Southern Gods

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Then she noticed the black figure standing in a spill of shadow at the foot of the stairs. A silhouette, jet black, looked up at her, head cocked and staring intently, silent, eyes like flecks of obsidian.

  Sarah’s breath caught in her chest, and the goose bumps of pleasure quickly turned to those of fear. She dropped her arms to her sides, not knowing what to do. A clock ticked somewhere and the old timbers of the house settled around her. The black thing below stared, its eyes fierce and black.

  Then Alice passed in the doorway of the kitchen, beneath Sarah, blocking the spray of light slanting into the atrium below, changing the configuration of shadows.

  And the thing was gone, if it had ever really been there at all.

  Sarah exhaled suddenly. She hadn’t realized she’d been holding her breath.

  She went downstairs and into the kitchen.

  Alice turned to look at her, then said, “Humph. She must’ve been real bad. I’ve got the water hot. You go on into the library, I’ll bring your toddy in to you.” Alice pointed to a bowl in a far corner of the counter. “I’m gonna be up for a bit, got some dough rising. I’ll come check on you in a bit. Go on, girl. I know you been waiting.”

  In the library, Opusculus Noctis was open on the desk, and as she sat down in front of it, Sarah took a deep breath, placed a hand on the yellowed sheet, and turned over her page of translation from the night before. It read:

  the little book of shadows

  or the little night book

  a glance look into the shadows

  demands requires many things

  if one wishes would like to converse bargain

  with the animals creatures kept locked

  beyond the stars or the vorago?

  admonitio admonition? warning

  a warning

  do not call up that which you haven’t pulli

  sent away

  don’t call up

  what you cannot put down

  all sermons converse with the prodigious

  must begin start with a payment tithe of

  inculpatis innocent? blood

  in addition to also

  the will intention to bargain, the caller

  is helped assisted by the

  intention to do necessity the necessary things?

  Sarah had managed the translation with great effort, flipping backward and forward in the Latin English dictionary. The fact it made no sense depressed her, but she felt, for the first time in years, a desire to know, to understand. What was the meaning behind the words? They blended together on each line of the pamphlet, having no spaces between letters to indicate the beginning or end of a thought or phrase. There were certain words, like vorago and prodigium, that were not provided for in the library’s poor dictionary. She couldn’t tell if it was some religious manual or an ancient recipe book. She knew she’d committed mistakes in the translation, but hoped the gist of it was right. She couldn’t be sure without consulting someone who knew better.

  Sarah frowned and nibbled on the eraser of her pencil. When she looked up, she noticed that Alice had entered the library, placed the toddy in front of her, and left with her none the wiser.

  Sarah picked up the glass and felt the warmth of the golden drink, took a swallow, and shivered. Alice had made this one strong.

  Sarah smiled and turned back to her translation.

  Chapter 9

  Rabbit came to the Royale Hotel to pick up Ingram at five in the afternoon, dressed in dark blue slacks and a silky white shirt. A gold chain gleamed in the V of his open collar, and his hair was smoothed back.

  Rabbit walked into Ingram’s hotel room, filling the small space with the scent of pomade. Ingram raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, you sure are sparkly. You fall into a vat of perfume?”

  Rabbit cocked an eyebrow at Ingram. His hair was darker now that the pomade kept it tight against his head. “Naw, I ain’t fell into no vat o’ perfume. Yet. Maybe later. Maybe it ain’t something you can appreciate but the ladies will be ready for me, and the smell-good is just part of the program.”

  Ingram thought for a moment. “Turn around.”

  Rabbit hesitated, then smiled, turning around, rotating slowly. “Nice, ain’t they? Got ’em in Little Rock. That’s real imported silk.”

  “Nice. Real nice. So where’s your gun?”

  Rabbit’s smile vanished. “It’s in the coupe, under the driver’s seat.”

  “Caliber?”

  “.25.”

  Ingram smiled. “It is Saturday night.”

  “Ain’t no Saturday night pistol. It’s a good piece, chrome plated, real sweet.”

  “Semi or revolver?”

  “Semi.”

  “It’s a Saturday Night Pistol, but that’s okay. We’re gonna be in a bar. You gotta shoot somebody, stick it in his stomach or his face and pull the trigger. It should probably do the trick.”

  Ingram went to his suitcase, picked up a rumpled jacket, put it on. He followed that with a Morley .38 and slipped it into the jacket pocket. He rummaged around in his suitcase a little more, then threw a small leather holster at Rabbit, who snatched it out of the air.

  “If it looks rough, just stay in the coupe, Rabbit. You don’t have to deal with any trouble.”

  “Wait in the car? Not with all the ladies waiting inside. What’s this?”

  “Ankle holster. For your not-a-Saturday-Night-pistol.”

  “All right then, I’m your man. Let’s get on.”

  Ingram stretched in the hall, reached up and touched the ceiling, then bent over to touch his toes. Rabbit watched him with a puzzled look on his face.

  “What’re you doing, Bull?”

  “Working out the kinks.”

  His hand throbbed horribly, and he held it above his head to ease the swelling as they went downstairs, out of the lobby, and into the parking lot.

  ***

  It was hot in the coupe, rumbling over asphalt and potholes, motor humming.

  Rabbit cranked down the driver’s side window all the way and hung his silk-clad arm out the side. Ingram popped the smoker’s window and angled it inward, so that the breeze blew directly on him. He was breaking out in cold sweats and feverish heats alternately; two days of whiskey and pills had taken its toll.

