The Amulet

by Michael McDowell

  The pendant felt just a little heavier than was entirely comfortable over Rachel’s breast but she considered, as she looked into the mirror, that it became her marvelously. She sighed, and thought the unexpected acquisition a very happy one. In the mirror she caught the reflection of the clock behind her, and realized that she was a little past her time and that she ought to be downstairs already, get­ting supper together. She reached back around her neck, intending to take the amulet off, but could not find the catch. She pulled the chain all the way around looking for it, but the thing appeared to be made of uninterrupted links. She could not pull it over her head. She laughed at herself, blaming her slight grogginess for her momentary blindness and told herself that she would take it off after supper.

  She opened the bedroom door, and the whole house seemed to sigh in relief. Suddenly, from down the hall, several small voices began to argue over a toy; the dog barked downstairs, the television set was turned on, and behind Rachel, the baby began to cry.

  Normally, this sudden onslaught of noise would not have bothered her. It happened every night; she had grown used to it, and even found it a reassuring bother. But tonight there was something about the noise that irked her horribly. It pressed in on her, but even more wretchedly pressing were the responsibilities that the noises represented: the house, the children, the husband. Her whole life had been subsumed by these six loathsome creatures. She told herself that she had only chosen one of them—Larry—and he had been a mistake. The others had been foisted on her. They had taken everything away from her, and left her with nothing; she wondered that she had got through so many years of it, and wondered even more darkly how she was going to get through an­other night.

  Rachel screamed out for the children to shut up, she slammed the bedroom door on the crying baby, stormed down the stairs and kicked the dog out the front door. She turned off the television set in the middle of the sports report, and didn’t reply at all when Larry in great surprise asked what the matter was.

  She pulled the kitchen door to behind her, and locked it. This had never been done before. Larry wondered greatly at it, and feared for the rest of the evening. Half an hour later, Rachel unhooked the door and commanded them all inside for supper. Larry and the four children who were walking came in meekly and sat down without a word; there was not the shadow of incipient bickering to be found among them. Their mother was upset, and though they didn’t know why, it was obviously best at these times (and she had never seemed so bad as this) not to cross her.

  Not even her husband ventured to say anything, for he feared that he was somehow the cause of this anger. He didn’t want to get into a fight with Rachel at all, and especially not in front of the children. Rachel told them all to get on with it, and then she left the room. While she was gone, Larry questioned the children in whispers: had they done anything to bother their mother that day, or did they know of anything that might have happened to upset her? The children shook their heads with troubled mystification. In a few moments, Rachel returned with the infant in her arms, sat down huffily at the end of the table, and began to feed the baby with a bottle of warm milk.

  It was the quietest and most wretched meal that had ever been consumed in that household. Whenever one of the children looked about to speak, Rachel stared him down so hard he choked on his food. They hardly dared to ask for the salt, and pointed out to one another which bowls and platters were to be passed. The children were so unused to this extremity of ill treatment from their mother, this unwholesome sternness directed at them al­together, that they began to feel sick. And even Larry suffered a queasiness in his lower intestines.

  As soon as the food could be bolted down, the children asked to be excused, and Larry indicated that he wouldn’t have any coffee, but might watch television for a little while. “That is,” he said quietly, “if you don’t think the noise will bother you.”

  “Do what you want,” she said briefly, and cast over him a chilling glance of absolute loathing.

  One of the children, the eldest girl, bravely ventured to tell her mother that she felt ill. “It’s my stomach,” she said. The other children nodded vigorously. The baby spit up its milk.

  “Go upstairs and lie down,” said their mother, without any apparent concern. “When I finish here, I’ll come up and see how you’re doing.”

  “Rachel,” said Larry hesitantly, “I feel funny too. You think there might have been something wrong with the pork chops?”

  “Nothing wrong with the pork chops. I had one a while ago, and I feel fine. Go watch television.”

