He parked the coupe away from the house, out of sight, and walked back down the road, his footsteps crunching on gravel. It was dark now, an intermittent cloud-cover partially obscuring the stars. The sap rested easily in his hand, the .38 cold and reassuring in the small of his back.
He went around to the back of the house, found a door, and smashed the window with the sap. Inside, he flipped a kitchen light and looked around. A picture of a man with a woman and infant, bundled in winter clothes. Nothing more to indicate family.
Might be his ex. Miller, a shabby, solitary male. The house reeked with the stench of unwashed bodies and trash, yet it was relatively clean. Ingram walked around the first floor, flipping on lights and opening closets, cabinets, anything. Finding nothing of interest, he went back to the kitchen, turning off lights as he went, and pulled a fresh bottle of milk and a wedge of cheese from the main compartment of the ice box. He sat his .38 down beside the milk bottle, and took a seat facing the kitchen door. Using his pocket knife, he curled slices away from the cheddar and popped them into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.
He sat sipping milk, eating cheese, at the flimsy wooden table until he heard the car pull up to the front of the house. He hummed the Sister Rosetta Tharpe song he’d heard earlier.
Ingram waited. He heard creaks on the porch steps, the ratchet of the key in the front door, and then heavy footfalls coming toward the kitchen.
Derwood Miller walked into the kitchen with his mouth open, eyes wide in unbelief. A stringy man, dressed in cheap clothes that hung loose on his frame, Derwood nervously ran a hand through over-greased hair and glanced from Ingram, to the milk and cheese, to the gun.
Ingram smiled, nodding at the opposite chair.
“Derwood?”
He didn’t bother with exclamations of protest. Derwood crossed his arms over his narrow chest, standing in a yellow pool of light, eyes boring in to Ingram.
“Yeah. That’s me. What’re you doing in my house?”
“Waiting for you,” Ingram said, hooking the chair with his foot and sliding it toward Miller. “Have a seat.”
His eyes shifted from the gun to the milk then Ingram again. He sat down on the offered chair like a dog sitting down to a meal from an unknown hand.
“Derwood, earlier tonight, I was attacked right out in front of your house by… someone—something—I can’t explain.” He pointed toward the bloody streaks on his face. “You can see I got the short end of that stick.”
Ingram reached forward and pulled the pack of cigarettes out of Derwood’s shirt pocket. He took one for himself and offered one to the other man. Derwood shook his head. Ingram lit his.
“I can’t explain it, so I won’t even try.” He blew the smoke toward Miller and dropped the match on the floor.
Ingram sat quietly for a long while, smoking, blowing the smoke into the other man’s face. He picked a loose fleck of tobacco from his teeth. He took a speck of lint from his slacks and smoothed the fabric.
Eventually, he raised his head, looked at Derwood, and said, “Tell me everything you know about a man named Early Freeman. If you lie, if you leave anything out, you’ll regret it.”
Miller swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“I know Early through work, deejaying at KBRI. He comes through about once a month, takes Mr. Couch to lunch and drops off some forty-fives, then moves on to the next radio station, the next town. That’s about it.”
“Mr. Couch said you’ve spent some time with him. Tell me.”
“Well…” Miller’s eyes flicked around the kitchen looking for something, some way out of this unexpected domestic interrogation. “Sometimes, we’d go drinking, you know, roll out to the Stockyard tonk, out near the county line, and Early would always do the buying, long as I made sure I spun his records. Which was fine with me cause I would’ve spun ’em anyway. They’re good.”
“Tonk?”
“Yeah. Honky-tonk. A blues joint. We’d listen to the blues, drink beer, or Coke and whiskey.”
“It a Negro establishment?”
“Yeah, but they know me there. They play the best blues, even on the juke. Most weekends, there’s a player, or a band. It’s good. Folks don’t know what they’re missing.”
Ingram paused to think, flicking the ash of his cigarette onto the floor. “So, when was the last time you saw Early?”
“Same day Mr. Couch did. He told me you’d been by asking after Early.”
“He take you drinking that night?”
