisiana. Tom had no idea of the storm sweeping in from the Gulf, the same direction into which his gunboats were heading.

Once the squadron was mid river, its temporary commander, Chief Mate Will Goss, stepped below deck and jabbed his head into the engine room. George, can you get us there before morning? he asked impatiently.

No problem, Chief, the engineer replied. Are we going to pick up the new Captain first?

Not yet, George, said Goss. And Tom Forrest ain’t a Captain, he sneered, he’s just a Lt. Commander. He’ll be waiting for us noon tomorrow, at Severn Harbor. But first we’re going to make a run up to Mandeville on the north shore of the lake, then cut back down to New Orleans to pick him up before heading back up again. I want you to show me what those new engines can do, George. Plus, we’ve been getting reports of Union gunboats probing around the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Maybe we’ll get lucky and bag one tonight. Show Forrest what we’re capable of.

Heard there’s a big festival about to start in Mandeville, George said. Those fellows in Cocodrie told us there’s some fine looking women in that town. Reckon the new skipper will give us some shore leave?

That ain’t why we’re going back, son, Goss snapped. So don’t get your hopes up.

George frowned. The rumors had started to circulate while the gunboats were being provisioned yesterday. A few of the men insisted Goss started them himself. So he decided to take a chance. We really going up there to watch ‘em hang a woman? he asked in a furtive voice.

Goss did not answer. The order from the Governor’s boys had made it clear that the crew should be told as little as possible about the mission. Ignoring the engineer’s question, Goss pulled a cherry out of his shirt pocket, sliced it in half with his pocket knife, and licked the juice off his blade.

Just get us there before daybreak, George, or you might see a bit of rope yourself, he said gruffly.

He returned to the small private cabin that he would soon have to give up, lit a cigar, and read a volume of Poe until sleep overcame him. While his men guided the gunboats to their destination, Will Goss dreamed of killing the man, Tom Forrest, who would replace him tomorrow.

ee, a Cajun card game known for leading to brawls, knife-fights, and slit bellies.

The boats moved slowly at first, drifting on a low tide past old river cemeteries, sloping orange groves, and sparse little cornfields that drank like wrens from the water’s edge. There were no cotton fields in sight, and few signs of country folk except for the few squatters and subsistence farmers who grew only what they could eat. The low river country mostly belonged to the fishermen and the trappers, the offspring of pirates, fierce patrons of their malarial paradise, wild spirits who would never secede because they would never join.

Along this feral stretch, the river was empty, the winds thin and briny, the world as dark as the breath of a crow. Up on the eastern bank of the river, old marsh hounds sat on the stoops of gray river cottages, wailing more at the cold wind than at the intruders moving down to the sea. On the western bank, blue jays huddled in warm corn cribs, scoffing at the throaty gray loons shivering in the marsh. Further south, where the sharpest bend in the river lay, the sailors on deck watched a levee bonfire throw off huge flames that stole the light of the moon from the darkening sky.

Although the boats moved south through the low river country, their destination was actually to the north of New Orleans. On the bridge to Mandeville, Jisel slept alone in her small shack above the pale blue river that ran through the town, dreaming of harvest nights when herons and plover rode in on the soft winds of the inland waters. No one aboard the gunboats knew her by name, but all knew that until her recent arrest for murder she had been owned by her alleged victim, a former whaler and mariner like themselves. A child of the wetlands, Jisel slept comfortably above the water, unaware that the age of metal hulls was looping around, coming to her doorstep – dispatched to oversee her hanging and, if necessary, to reduce her lovely town and its gorgeous oaks to ashes on the river.

