by Steph Post
Daniel watched the revelers, for now that’s what they had become, and waited. The smell of wood smoke rising up in the heavy, still air masked the sulfur of the swamp and reminded Daniel of the wicker giant sacrifices at home, so many centuries ago. The dancers were drenched in sweat, from the heat, the fire, the liquor and their continuous movement, but when Madame Celeste came up through the trees behind Daniel and stood next to him, she appeared as calm and cool as he was. She wasn’t surprised to see him.
“You came back. Or didn’t leave.”
Her voice was flat and resigned. Daniel jutted his chin out toward the dancers.
“Quite a party. It’s a little late in the year for St. John’s Eve, isn’t it?”
“I’m sure they will be glad to know you were here. It was a special ceremony for you.”
“Oh, really?”
Daniel turned toward her and smiled. He was enjoying himself now as he tried to decide what to do with Madame Celeste and her little village. Madame Celeste sighed.
“When they saw you walk through the market yesterday, they thought you were Doctor Jin.”
“Doctor Jin? I hadn’t heard of that one.”
Madame Celeste’s face was sour, as if she could hardly keep her distaste for the conversation back behind her teeth.
“Cousin to Doctor John. Doctor Jin is a ghost. A white man who can walk through walls, whose feet never touch the ground. How else could they explain you? Your arrival is supposed to bring them great luck and wealth. That’s what the Night Fire was for.”
“You should have told them I was Papa La Bas.”
Madame Celeste grimaced.
“What, was the ceremony not to your taste?”
Daniel shrugged.
“I’ve seen better.”
Madame Celeste slowly began to shake her head.
“We are a strange group here. This place was built by runaway slaves. Exiled quadroon mistresses. Mixed blood Comanche and Choctaws, run down from the north and the west. Two centuries ago, a ship was commandeered as it was entering the delta and the slaves escaped. They were from the East Indies, not the West, and they came here. They introduced the tattoo needle and many other traditions to us.”
“I had wondered about that.”
“Some follow the ways as I do. They are mostly as old as I am. The rest have been influenced by the hoodoo nonsense coming out of New Orleans. Gris-gris and love potions and get-together-drops. They believe courage can be bought in a vial and evil warded off from a bag of cat excrement. They do not know Bondye and the Iwa. They do not know Legba. And they do not want to know.”
Madame Celeste swept her arm out toward the clearing. Many of the dancers had ceased moving and were now standing still, only swaying slightly, as they ate plates of cold rice and chicken. Those that weren’t eating were passing around the tafia.
“They want this. As you said, a party. They want the fire and the drums and the creature sacrifices, but more for the show of it. Not all, but for many, the old ways are…”
Daniel turned to her.
“Old? You said it yourself, woman. Papa Legba has left you.”
Madame Celeste folded her arms over her chest. She continued to watch her people in the clearing.
“And you have arrived. To take his place?”
Daniel pushed himself away from the tree and stretched.
“Well, the music isn’t really to my taste, but I do love a party.”
“It’s true, what you are wondering. What I told you yesterday was not a lie. I did it.”
Something had changed in Madame Celeste’s voice and Daniel slowly turned around to face her.
“Did what?”
“The girl. The white woman. I did it. I turned her body into a shield. I used the Wanla and the Omi. I used bloods, I used minerals from the other side of the world, left to me by my ancestors across the ocean. Needle magic you know not of.”
Daniel shrugged.
“So?”
Madame Celeste’s yellow eyes began to blaze. Her lips were trembling, but she kept speaking.
“So, there are some things in this world that even you cannot combat.”
Daniel laughed, but she kept speaking. Her entire body was shaking now.
“There are things that are still unknown to you. You gods who eat time. You never look back. Never under, but always over. A century to us is but a blink of an eye to you, yes, but we still have centuries. We still have hidden power.”
“You have the power to give someone a tattoo? I’d hardly say that’s a mythical accomplishment.”
“But it worked.”
Celeste’s throat vibrated and her voice crackled.
