by John Farris
"'The lyin' son of a bitch,' he said. He meant Elias Pearman. 'Let's finish this.'"
"Who ran?" Jackson asked.
Tyrone shrugged. "Elias had everybody in church, and he told them they needed to stay there, until daybreak or longer, stay until reason could be restored. He promised nobody would be hurt, long as they remained calm and prayed. A couple of boys—they weren't more than fourteen—may have got scared thinkin' about what could happen. Or else they were just bored and wanted to see if they could slip by the guards and get home undetected. Both boys were chased down and shot dead when they didn't have breath to run another step. A lantern was thrown, a house fired up, more people left the church. Some were hysterical with fear, some in a mood to kill a white man. A few ran for their guns; others just kneeled in the street, petrified, and they were run over like toads when Boss's little army swooped down from the pasture.
"In all the madness Elias Pearman was helped to escape from the church. When Boss found out, he flew into a rage. I think the smell of blood had all but unhinged his mind. 'We're goin' after him, and we'll find him.' He didn't try to organize a search, just turned his men loose in packs to roam wherever they pleased.
"As the night wore on, destruction spread across the ridge: Vauxhall, Tambourine, Tchula Bend. Some places they were met by gunfire, colored men tryin' to protect their homes and families. That was the excuse for slaughter that numbed the soul. The sun rose the next morning on smoke and grief and ruin. Bodies laid out in rows in the fields. The national guard had to move in to prevent an uprising. But Boss claimed a victory through his bloody mouth. Had the gall to say it was all necessary to preserve order and the southern way of life!"
"What happened to Elias Pearman?"
"He was on his way out of the county in a truck driven by daddy Hackaliah when Boss caught up with them. It was dawn by then. Boss turned them both out and unlimbered his big old horsewhip. Beau had been at his side all night, pleadin' with Boss to let up. But Boss was like a drunken man. He shook off Beau and lashed out: Once, twice, three times, the blood flew. Daddy Hackaliah sank to his knees in agony. Beau just couldn't take any more. Grabbed a rifle from one of the men and drove it butt first into Boss's face. Boss dropped like a sack of wet meal, and that was the end of the Chisca County War. Over fifty dead, includin' white. By the end of the day Beau was nowhere to be seen. I don't believe Boss mentioned his firstborn son again, not as long as he lived."
"I'm surprised Hackaliah was allowed to remain here."
"He had the good sense to lay low for a time. It's a big plantation; you can go weeks at a time without seem' a man if you don't want to see him. Just about everybody ignored daddy, he was like a pariah. But he's been with Boss for a long time, and he did suffer a whippin', so Boss gradually allowed him back into his good graces. If I'd been daddy, though, I don't think I would have been so quick to forget and forgive. He should have gone away when Beau did."
Tyrone got up out of the chair, looking powerfully troubled by his lifelong ambivalence toward Boss Brad win.
"Oh, I forgot to mention. Elias Pearman took his proselytizin' across the river, and the next year he was murdered in Greenwood, Mississippi, by the Ku Klux Klan. Only skin left on his body when they found him was behind his ears and on the soles of his feet. In the old days that was called 'blanching.' It turned a disobedient black slave white by parin' him down to the—what do you call it? The subcutaneous tissues."
Tyrone held out his hands as if inviting inspection; his hands trembled. "Some of us, as you see, been blanched in other ways; more enjoyable for the boss man, and not near so bloody." He smiled bleakly. "Not a pleasant way to end this conversation, but I better had get along. Sometimes I just can't shut my flap, and your ears must be fixin' to drop off."
"I find everything about the Bradwins intriguing, particularly Beau's story. What a sad end to his youth. Mine ended rather abruptly, too, but under different circumstances."
Tyrone wasn't listening. He took a fair-size roll of currency from his twill work pants. "Let me pay you now for patchin' this finger."
Jackson waved the money away. "Nonsense. I should look at it again in two days, and change the dressing."
"Appreciate your kindness, doctor. I'll just shut the light then and lock up."
It was after eleven o'clock and the house was quiet. Hackaliah or one of the maids had turned down the counterpane of Jackson's bed and laid out his pajamas. The balcony doors had been closed against the sultry night. It seemed cooler in his room than it had been in the library, a welcome relief.