Further south, while Mandeville slept, the tides along the Louisiana barrier islands began to rise sharply. By the time the gunboats reached the lighthouse at Listener’s Point, the mercury in the wheelhouses slipped into a downward bender. Only a half hour into its mission, the squadron ran head on into what they later recognized as the front end of a meteorological aberration: a winter storm in October, a storm that jumped the line, blowing up from the sand bars and oyster beds down on the coast. As the boats fought the whipsawing currents and powerful headwinds, a colorful mix of snow flurries and fleeing blue herons shot over the bows, making for a downriver ride that was simultaneously treacherous yet infinitely lovely. Several of the men on deck briefly cheered the pretty spectacle, until a vicious crosswind nearly tossed both a sailor from Irish Bayou and a bushel of blue crabs out into the river. By the seven mile marker, ice began to form on the ropes and gunnels of the forward decks, sending most of the sailors back down into the safer, warmer bellies of their warships.

The storm worsened when they reached the great salt marsh at the bottom of the river. Winds rose up from the southeast, flattening long stretches of saw grass; mockingbirds trembled in silence on the upper limbs of bent maples while marsh panthers and river otters fled inland in a rare tandem retreat. Aboard the vessels, no one could remember such a cold October, not even the man among them from a place called Seattle. Nor could any of them recall such a dark and invisible sea.

Below deck, the men in the engine rooms fired up the coals; two in the armory rushed to oil the sabers, as if a sea of wraiths lay in wait on the dark longitudes of the Gulf. A galley hand with a stack of doves on his carving board and a filet knife in each hand silently prayed his boat would not be rammed by an errant pilot whale or drunken blockade runner. The smell of gun grease was everywhere; the few men who tried to catch some sleep were already longing for their river harlots before the long noose of the river and the last lighthouse fell away in the night.

Out in the Gulf, the boilers were throttled to full steam; the big wooden boats quickly cut through the shipping lane, then turned north to sweep around the soft arc of the Chandeleur Islands, temporarily leaving the storm behind. Navigating by the faint light of the few risen stars, the warships suddenly banked west and raced the cusp of a low fog into the northeastern quadrant of the big lake above New Orleans. A flock of white pelicans followed the squadron as it continued west along the warmer waters on the upper rim of Lake Pontchartrain, but they did not see any sign of the night shrimpers and trout runners who occasionally prowled the lake.

A few minutes after the ships’ carpenters unblocked the gun carriages, the boats dropped anchor at their signaled destination, a cluster of old crab traps at the narrow opening where the Tchefuncte River spilled out into the lake. On the nearby shore, the skull of a dead slave anchored the traps to the exposed root of a decaying white oak. The spy who left the tell tale mark for them was right. Will Goss, who had awakened just after four, immediately recognized it as a perfect spot for a large kill – especially for an ambush by sea.

As the fog lifted and the darkness began to dwindle, two deck hands on the lead vessel nervously pointed the starboard lanterns towards the junction where the two waters met. After a slow sweeping scan of the river’s banks and the lake’s split shoreline, the younger of the two men let out a loud sigh of relief – the only eyes that peered back belonged to a bony old river hen searching for wild corn in the wetlands on one bank of the little blue river. Down in the water, a few cane toads and river gars thrashed about in the low tide, but the bull gators and other night killers had long since slipped back to the sweeter banquet of the nearby marsh.

On the east bank of the river, an abandoned old fort sat crumbling above the mud flats. Only two walls remained, both riddled with gaping wounds from ancient cannon shot and a lick or two from passing hurricanes. The last occupant had been a lone sentinel left behind by Andy Jackson on his way to save New Orleans, then forgotten amidst the rum and revelry that followed the last battle of the War of 1812. No one ever figured out what finally got the poor fellow, but his story was often heard in the sailors’ bars scattered around the French Quarter. The prevailing creed was that his lonesome ghost still stood guard, beloved long rifle always at his side, still waiting for Old Hickory to come get him; a stone spider reportedly kept him company, carved out by a sympathetic wind. Even the wildlife stayed away from the haunted fort, the saloon boys swore.

While their lanterns were still raised, the two deck hands saw no reason to challenge that part of the legend. Must be where they lynch their slaves, you think? Aaron Gautreaux muttered.

Nah, his friend replied. Way I heard it is they got themselves a fancy little bridge upriver they use for swinging their darkies. This here’s just the bone yard they dump ‘em in afterwards, he laughed. Kind of a buffet for the gators and crows.