  Larry sighed. At least she had spoken to them. Maybe she would get over whatever it was that had her on edge. Maybe, he ventured to hope, there wouldn’t be any fight at all.

  The four children left the kitchen quietly; they went upstairs, following their mother’s directions, and lay in their beds. In a few minutes, Larry turned off the televi­sion and went upstairs after them. He passed their bed­rooms, and heard their muffled groans through the closed doors. He would have stopped to see about them, but was in too much pain himself. He pushed open the door of the guest room and fell across the bed—he had not been cer­tain that he would make it to his own bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Chapter 11

  Less than an hour later that evening, Sarah Howell was alone in her kitchen. The room was dark but for a single fixture above the sink. Here Sarah stood, washing the day’s dishes, and staring with a small smile out into the yard that separated Jo Howell’s house from that of Becca Blair.

  This was the first time in the entire day that Sarah had been wholly alone, and she was enjoying the restfulness of it. The noises of the plant had been left behind, and the hundred women and men all trying to chatter and gossip over a staggering number of decibels. Jo and Dean were in the far part of the house, and it was with some relish that Sarah calculated the number of steps that lay between her and them. She imagined the dark kitchen behind her, how she would have to move slowly across that tiled floor, to keep from knocking into the table. And the living room was dark as well, and cluttered, so that she would have had to proceed even more cautiously. At last she would reach the little hall, which would have to be crossed, and that was at least a couple more steps, and then, even standing at the closed door of the room in which Jo watched over her son, Sarah could have chosen not to knock at all, could have decided that it was best not to turn the knob.

  And in front of Sarah, out the window, was a flat piece of grassy ground, empty and still. Two fingers of concrete pointed up from the street and Becca’s two-door purple Pontiac rested just within Sarah’s sight. The moon was out, and full, and the empty yard was illumined with a dim, gray light that was peaceful and chill.

  Becca Blair’s house was dark, but Sarah could see only her kitchen and dining room windows, and it was probable that there were lights in rooms on the other side. But while Sarah looked out the window, Becca’s kitchen light was switched on, and in only another moment, the back porch light. Becca Blair flung herself out the back door; a rosary swung and glinted in her hands. The screen door slammed sharply behind her.

  Sarah leaned forward over the sink and put her face near the screen of the open window. Becca ran up to the house and looked up at her friend. Excitedly, she cried, “Coppage house gone up in flames! Larry and Rachel and ever’ one of them five kids still inside! You come out here, Sarah, and you can see the smoke!”

  Quickly, Sarah stepped outside and joined her friend. They moved together to the street in front of the houses and gazed in the direction of the Coppage house. A siren started up to their left, where the fire station was located a few blocks away. The house was too distant for them to see flames, but frighteningly, the stars in a large section of sky, in the direction of the Coppage house, were obscured beneath a veil of smoke that was black as the night.

  Sarah turned when she heard Becca’s car being cranked-up in the driveway. Margaret leaned out the win­dow and cried, “Get in! We’ll go on
over there!”

  “We’d be fire chasers,” said Sarah doubtfully. “Ought not chase fires.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Becca, “let’s go. It’s not like we don’t know who the people are, not like we won’t try to do ever’thing we can to help ’em—if they’s any of ’em that’s left alive by the time we get there. Come on, Sarah!” She opened the door of the car, and slipped into the backseat. “Get in, honey! And Margaret,” she said to her daughter, “you watch out for that fire engine! We don’t want to get into no accidental collision on our way over there! You hear me?”

  “I hear you, Mama,” said Margaret, and when Sarah had pulled the door shut, the car screeched out into the street and away they flew to where the Coppage house was burning to the ground.

  “How’d you hear?” asked Sarah, “I mean, how’d you know it was the Coppage house that was burning? We didn’t even hear the sirens until we got out in the yard!”

