Phantom Nights

by John Farris

  All Southern communities with more than one traffic light have a Pee-Wee or a Shorty, and most run true to type: Mickey Rooney—size, born standing up and talking back and, in the case of Evening Shade's Pee-Wee, minutely knowledgeable about all on this earth that is worth living for: fishing, hunting, politics, and sports in their seasons; the brag and mythos of male sexual prowess.

  Around six in the evening. Alex was halfway through a cheeseburger soggy with mustard and ketchup when Bobby came in to the tinkling of the bell over the front door, yelled at Pee-Wee, who was wrapped in an apron that looked as if it had been through an auto-da-fé, old Pee-Wee wreathed in stinky fry-grease smoke behind the counter and yelling back at him. He had the face of a cranky fetus. Bobby slipped into the initial-scarred, high-backed booth opposite his brother, having another look around the cafe to check on who was there and not given to minding his own business. But PeeWee's clientele was nearly all families with small ones, a couple of whom were whiners or liked to crawl under the tables. Except for a smile or a wave of greeting, nobody paid further attention to Bobby.

  Pee-Wee had Sara Sundeen waiting tables this Sunday and an elderly coachwhip Negro named, obscurely, True Willie Nebraska working alongside him, handing the burgers and Cokes out the Jim Crow window. The Negroes ate their meals at picnic tables in a restful grove of persimmon and chestnut trees between Pee-Wee's establishment and the Tropical.

  "What you fixin' to have, Bobby?" Sara asked him. She was fifty, give or take, still maintaining a rawboned beauty in spite of the puckered skin under-eyes like misplaced vaccination scars. She had carried on with his daddy once upon a time, among other things Bobby knew about her.

  "Coffee black; let's see, uh, toasted cheese, whole wheat. I still got to eat dinner home later on."

  "Catch up to them wild dogs yet?"

  "No, but we're out there looking."

  Alex paused with a mouthful of burger and raised his eyes to his brother's face.

  "Lord, that does give me the shudders! Poor thing. She was a pretty one. Educated too."

  Bobby glanced at Alex's face, the wad in his jaw he wasn't swallowing, and wondered.

  "Heard she was looking after Priest Howard in his last days. Reckon what she was doing in that cemetery come crack of dawn?"

  "No telling. Might just have been something she liked to do. Quiet that early, nobody else around to bother."

  "Well, sure. God bless 'n keep her."

  When they were alone, Alex pushed one of his spiral-bound notebooks across the Formica tabletop to Bobby and resumed eating. Chocolate malt and french fries backing up the burger.

  Bobby read Alex's account of the rape of Mally Shaw, his face settling into an expression of gloom.

  Before he could ask questions, Pee-Wee paid a social call.

  "Ad-lay!" he said with a derisive twist of his little mouth, summing up the previous week's high point in national politics and his own distaste for the Democrats' choice to lead their ticket in November. "Sure did think old 'Cowfever' had a lock goin' in, but Truman's hard-on has always been for Stevenson. Ad-lay against a war hero, it be a sho'-nuff perscription for losin' the White House."

  "Pee-Wee, you know you got to provide a decent burial soon for that old apron of yours before I declare it a public nuisance."

  "Like hell you will!"

  "How's your boy making out with that new wife of his?"

  "Reckon it'll be a good marriage. They been together eleven days already, and she ain't left him but twice."

  "Your grill is on fire again."

  "True Willeh! Throw some flour on that, gosh dang it! 'Scuse us older boys here a minute, Alex. Bobby, you heard why scuba diving is like sex with a tall woman?"

  "Haven't heard that one."

  "No matter how big your tank is, you can't never get in deep enough!"

  "Speak for yourself, Pee-Wee. Your ex-wife told Cecily yours didn't have no more twang to it than a one-string banjo."

  Pee-Wee chortled. "How would she know, her root cellar was tighter'n a gnat's navel. Damn if I didn't almost go broke paying for those lube jobs just so's I could get me a little somethin' come Satiddy nights." He winked. "'Scuse us again, Alex, that wasn't meant for your tender ears."

