by Libba Bray
I built them, Marlowe thought with a touch of pride. He was disappointed to think of all his prototypes being destroyed in order to stabilize the breach so that they could capture the King of Crows and harness the power inside the land of the dead for American interests. But in order to build something extraordinary, you often had to make sacrifices.
He could hear Margaret Walker in his head now: You talk all the time about making sacrifices, Jake. But why is it always other people having to put their comfort and lives on the line? What sacrifices have you been willing to make?
Margaret Walker. She never liked him. She never really understood his great plan. Margaret was very smart, but there was only so far she could go. The bloodline, of course. It limited her.
The lightning in the glass dazzled Jake, but there wasn’t enough of it.
More. He needed more.
“Bring in the next Diviner,” Jake said.
The young employee of Marlowe Industries turned a bit green. “Another one, sir?”
“That’s what I said.”
“If you don’t mind my saying, sir…”
“I’m sure I will.”
“It’s just… they scream so much. I-I’ve never heard such screaming.”
“This is unprecedented territory we’re entering. Imagine if you had been driving your wagon across the vast plains to stake a claim that would allow you to establish yourself in this country for generations to come. Well, this is our new frontier. And we must drive our wagons forward, damn the cost.” Marlowe’s enthusiastic smile hardened. “Of course, if you’re unable to complete simple tasks, I can always ask someone else. Many would welcome this opportunity.”
“No, sir. That won’t be necessary.” The employee grabbed the keys for the holding cells. After all, this was a great opportunity in a land that wasn’t quite as full of them as people thought. He wanted to make a name and a fortune for himself. He’d better do as he was told and stop asking questions. At the door, though, the employee looked over his shoulder at his boss. “Mr. Marlowe?”
“Yes?”
“Do you know my name?”
Jake Marlowe stared. “It’s Mitchell, isn’t it?”
“Martin,” the young man said.
“Yes. Martin.” Marlowe smiled. “I see great things for your future, Martin.”
The young man smiled in return, happy to be seen, to be thought worthy. It was a start. He, too, wanted more in the land of more.
“Thank you, sir. I won’t disappoint you,” Martin said.
“Swell. Then bring me the next Diviner.”
HEALING
Outside his family’s tent, Nate Timmons was sitting on the ground with his face buried in his hands. Beside him, Moses and Tobias were uncharacteristically quiet. Tobias had started sucking his thumb.
“What’s wrong?” Memphis asked Remy.
“It’s Bessie. She’s got the typhoid, they say. Floyd, she’s bad off.”
“The Red Cross will help.”
“The Red Cross is taking care of the white people, bon ami,” Remy said.
“I lost everythin’ else. Can’t lose my wife to this flood. Please, Lord, please.” Nate broke down and wept quietly, and the other men turned away out of respect. Moses and Tobias started to cry, too.
“I wanna see Mama,” Tobias said.
One of the other women picked Tobias up like he was her own. “Not just yet, baby. Come. Come play with Maxine.”
Memphis remembered his own mother lying on her bed, dying of cancer. He knew what grief was coming for these boys if their mother passed. He started toward the tent. Bill took hold of his arm. “We have to keep low,” he reminded Memphis sadly.
“She’ll die if I don’t,” Memphis said.
“Sometimes it’s hard to understand the way of things,” Bill said.
Memphis had had enough of the way of things. He shook free of Bill’s grasp. He spoke firmly, clearly: “I can do it. I can heal your wife, Mr. Timmons.”
Nate looked up at Memphis, red-eyed and bewildered. “You ain’t no doctor.”
“I’m telling you I can do it. Just take me to her, all right? Take me now.”
The tent where Bessie Timmons lay was rancid with sweat and sick. Thick breath wheezed in and out of her lungs. She had waded through a flood to come live in a dank tent on top of an eight-mile-long levee with thousands of other refugees. Sometimes, sickness came on like the flood itself, with no way to hold it back. But other times, sickness came about because of the carelessness and unfairness of the world.
