The Headhunter's Daughter

by Tamar Myers

  Sure enough, there, seated on the platform used by Protruding Navel to hold the washtub when he scrubbed clothes, was Mr. Gorman. Even without the aid of a flashlight Mrs. Gorman recognized him immediately by the way he held his body, for years of close observation and intimacy had etched every subtle variation of his shape and movement into her mind.

  She called loudly to him, both to be heard above the noise of the falls and so as not to startle him when she got too close. He immediately choked back his sobs but would not look up.

  “Mr. Gorman,” she said, unable to refrain from scolding him, “I have been worried sick in regards to your whereabouts.”

  “It is my soul that you should worry about, Mrs. Gorman,” he said, “for today I killed a man.”

  The OP enjoyed driving drunk. He took pleasure in every close encounter with a tree, or boulder, because the encounters were just that—close. There was no one on the road at that hour of the night, and no animals either, except for nightjars and jackals—both creatures that he hated.

  He detested the former because they seemed to explode into your windshield and could startle you off the road, and he couldn’t abide the latter because it was a jackal that had caught and eaten his favorite cat, an orange male tabby named Monsieur Bon Chance. Whenever he had the opportunity, the OP drove with his lights off at night, and then turned them on at the last second in order to blind his victim.

  Of course one never entirely goes unobserved, so gossip had come back to him. He knew there were citizens of Belle Vue (white, of course) who thought he was as heartless as a Nazi storm trooper. Others approved of his behavior. Some even made jokes, substituting Africans for the nightjars and jackals.

  That night, after seven Johnnie Walker Blacks, the OP would make his way to the gravel pits. He was too drunk to hit one jackal, and too off-course for the nightjars to collide with him, but a couple of times he almost tipped over after running up on the dirt embankments that flanked the unpaved roads. As he neared the pits he had to slow considerably—well, for a drunk who barely gave a damn, that is—because the road cut through deep forest and here the embankments sprouted trees.

  As he rounded the last curve and saw the largest gravel pit lying just ahead, an antelope leaped over the hood of the car—no, it wasn’t an antelope! It was something else altogether; perhaps it was a chimpanzee, although these apes weren’t supposed to be found this far south.

  Hell, whatever the creature was, it passed so close to the OP’s open window that he was able to smell it; it smelled of death, of a jackal corpse that had been rotting in the sun for two weeks. And strangely, because the OP didn’t have a religious bone in his body, it smelled of evil and fear.

  Perhaps if he hadn’t had that extra Johnnie Walker Black for the road, Monsieur OP might have been able to remain calm enough to stop the car before it went into the pit. Unfortunately he could not. Also, most unfortunate was the fact that the car entered the pit at its deep end, where its depth exceeded five meters.

  Of course the car did not sink immediately, and the OP did try to escape and would have swum to safety had not the strap of his gun holster gotten caught on the handle of the car door. When his car filled with water a minute later—if he’d been able to tell you—the OP would have said that he felt as if someone was pushing down on his shoulders. The feeling was both terrifying and comforting.

  As the water filled his lungs and at last he lost the battle to breathe, the OP suddenly felt—well, he felt nothing! No fear, no panic, no pain—just awesome, peaceful, nothing.

  “Monsieur OP,” someone said.

  “Oui?” He didn’t even feel as if he needed to turn and face the speaker, because the speaker seemed to be everywhere.

  Mastermind also arrived at the gravel pits much earlier than the appointed hour, but immediately Mastermind knew this was a grave mistake. Even though Mastermind did not believe in ghosts, there was an energy connected to the place so pervasively evil that one could hardly breathe. Surely one could not sit and calmly plan the next stage of a very complex operation in an atmosphere like this. Mastermind was contemplating leaving, and then returning an hour later, but then along came the OP’s car, and it drove straight into the pond.

  The Mastermind could see everything, from beginning to end, but really, there was nothing that could be done for the poor man. The car only stayed afloat for a minute—maybe less. It looked like Monsieur OP was struggling to get out, but what was Mastermind to do? Mastermind couldn’t swim. Not one stroke! There really was nothing to do but watch the gravel pit claim yet another life.

