by Ninie Hammon
No, that wasn’t actually why he’d filled that vial up with nigger blood. He’d done it so’s he could stand right up next to Bishop Washington with the blood of the big ape’s son in a vial around his neck. Stand there and make nice with King Kong, tell him how sorry he was to hear the man’s son had gone missing, and all the time that boy’s blood was right there, dangling inches from the old man. It’d been all Billy Ray could do not to bust a gut over it.
He sighed out the breath he’d been holding, took another drag and held it again, thinking how much he wished he still had that vial of blood. He could have got a whole gallon if he’d wanted to, the way it splattered everywhere. Chainsaws made a fine mess, for a fact.
And he’d be lookin’ at the stain that blood had left on the slat floor in only three weeks and six days, in that boxcar everybody said was a myth!
“Wasn’t no such thing as buried boxcars full of dope money,” folks’d said, “that’s crazy talk.” And he’d nod his head and allow as how they was absolutely right, a made-up story was all, couldn’t be the truth. And all the time he had the key to one hanging around his neck on the same chain as the vial of Isaac Washington’s blood!
He laughed out loud then when he remembered how shocked that stupid boy had been when he saw that boxcar. Billy Ray had let him get a real good look around it before he killed him.
There was a sudden banging on the door of the shed where Billy Ray sat leaned against the back wall. The force of the blows released a cloud of dust lacing the strands of sunlight from the cracks in the ancient walls that striped the floor.
“Hawk! You in there, Hawk? It’s me, Walker.”
Billy Ray had leapt to his feet at the first blow on the door, looking around frantically for somewhere to ditch the joint, or to hide himself. The small shed offered no place to do either. He gasped out a sigh when he heard Walker’s voice and started for the door.
“What do you want?” he called out. “Liked to scared me—”
“Get your butt out here, now!” Walker said. “A surprise count and you ain’t where you’s supposed to be. I covered the best I could, but—”
Billy Ray yanked open the door before Walker had a chance to finish. He knew he smelled like dope, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had stubbed the joint out on the floor of the shed and then swallowed the remains.
“Where they at now?” he asked.
“Admin wing. I said I thought I’d heard you say you needed to talk to the counselor, make sure all the I’s was dotted and t’s crossed ’bout your job when—”
“I owe you,” Billy Ray said, “now git!”
Billy Ray took off at a leisurely walk down toward the trees at the edge of the property. He stopped there and quickly unzipped his pants. Then he shoved the remainder of the small bag of dope into his mouth and chewed frantically. He knew what it’d do to him to eat marijuana; he’d done it before. But his body’s response was exactly what he needed right now. He swallowed hard, then kept swallowing back reflexive heaving, breathing in little sips of air as his stomach tried desperately to revolt. As soon as he saw the guard in charge of his wing come out the admin building door, he pretended to be emerging from the trees, zipping his pants.
“You, Hawkins, where you been?” the guard called out to him.
Billy Ray leaned over and vomited noisily on the ground in front of him, gagging up the dope and his breakfast in one noxious heave. He retched a couple more times as the guard approached, then spoke breathlessly.
“I’m sick, man,” he said. “The trots hit me so fast I barely made it to the trees ’fore I crapped my pants.”
The guard wrinkled his nose at the smell of the vomit.
“Get over to the infirmary,” he said and stepped away. “And don’t breathe on me. I don’t want whatever you got.”
Billy Ray turned and walked in the slow, careful way of a sick man down the walkway and turned toward the infirmary. Didn’t allow himself the luxury of a smile, but he was smilin’ on the inside. He’d outfoxed them again, like he always done. Like he always would do. Think fast on your feet and you always ended up on top. He could have lost it all, blown through the parole and had to spend the remaining ten years of his sentence locked up, but he’d beat them.
Home in less than thirty days. Get him some cash. Have himself some women.
And then find Becca.
* * * * * * *
Ruby Walsh saw it all. Peeked out the door in the men’s toilet in the recreation room and watched the whole thing.
