by Libba Bray
Evie hurried back to Zarilda. “You have to stop the woman in the scarf. She plans to kill herself.”
“What on earth!”
“Tell her… tell her not to do it. Tell her there’s so much to live for.”
Evie waited nervously for an hour for Zarilda to finish her fortune-telling.
“Well?” she asked when Zarilda emerged for a cigarette.
“You were right, kid. It all came pouring out of her. But when she left my wagon, she seemed lighter. I read her palm.”
“I didn’t know you could read palms.”
Zarilda wiggled her hand and shrugged. “Let’s say I interpret palms. Anyhow, I told her that soon her luck would change, and something new and exciting would come into her life.”
“Is that true?”
“It is if you believe it’s true.”
Evie frowned and Zarilda lit a cigarette. “Oh, look, kid, who can say where hope comes from, huh? Maybe it’s a fella who tells you your dress is pretty. Maybe it’s a picture show you see on a Saturday afternoon. Or the first flower you spy coming up, letting you know there’s spring right around the corner if you just hold on. And sometimes, it might just be a coupla misfit gals working the carny, pulling the con but for good. Folks can think this”—she waved her plump hand with a flourish—“is all smoke and mirrors, but today we gave a woman hope who didn’t have but a lick of it left. Shootfire if that isn’t magic.”
Sam wiped the resin from his hands and went out to look for Evie.
He passed by the stargazer tent. The contraption was really just a glorified kaleidoscope. Sam had always loved those. The line was short and he had a nickel. “What the hell,” he said and waited his turn.
He stepped up onto the orange crate, feeling a little embarrassed to need it, wishing he were taller, and dropped his nickel into the slot. He draped the curtain over his head and peered into the viewing holes. The mechanism clicked. Stars appeared, rotating like clockworks across a night sky. Sam concentrated on making out the various constellations. The stargazer picked up speed. Faster and faster still. Sam had the sensation of zooming into that starry sky, of being pulled deeper into space, of not being able to stop his velocity. His body was melting away. He was losing himself, becoming porous. Tears stung at his eyes but he could not blink, could not look away from all that space, so much like Marlowe’s Eye. Something was in there with him. He could sense its presence. Whispers whizzed past on comet tails. You will forget. The living always do. Stars flattened into points of light, whooshed past like bullets. This land is haunted. All haunted. All are haunted. A scream was building inside Sam, but so was the pressure. It trapped his scream inside him. His mother’s voice: Do not lose yourself to what you see. The thing in there with him was closing in. It was evil. He could feel it. It wanted him. Wanted him with a hunger that frightened Sam. The voices grew louder. We see you. He felt it all around him, nearly touching. He could not let it catch him. Don’t see me, don’t see me, don’t see me, Sam thought, just as the flattening stars on the horizon exploded into a blinding flash of white. A giant mushroom-fat cloud burst up, and everything burned around the edges of the film. Sam gasped and reeled back, rubbing his eyes.
“You okay, mister?” The man behind him in line steadied Sam as he stumbled.
Sam blinked and saw light. He didn’t answer. He staggered out of the stargazer tent, still blinking. On the other side of the Big Top, he thought he saw the King of Crows, his feathered coat fluttering in the wind, and he was laughing. Sam wiped at his streaming eyes. When he looked again, it was only the ringmaster, Mr. Sarkassian, in his top hat and tails, smoking a quick cigarette before heading back inside the Big Top. A minute later, the man who’d steadied Sam came out of the stargazer tent. Sam approached him. “Say, mister—what did you see when you looked into that thing?”
The man smirked. “Just a bunch of stars. Waste of a nickel, you ask me.”
Sam felt wrong. The encounter had slithered under his skin, and he felt that he would infect anybody he touched. Isaiah was running toward him, full of excitement. Sam didn’t want the kid to see him like this.
“Sam! Hey, Sam! I saw the poodle roll the ball all the way across the ring, and then! Then Billy, that’s the goat, he jumped over three rings in a row, and then—”
“That’s swell, kid. Go see the lions. They’re the cat’s pajamas, too,” Sam said, patting Isaiah’s back and brushing past, leaving the kid outside the stargazer tent.
