Hard Case Crime: The Murderer Vine

by Rifkin, Shepard

  “Can I get a cold drink here?”

  “Yessuh!”

  I followed him through the screen door. There were several big tears in it. He took two bottles right off the ice, opened them and handed them to me. I carried them out to the car and handed one to Kirby. I tipped mine back and let the ice-cold fluid run down my throat. I felt the blaze of the sun on my face as the soda went down.

  “Why did you stop at this dirty ole place?” she asked.

  I looked at her and said nothing. I took another long swallow. She said “oh” in a small voice and sipped hers.

  Every time I took another sip, I looked up at the sign above the store. It said ALEXANDRIA POST OFFICE. And where was Alexandria but in Egypt land?

  I took the empties and went back inside. The man was now in the back of the store reading a magazine. I had the feeling he wanted to place as much distance as possible between himself and any white person.

  “My name is Wilson,” I said. “I’m from Canada. I’d like to do some fishing for catfish. I’ve never tried catfish. I’m staying over in Okalusa. I wonder if I’d be back in an hour with some old clothes could you rent me a rowboat?”

  “Ah sure could, boss.”

  “Thank you.”

  I got into the car and turned around. Kirby wanted to know what had happened to the drive.

  “Tomorrow,” I said. She felt left out. I told her I was going fishing.

  “I want to come too,” she said. “I c’n put worms on hooks an’ fan you an’ sing songs.”

  “Sorry.” She turned sullen and stared out the window all the way back.

  I dropped her at the public library with instructions to charm the librarian. Librarians in small towns are very good at spreading gossip. She brightened up at the assignment. I went home, changed into an old shirt, old slacks, and an old hat I used for fishing, put the Kim on the back seat, and threw in three old shirts. I headed back for the Alexandria P.O.

  When I reached the swamp road, I pulled to one side. I would see a car coming for a mile in either direction. As for anyone being in the swamp on either side, I took a look at the impenetrable mass of cypress stumps. No rowboat could maneuver around them and be unnoticed by me. I put the jack under the axle and jacked the wheel up a few inches in case anyone should come by while I was working.

  I let the air out of my just-purchased secondhand tire. With my tire iron I took the tire off the rim. I took the attaché case, put it in the trunk compartment, took a look at the road in both directions. No one coming. I took out the contents. I ripped up my old shirts. I wrapped each piece carefully and inserted them all into the old tire. I had been worried about the drum with its eight-inch diameter, but it went in easily into the wide-tread. I mounted it on the rim and pumped it up. Then I bolted it down in the trunk and tossed the good spare on top.

  No one would think of looking inside a worn tire that was full of air. The spare on top was an almost new tire, and if some poor guy was hard-up enough to steal spare tires, that’s the one he’d grab. I scrubbed off most of the grease from my hands with some weeds, and when I bent down to grab a handful more of them, I shot to one side like a frightened quail exploding out of cover.

  But what I thought at first was a snake lying coiled at my feet was only the shed skin of a cottonmouth.

  I put my hand on my heart. Boy, oh, boy, nothing wrong with your reactions, Dunne. My adrenalin was A-okay. My heart seemed to be pumping away eight hundred to the minute. I got behind the wheel, wiped my face with my forearm, lit a cigarette, and waited till my chest had stopped its wild hammering and settled down.

  22

  I rowed the battered old rowboat till I was out of sight. I wasn’t interested in serious fishing. That could wait for a month or so. What I was doing in that river winding through the swamp was to convince the Alexandria post office that I was what I seemed to be, a speech expert who liked to fish.

  I dropped the small radiator used for an anchor in a little bayou. I baited the hook with one of the worms the owner of the bait shack had sold me in a rusty tin can. I stuck the bamboo pole over the stern and watched the little cork make little ripples in the slow current.

  From time to time I scraped a flattened tomato can along the bottom of the boat, emptying the water that kept slowly trickling in through the seams. I had three cans of beer along. I drank them slowly in the increasing, savage heat of midday, dropping the empties into the slow river. I was not a good citizen. I didn’t flatten them first. I let the current take them and move them into the swamp. They swirled around a cypress buttress, into the current, banged gently against another cypress, and disappeared among the tangled jungle of vines.

