Bacchanal

by Veronica Henry

  “I can’t do this,” she said, opening her eyes.

  Malachi simply said, “Try again.”

  Liza gave him a side-eye, which he luckily couldn’t see, as his own eyes remained closed. She blew out an agitated breath and let her eyelids flutter closed again. It took some time, but soon, the sounds of the bustling carnival-setup activities around her faded away. The steady stream of mind chatter slowed some. For a brief, blissful moment, her mind was blank.

  Unbidden images—not her own—played through her mind on a slow flicker: a raven soaring through the air, black, yellow beak, sleek, lean body. She pushed the raven away, and it floated from her consciousness as if on a cloud. Then the elephant came, followed by the badger. Her heart beat faster in her chest, but she kept her breathing to a constant in and out; she had even stopped counting. She felt totally at peace.

  The next image that floated into her mind was of a woman. Gray hair parted down the middle, her eyes round and intent, skin the color of charred wood. The woman’s name flooded her mind: Oya.

  “It has taken you long to find me. I am your grandmother, goddess of winds and storms, of death and rebirth.” The woman’s voice rattled around Liza’s brain like a pinball before it settled. “I have a vision for you. A prophecy.”

  A water buffalo thundered along on a wide-open plain. The beast stopped, dissolved into a pile of dust, and swirled upward into a tornado. When the tornado died down, Oya stood at the gates of a cemetery that stretched as far as the eye could see. The landscape changed, revealing centuries of death and destruction.

  The badger spirit appeared then and took an ineffectual swipe at Oya. A burst of wind from Oya’s mouth sent him away. The raven swooped in, circling Oya’s head, and with a clap of her hand was zapped out of the sky with a lightning bolt. The elephant charged at her back, but she spun into a hurricane and tossed him into another place.

  “You must make your peace with them. Accept the spirits. We cannot defeat our enemy without them,” the voice said. “And accept me.” Then Oya smiled at Liza and began to fade away.

  “Wait!” Liza screamed aloud. “What enemy? What does all this mean? Who are you?”

  “Liza.” Malachi was shaking her. “Liza, open your eyes.”

  She jerked away from Malachi and scrambled to her feet. “What the hell was that?” she shouted. “Are you playing some kind of trick on me?”

  Malachi stood and regarded Liza curiously. “You had a vision?” He sighed. “Your path is not an easy one, then. Sometimes the spirits have plans for us that we don’t like. But when your path is laid out, you have to walk it. I only hope that you learned something that will help you in what you must face.”

  Grandmother . . . huh. Ikaki had told her that they liked her because of who her grandmother was. Was this Oya her grandmother? She’d said she was a goddess. Liza deflated. She’d learned more, all right, but this business about her animal spirits and nameless enemies—why drop that on her and then disappear? “I understand more and am more confused than before I started.”

  “It will become clear.”

  “And what am I supposed to do until then?”

  “Nothing,” Malachi said. “Live. The ancestors will call on you when it’s the right time.”

  “Why can’t the ancestors stay dead and gone like they’re supposed to.” Liza made it more a statement than a question. She met Malachi’s eyes and hoped her own conveyed some sort of gratitude for him trying to help her, but she stopped short of thanking him. Before she turned to leave, Eloko appeared. The grassy dwarf with his menacing snout winked at her before she hurried off.

  Liza’s face was twisted in confusion when she passed Zinsa and Efe, who were practicing spear throwing at the expense of stuffed targets. The two women may as well have been Siamese twins for all the times they were ever apart from each other.

  “Have you eaten a sour fruit today?” Zinsa said, and she and Efe laughed as Liza kept walking. If only she could whip up a clever retort, something snide about always being glued to some old, empty trailer, but after that vision, her mind was a mess. All she could think about was what Oya had said about accepting the animal spirits, but where on earth was she supposed to find them?

  Then she was right in front of the red trailer. Clay’s, as usual, sat to the right. Zinsa and Efe were still practicing.

  Crouching and watching, Liza told herself to stand and back away slowly. But there she sat like a fly that couldn’t be shooed away from a freshly baked pie, even with somebody standing there, flyswatter held high.