Jackson unknotted his tie and put on his slippers, then Placed on a Chippendale secretary the late Dr. Talmadge's case history of Nancy Bradwin. As he leafed through the dog-eared and sometimes illegible pages he mulled over what he knew of her strange metamorphosis from a rather shy and quiet woman with not very great emotional reserves into an aggressive trollop. Successive shocks—the loss of a baby, Clipper's terrifying patricide at Blue Ridge—apparently had brought on the change in Nancy's personality. Or could there have been a pathological reason? Her pattern of wanderlust following a term of unnaturally deep and prolonged sleep seemed to indicate emotional imbalance rather than a lesion of the brain . . .There was, of course, a third possibility, rooted in the preconscious, in race memory, plausible only to someone of Jackson's particular background and experience.
Once more Jackson witnessed the dark fall of the coffin from the speeding train, her body loose, wraithlike, supernal in the moonlight, free from the sorrows of a troubled house and ill-fated family, free of hex, released from the spell of tainted blood. In the forest of his youth, a place of heat and deep moody silence and tenors swifter than the eye can follow, he had learned that none of us belong to ourselves, but to spirits good and evil.
Jackson shuddered and bent to his work, but the atmosphere of the house distracted him. Nancy Bradwin, by circumstance, had been committed here—eventually to die, beside herself, dispossessed. In this house people walked with guns and jumped too easily, looked sidewise down the dark hall, eased around corners and blamed their nerves on the threat posed by Early Boy Hodges. But something else was in the house: something dark, swollen and miasmic, threatening to explode. Jackson felt thin-skinned and vulnerable, a child in the forest again.
Devoting himself to the chicken tracks of Dr. Talmadge afforded some relief from the unevenness of his emotions. There was nothing in Nancy's brain or bloodstream to account for her malady. Talmadge had tried heavy doses of scopolamine and paraldehyde, but after tentative success, some encouraging periods of brightness and normalcy, Nancy Bradwin had gone back to her cold, deathlike slumbers. In the end Talmadge, admitting in the dry language of the report that he could not help her, returned to his clinic and hanged himself.
Of his final hours only the act was known, not his thoughts. Was he motivated by despair, or had he found an answer that, instead of enlightening him, had driven him mad?
Perhaps it wasn't Nancy after all, Jackson speculated, but the unhealthy atmosphere of this house where Talmadge had spent so much time, neglecting the rest of his practice. . Jackson rubbed his throat, as if in sympathetic response to the pressure of the rope that had killed Henry Talmadge. He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed. Just for a few calm minutes, a period of meditation; it was almost time to go up and look in on Champ again. But he was more tired than he had thought. Almost as soon as Jackson reminded himself not to forget Champ, he fell asleep.
In the Negro settlement, a neighborhood of plain board houses and big trees, fenced chickens and dilapidated automobiles sitting on rusted axles, the women attending Old Lamb came and went faithfully. Past midnight the air was still humid in this place, where the Forked Deer River slowed to a heron's roost and seemed dankly finished, directionless, beneath the live oak. From where Early Boy crouched in concealment he could make out a high shine of moisture on the aged man's untroubled brow. A kerosene lantern was hung beneath the porch eaves where the light wouldn
't be in his eyes. The porch and steps were heaped with barbarous flowers. Static crackled from the radio, with an occasional clear passage of half-sung blues as some gifted stranger played the bottleneck.
The women changed his nightshirt twice, tenderly stripping him naked without appearing to disturb him very much as he sat in his rocking chair. At least he never complained. They knotted white handkerchiefs soaked in cold water around his head and gave him frequent drinks from a gourd dipper. The water flowed through him and the slats of the chair and dribbled onto the worn boards of the porch. He rocked from time to time, when he was alone. That disturbed the cur dog which slept by the radio, one eye partly open and glowing redly like a doomed tube.
After the last appearance of the women from inside the house, when the moon had begun to set, the lamp burned low and finally flickered out. Not another light showed anywhere in the settlement. Early Boy rose from his couchant position and popped his stiff joints discreetly, then went about his business.
The old cur heard him as he trod the first step to the porch; he tried to spring up, but his back legs wouldn't untangle and he flopped foolishly across Old Lamb's bare feet. He was whining his way up to a growl when Old Lamb put down a hand to silence him.
