Other Worlds, Better Lives, A Howard Waldrop Reader Selected Long Fiction 1989-2003

by Howard Waldrop

  I heard a crash of glass out in the far edge of the graveyard just as we got to the gate, which was mighty rusty.

  “Miz Eustis is really gonna throw a hissy fit,” I said. “She’ll have white folks all over this place this weekend, hell or high water.”

  There was a moan from the back of the place. It stopped, then came again. “Oh, Mama, Mama,” it said, deep, a man’s voice.

  I looked around Mr. Myron’s tomb. There was a man at the back by the fence looking down at the ground where a tombstone had fallen completely over. “Who did this to you, Mama?” he asked. Then I recognized who it was.

  “That’s Mr. Anse,” I said to Houlka. “He’s mean, he’s drunk. He loved his mother and something’s happened to her tombstone. Her grave was the only one that was always clean. Let’s leave now,” I said.

  “Who’s there? Who the goddam hell kicked over my mother’s stone?”

  “Wasn’t us, Mr. Anse,” I said.

  “Since when’s niggers allowed in here?” he yelled.

  “Come on, I.O.,” said Houlka, going toward the gate.

  “Where you think you’re going, Mr. Cougar Man?”

  “We came to check on the cemetery for Mrs. Eustis. We’re going now.”

  “The hell you did!” Mr. Anse came around the three tombs and walked between them and the big stone lion. He was drinking from a Mason jar. “Come to kick over some more old ladies’ tombstones, Mr. High ’n’ Mighty?”

  “You’re intoxicated and we’re leaving.”

  “First you defile the grave of the greatest woman who ever lived, then you think you can just walk away?”

  Houlka sighed. “If it’ll help things, I’ll aid you in putting your mother’s tombstone aright.”

  Anse turned and smashed the liquor jar against the nose of the stone lion. “You set one foot on her grave and I’ll cut off your neck and shit down your throat.”

  He made a sneer that showed his teeth and beckoned with his fingers.

  “Don’t force me to fight. I have no quarrel with you,” said Houlka. “I’ve never been here before in my life.”

  “Not so brave, huh? Big man with a bow and arrows. Like a wild Indian. Big man with a club. All talk.”

  Houlka turned to walk away. Anse charged him with the jaggeldy jar.

  Houlka turned, tapped the jar so it cracked to pieces with his club. Blood appeared on both their faces from flying glass. Then he threw the club down and jerked his bow and arrows to the ground, and they smashed together like tigers.

  They rolled over and over in the glass splinters, then they were up and bleeding, smashing into Mr. Keiffer’s tomb and falling behind it.

  By the time I got around they were already over at the back by Mrs. Anse’s grave, snarling and roaring. Mr. Anse was bigger and had reach on Houlka and was trying to get at his eyes with thumbs. Houlka rolled them over and came out on top.

  They were up and down and up. Then down. Houlka threw Anse fifteen feet, but when he hit he came right back up. Blood flew off both of them in a mist every time they collided with each other. Houlka threw him down and he came up again. He got one hand in one of Houlka’s eyes.

  Then Houlka lifted Mr. Anse; all six foot six and three hundred pounds of him, up in the air in a bear hug from the back, and he started squeezing, and pushing the back of Anse’s neck with his chin; Anse’s face was purple and this sound came out of him like when you step on a toad-frog, and sinews popped and Anse went limp two feet up in the air.

  There was a squeal of brakes behind me, and I jumped and kept jumping because the squeal turned into the long loud wail of a siren. I came down crawling backwards.

  The black Model T truck with the iron cage on the back had come to a stop six inches behind where I’d been standing. The wail was still coming out of the siren. There were three faces filling the windshield of the truck. Their eyes were looking everywhere—at me, the cemetery, Mr. Anse, Houlka, the tombstone, the broken jar, the smear of wet on the lion.

  Sheriff Mr. Manfred’s hand was still on the siren handle. Mr. Maurice was watching everything from the middle, Mr. Jack leaned his head out the driver’s side, took two quick looks at me and Houlka, then all three of them were back inside the truck.

