As his chauffeur piloted him back downtown to Cotton Row, he looked out of the Cadillac’s opera window and thought of the old times before Kennedy and Johnson, the real Southern Democratic times, and of all those humid Memphis summers when blacks had been paid what they deserved and nothing more and when there had been parties and festivals and the ladies had worn their white dresses and he and all those cotton-wealthy friends of his had danced and drunk and flirted with the prettiest girls. They had played real blues on Beale Street in those days, real dirty blues, not the homogenized honky-tonk they played now at the Old Daisy Theater. There had been no Mud Island recreational centre then, no shopping malls, no Swiss monorails, no bistros. Elvis Presley had been a young trucker and Waverley Graceworthy had been the prince of Memphis.
Hot, dirty, squalid, exciting days, long gone by. Just as Ilona had long gone by and left him, and eventually died.
He never spoke her name these days, although he had promised himself he would, every single morning when he first awoke. It hurt too much, and that was the extraordinary and distressing part about it: that instead of forgetting her gently as the years went by, the pain of losing her had become increasingly acute, until some days it was almost intolerable. He knew why, of course, although he would not always admit it to himself. He understood his own psychology very clearly but he preferred not to face up to it. If he faced up to it, he would have to question the intensity of his anger and the veracity of his vengefulness, and the truth was that he actually enjoyed feeling vengeful, he derived pleasure from his rage. He was a man of exceptional cruelty because he understood his cruelty, what caused it and what could cure it.
He and Richard Reece were perfect partners because Richard Reece was cruel without knowing or caring why. They could admire each other’s heartlessness while admiring each other’s extraordinary mentality. Richard Reece was awed that Waverley could instruct him to do what he did. Waverley was awed that Richard Reece could actually go out and obey him.
Jimmy the Rib was about to discover the perfection of their partnership, for just as Waverley’s limousine was turning into Linden Street, Jimmy was awakened in an apartment on Tutwiler Street, where he had inadvertently spent the night, by a furious knocking on the bedroom door.
‘Who that?’ he called out. He sat up in bed, dragging the rumpled sheets around himself. That you, Linda?’
The knocking was repeated, more violently than before. Jimmy the Rib shuffled across the bed and reached down to the floor for his shirt and pants. He was worried now. He had spent the night with Linda because she had invited him to and because she had wanted to share the fresh white snow he was carrying; nothing immoral had happened apart from Linda’s dancing around the room to the heavy thumpings of Z.
Z. Top, flopping her bare breasts up and down in her hands and giggling sweet and high. But Linda’s lover, Earle Gentry, might not see the situation that way, even though Linda had gone to work hours ago and Jimmy the Rib had been left here snoozing the day away in gloriously fetid isolation.
‘Who that?’ Jimmy the Rib repeated, struggling into his pants and hopping across to the brown-painted dresser where he had left his long-bladed knife. ‘That you, Earle?
Why you knocking like that?’
The knocking abruptly stopped. Jimmy the Rib stopped too, halfway across the floor.
Linda’s apartment was on the wrong side of the building to catch the sun but a bright, cheeselike slice of reflected light hovered on the floral wallpaper and touched the tip of Stevie Wonder’s nose on the poster opposite. Linda thought that after ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You,’ they should have stopped writing songs altogether. As far as she was concerned, that was the definitive song. ‘Makes me shuddah,’ she claimed.
Jimmy the Rib stepped nearer to the door. ‘Anybody there?’ he wanted to know.
Sweat glistened on his jet-black forehead and in the concave dip of his breastbone.
Around his neck he wore a crucifix, an ankh and good-luck talismans from almost every religion known to man. He ran his tongue around his big yellow teeth and gave his dry, thumping sniff.
‘I said, is anybody there?’