  Maybe the answers to her particular situation weren’t inside that trailer, but something was off, and whatever it was, it wasn’t quite right. Liza was sure of it.

  With elephants and ravens and badgers churning in her head, she approached at a wobbly crouch. It was as if she watched herself from outside her body: mounting the creaky stairs, a jittery, sweat-slick hand reaching out, the cool steel door handle. Locked.

  She edged back down the steps and circled around to the open window on the back of the trailer, an empty field of brown and green grass the only witness. Even after she reached her arms to their full length above her head, the open window was still out of reach. She searched around for a crate, a box, or anything to stand on but came up empty.

  When she leaped, her fingers only scraped the windowsill. She tried again, using her feet to scramble upward.

  She’d peeked inside—a fleeting glimpse of masks, pale-yellow walls, and underneath a lounger, a child’s slingshot like the one she and her father had made for Twiggy—when, from a reflection in the window, Liza caught sight of one of the stilt walkers right behind her.

  She cried out and tumbled to the ground. Mico chittered wildly and dropped deeper into her pocket as Liza tried not to crush him. The stilt walker closed in: the red-and-black-painted face was of a skeleton, body armor made of bones. A wild red-and-yellow headdress sported an array of tinier skulls.

  The walker lifted a long leg and stood over her, peering. Liza’s breath and voice tangled and lodged at the back of her throat as the skeletal face detached and oozed downward. As it neared her face, the dark mouth crowded with teeth, the little skulls all became the bloodied, decayed faces of every animal she’d killed. They rippled through. With the face now inches from hers, the inexplicable sound of an elephant’s trumpeting rang out. And the stilt walker disappeared.

  “Eliza Meeks. What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  Liza froze. Where had the stilt man gone? And she knew darn well she’d heard an elephant.

  “Come on, get up!” the voice demanded.

  Liza turned to find Hope standing there looking like steam was coming from her ears. Her hands were on her hips and her mouth set in a grimace. “Jamey said you were in some sorta state this morning.” She stalked forward and grabbed Liza by the wrist, pulling her away from the trailer. “You diggin’ into things you don’t know anything about.”

  Liza pulled her arm away, but she still followed her friend, ruffled like she had been chastised by her own mother. “Something’s wrong in that trailer. I can feel it. Don’t you want to know what Clay is hiding?”

  Hope stopped and turned to face her. “I’m curious, but I got the good sense to keep it in check. We got a good life here, and ain’t neither one of us gonna mess it up.”

  “What is the big deal? Is there some mysterious man in there watching what we say and do?” Man. Liza remembered that flash of eye-catching garb she’d shaken off as her imagination. “Or woman. Is there another performer here that I haven’t met? A woman that wears a long colorful skirt?”

  “Huh? No.” Unease slid from the side-eye glance the fortune-teller spared her before she charged ahead. “Way I see it, long as we keep getting paid and fed, ain’t none of my concern.” Hope started walking again. “And what on earth did you do to Jamey?”

  “He’s got some strange opinions.”

  “That makes two of you.” Hope had a point, but Liz
a wasn’t about to admit it.

  “He run to you to tell on me or something?” Liza was growing angrier.

  “No, he didn’t,” Hope said. “I ran into him looking for you. Wasn’t hard to see he was upset about something. Had to drag it out of him.”

  They had arrived at Hope’s trailer and found Bombardier standing outside with Ishe. He shielded his eyes, squinting at the sight of an approaching vehicle. “Looks like we got company.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A STRANGER IN THE NIGHT

  The car—a fancy shiny new Packard—rolled to a stop. A crowd had gathered around, oohing and aahing at the fine piece of machinery. The driver, a white man, emerged and held the door open for someone in back. A gloved hand snaked out from the car, taking the driver’s arm. An elegant Negro woman stepped out.

  She wore a black hat with a big sparkling pin on the side. Her dress was a simple, pink, V-neck affair in a fine silk. It cinched at the waist and flowed outward, down to midcalf. Smooth mocha skin made it hard to place her age, but her dress, even the way she walked, screamed that she was somebody formidable, and younger women rarely possessed that sort of swagger.