Isaiah was hurt. He’d been excited to share his news, and here Sam had gone and treated him like he was just some kid! The older ones never took him seriously. He was almost eleven! Back home, there were kids his age who were numbers runners and newsies. Why, some of ’em even smoked. He was tired of being treated like a baby.
If he could control his power more, then they’d have to see him as being just as good as they were. But his visions just seemed to show up whenever they wanted to. How did you call down a vision? How did you make it pay attention to you?
Sarah Beth was a seer, like him. Maybe she would know.
Isaiah made his way through the bustling circus. Behind a tent, two clowns practiced a juggling trick. Isaiah peeked into the sideshow wagon and caught a glimpse of Johnny in his cage, teeth bared as he howled at an imaginary moon, making a lady scream. Isaiah needed a place where he could be alone. He snuck into the acrobats’ changing tent and hid behind a trunk.
“Sarah Beth?” Isaiah whispered. He shut his eyes and tried to picture her. Sarah Beth, can you hear me? Sarah Beth… Sarah Beth…
A tingle traveled from his neck to his arms, which stiffened, then relaxed. It felt good, as if he were floating in a warm bath. All he saw was darkness. That part scared him a bit. He didn’t like the idea that there could so much nothing. But then veins of blue light spasmed in the dark, and tiny clouds of jittery, colored light. It reminded Isaiah of shutting his eyes after bright sun and still seeing that light on the backs of his eyelids. Something was coming toward him within the dark. The girl!
“Sarah Beth! I was tryna find you and I did it! I did it!”
“That’s ’cause our powers work real good together.” Sarah Beth smiled. Her teeth were small for her mouth, and Isaiah felt sorry that she didn’t have much of a smile.
“Does that mean our powers will get stronger?”
Sarah Beth nodded vigorously. “Once you get to Bountiful. We’ll work on ’em all the time. Why, we’ll be so strong everybody will be amazed!”
This thrilled Isaiah. He imagined the surprise on Memphis’s face when he showed him what he could do—whatever that was. He imagined his big brother saying something like, Isaiah, today you become a man. Already, he liked that Sarah Beth thought of the two of them as a team. It would be like when the Yankees came from behind and wowed everybody.
“At least they’re not afraid of you. My mama and daddy are afraid of me,” Sarah Beth said. Isaiah thought that was really sad, but he couldn’t tell if Sarah Beth felt sad or mad about it.
“Why?”
“They don’t understand my gifts. They don’t like it none, either. I’m not… normal. Like other girls.” Now Sarah Beth did seem sad to Isaiah. He wished he knew what to say to make her not be so sad.
“Do you really know how to stop the King of Crows?”
She nodded. “I think so. I can’t do it by myself, though.”
“Can you tell me?”
“When you get to Bountiful. It needs to be all of us. He’ll try to keep us apart so we can’t get strong and defeat him. You know what he did to Conor.”
Isaiah did know. Conor was dead, and it was the King’s army that did it.
“Don’t worry, Isaiah,” the girl said.
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. I can tell. Where are you? Why aren’t you here?”
“We’re traveling with the circus,” Isaiah said.
“The circus?”
“Uh-huh. They’re helping us get to Bountiful.”
<
br /> “Oh. I’ll bet the circus is something. I’ve always wanted to see it, but Mama says we can’t spare the time away from the farm. And she’s worried it’ll be too much excitement and I’ll have a fit. I never get to go anywhere,” Sarah Beth said, sounding both mad and sad again.
“I’ll bring you a souvenir!” Isaiah said. He was excited that he’d have something to tell her about that was special.
Sarah Beth’s whole face lit up then. “Well, that’s real nice, Isaiah. Real nice. It’ll sure be good to have a friend. You will be my friend, won’t you, Isaiah?”
“I will,” he said.
She put out her hand, palm up, and Isaiah understood that she wanted to touch their hands together. Softly, he touched his skin to hers. She gasped, and her eyes rolled back in their sockets just like Memphis said Isaiah’s did during a fit. And then Isaiah felt like somebody was squeezing him from all sides, like a tube of toothpaste. He saw so many things, coming hard and fast: A golden machine surrounded by the rays of the sun. Soldiers falling from the sky. The King of Crows opening his coat with the too-bright lining. And Isaiah wanted to see what was there for him. What was waiting inside that coat. But then he was somewhere else. Dust-covered towns still as death. Bone-white bodies glinting in dust. The sharp curve of teeth. Ghosts on the road. An army of hungry dead as far as Isaiah could see, and they were running.