  The cork suddenly danced delicately three or four times and then went under with decision. I had caught my first catfish. In the next two hours I caught six good-sized ones. I strung them on a line tied to a screw-eye at the bow. A cool wind blew down the river, drying the sweat. I could hear frogs in the swamp. They wouldn’t rattle windowpanes ten miles away, but some of them did have a good deep thrumming note, like a string being plucked on a big bass cello. A bird chirped somewhere. It was pleasant being someplace where there were no truck noises, no sound but the water sounds around the cypress knees, a frog or a bird.

  The empty beer cans had disappeared. Maybe the boys were in the swamp somewhere. Maybe they were at the bottom somewhere along this peaceful little river with heavy iron weights tied to them. My forearms were burned red. It was time to go back. I pulled up the anchor and rowed back to the bait shack.

  “That’s a nice passel o’ cats you got theah, boss,” he said, with that rich, phony black laughter he saved for whites.

  “I like that little river of yours.”

  “Yessuh. Lakes are fine, but they nevuh go anywheres. Take a river, it goes on, it lahk to work, to ramble around, an’ see what’s ’round the next bend. An’ sometimes it gets real mad an’ throws its weight around, but that’s in the springtime when the snow melts up theah in the mountings.”

  I paid him for the boat and the bait and the beer. I handed him the string of fish. “They’re yours,” I said. His eyes widened with pleasure. “Mrs. Wilson wants to eat out tonight and they’ll smell up the refrigerator if I keep them in overnight.”

  “Why, thank you, thank you.” He was delighted. Mrs. Wilson, from the remarks I had heard her make about catfish, would have been delighted herself to make a meal of them, but it was more important for me to please this man than her.

  I asked him to join me in a beer. He brought out two ice-cold ones, and he stood sipping his until I pushed a kitchen chair at him. He sat down on the edge of his chair with his knees together, but he had relaxed quite a lot from his earlier stiffness.

  “Ah nevuh did see a car from — from — from wheah you come from,” he said. I was glad to see he had dropped the yessuh business.

  “Quebec?”

  “That’s how you say it? From Queeebec.”

  He chuckled at the sound of the word.

  “I came down to do some research on the way people talk around here.”

  “You what?”

  I got the Kim from the car. I set it up on one of the kitchen chairs. “I use this tape recorder,” I said. He didn’t know what a tape recorder was. I switched it on and while he was asking questions, I taped him without his realizing it.

  I played it back. He clapped his hands.

  “Oh, Lawd, lissen!”

  I bought two more beers and explained how the speech of Northern Mississippi was important to scholars.

  I told him I paid five dollars an hour for people to talk to me and tell me stories. I told him if he would tell me how he rented rowboats and how he caught catfish and would tell me a couple stories about the catfish he had caught, I would pay him five dollars right on the spot. He was delighted. I taped him for forty minutes.

  “Most city fo’ks nevuh eat the best part of a catfish,” he said. “When they breed in the spring, parts of they muscles gits b
igger behin’ an’ undah the eyes. These here chops are lahk jus’ solid lumps of meat. They as big as the ball of your thumb, an’ they firm, an’ white, an’ juicy. Man, they good!”

  When the forty minutes were over, I gave him five dollars. I told him I paid the hourly rate even if it ran to less than an hour. So he had made from me, if you added the rent for the boat, the worms, the beer, and the five dollars, about twelve dollars with very little effort on his part. Plus the six fresh, free catfish. He was in a very good mood. When I told him I’d like to tape him again, he felt even better.

  I began to pack up the Kim. When I was doing it, I said casually, “I hear there’s a man around here who tells good stories.”

  Bait shack was cleaning the catfish. For a moment I thought he had clammed up, but then I realized he hadn’t heard me. I repeated it. I added, “If he’d like to make some extra money — ”

  “Sure, Ah’ll tell ’im.”

  “His name is Moe, or Moses, or something like that.”

  He chuckled. “That’s Ol’ Man Mose. He about ninety. He a conjure man. He sell yarbs to iggerant colored people.”

  “Yarbs?”

  “Little plants good for sicknesses. But he smart, Ol’ Man Mose is. He can’t walk good; you’ll have to go to him.” He stood up and yelled, “Simon!”