Ok, not all of it.
She didn’t see the part where the patient everybody called BB, for Blubber Butt, went and found Nurse Phillips. Ruby’d been hiding behind the urinals, hadn’t yet got the nerve to crack the door open an inch so she could see what was happening.
But she did see the part where he dragged the nurse by the hair into the room—her screaming and crying—and threw her down on her knees in front of the nurse’s station.
“You’re sorry now, ain’t ya,” he yelled at her. His voice was strange, made an odd rumbling sound in his throat like Ruby hadn’t ever heard anybody make. “Sorry you got me locked away in solitary, left me to rot in that dungeon, couldn’t talk to nobody through them rock walls. Say you’re sorry!”
She cried, said she was sorry, begged him not to hurt her, said she had little kids, went on and on. But the man in black didn’t have any patience for her. He reached out, grabbed the nurse’s head and twisted it on her shoulders—Ruby heard the crack sound—and the nurse went limp. He kept twisting, though, until her head was pointed backwards, her face all purple and her eyes bugging out.
The one-eyed-man was an Eliminator, all right. He’d come for Ruby, but she’d outsmarted him—kept a metal bedpan on her head so he couldn’t find her as she peeked out of the bathroom, watching.
She’d known The Force Supreme would send an Eliminator after she’d blocked its control beams with the foil lining in the cap she wore all day—nurses wouldn’t let her sleep in it. Ruby had seen him in time to hide, though. She had sneaked out onto the roof to catch a smoke like she always did on Wednesdays after her sister visited the day before and slipped her a pack.
She was sitting on the roof tiles outside the glow of the lighted sign out front that said “East Texas Regional Psychiatric Hospital, Texarkana” when she saw the car.
A service road wound around to a gate in the back of the stone fence surrounding the facility and she watched a car drive down that road—with its headlights turned off. It parked in the mesquite grove under where she was sitting, just drove right into it. She heard the brush and dry limbs scrape down the side of the car with a sickening there-goes-the-paint-job sound.
The man who got out of the car was dressed in black, head to foot. Even had a black patch over one eye. He walked along the base of the wall until he found a place where overhanging tree limbs formed deep puddles of darkness. Then he jumped up to the top of the fifteen foot wall. In one leap! That’s when Ruby knew for sure he was an Eliminator! She almost wet herself, crawled as fast as she could back in the top floor crafts room window, then raced down the stairs to the men’s bathroom on the ground floor where the storage closet was full of metal bedpans.
Now, she sat trembling as BB and the one-eyed-man yelled at each other.
“You done now?” the Eliminator snarled. “We’ve got more important things to do than—”
“Ain’t nothing more important than revenge. I’m gonna get me some payback!”
BB turned to walk away, the one-eyed-man grabbed his arm and suddenly they were at each other like animals. Rolling around on the floor, knocking over tables and lamps and chairs, growling, hitting, kicking, biting—didn’t stop until the double doors opened and in stepped Matthew Mitchell, the skinny little orderly, come to see what all the noise was about.
The fat man was as quick as a snake. Before Mitch even registered what was going on, BB jumped up and grabbed the front of Mitch’s shirt and threw him
across the room. All the way across the room! He slammed into the wall and fell away groaning. His face was smashed, his lip bloody.
BB went to where Mitch was lying stunned on the floor. “Warned you! Said you’d be sorry for taking away my TV privileges.”
“No reason to get upset,” Mitch said. He sounded stuffy, like his nose was stopped up. It must have been broken. “Look, we can work—”
BB reached down and lifted Mitch off the floor—grabbed his neck with one hand and a handful of his scrub pants in the other—and…broke Mitch in half over his knee, like you’d break a stick for firewood. Mitch shrieked and Ruby was afraid she was going to be sick, heard herself making little whimpering, retching sounds, couldn’t stop even when she put her hands over her mouth so they wouldn’t hear.