“Yeah, he did. We went out to the tonk, like I was telling you, and pretty much got our bellies tight, you know?”
“He mention where he was off to next?”
“Said he was gonna head down to England, visit the folks over at KENG.”
That matched what Ruth Freeman had told him about Early’s last phone call.
“What do you know about Ramblin’ John Hastur?”
The outraged flush of red drained from his cheeks like water from a cracked glass, his eyes pulled tight as if to ward off a blow. Miller brought his hands into his lap, like a schoolboy, and clasped them together.
“Nothin.’ I don’t know nothing ’bout him.”
Ingram clubbed Miller across the face with the sap. Miller looked at Ingram with surprise, an expression of pure bewilderment on his face. He toppled onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor.
Ingram snatched the front of Miller’s shirt, lifted him, then placed him back in his chair.
“What do you know about Ramblin’ John Hastur?” Ingram said slowly.
Miller swayed in his chair and reached a hand up to touch his rapidly swelling cheek. His hand came away bloody.
“I know… I don’t know nothing,” Miller said, looking Ingram straight in the eyes and saying it slowly. “Nothing.”
Ingram rapped Derwood’s head twice with the sap, and the man slumped back into the chair, unconscious.
Ingram stood. He moved across the room and rummaged in the kitchen cabinets and closets. In an adjoining hall, he found a cylinder of nylon rope and returned to the kitchen. He bound Miller’s hands and feet. He tied his body to the chair. Taking a pot from an open cabinet, he filled it with water and dumped it on Miller’s head.
Miller spluttered. He twisted his body, looked down in surprise at the rope binding him.
Ingram patted Miller’s cheek. “Here’s the deal, pard. I’m not gonna hit you again. You’re gonna tell me everything you know about Ramblin’ John Hastur or I’m gonna pick up this chair, with you in it, and take you outside, where that fucking thing attacked me. I’m gonna set you down on the edge of the wood, out of sight of the road, and let you think about what you know and you don’t know. I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll have this conversation again, if there’s anything left of you.”
A growing horror filled Miller’s face as Ingram spoke, and Ingram felt it too. The blackness. The memory of a silhouette approaching. A black, open mouth, emanating sound. The idea of leaving Miller out there, on the edge of the woods like a sacrifice—no, an offering, he thought suddenly—horrified him. And just as suddenly, Ingram knew—he knew—that if he did leave Miller on the wood’s edge, the offering would be accepted and he’d be able to parlay with the black creature.
“No,” Miller said. “I’ll spill.”
“Then spill, goddammit. I’m tired of waiting. And I might not like it—you definitely won’t—but I’ll do as I fucking say and put you out there.” Ingram motioned toward the dark windows at the front of the house.
“They call him the Yellow King. Or the Tattered Man. He plays and sings his songs with the Devil’s voice.”
“Who’s they?”
“Negroes. Black folk all around. Poor white folk who work the fields. Sharecroppers and wood folk, you know, them that live on the edges of the bayou, or the river, and fish for a living. You hear ’em sometimes, talking ’bout him, when you’re at the store, or passing ’em on the street. You know? His name just sorta starts g
etting heard.”
Ingram nodded. It’s the fucking middle ages out here. No Errol Flynn in sight.
“And what do they say?”
“That Ramblin’ John sings with the Devil’s voice and plays with the Devil’s hands. That when he sings, it’s like he’s casting a spell. That he’s got songs that if you heard them, they’d drive you mad. That his songs can raise the dead.” Miller paused here, uncertain. “They say his voice can get a woman with child if she hears it full.”
Ingram grew cold, remembering the song on the pirated radio station. The black thing in the dark, making that unholy sound. He reached up to touch his face and caught himself.
“Did Early ask you about him?”
Miller looked as sheepish as was possible with a swelling, bloody cheek, and said, “Yes.”
“And you told him just what you told me, didn’t you?”
Miller nodded.
Ingram grunted. “OK, Derwood. One more question. What do you know about this radio station? The pirate radio station.”