  Then Sheriffs Manfred, Maurice and Jack Eumenides jumped out of the truck, ran over to Mr. Anse where Houlka had dropped him to the ground, felt his chest, picked him up, ran to the back, threw him in, shut the cage door, jumped back into the front seat. The truck spun around, turned and was gone through the cemetery gate. The siren’s wail started, and through the brush I saw the black truck shoot by, Mr. Manfred’s arm working the siren crank.

  The sound faded away toward town.

  I turned back to Houlka. He was bleeding all over. He sank slowly toward the ground. I grabbed him.

  * * *

  “Ain’t no use goin’ to Dr. Sclape’s,” said one of the old men who had a warped place shaped exactly like his butt on the bench in front of the drug store. “He just lit out in his wagon to go birth some babies out to the Mannon place.”

  Houlka was still bleeding pretty badly from the head. “Where’s Nurse Ramis?” I asked.

  “I reckon she’s over to the Ladies Church Aid Society with them others,” he said, nodding his head to the northwest part of town. He stopped and put a squirt of tobacco juice about fifteen feet out in the street. “They’s decoratin’ for the young folks’ Jesus social tonight.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and led Houlka over to the edge of the square. I was holding him up, and carrying his club, and it was killing me. I never realized how heavy it was. He had his bow and quiver on his shoulder where I’d put them.

  We cut past the Mercantile and went up Second Street till we came to the railroad tracks about two blocks west of the depot. There were two signalman up working on the thru-light panel. One of them was holding up one of the big green lights. We cut across the track right under them.

  “Damn if that ain’t the sorriest sight I ever seen,” said one. “That guy looks like a gorilla, and that nigger boy with him looks like a monkey.”

  Houlka straightened a little, tried to clear his head. He only made it bleed faster.

  “Hey. Get your dumb asses off the tracks. You want to be run over?” yelled the other guy up there. “Don’t you know better? I seen brighter turnips than you two.”

  “What you wanna go that way for?” asked the first. “Way to the insane asylum’s out the other side of town.” They laughed and yelled, and one of them threw a greasy rag down at us. “Hey! Gorilla! Climb up here and beat us up. I’ll give your monkey a banana, too!”

  They were still hooting when we crossed Apple Street and turned down Peach. The First Baptist Church was at Third and Peach, but the social hall was out with the Sunday School wing where Third crossed Pomegranate. There weren’t any lights on there even though it was getting dark outside.

  “Hello the hall!” I said, banging on the side doors. There was noise inside then the door opened. “Oh, my,” said a woman’s voice.

  “They told us Miz Ramis was here,” I said. “Mr. Lee’s got a bad head cut.”

  “Oh, my. No. Bring him in. Miss Ramis just got sent for by that old hypochondriac Methodist lady on the other side of town. Here,” she said. She had pulled one of the chairs out from along the wall, one of the big old chaperone chairs, and we eased Houlka into it.

  “Wait,” I said. I pulled the bow, quiver and the lionskin coat off him and unbuttoned his overall strap. I put the cloak in the chair so it wouldn’t get blood on it, then we eased him back down.

  “Goodness. I’ll get Mrs. Dimmitt,” said the woman. I was holding Houlka’s head up when I heard a voice I knew.

  “Why, I.O.! What in the world are you doing here?” I turned my head in the tiny bit of light still co
ming in the windows. Sure enough it was Emzee Dacy.

  “I’m trying to keep Mr. Houlka here from bleedin’ to death. The doctor’s gone and some fool told us Miz Ramis was over to here.”

  Emzee was just my age. Her people now worked for Miz Snooks who owned the Mercantile—her mother was the cook and her father was the car-drive and handyman.

  Everybody calls her Emzee, though that was from her initials, M.Z. Emzee’d been born just as this crazy two-hundred-year-old great great aunt was about to die—Emzee’s folks had told her she could name the baby if she could live long enough to see her born, and an hour after the child was birthed, they’d taken her in to the old biddy, who hadn’t opened her eyes for three weeks and whose breathing was so shallow they’d taken to putting a mirror up to her nose a hundred times a day, and they brought this squalling baby in, and the old lady opened her eyes and said: “Mercurochrome. Zipper.” And then was dead as a hammer, so what could Emzee’s folks do?