  This man-made scar upon the face of the earth had become a living thing; it was a watery monster that demanded to be fed. Mankind had created it out of his avarice, and now it was feeding on man’s flesh and blood. So far as Mastermind was aware, the gravel pits had claimed only European lives—Belgian lives at that—which was fitting, proving that there was justice under the sun after all.

  Although Mastermind believed it was totally inappropriate to do so, she smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mrs. Gorman prayed that her words would henceforth be gentler. She even laid a hand on Mr. Gorman’s shoulder; it was an act alien to their relationship, unless it was one of their scheduled days of intimacy. However, the aforementioned days never fell in October.

  If her brazen action shocked her husband, he certainly didn’t show it. “I killed a man,” he said again.

  “We are all guilty of murder in our hearts, Mr. Gorman. Why, just last week, I found myself getting so irritated at Pastor Mukedi-Paul that I wanted to—well, I didn’t of course. I only imagined something dreadful, like him stepping into quicksand on his way back home to his village. But as we both know—”

  “Shut up!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Even though he could at times be an arrogant and pompous man, Mr. Gorman was never downright mean. That had been Papa.

  “I said shut up! You don’t know what you’re talking about. I really killed a man. A real flesh-and-blood man.”

  Mrs. Gorman sat abruptly, and with some force, on the hard-packed earth next to the washstand. Either she was married to a murderer, and that was going to take a bit of adjustment, or she was married to a crazy man; that too would be rather taxing. If only they had returned to the United States as scheduled. If only they had not delayed their return by one week so that they might view the headhunter’s bizarre white daughter.

  It had most certainly not been worth it. But how was Mrs. Gorman to know that she would find herself so attracted to the sight of mostly bared male flesh again—that is, white male flesh—at the club swimming pool? Well, really, she ought to have known. After all, didn’t she teach the African children in Sunday school that Satana lurked in the most pleasurable places, just waiting to pounce on those who let their guards down?

  “Please explain yourself, Mr. Gorman. But first, should we have a word of prayer?”

  “I have done nothing but pray for these last many hours, Mrs. Gorman, yet nothing has changed in my situation. Alas, the man has not revived—nor did I expect him to—but neither does the burden of sin feel lifted from my soul. I am lower than a worm, Mrs. Gorman. I am no longer worthy of continuing on as a seeker of souls. This morning I took it upon myself to confront the Mushilele headhunter.”

  “Why, husband?”

  “Because I believed it sinful—a filthy thing—for a savage like him to be rearing a beautiful young white girl like that. Did you know that he spoke Tshiluba?”

  “No! But I thought he could only speak their gibberish—whatever it is.”

  “Bushilele.”

  “Yes. Mr. Gorman, what did you mean by saying that he spoke Tshiluba? Where is he now?”

  “That is who I killed, Mrs. Gorman. The headhunter and I—well, I saw that he was armed, and I believed that he was going to kill me with his knife. So I put some of that good old U.S.A. Marine training into play and we wrestled, and I overpowered him, and I pushed him off the clif
f. God help me, I pushed him off the cliff!” He grabbed her hand and pulled her from the ground and half carried her to the exact spot where he’d stood when he’d given the Mushilele headhunter the fatal shove.

  For a moment Mrs. Gorman was unsure of her own future, so intense did her husband sound. She prayed that God would forgive her sins, she thought of Peaches one last time, she thought of her mother, and she thought of butter-pecan ice cream.

  “I watched him fall,” Mr. Gorman said. “I watched him bounce from rock to rock, and then at the bottom a crocodile grabbed him. It was worse than anything I saw in the war, because this man had done nothing to deserve it. But I realized that only when it was too late.”

  Mrs. Gorman pulled loose from her husband’s grip and took several steps back from the precipice. “Tell me,” she said. “Would you have been so upset with this man if his daughter had turned out to be fat and ugly?”

  “Hells bells!” Mr. Gorman roared. “What kind of question is that?”