  The driver leaned against the car and thrust his hands into his pockets. His shoulder holster held a sizable gun, and the carnies backed away in a hush.

  Clay emerged from his trailer, shirt and pants dusty, and streaks of grease smeared his left cheek. He walked out in front of the carnies, wiped his hand on his pants leg, and extended it.

  “Clay Kennel,” he said. “Owner and proprietor of the G. B. Bacchanal Carnival.”

  “May I present . . . ,” the driver began.

  “Madame Stephanie St. Clair,” Clay finished. He kept his expression vague, but the admiration and suspicion in his voice slipped out, unmasked.

  “Queenie,” the woman answered. She looked at his outstretched hand and, with her eyes, made it clear that there was no way she was placing her silken-gloved hand in his.

  Whispers of awe rang out through the crowd like tiny bells.

  Jamey, as usual, was not far behind Clay. “And this here is my right hand, Jamey Blotter,” he said, introducing the young man. Queenie smiled, her expression soft, steeped in a gentle warmth that wasn’t there a second before.

  Jamey’s eyes grew wide. He mumbled a greeting as he looked anywhere but directly at the woman. What had shaken the boy’s manners? Clay turned back to his esteemed guest.

  “You come through Louisiana recently?” the woman said, walking forward, assessing the group of carnies but directing her question to Clay.

  Clay recollected on what trouble they may have left behind them; sometimes he lost count of the weird trail of mishaps that followed them. Thankfully, people often had more important things to worry about than what strangeness followed the carnival’s arrival and departure. Outwardly, he was composed.

  “We travel quite a bit, as you might expect.” He motioned for the carnies to move out of their way. He then held out his arm to Queenie, inviting her to follow him. “But yes, we were in your home state.”

  “The news does travel far,” she said, walking beside Clay now.

  “Everybody knows about you, ma’am,” Clay said. Working for Geneva, he’d come to have a respect for Negro women. His perspective was one that most white men wouldn’t allow themselves to have. This woman was a criminal, but who wouldn’t admire a southern woman running a numbers game up in a big city like Harlem, and even going up against the mobster “Dutch” Schultz? Clay didn’t know how it was that she was still alive.

  “Half lies,” Madame St. Clair said. “About a quarter embellished, the rest. The truth depends on who’s doing the telling.”

  Clay had ordered a carnie to have Mabel bring out something for their guest to eat. He gestured for her to join him at one of the picnic tables. She glided in opposite him and fixed her unsettling gaze on him.

  First Geneva, now Queenie herself. I got a thing for powerful women. “What brings you to the carnival?” He didn’t think the visit was a social one, and she didn’t look the type for the Ferris wheel.

  Madame St. Clair appraised Clay for a full minute before answering. “Looking for someone,” she said finally.

  “And who might that be?” Clay leaned forward.

  “Believe you already know.” Madame St. Clair raised the cold glass of iced tea that had been deposited at her elbow, took a sip, and set the glass back on the table. It was the most elegant motion Clay had ever seen.

  The resemblance was clear to Clay now. The slightly wide-set eyes, the coloring, the less noticeable but still present strong chin. And the odd behavior.

  “How’s Jamey related to you?” he asked. “And why don’t he seem too keen on admitting it?”

  “You know he was born and raised in Louisiana,” Madame St. Clair said. “My sister’s boy. When his mother died, I took care of him . . . in my own way. I couldn’t raise any children with the life I led, you see. But I made sure he was taken care of. He stopped accepting my money years ago, and guess I got you to thank for that, Mr. Kennel. Guess you can say that my life up in Harlem has kept me preoccupied. Now, I need my kin near me. Whether he likes the total package or not, we are all we have left.”

  Clay had read about how her goon “Bumpy” Johnson had hooked up with them Italians. He’d also read that she’d quieted down her business in the last few years, but maybe she needed some new muscle. If she was counting on Jamey for that, she didn’t know her nephew at all.

  Almost reading his thoughts, Madame St. Clair intoned, “He always got good marks. I don’t need another Bumpy—I need somebody with a good head. That understands numbers.”

