Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [223]
Tocquet slipped down from the tree. Elise, Nanon, and Isabelle circled him expectantly. Tocquet passed around a few soft hulls of almonds he’d collected in the climb. “You might open these for the children,” he said.
“Marvelous,” said Elise, “but what did you see?”
“That is the grand’case of Sancey, if I am not mistaken.”
“And burning?” Elise let her face fall in her hands.
“We don’t know what that means to us—except that we’ve come farther than I knew. Wait here—” Tocquet cocked his head—he heard Gros-Jean’s voice, talking to someone unfamiliar further up the trail. He turned from the women and ran catfoot through the darkness—at the next bend he found Gros-Jean with the stranger.
“Yo té brulé Sancey?” Gros-Jean said. Have they burned Sancey?
“Yes,” came the stranger’s voice.
“And Descahaux?”
“No, Descahaux is not burned yet.”
“And Thibodet?”
“Pa konnen,” the stranger said. I don’t know.
Gros-Jean turned to Tocquet in the moonlight. “You heard?” he said. “There is a lakou just above where we can rest.”
Tocquet nodded and went back to the others. “How far?” was Elise’s first response, echoed by Sophie in a still more plaintive tone, but Tocquet did not trouble to invent an answer. They went on climbing doggedly. In fact it was not very long before the stranger led them through a break in a cactus fence into a cluster of small clay-walled houses. A little dog yapped once or twice before someone picked it up and hushed it.
Silhouettes of two women emerged from one of the small, square houses, one young and one old to judge by the shape of their shadows. Their faces were featureless in the dark, their voices soft and warm as chocolate. After some murmuring back and forth, the white women and the children stepped carefully over the sill, one by one, inside. The cloth was dropped across the doorway. Through it, Tocquet could hear the rustle of their settling: a bump, a shuffle, a child’s complaint, then Nanon’s soothing, shushing voice.
He squatted by the corner of the cabin. The donkeys they’d managed not to lose in the days of flight were tethered outside the cactus barrier. Bazau and Gros-Jean had gone off somewhere. From somewhere higher up the ravine came the desultory tap of a single drum. Tocquet crossed his legs, half closed his eyes, was scarcely aware that he was waiting until Bazau and Gros-Jean had returned.
The sinking moon threw their long shadows toward the mud sill of the case. Bazau unplugged a gourd bottle and with a seemingly careless motion spilled a little on the ground before he drank. Gros-Jean did the same when the gourd was passed to him. Tocquet held his eyes aside. He knew they meant to thank their spirits, that they’d been guided safely through the dangers of this day.
What would it hurt? He spilled a little rum himself before he drank. All through the day he had been wishing for Antoine Hébert—another man, and one who could shoot. They were safe now, though; Tocquet could feel it. Tonight this lakou was as peaceful a place as he’d ever known. He could only wish the doctor had found as good a sanctuary. Let all the invisible ones protect him.
Tocquet lit one of his cheroots and let it go around their circle. When it was done, he slept a little, sitting with his back against the wall. At dawn he woke to the sound of cock crow moving over a steady bass tone: a woman grinding corn with a pole twice her own height, in a mortar made of a hollow stump still rooted to the packed earth of the lakou. She grinned at Tocquet, toothlessly though she was not old, as he got up and dusted off his trousers. He returned her smile and went down into the bushes to pee.
When he came back, Sophie had just come out of the case, blinking and rubbing her eyes with her wrists. She sulked a little when she first caught sight of Tocquet, then gave it up and came to wrap her arms around his waist. They stood side by side, still touching lightly, looking down the green valley.
“Where are we, Papa?” Sophie said.
“Descahaux. It is one of Toussaint’s places. You see, the grand’case is still