“It worked. I know it worked. And you have found her. And she will know. And she will haunt you for the rest of her days. I can see it now. I can see where her path will take her.”
Daniel clenched his fists. He didn’t have time for this babble, for this pretense. He drew himself up to his full height and pushed his face close to Celeste’s.
“You hag. You witch doctor. You conjurer. You have no power.”
He grabbed her by the throat and lifted her up so that she was barely standing on her toes. Her eyes were bulging slightly. Her pointed tongue came through her lips as she laughed at him.
“But she does. And she will use it. It has come to me now. I have seen it. In the sky, in the whorls of the trees, in the sun on the skin of the water. She is a mirror. She is the reflection and the pieces you will shatter. Sharp as a razor’s edge.”
“Liar!”
Daniel roared and released her. Madame Celeste dropped to the ground. She was coughing and gurgling in the mud, breathing with difficulty and unable to lift herself up. Daniel kicked her like a dog, but she kept laughing.
“I have seen it! And you have seen it, too!”
“You lie!”
Madame Celeste lay on her side, holding her ribs, her face still a grotesque mask of mockery.
“You came back tonight because you thought I was counterfeit. That the tattoos on the girl were only charms. You watched this ceremony and you think yourself safe. But you know. Oh, you know, you know, you know it in your dusty ghost bones.”
He kicked her again, but she only laughed louder, her words garbled between the wheezing and cackling.
“You knew it when you first saw her. You knew it when you touched her. You knew, you knew, you have seen it in your dreams, as I have.”
Daniel stepped back from her.
“I don’t dream, old woman. I don’t dream, because I don’t sleep. Because I am a god.”
Madame Celeste spat out a clot. She grinned up at Daniel, with blood smeared across her lips and chin. She caught her breath between every word, but her message was clear.
“Then why are you arguing with me?”
She rolled over on her back and howled. Daniel backed away from her in disgust. He looked over his shoulder at the dancers. No one could hear Madame Celeste’s maniacal laughter over the din of the resumed drums and rattles, the shouts and squeals and occasional smash as empty bottles and plates were thrown into the fire. Daniel looked at the villagers and then looked at Madame Celeste and the fury rose and rose in him like a tempest. It filled his body and his brain and the air around him, swirling like a maelstrom of unrefined rage. He faced the dancers head on and sent all of his wrath out toward them. Then his eyes glowed red as he wrapped himself in black feathers and ascended to the trees to watch.
The first one to react was a woman, who took the glass bottle she had been drinking from and smashed it into the face of the man dancing next to her. He reeled and tried to grab her wrist while feeling for the shards of glass in his face, but the woman dug the edge of the broken bottle into his throat and it was over. Or rather, it had begun. The villagers began to turn on one another, crashing into each other with bottles, plates, rattles, drums and then using their fists, their feet, their nails, their teeth. One of the men picked up one of the wooden benches that had been br
ought out with the food and wielded it like a club. They knocked each other into the fire and the smoke turned oily as the woods began to fill with the smell of singed hair and roasting flesh. When less than ten of the dancers were still standing they collectively turned toward the trees and found Madame Celeste, still rolling in the mud. They fell on her and tore her apart with their teeth. As her laughter morphed into screams, Daniel climbed up higher into the sky. He didn’t need to see anymore. It would be over in a few minutes. They would continue like this until there was only one left and he or she would throw themselves on the flames. The air grew colder around him and Daniel closed his eyes. He didn’t have time to bother with a silly swamp village. He had bigger fish to fry.
Down on the midway, a little boy in his best pressed shirt and only pair of shoes is staring up at me. He is pointing to the pinnacle of the big top tent. The boy tells his mother that a man is holding fire in his hands. He whimpers. He is the only one who sees it coming.
