Bacchanal

by Veronica Henry

  Then Liza swept her gaze to the table directly behind theirs. Zinsa and Efe sat eating and chatting. But it wasn’t their food that drew Liza’s attention; it was the slingshot that Zinsa was fiddling with. Liza had caught only a glimpse of it before, but the slingshot looked like the one she’d seen from outside the red trailer. Efe caught her staring and whispered something to Zinsa, who then turned toward Liza.

  The women finished their breakfast and were leaving the cook tent when they paused at Liza’s table.

  “Did your boyfriend tell you we had to save his hide at that craps game the other night?” Efe said with a smile.

  Liza’s mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. Jamey gambling, playing craps?

  Bombardier pushed back from the table. “A woman who does not even know her own true God-given nature should learn to keep her mouth shut about other people.”

  “Oh.” Efe laughed. “He did not tell you? You know, there were whores there too. Your man has interesting hobbies.”

  The hair on the back of Liza’s neck prickled. A searing blitz of destructive emotion set every pore on fire. A snarl, an inhuman sound, wound its way through vocal cords that were most decidedly human and tore free from her throat. Liza dived across the table and crashed into Zinsa. Her own teeth bared, she found herself trying to go for the woman’s throat. She couldn’t stop herself, but she didn’t have to; Zinsa was incredibly strong and held her at arm’s length.

  Liza felt Bombardier struggle to pull her up. When she had finally gained control of herself, the badger hissed in her mind and then receded. Bombardier shoved Liza and Hope backward, but Liza, still imbued with the badger’s spirit, swatted the strongman’s meaty hand away and came to stand by his side.

  The big man smiled, but the look in his eye told everybody he wasn’t playing. “You looking for another fight? I’m your man.”

  The women ignored Bombardier. Zinsa knelt and picked up a rock. She positioned it in the slingshot and shot the rock at Liza’s feet. “Watch where you stick your nose, dog trainer.”

  “I don’t need you to fight my fights,” Liza said to Bombardier, and she meant it. Though with the badger’s presence seeping away, a knot of fear twisting in her gut pulled tauter with every breath. How could something so easily take over her body? A presence that ignored her will and acted completely on its own? It reminded her of—

  “Ain’t nobody gone be doing any fighting.” Ishe ambled up like he was out for a summer stroll. He walked right between everybody and took a seat at the bench. “If you ain’t gone finish these here eggs?” He held up the plate, and when nobody said anything, he started eating and then held up an empty cup, as if hoping somebody would come and fill it.

  Zinsa and Efe actually looked a bit taken aback. Zinsa laughed. “As you say, night hunter.”

  The cup struck the table with a clatter. “My name is Ishe.”

  They all settled back at their tables, another crisis averted. Ishe and Hope and Bombardier chatted, but Liza could focus only on how quickly and easily the badger had . . . had it come to her rescue? Had it instigated the fight? She stared at Ishe’s profile. Was she like him now? Was that Oya’s “gift”?

  She couldn’t shake that she’d liked the feeling. Powerful. It was almost as if she’d watched from a corner of her mind while her animal spirit had done its will. Mama didn’t tell me everything. There’s more to her, to me. So much more.

  I’ll have to learn to control it. If Ishe is right, my life may depend on it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  RECKONINGS

  The woman stood at the parlor entrance, rigid and worn as the lone faded sofa.

  Her fists curled with indignation—weapons she sometimes wielded, though she favored a good sharp slap or three. The sinful child sat in front of the radio—her radio—listening to that Little Orphan Annie show. Her face upturned and bewitched as if she were receiving the holy word of God instead of that wicked rabble-rousing nonsense. May as well have been the devil himself speaking right there in her own home!

  “I’ll tan your hide and good this time.”

  The girl scuttled up and backed into a corner as her mother tore into the room and silenced the radio. At the barely audible click, the girl’s expression crumpled. “No, Mama. Please. I sure am sorry.”

