Marion Perutelli

THE MUD DAUBERS, by Marion Bolick Perutelli, is a historical novel of 146,000 words. The time is 1837-1865. The story takes place outside Memphis, in Shelby County, Tennessee, and is about social injustice toward a man, who as a boy is labeled a foundling, and his quest for dignity and respect. It is about flatboating and steamboating on the Mississippi River. It is about love, religious bigotry, plantations, slavery, cotton, and the War Between the States.

THE MUD DAUBERS

Chapter One

Tanglewood Plantation
Fall, 1837

“Clara, what's a bastard?”

Her flour-coated hands froze in the bread dough she kneaded. “What'd you say, boy?”

David's gaze was fixed on the spice cake he had smelled from the backyard. “Kent called me that. Is it bad? He made it sound bad, so I hit him, just as hard as I could.”

“Good God, boy! Can't you keep outa trouble jest one day?”

He jumped as she whirled to face her kitchen helpers. “Don't stand there gawking! Git them 'taters peeled.”

Taking advantage of her distraction, David flicked a dirty finger through the cake's burnt sugar icing, and as he sucked it clean, his eyes rolled heavenward.

Only after Clara turned back to him did he realize his question had upset her. To him, Clara was not just a slave, she was a friend who answered questions which were puzzling to an eight-year-old, questions no one else had time for. Besides that, she was the best cook in the whole world.

“Sometime I think you make Miss Florence mad on purpose,” she said. “Why can't you git along with Kent the way you do with Susan?”

“But you haven't told me what a bastard is,” he said, climbing up on the tall stool beside her worktable.

She glanced at her helpers like she wished they were someplace else, then leaned toward him to whisper, “It's a chile that don't always carry his papa's name.”

Her answer surprised him. It made him think about when he was six and had asked his uncle, “Why must I call you Uncle Byron? Why can't I call you Father, like Kent and Susan do?”

“I'll explain when you're older,” his uncle had said. “In the meantime, you will go on using my name.”

Last year, when he was seven, he had asked his uncle, “Why must I use your name? Don't I have one of my own?”

His uncle had left the room without answering.

Clara's words brought back those questions—and others. Where were his parents? Why wasn't he living with them instead of here at Tanglewood with Uncle Byron and Aunt Florence? Was he different in some way? Was that why Kent had called him a bastard?

He would find Uncle Byron and ask those questions, even if his uncle did become impatient with what Aunt Florence called “unnecessary inquisitiveness.”

He hopped off the stool and started from the kitchen just as Clara's husband Shad came in. Shad was also Uncle Byron’s body servant and the butler.

“There you are, boy! Miss Florence wants to see you in her parlor.” Shad shook his head. “Lordy, just look at you! Best wash your face and hands 'fore she see you and wipe the mud off them shoes. You know how upset she git when you track her floors.”

“But I've got to talk to Uncle Byron.”

“He's gone to town.”

“Dern it!”

“Best watch your mouth too.”

“Does Aunt Florence look mad?”

“Mad 'nuff so that vein's sticking out on her neck. If I was you, I'd scat!”

David stepped out of the kitchen onto the brick walkway, which separated the kitchen from the house. He paused there to search for the big red rooster, which had a habit of flying at him to rake him with cruel spurs.

“What's wrong, Clara, honey?” he heard Shad say.

“To start with, that no-count yard boy let my oven git cool, so I was late fixing lunch for Miss Florence’s guests. And you know how upset she can git. But that ain't the worst of it. David come in here wanting to know what a bastard was.”

“Gawd'almighty!”

David forgot about the rooster.

“I'm scared, Shad. He said Kent called him that.”

“But where would Kent hear such a thing?”

“Where else, 'cept from servants talking outa turn.”

David followed the covered walkway to the butler’s entrance, wondering what Clara had meant about being scared. She usually sent him on his way with some kind of treat, like a johnnycake fresh off the griddle or a piece of still-warm bread sticky with sorghum. Today, he’d had his mouth all set for a piece of that spice cake.

David climbed the steps to the rear veranda and entered the door leading to the butler’s pantry. He went through the dining room into the foyer and passed Uncle Byron’s study to reach the stairs, where he paused. Aunt Florence sent for him only when he had done something wrong. He knew what he had done wrong this time.

He spread his dirty hands and studied them. If he washed them, they’d only get dirty again. He realized that was the kind of thinking which kept him in trouble. But since he was already in trouble . . .

He turned about to head for the parlor. “Oh!” He had tracked mud out into the foyer. He must have trailed mud through the butler’s panty and the dining room, too.

David went up the foyer and paused before the closed parlor door. He knew without being told why the house was so quiet. The servants always tiptoed when Aunt Florence got upset. As he stood there, the only sound he heard was the grandfather clock ticking across the wide foyer.

Even when he wasn’t in trouble, he hated Aunt Florence’s parlor. Why would anybody want a rug too nice to walk on? Or chairs too nice to sit on? Or figurines too fragile to play with? He hated the way she would shake her finger in his face and say, “If you so much as touch one of my porcelain figurines or my crystal lamps . . .” Or “If I find mud tracked on the rug . . .” Or “If I find fingerprints on one table top . . .”

