“Why does he have to be wild? Can’t he be like Gus?”
Gus was a goat who lived nearby and who escaped from his pasture every once in a while to terrorize the local dogs.
“No,” I told Samuel. “Some creatures are not meant to be pets.”
When the sky brightened, and the donkey was well fed, we set it free. Samuel cried for so long that David teased him and called him a baby, which made him cry even harder. That night when I was putting Samuel to bed I lied and swore that I had seen the little donkey on the road with its mother, and that the day had turned out for the best. He slept easier then, his hand clutching mine. I curled up beside him rather than go into my marriage bed. But the wind arose again, hammering at the roof, and I couldn’t sleep. I felt I had become a different person since moving into this house. Before I’d had no trouble killing chickens for Friday dinner, but now I wept over a wild donkey as I thought of him wandering alone. My dream for my life was slipping away from me, and perhaps that made me more tenderhearted toward this motherless creature.
I needn’t have worried. In the morning the donkey was in the kitchen. He had let himself in through a door that had been blown open. Maybe it was true what they said, that donkeys and mules would not cross over a shadow, and this one had turned back when he reached the end of the property. The boys begged and begged, and even Hannah wailed and cried, reaching her hands out to the beast everyone now referred to as Jean-François. I relented. When Isaac came home at dinnertime, he found that I’d made his favorite dish, wild mushrooms and rice. I poured him a glass of rum with limewater. I said there was no reason to let our disagreement fester and interfere with our daily lives. Then I told him that the children had a pet they had named Jean-François.
“Pets are a foolish expense” was his initial comment.
“Sometimes being foolish is the right thing to do. Look at us.”
“You’re never foolish. I know that much.”
“Not even when it comes to Paris?”
“The business cannot be run from Paris, Rachel, though I wish that it could be. Do you think I haven’t thought a thousand times of leaving this place behind? I have terrible memories here. But I have to think of the children, and children expect to be fed and clothed.”
“And you would be leaving Esther if you went back to Paris.”
Whereas other men went to taverns in the evenings, I knew my husband went to the cemetery. Rosalie and I could both tell because there would be red mud on his shoes and red flowers in the pockets of his jacket.
“I couldn’t leave,” he admitted.
I went to sit on his lap. He was a kind man, and although I couldn’t change his mind about Paris, when it came to the household I knew how to get what I wanted. “Be ready to be surprised.”
“You always surprise me.”
Because Isaac disliked dogs, he was somewhat relieved when I took him out to the barn.
“Voilà,” I said. “Jean-François.”
Isaac laughed, despite how tired he was. “Let me guess—he’s a French donkey.”
“Exactly. So we had no choice but to take him in.”
Isaac stroked my hair. He was grateful that I was good to his children and humored them. “The boys talked you into this.”
“Would Esther have let them keep him?”
“Esther would have been terrified of him. But she would have been glad you kept him.”
I DID NOT HEAR my husband laugh again for some time. The storm was terrible for everyone, and nearly ruined us. Every workingman on our island found himself thwarted. Desolation was everywhere: roofs collapsed, houses were washed away, mudslides ruined roads and streets. The island was ravaged by destruction, and we suffered the fate of those who depended on the sea. Trading ships carrying merchandise to Charleston, including those belonging to our family, had sunk. It was a financial disaster, and Isaac spent weeks in the office, sleeping there and taking his meals at his desk, doing his best to salvage the business. Three months had passed since I’d been ill in the garden, but our bad fortune kept me from telling my husband of my condition. He didn’t need more worry.
At least we still had a home. Other people were not as fortunate. Roads were impassable, and part of the shoreline had disappeared. Boats could be found on hillsides, swept there by the rising tide, broken apart so that their wooden hulls whitened and became skeletons left in among the vines. There were bodies of creatures, dogs and rats and iguanas, along the streets. Parrots in the trees drowned from turning their faces toward the sky; when they fell their feathers scattered in the mud.