“Time to go, Josh.”
“Already! We just got here.”
Abe laughed. “Dat’s de way it seem when you listen to Cain. Tol’ you. But tonight, I doan rightly know just why, tonight it do seem different someway.”
“Sho’ ‘nuff,” concurred Eulises. “Cain be cut from a different cloth, dat’s for sho’. Do you be wantin’ to speak with him, Josh? You ain’t rightly met him yet.”
“Well, we fix dat right now,” said Cain. He appeared soundless at the boys’ side. “You ain’t joined us ‘fore now, has you, son?”
“No, suh.” Now that he’d come down from the night sky, Joshua’s senses were beginning to clear. He knew the polite thing to do was introduce himself. Right now he wasn’t sure he wanted to.
Cain saw returning clarity in the boy’s eyes. Have to watch this boy. His eyes gleamed with intelligence.
“Well, I be real pleased you did, son. Real pleased. And glad to have you back. Anytime. De fellowship of our brothers and sisters. Be dere anything finer in dis great world?”
“No, suh,” said Josh, beginning to back away. “I thanks you for lettin’ us come. Abe, ain’t it time we headed back?”
“Probably so. My mama, she goan likely tear me up bein’ out dis late,” he said, evidencing little concern over the prospect. Up until Cain’s arrival, the thought of his mother’s wrath made him cower like a six year old.
The boys turned and headed back up to the boundaries of Wharf Street.
Cain stared thoughtfully after them. That boy. He’d noticed him before, at St. Barnabas. Cain called out to one of his remaining followers.
“Silas!”
“Yes, suh?” Silas didn’t precisely stand at attention but it was a close thing.
“Dat boy, de one come with Abe and Eulises and Jeremiah. He ain’t come ‘fore now.”
“Naw, suh.”
“Who he be? Whut his name?
Silas looked after the departing group.
“Oh, him. Dat be Josh Devlin. Surprised to see him here.”
“Why dat?”
“Josh, he got mighty uppity last few years. Like he ain’t got time for none of us no mo’.”
“How so?”
“He, well, Doc Everett, dat’s Doc Everett Devlin, he raise Josh since he a baby. Josh’s Mama, she come off de street and she die havin’ Josh. Doc Everett, he take him in. Doc like dat, didn’t surprise nobody. But back four, five year ago, Doc Everett’s son, Mist’ Paul, he come home from someplace foreign where he in school. An’ Josh, he go to live with him. He a doctor, too. An’ dat do be all Josh seem to care about now, taggin’ after Mist’ Paul. Like I say, I surprised to see him here.”
“Sho’ nuff,” mused Cain. “Now, ain’t dat interestin’?”
Cain walked away. When he was far enough removed from any of his followers, he laughed. Doc Everett, he take him in. Doc like dat. Sure Doc was like that. The boy’s nose was sharp, his skin creamy brown. His lips, though full, couldn’t be called large. Either the older Devlin’d been having some fun or the younger Devlin’d been getting educated. Because that boy was half-white. And a Devlin, for certain sure. Foundling, hell.
So. Could he use this? Cain already knew both Dr. Devlins, father and son, had a lot of influence in the black community. Cain always did his homework. And it did appear that whichever Devlin had fathered the boy, Joshua was important to the Devlin family. Oh, yes. Cain could use this. He didn’t know exactly how, not right at the moment, but he’d know when the time came.
* * *
Joshua never slept late. The next morning, he woke only because Paul was shaking his shoulder. Hard. “Josh! Time to get moving! What’s the matter, late night? You out with some sweet young thing last night? Knew I wasn’t giving you enough free time, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“Unnnnn,” intoned Josh, and tried to settle back in his pillow.
“Hey, wait a minute! You feel alright? Something wrong?”
“I’m fine. Give me a minute, will ya?”
“Sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. Can’t anybody sleep late once in a while in this house?”
“No. Don’t have time for it. Janie’s got hotcakes for breakfast.”
“Not hungry.”
“What? Thought you weren’t sick?”
“Not sick. Just not hungry. Up in a minute.”
“Better be. Got lots of rounds to make this morning.”
