Little Sister Death

by William Gay

  Then in the early spring, when the trees were greening out, Ginny was on her way home from school when she chanced to look down into a meadow that bordered the path she was on. There was a great oak tree there where the children used to play, and swinging from one of its topmost branches was a young girl. The girl wore a dress of brown homespun, a butternut color, and she had long yellow hair like Ginny, who did not recognize her and drew nearer to call to her, thinking her new to the neighborhood and not yet entered in school.

  The girl was watching her, holding the limb by her arms and swinging slowly in the air. Ginny crossed the splitrail fence and stooped to put down her books, and when she looked up the girl was gone. The branch still tossed with released weight.

  From that the haunting grew in intensity, as if it drew nourishment from the fecund growth of that long ago wilderness spring, or had some urgent need to make itself known so strongly that even Jacob Beale himself could no longer deny its existence.

  Noises began to be heard at night, soft and furtive, so that the Beale family felt the house had become infested with rats; during the night gnawing sounds would issue forth until it seemed that the very beds were being consumed as they lay upon them, and there was a persistent chewing behind the paneling, but when lights were lit and carried from room to room nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

  There were the sounds of dogs fighting, as if chained together to battle to the death, bounding and leaping over the furniture. One night a great flapping of wings in the attic that moved from one corner to the other, as if some winged beast the size and weight of a heifer calf was cavorting there.

  During the day the Beales would ransack the house from top to bottom, some of the flooring and paneling even being removed and replaced in an effort to locate the source of their troubles, all of which was in vain. Cats and dogs were brought into the house at nightfall to try and scent out the infestation, the animals behaving peculiarly and immediately seeking an egress; no dog ever spent the night willingly in Jacob Beale’s house after the haunting began. This was tried early and abandoned, as the dogs created such a cacophony of noise with their howling and whimpering, not ceasing even when Jacob Beale arose to beat them, that the family seemed almost to prefer the sounds of the Haunt.

  These were trying times for the Beales, and though they could not have known it, they were to continue for four more years.

  Jacob Beale was a man trying to get a crop in and keep his slaves under control, who were likewise affected by the haunting. Ignorant and superstitious, they were even more terrorized by the sounds and flitting lights than the white people were, some of them even slipping away and trying to escape, having to be returned by patrollers. Mr. Beale was under great pressure at this time, as were to a lesser degree the members of his family. Unable to sleep at night and having to carry on his business and financial transactions in the daytime, he now became afflicted by a singular malady. His tongue and jaws seemed to be most affected, swelling and paining him so intensely that he was at times unable to speak or eat. These spells were generally of short duration, however, enabling him to continue his business affairs rather than completely giving up and taking to his bed.

  At first he tried to blame the nocturnal noises on the effects of the earth quaking, earthquakes being on the mind of Tennesseans, a severe quake having just recently struck Tennessee, affecting much of the countryside and creating Reelfoot Lake, which at that time was widely believed to be bottomless.

  At last, however, he was forced to seek outside help, going for counsel to Brother Joseph Primm, preachers being known to possess a greater knowledge of such things than the common man.

  It is not recorded what Brother Primm thought of these revelations, but he and his wife agreed to spend the night with the Beales and listen for themselves. Before retiring he offered a prayer and a song, praying piously and at great length for the good Lord to direct his attentions toward alleviating the circumstances that had brought his friend Beale to such a sorry state.

  The lights were scarcely blown out and the folk abed before the Haunt seemed to fairly spread herself. Objects were thrown, the sound of furniture being overturned, the covers were jerked from Brother Primm’s fingers. For the first time coarse and derisive laughter arose, went effortlessly from room to room, and continued so loudly that none were able to sleep, not even desisting when Reverend Primm called loudly on a Higher Power, but continuing until it seemed to tire itself out, or just to weary of the game.

  The next day, under the advice of Brother Primm, others of Jacob’s neighbors were told of the troubles, the affair being of so complicated a nature that the efforts of their common minds might be able to unravel this riddle.