  When Pee-Wee returned to his chores Bobby looked at Alex and said, "What were you doing over to Mally's last night? Looking to diddle her yourself maybe?"

  It was his angry tone more than the off-base accusation that alerted Alex; Bobby was deeply troubled by what he'd read. Alex calmly shook his head although his cheeks were reddening and stared his brother down. Bobby looked at the notebook under his right hand.

  "Okay, that was—I know Mally Shaw wasn't uh—so what were you and Mally all about anyhow?"

  Somebody used up a nickel at the jukebox to hear Hank Snow's Rhumba Boogie.

  Alex leaned back in the booth, wiping his fingers on a paper napkin. Not taking his eyes off Bobby.

  Bobby looked up again uncomfortably.

  "This uh story of yours—"

  Alex shook his head again, very deliberately, his lips clamped together.

  "Okay. You heard and saw most of it. Mally let—him in her house when she should've known a sight better. Then one thing led to another while you were hiding out. Probably the only smart thing you did last night. Let me tell you. The man's reputation is, he's always been Woody Woodpecker with a big set of balls. Takes 'em and leaves 'em. So what do you want me to do? Arrest Le—the man on your say-so? Know how far I'd get with that? Hell, you're old enough to know the score, Alex. Rape is a booger to prove anytime, and when it's a nig—shit, forget it. Even saying she was still alive, Mally wouldn't dare open her mouth in her own behalf. I'd be out of a job in an hour with mouths to feed, and six months from now I'd be gone fishing and like as not never turn up again. Until maybe the concrete blocks they wired to my feet slipped off the bones. That's how they play it—man who has friends with a big stake in his future."

  Alex was very still with cheeks fully fired up, causing his eyes to water a little from the heat of his disappointment and dismay. Then he reached for his notebook, but Bobby slid it away from him.

  "Uh-uh. I'll just hang on to this, get rid of it when I can. Now tell me: There a chance anybody saw you out to Mally's last night?"

  Alex half-rose from his seat to try to wrest the notebook from Bobby's grip.

  "Sit down," Bobby said grimly. "I'm after looking out for your welfare, and all you ever do is think up new ways to make it hard for me. I said sit down, asshole!"

  Alex's sore lips trembled. There was such pain and disillusionment in his brother's eyes that Bobby had to look away for a moment.

  That's when Alex stuck his left index finger down his throat, triggered his gag reflex and vomited all over the table and Bobby as Sara Sundeen approached with Bobby's pot of coffee and his toasted cheese.

  Alex had finished barfing and bolted from the booth before Bobby, looking at the undigested burger shotgunned across his shirt front, could recover from his astonishment.

  "Oh my," Sara said, reaching for the wipe cloth tucked under her belt. "We'll just take that one off the bill."

  SIX

  Of Shadows and Phantoms

  Now in the blue hour

  Beneath a gemmy cusp of sky

  In that landscape of surcease

  Known as Little Grove churchyard

  The boy lingers with more

  Anguish than any boy can be prepared

  To know,

  Sun sinking west like a homesick

  Heart

  Gilding him with the hint of a halo

  In a stoned church window.

  The wind sighs in the vernacular

  Of the estranged. There in uplifting

  Night he stands ready once more

  To welcome the Dixie Traveler.

  It is the cloudless time

  Between the limepit noon of summer

  And the mockingbird's dark,

  Time of crossings and recro
ssings,

  Of going and returning—of

  Shadows and Phantoms that appear

  To the occult eye as dew

  Gathers on blades of grass,

  Pallid Sisters and Brothers

  Rising to the occasion

  From little houses of the dead,

  Sepulchres of the shattered

  Grail.

  The rusted bell tolls. But he, lusting

  Now for more than antics, for the

  Bravest step of all, cannot hear

  Beyond the Dixie Traveler's

  Iron thunder. His heartbeat

  Swells, his mind is filled

  With a bluesy reckoning:

  If you don't have what it takes,

  Some pretense of folly,

  There can be no love lost or gained.