Gautreaux groaned. You’re such a refined and erudite fellow, Gerald Torrance. Was your daddy a Sodomite or a Gomorrahian?

Torrance rolled his eyes. Oh dry up, you bible thumping Israelite. I ain’t got nothing against nigg–, uh Negroes. And I don’t see you jumping ship despite the fact we’re running up here to hang one.

The two men continued their sparring as they returned below deck. Along with the cold tide, a strange scent of war began to encircle the small fleet as the boats waited near the mouth of the little blue river. Although their big guns were kept at the ready, the Confederate raiders had not come to battle Union forces, for none had yet to set foot in the state. The gunboats came instead to kill a small town of fellow southerners. Their actual mission – which Goss kept secret from nearly all of the crew – would be the war’s first Confederate attack upon a Confederate town. The virus of secession had spread in the wrong direction, and he planned a slaughter of splendid proportions to deal with it. The killing of a bridge tender was mostly blood bait he had used to stoke war fever among the crew. For good measure, he had even described Jisel as a female Nat Turner, which drew a particularly vile hoot from a purser born in the Virginia wetlands near Harper’s Ferry.

When the lovely fall morning finally rolled out of the darkness, Goss’s gunner and spotter stepped out onto the aft deck of the command vessel, climbed the forward mast, and made careful calculations of the three highest targets on the northern horizon: a church steeple as white as a magnolia blossom, the golden cupola of a massive courthouse, and the upper balcony of an ornate building identified by their crab trapper informant as a cotton exchange. As they lowered their spyglasses, the two sailors glimpsed a lovely panorama of cantilever barns surrounded by dazzling orchards and rolling meadows, and a vast sea of indigo and cotton running down to the big salt lake beneath their keel.

Sure is a pretty place, said the gunner, Rance Carter.

The spotter, Burton Hanks, stepped off the bottom prong of the mast, pocketed his scope, and whistled softly. Got enough cotton there to wrap Virginia, I reckon.

It won’t when we finish with it, Will Goss chuckled. Give it to me, boys.

The eleven-inch deck guns could quickly wipe out the town of Mandeville if the rumors of secession bore fruit, they assured him. Satisfied with the reconnaissance - a completely unauthorized diversion - Goss downed a handful of wild cherries, smiled, and pissed into the lake. With hands stained as red as cow gut, he gave the signal to raise anchor.

Tell George to get us out of here quick, full throttle, he said to Carter and Hanks. That town’s got a lot of fishing boats that’ll be heading our way any minute now. I don’t want a one of them seeing us.

Burton Hanks scratched his chin with his spyglass, then looked to the south. Even on the clearest days, it was impossible to see all the way to the lower shore. There were at least thirty miles of wide open lake between Mandeville and New Orleans, he estimated. It’s not like a river, he understood. Rivers provided plenty of bends and coves to duck into if necessary. But this was nothing but a big round pond with no place to hide.

Could be some night trawlers already out there, Chief, Burton offered. What do we say to them if we cross paths?

Tell them they’re dead, he said coldly.

Goss and his stolen gunboats then slipped away unnoticed and headed down to New Orleans, back into the storm, to pick up the squadron’s new commander – Tom Forrest – and await the final order of battle.

IN HER SHACK ABOVE THE RIVER, the bridge tender rose from her small mattress, lit a candle, and started up again on the shawl she had been playfully knitting for her old bulldog friend who now slept beneath her bed. A storm was coming, she suddenly realized, glimpsing a soft tremble in his massive paws.

Stay with me, Edgar, she whispered, stay with me.

1

Rivers of the Moon

At the lighthouse in the lake, the keeper slept. Upriver, except for the fishermen already on their boats baiting their nets and preparing to unmoor their lines, most of the town’s unwary residents were just rising to the rattle of the milkman’s cart. The owner of the only picture shop in town had risen early and begun to board up her windows, only to be laughed at by most of her fellow merchants.