BB dropped Mitch’s broken body on the floor, leaned over and took Mitch’s watch off his arm.
“Always liked this watch,” he said as he fitted it on his fat wrist. “I know you want me to have it since you won’t be needing it anymore.”
Mitch didn’t say anything. He wasn’t dead, but maybe he couldn’t speak. He just looked up at BB, so pitiful, like a dog got run over on the road. Then the Eliminator got to his feet, took two steps, bent over Mitch, and casually twisted his head around on his neck like he’d done Nurse Phillips. Ruby didn’t hear the snap, but she was glad Mitch wasn’t suffering no more.
“We done now?” the man in black said. “It’s a long drive. Come on!”
Ruby reached up and held the bedpan down on her head, gritted her teeth together to keep silent so tight her jaw hurt.
And that was it. They left, but Ruby didn’t come out of the bathroom until the police arrived.
She tried to tell them about the Eliminator, why he’d come and what he could do. She got right up in that policeman’s face, started crying just talking about it. No one believed her, though. But because she was close to hysterical, the nurse let her sleep the night with her foil-lined cap pulled snug over her ears.
CHAPTER 21
It was a modest brick house with a well-kept lawn—a small one because the rest of the yard was devoted to flowers. Big flower beds bordered the fence and the driveway, a riot of daisies, daffodils, asters and dahlias. The winding path to the front porch was lined with orange and yellow marigolds and sunflowers, their colors forming a lattice, and Jack had the impression of wandering toward the Emerald City down the Yellow Brick Road. But the most impressive flowers were set around the porch. Roses—white, pink, red and multicolored—grew on bushes that encircled the house, leaving only a narrow pathway up the front steps. Bordering the rose bushes were huge hydrangeas in shades of pink, blue and white.
An image flashed in his mind and was gone almost as soon as it formed. A smaller house, wood frame, not red brick, but with rosebushes lining the porch just like this one. There was a swing on the porch, the kind you knew would produce a melodious eek-eek with every movement back and forth. Above the front door of that house was a plaque made of dark wood with a swirling grain—stained oak, maybe—that had words burned into the surface. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15.
The same plaque hung above the door of this house.
Jack stared at it as he pushed the doorbell, wondering if he’d only imagined the other house and the other plaque. No, correction: the other house and the same plaque, even down to the border of wood-burned morning glory vines laced around the edges.
Theresa opened the door while he was still staring at the plaque.
“Bishop made it,” she said, “years ago. It’s hung above the front door of every house we ever lived in.” She eyed him carefully. “You recognize it, Jack?”
“No.” He paused. “Yes.” He shook his head, embarrassed. “It’s like I ‘almost’ remember it, then the image is gone. I’m sorry, I know that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” Theresa said. “If you’d a’come to my house a month ago, you’d a’looked at that plaque and it wouldn’t have rung no bells whatsoever.” She studied him. “An ’pears to me if you come back a month from now, you gone remember the plaque and the door and maybe what happened years ago behind a door just like this one once it was shut tight behind us.”
She stepped back.
“Ya’ll come on in this house and make yourselves at home.” As Jack and Daniel filed past her into the room, she asked, “What can I get you to drink? I got coke-cola, tea, water, coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice. I recommend the orange juice, but I ’spect you fine gentlemen ain’t the orange-juice-drinkin’ kind.”
The room wasn’t what Jack expected. It was large, stretching across the whole front of the house, the walls painted a rich, amber brown. But it wasn’t dark or confining. Half a dozen lamps of different shapes and sizes resting on antique end tables joined two antique floor lamps to bathe the room in a rich, warm glow through shades of gold and ivory. A large picture window looked out on the front yard and big windows on both ends of the room brought in abundant sunlight. The shiny hardwood floor was a different shade of the amber brown on the walls and it was covered with two oval rugs, the kind his grandmother called rag rugs. The furniture was all antiques, big and sturdy. Jack would have expected nothing less given the size and bulk of Bishop Washington.