  A little kid with a ragged pair of blue jeans ran up from the dock where he had been bailing out my boat.

  “Simon, you run to Ol’ Man Mose. You tell ’im theah’s a gennulman heah wants to give ’im five dollahs a hour jus’ to lissen to ’im tell stories. Ah want you goin’ so fast Ah c’n play checkers on your shirttail. Git!”

  Simon took off like a rocket. We drank our beer till he came back, panting and sweating.

  “Ol’ Man Mose, he say — he say — ” the kid was out of breath. He finally took a deep breath and got it all out. “He say, ‘come.’ž”

  I gave the kid half a dollar. His eyes bulged out in amazement. Well, that made two people I had made happy that afternoon. And maybe me, if Old Man Mose believed in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  23

  I drove slowly for five minutes on a very bad road. Occasionally the crown of the road scraped against the rear end. The fences were usually broken, the sides of the road choked with weeds, and cows stood in the road munching at the grass. The ruts were baked hard by the sun.

  At an old oak the road made a sharp right turn. I climbed for a while and then, following directions, made a left onto an even worse road. After a few hundred feet I stopped the car. I was afraid of ruining the rear end. At the top of the hill was a shack where Old Man Mose lived. Sunflowers eight feet tall grew all around it. Oleander was blooming in the sun-baked yard. There was no grass. I stopped near a peach tree with a rotten trunk and called out, “Mr. Mose!”

  A thin, black, wrinkled hand came out of the door and beckoned me to approach. It was covered with veins that stood out like ridges. The tendons and muscles and veins had barely enough skin to cover them. The fingers were long, the fingernails were long and sharp. I came up to the door, took off my hat, and entered.

  It was dark inside. There was only one room, and across the farther end ran a window four feet across. Several strings stretched across it, each a foot or so higher than the one beneath it. Bunches of herbs were tied to them. Not much light filtered through. On the one plain table in the center of the room stood a kerosene lamp. The glass was polished clean, without any soot deposits. A green glass shade, with little flutings, was mounted on top.

  “Those my simples,” Old Man Mose said. His voice was strong for a man of ninety. He was sitting in an old rocker. He was very small and had a completely bald head. He had a stubble of white all over his chin, as if he had missed shaving for a few days. He wore an old-fashioned striped shirt held together at the throat with a gold-plated collar button.

  “From the swamp?” I asked.

  “Some on ’em.”

  He looked at me closely.

  “An’ some on ’em from de fields. You interested in de swamp simples?”

  I shrugged.

  “Wid ’em Ol’ Man Mose kin cure faintin’ spells an’ seizures an’ snakebite. You the gennulman what’s givin’ away money?”

  I nodded.

  “Ah’ll take some.”

  I went to get the Kim. He watched me as I set it up on the scarred table. His eyes were bright and shrewd. As I worked, I looked around. On an old bureau next to the window sat a squat brown jug with two handles. Around the neck hung several strands of cheap, colored glass beads. From the strands two tassels hung down. Around the open mouth, almost like a necklace, was what looked like a crudely made charm bracelet, with all the charms made from tin. A rake, a hoe, a shovel, a scythe, and another shovel.

  Next to it stood a small female figure ten inches tall. It was naked and was carved out of stone. It looked very old and worn. Her pointed breasts jutted out; her stomach was full and distended, as if she were pregnant. She wore a tiny little necklace of blue glass beads. The upper skull of some animal plus its upper jaw was tied against her back. An old string was passed through its eye sockets and then under her breasts. Holes had been drilled at the base of the skull to permit another string to he lashed around her knees. The skull had two enormous fangs, and between them rested her head.

  From a nail driven into the wall another weird creation was hanging. It was an old piece of brown leather three inches in diameter. A silver loop two inches across had pierced the leather at the top. Hanging from the ring were two large wire hoops eight inches in diameter. Through another hole in the leather a two-inch length of some hollow-stemmed grass had been forced.

  The lower jaw of some small animal which I did not recognize had been wired horizontally to the bottom of the leather. From the end of the jawbone fell three rawhide thongs. On the bottom of each one was tied a snail shell. A small length of worm-eaten wood had been slid onto one of the big metal hoops. It had slipped to the bottom of the hoop.