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Timmons. I’m gonna do right by you.” Memphis whispered it like a prayer. Memphis had been afraid of being found out as a Diviner with a bounty on his head. Now he had another fear: What if he couldn’t heal this woman after all?
He placed his right palm atop her damp, feverish brow; the other hand he pressed to her rigid belly. The healing power came on so much stronger than before. It reached out and pulled him like a crocodile’s jaws. There was a tight squeezing in his chest, and then the sickness traveled back and forth like a current, from Bessie to Memphis, thinning out each time until it was nothing but a low hum between them. A second jolt shot through Memphis. His whole body felt electric. He was a bird soaring high above the country before it was a country, when it was a quilt of tribes. Down below, majestic buffalo stampeded across the plains, and it was a sight to behold. He felt Bessie’s body healing, growing stronger, could sense that body taking her forward, bearing another child, lifting grandchildren into her arms—even great-grands. Bessie Timmons was going to be all right. More than all right. A third jolt came, and Memphis fell to his knees beside Bessie. His hands shook. The muscles of his arms ached as if he’d been doing push-ups for days.
“Water,” Bessie Timmons said. She sat up. She was drenched in sweat. “Please. Can I have some water?” A bowl of it was fetched and she drank greedily. Outside the tent, families gathered, looking in on the scene: Memphis Campbell, on his knees in the dirt beside the bed of Bessie Timmons, who seemed right as rain. Completely healed.
Moses crept forward. “Mama?”
“That my Moses? Come give your momma a hug now.”
Memphis felt Bessie’s pulse. Where it had been weak it was now steady and strong. She rolled her head toward Memphis. “I… I felt you. Must’ve been a dream. But I could’ve sworn you were with me. But in that place, you had a different name.”
“Fever dreams are funny that way. How you feeling, Mrs. Timmons?” Memphis asked. Lord, but he was tired.
“Fine, thank you. A might bit hungry. But just fine, thank you.”
Bessie smiled at Memphis, and for just a minute he could pretend it was his mother, and that he had healed her and kept her from the clutches of the King of Crows.
“Well. I’m just glad you’re feeling better, ma’am. I would appreciate it if we could keep this a little secret between us.”
“All right. Memphis,” Bessie said, making Memphis go cold. “That was the name I heard.”
“Like I said, fever dreams are funny.”
Bessie chuckled weakly. “Well, you surely are a miracle man. I thank the Good Lord for bringing you to me.”
That night, to celebrate the saving of Bessie Timmons, the refugees gathered around a small campfire to share what food they had. Somehow they’d managed to make a feast of Red Cross rations, and it fed everyone. “Gonna have us a true fais-dodo,” Remy said, and Henry smiled to hear a phrase he knew so far from the home where he’d first heard it. He sat at the rescued piano and banged out all the songs he knew, and then Nate Timmons sat down and showed off his stride piano chops. They sang and danced, and Memphis took note of all of it, how no matter what miseries life threw at people, they managed to make the best of it. But they needed one another for that. Maybe he and the other Diviners—his friends—didn’t know what they were doing just yet. But they would figure it out. Because they had no choice and because they were joined. He watched a grinning Henry banging out a
song on the piano, adding haunting little flourishes and chord changes. He’d never realized what a beautiful musician Henry was, and Memphis felt a joy that his friend was so full of happiness just now. To share a joy was to make it last longer. The women danced and clapped hands. Someone who worked the food tent had managed a pot of coffee somehow. It was tepid, but that didn’t matter. The smell alone was a welcome respite. Strong and chocolaty, it blotted out the stench from miles of fetid floodwater. Bill and Henry passed around cups until all who wanted it had some. It was nearly time for the children to go to bed, though they insisted through their yawns that they weren’t sleepy at all.
“Can’t we have just one more story?” Moses begged. “Floyd! Tell us a story, please?”
