Bacchanal

by Veronica Henry

  Jamey didn’t want to admit that, over the last couple of years, it had gotten tougher to secure dates. But Clay always pulled things out. No, G. B. would be fine; folks would always need entertaining. “You want me for my brain; guess somebody else would, too, if it came to that.”

  “And we are family,” Queenie added. “When everybody else leaves you, family is all you have.”

  “You only coming to get me now ’cause you and Bumpy on the outs?”

  “Bumpy works for them people, but he still looks out for me,” Queenie said, taking another sip of tea. “I wasn’t there when Myra first died. But I’m trying to be now.”

  Jamey considered the vision of himself as a businessman, in a fine suit up in Harlem, New York. Owning a fine house, not breaking his back anymore. And he wouldn’t be second to anybody when his aunt died. But there was Liza. Would she come with him? And after their fight today, would he even want her to?

  It was getting dark, and the crowd watching them, including Liza, still lingered. Jamey was surprised to realize that he was glad she was there.

  “You gonna have to stay the night,” Jamey said. Queenie had probably timed it that way. When you dropped something like this in somebody’s lap, a decision wouldn’t come easy. She said she was prepared to stay for as long as a week, but then she would need to head back north to check on her business.

  “You won’t like some of the ways we live out here,” he said. “None of the fine things you used to. But we can make you comfortable.”

  “Me and your mother may have been born on that plantation in Martinique, but Lake Charles was our home, same as you,” Queenie said. “I know how to make do. I won’t break.”

  Jamey stood to lead his aunt away. He walked past Liza on his way out. Maybe he was seeing things, but it seemed like her eyes were telling him she wasn’t mad no more.

  He steered his aunt toward the trailer he shared with Wendell and three others. “I’ll get some clean sheets,” he said. “The boys will bunk up under the stars tonight. It’s no trouble.”

  Queenie let a grin warm the right side of her mouth. “Nobody will need to give up their bunk tonight.” She took his arm in hers and led the way, shushing his protest. But Jamey’s alarm heightened when she strode toward the red trailer.

  “You can’t go in there.” He looked at his aunt. “Nobody can. Clay uses that trailer for carnival business.”

  Queenie smiled. “I’ll see you in the morning, James.”

  Jamey stood with his mouth open, and the last protest died as Zinsa and Efe actually smiled—smiled! They dropped to one knee and lowered their heads as Queenie mounted the steps and entered the enigmatic red trailer.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  WICKED ALLIANCES

  Madame St. Clair entered the trailer, and soft, muted lights sprang to life. The light painted the festive yet brooding interior with a warm glow that achieved the goal of providing a demon or her honored human guest with the aura of comfort and luxury. The plush chaise lounge, where Madame had first sat several years earlier, still occupied the same space beneath the large wooden-framed window. Somehow, it still looked new. The breeze fluttered the yellow curtains, ballooning them outward.

  Her gaze drew her toward the mask she had given the demon woman: pewter-bronzed, embellished with a pattern of maroon-and-gold-sparkled flowers, broad curved brows, a soft golden mouth. The mask was adorned with black feathers at its crown and a silvery tassel dangling on the right side. It was perfectly at home between the masks from the Congo and Zaire. A gift from the New Orleans carnivals of her youth. This small gift had sealed the deal on their first business relationship. It was strange, the things that spirits treasured.

  Madame St. Clair lowered herself onto the lounge, reveling in the luxuriousness of the plush velvet beneath her fingertips. Inhaling the scents of the carnival, the bayou, and the homeland that she had never visited, she exhaled the words that would summon Ahiku—Geneva Broussard, she corrected herself—back to the land of the living.

  “Mo pe awon dudu emi.”

  She was the only living human being who knew how to speak those words.

  It was a language of the medicine women from francophone Africa, a mixture of genetic ancients that some called evil while others, like her, called the advantage that she needed to survive in a world stacked against her.

