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"Oh, go on with you, Robert. You don't seem bothered by the abolitionist tendencies of Abigail Dowli
ng," Willie said.
"I love you dearly, Willie, but you're absolutely hopeless, unteachable, beyond the pale, with the thinking processes of a stump, and I suspect an extra thorn in Our Savior's crown," Robert said.
"Thank you," Willie said.
"By the way, Abigail is not an abolitionist. She's simply of a kind disposition," Robert said.
"That's why she circulated a petition begging commutation for John Brown?" Willie said. He heard his friend make a grinding noise in his throat.
THAT evening Willie bathed in the clawfoot tub inside the bathhouse on the bayou, then dried off and combed his hair in a yellowed mirror and dressed in fresh clothes and walked outside into the sunset and the breeze off the Gulf. The oaks overhead were draped with moss, their limbs ridged with lichen, and the gardenias and azaleas were blooming in his mother's yard.
Next door, in a last patch of yellow sunshine, a neighbor was boiling crabs in an iron pot on a woodfire. The coolness of the evening and the fecund heaviness of the bayou and a cheerful wave from his neighbor somehow made Willie conclude that in spite of the historical events taking place around him all was right with the world and that it should not be the lot of a young man to carry its weight upon his shoulders.
He strolled down East Main, past the Shadows and the wide-galleried, gabled overseer's house across the street, past other homes with cupolas and fluted columns that loomed as big as ships out of the floral gardens that surrounded them.
He paused in front of a shotgun cottage with ventilated green shutters set back in live oak and pine trees, its windows lighted in the gloom, a gazebo in the side yard threaded with bougainvillea. He heard a wind chime tinkle in the breeze.
The woman who lived inside the cottage was named Abigail Dowling. She had come to New Iberia from Massachusetts as a nurse during a yellow fever epidemic and had stayed, working both in the clinic and teaching in a private school down the street. Her hair was thick, chestnut-colored, her skin without blemish, her bosom and features such that few men, including ones in the company of their wives, could prevent themselves from casting furtive glances at.
But for many her ways were suspect, her loyalties questionable, her candor intimidating. On one occasion Willie had asked her outright about rumors he'd heard.
"Which rumors might that be?" she said.
"A couple of Negroes who disappeared from plantations out by Spanish Lake," he replied.
"Yes?" she said, waiting.
"They got through the paddy rollers. In fact, it looks like they got clean out of the state. Some say you might be involved with the Underground Railroad, Miss Abigail."
"Would you think less of me?" she replied.
"A lady who hand-feeds those with yellow jack and puts their lives ahead of her own?" he said.
But she was not reassured.
Now, in the gloaming of the day, he stood on her gallery and tapped on her door, his straw hat in hand, a discomfort in his chest he could not quite define.
"Oh, good evening, Miss Abigail, pardon me for dropping by unexpectedly, but I thought you might like to take a walk or allow me to treat you to a dessert down at the cafe," he said.
"That's very nice of you," she said, stepping outside. She wore a plain blue cotton dress, buttoned not quite to the throat, the sleeves pushed up on her arms. "But someone is due to drop by. Can we just sit on the steps for a bit?"
"Sure," he said, hoping his disappointment did not show. He waited for her to take a seat on the top step, then sat on the step below her.
"Is something bothering you, Willie?" she asked.
"I enlisted today. Out at Camp Pratt. I'm just in the Home Guards now, but I suspect we'll be formed into regular infantry directly."
The darkening sky was full of birds now, sweeping above the chimneys, the oaks loud with cicadas and the throbbing of tree frogs.
After a long silence, she said, "I'm sure in your own mind you did the right thing."
"My own mind?" he said, and felt his face color, both for his rudeness in mimicking her statement and because he was angry at himself for seeking absolution from her, as though he were not possessed of either humanity or a conscience himself.
"I don't judge you, Willie. Robert Perry is enlisting, too. I think the world of you both," she said.
"Robert believes in slavery. I don't. He comes from a wealthy family and has a vested interest in seeing the Negro race kept subservient. That's the difference between us," he said, then bit his lip at the self-righteousness in his voice.