The reply was earshattering and spectacular. With three systematic kicks, the door was smashed off its hinges and it crashed inwards, flat on the floor. Jimmy the Rib danced backwards and reached for his knife, hissing between his teeth, OK you mothers, you wait until you see what you up against here, Jimmy the Rib, okay, only the fastest, meanest, least-kindly knife artist east of anyplace at all. But that first confident surge of aggression and power died away like a run-down gramophone when three tall, broad-shouldered men stepped into the room, their faces covered with ice-hockey masks. One of them was carrying a sawed-off shotgun. The second was carrying a bale of wire. The third was twanging a coarse-toothed logging saw against the open palm of his hand.
‘What you dudes want?’ Jimmy the Rib demanded fearfully.
The men said nothing but surrounded him. The shortest of them was almost four inches taller than he was, and all of them were far more heavily built. Jimmy the Rib could hear their harsh breathing behind their masks.
‘What you want?’ Jimmy the Rib repeated. ‘Who sent you here? This is some kind of a mistake, huh? Is that it? Some kind of a error? Maybe somebody got their lines crossed. I mean, what is this, breaking the door down and all? This ain’t even my place, man. Hey, this some kind of a telegram maybe? A Scare-U-Gram or something?’
The man with the sawed-off shotgun nudged Jimmy in his bare belly with the muzzle and directed him towards the bed. Jimmy retreated step by step until at last he was forced to sit down.
‘You touch me, you guys, and I warn you, I’ve got friends. I’ve even got friends in the police department.’
But the men took no notice. They put down the saw and the bale of wire and then they forced Jimmy’s arms over his head and wired his wrists to the head of the bed.
Jimmy sweated and grunted and wriggled, but the men were too powerful for .him and he was too afraid to mouth off any more. The man with the sawed-off shotgun kept the muzzle so close to Jimmy’s nose that he could smell the oil. Besides, these men did not look like humourists. The wire cut into Jimmy’s skin and the harder he struggled, the more painfully it bit. He gritted his teeth and grunted, but the men remained silent.
‘You guys making some kind of mistake here,’ Jimmy protested. ‘Believe me, I didn’t even touch that woman. We was snorting coke, that’s all. And maybe we danced a little, but I didn’t even touch her.’
Still there was no reply. Jimmy found the lack of response unnerving. He was a hard man himself; he had stabbed both men and women without any compunction. But he had never met anyone as cold and as uncommunicative as these masked men. You killed because you were angry, right? You killed because somebody had done you wrong, insulted your woman, stolen your money, totalled your car. But you always let your victim know what you were doing, and why. At least Jimmy the Rib did. And that was why these silent, faceless men terrified him. They were going to do something bad, there was no question of it, but he didn’t know what, or why, or even who they were.
‘I got some money, all right? You understand that? I can pay you off. How much is it going to take? A couple of thousand each? I can manage that. Maybe two thousand, how does that sound?’
It was then that two of the men seized Jimmy’s ankles while the third man, the biggest, picked up the coarse-toothed saw. He stared down at Jimmy through the slits in his mask and shook his wrist so the blade of the saw rumbled and sang.
With a dry mouth, Jimmy asked him, ‘What you going to do to me? What you going to do with that saw?’
Without any further taunting, the man grabbed Jimmy’s right thigh and drew the teeth of the saw across it, tearing through the black cotton of his pants, through black skin and scarlet flesh. Jimmy shrieked and yanked against the wires that held his wrists.
‘My legs, man! Not my legs! For Christ’s sake, man, not my legs!’
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He screamed and screamed, but the people in that building on Tutwiler Street were the kind of residents who kept themselves to themselves, and even if a husband was strangling his wife in the next-door apartment, they would not come out, except later to see the body as it was wheeled along the hallway. Yelling as hideous as Jimmy the Rib’s meant real trouble and so they turned up their televisions, double-locked their doors and wondered how serious it was going to be.
Because, Jesus, that man was screaming like you never heard anybody scream before.