  “Miz Ramis was here. But she had to go over to Ol’ Miz Haigis’s because the old lady had the vapors.” She leaned down real close. “Uh-oh! He’s really hurt.”

  “Yeah, and if someone would turn on the damn lights, I could see where to sop.”

  “Can’t,” said Emzee. “That crotchety old Mr. Moper came in while ago and was fixing some outlet plug or something and blew out all the damn fuses. He’s gone over to the hardware store to pick up some more. I swear he gets more scatter-brained every day!”

  “Emzee!” said a sharp white woman’s voice. “What have I told you?”

  Emzee scrunched all up. “I’m sorry, Miz Dimmitt.”

  The woman came up beside me. “I can’t see anything. Get in there and get me a candle. There’s some in the second right hand cabinet. Cory? Cory? Where is that girl?”

  Emzee’s voice came from far back in the kitchen part of the social hall. “Don’t know, Miz Dimmitt. We was playing this afternoon but I ain’t seen her in a long while.”

  “Co-ry! I never can find that girl when I need her. Hurry up with that light.”

  “All I can find’s this little old stub here,” said Emzee’s voice.

  “Well, light it and get in here.”

  “I can’t find no matches, Ma’am.”

  “Hold his head up more,” she said to me. “You’re one of Mr. Eustis’s help, aren’t you?”

  “Yes’m. This here’s Mr. Lee. He’s been brought out of Parchman. We was at the cemetery. Mr. Anse—”

  “I don’t care about anything unless someone was killed out there.”

  “No’m. The sheriffs was there and they took Mr. Anse . . .”

  “Co-ry!” she hollered. “Cory! If she was here at least she’d be able to find me the matches.”

  “I’m tryin’!” yelled Emzee from the other room. I heard a match strike.

  “Bring the dishtowels with you when you come, if you can do two things at once,” said Miz Dimmitt.

  Emzee came in with about an inch of lit candle and a bunch of rags.

  “Goodness gracious!” said Miz Dimmitt when she saw Houlka’s head. The skin had been sliced back above the left eye. His whole face and shoulder were covered in blood.

  “Damn!” I said. I grabbed at the towels, put one behind his shoulders. Miz Dimmitt wiped his head.

  “Get some water in here, Emzee. Some to wash him with and some to drink.”

  “I think there’s about one more piece of candle in there,” said Emzee.

  She left. It was really dark in the place now, except for the little candle. Emzee came back with a basin and a glass of water. I put it to Houlka’s lips and he spilled it all over his beard. Miz Dimmitt got most of the old blood off his face and got a wet rag up against the cut to slow the bleeding down. The water in the basin was already dark.

  Houlka’s stomach gave a big rumble.

  “Have y’all eaten lately, or is he going to upchuck?” asked Miz Dim-mitt.

  “We ain’t eaten, ma’am.”

  “Emzee. Find some food for these people.”

  “Ain’t none here yet, Miz Dimmitt. Miz Leda was supposed to be here by now, but she probably done looked over from her house and didn’t see any light on and didn’t think we were here yet.”

  “How’m I supposed to see what this place needs for a social if nobody’s done anything yet? And where is Cory?”

  “I told you, I don’t know, Miz Dimmitt.”

  Houlka stirred again and his stomach rumbled.

  “Well. Go see what’s left from the prayer breakfast and fix that. The stove should be hot enough by now.”

  “Yes’m.” She went off and made noises with pots and pans.

  “Hold this rag up here,” said Miz Dimmitt. “I’ve got to find that daughter of mine. I’m worried about her now.”

  She went to the dark doorway. “Cory!” she called. “Co-reee!” She walked outside. I heard her calling all around the building and up toward the church.

  I washed Houlka’s head some more. He might be okay for a while, until we could get him over to Dr. Sclapes, whenever he came back tonight.

  My eyes were getting used to the candlelight. There was some streamers hung overhead that I hadn’t noticed till now, and there was crêpe paper all over the walls.