“A story, huh?” Memphis said. “All right. All right, then. I got one for you. Who here has heard about Diviners? Okay. All right. Quite a few folks. The rest of you I’m guessing don’t have no interest in hearing about magic and ghosts and whatnot. Maybe I should tell a Bible story instead.…”
The children screamed in protest. They demanded the other story. Memphis held them in suspense for a little longer, fighting a grin. When he looked up, the eyes of all the children were on him. Hopeful. Eager. Something shifted inside Memphis, and the story, his story, began to come out as if it had been waiting patiently for him to tell it. “Once upon a time, there were some friends called the Diviners. They were object-readers and fire-makers, dream walkers and invisible men, future-seers and, yes, healers.…” Memphis told the story of this band of heroes battling evil in the land, trying to right a wrong that had been done many years ago, and of their great foe, the King of Crows, and his Army of the Dead. There was nothing but the night and the fire and the ancient, lasting story of good versus evil, of life and death hanging in the balance. It was a thread woven through all of humankind: this need for story to explain the unexplainable, to comfort the hurting, to promise that no one was alone. Evie’s uncle Will had said there was no greater power on earth than story. And in this shared moment, Memphis knew that it was so.
“And that concludes this episode of… the Voice of Tomorrow!” Memphis said.
The children protested, wanting more.
“Wait just a minute! But what happens after they face the King of Crows? How does the story end?” a boy named Jeremiah asked.
“I suppose that depends on us,” Memphis answered. “We’ve got to be the heroes of our own stories. Sometimes that means reading the past for clues. Sometimes that means peering as much as you can into the future to light the way. Sometimes you got to work where no one can see you until you’re ready to be seen. Sometimes you got to walk in dreams so you know what a dream feels like, so you know the shape of your own longings. Other times, you got to bring the fire of your anger and righteousness! And sometimes, you’ve got to heal the things that are broken or sick. Even when it scares you. Even when you feel like walking away and pretending you never saw the sickness. Don’t need special powers to do any of that. The truth is, the story never ends. It’s always happening. But whether it tips toward evil”—and here Memphis held out a fist—“or good,” he said, offering the other, “well, now. That’s up to all of us. We are all storytellers telling the story, adding our piece.”
Memphis caught Bill’s eye. He expected him to be angry. To rebuke Memphis with a look for telling that story. Instead, the big man seemed moved.
“I’m scared of the King of Crows.” Jeremiah burrowed into his mama’s side.
Memphis looked the boy in the eyes. “You know what heroes do? They pay attention. You be on the lookout for trouble, now. Things you might tell yourself are nothing to worry about. Just your mind making too much of it. It’s like the flood coming through—it gathers strength fast, and then it’s too late.”
“What kinds of things?” Moses asked.
“You wake up in the night because you feel like there’s something near. If you’re out walking and a crow caws nearby three times, like a warning, or sudden mist comes up, making it hard to see, or the sky shudders with lightning the color of a dead man’s eyes. If the hair on the back of your neck stands up and tells you to get moving quick, well, go and get your friends real quick. And if you see an ash-gray man in a tall, tall hat and a coat made of birds, a coat he’s starting to open up to mesmerize you, just… run!” With that, Memphis reached out and tickled Tobias. All the children squealed, then collapsed with laughter.
“Come. Time for bed,” Mrs. Timmons said. She and the other mothers corralled the children toward the tents. The adults thanked one another for the food and Memphis for the story. Old Mrs. Jessup nodded at Memphis. “You know about the man in the hat, do you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Memphis said, surprised.
“Then you know the danger. Don’t let him trap you with the lies inside his coat.”
Memphis, Henry, and Bill retired to their own tent. Before he ducked inside, Memphis took one last look at the sky.
But it was only sky.
“If I’m not mistaken, I could swear you shed a tear over my story tonight, Bill,” Memphis said as he entered the tent and stretched out. He could hear Henry snoring softly.
“You was mistaken,” Bill said. “Go to sleep. Long day tomorrow.”