Jimmy the Rib was blind with pain, deafened with fear. Every now and then he jerked his head up to see what the big man was doing to him. The teeth of the saw were rust-red with blood, and there was blood splattered all over the bed, and when the teeth had at last torn their way through fat and muscle and cut right down to the bone, there was a hideous ripping vibration that went all the way through Jimmy the Rib’s pelvis, up his backbone and into his brain … and he went on screaming and screaming and praying for the sawing to stop.
But he did manage at last to say through ash-grey lips, ‘Not the other one, man. Leave me with one. Please, not the other one.’
But the man with the saw walked around to the other side of the bed so he could take hold of Jimmy the Rib’s other leg.
Jimmy was beyond screaming now. He lay back and his eyes filmed over like a sleeping crow’s. All he could think of was agony and of how he wasn’t here at all; he was back home with his mother in days gone by, his sister Juliette’s birthday, that must have been the nicest day he ever had, all those years ago, before he started running with the teenage gangs. He could see the candles shining on his sister’s birthday cake, shining and wavering in the draught that blew in through the screen door. Momma, dear Momma, why did I let you down so bad? Me and that skunk of a father of mine.
‘Not the other one, man,’ he hissed between bloodied lips, his tongue bitten through.
But he could hear the saw rasping even if he couldn’t feel it now, and he could hear the sound of sirens somewhere outside, and birds singing, those birds that always nested in Linda’s roof.
If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk, Married men would have to take up their beds and walk, Except one or two, who never drink booze, And the blind man on the corner who sings the Beale Street Blues.
The man lifted up Jimmy’s second severed leg. Jimmy stared at it and then said dully, ‘You done crippled me, man.’
The man shook his head.
‘You done took my legs off, man,’ Jimmy insisted.
But he had missed the point. The man had done more than cripple him. The bed was already dark with blood as both femoral arteries flooded onto the sheets. Within ten minutes Jimmy the Rib would bleed to death.
The three men left the apartment. He heard their feet on the stairs. He lay back, his wrists still wired to the head of the bed, and tried to think of what he could do. He knew his legs were gone but he could not really believe it. He could still feel them, and they hurt. Maybe, if he could work himself free, he could limp down the hall to the telephone and call his friend Morris. He knew Morris would drive over and help him, even if nobody else would. Morris was cool.
Time went by. He opened his eyes and tried to figure out whether he had been sleeping or not. He thought he heard voices but he could not be sure. Then he heard someone shouting, and a woman calling her children, again and again, so repetitively that it began to irritate him. The cheese-shaped slice of sunlight gradually grew thinner and then faded altogether. Linda had always complained of how dark her apartment was, you had to switch the light on at four o’clock.
A white face appeared above him like a Hallowe’en lantern. A blurry voice said, ‘Is he dayud, what jawl thayunk?’
Jimmy the Rib opened his eyes wide and said, ‘I ain’t dead, man. I’m only resting,’ and the white face let out a horrified yell and disappeared.
Jimmy smiled, just a little, but he was lying again. The last minute of his misspent life ticked away and he was gone. The white face came back and after a long pause said, ‘He’s dayud oright. You cain’t fewl me. That’s one dayud nigrah.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They stood in a close, silent group at the far end of the United Airlines freight hangar, watching with sad attention as the hearses drew away from the cargo hold of the recently arrived 767 outside: four hearses, black and gleaming with wax, with silver crests and black-feathered plumes fluttering on their tops, a solemn procession to carry home the martyred family of Randolph Clare.
They said nothing to each other as the hearses approached and drew up beside them, and the vice-president of Arjemian & Prowda, Morticians, tall and serious in his black suit and his black fedora hat, stepped out of the leading hearse and approached Randolph with five or six different expressions of sympathy: the lowered head, the raised chin, the eyes dropped sadly to one side, the brave but understanding frown.
‘We shall take the remains directly to the home of rest,’ he said. ‘I gather from your personal assistant that you have no desire to view them.’
