The Cutting Season (10 page)

When the phone rang, she actually jumped.

On the other end of the line, Eric repeated the same story Morgan had told her earlier, that the shirt was probably not even hers, the whole thing likely a mix-up at school, and Eric still didn’t think any of it added up to much; he still had a hard time believing it was blood on his daughter’s shirt, or that Morgan would lie. Caren bit her tongue rather than point out the ways she felt she knew her daughter better than he did. It seemed mean-spirited. It was never his idea for Morgan to stay in Louisiana.

She reminded him of the amount, the odd placement on the sleeve.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said, sounding suddenly very far away. For the first time, Caren wondered what he was doing when she called, if his dinner was getting cold, if Lela had been waiting this whole time, alone at the table.

“They’re getting a search warrant, Eric.”

“The cops?”

“They’ll be here in the morning,” she said.

Something shifted in Eric’s demeanor.

He was a trained lawyer after all, and Morgan’s father.

He was quiet a good, long while.

Then he said, “I honestly wouldn’t worry about it, Caren.”

“Okay,” she said, because she wasn’t going to worry about it.

She was going to get rid of it.

H
er first thought was the river. But there was, of course, the issue of weight, of how to keep the thing from merely skimming the surface of the water and floating along in plain view. She could just imagine someone finding her daughter’s shirt tomorrow morning, tangled in a thick of weeds along the riverbank, having traveled barely a mile by sunrise. And anyway, the levees in this part of the parish were eight feet and a challenge to navigate even in broad daylight. Nor could she come up with a convincing enough story to tell Gerald that would explain her stepping out on an errand in the middle of the night, after she’d made a point to put him on post, right outside her front door. Besides, she knew from experience that literal disposal was often tricky. That’s where most people made their biggest mistakes. One of the first cases she’d assisted on, a kid had tossed a knife in a Dumpster, mere feet from his apartment; it was city property by morning, as soon as the trash trucks rolled past. No, it made more sense to keep any evidence close, within the bounds of a carefully laid argument about Fourth Amendment rights against improper search and seizure. She didn’t know what was on the shirt or how it got there. But she knew Detective Lang would never lay eyes on it. Not until Caren had more information. The law, she knew, is a narrow little box, and it takes only a single misstep to find yourself on the outside of it.

It was after two in the morning when she came up with a plan.

Morgan asleep upstairs, Caren washed the shirt twice, both times using double the amount of bleach. She leaned against the stove, watching the swish and slosh of the machine, the violent jerk-and-pull of her daughter’s white shirt. The plate of food from Lorraine’s kitchen was still sitting untouched. Caren made a halfhearted attempt to eat. The fried ’gator was rubbery and cold and completely inedible. The greens were coated in white animal fat. The sight made her stomach lurch. She settled on a single lump of creamed potatoes, a small spoonful to dull the gnawing emptiness in her belly.

She swallowed, and she waited.

It was as calm as she’d felt all night.

The shirt, once out of the dryer, was startlingly white, everywhere
except
the spot on the right sleeve, where a ghost lingered. The color had faded to a muddy gray, but the half-moon shape was outlined clearly. Still, Caren felt relief. Who would make anything of this relatively small stain, the color and spirit drained to nothing, which, at this late hour, she was willing to concede might not have even been blood? Why would her daughter’s rose-colored bureau ever make it within the bounds of a police search warrant? Surely, if she folded the shirt tightly, sleeves tucked in, and placed it in the back of some rarely used drawer, no one would ever notice. Upstairs, in her daughter’s room, she watched Morgan sleep. It was almost ten hours she’d been out like this. Caren tried to wake her, gently shaking her shoulders. She heard her utter a sound, a faint hum that sounded a lot like
Mom
. But maybe it was only a wish, a whisper inside Caren’s own head. Morgan’s body remained motionless, save for the soft rise and fall of her breath. Caren pulled the sheets from the foot of the bed, covering Morgan’s bare legs. Finally, she tucked the laundered shirt into the top drawer of her bureau before crossing the hall to undress for bed.

She lay down and closed her eyes, thinking of the strangeness of running into Bobby Clancy again, and the things he’d said about his brother, Raymond. She lay in the stillness with it. Only then, in the dead of night, her body on the very edge of surrender, did an image finally pop free: the dead woman, her face, the black eyes drawn in charcoal. She finally remembered where she’d seen her before.

7

I
t was a quarter after six when Donovan called, waking her.

She didn’t remember falling asleep or how exactly she’d ended up face down at the foot of her queen-sized bed, her bare feet facing the headboard. The quilt beneath her was damp with sweat. The silk slip she hadn’t bothered to change out of was like a sheet of saran wrap against her skin. The room was suffocating. She crawled toward the radiator. Her tongue was thick as carpet and tacky against the roof of her mouth. She turned the knob on the radiator. “What is it, Donovan?” she said.

“You called me.”

Right
, she thought.