  He is kindled by the headlamp

  Of the Traveler; studies it

  With the pierced, deep look

  Of the entranced. Night seals

  His world. The stars

  Grow older, but slowly.

  Surcease. Tears at his grave

  (He knows) will settle

  Like a melancholy rain. O

  The fickle-hearted! Now he trusts

  Only the entrancement, mirrors

  That reflect inward.

  The Traveler is here, and it is

  time for him to board.

  He steps forward and puts a foot

  on the shining rail to meet

  His Titan—

  —Steps forward—

  "Alex Gambier, what the hell did you think you were doing?"

  From where he lay on his back in gravel seven or eight feet from the now-empty rails, stunned as if swept back from the wheels of the passing train by a blow from a wing of an angry angel, Alex blinked to clear his cloudy vision and looked up into the eyes of Mally Shaw, who was standing over him, hands on hips in a scolding attitude. No wings but anger to spare. The moon, the stars in their appointed places becoming visible to him past Mally's squared shoulders, brightest around her head, coronal.

  At first thought he was dead, then, no, dreaming. But the dead knew no pain, according to the preachers. As for a dream, you didn't hurt from scraped elbows while dreaming.

  "Go and throw your life away like that, for what? Don't you know what I would give, just one more day, one hour, even, to get out of here, have me a deep breath of air, eat corn on the cob just dripping with melted butter—I never figured you to be so dumb."

  "Get out of where?" Alex said, hearing the last rattle of the club car of the Dixie Traveler as it cleared the long trestle over the Yella Dog, then belatedly hearing his own effortless words in his mind even though the voice was not familiar. He scrambled up off the right-of-way ballast, away from the figment, the apparition his brain was trying to pass off as Mally Shaw. Not doing such a bad job of it, actually: she was perfect in form, not scarred like an ancient obelisk nor bloody from hounds' teeth, wearing a dark blue dress with moonflowers on it he'd seen her wear before—his body was moving, but his head reeled; Alex did a spin and fell again and heard her laugh.

  "Oh boy. Better just to take it easy for a little while, get your balance back."

  "You're supposed to be—in the Promised Land." That voice that must be his.

  Mally looked around with amused skepticism. "I'm sure enough not, punkin," she said. Her expression sobered. "How much more time do you need to get used to that notion?"

  "Well, if you're not dead—"

  "Oh Lord. I'm plenty dead all right. Can't take that back."

  He tried to get up but his head wasn't ready; he fell hard on his butt.

  "Then what are you doing here." Alex cried in exasperation.

  Mally gave him a long look.

  "Don't know for sure. But it's bound to have something to do with you, Alex. And maybe some unfinished business of my own."

  SEVEN

  Jean Valjean on the Pegasus

  New Gunslinger in Town

  True Obsessions

  Eddie Paradise Galphin had finished throwing up under the catalpa trees behind the delivery entrance of Godsong and Wundall's funeral home and was halfway through a cigarette when Ramses Valjean came outside, put down his medical bag and Eddie's Speed Graphic camera, and stood in the driveway of the one-story frame building rubbing his sore eyes. The sun had set, but the sky was still alight at treetop level. What breeze there would be to make the coming night bearable stirred the leaves above their heads and smelled of fresh-cut hay from a nearby pasture.

  Eddie strolled over with a show of cockiness to the man who had seen him run from the room in which Mally Shaw's body still lay in all of its shrunken ghastliness on a zinc-top table—but Eddie was going to put that image out of his mind. He was going to . . . Sure. In about six months, if he was lucky.

  "How long will you need to develop the photographs we've taken?" Ramses asked him.

  We've taken was being generous; Eddie had managed with panicky heart and rising gorge to get one shot at Ramses's direction before abandoning his camera and quitting that room with its morbid airs on the dead run. No telling how many other plates Ramses had exposed. Or of what use they were to him. His own daughter? If he wasn't such a cool customer and a doctor to boot, Eddie might have entertained dark suspicions about Ramses Valjean.