  “Lord willing, you’ll learn to mind me.” She moved to the fireplace mantel and opened the velvet-covered box that rested there beneath a simple wooden cross and a portrait of Jesus. The switches had been freshly plucked earlier that week, cleaned and saved for such an occasion.

  The child bawled in earnest now. Good.

  “Cursed is he who dishonors his father or mother.”

  Swoosh. Satisfaction swelled and burst as she delivered the stinging blows with an efficiency born of devoted practice. Hers was the Lord’s work, after all.

  After, they shared a dinner of boiled potatoes. The girl squirmed and winced with every bite, and a curious pang of guilt gnawed at the woman. She gave her an extra potato, one of the small ones, from her own plate.

  “It’s the last night.” The girl didn’t look her in the eye; that much she’d learned. “You said that you might take me to the carnival.”

  She had no intention of doing any such thing, but that curious inkling nudged her again. The woman reluctantly agreed, if only to have something to criticize later.

  “One hour, less if you ask me for anything.”

  The handful of stilt walkers who mysteriously appeared were in full force, taking wide steps around the midway. A ragtime band belted out the latest tunes from the speakers.

  Liza felt a chill run down her spine as she spotted the skeletal stilt walker from the red trailer. It passed her without a glance.

  She averted her eyes and ducked into her animal tent.

  “I said I wanted to separate these out, move this row of benches along the right wall,” Liza snapped at Uly, who had been bent over, nuzzling Sabina beneath her chin. She tugged at her uniform, which pinched and chafed in all the wrong places.

  Uly looked momentarily stunned but soon recovered. “What’s with you? You and that lackey you gone all sweet on have a fight or something? You haven’t even been around here as much. You spend all your time with him. And don’t think Sabina and Ikaki don’t know it too.”

  Liza glared, and it crossed her mind to send a pack of wolves to his throat. “First it was me, now you’re jealous that Jamey has a brain? That he works with Clay?” She didn’t have time for this. She’d been avoiding Jamey since he’d dropped that bomb, but Uly didn’t need to be prying. “That’s sad.” She grabbed one end of the long bench in front of her stage and started dragging.

  Uly moved as if to help her, then stopped himself. He muttered something about “crazy women” and stalked out of the tent. Liza maneuvered the bench into place and then went to tend to the animals, but already the barker was at it out front. And so was the sweet sound of coins falling into the collection box. Sabina and Ikaki eyed her suspiciously. It was true: she’d been avoiding them, too, as the spirits inside her had jostled for attention.

  The stands and benches were filling up. A woman caught her eye. No, it wasn’t so much her as the little girl with her. That sadness. Theirs must have been about as happy a home as her own was. Liza retreated behind the curtain and tried the breathing techniques Malachi had taught her. The method stilled her nerves, but images of her animal guides—all vying for attention—rushed right in. She clasped her hands to her head and begged them to go away.

  Uly, who had grudgingly returned, peeked his head backstage. “What?” He was looking around, as if he expected someone else to be back there.

  “Nothing,” Liza said. Her face relaxed. “And I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “Some kinda trouble with Jamey’s aunt?” Uly asked without a bit of laughter in his voice. But he did look away. “My ma and . . . well, I got five sisters.” He seemed to want to delve deeper into the matter but didn’t. “You’re on, kid.”
He disappeared out front.

  Liza smoothed her clothes, plastered a smile on her face, and emerged waving to the crowd. She bowed, thanked everyone for coming, and got set to begin the show with Ikaki. She pointed at Uly to cue the music. In the back, he set the needle on the phonograph, and the classical music selection they’d agreed on filtered out and around the tent. She shivered as the mental connectors locked into place. Before she could press on, the inexplicable screech of a raven hacked through the connection like an ax through a sapling. A few mumbled curses later, she refocused and floated an image to Ikaki to begin the dance they had been practicing, the new one to the music they’d requested.

  Only, the turtle sat mute with their back turned to her. Ikaki looked out at the crowd, lifting their head out of the shell, inspecting the patrons as if they were the performers instead of the turtle. Liza’s smile faltered, and she tried again.