Memphis turned onto his side, grinning.
Word got around, as word always does, about what Memphis had done for Bessie Timmons. Others began asking for his help, and Memphis obliged: an infected cut here, a feverish child there, a barking cough or some other waterborne illness. What the Red Cross held back, Memphis gave. Day after day, he brought ease to those in need of it. When he returned to his tent later, a handkerchief-wrapped bundle would be left on his doorstep—a ration of bread. A jar of water. A piece of meat. Small thank-yous from the kin of those he’d helped.
The children followed Memphis now wherever he went, especially Moses and Tobias, who saw him as their hero. It made Memphis miss Isaiah all the more.
“Can you show me how to do it?” Moses asked one evening as Memphis, Henry, and Bill shared a supper of beans and bread at a long table with many others in the food tent.
“Don’t work that way.” Isaiah would have a fit making fun of Memphis for not speaking “proper” English. But who got to decide what was proper and not? Tying his words up with “proper” strings made it hard for Memphis to think, hard for him to express himself. The words had to come however the words came, on a tide of feeling.
“You got kids?” Tobias asked, bringing Memphis back to the moment.
Memphis laughed. “How old do you think I am, Shrimpy?”
Moses and Tobias burst into giggles, and Memphis thought about Isaiah’s laugh, which was just about the best sound in the world.
“We gotta get off this levee and on to Bountiful,” he said to Bill and Henry on the way back from dinner.
When they reached their tent, Nate Timmons was sitting in front of it, whittling a stick. He looked very serious.
“How’s your wife feeling?” Memphis asked.
“Better.” Nate kept whittling. He dropped a curl of wood onto the ground. “You’re the one they looking for. Memphis Campbell. The Harlem Healer. The Diviner.”
Memphis’s stomach went cold. Five thousand dollars was a lot of money. Enough to get a sharecropper and his family off this levee and headed up north.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell.” Nate looked up at Memphis not with suspicion or greed, but with a soft pleading. “But you got to be careful, you hear? Word gets back to these white planters like Mr. LeRoy or those National Guard boys, they’ll turn you in quick as a snakebite turns bad.”
That night, as Memphis lay on his blanket on the ground inside the tent he shared with Bill and Henry, he could tell Bill was mad about something. He could hear Henry outside the tent playing that piano and singing, keeping everybody entertained. It was just Memphis and Bill.
Memphis propped himself up on his elbows. “What is it?” he asked at last.
“You don’t
know nothing ’bout your powers, really. None of y’all do.”
“So?”
“So you don’t know if what you got… how long it lasts.”
“I’m fine,” Memphis growled.
“Yeah, you fine, now. Enjoying being the big man on the levee. Memphis, if you use it all up here, what you gonna do when it counts—when you got to heal the breach?”
Memphis had worried before that his power might be finite. He did feel awfully tired after a healing, and that worried him a bit. During the initial phase of a healing, the sickness in the person transferred to Memphis. He could feel it invading his body, and that was often the moment that scared him most: What if he got stuck with that sickness? When Papa Charles had made him heal Dutch Schultz’s boys, Memphis had even gotten rashes and sores.
Back when he was the Harlem Healer, his mother used to say there was no sense hiding your light under a bushel: Whatever gifts you’ve been blessed with, you must share them. There will always be enough. Think of Jesus and the fishes and the loaves. But now Memphis was concerned. What if he needed the healing at some point and it wouldn’t come? Maybe he should hoard the power and use it only for the people closest to him.
So the next day, when word came that the Robinson family would sure appreciate a healing, Memphis said he wasn’t able. It was only a cough; a cough was nothing. No reason to think it wouldn’t get better on its own. He felt lousy about it, though. Because the thought had also occurred to him: What if the secret to his power was in using it? What if, rather than a battery being drained, it was like a muscle being trained, and the more he used it, the better he’d get?
“Henry,” Memphis whispered into the dark of the tent later that night. “Henry.”