It made him want to slip in there and blow his hot breath on the table tops to fog them up so he could print his name on them. It made him want to muddy the rug and plop down on the chairs to play with those figurines.

David was hoping Aunt Florence still had guests, guests who would stay and stay, so by the time they went home she would have forgotten what she was mad about. Besides, she was nicer to him in front of guests.

David put an ear to the parlor door and held his breath. All he heard was the creak of her rocker. She rocked fast that way when she was angry. He bit his lip to still its tremble, wondering how she would punish him this time.

Rigid with dread, he curled his hands into fists and took a deep breath which squared his shoulders and made him feel bigger. Only then did he knock to enter her parlor.
He found her alone. Now she didn't have to be nice to him.

*****

After eight humiliating years, Florence was unable to endure this child's presence without anger. It was degrading the way Mr. Braddock—even in thought she addressed her husband formally—insisted David remain here with their own two children, when to her his very existence was a stigma against decency.

Mama had once said, “God directs people's lives with a purpose.” But Florence questioned any purpose—even God's—which burdened her with a living reminder of her husband's betrayal.

After spawning this loathsome child with his French harlot, Mr. Braddock tried to pass him off as a foundling, saying, “I found him abandoned in my carriage in New Orleans.” But an inflection in his voice told her he lied. Her slightest doubt concerning the dark, newborn infant vanished when he added, “We'll call him David.”

“Your middle name?”

He had stridden from the room without answering.

Later, when the boy's resemblance to his mother could no longer go unrecognized, Mr. Braddock had admitted the truth to Florence. Of course, he never publicly admitted David was his child. Neither had he confirmed or denied the empty deception that the boy was a foundling. Most people tactfully accepted the lie, but Florence still felt the smirks of those who had met David's mother when she was a houseguest at Tanglewood.

At lunch today, Florence had entertained three guests: her closest friend, Vada Stuart; her sister-in-law, Nadine Cameron; and her neighbor, Barbara Alexander.

For that occasion, Florence had worn a new gray dress which lent depth to her eyes, eyes Mama called "Cameron gray," since they were the same gray as Florence's father's, and his father's before him.

Florence had already been irritated because lunch would be served late. Then her maid Lena had bungled a new hairstyle, which called for a part down the middle all the way to the nape. Both sides were then braided and wound in circles over the ears. Florence had such thin hair she ended up looking ridiculous. After ordering Lena from the room, she’d hidden the mess under a matron's cap.

Despite her upset, she managed to receive her guests with the air of a dignified matron. But her dignity had been sorely tried in the midst of lunch when nine-year-old Kent burst into the dining room with his lip bleeding and his clothing smeared with mud.

“David hit me!”

“Oh!” She said, mortified that her lack of control over David should be brought to the attention of her guests.

“He was muddying the well,” Kent said, “and when I tried to stop him, he knocked me down.”

Florence, shaking with anger, dabbed the blood from Kent's lip, wiped his runny nose, and dried his tears. She then summoned Lena to take him upstairs.

She had been still fuming when she bade her guests farewell and sent Shad in search of David.

She frowned at him now, disconcerted as always by his unwavering gaze and the proud tilt of his head—traits he had inherited from her. He was dark like her too, dark as the sin which had borne him.

“Don't come into my parlor looking like this again! Your clothing is wet and soiled, and you've tracked mud all over the rug.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Is it true you knocked Kent down when he tried to stop you from muddying the well?”

“I . . . yes, ma’am. It's true that I did knock him down.”

“Your conduct is inexcusable! Miss Vada called you a barbarian. But for some reason, Miss Nadine and Miss Barbara defended you.” She rocked faster. “As far as I'm concerned, you are a willful, uncivilized, incorrigible—”

“Bastard?”

For one awful moment, she feared she would faint. Then anger took hold. She jerked him so close her spittle sprayed his face. “You filthy child. Where did you hear that word?”

“Kent called me that.”

“You're lying! How could Kent?—” Her grip tightened on his arm, making him squirm. “You will go to your room, where you will remain for the rest of the day. If you take one step from there, I'll lay a switch across your back. And there will be no dinner for you. Is that understood?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

His dark eyes literally snapped with resentment. No, not resentment, hatred.

How dare he hate her! And how dare he utter that vile word!

She shoved him from her with such violence, she sent him sprawling. Somehow it made her feel better.

As he ran from the room, she told herself surely after this Mr. Braddock would agree to send him to a Catholic boarding school in New Orleans, where he belonged.

Her rocker was still now, her hands loose in her lap. She felt drained, exhausted. How could he hate her? Out of Christian charity, she made sure he had advantages any foundling would envy. He had proper nourishment, nice clothing, a tutor, and a room of his own on the attic level with the house servants. She had placed him there as an infant so his wet nurse could attend him in the night. At least that had been her excuse.

Florence was puzzled over the way David’s hatred had affected her. Why had it made her feel so . . . so vulnerable? And why was she conscious of a tiny suggestion of guilt . . . when she had nothing to feel guilty about?

*****

THE MUD DAUBERS, published by Cold Tree Press, Nashville, Tennessee, a print-on-demand publisher.

AVAILABLE AT: coldtreepress.com, amazon.com, booksamillion.com, barnesandnoble.com, and by order at most retail bookstores.