A Corpse's Nightmare

by Phillip DePoy

  “How old?” Stacey wondered. “Maybe it’s an antique or something, worth money, I mean.”

  “Well.” I tried to think. “It seems to me that it came from my mother’s side of the family, from my maternal grandmother, I think.”

  “So it was old,” Skid confirmed.

  “Yes,” I told him, “but I can’t imagine that it would be valuable enough to … and anyway how would the man even know about it?”

  “All right.” Skid started to leave the room again.

  “Wait,” Stacey said suddenly, remembering something. “You were going to talk to him about the phone call.”

  “Shoot, that’s right.” Skid stopped again, this time framed in the doorway. He turned and sighed. “Stacey told me that you got a call from inside the hospital.”

  “Oh, right,” I mumbled, trying to collect my thoughts, feeling more and more drowsy. “What was that about, does anyone know?”

  “They didn’t say anything to you?”

  “No—they said—wait, I think they asked if I was Earl. Maybe they just got the wrong room or something.” I looked at Stacey. “Nurse Chambers, here, said that.”

  “That’s what the hospital operator said when I asked about it,” Stacey confirmed.

  “Maybe it was just a wrong number,” Skid said slowly, “but you get that call right when you come out of a coma? The timing is too coincidental for me.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to rule out anything at the moment. Could be nothing. Could be related.”

  And he was gone.

  “He thinks I’m insane,” I confided to Stacey.

  “Skid’s really tired,” Stacey whispered. “You can hear it in his voice.”

  “I really want to go home tomorrow,” I told her.

  “Oh, sweetie, I don’t think that’s going to happen.” She tucked me in a little bit. “Right now it looks to me like you’re just going back to sleep.”

  And with that, I was out.

  10.

  Again the Paris streets, steel-gray, wet with rain, appeared. And with them the sound of an obscure tune I had heard many times called “The Montmartre Rag.” It was the composition of early African-American jazz impresario Louis Mitchell, the only person with whom T-Bone Morton recorded before he left Paris. Mitchell’s Jazz Kings had played for several years at the Casino de Paris on the rue De Clichy. Mitchell himself owned an American restaurant in Montmartre. T-Bone was the alto saxophone player on Mitchell’s composition for the Pathé label in Paris in 1922. T-Bone took the place of James Shaw, Mitchell’s usual sax player, when Shaw developed a toothache.

  Mitchell was an important figure in T-Bone’s world because he helped many African-American jazz artists establish themselves in Paris. At a time when most black musicians couldn’t even walk into a restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Louis Mitchell owned a restaurant in the gastronomic heart of Europe. He saw to it that his brothers and sisters were afforded the same opportunities. He was the man who introduced Sidney Bechet to T-Bone. He was the one who got T-Bone a job at Lisa Simard’s café.

  And Mitchell was the man who gave T-Bone the money to book ship passage back to America after Lisa died. T-Bone arrived at the dock with most of his belongings and all the baby’s clothes jammed into his sax case. Tied to the sax case was a small bundle of Lisa’s personal thing: photos, letters, and her small mantel clock. T-Bone walked onto the ship bound for America with the baby on one arm, and the sax case in his other hand. No one was there to wave good-bye, and he wouldn’t have looked back anyway. He was nearly catatonic with grief. He didn’t know what he was going to do without Lisa.

  Mitchell had wired King Oliver in Chicago. He recommended T-Bone. Mitchell said in the telegram that T-Bone was one of the greatest saxophone players he had ever heard, the equal of Sidney Bechet. That’s how T-Bone came to be at the Lincoln Gardens on a quiet Tuesday night early in February of 1924. That’s how T-Bone found himself in the company of Bix Beiderbecke, who subsequently came up with a plan to save the life of T-Bone’s infant daughter. Bix knew people, Caucasian people, in New Orleans—a strange family, but wealthy and decent enough in their own way—who would take the daughter for a while.