  "I've got my own darkroom, so soon's I make it back to the house—"

  "Do you have a wife, Eddie?" Ramses seemed momentarily staggered, as if by a sudden zephyr, and put out a hand to a post of the fence that lined the gravel drive. Finally getting to him, Eddie thought with a twinge of sympathy. Eddie had spent much of the last four hours with the enigmatic Dr. Valjean at the Little Grove cemetery, then on a visit to the farm of Ike and Zerah Thurmond, finally this stop at the mortuary. Eddie the willing chauffeur; Ramses might have had the use of Mally's old car, but he had never learned to drive.

  "Married? Not hardly. Not on what the Defender pays. I not only write for it, I got to deliver it to make ends meet. But it is journalism, and you got to start somewhere." Filing daily items about life and events in Evening Shade, such as his account of Mally Shaw's death. Half a column for sure, maybe a two-column head in tomorrow's paper. But Eddie, having met her father while doing his follow-up, sensed that a bigger story was happening here that, once he had the complete lowdown, could pave his way to a salaried position as a staff reporter, not a lowly stringer. And not necessarily with the Tri-State Defender Eddie had his sights set on Chicago and the Negro journalist's Olympus, the great Chicago Defender newspaper. All he had to do now was stay close to his source.

  "Dr. Valjean, you look done in. Which under the circumstances who can blame you? Wonder do you have yourself a place to stay while you be in Evening Shade?"

  "I haven't given that any thought, Eddie," Ramses said, gripping the fence post with one hand, looking up at the stars and breathing deeply as if he were trying to inhale one or two. "I should stay the night at Mally's house, if you know where that is. In the meantime I have more to do. The sheriff, what was his name? Gambier. I need to see him, although I'm sure I won't find him in his office."

  "Lives on West Hatchie. He's acting sheriff while Luther Tebetts be out of town the next week or so. Had my druthers, rather deal with Sheriff Bobby than old Lute."

  "Could you drive me to his home, then?"

  "No problem at all," Eddie said with a gracious smile.

  With Ramses in the rumble seat of the red roadster and Eddie driving, conversation was awkward but Eddie gave it a try, looking back and raising his voice so that Ramses could hear him over the noise provided by a bad muffler.

  "Lived here all my life! But I don't recall any Valjeans hereabout!"

  "My father's name was Russell."

  "Be plenty of Russells in Evening Shade. How did you come by that name of Valjean?"

  "I changed my name after adopting France as my native country. If you drive more slowly, I would be able to hear you without your having to shout."


  "Oh, right!" Eddie throttled back to twenty-five sedate miles an hour. "You been to France, then? When was that, during the Great War?"

  "Long before. I spent fourteen of my first thirty years in Paris."

  "No fooling? I'll bet that's a story."

  "Yes, it is, Eddie."

  "Changed your name and everything. So if you don't mind my asking—"

  "Ask away," Ramses said, brushing a flying insect with diaphanous wings from his beard.

  "Where did 'Valjean' come from?"

  "From a famous novel I read, or taught myself to read in French, when I was a cabin boy aboard a merchant marine vessel. Les Misérables. I identified very closely with the unfortunate hero of Hugo's novel. Have you read it?"

  "No. How did you happen to—"

  "When I was fifteen, I fell in love with the notion of going to sea." Talking seemed to be something he needed to do right now. Words helped him breathe properly, which was useful for repressing the feelers of pain finding their way around the roadblock from his last injection of morphine. And language called up memories to replace other memories of the grim hour he had spent in the mortuary. "I was one of a barefoot gaggle of farm children, and the only sea I knew in reality was a green sea of corn rows in a good year. My father said he couldn't spare me, so I simply ran away. To the Mississippi River, and down to New Orleans by barge. This was in 1906. I was a handsome boy in rags, yet I carried myself well. I survived around the docks until I came to the notice of Captain Jack Marsh of the Pegasus. He happened to be an educated man who kept a small library, in four languages, aboard his vessel. To which I was eventually allowed access during my four lengthy voyages aboard the Pegasus."