Joshua threw back his covers in irritation when Paul left the room. He felt nervy, itchy, scratchy, unsettled in his skin. A body couldn’t even get any decent sleep around here. He realized suddenly he was annoyed with Paul. Not for waking him up. For being Paul. What on earth was the matter with him?
All at once Joshua remembered his moonlight ride across the heavens and shivered. He wasn’t sure if he shivered in apprehension or in anticipation.
“Josh! I’m goin’ to eat your stack of hotcakes if you ain’t out here in two minutes flat!”
Joshua fought a sudden, inexplicable urge to yell back, “Just shut the hell up!” He’d never felt like that before in his life.
“Comin’!” he yelled back.
* * *
Joshua fought intense irritation all day. It moved under his skin, swarming like ants every time he heard Paul’s voice. It had something to do with that great phantom horse he’d ridden across the face of the moon last night. That night ride hadn’t been normal. He knew it. Shouldn’t be repeated. Un-huh. He knew nothing about Cain, where he came from or why. He shouldn’t go back to the riverbank.
But what an adventure! And being with his own people again! Who would ever understand him better?
He strolled out of the house around 7:00 p.m. that evening, mind made up. He’d never go back to that riverbank. No way, no how. Nothing would make him change his mind.
Abe and Eulises and Jeremiah passed by the house. They paused and lifted their hands in greeting. They hadn’t done that since they’d all been twelve years old.
“You comin’?”
Joshua hesitated for only a heartbeat. He went.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sadie noticed the changes first. Even Doc didn’t realize the pain Sadie’d hidden to raise Joshua without proclaiming to the world he was hers. No mother ever guarded a child with more care. She knew him. Inside and out.
The changes were small at first. Josh paced restlessly throughout the house. He’d always viewed the world with wonder. Now, it seemed nothing gave him pleasure. His voice lost expression. His sense of humor, uncannily similar to his brother’s, went into hibernation. Most of all, she noticed a certain flash in Joshua’s eye when anybody even spoke to him. When that flash seemed to edge past irritation and over into anger, she consulted Paul.
“Mist’ Paul, you notice anything different ‘bout Josh lately?”
“He’s growing up.”
“Dat ain’t it. Since he been goin’ out with his friends in de evenings, he different.”
“God, Sadie, I pushed him too hard. I didn’t realize. He needed some time to himself.”
“He full of hisself, he ill as a goat, and he ain’t eating right.”
Paul grinned.
“Well, whut? Doan jest grin at me like a monkey!”
“He’s in love.”
“He whut?”
“He’s in love. Face it, Sadie, he’s almost a man.”
“You know dat for sho’?”
“Welllll,” Paul drawled out the word. Of course he’d noticed the changes but he’d been a seventeen year old boy himself. He was pretty sure all of Josh’s symptoms would be instantly cured by a good roll in the hay, but he valued his own hide enough not to say that to Sadie.
“He hasn’t said so, but I know, just the same.”
“He in love, he tell you ‘bout it, Paul. He tell you everything. Dat ain’t it.”
“No, he wouldn’t. When you’re seventeen, nothing’s ever happened to anybody else but you, so nobody else understands. Th
is is one thing that’s real private, Sadie. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Humph!” snorted Sadie. “Well, it ain’t goan stay private too much longer do he keep flashin’ dat look. You know de one I mean?”
Paul laughed. “Yeah, I know. Caught it a time or two myself, but Sadie, he was such a good child. He’s been such a good boy. Growing up’s not easy and it’s been especially hard for him.”
“I knows dat.”
“He’s never given a speck of trouble so he’s entitled to be a little difficult every now and then. Don’t you think?”
“Humph!” Sadie snorted again. “Little difficult be one thing. He’s just about crossed dat line over into a pure-de-pain in the behind!”
Paul hooted.
“An’ he cross it any further, I’m goan give him a pain in the behind! You hush up dat laughin’, I mean it.”
“I know you do, Sadie, don’t doubt it for a minute.” Paul assumed a straight face and went about his business.