Miller exhaled, almost relieved. “Early asked me about that too. I heard it… I heard it once, late at night after my shift. I went… wild. Before I could stop myself, I went to her bedroom. My wife.” He bowed his head. He sobbed. “She left the next day, took the kids.”
“That’s tough, soldier.”
Derwood stayed that way for a long while. Finally, he sniffed and raised his head.
“It’s always on a different frequency. It’s always on at a different time of night and that… well… they play Ramblin’ John songs. Full ones. If everything they say is true, it’s a good thing they shift frequencies every time they broadcast because if you always knew where you could tune in to ’em, the whole world might go crazy, or fall under Ramblin’ John’s spell.” Miller smiled as he said this, recognizing the absurdity of the statement. He winced with the pain of his skin drawing tight on his cheek.
Ingram dropped his smoke to the kitchen floor and crushed it with his wingtip. “OK, Derwood. That’ll do. You got any candles?”
“Yeah,” Miller said, looking toward a cabinet. “There’s a box of ’em right in there. What’dya need candles for?”
Ingram stood and retrieved the box. He stopped, and turned back to Miller. “Lemme ask you one more thing, and I guess you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
Ingram sat down in the opposite chair and said, “Have you seen him? You know, the dark thing.”
Miller looked at Ingram. The two men locked gazes for an instant.
That answers that.
“Okay, Derwood, here you go.” Ingram used the matches again and lit a candle. Moving behind Miller, Ingram dripped a pool of red wax onto the linoleum floor directly behind his chair. He seated the base of the candle in the wax, the candle standing upright and only an inch or two below where Miller’s hands were tied. Miller moved his hands as far away from the candle flame as he could.
“It’s gonna take you a while, and hurt like hell, but you should be able to burn your way out of there before morning, if you start right now. I’ll be seeing you.”
Ingram walked out of the kitchen, out the front door, and back to the coupe. He drove back through Brinkley, now dark in the early hours of the morning, back through the night and away from the town, regaining Highway 70 and heading west again until he came to Lonoke.
At the first church he could find, Ingram parked the coupe as near as possible to the front doors, locked the car, and fell across the front seat, sleep overtaking him.
Chapter 6
Life was good in the Big House.
Now a week into their stay at her family home, Sarah and Franny found a rhythm to life here, a cadence as irresistible as the voices of children, begging them to play. Mornings were bright, dappled with sunlight, filled with the scent of muffins and minced-meat pies, of coffee and newsprint and cigarettes and white vinegar, and the cacophony of children running rampant through the house, of bright voices in old dark halls, through the kitchens and sleeping porch, in and out of Alice’s bedroom, the old servant’s quarters. Other than the library, which stayed closed at all times, the Big House rang with the sound of laughter.
Sarah never realized how lonely Franny had been until now, never realized how much she needed the company of other children. Franny was like some sun-loving plant put in the shade too long. Gone was the drowsy, languid child of their old home; Franny flew through the house, a jittering ball of energy with wild hair streaming behind her, yelling and chasing Lenora or Fisk. Gone was the child ready for bed at seven; she now had to be calmed for bed, her hair a dirty nest above her luminous face. Sarah felt a twinge of shame at what she’d denied her daughter all these years. Water seeks its own level, Alice would say, and Sarah would amend, love seeks its own height.
The children made lords of themselves, basking in the late glow of summer. In the morning, they gorged themselves on biscuits and honey and ham, then raced through the fields to the hen house to gather eggs with tremulous shaking fingers, shoes and socks heavy with dew. In the kitchen, with the sky lightening in the east, Franny, Lenora, and Fisk would grin at each other, proud and secret, each one keeping their happiness held close, pulling brown, still-warm eggs from a rough basket. After breakfast, when Alice reached the limits of her patience and shooed the children into the yard, they raced around the pecan grove, unharvested nuts crunching underfoot, their imaginations running wild, pistols made from index fingers, swords made from branches.
But Mimi terrified Franny. The child never overcame the idea that her grandmother was transforming into a wolf. Daily, Sarah cursed her absent husband for his insolent play on words.