  “A good one,” Mrs. Gorman said, and then she turned and walked away.

  “Stop, Husband,” Cripple whispered in a terrified voice. “I see the ghost of a white woman.”

  Husband stopped the wheelbarrow so abruptly that Cripple and Amanda were dumped out onto the road. Lucky for them it had a layer of soft damp sand that cushioned their impact. Nonetheless, Husband recognized that for Cripple it was an opportunity to express her fear of the spirit world in a way that wouldn’t embarrass herself in front of the mamu.

  First she made quite the show of groaning while the mamu got up and brushed herself off. “Husband,” she then moaned, “perhaps you will find it in your heart to have mercy and bring your machete down upon my poor twisted neck.”

  “Not while a spark of breath remains in you, little one,” Husband said. “For how then will our son yet live? Who will breathe for him? The worms in the ground? Would you have the cockroaches feed our baby boy until he is old enough to rise from the grave, himself a ghost? What then shall I name him? Mukishi—Ghost, now that is a fine, original name, is it not?”

  Cripple jumped to her feet and commenced to hop about like a baby bird in a crowded nest vying to be fed. “Aiyee! We will not name that which grows within me Ghost! To do so will curse both it and me! Then we will surely die, Husband.”

  “Cripple, stop!” the white mamu begged. “Do I understand correctly? Are you with belly?”

  “Eyo,” Husband said proudly. “So powerful is my lubola—penis, that even this one jumps with happiness like a gazelle in the Song of Solomo.”

  “Ah, so although you are a witch doctor by profession, you know the Christian Bible?”

  “Tch,” Husband said, deeply offended. “Mamu, I am a Christian—a true Christian. I am a Roman Catholic. Perhaps the Holy Fathers do not teach us as many stories from the Bible as the Protestant missionaries teach their students. But do you not agree that the Bible contains many vicious stories that are unsuitable for human ears?”

  “Well, I—”

  “Look!” Cripple cried. “The ghost; she comes closer!”

  Husband paid heed for the first time, and what he saw made his knees go weak and his heart pound. The ghost had two enormous round eyes that glowed in the dark and it was bearing down on them faster than he could think.

  “That is not a ghost,” the mamu said slowly. “Listen! What do you hear?”

  “I hear you, Mamu,” Cripple said. “But then, who is there in all of this forest who can not hear you? At least your accent has improved a little bit since your arrival. Honestly, Mamu, in the beginning I thought you were speaking to me in Chinois.” Then Cripple laughed—like a monkey!

  “Wife,” Husband said, deeply embarrassed, “have you ever heard Chinois spoken?”

  “Stop it!” Mamu ordered. So like a white, eh? “That is a car that we hear. Those are the lights of a car that we see! It comes to us now, so we must move to the side of the road!”

  Dorcas Middleton had observed quite a bit in the last hour from her post beside the largest gravel pit. She’d come very early, like Jesus had come to Gethsemane to pray on the night of his betrayal and arrest. Dorcas, however, had come on a much different mission. She’d come to pray, yes—that much was like Jesus, but mostly, she’d come early so as not to be outfoxed by that wily Monsieur OP.

  Instead, she’d had the horrifying, yet strangely gratifying, experience of watching the greedy, womanizing Operations Manager driving drunk, go off the road, straight over the bank and into the deepest end of the pond. Then she saw him struggle to get out and flail about as he screamed for help.

  Dorcas knew for a fact that the OP’s soul was not saved from damnation—he’d told her that he didn’t believe in that “Protestant stuff”—so clearly, he was headed straight for hell. On that account, Dorcas felt justified in believing that she saw a claw-like red hand pulling him back into his car, and that’s what was holding him back. That hand, of course, belonged to Satan. The Devil. The Prince of Darkness. Emperor of the Gravel Pits.

  Even if she hadn’t seen a giant red claw, but just spots in front of her tired seventy-nine-year-old eyes, what difference did that truly make? Dorcas Middleton had never learned to swim. In her day, proper middle-class girls did not parade around in bathing costumes in mixed company, just as they did not ride bicycles—well, there was another reason for the latter. Girls who rode bicycles might prove not to be virgins on their wedding night.