  Ikaki turned to her and, at once, pulled their legs and head into their shell. The shell spun round and round a few times and then stopped. The crowd had begun to grow uneasy. Curious glances were exchanged, and a slight grumble circulated from ear to ear.

  Under her breath, Liza cursed Ikaki and promised that they wouldn’t have their precious bean sprouts for a week. They wouldn’t even send an image back to say they were sick or tired or any indication of what was wrong. But when she turned to Sabina, the Tasmanian tiger was quick to show her anger. She suffused Liza’s mind with an image of Uly’s dejected face after she’d snapped at him. Next, Sabina transmitted a scene of Liza with her back turned on the animals.

  Liza fumbled together an image of apology and shot it across their connection—too late. Sabina sank onto the platform and began licking her fur. Neither the tiger nor Ikaki would communicate with her.

  “Show’s over!” Liza called.

  Uly’s mouth dropped open, but he sprang into action. He turned off the music and said, “You heard her, this show’s done. Come back to the late show.”

  “I want my money back!” a patron yelled.

  “This is a crock!” came another.

  Uly went to try and hustle them out of the tent amid other angry cries.

  An apple hit Liza in the back of the head, stunning her. Sabina apparently forgot her own irritation with Liza and bared her fangs. The tiger leaped from the stage, tearing out of Liza’s grasp to sink her teeth into the leg of the man who had thrown the apple.

  People screamed and tore out of the tent. Liza and Uly tried to get Sabina off the man, whose trousers were now soaked with blood. Eventually Clay appeared in the doorway after they had calmed Sabina and put her back in her cage.

  “I’m shutting you down for the night,” Clay said, helping to carry the man from the tent. It would likely take a hefty sum to quiet him.

  “Why, I ought to tie her up to a tree and give her a good whippin’,” the man spat at Liza.

  She planted her fists on her hips in invitation for him to try it, but Clay intervened. “Now, I won’t be having any of that. Let’s get you outta here.”

  He shot a look of annoyance back over his shoulder at Liza as he shuffled the man from the tent.

  She sank to a bench, and Uly patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.

  The man could walk. Clearly if the tiger had wanted to hurt him more, she could have. But that didn’t stop him from milking Clay for all he could get. In the end, it cost him ten dollars, and as they’d all spilled outside Hope’s trailer, she’d offered the promise of a free card reading the next day.

  “You better have a talk with that friend of yours,” Clay said, taking a seat beside Hope on the stairs of her trailer. The commotion had scared away most of the customers.

  “She’s got a lot on her mind,” Hope tried to explain. “Cut her a little slack.”

  “She better have her show on her mind come showtime,” Clay answered. “What she worries about outside a that, I don’t care.”

  The two sat in companionable silence for a time until Hope asked, “You ever think about what you would do, you know . . . if we didn’t have Bacchanal?”

  Clay hoped he’d be dead and gone by the time the carnival ended. He took off his hat, fiddled with the brim. “I don’t think much more than a day or two ahead of me,” he lied. Eventually, Geneva’s strange tastes would catch up to them all. “’Sides, why wouldn’t a carnival survive? Folks need entertainment more than food.”

  He tried to hide the doubt in his eyes. Hope gestured with her head. “Wanna see what the cards say?”

  “Naw.” Clay stood but still didn’t walk off.

  “You don’t believe in this stuff noways,” Hope said, standing and turning to walk up the short set of stairs. “Come on, what could it hurt?”

  Clay squeezed his hat in his hands and followed her. Hope settled behind her table and waved him into the seat in front of her. She took up the cards and shuffled them. Spreading them out, she asked him to pick out five. She took his selections and laid them facedown in front of him. She turned them over one by one. The first, a crowned and bearded man sitting on a stone throne and holding a scepter.

  “The Emperor,” Hope said with a sigh. “Why am I not surprised? A wise and knowledgeable leader. Strict. A creator of order from chaos. And lots of other stuff you probably already know. Hmm,” she murmured, turning the next card. “The Hermit.” A wizened and robed old man stood grasping a lantern and staff. “You do like to be alone. Introspection. You’re looking for meaning for yourself.” Hope paused. “And all this.”