Until the turmoil that preceded the bridge tender’s upcoming trial, Mandeville had been a quiet little southern town where little stirred but the wind in the roses and the clamor of morning gulls chasing the fishing boats as they cruised down to the rim of the sea. Even the crows in the old cornfield behind the church were a sedate lot; they spent most of their afternoons roosting lazily in the shadows of the bell tower or visiting the open altar for occasional nips of holy water.

According to the fishermen’s stories, everything changed when Jisel became the first woman in Rose Parish condemned to hang. It was the first fall of the war and the tulip poplars and river birches had just begun to drop their leaves. Despite the rumors of federal cavalry gathering on nearby Ship Island, the only local casualties so far had been the saloon keeper’s son, a few cypress stumps used for target practice, and the increasingly popular bird festival of Mandeville. No one spoke up for the ancient cypresses since they were already dead, but the festival’s organizers were still nervously hoping for some show of life on their front. The usual flood of visitors had yet to venture out from New Orleans to the south. In previous years most of the festival goers arrived by ferries and sloops, but the fall of 1861 was a time when even the town’s fishermen reluctantly took to the water.

In Mandeville, most of the houses had a deep front porch, and nearly every evening saw a gathering of old folks and neighbors who shared steaming pots of dirty rice along with the latest dish of river gossip. In the local schoolyard, the younger children echoed their parents’ porch talk that their little town was an enchanted place that was itself an offspring of the wetlands. Mr. Dell, their geography teacher, occasionally jumped in to remind them that a visitor could hardly step foot in any direction without encountering the gentle blue river that ran through the center of town, an intricate web of bayous that formed a northern crown, a breadbasket of rich feral marshes to the south, or the great bowl of water – Lake Pontchartrain – that separated the town from New Orleans. A purple martin, he boasted, could fly a bit further south to explore both the Mississippi Sound and the adjoining Gulf, then return home long before supper time.

In previous years, the number of visitors had been considerable for such a small village. The town had achieved a remarkable if mixed notoriety for the abundance of its fine seafood, its cool summers (by New Orleans standards), affable card cheats, loquacious whiskey peddlers, and a magnificent bird festival held each October. Although a provincial outpost, the town prided itself on its cosmopolitan countenance, even when it decided to hang its bridge tender for killing her owner. The body of its leading citizen, Captain Sydney Albert Menhaden, had been found in the Abita cave with its head smashed in by a large stone wrapped in a Confederate flag; an unmentionable part of his anatomy had been violated in a manner the local sheriff shared with no one other than the killer.

The skeletons of five babies were also found nearby; their tiny bones bore a peculiar mark, one no one had ever seen on any resident other than Jisel. Sheriff Owen Lee did share that unique bit of information with the town’s leaders, who nervously discussed the matter for several days before agreeing – under duress from Baton Rouge – that they would give Jisel a fair trial before she was hanged, so long as it didn’t interfere with the festival.

Since Mandeville was part of a fine new democracy, some of the locals voiced considerable discomfort with the notion of hanging a woman, even if Jisel was a slave. With prospects of a dwindled attendance at the bird festival, the timing in particular stuck in the throats of some. Many thought that a hanging in a country town like Mandeville could be good for business, but others worried that some of the festival goers who did show up – especially those with children in tow – might not stick around for long.

Like other fishing villages on the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, the hanging of any woman was such an unheard of event in Mandeville that it also nagged hard at the thoughts of the town’s older fishermen, an often ornery and superstitious lot who imagined omens in such ordinary events as the crest of a wave or the turn of the wind. Already troubled by reports of federal cavalry and gunboats gathering in the gulf, the hanging of their bridge tender, a woman, became a grave concern of the old men, an idle lot who spent more time chatting on the docks than trawling the lake in their often leaky old boats.

The docks sat on the northern side of the bridge over the Tchefuncte, the beautiful river that ran south to the lake and the sea. Jisel lived and worked in an old gray shack that sat atop the middle of the small wood and stone causeway. With their tall masts, most of the vessels in the fishing fleet could not get to the rich waters of the lake and the gulf until the tender raised the bridge. In the minds of the old fishermen, the sea might be their mistress, but Jisel – the bridge tender – was their gatekeeper. To their way of thinking, she was as much a part of the sea as the winds that carried them home each day.