  Unfortunately, no amount of exhaustive genealogical study would ever reveal what happened after that night in Chicago. T-Bone Morton vanished from history, and only confusing half references exist concerning the infant daughter.

  * * *

  That time when I awoke there were angels in my room: streaks of blurred light racing all around me, humming impossible music. I thought for a moment that I wasn’t awake at all, still dreaming.

  But as the light slowed down, I was clearly in the hospital room.

  Still, I could see faces; hear voices that belonged to the streaks of light. I might have been able to decipher what they were saying if I’d had a few more uninterrupted seconds with these creatures, but unfortunately, Nurse Chambers opened my door and they all vanished.

  “Dr. Devilin?” she said softly. “Are you awake?”

  “I am awake,” I sighed, “and you are a person from Porlock.”

  She came into the room quickly, frowning. “No, I’m Stacey Chambers.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “But I’m from Blue Mountain,” she said hesitantly, “not from—”

  “When Coleridge was writing his poem ‘Kubla Khan,’” I explained, “he was interrupted by a person on business from Porlock who kept him from his work. After the interruption, he couldn’t remember the vision or the rest of the poem. But the phrase ‘person from Porlock’ has come to represent any interruption thrown in the way of inspiration and vision.”

  “Okay I don’t know what that means,” she said briskly, checking one of the dozen wires going from my body to some machine, “but you had a big spike in your blood pressure while you were asleep and I had to come in and check on it.”

  She busied herself with the device, her back to me, while I tried to think of the right way to apologize to her.

  I finally decided on, “You’re a kind of angel, really, Stacey, and I genuinely appreciate what you’ve done for me.”

  “Oh for God’s sake,” she said without turning around, “you fall asleep for a few months and you turn into a girl? It’s confusing because you used to be a whole lot more—look, if you’re too nice to me, I can’t flirt with you and make Lucinda jealous. And we both like that.”

  “Both?” I smiled. “You and me or you and Lucinda?”

  “Well.” She finally turned around. “Your pressure is completely normal now. Maybe you were having a bad dream.”

  “I was. A little short one.” I decided against telling her about the angelic streaks of light.

  “Your voice is back, have you noticed?”

  I hadn’t, but when she mentioned it, I realized that my throat wasn’t raw anymore, and the sound of my voice was more normal.

  “Good,” I said, locking eyes with her. “Does that mean I can go home now?”

  “Now?” She just laughed. “No. Not hardly.”

  “Stacey,” I began once she quieted down, “last autumn—which I remember as if it were yesterday because, to me, it was yesterday—I was in the doldrums. I had come to a midwinter wood, like Dante. I needed some shaking up. And presto, as my father used to say in his magic show: I got shot. Something shook me up—shook me up a great deal. Now all I can think about is the past. I’m obsessed with it in my dreams. If I don’t get out of this hospital bed and back into my home so that I can start figuring all this out, I might lose my mind.”

  She stared back at me. Finally she muttered, “Your daddy never said the word presto in his life.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Of course you want to go home. And that’s a good sign. When a patient wants to go home, it means they’re feeling better.”

  “There you are,” I said. “I’m feeling better.”

  “Make a deal with you,�
� she said, folding her arms. “If you can walk from here to the sunroom and back, and then stay awake for two hours after that, I’ll talk to Lucinda about getting you out of here.”

  “No, no,” I insisted. “Not Lucinda. I want to talk to the doctor.”

  “What doctor?”

  “The doctor,” I answered. “The one who took the bullets out of me. The one who saved my life. My attending physician.”

  Nurse Chambers shifted her weight onto one leg. “Sugar, Lucinda is the one who saved your life. And the doctor who took out the bullets, Dr. Mercer? He’s gone. He retired on Valentine’s Day. He’s in Italy with his wife.”

  “I don’t have a doctor?”

  “You don’t need one.” She smiled sweetly. “You have Lucinda.”

  No arguing that. Lucinda Foxe was more qualified than most MDs in America.

  “Fair enough,” I said at length. “So, now, what’s your challenge? Make it to the sunroom down the hall, get back here, then stay awake for two hours.”