  “No, it was me that heard, Sarah,” said Margaret, with a little pride. “The Nelsons live right next door to ’em, in that little green house with the dogwoods right out in front—you know the place I mean—and Mary-Louise is a good friend of mine, and she called me up just as soon as she saw the flames. She didn’t really call me up, ’cause we were already on the phone, but when she saw the flames she told me what was happening and then hung up to call the fire department and I told Mama!”

  On the drive over to the Coppage house—and half the population of Pine Cone that lived below Commercial Boulevard seemed on its way to the other side—Sarah told Becca and Margaret, in a hushed whisper, that just that afternoon, not two hours before, Larry Coppage had come over to the house to see Dean.

  “Well,” said Becca, “it’s probably a good thing he come over when he did, ’cause it’d be just awful if Larry or Rachel or one of them kids got burned the way Dean did at Rucca. Larry and Dean used to be such good friends, and if something happened to Larry, I’m glad he and Dean had the chance to make it up between ’em . . .”

  “They didn’t exactly make it up,” Sarah had to admit. “Dean didn’t do much talking.”

  “Well,” said Becca, “he come over, and that’s what’s important. I sure do hope we find him all right when we get over there, him and Rachel and all them kids . . .”

  Sarah was on the verge of telling her friend about the strange gift of the amulet, but they turned the corner, and the Coppage house came into view.

  Chapter 12

  Silent, searing flames consumed three walls of Larry and Rachel Coppage’s bedroom. It was a fire that was sure of itself. All the glass in the room—the window-panes, the mirrors, the light bulbs, the jars of perfume on the dresser—had broken in the intense heat. A fur jacket that had been thrown across the back of a chair, to be put up for summer storage the following day, ig­nited suddenly, and was devoured in a moment with a pervasive forest smell that for a few seconds conquered the overwhelming odor of burning wood. All the fabric in the center of the room—the carpet, the coverings of the bed, the contents of the open cedar chest—had begun to smoke.

  Rachel Coppage sat on the edge of the bed in an atti­tude that was completely relaxed. She was bouncing her youngest child up and down on her knee, smiling at it, plying it with a soft voice to stop its crying. The baby wailed abysmally from the discomfort of the heat and the smoke.

  Larry’s voice crested a moment over the buzzing, undefinable noise that a house makes when it is on fire, calling Rachel’s name, and those of their children. But Rachel did not respond. She looked up briefly when their seven-year-old daughter, Beverly, ran past the bedroom door, screaming. The child’s pajamas, of a synthetic material, had melted onto her skin, and her curly blond hair had been completely singed away.

  Beverly’s four-year-old sister lay dead of smoke inha­lation in the hallway. The two boys were beating against their locked bedroom door, screaming in fright that was even greater than their intense abdominal pain. But the noise gradually subsided beneath the crying roar of the flame.

  Larry lay on the floor of the guest room, unable to raise himself for the intestinal cramps. He would have gladly given over the struggle if he had not been able to hear the frantic cries of his two boys in the next room. He wept for his helplessness to preserve their lives.

  The fourth wall of Rachel’s bedroom caught fire, and a ceiling beam collapsing into the middle of the room ignited the bedclothes and the contents of the cedar chest. The infant on Rachel’s knee fainted, overcome by the smoke. Rachel lifted it to her breast, cradling its head against her shoulder as if it were asleep, and walked it across the room, carefully avoiding the little patches of fire on the carpet, as if they had been toys left by the other children. She laid the child in the burning wicker basinette, tucking it lovingly between smoldering sheets.

  She turned around then with a small smile, and picked up a fragment of the full length mirror that had exploded a little time before. Holding it before her, she admired in it the handsome, becoming, stylish amulet that Larry had brought her that afternoon.

  Again, Larry called her name, but his voice was very weak.

  “What do you want, honey?” she called back, still looking into the piece of glass. “I’m in the bedroom!”