Joshua was in love all right. Paul was right about that. But he wouldn’t be cured by anything as simple as a good roll in the hay. He was in love with those wafers and potions Cain dispensed at his special Communions. And the strength of those wafers and potions increased dramatically as Cain eased his sermons away from brotherhood and love, toward rage and the dark gods he served.
Sometimes during brief periods of clarity, Joshua felt waves of terror. The dark things flitting at the edge of his consciousness—they couldn’t be real. He hadn’t drunk the blood of slaughtered newborn calves. He hadn’t really slung any of the young girls at the riverbank to the ground and rutted like a wild animal. Had he? No, of course not. Those things happened only in the dream world. Every world held darkness somewhere.
Cain began to dispense little cloth bags to his faithful, small tidbits to “tide them over” from one service to the next. And so for Joshua, the periods of lucidity when he realized he wasn’t ever completely lucid for very long anymore began to disappear entirely. A tidbit here and there throughout the day took care of that.
The tidbits took care of Joshua’s lifelong habit of catlike neatness, too. Even as a child, he’d been precise, his play toys placed, not merely strewn across his room. Sadie opened the door to his room one morning when he was running an errand for Paul. The bed covers were thrown aside, clothes scattered over its foot and spilling onto the floor. His books, his proudest possessions, lay helter-skelter in heaps.
Sadie tightened her lips. This was too much. She didn’t care what Paul said. She’d get this room in order and then she’d get get Joshua in order.
“Too big for his britches,” she muttered, picking up the scattered clothes. “Won’t stand for it. Don’t care what Mist’ Paul say. Tan his hide for him, I will! The idea! The very idea! Of leaving dis room like dis!”
She folded and straightened, sniffing the clothes to see if they needed to be laundered. She shook a pair of pants. Encrusted mud fell off the legs and onto her clean floor.
No question where these pants were going and she plunged her hands into the pockets to check their contents before consigning them to the laundry hampers. Her hand closed on a small cloth bag.
What on earth? She plunged her fingers into the small sack. Her blood ran cold as she examined the contents. She broke open the small, hard wafers and sniffed. Small, dried mushrooms. Seeds. With a pungent odor. Not too many folks would have a clue what they were. Sadie did. Holding the bag tight, she walked out of the room and closed the door firmly behind her, heading to the room she used on the infrequent occasions when she spent the night at the Orange Street house. She sat down on the bed and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Oh, Joshua!” she moaned. “Son, whut you done got into now? Whut?”
* * *
The front door slammed. Joshua. Paul had sent him down to Sol Hogue’s Drug Store for quinine.
“Oh, good!” Paul met him in the hall. “Now we can start rounds. Needed this for Jimbo James, those malaria fevers are coming and going and I know he needs some more—”
“Doan got none.” Joshua walked past Paul toward the kitchen.
“You don’t—you didn’t get any? Why not?”
“Doc Hogue say he out.”
“You out of grammar this morning too, it seems. But Josh, you knew I needed this. Didn’t you go down to Goodwyn’s to see if they had any?”
“You didn’t say to.”
“I didn’t say—Josh, what’s wrong with you, boy? I shouldn’t have to tell you—”
Josh whirled to face Paul. Watching from the stair landing, Sadie almost stepped back from the rage in his expression.
“Ain’t yo’ boy! An’ I ain’t yo’ slave! Doan you call me boy!”
Paul grabbed his arm and jerked. “You hold it! You hold it right there! You got no call to talk to me like that! Sadie calls me boy!”
Josh’s expression changed to murderous wrath. Sadie shot down the stairs, intent on getting between them. Josh moved faster. He broke Paul’s grip and raced back down the hall towards the front door.
Sadie grabbed Paul’s arm as he started after him.
“Paul, please! Please, right now, jest let him go! We gots to talk, son!”
“The hell I will!” exclaimed Paul, impatiently shaking off Sadie’s hand. Too late. Joshua was already out the door. Paul turned back to Sadie.
“Sadie, what the hell? You were right and I was wrong and I’m goin’ to find him and bring him back so you can put that pain on his behind you were talking about. ‘Cause if I do it right now, I’m goin’ to put some serious hurt on him!”
Sadie thrust the bag in front of Paul.