  Madame didn’t need to look behind the curtain; she never had. When it stirred, Geneva was coming. Soon enough, the drapery lifted and a roiling, thunderous black-gray smoke emerged. It hovered like a thunderstorm trying to decide if it wanted to kick out a bit of rain, churning, spinning. Finally, within the empty space, Geneva Broussard—mistress of the afterlife—coalesced.

  The women regarded each other carefully. It had been years since they had last seen each other in person, though they had spoken. Queenie had the ability to communicate with the spirit world when the need arose; she need only whisper the words. With Geneva’s arrival, the interior of the trailer thrummed to life with the continuous, rhythmic beat of African drums.

  “The queen has aged well.” Geneva smiled, and Queenie found it genuine.

  Queenie stood. “And you, Ahiku, have not aged at all.”

  That earned a chuckle from Geneva. “A gift of committing I made in my youth,” she said. “Sit, sit. I need to settle myself into this body, stretch my legs. How you people live an eternity cooped up in a shell . . .” She waved a hand and stretched, walking back and forth. “Without the relief of the underworld, I don’t think I could bear it as long as I do.”

  “I’ll meet my maker soon enough,” Queenie said. With the difficult deals she’d made, she supposed she would spend more time with Geneva in death than she had in life.

  Geneva rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck. “You have found your nephew in good health and spirit?”

  Queenie leaned back and planted her hands behind her, crossing her legs at the ankle. The demons couldn’t take her before her time; it was always reassuring to tell herself that half-truth. “He is healthy, happy. He has a good position here—”

  “But your herd up north is thinning,” Geneva said, interrupting. “You have come to claim your lamb.” She turned her back on Queenie and made an intricate weaving with her hands. When she turned back, her face had grown stony. “And what if I am not ready to let him go?”

  Queenie kept her face impassive, but this was the moment she had dreaded. She had already committed her soul to damnation in exchange for the powers of persuasion that had kept her largely unscathed in the war for Harlem. The power had insulated her from bullets, deflected knives, and thwarted would-be assassins. The rest—the cunning, the building of the business, the politics—that had all been her doing; the spirit could not take credit for that. And the souls that she and Bumpy had donated to hell’s cause—well, that was an extra tossed in to keep Geneva happy. Apparently, this had not been enough.

  “Your promises are about the only sure thing left to me in this life. Toy with somebody else—I’m tired.” It was a gamble, but that was what she did.

  The demon’s shoulders slumped like those of a sullen child. Her laugh was a horrible sound, like a dying child’s cry, the sound of a hyena’s brutal cackle. “I chose well, dear queen, on our first meeting. I am rarely wrong.”

  Despite herself, Queenie relished the compliment. Now, the next difficult topic. “And what about your enemies? Have you found them all?” Her luck would dry up if something happened to her friend. It was a hard truth she took to bed with her each night.

  The demon edged closer to Queenie and joined her on the lounge. “One still eludes me. Perhaps she is dead already.”

  Queenie doubted Geneva believed that, but hope was a precious thing in a sea of uncertainty. She left the matter there.

  “There is another reason for my visit.” Even though demons could roam, most were territorial sorts, and just like the living, their gossip traveled far and wide. And those who favored Harlem had a story worth shari
ng. “Hear tell those friends of yours, the others like you, I mean. Word is, they are using your lack of progress to amass support against you. Don’t be surprised if one, or all of them, try to make a move against you.”

  “Those insolents!” Geneva seethed and then grilled Queenie for the scant remaining details she had.

  When that business was dispensed with, the old friends settled in like a pair of schoolgirls and traded stories. Only their tales were not of boys and latest fashions, but of grisly murders, artful treachery, and general mayhem in the lands of the living and the dead.

  Late into the night, Geneva whispered a few words, and a fresh blanket, a pillow, even a pair of French slippers appeared on the chaise lounge. “I would conjure an indoor shower and latrine”—Geneva’s voice carried even as she dissolved and moved away on a whisper of smoke, retreating behind the dark drapery—“but there is a limit to even my powers.”