  As much as Clay wanted to tell her to scram, he had to let Jamey make the decision himself. “I know where he run off to. I’ll send him on over to you.”

  “Madame,” two women said in unison, bowing on one knee. “We are honored.”

  Madame St. Clair looked up from her plate and took in the women’s roughshod clothing, the beads, the daggers at their hips. “And you are?”

  They stood.

  “Zinsa,” Zinsa said.

  “And I am Efe,” Efe added, lifting her chin. “We are the last of the Dahomey women soldiers.”

  Queenie set down her fork and stood. “The soldiers of West Africa,” she said with unmasked admiration. “The honor is all mine, ladies. Join me.” She sat back at the table, but when she looked up, Zinsa and Efe stood where they were, looking dumbfounded. She gave them a look, and they all but scrambled to the bench.

  “We have read about you,” Zinsa said.

  “The way you handle all those men,” Efe added.

  “You would have made an excellent commander in our army,” Zinsa added. The women gushed on and on interminably, and Queenie endured it all, answering their questions politely.

  “I could use two women such as yourself,” she said. “What, if you don’t mind me asking, would you two be doing in a carnival?”

  Zinsa and Efe at once looked at each other, their expressions sullen. Didn’t take much to piece it together—their homeland, their particular set of skills. Yes, her friend Ahiku had snared them somehow. That meant they weren’t here entirely of their own will. But they didn’t get a chance to answer, for Clay approached with a reluctant-looking Jamey.

  “Quit bothering the lady.” He shooed away Zinsa and Efe.

  “No bother,” Madame St. Clair said. “You ladies think about what I said.”

  Queenie watched Clay try to puzzle out her meaning and left him to it.

  “You got your mother’s eyes,” Queenie said. “And mine.”

  Jamey stood rooted in place. Funny how the times when his aunt had cuddled him, taught him the latest dances, and even sneaked him candy his mama said he couldn’t have were dimmed by the one memory he tried the hardest to forget.

  He’d run the food his mother sold back and forth to the patrons of her sister’s weekly card games. On this night, things were a little slow, so Que
enie sat in with the other men in a game of bid whist. Her neatly painted fingernails gleamed against the backs of the cards. The pearls at her neck were out of place with the rough loose trousers she favored. His mama always wore dresses.

  His seven-year-old self braced for a fight. That drunk was right on the edge of trouble with all his blubbery flirting, but when he laid his hand on Queenie’s wrist . . . his aunt had pulled out a gun and pistol-whipped the man bloody.

  “Go on now, sit,” Queenie prompted. “You think I got fangs or something?”

  “Aunt Queenie,” Jamey said finally. “Excuse my manners. I . . . I don’t know what you doing here.”

  “It’s time for you to come and be with me.”

  “I ain’t no criminal,” Jamey said and then caught himself. “I mean, I got a good job here. I don’t want no trouble.”

  Queenie looked around, even sniffed at the air. “I bet there is more trouble here than you letting on, but you can keep that to yourself. I need your mind. I can give you a good home, a good salary. Cops don’t bother me none anymore. I’m an old lady. But I need somebody to handle my business. You are the only kin I have left.” Then she looked around. “Unless you got some baby running around someplace. Am I a great-aunt?”

  Jamey flushed. “Nothin’ like that,” he stammered. “No kids here.”

  “Smart boy,” Queenie said, looking around the grounds. “Get the feeling children wouldn’t thrive here. Not the way they would in a stable home, I mean.”

  Liza strolled idly by the cook-tent entrance, trying unsuccessfully to look inconspicuous. Why she gotta be so nosy? Queenie followed Jamey’s eyes.

  “A girl,” she huffed. “There are so many beautiful, clean girls in Harlem you will have to hire a guard to keep them away. I’m offering you something real. Do you want to work at a carnival all your life? Think about it. It is nearly 1940. How hard has it been for you to find new spots? You don’t even come north much anymore; you know why? It’s because they consider the freak show vile, looking at odd folks not as popular as it once was. Carnival may not even be around in a few years. What will you do then?”