The Cottoncrest Curse by Michael H. Rubin Read Free Book Online

house. The feast would begin late at night, and the cochon de lait would start soon, and there was still the boiling to do.
    Jake and Trosclaire went to the pen on the side of the house. Trosclaire picked up one of the larger suckling pigs, pulling it away from its mother’s teat, and handed it to Jake.
    Jake put a large bucket under the ledge of the porch and, holding the squiggling pig tightly, walked up on the porch. It must have weighed more than fifty pounds, but Jake handled it easily. He placed the pig between his knees, squeezing it firmly with his legs so that it couldn’t move.
    Jake pulled a large Freimer knife with a ten-inch blade out of his belt and, reaching down, grabbed the squealing pig’s snout and pulled it up, stretching the neck taut. With one practiced stroke he cut the pig’s neck, severing the jugular vein and the nerves of the backbone.
    It was perfect. One cut. The pig never felt any pain.
    Jake tilted the pig’s body so that the blood would drain into the bucket below.
    Trosclaire was amazed. “That knife, she is as sharp as you say. But you have almost cut off her head! What kind of boucherie is this? It is no way to prepare for a cochon de lait. ”

Chapter 10
    The sharecroppers were still under the trees when Marcus came out of the house, another bucket of bloody cloths in his hand. Marcus already had used up all the old sheets. His wife, Sally, was doing her best to rinse them out as quickly as possible in the big old tub on the side of the kitchen. She ran them up and down the washboard, the suds from the lye soap turning a bright pink.
    Marcus left the bloody sheets on the wooden pallet next to the wash-tub, where the brown soil had taken on a reddish tinge. He took some of the damp sheets that Sally had finished off the clothesline. He put these sheets in a bucket and headed back into the house. At this rate it would take until dark to mop up all the blood that had coated the stairs and dripped down the walls onto the hallway floor below. Tomorrow’s daylight coming through the east windows would let them see clearly what remained to be done. But who would give the instructions? Where would he and Sally go? Would they have a place to live?
    Marcus had been with the Colonel Judge long before he had that title. The General had bought him for Mr. Augustine when Mr. Augustine was just turning into a man. Marcus had been with Mr. Augustine in the days when a white ocean of cotton blanketed the plantation as far as the eye could see. Marcus had been with him when the cotton bales, stacked as high as four men, were on the shore waiting to be loaded onto the riverboats that used to line up in front of Cottoncrest.
    Marcus had been with Mr. Augustine when the General left, before the fighting. Marcus had followed Mr. Augustine into the camps. Marcus had saddled his horse and polished his sword and cleaned his guns and washed and pressed his uniforms. Marcus had been with Mr. Augustine at the siege of Port Hudson, when Mr. Augustine had been made a colonel. And from that point on it was never “Mr. Augustine” anymore. It was “Colonel.”
    Marcus had been back at the campground when the Colonel’s horse was shot out from under him and the Colonel himself was captured. At that time Marcus had thought his world had ended.
    But it had not. Marcus had survived, and the Colonel had survived, although just barely. When after the war, the Colonel had returned to Cottoncrest from the Union prison at Camp Butler in Illinois, he was like a ghost. In fact, to the General, Augustine had long ago become a ghost, which is why the General… but that was the start of the curse, wasn’t it.
    When the Colonel had finally come back to Cottoncrest, his ribs showed through his thin cotton shirt, his face was gaunt, his chest hollow, and he walked with a limp that never left him, the old bullet still in his left thigh.
    Marcus had made it this far. The good Lord