  Dorcas shuddered at the thought of someone touching her there. Or anywhere, for that matter. And especially a man. She’d given the matter a lot of thought over the years, and was grateful that the Lord had led her to the mission field, where the opportunities for her to get married had been slim to none. After all, how could she explain—well, she couldn’t. She couldn’t explain it to herself, except to say that those feelings were from the Devil. He was certainly persistent, wasn’t He, this Prince of Darkness?

  He’d first come creeping into her mind when her cousin Florence Rebecca stayed over the night of supposedly the worst snowstorm ever. Both girls were thirteen, but Florence had developed far faster than Dorcas, a fact that both fascinated and inflamed the poor girl. Neither of the girls mentioned their disparate development, but from that night on, Satan was Dorcas’s constant companion.

  No matter how many times she whispered “get behind me, Satan,” the tempter slithered right back into her mind at the slightest provocation. Once, in a misguided attempt to purge herself of these thoughts, Dorcas asked to be stationed at a mission that was being established on the fringe of Bashilele territory. Her request was based on the fact that the Bashilele women who were not yet Christian—the missionaries took the liberty of calling them heathens—wore only loincloths, which they made from the fibers of raphia palm leaves. In a traditional Bashilele village, or sometimes even at church on the mission, it was possible to see hundreds of bare breasts of all sizes and shapes, bouncing and bobbling about (the church breasts were more sedate, to be sure).

  If Dorcas could train herself to be immune to the attraction of so much flesh to meet the eye, then maybe she could keep simple thoughts locked out of her mind when there was no visual stimulation. Unfortunately, after only three months she asked to be reposted. She felt like she’d been living in Sodom and Gomorrah—although she was the only one thinking that way. The other missionaries were quite happy with their posting and confused by Dorcas’s request. Much to Dorcas’s great relief—and Satan’s disappointment—the Mission Board complied.

  Although every now and then when Dorcas would meet another single missionary lady for the first time, she would wonder why that woman was single. Was it because men were not exactly that woman’s particular cup of tea—so to speak? Sometimes she was sure she detected something about the other woman that wasn’t quite—well, “feminine.” Of course, she never asked the woman for personal details; nor did she ever act on her thoughts—not once in fifty-four years. And although Dorcas had never, ever committed a single sexua
l act in all of her seventy-nine years, in the eyes of the Lord she was guilty of it too many times to count.

  But yes, yes, she’d watched as Monsieur OP had drowned, and she’d prayed that at the last minute he’d repented in his heart for being a Catholic and was now well on his way to heaven. That was the best she could do. It was only a few minutes after he’d died, and the last ripples had settled on the pond, that a leopardess and two half-grown cubs padded silently out of the forest to the water’s edge. There they lined up along an accessible stretch of bank and drank noisily. At that hour the almost rhythmic slurping produced by their wide tongues was the only sound audible to Dorcas. Their thirst slaked, the cubs engaged in some rough-and-tumble play until the mother cuffed one of them to signal it was time to retreat back into the shrinking shadows.

  It was time for Dorcas to leave as well. Her plan had been thwarted by her arch nemesis: Johnnie. Johnnie Walker Black. He seemed to have a lot of friends among the Belgians, along with his friend and partial namesake, Johnnie Walker Red. The OP was supposed to have brought her some of his back stash of diamonds. It wouldn’t have been as much as the original plan had called for, but something was better than nothing. One should always be grateful for something, and give God the glory, for He was the Ultimate Giver—“from whom all blessings flow.” From whom everything flowed, right?

  For that reason Dorcas was feeling utterly calm when she saw the next hurdle the Lord saw fit to set in her way. This was before she’d even left the gravel pits behind. Caught in the head beams of her car were Amanda Brown, two Africans, and most important, the Belgian girl whose life she had ruined by the abduction so many years ago. Dorcas drove slowly forward as she prayed for strength; then finding none forthcoming she forced herself to stop and got out of the car.