“I found dis. In his pants pocket when I wus straightening his room. You looked in his room lately?”
“No.”
‘Come,” said Sadie.
Paul looked around in astonishment. “We got a boarder I don’t know about? Josh ain’t never—”
Sadie shook the bag again. “You know what dis is?”
Paul took the bag and opened it. He shrugged.
“Some dried mushrooms. Seeds of some kind.” He picked up one of the wafers. “Some sort of hard cookie? What?”
“It’s poison, Mist’ Paul. Pure-de-poison. Not too many folks know whut dis is, whut it do. It fill yo’ head with color and sights of wonder, sapps yo’ will, put you in somebody else’s power. Make you do and think and feel whatever dat somebody else tell you to do and think and feel. An’ sometimes, sometimes, de bright colors, de pretty dreams, dey twist and turn into snakes dat fill you up and send you screamin’, runnin’ and beggin’ for mercy.”
From nowhere, he heard Chloe’s voice as she told him long ago, on the banks of the Ocmulgee. Sadie has power. Sadie knows mojos.
“How do you know about things like this?”
Sadie sighed. “Might be we ought to go in your office and sit a spell.”
“Might be.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
They settled down on Paul’s big leather couch.
“So,” said Paul. “Tell me.”
“While I talk, you forget I’m Sadie, Sadie like you knows me. An’ doan take no insult, ‘cause right now I ain’t speakin’ as yo’ hired help.”
“Sadie! I had enough horseshit out of Josh. You’re not hired help, you’re family. You’re my Mama, for God’s sakes!”
She continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “Or as yo’ daddy’s woman. Yo’ daddy, he tol’ you my real name one time. You ‘member?”
“Sadama. Wished you’d used it, Sadie. It suits you a lot better.”
“I made a choice a long time ago. To live in dis world de way I do. I had a chance at another world, an’ my sister, she do live in dat world.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister, Sadie.”
“Lord, Mist’ Paul. Got sebben of ‘em.”
“Seven? Your mama must have had her hands full.”
“My Mama, she a great lady. She work all her life, she work hard, and my Daddy did, too
, and dey done dere best for all of us, but my Mama, she didn’t jest live in dis world. She have power, Mist’ Paul. Now, I knows you goan laugh, but she have de sight. She could see things, things dat move just beyond de veil of this world. See, what you doan know, not too many men, black or white neither knows, is this world, it be ringed with worlds on worlds. Dey shift, dey overlap, and some of dose worlds be real dark, full of evil and danger, and some of ‘em, dey be real bright and beautiful.”
Sadie paused to look at Paul’s face and gauge the effect of her words. Satisfied, she continued.
“An’ some folks can pass back and forth whenever dey want to. An’ dey can use de powers of dose worlds in dis one. I doan know jest why or what it is dey have dat let’s ‘em do it. But whut I do knows is whatever dat thing is, it doan care whether the body dat gots it be good or bad. An’ whether the body dat gots it be good or bad, dat whut makes dere power good or bad. ‘Cause a bad person, be dat person black or white or man or woman, dey goan use dat power bad, and a good person, dey goan do great wonders wid it. Do you see a’tall whut I’m saying?”
The Paul educated in Edinburgh where the religion of rationalism ruled laughed at Sadie’s earnest explanations. The Paul who’d moved in and out of the black sub-culture around him since earliest boyhood didn’t laugh. That Paul leaned forward in anticipation and shouted, “Finally! I knew sooner or later somebody’d tell me the truth!”
“And your Mama, she could do this? And you, too?”
“Yes. No. Well, my Mama, she could do it some. She was a sebbenth daughter, the sebbenth girlchild of my Grandmama. Numbers, dey have dere own powers and sebben, it be a real powerful number. So yes, my Mama could do more den lots of folks could. But she didn’t never use dat power for no badness and truth be tol’, she didn’t use it no more den she could help. I think it scare her. An’ dat’s good, Mist’ Paul, dat’s real good, ‘cause if you doan use it right, if you doan knows ‘xactly whut you doing, bad things can happen. Real bad things. Things can cross over to us dat weren’t never 'sposed to be in dis world.”
Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) Page 12