She stood upright, mumbling a repeat of the earlier lie, the ruse to get him on the grounds of Belle Vie, though she mixed up a few of the details. This time, she invoked Raymond Clancy’s name, suggesting
he
was the one with some proposed changes to the regular schedule. She told Donovan to come by her office by nine. He didn’t ask any questions. “Yeah, all right,” was all he said. The line clicked, and he was gone.

In a dim corner, the radiator rumbled and hissed as it cooled.

Caren propped open her bedroom window.

Dew sat on the chipped paint of the windowsill. The air outside was cool and wet, the plantation wrapped in a rolling, morning fog, the sky above still a blackish blue, barely a whisper of light on the horizon. In the dark of her small bedroom, she started to dress herself, sliding into jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt.

She heard a sound coming through her open window.

In the early-morning hour, the wind was completely still, Belle Vie holding its magnolia-scented breath. Caren leaned her face into the fog, listening. The sound was faint, like a low whistle, a distant call. It was coming from the south, down by the quarters. From her second-story window, she could see only treetops, and even though it made no sense to her, she swore she heard voices . . .
singing
. It was the same floating sound she’d heard through her office window last night.

She stepped out into the hallway, peeking into Morgan’s room.

Her daughter was still sound asleep.

Downstairs, Caren slid into her boots. The worn leather was cold against the soles of her bare feet. Outside, Gerald was sitting in his golf cart, a black windbreaker zipped to his chin. His hands were clasped, resting on the bulge of his midsection, and his head was thrown back against the headrest; he was fast asleep. Caren had walked out of the house without a jacket. She wrapped her arms tightly across her chest, trying to seal in her body’s heat. “Gerald,” she said, walking to the cart, parked just a few feet from her front door. Gerald stirred, opening his bloodshot eyes. He was in his late thirties and built like an NFL lineman. It took some effort, but he slowly pulled himself upright, wiping ashy, dried spit from the dark-brown skin around the corners of his mouth. “I was just resting my eyes for a minute, ma’am.”

She asked him to stand, to please give her the keys to the cart.

“Everything okay, miss?”

She took his place in the driver’s seat, feeling his lingering warmth through the thin cotton of her clothes. She told him to wait by the front door, reminding him, as she started the cart’s engine, that her little girl was upstairs. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Behind the wheel, she took off to the south, the cart’s tires bumping against wet grass.

By the time she was past the guest cottages, the light had begun to change. The rising sun had whitewashed the horizon, burning through the moisture in the air and parting the fog just as she arrived at the mouth of the slave quarters.

Near the village, she slowed as she always did.

The cart’s engine sputtered . . . then fell quiet.

Caren stared at the dark, empty cabins, their sagging porches facing one another. She felt the familiar chill in the air. And she heard the voices again, layered one on top of another, woven into a solemn chorus. It was a melody she recognized at once.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved . . .

How precious did that grace appear,

The hour I first believed . . .

Caren held perfectly still, listening to the old church hymn. It seemed to be coming from the far end of the village, from all the way down the dirt road, all the way down to the last cottage on the left, the one her mother called Jason’s Cabin.

She felt a soft wind at her back, cold and wet, like a spook’s breath.

It quickened her pulse.

She stepped out onto the dirt road and started the walk, wondering if, in this early morning light, she was bearing witness to an actual haunting, the quarters come alive right before her eyes. The music grew stronger, the voices more fervent, the closer she got to Jason’s Cabin, the one set nearest to the cane fields. Their sweetness was as sharp as needle points, leaving tiny pinpricks along the surface of Caren’s bare skin. She got as far as the gate when it stopped suddenly, the sound fading as mysteriously as it had started. She paused at the gate, remembering the cold dread that had come over her yesterday morning, when she had, for no good reason, cut her inspection short.

She remembered Bobby’s ghost stories, too.

Jason’s Cabin, he’d always said, was haunted.

Inside, the place was cloaked in shadow, the room even darker than it had been yesterday morning. She took a few steps, making a few tentative stabs in the air, feeling her way around the small shack, patting the raw wood of the walls. And that’s how she found it, the first real clue in the cops’ case. Caren stopped short, waiting for her eyes to adjust. When the light finally came, she was staring at an empty space on the wall. She could see the outline still, the blank shape of an antique cane knife, with its long blade, flat and wide like the head of a hoe, and a handle of curved wood. The knife itself was gone. Someone had stolen it, within days of that woman’s throat being cut.

The voices started again, like a whisper at her back.

Caren swung around but saw no one.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease . . .

I shall possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace . . .

The singing, she realized, hadn’t been coming from the cabin at all. She walked back outside and the sound grew louder. It appeared to be coming from the cane fields.

Caren drove the cart around to the back side of the quarters, down the drab hill where no grass would grow. When she got within thirty yards of where the body had been found, she saw them out there. They were on the cane side of the fence, a small crowd standing in the dirt by the fields. One of the women was holding a candle, burned down to within an inch of her fingertips. The others were likewise facing in Caren’s direction, their heads bowed solemnly toward the open grave on the other side of the fence. They were women mostly, six that she counted at a distance, all white and middle-aged and thick through the hips. Their voices were high-pitched and sweet, anchored by one lone tenor. At the center of their group stood a black man with round, almost cherubic, features. He was wearing black slacks, a black shirt, and a clerical collar, the cuff of white stark against his dark, coffee-colored skin.