ANTICIPATION RAN HIGH on the nights before the festival’s start, especially among the children who came out to play along the riverfront. A long string of lanterns lit up the crepe myrtles and sweet bay magnolias at the base of the drawbridge, while the moon’s full glow took care of the rest of Rose Avenue. Along with his five year old sister and best friend Bobby St. Pierre, Teddy Fence set out to chase a tall cartwheel down the wide boulevard that followed the river’s path. Several spokes were missing, but the three children managed to keep the wobbling rim under control with laughing swats of an old broom handle they had found behind the nearby saloon.

The little girl was the first to spot the four fishermen sitting around a pot of fire near the water’s edge. To her sudden horror, the wheel bounced off a sharp rut in the cobblestone road, turned midair, and headed directly at the men and the string of catfish and corn they were cooking over the small flame.

Look out! Anna Fence screamed a second too late.

Grasping what was about to happen, Teddy and Bobby darted for cover behind the trunk of a big water oak. But to everyone’s amazement, the runaway wheel perfectly jumped the fire without touching the pot or the fishermen’s supper. A snowy egret standing at the river’s edge was not so fortunate. Its pitiful shriek was followed by a loud splash and a spray of lost feathers. The children looked on in dismay as their lost wheel floated down river and disappeared into the dark water beneath the bridge tender’s shack.

Belongs to the river now, Captain Benjamin Drummond scolded over his shoulder, and then the lake tomorrow.

The old man’s cheeks flushed with anger when he looked towards the river and saw the dazed egret whose wing was struck by the wheel just before it hit the water. But when he turned to face the children, all of whom he recognized, he saw that little Anna Fence was crying in her hands. Her older brother and his friend had stepped out from their hiding place behind the oak and now hovered in the little girl’s shadow, sheepishly avoiding the older men’s accusing eyes.

Now, now, Captain Bem tried to soothe the little girl, his anger subsiding. We’ll see if we can fish it out the lake for you tomorrow. If not, you just go see the blacksmith when you get out of school. I have a feeling he’s got a few extras laying around, he winked. Now you kids come over here and grab yourselves a cob of corn.

That ain’t it, Captain Ben, Anna said softly, her tears fading. I thought I kilt you. Are you a ghost now, Captain Ben? Are they gonna hang me too, sir?

Jesus, muttered Ed Dillon, one of the other fishermen. The two other men sitting around the fire kept their mouths shut, but Ed and Captain Ben were certain that everyone was thinking the same thing: how did Mandeville – of all places – turn into a town where little white girls now thought that they too could be hanged?

We don’t hang no ladies in Rose Parish, the third fisherman, Dan Needham, spoke up. He tried to put a reassuring tone in his voice, but his words came out as thin as the catfish bone he was using to pick corn from between his teeth. Despite his good intentions, comforting children was unfamiliar terrain for an old river bachelor like Dan.

But what about Miss Jisel? Anna asked worriedly. She loved the pretty lady who lived over the river. Once when she was stung by a wasp, Miss Jisel made it better. And gave her a bag of lemon drops too.

She’s a damn slave, Bobby St. Pierre snarled out from behind her. With a knowing smirk, he quickly added, She killed her master. You only killed that damn bird.

I didn’t! Anna screeched. Was your fault, Bobby St. Pierre!

Anna’s brother didn’t say a thing, but he showed his loyalties by resting his hand on his friend’s shoulder. A big mistake, Anna thought, just like when he punched her in the arm last night because she had played with his stupid top. Grandma took a switch to him for that one, she remembered with a hint of a smile. Said he could forget about a party for his coming birthday if he kept misbehaving. Sometimes Anna thought misbehaving was his middle name, though Teddy wasn’t as mean as possum faced Bobby.

"That’s quite a mouth you got there,