He pondered the question mightily and continued to do so until a sudden tug at his fishing line gave him a start.
“Trouble comin’,” he said aloud.
Marcus was suddenly aware of the sound of hammering, relentless and orderly as it echoed off the water from both sides of the river, combining into an uneasy rhythm, somehow familiar-
– and that rhythm caused his heart to sink. He knew it was only the sound of concerned fathers and husbands nailing boards over glass windowpanes, but to his tormented imagination it was the sound of building coffins.
He fixed his gaze purposefully on the salient clouds, paying no mind to the gentle but urgent activity at the other end of his fishing line. Just then, a wind began. The speed and force of it was mild like a breeze, but there was a heavy firmness to it, a certain change in atmosphere heralded by it, a change in the air itself associated with it. An electricity. A static warmth. It felt good on his cheek, like a mother’s caress.
“Trouble comin’. Lord, Lord.”
Time to move on. He had to get back to the potter’s field and make certain preparations. The tug at his line urged him to stay; just for a little while, just long enough to reel it in and have a look, check to see if it was his fish. After all these years he knew the possibility was slight. But there was still the possibility.
He pulled a small knife from his hip pocket and cut the line. “Sorry, son, if that’s you. Gotta go tend yer ma now. Gotta make sure she stay put if the water come.” A pause and a sniff. “Can’t risk losing you both.” The fish dived down deep with Marcus’ hook still in its mouth, the cut line trailing behind it like an endless tail.
When Marcus was a young man, before the War of the States, he’d seen his first flood in the Parish. The dead had risen that time-he among them-and for once the resurrection of water had been a blessing, not a curse. This time there would be no blessing. Today and tomorrow the dead must stay down. If not all, then at least one. He must tend to Maria’s grave, the mother of his only child. He must be there for her as she had been for him.
Marcus Nobody Special walked as briskly as his old legs would carry him towards the cemetery, his head hung low with worry. The storm was coming up fast with the rising sun, the wind gaining enough force that he nearly took a tumble once or twice along the way. By tomorrow afternoon, he reckoned, this city might be a different place altogether. By tomorrow evening, he reckoned, this place might be gone.
When he reached the cemetery’s lip he tipped his head to take one last glance at the sky. The strange turnings of his mind had melted the clouds into a screaming mouth-but no scream issued from its center, just the gentle hum of steady wind from all around.
And the sound of hammering.
Before the troubles, Malaria Morningstar had prided herself on being an early riser. Before the troubles, she’d witnessed each and every sunrise, had watched every morning fog lift with the rising sun. These were not things she missed now that she had discovered the drink.
The drink had turned her routine on its head-late to bed, late to rise. But also, the drink had protected her from the treacherous workings of her own mind. So much had been lost in one week, her family now removed from her completely. It was just too much.
Nearly noon, she stepped outside to discover a thick gray sky that retained a dim swath of orange; a gentle reminder of past sunrises, of who she once was. The same sky that had been wild and beautiful in the eyes of Marcus Nobody Special was unremarkable to her own-the inoffensive hue of an old dirty peach. What she did find remarkable was that the fog had remained kissing swamp so late in the morning, silently and stubbornly unlifted. The air was warm and moist against her skin, but she felt a dry chill. There’d been a time not long ago that she’d wished for a morning like this to come along; a morning that would begin a series of new and different mornings, no morning ever again the same-and she’d imagined that such a morning would be marked by unlifted fog. She shook the thought from her mind and went back inside.
The home she’d loved all her life had acquired new weight in recent days that now pressed down hard upon her soul, and so she found herself frequently leaving early for work; parking herself downstairs at the Eagle Saloon for long afternoons, sipping short glasses of rye till five o’clock rolled around and her shift upstairs at Odd Fellows began.
Today would be no different. She methodically folded and placed her work clothes in a canvas sack-short red dress, black high heels, a pair of six dollar stockings (one of nine pairs left behind at the Arlington House by Diphtheria)-then put on her mud-walking boots and left for the district, trudging through muck and unlifted fog, focused only on the thought of how wonderful the touch of a glass to her lips would feel once inside the bar.
She did not make note of static wind that scattered and swept away settled fog behind her as she walked, a wind that would soon erase everything she had ever known.
Chapter fifty-four. Keep My Baby Down
It was too late for Marcus to reinforce the brickwork covering Maria’s grave. The mortar of it had long since crumbled in places, many bricks loosened by time and a few missing altogether. He had some supplies stored in the small caretaker’s shack at the cemetery’s edge, but there would be no time for mortar to dry and take hold-large raindrops had already begun to slap the earth at a steep angle.
The wind whipped ferociously and the rain intensified in kind. A pecan tree thirty yards off creaked against a howling gust, shedding pecans that shot like bullets through the air alongside sheets of horizontal rain that stung Marcus’ neck like wasps. He lowered to his knees but didn’t fall. Stone and wooden markers toppled or flew from graves and water began to collect in animated puddles that indicated where the ground lay lowest. Marcus placed his hands upon the hard red clay above Maria, kissed the brick nearest where her head would be. “Stay down, baby,” he whispered.
There was not much that he could do, but he could not do nothing. Crouching low, he hurried to the caretaker’s shack, the wind ushering him along with such power that his legs barely kept up with his body. Relative calm inside was short-lived, as the shack’s lone window, blurry and shaking from pounding rain, suddenly exploded-a two-foot plywood crucifix crashing through and spraying Marcus with hard water and shards of glass. Quickly regaining his bearings, Marcus grabbed the can of white paint he’d come for and pushed through the door once more, walking into and against the direct force of the storm.
Returning to her grave he noted a few bricks had already broken free and tumbled away, but the water had not yet risen to cover her. Kneeling with the can between his legs, he pulled a small knife from his hip pocket, the same one he’d used to cut the fishing line. As he pried open the lid the knife flew from his grip.
He plunged his naked hand into the thick white paint, then withdrew it to smear a rough diagram over the bricks. The diagram was a
Ten yards to his left was another grave, a newer grave, one with no bricks protecting its occupant from unwelcome resurrection. The marker was a rectangle of plain concrete:
Malvina Latour
1806-1906