  I turned aside from my staring. He had been watching me with a little smile. I set up the mike.

  “We start now?”

  “Your time started as soon as you said you’d talk.”

  His eyes widened.

  “First, Mr. Moses — ”

  “Holt it. This here tape goin’ to be listened to by a lot of people up there in Canada?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then ah wants my name spoke. Mah name is Moses Howland Gardiner.”

  I started the tape. I said, “This is the voice of Mr. Moses Howland Gardiner, taped on the twelfth day of September, in his house in Milliken County. Mr. Gardiner, I’d like to start by asking you to tell me what you remember of your early days in Milliken County.”

  “ž’At’s easy. They got more religion an’ less morals heah than anywhere else in de world. Over on de upper stretches of de river there’s a man that claim he been daid an’ come to life. He say he went to heaven for half an hour, an’ he met Christ there, an’ the man, he tell Christ about the road he had come an’ how lonesome it was, an’ he ask Christ, if that was really the road to heaven. ‘Hit was all grass-grown,’ he say. ‘Hit must be very few ever go to heaven if that the road,’ he say. An’ Christ say, ‘Yes, that de road to heaven, but that not de only road. That jus’ de road from no’th’n Mississippi.’ž”

  He looked at me with amused eyes. He was sharp and deferential. He was reserved and polite. His guard was up. I couldn’t sense any opening anywhere that wouldn’t result in his pulling in fast, like those little hermit crabs you see on the beach, dragging their shells behind them, like Ol’ Man Mose with his rocking chair. I knew if I made a sudden grab he’d clam up solid.

  He talked about the way he tended his garden.

  “Ah’m a great hand to garden in de moon. Things that grow under de ground, lahk potatoes an’ carrots, they want to be planted in de dark of de moon, an’ things like beans an’ peas that grown above ground want to be planted in de light of d
e moon. You c’n start potatoes side by side, some planted in de dark of de moon, an’ some in de light of de moon, an’ those you plant in de dark will be de bes’ ever’ time. That is de case.”

  I asked him casually what the things on the bureau were.

  “That with de woman, she good luck from Obalufon. Obalufon, he makes de babies take a good shape so they be born healthy, not hunchback nor nothin’ like that. That jaw with them big teeth, that a baboon. That come from Africa with my great-great-great-great — oh, I fergit how many greats ago, my grandmamma. Maybe three hundred years ago. It gits passed along from father to son wid its power. I got no son now; he got hisself killed ten years ago by some white man over to Montgomery. So I de only one wid its power. An’ that, wid de leather an’ old wood from de swamp an’ de silver rings, real silver, an’ de snails an’ de snake’s jaw, that a good luck charm ’gainst evil spirits.”

  “What evil spirits?”

  His hands slid over the ends of the rocking chair arms. His palms began rubbing them in a slow, circular movement.

  “Spirits in de swamp.”

  “Do people believe in that?”

  “Oh, yes. People goin’ in de swamp fo’ deer or alligator they come to me fust. Ah lets ’em rub it. It keeps ’em from gettin’ snakebit. Ah charges fifty cents an’ it works. Ah knows it works ’cause Ah has no complaints. But de othuh conjure men, they gets complaints. Theah’s Melvin Robinson, ovah to Gaines Creek. Theah’s Dorothy Baker, she’s only eighty-fo’, she sells love simples. An’ down to Okalusa, back of Morgan’s Fun’ral Parlor, theah is Preacher Eugene. He blesses with the prayers of the Lord Jesus, but Ah don’t hold with that atall.”

  “Why not?”

  “ž’Cause mah simples got African power, an’ that am de best. Theah’s plenty othuh conjure people ’sides those three, but Ah am de best. Mr. Morgan, he used to play ‘round heah when he was a baby an’ his daddy was a good friend to me, but he went to France in ‘fo’ty-fo’ an’ when he come back wid de Bronze Star he got too uppity an’ one night he was lynched. Mr. Morgan promised me a real good fun’ral, better’n mah burial society, an’ he say, regardless what the preacher might say, he bury mah conjure things wid me.”