  Chapter 13

  The two fire engines of Pine Cone were driven onto the lawn of the Coppage house, and the hoses were hooked up as quickly as possible; but it was impossible to save the building. It was not known at first whether the Coppages were still inside or if they had escaped and were at a neighbor’s or somewhere in the gathering crowd. Their names were called continuously. Then the eldest boy, only six, jumped from his bedroom window. He caught his foot in the gutter, twisted round, and dropped headfirst onto the brick steps. He died in a fire­man’s arms.

  A perimeter of neighbors and friends gathered round the house on all sides, trampling the flower beds, gently swinging in the hammocks set up between the trees. Some had brought out pieces of chicken, having been inter­rupted at supper; others were already in their pajamas. Small children played games of catch among the legs of the adults. There was nothing to do but watch the house burn.

  The Baptist preacher’s wife thought she heard someone yelling from inside the house, and a cry of “Shhh!” shot around the circle, but nothing more could be heard, noth­ing but the sound of falling timbers, collapsing walls, and breaking glass.

  A fireman tried to get to the second floor, but the staircase inside was itself burning, and by the time that ladders had been set against the second-floor windows, the floors had broken through, and the whole structure—and whoever was inside—was lost.

  “Let’s leave,” sighed Sarah, “there’s nothing that we can do. I don’t want to see the bodies, I don’t want to see them brought out.”

  “Honey,” whispered Becca, so that Margaret could not hear her, “there’s not going to be nothing to bring out of there!”

  Becca and Sarah moved back to the car. Margaret came after them and said, “Mama, I want to know if it’s all right if I stay over tonight with Mary-Louise. Miz Nelson said it was all right.”

  Becca shook her head. “You’re not gone do that, Margaret. You and Mary-Louise—I know you two—you’d be up half the night just looking at them smoking embers out her bedroom window. We don’t know how long this is gone go on, and what if the Nelsons’ house was to catch? You think I want you to be getting hit in the face with them hoses? Water like that would break your nose in two!”

  When Sarah returned home, she went into her bed­room to tell Jo what had happened, and why she had left the house suddenly and without explanation.

  Jo still was at the foot of Dean’s bed, but all the blinds in the room had been raised, and Dean’s bandages were lighted faintly but eerily by the moonlight shining obliquely through the rear window.

  “Well,” said Jo, “it wouldn’t have happened if Larry Coppage had given Dean a job, like he wanted, like he needed, like he asked him for, making guns to blow up in other p
eople’s faces . . .”

  This reaction of Jo’s distressed Sarah. “How can you say something like that?” she demanded. “They’re ever’ one of ’em lying dead and burned on the other side of town. Larry Coppage was standing right where I am now, not four hours ago, being nice to you and Dean—”

  “You think I care about Larry Coppage being nice!” cried Jo. “I look at Dean in that bed, can’t see, don’t talk, and it was Larry Coppage that put him there. You think Larry Coppage saying he’s sorry what happened is gone make Dean see again? You think Rachel Coppage’s casseroles are gone put the flesh back in Dean’s face?”

  Sarah did not reply to this. Instead she asked, “Why do you say this wouldn’t have happened if he had given Dean the job? That didn’t have nothing to do with the Coppage house burning down—it couldn’t have . . .”

  Jo paused a moment, and then said carefully, “If Larry Coppage had given Dean a job, then things would be different, that’s all. Things would be a lot differ­ent . . .”

  “Jo, you listen to me,” said Sarah, still in the heat of her anger, “Dean lying there don’t do me a bit of good either. I hate it worse than hell what happened to him, he’s my husband, but the blame for it don’t go to Larry Coppage, it don’t go to nobody at all. There’s nobody to point your finger at.”

  Jo glared at Sarah but said nothing.

  “But,” said Sarah in a low voice, “if you are bound and determined to blame somebody, go ahead and blame it on Larry Coppage, ’cause the poor man is dead now, him and Rachel and ever’ one of them five kids. Go ahead and blame him, because it cain’t hurt him—”