  “Righty-o,” she confirmed. “That’s all you have to do.”

  “Well unhook me from all these machines and watch me work.”

  I don’t know what she did next because I fell asleep.

  * * *

  The next time I woke up, Lucinda was in the room. She was sitting in the chair reading an old Time magazine. I opened my eyes. She didn’t look up.

  “Did you know,” she told me before I could say anything, “that eighty-seven percent of Americans say they believe in angels?”

  “Hm?” I mumbled, rising toward consciousness.

  “I’m reading an article about angels.”

  “Does it say there how many also believe in the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot?” I sniffed.

  “Right about the same percentage of hospital patients who get to go home when they say they want to.” She closed the magazine and set it in her lap.

  I stared at the cover of the magazine. There was a picture of an angel on it, a Pre-Raphaelite-looking woman with wings and very nicely done-up hair.

  “Here’s my plan,” I announced. “I get up, go home, and solve my own murder. That’s what they call incentive. I have a really good reason for going home, for staying awake, for getting to work. Plus, I’ve had no coffee since I came out of my coma, and, as you know, coffee is my bread and butter.”

  “Then what’s bread and butter?”

  “Bread and butter is my cream of wheat,” I fired back. “Let me go home.”

  She stood, dropped the magazine onto the chair, and smiled devilishly. “Stacey told you the test. If you can make it to the sunroom and back, then stay awake for two hours, we’ll talk about letting you go home.”

  “Done.” I scrambled forward. “Unhook me from these machines.”

  She did in short order. I sat up. I put my feet on the floor. I made it almost all the way to the door before my legs gave out.

  * * *

  Nine days later, with more than three-dozen failed attempts behind me, I finally passed the test. My muscles hurt all the time, cramped significantly. I was dizzy for an hour after I walked. But I had passed the test.

  Thereafter ensued the most vociferous series of arguments in which Lucinda and I had ever participated. She actually took a swing at me the first time I tried to put on my shoes. But in the end, I convinced her that I would heal much more quickly if I could get my muscles working and my brain waves cresting. At least I would like to think that’s what happened. Closer to the truth: I wore her down. She kept saying no and I kept getting dressed. She was spending all her time in my room trying to keep me from climbing into my jeans. Ultimately, she just had to get back to her real work at the hospital and let me do what I was determined to do. Oh, there were long speeches about how stubborn I was, and how angry she was—and I agreed with everything she said. But I was going to go home no matter what.

  Her final volley had been that I couldn’t go home without clothes. They’d thrown away the things I’d been wearing when I’d been shot, and her argument was that I’d be arrested for indecent exposure if I tried to head home in a hospital gown. Then, out of nowhere, a pair of my old black jeans and my favorite green flannel shirt appeared under my pillow. I assumed that she had simply, and sweetly, relented after I’d passed the “walk and wake” test.

  So I was already dressed when Skid barreled into the room. It felt good to have my old green shirt on instead of the humiliating hospital robe.

  “I just got word from Nurse Chambers,” he began without a hint of salutation, “that you think you’re going home. I don’t know who you paid off or what you did, but I’m against it.”

  “Against what?” I asked without looking at him.

  “You know what,” he raved. “You’re going home so you can butt into my investigation. You’re going home so that you can save the day, solve the crime, figure something out.”

  I turned to face him. “I got shot. I want to know who did it.” The simplest answer is always the best.

  “I get that,” he said, “but you’re not really in any shape to—I talked to Lucinda.”

  “Then you probably know that she did everything short of shooting me again to keep me from going home,” I responded, “and as you can see, I’m dressed.”

  “I brought my sidearm.” He wasn’t smiling.

  “Look,” I sighed, “I know you’re here to talk me out of going home because Lucinda told you to do it.”

  “Lucinda didn’t tell me to do a damn thing. I’m doing this on my own recognizance. You’re not ready to investigate your breakfast choices, so I don’t know how you’re in any shape to look into your own murder.”

