House of Rougeaux(50)
“You’ve got to lead, but follow too,” he might say. Or, “Take care of her. She will be your rock and your refuge.”
Guillaume took his father’s words to heart, even if he didn’t yet know what they could mean. Papa was everything honorable in a man, and Guillaume’s dearest wish was to live up to his example.
* * *
That autumn they had an unusual visitor. He was a young itinerant preacher, an American from a family of freedmen, the Clarksons, in New Haven. He was making a pilgrimage around the region, to spread the word of God, and, as he said, to educate himself by seeing more of the world. Emmet Clarkson appeared in church, seated with the Minkinses, the Rougeauxes’ closest friends. He wore a well-fitting, if slightly worn, black suit with a dark blue cravat, and held his black brimmed hat in his hands. During the service Guillaume, seated nearby with his family, found his gaze drawn repeatedly to the stranger’s striking profile.
Later, during introductions between the Rougeauxes and the Minkinses, Guillaume took in Emmet Clarkson’s erect posture, his smiling eyes, his charming how-do-you-dos, his resonant voice. He was twenty-three or twenty-four. He stayed a fortnight, lodging with the Minkinses, then with another family, and then with the Rougeauxes. He led two prayer meetings in each home, conducted in a different style than the community was used to, but all were well received. He spoke of character, of duty, of the sacredness of man, and also of humility. He quoted scripture with well-versed alacrity, and when he punctuated his orations with a reverent Let us pray Guillaume felt faint.
Guillaume was as intoxicated by Clarkson’s presence as he was mortified. Clarkson noticed Guillaume’s rapt attention during the prayer meetings and interpreted his interest as a true connection with his message. He clasped a warm, firm hand on Guillaume’s shoulder and remarked to Papa on the beautiful nature of his son’s evident piety. Guillaume’s face burned like fire. Then, worse, or better, when he lodged with them he shared sleeping quarters with Guillaume. Maman fixed up a pallet and they insisted the young preacher take the bed, which he refused. Those four nights Guillaume looked askance as the other man undressed and replaced his suit with his nightshirt. The lamplight shone on his wide, bare shoulders and the long dipping line of his spine. They lay but a few feet apart, sharing some revelation of the day, and each time Clarkson said, “Shall we pray, Brother Guillaume?” Guillaume prayed for the impossible; that Emmet Clarkson would remove his nightshirt and that Guillaume would remove his own, and that they would lie together the whole of the long night.
It was awful when he left. The family saw him off as he disappeared down the road, having hitched a ride out of town in a neighbor’s wagon. The last glimpse of him, waving his black hat in the air, left a crushing ache in Guillaume. But aside from imagining the young preacher’s hands when he touched himself, there was nothing to be done. Surely this pain was punishment for the sin of desiring a man in the first place. Perhaps, thought Guillaume, he should take God’s side against himself. He would easily have done so, if it weren’t for Josephine.
Josie, as with all her peculiar ways, had her own relationship with God. She attended church with the family, but never seemed to pay attention to the sermons or Scriptures. Instead she sat with her eyes closed and her lips moving, visiting her own interior temple where she communed in her own way. She didn’t even say the word God, but rather used Maman’s term, the one brought with her from her island. The Holy One. Maman herself rarely said it anymore, preferring to say Dieu or God, in harmony with the vernacular of the community. And now Josephine knew, with her piercing and infallible insight, the full extent of her brother’s affliction.
“At least don’t torment yourself,” she said to him one evening as they fetched water from the pump outside. The twilight air was crisp. Soon enough they would cover the pump for winter and melt great pans of snow by the stove. Guillaume rubbed his hands together and glanced at the back door just to be sure they were alone. “And don’t imagine the Holy One made a mistake in making you. We are all made on purpose, just as we are.”
After a long moment he said, “What do I do, then?”
“You just love, however you can. That’s what we all must do.” She was awfully young to be so sure, not more than sixteen, but he knew she was right.
On his wedding night, in bed in the dark with Elizabeth at his side, he said a silent prayer and thought of Emmet Clarkson. Afterward he prayed for Bess’ forgiveness. The years rolled forward and the children came. Guillaume took for granted that everyone had dear things that they lived without. His parents had suffered terrible losses in their young lives. The Minkinses had too. They lost the first two of their four children, a little boy and girl Guillaume had known and loved in his youth. No one was spared hardship.
Once when Guillaume was a boy, he was in the stable grooming the old chestnut quarter horse they called Nantucket, when one of the short brown hairs flew into his left eye and became lodged high up inside. No amount of flushing by Maman was able to remove it, nor could she see it and pluck it out. The eye became red and inflamed, and for days it stung and watered. The lid swelled and oozed pus, half blinding him. With only one eye to see through the world suddenly appeared flat. He reached for things that were too far away to grasp, and he stumbled over curbs and uneven ground. At last though, the hidden hair worked its way out. The infection cleared and was quickly forgotten, as just another in a thick catalogue of childhood injuries and ailments that passed through the ranks of the children. Yet, now and again, Guillaume thought he could still feel the hair, when he was tired, or angry, or, years later, if a man chanced to remind him of Emmet Clarkson.