The crowd heard the screams before Ruby did. Their heads began to turn as they looked around at one another, wondering if the sounds were part of the snake show or another show, farther down the midway. Ruby watched their faces and slowed down her dance. Then the screams became louder, the word “fire” discernable, and a stampede broke out. Ruby froze on stage with a snake still around her neck and looked to Jasper, sitting behind the gramophone. Their eyes met for a moment and then Ruby dropped the snake on the ground and leapt off the stage, following the crush of people as they bottlenecked through the front of the tent. She stumbled behind them out onto the midway and into the path of chaos.
At first, it was hard to tell what was happening. The townsfolk appeared to be running in one direction and the carnival workers in the other, and everyone was colliding, pushing and shoving and forcing each other out of the way. Children were howling over the screams and shouts and she could smell smoke in the air, but couldn’t tell where it was coming from. A woman went down in front of her and Ruby grabbed her and dragged her against the side of the tent to keep her from being trampled. Ruby braced the woman by the shoulders and shook her.
“What’s going on?”
There was a terror in the woman’s eyes such as Ruby had never seen before. A blind terror of pure panic.
“My boy is in there, my boy is in there!”
Ruby spun around to see where the woman was pointing and she gasped. The big top. The big top tent was on fire, its roof blazing, the flames crawling down the sides of the tent. Ruby barely noticed that the woman had darted away beneath her hands as Jasper came up beside her.
“Holy hell. Holy mother of hell.”
His eyes had a wild glaze to them and already his face was beginning to darken with the soot and ash wafting through the air. Jasper pushed her hard.
“Get out of here, Ruby. Go!”
Rousties and gamesmen were rushing past her, swinging buckets of water at their sides. For a moment there was the possibility, the hope that it could be saved, that it wasn’t all over, that the fire could be put out, but in the blink of an eye Ruby realized that hope was futile. The fire was too big and moving too fast. A few men were wrapping cloths around their faces and dumping the buckets of water over their heads, but it was soon clear that no one was going in or getting out of the big top tent. The fire had come down like a curtain, sealing the canvas walls. The soaking men couldn’t get near it.
The crowd suddenly grew thicker around her and Ruby realized that the townspeople who had been running down the midway to get away were now running back toward the fire. They were pooling in the corral created by the circle of show tents and were too confused to think of darting behind the wagons to get out to the open field. Ruby caught Gig by the elbow as he raced by.
“Why is everyone coming back? Why aren’t they getting out?”
Gig was carrying a small tin pail filled with water from the fishing game. His face was darkly streaked with ash.
“The gates. The arches. It’s all on fire. It’s all on fire, too. I don’t know how.”
He caught his breath for a moment and gripped the pail tighter. Ruby looked around her, overwhelmed by the maelstrom swirling beneath the Ferris Wheel as people crowded against it. Gig grabbed her shoulder and shook her.
“What are you still doing here? Get out! Go through the field. What’s wrong with you?”
He shoved her and tottered toward the big top, wobbling against the weight of the bucket. Ruby whirled around, but Jasper had disappeared. She looked out into the stampeding crowd, still stunned, but then she heard the creak of the big top as one side of it crumpled to the ground and suddenly her head cleared. She didn’t turn back and run for the field, but charged across the midway toward the cootch tent, pushing people already smelling of singed hair and cotton out of her way. The Girl Revue was on the opposite side of the midway, past the Ferris Wheel and the Whip, and as she ran she tried not to look up at the tower of flames that had once been the big top tent as it collapsed in on itself.
Then everything went still for a moment, as if all of the sound had been sucked out of the air. Ruby looked around, seeing only terrified faces, eyes rolling back like horses, skin already blistered by the heat, buckets, bodies, a useless hose underfoot, and then came the wind. An impossible, raging wind came tunneling down the midway and Ruby dropped and clung to the ground, closing her eyes against the grit and the heat. It howled over her head and Ruby knew that it couldn’t be real, it couldn’t be natural, and in that instant, with the wind ripping at her skin, she remembered the fox eyes in the darkness.