  The next card featured a man balancing two circular objects that looked like gold coins caught together in a long band.

  “The Two of Pentacles. Right now you’re juggling things well, but change is coming.” Turning over the next card, she proclaimed with a smile, “The Knight of Wands. Rides in with his shining armor, straddling a great mare. Shows your courage.

  “And last we have . . .” She turned the last card and frowned. Beneath a black sky, a man lay on the ground dead from the ten swords sticking out of his back. She looked at Clay.

  “What?”

  “The Ten of Swords.” Hope blinked. “All that take the sword, it has been said, shall perish with the sword. This card foretells an unexpected disaster. Some power that is going to humble you. Whatever happens, it will be final. But the sun will rise again.”

  Clay sat staring at her. He gulped. What he had been doing might catch up to him, or maybe it wouldn’t. The damned cards didn’t give any real answers. “Well, ain’t that the same for everybody?”

  Hope inclined her head. “This card, together with the last, means you are making a conscious decision.”

  Clay pushed away from the table. “Yeah, well. Guess we all got choices.”

  When Clay left, Hope gathered up the cards and wondered about her own choices. The one that grated most: the decision she and Bombardier had made to leave their son in Baltimore.

  They’d met at the hotel in the city. She did the backbreaking work of cleaning the rooms, and Bombardier helped to tote the luggage of the rich, the criminal, and the famous.

  He had not been a shy man, even then. His tongue wielded his strongly accented French English and Wolof like an invitation to a world in which he was the center, the light, the opening and closing attractions. He’d fallen in easily with the other men, while she—the American—was seen as the strange one. But it was his smile, his deep throaty laughter, that had won her over.

  It had taken time to learn to control her gift, and sometimes, when the visions came to her, she’d blurt out questions or make remarks about things she shouldn’t have known. All it took sometimes was a touch, or the passing scent of an earthy body odor. In truth, the cards were a cover. When people picked them, their story was usually more or less laid out. Being from Africa, she guessed that Bombardier was a bit more used to the supernatural than some of the northern Negroes who had the same roots but worked overtime to forget them. When the other men warned him about talking to her, he only grinned his gr
eat grin, waved them off, and promptly asked after her parents and when he could meet them.

  Their courtship was not long. There were no flowers, no series of midnight strolls and stolen kisses . . . well, there was that one night in room 1206. Bombardier had regaled her parents with stories of life in Senegal: his village and move to the city; the art of laamb. He even demonstrated some of his wrestling moves with her younger brothers. After that first visit, his appearance at Sunday dinners became regular. Within six months, they’d been married and were living in a little room not far from the hotel.

  Their little light, Bombardier Jr., was born the next year, his crib pushed into a corner of their now-overcrowded room. Hope’s parents doted on the baby, her mother keeping him while they both worked long hours. But they were happy.

  Her father got sick and died practically before they could figure out what the trouble had been. He was a heavy smoker and had been complaining of breathing problems. He sat in the emergency room at Provident Hospital. The doctors and nurses were mostly Negro and did the best they could, but the place was understaffed. A white administrator had finally come out and pronounced her father dead on the floor. Her brother had lunged at the man and landed a few good blows before the police dragged him away.

  The little savings they all had went to getting him out of jail, but not before the authorities had beaten him into a mental corner from which he had never emerged. It nearly broke her mother. Hope believed that if not for her new grandson, her mother would have curled up in bed one night and gone on to join her husband in the afterlife.

  Not five months later, Hope had been cleaning a room that was in tatters following a night of ill repute from two shady-looking characters and the lady friends she guessed were prostitutes. She had finished cleaning her last room and was on her way to meet Bombardier outside so that they could go home. Through the revolving door, the two men came racing after her, along with the manager.

  “I tell ya, the wench stole my money.” The red-faced, disheveled man pointed a finger at her.