  The resplendent sound of her laughter trailed her back to the underworld.

  Liza sat outside her trailer, back against the stair railing. Jamey arrived wearing a sullen expression.

  “Who is she?” Liza asked, patting the ground next to her.

  Jamey obliged and sat down on the soft grass beside her. He drew up his knees and breathed deeply. “She’s my aunt—my mother’s sister.”

  Liza gasped. The most famous Negro woman gangster in history—as she’d just learned from the others when she’d asked about the mysterious woman—was his distant, yet watchful, second mother.

  “Nobody’s family is perfect,” she said. What she didn’t say was that at least the woman had come to find him; it was like her own family was running from her as fast as they could. “Are you all upset because you think the carnies will judge you for her choices?”

  He stole a look at Liza, straightened his legs, and blurted out, “She wants me to come back to Harlem with her. That’s why she’s here. Folks back in Louisiana, where we picked you up, they told her we had passed through. Didn’t take long to track us down.”

  As soon as the word “Harlem” had tumbled out of Jamey’s mouth, Liza turned to gape at him. Her moldy, forgotten heart had begun tentatively to beat again. Then her eyes turned hard.

  “Well,” Liza said finally. “If you don’t mind going in with a known criminal, I guess it would mean a pay raise for you. But be careful of stray bullets. Don’t bother to write.” She made to get up, but Jamey grabbed her by the wrist—not all that gently.

  “We all got a past,” he said, more gently pulling Liza back down beside him.

  “It’s your aunt—”

  “This ain’t ’bout me.” Jamey kept right on talking but released his grip and kept his hand on top of hers. Liza looked at it like it was a viper. “Whatever happened in your past, maybe you tell me ’bout it one day. Maybe you don’t. Clear to me, though, that whatever brought you to be out there on your own in Louisiana still hurt you. You think anybody get close to you is a minute away from doin’ you harm.”

  Liza stilled her trembling lip. Jamey had seen right through the walls and parapets she’d so carefully constructed around herself. Thankfully, he didn’t look at her. She didn’t want him to see the unmasked pain on her face.

  “Truth is, can’t nobody hurt you like the folks you love. I can’t promise I won’t make you mad or cross at me from time to time. But if you ask me, right here and now, quit dodging around, and ask me to stay, I do promise I won’t leave you.”

  Liza dared not speak right away, or all that would come out would be a pathetic sob. She turned her head away so Jamey couldn’t see the welling tears and made her face as blank as possible. When she met his eyes, everything was clear. He was an earnest man, and it had taken a lot for him to say what he had. She put her hand back atop his.

  “Don’t stay on my account.” She spit the words out quickly and stood to leave.

  He didn’t call after her. As much as she hoped for him to, he didn’t. He was not going to make this easy for her. Only a few steps away, she turned to find him still sitting on the ground, not even glancing in her direction. She cursed him with every step she took back, till she again was with him. She sat in front of him this time but settled her eyes on her fingers in her lap.

  “I wouldn’t be too happy to see you go.”

  Her words came out in a croak.

  Jamey exhaled. “One thing settled.” He pulled at his ear. “Another thing to consider, though. How you feel ’bout coming north . . . with me?”

  Liza blinked. “I—I’ve got a home here. I’m putting a show together. I’ll make my own money for the first time in my life.”

  Jamey stood and held out his hand for Liza. He didn’t say it, didn’t have to, but her little show must have looked like a joke. Queenie offered him a ready-made empire, in a city where a Negro man at least had a chance to make something of himself. Too much to think about.

  “I’ll talk to Aunt Queenie in the mornin’,” was all he said.

  Before Bacchanal, Liza’s life’s work was driven by a spark, the base instinct of self-preservation. It led to the creation and tender care of her self-protective little fortress. But the carnival, her friends, they had shattered it all into a dusty pile of stone. Liza sighed. She felt as if she were stepping outside for the first time in years, able to breathe beyond the walls.