  Emzee brought in two steaming hot bowls of something. “All I could find was some old oatmeal, no telling how long it’s been in there, probably since the McKinley Administration. I can’t find any sugar and they ain’t no milk I could find in the ice box so I crumbled up some julep that’s growing in a pot in there. I hope you like it.”

  “Hold this bowl while I get some of this into him,” I said. I blew on the spoon and put some in Mr. Lee’s mouth. He swallowed it even though his lips were cut and swelled all up. I tried not to get it all over his beard.

  I eased his head back. He must of been having bad dreams, ’cause his lips were moving and he was real restless.

  “You better bandage that up else he’s gonna start bleeding again.”

  I tore up one of the dishcloths and wet another rag and put it on the cut, then tied it on with a dry rag around the back of his head. He seemed to be turning his head away from the candlelight.

  I took his cougar-skin cloak and put it over his head to keep the light off him.

  Miz Dimmitt was still out calling when Miz Leda came in with a whole plate of roasting ears and Emzee jumped up and took the candle in the kitchen with her.

  “We gonna go out and look for Cory,” said Emzee as she and Miz Leda went out through the door.

  It was dark and close in the building. Now both the candles was in the kitchen. I could tell Houlka was still hurt because he was moving under that skin.

  The screen door opened and Miz Dimmitt came in. She was so upset she was crying.

  “I just don’t know about that girl,” she said, sitting down in one of the folding chairs against the wall. She listened as the calls of the women moved further away. “She’s a bright girl, but she just wanders away sometimes and can’t be found.” Then she really started crying.

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine, Ma’am. She’s a lucky girl. Some people’s folks don’t even care if they’re around or not.”

  She quit crying; I could see her rubbing her eyes.

  “How’s he doing?” she asked.

  “Some better,” I said. “He still ain’t easy. He feels like he might have a fever.”

  She got up to come over, watched him turning and tossing, reached under the cougar skin and felt his head. “He is burning up.” Then she looked back out the darkened windows. “I wish they’d find that girl!”

  “Yes’m.”

  “What in the world did Emzee fix you?” she asked, noticing the bowl on the floor beside the basin. I’d forgotten about mine, picked i
t up and ate some. It was minty, and the oats was like wet paper now, but it was good.

  “Whatever it is it’s just fine,” I said. “Sometimes you can be happy with just anything.”

  The screen door slammed open. We both jumped a foot.

  At the same time the lights came blazing on, blinding me completely.

  “Here she is!” said Emzee.

  My eyes came back to normal. Emzee stood in the door, holding Cory Dimmitt’s hand. Cory was a couple years younger than me. She was covered with streaks and on her clothes.

  “Where have you been?” asked her mother, going to her.

  “She was asleep down in the coal bin when I found her,” said Emzee. “Me an’ her used to go down there during hide-and-go-seek.”

  Her mother shook her shoulders till I thought her teeth would all fly out; then she stopped and hugged her and kissed her. Cory still wasn’t wide awake.

  “Don’t you ever run away like that again,” said Miz Dimmitt. “Promise me!”

  “I won’t, Mama,” said Cory.

  Over in the big chair, with the skin over his head, Houlka began to snore like a freight train.

  VII

  The white folks cleaned off the old cemetery again, then the weather set back in. The Mississippi River busted through the levees all the way from Missouri down to the Gulf of Mexico, and President Coolidge came down to look at Louisiana from a train. People in Greenville was living in tents on the levee, and looking at a sheet of water forty miles wide broken only by the tents on the Arkansas side of the River. It was still raining and the River hadn’t crested yet.

  Mississippi had just gotten over the War For Southern Independence when the depression of 1893 hit; they were coming out of that when the bottom dropped out of the cotton price; they all got out of the cotton business just when we got into the Great War; everybody rushed to grow cotton while the price was sky-high and along came the boll weevil; they were just over that and Boom! Ol’ Man River came to live on their farm. Now they were staying on a levee, and if they looked real hard, they could see their grandmother, dead and buried twenty years ago, come floating by in her coffin full of wet rats.