Just as fast as it came, the wind disappeared, but the entire midway was now lost in the blaze. Ruby dug her toes into the dirt and pushed herself up, disoriented by the surrounding flames. Every tent and wagon was burning now and she couldn’t even see the big top, it was only a tower of fire. No one was running with buckets to douse the fire, they were all running away. Only there was nowhere to run. Ruby turned in circles, trying to determine the direction of the cootch tent amidst the pandemonium, still thinking that’s where she needed to go. Still with only one purpose in mind. People were streaming past her, flailing in circles, careening into the ride machinery or each other. Their hair and clothes were on fire, their eyes aflame in white terror against their blackened skin, and their mouths were open and uttering inhuman screams. One of these demons was January.
She fell against Ruby and Ruby caught her and flung her to the ground, beating her chest and head to put out the flames. As soon as she rolled January over, though, she knew it was too late. The skin on half of her face and the right side of her body was sliding off. What was left of her gauzy costume had melted and her voice was bubbling in her throat as she tried to speak. Ruby didn’t know if January could see or hear her, but she held January’s head in her lap and kept calling her name, trying to save her with her voice and her presence. It only took seconds for the light to leave January’s eyes and Ruby threw back her head and wailed like an animal, clutching what was left of her friend to her chest.
And then, through the smoke and the dirt and the tears and the heat and the flames, she saw him. Standing in the center of the midway, with his black suit and his red eyes, with what looked like bones rising up out of his back and arching over his head. His fists were clenched and his jaw so tight it seemed the bones of his face were coming through the shimmering skin. A cloud of sparks swirled around him, but did not touch him. It was Daniel and not Daniel. He was spectral. Ruby saw him and he saw her and though the bodies falling around them both were in flames and the sounds coming from them were bestial and the smell was of burning flesh and hair and dreams, neither Ruby nor Daniel looked away from one another. She cradled January’s head and matched the intensity of Daniel’s stare with her own and she knew and knew and knew. She felt the wind again, whipping, unnatural, and heavy with the same hatred now burning in her core. She closed her eyes against it and the world was filled with fire.
“Piece of pie?”
; Hayden finished stirring sugar into his coffee before looking up. He carefully set the spoon down next to his cup and smiled cautiously at the woman standing behind the counter with the coffeepot still in her hand. Hayden shook his head and removed his hat. She tucked a pudgy hand into her apron and grinned at him.
“You sure? We got banana cream. My daughter made it herself.”
The woman tilted her head toward a red-haired girl with near translucent skin and a swath of freckles across her cheekbones who was standing idly behind the cash register, picking at her nails. The girl blushed and hid her hands behind her back when she saw her mother and Hayden watching her. She edged around the wooden counter and began furiously wiping off one of the three tables alongside the window with a dirty rag. Hayden turned back to his coffee and shook his head again.
“No pie, thanks. Coffee’s fine.”
The woman put her hands on her broad hips and considered her daughter.
“She’s shy, poor thing. Even working here, there’s not too much of a chance to meet folks. Not too many travelers coming this way no more. For a minute there, this place was jumping. Folks headed down to Mobile and Biloxi. Up to Jackson. Going through Napoleon on mill business. People started buying cars and they came whizzing up to the door, scaring the mule teams half to death. I opened this place up after my husband passed some years back. People talked about my meatloaf halfway across Mississippi and into Alabama. And my pie. ‘You got to stop by and try Pam’s pie.’ Everyone said that. Then the Southern Line connected across the state and the mills around here dried up. Anyone going anywhere takes the railroad now and we got no one but the locals stopping by.”
Pam shook her head and finally set the coffeepot back on the stove. She smoothed down her apron and fingered the dark ringlets of hair framing her face. Hayden wrapped his hands around his cup and blew on it. The air in the cramped roadside restaurant was almost as hot as the steam rising up from the coffee. It was just mid-morning, though, and he still had a ways to go. He tasted the coffee. Even with the sugar it was strong and bitter and Hayden hoped it would keep him going. It had been a long week and a half. Pam leaned on the counter and chewed the inside of her cheek for a moment.