Sarah Beth’s blank face, looking at him. “Are you my friend?”
The sound of water. Water all around. Rising, rising, pulling him down…
When Isaiah came to in the acrobats’ wagon, he was sweated wet. But he was okay, too. Not woozy the way he sometimes was after a vision. He had a new friend, and together they were going to do great things. They would stop the King of Crows.
He couldn’t wait to get to Bountiful.
FLOOD
“This is it! Greenville, Mississippi,” Henry said with relief.
“Remember what I told you now,” Bill warned.
“Mmm,” Memphis said, committing to nothing. He’d already had enough of the South. He wished he were back in Harlem, at the 135th Street Library, talking to Mrs. Andrews, his favorite librarian, or listening to the rumble of the elevated train running the length of Eighth Avenue. The lack of city noise here unnerved Memphis, especially after his bizarre dream on the train. All those insects and nature sounds. He needed the hustle and clamor, the streetside jazz of New York.
“I hope there’s something to eat in Greenville,” Henry said, rubbing his stomach, which growled loudly.
“Then walk faster,” Bill said.
When they reached Greenville, the town was frantic with activity. Crowds swarmed the platform of the train depot. Big men heaped overburdened suitcases and household belongings—mattresses, linens, crates of china—onto trucks. At the banks of the swollen river, other men rolled more of those belongings onto waiting steamers and boats of all kinds. They’d staked their hopes on catching a train heading west out of Greenville. But the sight of that packed depot didn’t fill Henry with hope.
“Pardon me, ma’am,” Henry asked a woman in her Sunday best holding the hands of two well-dressed children. “When’s the next train headed north?
“There are none. This is the last one out of Greenville, and it’s headed to Vicksburg,” the woman answered.
“The last one for how long?” Henry looked down the platform at the sea of anxious people waiting to board.
“Who can say? The river’s already busted clean through at Cairo, and they say Greenville might be next. The water’s rising up near Mounds Landing. If that goes, we’ll flood. Plenty of folks say it’ll be all right. They’re staying put. But, young man, if you don’t already have a ticket for this train, you won’t be getting out. You’ll have to take your chances here.”
“Looks like we’re stuck here for a while,” Henry reported to Memphis and Bill.
“Hey, you. Y’all need to be working.” A National Guardsman with a rifle on his back pointed at Memphis and Bill. “What’re you standing around for? Mr. Percy said every man should be working on the levee. Get over there and start hauling those sandbags,” he ordered and motioned with his gun. “Go on, now.”
Memphis balled his fists. Bill whispered: “We’re wanted men. Remember?” Bill hoisted one of the heavy burlap sacks on his shoulder with a grunt and fell into the line of other men wading through the current to shore up the spots that had been weakened by the deluge. With a grunt, Memphis hoisted his own, struggling under the strain of it. It had to weigh fifty pounds, easy. When Henry reached for one, the Guardsman stopped him. “That’s all right, sir. You don’t have to do it.”
Henry glared. He wanted to punch this man. “If it’s all the same, I’ll work beside my friends.”
He reached down again to lift the sandbag, but he was skinny. His legs buckled from the weight of it.
“Hold it like this. Use your knees,” a tall man in a brown felt hat said. The man was sturdy, with broad shoulders and deep, soulful brown eyes that put Henry in mind of the great actor Paul Robeson. He helped Henry shoulder the weight properly.
“Thank you,” Henry said in a pinched voice. He staggered after the man through the ankle-deep water to the levee.
“Well. That oughta do it,” Henry said, securing the bag in place.
The man who’d been so kind gave him a baleful look. “We’re just getting started. My name’s Nate Timmons.”
“Henry… Smith,” Henry lied. He put out his hand, and after a nervous second, Nate gave it a quick shake.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Smith. You don’t mind my asking, why’re you doing this? You could get on a train or a steamboat.”
“Can you, Mr. Timmons?”