  She stood beside Jamey, absorbed in the boring but aptly diverting task of figuring out whether or not the grass was growing beneath her feet as he talked with the high-and-mighty Madame St. Clair. She wore a beautiful baby-blue silk dress with cuffed three-quarter-length sleeves and a scooped high neck. A matching hat sat skillfully tilted on her head.

  “I’ve made sacrifices for you that you don’t even know about, and I’m not looking for any special favors for doing so.” Queenie cupped Jamey’s face in her right palm.

  “And I appreciate it,” Jamey said.

  “I know you and some other folks around here think you know something about my business.” She turned her gaze on Liza. “But don’t insult me or yourself by thinking that evil only wears one mask. Choosing not to see it, especially when you find yourself right in the muck of it, don’t make it any less real.”

  That last bit made Liza finally raise her eyes. Queenie then turned and settled a gaze on her that made her take an involuntary step back. The look said that she was unwelcome in this conversation, an intruder.

  “She may not know it”—Liza didn’t doubt for a minute who “she” was—“but I know you want more than this. I’ll get you reacquainted with the business and step aside. I’ll be there to help guide you, of course, but what’s mine will be yours. And we both know that you have appetites such that Harlem can more easily accommodate.”

  Appetites. Liza’s temper flared. What kind of appetites?

  When Jamey didn’t utter the decisive “no” that she was expecting, Liza craned her neck to try to get a look at him. In her sideways glance, indecision, a bona fide war on his face.

  “I’ll expect your answer by the time y’all wrap up in Tulsa.”

  Queenie climbed back into the Packard as Liza and Jamey stood shoulder to shoulder again, watching the outline of the car grow smaller until it was no more than a tiny dot. Queenie had given Jamey a kiss on the cheek and a mother’s smile. All she could spare Liza was a barely concealed evil eye.

  Jamey had promised to visit her, to keep in touch. Liza wondered if her anger at that promise had to do with the woman herself, the kind of life she led, or her own jealousy that no matter how small it was, Jamey had a family and she didn’t.

  The next day brought a break from the heat. The wind swirled, tossing dislodged banners and debris, perfuming the air with the scent of a not-too-far-off rain shower. Relief and fear and God knew what else bubbled and burped in Liza’s stomach as she relayed everything to Bombardier and Hope.

  “I am not saying Jamey is a bad man,” Bombardier said while doing one-handed push-ups with Hope perched on his back, her arms held out for balance. The
re wasn’t one ounce of strain in his thunderous voice. “But he is barely a man.”

  Hope huffed and swatted him on the head, and he summarily tilted over and dumped her on the ground. She righted herself and lurched at him, taking a swipe at his stomach. “Don’t listen to him, Liza. ’Sides, she’s still a girl herself.”

  Liza sniffed at that—she was a full-grown woman, just like her friend.

  Dodging Hope easily, Bombardier caught her in a light chokehold. After a largely insubstantial struggle, she nestled into the familiar curve of his arms.

  “Jamey is a sapling. You don’t even know yet what his roots will look like when they stretch and settle,” Bombardier continued. “What you need is a baobab: strong and tested by the elements.”

  Liza rolled her eyes and stalked off.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE SHOW MUST GO ON

  The people of Texhoma, Oklahoma, had been slapped and berated by the backhand of good fortune. Economic hardships had settled into the town a decade ago, an incurable ache deep within the bones. It was an internal wound soothed by promises of relief from the government but cleaved and gouged repeatedly open by blunt-force disappointments.

  Hardship made itself at home on both sides of the racial line. But both communities rallied, definite but separate, in their attempts to help their neighbors. Food, clothing, and homes: all were shared, even as nerves and resources thinned to the point of fraying. But the carnival, any distraction from their daily lives, lifted spirits. And so it was that they swarmed the carnival, ready to spend what little they had to take some of the sting off their poverty.