Faye Longchamp 01 - Artifacts

how to get rid of him. Just give me a little time.”

    Faye’s first aid kit was not well stocked. Band-Aids, generic painkillers, antiseptic spray—if it wasn’t cheap and you couldn’t get it over-the-counter in a small-town drugstore, then she didn’t have it. She prodded at the wound on her thigh. It was surrounded by a hard red patch the size of her palm. No pus yet, but she’d bet the Gopher that it was infected.
    Time to haul out the big guns. She reached for a tube of antibiotic ointment, the one with the label that said in huge print, “The strongest antibiotic you can buy without a prescription.” Well, being as how she had no insurance to cover a prescription or the doctor who prescribed it, she slathered the non-prescription stuff on thick.
    Cyril had mentioned going dancing sometime soon. She sure hoped she was able to walk. Gangrene was not an attractive quality in a date.
    Faye was old enough to recognize the single-mindedness of someone enjoying the earliest stages of an affair, but no one is old enough to resist slipping into that giddy state. She had spent an embarrassing amount of time that day reflecting on Cyril’s affable nature and fine intellect. She was thrilled that he enjoyed dancing.
    Only someone very special could have risen so far above his miserable upbringing. Look what it had made of his brother: a probable killer. Her new friend’s rise out of poverty was admirable and she liked spending time with people she admired. Faye hoped he found something admirable in her, but she didn’t know what it might be.
    She did have some admirable ancestors, no question. Thus reminded, she reached for the old journal, eager to continue Cally’s story.
    ***
    Excerpt from Cally Stanton’s oral history, recorded 1935
    Lots of folks said the second Missus was stupid, but I knew her better than they did. She wasn’t stupid. She was a Yankee.
    She took to me from the start, saying I was pretty, and I had elegant bones. She said I was smart, too, and she wanted to teach me to dress and talk, so I could be a proper lady’s maid. Maybe I’m smart. I think I am. But only a Yankee could look at my skin and my hair and, yes, Lord, even my bones, without wondering who my daddy was. I don’t rightly know who my daddy was, but there was never but one white man on the place and that was her husband.
    The new Missus kept herself busy by keeping me busy. I sponged her down with cool water—she didn’t take to our weather—and I fetched her drinks. A little bourbon made her forget how the heat made her corsets stick to her skin. A little more bourbon made her forget that the Master married her for her money.
    It wasn’t hard work. The Big House felt cool to me, with the breezes coming in the tall windows and blowing the lace curtains around. There was just one bad thing about the Big House. The Master was there, and before long he noticed I was growing up.
    I have lived a long ninety-six years. In all that time, I never hated anybody but one man: the Master, Andrew LaFourche. I never hated anybody in my life before the Master dragged me into an empty room and locked the door.
    The Missus never noticed when my clothes was messed up and my mouth was bloody. Maybe my skin’s dark enough so the bruises don’t show. I don’t know. But she never noticed. Or she made like she didn’t notice.
    Later on, he learned to hit me so he didn’t leave marks. And I learned not to feel anything much at all. Time and again, I dreamed that he was going to come to a bad end and that I was going to make it happen. There was a heap of comfort in that.
    The Missus always chirked up when her son, Mister Courtney Stanton, came to see her. Mister Courtney was a fine-looking man. His hair was even prettier than the master’s, the color of sweet corn, more white than yellow. And shiny, good Lord.
    Mister Courtney bought a fine plantation named Innisfree, slaves and all. It was near Quincy, right next door to one of the Master’s tobacco plantations. And he bought Last Isle, too. First thing Mister Courtney did was lease half the island to one of his Yankee friends to build a hotel on. Next thing he did was set to work on the Big House at Innisfree.
    Nobody had lived in the house at Innisfree for nigh onto five years—nobody except for possums and bats—and the roof had taken to leaking. Folks said Mister Courtney waded into his new house—right beside the slaves—to help shoo out the possums and mop out the mud.