  “People keep referring to it as my murder.” I finished tucking in my shirt. “It makes a nice dramatic effect, but I feel I ought to point out the very salient fact that I’m not entirely dead.”

  “Yet,” he intoned.

  “Yet,” I affirmed. “So could we segue gently into some other phrase? Would that be all right?”

  A slow wave of dizziness took deep hold of my body, surging from my sternum then back to my spine and upward to my cheeks and eyes. It was the kind of sensation some people have just before they drop off to sleep. I used my new secret trick, something I’d discovered a few days earlier. I had a small wood screw in my hand and I pushed the point into my leg. The pain was instant, and chased away the drowsiness. I’d hidden the screw, stolen from one of the drawer pulls on my hospital nightstand, under my pillow. It had kept me from fainting several times each day.

  “Fever?” Skid took a few quick steps toward me.

  “I’m okay.” I held up my hand, warding him off. “The muscles in my legs cramp every once in a while. They’re still not quite used to being in action again.”

  That was true, but it had not provided my impetus, on this particular occasion, to stay awake. What kept me from falling asleep was a little metal screw.

  Unfortunately, staying upright and conscious was not my only problem. Even with the biting pain, I still lost concentration and comprehension. I needed to cover that. I used another trick for that, something I’d learned in graduate school. Often then, when I hadn’t known the answer to some question I’d been asked, I simply asked another question. For example, I’d been asked the question, “Mr. Devilin, could you give us an example of Spinoza’s determinism?” by one of my colleagues bent on proving that the folklore department was not a sound intellectual investment for the university. I had responded, “Wouldn’t Spinoza have as much in common with the Stoics as with the Determinists?” Thereafter ensued a debate for which I received praise from the very professor who had tried to embarrass me, whose question I never answered. Of course, I’d been correct in that both philosophical schools had made efforts to provide a therapeutic approach toward a human achievement of eudaemonia or happiness.

  “You look like you’re about to fall asleep, to me,” Skidmore said, obviously suspicious.

  “I’m thinking.” I dug the screw into my thigh
a bit deeper, winced, and turned to face Skidmore. “Just what is your real objection to my investigating this—crime?”

  “Your health,” he insisted. “Damn.”

  I finally took a good look at my oldest friend. His sheriff’s uniform was wrinkled; there was a smudge on his tie. His eyes were bloodshot. He sported at least a dozen small cuts on each of his hands. His boots had been muddy, but he’d taken the time to scrape them off before coming into the hospital.

  “Not to mention the fact,” he continued, “that Lucinda Foxe would hurt me bad if anything happened to you and she thought it was my fault.”

  “I agree with that. Lucinda is the one to be afraid of.”

  “You must have had some kind of an argument when you told her you were going home.”

  I stopped torturing my leg with the screw and slipped it casually into my pocket.

  “No,” I told Skid. “We had a deal. I passed her test. She had to agree.”

  “It can’t have been that easy.”

  “All right,” I admitted. “I may have worn her down.”

  “I can believe that,” he said flatly. “But she’s not happy about it.”

  “I know.” I stood. “Now. Sheriff. You look terrible. What in God’s name have you been doing today?”

  “Oh.” He smiled. “You remember Truevine Deveroe, right?”

  “Of course.” I smiled to think of Truevine. She was a dark-haired, strange, shy girl whose family lived back in a remote part of our community. She had been taunted, as a teenager, by bullies of both genders who enjoyed calling her a witch.

  She had once saved my life under mysterious circumstances. That kindness had, in turn, caused me to write a short article called “The Witch’s Grave” concerning folk remedies for certain health problems that were once considered occult.

  “Well, you know how she loves her dogs,” Skid went on. “One of them took off yesterday afternoon, and she came to me for help.”

  “You’ve been chasing one of Truevine’s wild dogs through the woods? Really?”

  “Well,” he said, avoiding eye contact, “when you hear the reason her dog took off, I think you’ll be a little more understanding.”