Old Lamb turned his head in Early Boy's direction. "You come to hymn and Bible me?" he said crossly, gumming his words.
"Not my style."
Old Lamb sniffed the air, as if finding his odor unfamiliar. A change came over him. He spoke in a stronger, educated voice. "Oh, it's you, Beau. Had yourself a bath?"
"Early Boy, if you don't mind."
"Glad to see you, whatever you choose to call yourself."
Actually Old Lamb couldn't see much of anything. Of one eye there were only bluish glints beneath a heavy lowering lid; the other eye was dormant in a bristle-bog, buggery growths all around it. He smiled at the fierce, particular clutch of Early Boy's hand on his shoulder. "Sit," the old man said.
Early Boy glanced at the screen door, listening to snores inside the house, the heavy sounds of one of the women turning over in her sleep. Then he hunkered down near the rocker, his back against a pillar of the porch.
For several minutes neither of them said a word. Early Boy looked as if he were napping with his eyes open, but he had taken inventory of every shadow, and no sound escaped analysis. Old Lamb began to rock. Then he stopped to pee in his wholesome shirt. He rocked again.
"Nephritic kidneys. Renal failure."
"I noticed that. You in pain?"
"No. The breath of starvation is like the odor of fresh bread. Did you know that?" A mild complaining note crept into his voice. "But it takes a long time to die this way."
"How long you gone without food?"
"I don't know, when did you come the first time?"
"Two weeks ago."
"Since way before. then. I'm weaker than I was; sometimes I can barely detect my own pulse. But it's taking so long, Beau."
"Call me Early Boy. You could've give yourself a shot of something, end it quick. Why didn't you?"
"Early Boy, I had a dream." A smile formed. The dog at his feet whistled in his sleep. "I walked with my neighbor Jesus to a door that opened in the earth. And he carried all my bones packed in a little gold keepsake box, small and round as an egg or an eye."
"That's some dream. I wonder what it has to do with my question?"
"Easy. Before I can walk again with Jesus, walk the straight and narrow path, I have to give up all my corruptions. And I've been a corrupt man. So I take in nothing but pure spring water. I piss out all the poisons. I grow weaker, but exalted. In the end I'll step down from this old rocking chair, light as a feather, and Jesus will be waiting in all his shining glory, his hand outstretched for mine."
Early Boy looked both ways along the deserted road in front of Old Lamb's house, thinking of Sunday school long ago, and Bible lessons. His mother had been a soprano in the Baptist church choir. It was about all he remembered of his mother: singing solo in the choir loft, her voice eerily perfect, but without passion.
"Have you thought about what I asked you?"
Old Lamb nodded. "I have."
"Well, then?"
"It's too late. It won't do any good to kill him, he's just the N'ganga, a feticheur, and not a very good one at that."
"What if I do kill him?"
"It's the loa you should be concerned about. She must be the Ai-da Wédo—the most powerful of African goddesses. She has, she is, eternal life."
Early Boy turned his head and spat. "Horse shit."
"Have you seen her?" Old Lamb asked him patiently.
"Told you what I saw. A ritual, and a goddamned bunch of snakes, more snakes than I ever seen in one place before."
"Of course. The Ai-da Wélo is a serpent, goddess of the moon and wife of the sun. In Africa she's called Mawu, in Haiti Erzulie—she's dark, and as beautiful as the queen of Sheba. Those who want to change their fortunes, their station in life, invoke her. But there's a danger in that, as you already know."
"Didn't they wring all that voodoo crap out of you in medical school?"
Old Lamb was amused. "For many years I set aside my faith. I didn't truly believe again, not until I saw her—the Ai-da Wédo. Beautiful as a rainbow, forbidding as the adder." The brightness of his mind seemed to fail abruptly, leaving him a soiled mummy, his voice fading into querulous dialect. He spoke to unseen intruders: "Git yore hands off me now, tol' you I jus wants to be left 'lone. Don't do that, niggers, I ain't et nothin' and I won't, jus' tend to your ownselfs and let me die!"
Early Boy sighed, putting a fist against his wrecked mouth to stifle the sound, wondering if he would have to come back another night, or if there would be another night for Old Lamb. He waited, not sure what to do. But Old Lamb spoke again, brisk and sure.