“Mimi is turning into a wolf,” Franny would say.
“No, baby, she’s just sick. She’s got lupus, honey. It makes her face dark.”
“That’s what I said, Mommy. Mimi’s turning into a wolf.”
After the first meeting, Franny absolutely refused to spend any time with her grandmother. When, driven to distraction by her daughter’s obstinacy, Sarah exclaimed, “And why not? Why won’t you say hello to Mimi?” Franny’s face became pale, and then her lip quivered. Sarah felt ashamed, bullying her own child. Franny whispered, “Mommy, if I go up there she’s gonna bite my head off.”
Sarah barked a little laugh, and said, “No, baby, she won’t bite—” and then stopped. Biting is what her mother would surely do, had done for years. It was her nature.
So Franny avoided her grandmother and ran wild. In the late afternoons, the children tended the peafowl that stalked the Big House grounds like emperors, their beady eyes inscrutable and cold, their tails flaring in aggression or in love, no one could tell. The children scooped coffee cans full of feed from the barrel on the back porch of the Big House and then walked about the ground, scattering the feed into the grass or gravel, calling in high, bright voices, “Here Pea! Here Pea! Come on now, fowl! Here Pea! Here Pea!” and the birds would come, some high stepping their way through the orchard, through the grounds, from the back acres, and even the edges of the dark wood. All the fowl made haste, except for Phemus, head high and proud, taking delicate steps, tail rampant and viridescent, his dead eye lost in some long-ago fight for a hen, the other baleful eye ever moving, ever watching, his spurs long and vicious. Phemus tolerated nothing; no human nor machine could make the bird give ground. The children avoided Phemus, especially Fisk. Once, he’d moved too slow getting out of the old bird’s way, and Phemus leapt up in a flurry of feathers, hissing like a cat. He landed on Fisk, gashing his thigh with a well-placed spur.
At night, they all ate dinner together, everyone except Mimi gathering round the dining room table, sharing meatloaf or hash or bologna sandwiches, drinking sweet tea and lemonade and coffee in turns. They talked about the day, the children still excited about new discoveries, words tumbling out one after another, breathless and exhausted and in pure heaven.
Sarah couldn’t remember a time she’d felt more content, happier with
the ebb and flow of days, the companionship of Alice and the wonder and excitement of her child, her dirty happy child.
But at night, Sarah felt lonely and her body ached for comfort.
Franny yearned too. Every bedtime, she begged and pleaded with her mother to sleep with Lenora and Fisk. It was the only point of segregation that Sarah forced on Franny.
One night, Alice overheard Franny’s pleas as she brought fresh linens to Sarah’s room.
“It’s fine if she wants to,” Alice murmured. “I know Fisk and Lenora would be happy as clams to let that girl sleep with them. They fight over her, you know.”
But what about me? Being alone here without Franny?
Instead, Sarah shook her head and said to Alice, “No, they’re all tired and need their rest. This way, they’ll have energy for the morning.” The excuse sounded lame even to her ears. Alice nodded, and went about stacking linens in the closet.
And while the days were filled with light and laughter and activity, in the dead hours of night when the old house settled, wrapped in a wreath of darkness, the fields and dark wood pressing close all around, Sarah felt an unease creep upon her. She made a point of checking on her mother after Franny fell asleep, filling in Elizabeth on the day’s events. And administering the constantly growing doses of port. Sometimes she would even take a glass herself, to her mother’s great delight.
Late at night, the library drew her.
After giving her mother her port, Sarah would pad back downstairs, barefoot and silent, tray in hand, and quietly slide back the doors of the library and enter the dark room. She’d sit at the desk and smell the musky leather of the old books, and remember all those evenings so long ago when her father, uncle, and grandfather poured over these tomes, searching for something.
And now Sarah found herself doing the same almost every night, lingering in the library, running her fingers down the spines of ancient books.
It had been a long day; they’d taken the children to Old River Lake to swim. Sarah had wanted to take them to the Lonoke municipal swimming pool.
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