  They were sworn to secrecy, but in a community as small and closely knit as Sinking Creek, and a matter as marvelous as this one was, it can come as no surprise that word spread throughout the countryside like wildfire, so that in the evenings the house would be full of neighbors who had gathered to hear for themselves these wonders.

  Reverend Primm was the unofficial leader of the group, and he used to sit before the fire and talk to the Haunt, beseeching it to speak and make its purpose known. To their great surprise it did learn to talk, making at first a kind of babylike gurgling. As the nights passed it grew stronger, saying a few words and humming a few lines from gospel songs of that day; and then one night it began to speak, repeating word for word Reverend Primm’s sermon of the previous Sunday, and concluding with the song he had used to lead the service. It was a wonderful mimicry, copying perfectly the inflections of Brother Primm’s mellifluous voice.

  As soon as the Haunt could speak it was begged to reveal its intentions, and it was not loathe to do so. It said that it had come to torture Virginia Beale and to drive Jacob Beale, whom it referred to as old Jake, to his death, at which time it promised to return whence it had come.

  After crops were laid that summer, they would be there every night. The yard would be full of wagons and tethered horses, playing children chasing fireflies, solitary workers appearing sourceless in blue dusk from whichever direction they happened to live in. Not even waiting now for full dark, but stringing out along the roads in early dusk, whole families of them coming from God knew where, folks Beale had never seen before or heard rumored, the men dressed in their Sunday best, stiff on the wagon seats, the women bonneted in their best finery, shifting the snuffstick aside in their drawstring mouths and watching him with their flinty little eyes, knowing as sure as death that he knew what they came to hear: not the gospelsinging or the sugarmouthed pseudopreaching but the Haunt’s obscene rantings, its dirtymouth tattling of the community doings. Them hearing it and rolling their eyes in spurious shock and saying, They Lord have mercy, as if it had taken them by surprise, as if it was not something they had come anticipating, by now a perverse source of entertainment that drew them gapejawed and slackmouthed out of the brush as sugar draws flies.

  And him feeding them, likely as not. Or having to offer, anyway, a few of them saying no thanks ye, we got a little somethin here we brought. The rest of them taking whatever fare was offered, and there would have to be more flour and coffee brought by the end of the month.

  Standing there in the hall of the haysmelling barn dappled with moted light, he estimated the number of horses, said to himself, how about a pad of hay for my horses, Brother Beale? Or two pads, or an armful of corn.

  Yet he watched with more than cynicism. He studied these outlanders, neighbors, halffools and wholefools. There might be the one man who would study this chaos with a bright and unjaundiced eye and say, as if it were something they should have noticed long ago, why here’s the trouble right here, leant to study the situation like a man indicating the fault in a hay mower that would not work.

  He watched his sons cross the field with the horses, angle along toward the creek to water them. Dusk drew on. Lights were lit in the house. Soon he would be expected to put in an appearance, to exchange civilities with his neighb
ors, with these strangers who’d come to amuse themselves at his expense, and say you’re from where? My land, that’s a far piece, and you come all the way by wagon. Their eyes asking each other, how does he do it anyway? And why does he?

  He waited, loathe to leave here for the tobacco smoke—scented front room, the turbulent emotional atmosphere from which the Haunt drew strength. Here he could smell the placid animals that he had come to respect more than men, the hay that reminded him of the last days of summer.

  The blondehaired girl in a green dress sat by the fireplace. She sat in a willow rocker, unmoving, her hands in her lap. Her eyes were closed; perhaps she slept. Yet every eye in the crowded room was upon her. The people jammed into the room and seated on ladderbacks and kitchen chairs or just hunkered against the wall seemed not to breathe. What’s the matter with her? She’s subject to the vapors. The girl’s color was high, cheeks lit by a mottled red blush, and her breathing was harsh and irregular, could be heard from the farthest corner of the room.

  Joseph Primm began to pray, kneeling on the floor, bracing himself against the hearth of the dead fireplace, speaking of theft, of the value a man attached to his personal belongings, of the roiling flames of hellfire awaiting the man who took this value lightly.

  The girl had not moved. She slept on. Beside her sat an old black woman with a fan, moving it listlessly, the faint breeze moving in the pale tendrils of flaxen hair at the temples.

