White Doves at Morning by James Lee Burke Read Free Book Online Page B

nature of your activities with me. Good evening, sir."
    "You see much of Mr. Jamison's
wash girl, the one called Flower? The drowned nigger was her aunt."
    "In fact I do know Flower. I'm
also under the impression your interest in her is more than a
professional one."
    "Northern ladies can have
quite a mouth on them, I understand."
    "Please leave my property, Mr.
Atkins," she said.
    He bowed again and fitted on
his hat, his face suffused with humor he seemed to derive from a
private joke.
    She returned to her writing
table and tried to finish her letter to Robert Perry. The sky was a
darker green now, the oaks dripping loudly in the yard, the shadows
filled with the throbbing of tree frogs.
    Oh, Robert, who am I to
lecture you on doing injury in the world, she thought.
    She ripped the letter in half
and leaned her head down in her hands, her palms pressed tightly
against her ears.

    HER journey by carriage to
Angola Plantation took two days. It rained almost the entire time,
pattering against the canvas flaps that hung from the top of the
surrey, glistening on the hands of the black driver who sat hunched on
the seat in front of her, a slouch hat on his head, a gum coat pulled
over his neck.
    When she and the driver
reached the entrance of the plantation late in the afternoon, the
western sky was marbled with purple and yellow clouds, the pastures on
each side of the road an emerald green. Roses bloomed as brightly as
blood along the fences that bordered the road.
    In the distance she saw an
enormous white mansion high up on a bluff above the Mississippi River,
its geometrical exactness softened by the mist off the river and
columns of sunlight that had broken through the clouds.
    The driver took them down a
pea-gravel road and stopped the carriage in front of the porch. She had
thought a liveried slave would be sent out to meet her, but instead the
front door opened and Ira Jamison walked outside. He looked younger
than she had expected, his face almost unnaturally devoid of lines, the
mouth soft, his brown hair thick and full of lights.
    He wore a short maroon jacket
and white shirt with pearl buttons and gray pants, the belt on the
outside of the loops. "Miss Dowling?" he said.
    "I apologize for contacting
you by telegraph rather than by post. But I consider the situation to
be of some urgency," she said.
     "It's very nice to have
you here. Please come in," he said.
     "My driver hasn't eaten.
Would you be so kind as to give him some food?"
    Jamison waved at a black man
emerging from a barn. "Take Miss Dowling's servant to the cookhouse and
see he gets his supper," he called.
    "I have no servants. My driver
is a free man of color whom I've hired from the livery stable," she
said.
    Jamison nodded amiably, his
expression seemingly impervious to her remark. "You've had a long
journey," he said, stepping aside and extending his hand toward the
open door.
    The floors of the house were
made of heart pine that had been sanded and buffed until the planks
glowed like honey. The windows extended all the way to the ceiling and
looked out on low green hills and hardwood forests and the wide,
churning breadth of the Mississippi. The drapes on the windows were red
velvet, the walls and ceiling a creamy white, the molding put together
from ornately carved, dark-stained mahogany.
    But for some reason it was a
detail in the brick fireplace that caught her eye, a fissure in the
elevated hearth as well as the chimney that rose from it.
    "A little settling in the foundation," Ira Jamison said. "What can I
help you with, Miss Dowling?"
    "Is your wife here,
sir?"
    "I'm a widower. Why do you
ask?"
    She was sitting on a divan
now, her hands folded in her lap, her back not touching the fabric. He
continued to stand. She paused for a long moment before she spoke, then
let her eyes rest on his until he blinked.
    "I'm disturbed by the conduct
of your employee Captain Atkins. I believe he's molesting one of your
slaves, a young woman who has done