relief, Lucien turned his mind to restocking the commissary and obtaining a line of credit. There was a time his plantation-owning neighbors, as spread out as they were, along with struggling piney woods farmers, some Choctaw Indians, some Irish and Germans encamped on riverbanks, and his enslaved laborers, would frequent the commissary to buy goods and rent tools and equipment. He still had rolls of gingham, wool, linen, and a bit of bombazine fabric, hoping wives of Irish ditch and levee workers would buy a few yards. It seemed a string of bad luck hit every other family just as hard as a wave of yellow fever had swept through the parish. No one seemed to have cash, only promissory notes and pride.
He combed through the barkers in print. Even at these good prices, he had to choose between shoes for some of his field hands to get through winter hoeing and replanting, and clothing for all. At least his field hands ate well enough, between their vegetable gardens and time off to fish. Could he afford to give his enslaved laborers that hour to cultivate vegetable gardens and muck up holes for crawdaddies? He needed his slaves fit and robust for work, but no one, particularly Lucien Guilbert, liked to see an idle Black body when their rest cost him so much.
Lucien moved on to the Louisiana Democrat. He studied the legal notices, foreclosures, and sales of once prosperous, enviable plantations. He followed the accounts of poor harvests, disrepair, and plantation mismanagement. Ah! Better the planter precedes the plantation in death than the reverse, he thought. For the jaws and lips would jerk and flap to gossip and mourn over the unthinkable: the sale of field hands, house servants, good china, French tea and coffee services, sugarhouse equipment, horses, mules, cattle, pigs. The principal house. The land. Then there were the firsthand accounts of how the planter and mistress stole away in buggy and wagon. The good laughs to be had over those accounts were always mingled with the remembrances of the communion parties, waltzes, weddings, and funeral gatherings at the now foreclosed upon plantations.
Lucien hadn’t opened the ledger since Byron had returned to St. James. This task of making entries and recording sales from the commissary now fell to Byron when he was home, and not a moment too soon. Lucien could barely stand the dismal reality of the commissary’s income: a cycle of pennies that went from him to his slaves and back to him. The commissary. Yet another business investment that failed to yield a real profit. Some of his slaves were savers, hard to part with a penny. He found this more so with the women, who wore their same dress in the field day in and day out, giving it a washing until threadbare, pushing its wear through another year.
In hard times he was forced to sell his more profitable slaves rather than hire them out. These included a dressmaker who’d made herself profitable by mimicking Parisian styles, and a wood-carving craftsman and son responsible for ornate bedposts, armoires, cabinets, and caskets. The father and son carvers, having learned their craft from their African ancestor, were relatives of his mother’s servant, Thisbe, and were meant to be freed when Vié Pè passed on. (Patience is not required, as that is yet another story.)
This year’s crop promised to rescue Lucien Guilbert from his debts; but these days, Lucien Guilbert, now master for the past thirty-five years, went to bed with worry, and always a flask of bourbon or whiskey.
Things were not yet dire, but everything was tied to a fraught little string. The banks nipped hungrily, and there were property taxes owed. The Guilberts could maintain for another year, but the harvest! The stalks rose and swelled under the sun, their juice threatening to rot if the cutting season was attacked too slowly. And then there was the risk of early frost. He preferred the assurances of his father’s gold, buried decades ago, to the long list of hopes he relied upon: He hoped the newspapers would continue to omit from or misspell his name among the list of those denied credit. He hoped his mother would relinquish her hold on the plantation. He hoped she didn’t suddenly expire—not until after relinquishing her hold on the plantation and telling him where the gold was located. He hoped to bring his quadroon daughter, Rosalie, home to Le Petit Cottage from the convent where she lived, and