"It's an old religion, you know, older than our own. Moses was a voodoo initiate, a student of Ra-Gu-El-Pethro, the sacred Midianite teacher. Moses, according to the voodoo tradition, married Sephora, daughter of Pethro, and she bore him two mulatto sons. All of the social and religious teachings of the Bible, codified by Moses, had their origins in the Negro theocracy." He chuckled richly. "I do wonder what all the sanctimonious white preachers around here will say when the truth is finally revealed. Thousands of years before Jesus, the beauty of ancient civilizations was the beauty of their blackness. Their wisdom was Negro wisdom. Who knows? If the Ai-da Wédo has chosen Tyrone to be the prophet of the ultimate Truth, the dawning of the new age of the Negro race, it must be that he's a better man than I thought he was."
"Tyrone's nothing but a crazy nigger, and you know it."
"Tyrone always had time to sit and talk. There was little he couldn't absorb quickly: medicine, philosophy, religion—though his Christian faith had become a shell, riddled by contempt for the white man's pompous religiosity, his own refusal to abide meekly outside the Jim Crow door to heaven. I was flattered by Tyrone's attention, renewed by his vigor, seduced by the quality of his mind. In return he seduced my daughters. He must have thought I owed them to him, for the time he spent with me. So Tyrone was never a true friend of mine. But I believed his cause was just. I believed in his right to all the lands of Dasharoons. Why not? You no longer wanted what your father, and his fathers before him, purchased with the blood of slaves. Tyrone's cause was just, but his pursuit of it seemed hopeless enough to turn him into a crazy nigger, like you said. So I took pity and helped him—"
"You taught him voodoo. Like giving a little kid a can of gasoline and matches to play with. So he raised the devil with his voodoo. How did he cripple the lawyer, by sticking pins in a doll?"
Old Lamb began to shake his head. "No, no, you don't understand—I taught him voodoo, not to fulfill his fantasies but to take his mind off them. I hoped he would become absorbed in its complexities and possessed by the right spirit, one who would serve as his mentor. Voodoo is not primitive witchcraft, as so many white men want to believe. Its rituals and symbolism are as complex
and meaningful as anything in Christianity. The pantheon of voodoo gods rivals those of the Greeks and Romans, with whom they have many deities in common."
"Where did you learn about voodoo?"
"My mother was a mambo in Haiti. Unlike so many of the priests in an overcrowded profession, she seemed to have an authentic calling, which must include reverence for the lois—the laws of creation."
"But Tyrone didn't have the call."
Old Lamb sighed, and Early Boy caught a whiff of his yeasty breath.
"Tyrone was mounted too soon, before he was prepared for the responsibility. One must have power over the mystères—the spirits—in order to drive out the unruly ones before they can do harm. But the Ai-da Wédo.—that's different. She has no earthly master."
Old Lamb began to cough and rock and clutch at his chest. Early Boy couldn't tell if he was in pain or laughing. His sentient eye blazed with ardor. When the cough subsided, his mouth chewed soundlessly for a time. There was a nugget of phlegm on his lower lip. As he resumed speaking, he reverted to guttural dialect.
"You know de Ai-da Wédo, she can fly twice round de worl' in smoke an' fire, tail like a comet, 'fore you whispers her name. She got power like de earthquake, but she can strut, too, jus' like some fancy whore. Tyrone, he think 'cause she play de flirty womans wif 'im, he got control ober her. But you don't luck wif de Ai-da Wédo and live to tell no stories, no, sah! De big boss man, you knows who I mean, be alive today iffen his boy didn't fuck wif de Ai-da Wédo." Old Lamb broke down in a sweaty wheeze of laughter. "Jezebel! She try to fuck wif me too 'cause she's afraid, jus' a little bit you know, of my dead mama's magic! Strong baka! But I don't let Ai-da Wédo mount me, and not jus' 'cause I's old. No, sah, never gets dat old. But I's plenty careful 'bout what I dips my wick into."
He slumped sideways in the chair, still laughing, until tears ran from his burdened eyes. Early Boy looked at the screen door, ready to melt away from the porch if anyone stirred inside and came sleepily to investigate a dying man's mirth. But Old Lamb had to stop laughing in order to breathe. After a while he became very still, his gray head sagged down onto one shoulder.