  At last Primm ceased. A sigh of creaking chairs, a general hum of coughing and throatclearing. A few began to talk about stealing. Things they had taken from them.

  I was never one to hold with stealin, a man from Jack’s Branch said boldly. But I reckon if a man was starvin to death and took a little grub the Lord would take that into consideration. It don’t seem right for a man to burn in hell forever for stealin a bite to eat.

  How long’d it take you to eat that horse you stole in South Carolina? a voice shot back instantly. The voice seemed to come from the far corner of the ceiling and every head in the room turned, the necks twisting like some synchronous machine.

  I never stole no horse, the man cried.

  You’re a goddamned liar. You never stole a chestnut gelding from a man named Burbank and sold it in Town Creek, Alabama?

  The voice was at once sourceless and omnipresent, seeming to shift its position, as if it feared to remain in one place too long: rising and falling, a soft feminine voice, sweet and innocent, a dream voice, a voice like no other they had heard in all their lives.

  I never took no horse, the man said stubbornly to his neighbor.

  Hell, the other said, wryly amused, don’t tell me. I never said you did.

  After a while the man left. He would not be the first that night, but the voice had lost interest, began to hum to itself some old gospel song. Come to the church in the wildwood, breaking the song off, childlike, as if its attention span were short.

  Where’s old Jake? it wondered abruptly. Where’s Jake Beale? Is he not in here? Where is that whorechasing old smellsmack?

  The voice ceased, as if counting heads, searching among all those present.

  Mr. Beale is not here, Joseph Primm said. He’s taking care of the livestock.

  Oh he is, is he? I know the livestock Mr. Beale has his mind on, Sugarmouth. He’s peeping at those courting couples playing a little stinkfinger out in the edge of the woods…is Virginia here? That thicklegged little slut, is she here? She likes to play that stinkfinger too. I saw her and Mr. Posey down by the springhouse a night or two ago…he had her dress wadded up around her waist and his finger up in her and Lord, how she loved it.

  The room was struck by a delirious hush of silence. In the back of the room a woman had arisen haughtily, her face a haggard mask of contempt.

  She never played it, the voice said, her leaving there. She never had one in her, not in a day or two anyway. She’s like Sugarmouth there, he don’t know what stinkfinger is. Do you, Sugarmouth? He doesn’t. He thinks it’s something like tiddlywinks, but Virginia doesn’t. Virginia thinks it’s much nicer than that, don’t you, Virginia? Sugarmouth doesn’t know anything about such worldly things, he doesn’t even lope his mule behind the barn anymore.

  The voice babbled on mindlessly, rising and falling like a madman talking to himself.

  Why do you carry on such crazy filth? Primm asked earnestly. You have a fine mind, a great knowledge and memory of the Bible. You could move countless souls toward heaven. Your singing could move thousands of lost sheep into the folds of Christianity.

  Don’t you just love the way old Sugarmouth talks? The voice was fey and whimsical. Don’t you just wish you could go home and talk that way too, whenever you wanted? I know I do. But Sugarmouth’s not very smart. He thinks it’s me. It’s not me, Sugarmouth. I’m…I’m everything and nothing. Here the voice faltered, trailed weakly off, struggled with a thought, a concept or the way to express one. I’m just a mirror, Sugarmouth. All I can do is reflect what you bring me. You give me a roomful of Christians and I’ll give you back Christianity. These folks here, though.

  She’s doin it, a man said suddenly. That whiteheaded gal’s makin it talk somehow.

  Sewell Beale was watching with indolent, sleepy eyes. He was sitting backward in a canebottom chair, his arms laced across the top slat, his bootheels hooked in the rounds. He was a young man with long dirtyblond hair. His eyes were hooded and chill. His upper lip was covered by a soft blond mustache. You’re talking about my sister, sir, he said coldly, and you are doing it in her house. Say one more word and you will answer to me outside, and you be required to furnish more than your mouth to do it with.

  The man arose awkwardly. I forgit where I am, he said. I apologize.

  Beale nodded coldly in dismissal.