“Sit yourselves down”—Theresa made a sweeping gesture that included the whole room—“while I fetch the drinks. What did you say you wanted?”
Jack knew better than to say he wasn’t thirsty.
“I’ll take coffee if you have it,” he said. “Black.”
“Double that,” Daniel said.
Theresa returned shortly with two mugs of coffee—no tray, no saucers.
“This here’s strong enough to trot a mouse across. You sure you don’t want no cream?”
Both men shook their heads. Jack took a sip and found the coffee rich and strong, not the bitter antifreeze-tasting swill from his office. He saw Daniel wince after he swallowed a big gulp.
Theresa eased herself into the recliner that sat across a coffee table from the couch where the two men sat. Jack suspected it had been Bishop’s favorite chair.
“Well?” she asked. “What’d that pole cat say?”
“Nothing helpful,” Daniel said. “He said he doesn’t know where Becca is, said he hadn’t seen her in eighteen years.” He sighed. “Unfortunately, I believe him. I don’t think he has any idea where to find his daughter.”
“Them locking Billy Ray in a cage unlocked Becca from hers, and she likely flew far away as her wings’d carry her,” Theresa said. “I woulda, if Hawk’d been my daddy. She never come home, not one time after she left. Far as I know she didn’t talk to nobody.”
“You said she sent pictures, though, right?” Jack asked.
Theresa nodded. “It was like she wanted us to see she was doin’ all right, but she didn’t want to establish contact or nothing like that. She didn’t want nobody to come looking for her!
“On the back one of them pictures, she wrote, ‘You could never find me, Theresa, but maybe you could, Bishop. Maybe you know where I am every minute.’ That was nonsense, of course. Just ’cause they both could see demons didn’t mean they had some special ability to see each other. But after awhile, Becca got where she didn’t make no sense at all sometimes.”
Theresa thought for a moment.
“On another one, she wrote how she was afraid that you boys—‘the ones who stood with me’—could find her, that you could ‘follow the strand that binds us together.’ I think she was scared you’d both show up on her porch someday like you’s trying to sell her Girl Scout cookies.”
“Mind if I see the pictures?” Jack asked.
He could have asked to see them the other night when Theresa first mentioned Becca had sent them. But for all his protests to the contrary, he wasn’t all that different from Daniel in his reluctance to actually connect with Becca. His reasons were different, though. Daniel didn’t want to see an adult
version of Andi. Jack harbored the admittedly irrational fear that with one look at Becca Hawkins’s face the whole summer of 1985 would download into his mind like a file off the internet. He wasn’t prepared for that. He was prepared for somebody to tell him about it, but not to relive that whole summer with the clarity and visceral reality of his only memory of it—particularly when he suspected his lone orphan memory was a pitter-pattering spring rain compared to the Hurricane Katrina of the whole load.
“Can’t. They’s gone. Kept them stuck with magnets to the refrigerator, and I went to look at them the other day and they’s not there no more. ’Course my kitchen was full of all kinda people right after…women from the church bringing food and such. They was only trying to be helpful, but they moved stuff around, must have misplaced them.”
Jack couldn’t help a little sigh of relief that he had, at least temporarily, dodged that bullet.
“The pictures were only of Becca, nobody else in them with her?” he asked.
“Nope, her all by her lonesome, just standing out in front of buildings. We figured they was places she was working ’cause Becca always did like little kids and movies.”
Jack felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He seemed to have trouble shoving the next words out between his teeth.
“Could you identify the buildings in the pictures, were there names on them?” he asked.
“One was the Carnival Multiplex Theatre, sign said ‘Serving south Savannah since…’ but Becca was blocking the date so I couldn’t see how long. In the other, she was sitting on a bench holding a bunch of helium-filled balloons. Couldn’t see the name on the building, but the balloons all had smiley-faces and said, ‘Happy Toddlers Day Care Center.’”