Randolph glanced at Wanda, who was dressed in a black tailored suit and a black veiled hat. Wanda, who had been talking to Dr Linklater, had gently tried to persuade Randolph that he ought to view the bodies. The morticians, after all, would have carefully disguised most of the traces of what had happened to them. The most important point, though, was that if Randolph were to view the bodies, he would at last be forced to come to terms with the fact that his family was actually dead. At the moment, Dr Linklater was concerned that this reality had not properly sunk in and that sooner or later Randolph was going to suffer a damaging psychological crisis.
Neither Dr Linklater nor Wanda could possibly have understood that Randolph had declined to view the bodies for the simple reason that he expected to see Marmie and John and Mark and Issa alive, or at least spiritually alive. These four black caskets with their silver handles contained nothing more than the physical likenesses of the family who had left him, nothing more than their earthly shells. It was easier for him to believe in Dr Ambara’s philosophy of reincarnation if he did not see them. It was easier to believe that they were still breathing, talking, living, laughing. Not here of course, but somewhere, and not too far away.
Wanda said, ‘You’re sure? It might be a way of saying good-bye/
‘You’re beginning to sound like Dr Linklater,’ Randolph replied, although not accusingly.
The mortician raised his eyebrows interrogatively at Wanda, who shook her head.
‘Very well,’ he said, bowing in reluctant acceptance. ‘But I can assure you, Mr Clare, that your loved ones received the very finest attention.’
‘I’m sure,’ Randolph said, although he thought to himself with a sudden, agonizing spasm of grief: Marmie, my darling.
The four hearses were driven out of the hangar into the sunshine. Randolph watched them go and then beckoned to Herbert to bring the limousine around and drive him to the funeral home. Neil Sleaman, who had made a point of staying in the background, stepped forward and said, ‘Would you like me to come with you, sir?’
Randolph shook his head. Td rather you went back to Front Street and took care of that consignment from Levee Cotton. And could you see what progress they’re making out at Raleigh? They seem to be dragging their feet.’
They had some trouble with the refrigeration system,’ Neil explained. His forehead was beaded with perspiration and there was a dark sweat stain on the front of his white shirt. The temperature was ninety degrees in the sun and the humidity was eighty-seven per cent.
Randolph said almost offhandedly, ‘I may be taking some time off. Not too long, nothing more than a week. But we’re going through crucial times here, Neil, and I want you to understand that if you can hold things together for me, if you can get us back on line … well, you’ll reap the rewards of whatever you’ve done.’
Neil smiled tightly and said, ‘Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.’
Neil said, ‘Surely, no problem. But if it looks like it’s getting complicated, I’ll refer him to you.’ Then he hesitated for a moment and finally said, ‘Are you thinking of going away, Mr Clare? I mean, are you thinking of leaving town for a while?’
Randolph said, ‘I’m not too sure yet. I won’t know until after the funeral. But you know this has all been pretty much of a shock. I think I would be doing a disservice to everybody at Clare Cottonseed if I went on working and pretending that I hadn’t been affected. Of course I’ve been affected. My wife and my children were just driven out of here in funeral cars. So the best thing I can do is to give myself some time off …
not too long, but long enough to come to terms with what’s happened.’
Neil took Randolph’s elbow and gripped it uncomfortably tight. ‘Sure,’ he said with over-effusive familiarity. ‘Sure, I understand. And you just leave Orbus Greene to me.
No problem. If he was as smart as he was fat, huh? That would be something.’
‘Yes,’ Randolph agreed. That would be something.’
Wanda was silent during most of the drive along Elvis Presley Boulevard as they headed towards the funeral home. Randolph sat back in his seat, half-closed his eyes and tried to think of Marmie and the children, but somehow the reality of downtown Memphis kept intruding -the streets and the buildings and the traffic - and he was more aware of Wanda’s perfume than he was of his memories. As they drew up before the traffic signals at Linden, Wanda said, ‘You didn’t tell me you were thinking of going away. Did you decide that this morning?’
‘More or less. Let’s just say that a very good friend made it sound like an attractive idea.’
Death Trance Page 17