  The black woman had laid aside her fan. Every eye in the room watched alike. Her movements had something of ceremony, intuition, a ritual performed many times before. She clasped the girl’s mouth, the fingers of each hand overlapping over her lips. The girl didn’t stir. The silence stretched, elongated. The audience sat hypnotically rapt.

  It would serve the little bitch right if I kept my peace, the voice mused, altering, taking on a selfsatisfied tone. The old black woman sat still as ebony statuary. Then what you do? the voice asked. Band together, tar and feather her, I suppose, and it would be no more that she deserves, the little spreadlegged beast.but do you actually think I’m something she dreamed up to pass the time? I’m more than that.

  Then just what sort of monster are you? Primm asked it.

  I’m no kind of monster. I am greater than the God you pray to, less than the spittle of a dog’s tongue. I have been here forever, and I will be here when the worms have long finished with you. Now, what kind of monster are you?

  That’s no kind of answer at all.

  Do you want me to lie to you? I remember what I told old Jake one time…Old Jake was whiteeyeing on me, laying down, he finally knew I was going to stay till I killed him.he kept asking what I was (here the voice changed, coarsened, took on the unmistakable timbre of Jacob Beale’s voice)…Why are you so set on torturing me? What have I ever done to deserve such treatment?

  The voice shifted eerily, became curiously neutral, a voice without sex or accent. I said, well, Old Jake, I was one of the first settlers in these parts and I was attacked and killed by Indians here sixty years ago, and I was buried right where your front porch is. When they were building this house, they dug up my grave and reburied the bones down below your spring. They left one of my fingerbones there where the graves was and my soul won’t ever rest in peace till I get a decent burial. Well, Old Jake got them boys humpin. They tore up the floorboards and they was digging up dirt and siftin it lookin right and left for that lost fingerbone. It was in July, and Lord it was hot. After about half a day, I got to feelin sorry for them boys and I broke down and told em I was just sportin with em.

  Old Jake still didn’t believe me. He took a grubbin hoe and shovel and dug up th
at whole bottom there lookin for a grave. Of course he never found one, but anyway that old reprobate did the only full day’s work he ever did.

  The voice went on and on without ceasing or even an intimation of ceasing, abusive, obscene, vituperate, until Jacob Beale bolted into the front yard, the door slamming to behind him, opening and closing with the passage of no visible person and the voice commencing again immediately. Beale halfrunning blindly across the frozen yard into the silver moonlight past the dark bulk of the trees.

  Run, goddamn you, the voice shrieked. Anywhere you go I’ll be there and waiting for you.

  Sewell Beale came onto the porch. Father, he called.

  He crossed the yard and took the old man’s arm. Come in by the fire, he said.

  Come in by the fire, the voice mimicked. Don’t you worry about Old Jake. He’ll be in the fire soon enough.

  There was the flat sound of a slap and Beale’s head lurched sidewise, the long silver hair fanning out, his eyes wide and horrified. More blows, methodical, first on one cheek and then the other, his head jerking crazily from side to side. He tried to run, turning, his left foot dragging on the frozen ground, and then fell as if from a blow across the back of the head. Sewell Beale was flailing at the air, cursing, trying at once to grasp whatever it was and to shield his father. He could feel the blows falling across his own shoulders, sharp measured blows from a stick or walking cane, making a twack, twack on the heavy wool overcoat.

  My shoes, boy, the old man said, and Sewell looked, still feeling the stinging blows across his shoulders. He watched his father’s boots unlacing themselves, the rawhide thongs writhing out of the eyelets as if magically invested with life, crawling out.

  He could hear maniacal laughter above him. He grasped the boots, one on his father’s foot. No sooner was he at the other than the other was jerked off. He lashed the lacing round the cuff of the boot and felt the boot slide from beneath it. The heel of the boot caught him hard on the temple and he lay for a moment dazed, his cheek pillowed against the cold ground. His father’s feet had begun to jerk eerily as if performing some demented buck-and-wing, kicking madly at the air until Sewell stopped them with his weight, felt them still moving spasmodically against his belly, the flesh of his father’s face contorted, dancing as if every nerve had been divested of coherent purpose, left with only uncontrolled twitching.