Behind them, the field-workers were gathered. The men were small and compact, their skin tanned to a reddish brown, their dress nearly identical: sleeves of their work shirts secured with rubber bands at the wrists, the legs of their pants tied at the ankles with strips of cloth. They and a few women pressed straw hats against their chests, listening in silence, holding tight to the bittersweet melody, if not the words themselves. There was one man with his head down. He was leaning against the fence. With the back of one hand, he wiped at tears in his eyes. The black priest glanced in Caren’s direction. He nodded kindly, but didn’t smile. He held up his hand, signaling the group, and together they started the hymn all over again.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound . . .

That saved a wretch like me . . .

Deputy Harris, who was coming up on his twenty-fourth hour on duty, had his backside leaned against the fence railing. He was smoking a cigarette, chewing on the fingernails of his left hand between frequent puffs, his nerves seemingly shot to hell. He looked over his shoulder at the singing Christians and the black priest and rolled his eyes, flicking cigarette ash within a foot of the mouth of the ragged, open grave. There were four short stakes in the ground around it, strung together with flimsy yellow tape.

Over the gospel melody, Caren heard the kick of a truck’s engine.

Behind the workers, a Chevy pickup, the name
GROVELAND
stenciled in sunny yellow across its side, pulled to a stop on a strip of raised land between the fence and the rows of cane. Hunt Abrams was behind the wheel. From the cab of his truck, he stared at the scene: his workers standing idle and more than a half dozen strangers singing church music at dawn. His left arm was hanging out of the driver’s-side window. He stabbed a finger in the air, trying to get the young cop’s attention. “Hey,” he said. “You want to tell them to get the hell off my farm?”

Deputy Harris barely stirred. “My deal is on
this
side of the fence.” He took another puff of his cig. “Long as they not disturbing the scene, it ain’t my problem.”

“Is that right?” Abrams said tersely.

Deputy Harris shrugged.

In the cab of his truck, Abrams paused for a moment. His eyes skimmed past the deputy, taking in once more the priest and the churchwomen. Then he rapped his knuckles against the side of the truck, nodding his head to get his workers’ attention. “
Vamonos
, people,” he said, his Spanish as dull as dry clay. “Let’s go.
Trabajamos
.” Caren could see the nose of his shotgun resting beside him on the truck’s front seat. The workers, all ten or so, returned their hats to their head. Moving wordlessly under a newly rising sun, they disappeared into the fields. The last man, his cheeks still damp, wouldn’t move until one of the other men called his name. “
Gustavo, no puedes quedarte aquí
,” he said. The one named Gustavo wiped his tears. He made the sign of the cross before turning to follow the others. “Y’all need to get on away from here,” Abrams said to the women. “We’re running a business, not a prayer group.” And when they didn’t immediately move, he spoke louder. “I know you hear me. You’re just making trouble for yourselves every minute you’re still standing here.”

The shotgun was still within arm’s reach.

One of the church ladies, her face plump and heart-shaped under a mass of sagging curls, pleaded with the boy cop. “Did you see that? You hear the way he’s talking to us?” But Deputy Harris was as unmoved by their complaint as he had been by Hunt’s. Like he said, it ain’t his deal. Though he did watch with some curiosity one of the churchwomen pulling a spiral notebook from her purse and making what seemed like copious notes about every detail of the scene on Groveland’s sugar farm, even taking the time to jot down the truck’s license plate number. Abrams glared at the lot of them. The priest, through all this, hadn’t said a word, not to the cop and not to Hunt Abrams. He motioned to the women, signaling an end to their vigil. As the group began to form a line to take them out of the fields and toward the farm road, the priest, his English sharpened by an accent Caren couldn’t immediately place, looked lastly at her. “Good day, ma’am,” he said, as polite as she’d ever heard the words.

Hunt Abrams was still sitting in his truck when they’d gone.

He stared across the fence at Caren. “You got something you want to say about it?”

B
y the time she returned home, it was well past seven, and Letty was already at the kitchen stove, making eggs. Morgan was sitting at the round, two-seat table opposite the stairs, dressed for school. She was wearing another of her white oxford shirts, under the straps of a plaid smock dress, her head down in a math textbook. She appeared to be doing fractions. Caren kissed the top of her head and went to finish a single braid Morgan had started at the back of her head. “Don’t,” Morgan said, pulling away and brushing pencil-eraser shavings from her lined notebook paper.

“I thought you said you did your homework.”

“I did. This is for tomorrow.”

At the stove, Letty smiled. “Smart girl.”

Morgan closed her math book, shoving it into her navy schoolbag, then stood up from the table and announced to Letty that she would wait for her by the car.