“Nope. They won’t let us go nowhere.”
“Then I’m not going, either.”
Nate regarded Henry curiously, as a man he didn’t quite know how to classify just yet. “Well, Mr. Smith, I surely hope you know how to swim if it comes to it,” Nate said.
“You really think the flood’s gonna come?” Henry asked.
“I surely hope not. But there’s no telling,” Nate said.
All afternoon, Memphis, Henry, and Bill worked to shore up the weak spots along the protective levee. It was hard work filling the burlap sacks with pounds of sand and then carrying those sandbags, pushing them into place. On the other side of that wall, the mighty Mississippi groaned and shoved its weight at their work. Henry had grown up in New Orleans. He knew about floods that threatened Plaquemines Parish and other low-lying areas, but he’d never seen the Mississippi so high, so angry.
“Haven’t seen you before,” Nate Timmons said to Memphis and Bill as they delivered another back-bending load. “Nate Timmons.”
“I’m Bill Johnson. And this here’s my cousin, Floyd,” he said, nodding at Memphis. “And this is…”
“Henry Smith,” Henry said pointedly. “We’ve already met.”
“Real nice to meet you,” Nate said. “You work for Mr. LeRoy?”
“Who?” Henry said, and Memphis flashed him a look that said Don’t give us away.
“Senator LeRoy Percy? He owns most of this Delta. We all work for him. Hear tell, he and his son, Mr. Will, are the ones who won’t let us evacuate.”
“How come?” Memphis asked as he scooped more sand into a burlap potato sack.
“They’re afraid we won’t come back. They call Greenville the ‘Queen of the Mississippi Delta.’ Why, Mr. Al Jolson himself played the opera house. But the money comes from the fields we work. And all the money goes right back to landowners like Mr. LeRoy.”
Memphis listened to Nate’s story and felt his anger boiling up again. He wondered where Isaiah was just now. If he was safe or had found enough to eat. If somebody with a rifle was making him work on a levee. If that man with the gun had an itchy trigger finger. He felt that the worry would drive him mad.
“We’re from New Orleans. Musicians,” Henry said, answering Nate’s question at last, and Memphis was
glad Henry would provide the cover for them.
“Really, now? What do you play?”
“Piano,” Henry said.
“Guitar,” Bill said.
Memphis wiped his brow. “I just came along with my cousin to see the country.”
Nate grunted as he shoved a sandbag into place. “Well. You don’t mind my saying, you sure picked a sorry time to come to Greenville.”
At the end of the day, the men were exhausted and muddy.
“I’m so worn out I can’t even feel my face,” Henry said. “I still have one?”
“You still talking, ain’t you?” Bill jibed.
Nate Timmons invited them to stay with his family in their two-room house out on the edge of town, near where Nate and several other families worked the land. They walked past the railroad tracks and into town to Washington Avenue and Main Street. Nate pointed out the various points of interest—a jewelry store and the printing shop where his friend Gibson worked. There was a grocery store, Joe Now New, run by a Chinese family, and Henry made a note to tell Ling about it later. Memphis’s heart leaped when he saw a bookshop.
“That’s Mr. Granville Carter’s shop. First black man to own a bookshop in Greenville. Fine man. Over there’s the hotel, and there’s Main Street, which goes on for a good long while, all the way out to the white folks’ cemetery.”
“The cemetery,” Memphis repeated with a look to Henry and Bill.
“Yes. Cemetery. Don’t they bury folks where you’re from?” Nate joked.
“Yes. But sometimes they don’t stay buried,” Henry said.
Bill coughed loudly in warning. But Nate just laughed. “Oh, that’s a mighty good one! Here now. We’re coming up on our neighborhood,” Nate said.
To Henry, it felt as if they had crossed an imaginary border, from white spaces to black. From a certain freedom Henry took for granted to a newfound awareness of just how that freedom was assumed or refused.
The Timmons house was small—two rooms with a covered front porch and an outhouse ’round the back where they also kept chickens in a coop. Around a modest supper, Nate and Bessie told their guests about their life working the land in Greenville, about their desire to migrate north—“Got kin in Chicago and St. Louis. There’s good work there.”—and about their fears of a flood.