  They passed through deep delta, low country interspersed with fields and farms that gave way to forests and scrub-brush. They trundled down dusty roads, rolling in an out of cane breaks, past amber fields, through the late sunny haze of afternoon.

  Rabbit told Ingram about the layout of Ruby’s.

  “Big long building, it is, lemme tell you. Got a stage in the back. When you come in the front door, you got an aisle going between tables, got your bar—a real long one—on your right with stools. They’s an office at the back, back of the kitchen, I think but can’t be sure.” Rabbit took his hands off the coupe’s wheel and adjusted the rear view mirror. “There’s a hallway to the right of the stage, just beyond the bar, that leads back to a back door where they take deliveries from the pier. Got some storerooms and closets and a pisser back there too.”

  “Pier? So it’s on a wharf?”

  Rabbit gave a sharp look to Ingram, then nodded. “Sure. Named Ruby’s on the Bayou, ain’t it? When I was a youngun, working in the cotton fields, after harvest we’d put them cotton bales on barges—shallow rafts back then—and pole the barges down the bayou until we’d hit Ruby’s. It was called McFeely’s Wharf back then. We’d load the bales on the pier, and after a little bit a steamer or one of the new diesel freighters would come pick it up, float it down the Arkansas to the Mississippi. To Helena or Natchez or New Orleans.” He sighed and looked off into the tree line. “That was some hard work.”

  After another pause, he said, “I remember Ruby made good etoufee. Heard that ole girl died a while back, so we’ll find out about the grub.”

  Ingram snorted. “Last thing on my mind is food.”

  “Better eat. A body wants food, and your mind ain�
��t gone work right if you don’t. If bad things happen, you’ll need to have ate. That’s a fact.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  They drove on in silence. It was nearing dark when they rejoined pavement. Rabbit steered for ten or twenty miles down the unmarked highway, then took a left toward a large wood with smoke rising behind the trees. Oily-leafed magnolia trees lined the gravel road, their white blossoms filling the coupe with a sweet, cloying scent. Well graveled, the road was twice as wide as the highway, and the rocks crunched heavily under the coupe’s tires.

  Once they passed the tree line, Ingram smelled the bayou and the river beyond, a thick muddy scent, wet and filled with life. He bummed another smoke from Rabbit, and blew billows out the window. The wind whisked the smoke away behind them. Through the trees, Ingram noticed thin yellow light from a building, and heard the slamming of car doors. The sun had extinguished itself in the waters of the bayou and sent up pink and purple streamers into the night air.

  Rabbit steered the coupe into a large gravel area next to a dark brown building on the edge of a muddy expanse of water. The trees didn’t crowd so close here. Ingram judged there to be twenty or thirty cars clustered around the building. He watched as two couples walked to the front doors of the building, noticed another couple sitting in a darkened car, either smoking or drinking. Or something else.

  The building itself was wooden with brick work around what Ingram assumed was the kitchen area. On a wrap-around porch, kerosene lanterns cast guttering pools of yellow light, except for the far side of the building, where a pier stretched a good thirty or forty yards into the waters of Bayou Bartholomew.

  Rabbit parked the coupe, wheels crunching on the gravel, and the men exited. Ingram checked his gun and put on his rumpled jacket. He motioned Rabbit to follow and walked around to the side of the building to the pier. A couple of big flat john-boats with outboard motors were moored there, along with a skiff that looked unstable and carious as a rotten tooth. At the very end of the pier sat a large river tug, heavy in the water, painted black and silhouetted against the last vestiges of the dying sun, stars salting the sky around its stacks. It was a big boat, made for pushing heavy barges up and down the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, barges filled with coal, or granite, or other dense materials. The boat had three decks, the main, a second deck, and then the pilot’s roost, with a big smokestack sprouting behind it. Antennae poked skyward from along the main stack, giving the tug a jagged, insectile appearance.

  Ingram walked up the access stairs to the pier. Drowsy waves washed onto the muddy shore with low, gurgling sounds. The moored boats knocked and bumped against the pilings. Ingram’s feet echoed loudly on the tarred planks. The air was filled with the smell of burning kerosene and dead fish.

  As he drew closer to the end of the pier, the word Hellion painted in white on the hull of the boat became clear. He could make out the word Natchez a little further down the gunwale. Ingram scratched his head.

  He had forgotten Rabbit until he heard him say, “This here’s Bayou Bartholomew. Runs from where we stand down to the river if you go that way.” A long, well-manicured finger pointed north.

  Arm out, Rabbit swung around and pointed south. “But it also runs that way, for a country mile. You could probably float all the way down into Louisiana on that bayou. It’s the only water transportation for a lot of counties, and it was pretty important for us coming up, right after the war. Not that European one.” Rabbit looked sharply at Ingram. “Or your war, Bull. But the one between the states. Spent a lot of time on it when I was younger, floating cotton right to this pier we’re standing on.” He waved his hand toward the dark. “Used to be good fishing out there.”

  Rabbit stared out into the bayou, a half smile shadowing his face, lost in his own thoughts. Ingram looked at him, noticing for the first time the ineffable tracery of time and experience etched into his skin.

  Ingram asked, “How old are you, Rabbit? I can’t tell.”

  Rabbit barked a laugh. “White folk never can, can they?” Then he smiled, a little rueful. “Do it matter? You’re all right, Bull, I ain’t got no call to give you any grief. I was born in ’88. Makes me sixty-three, which is old, by just about anybody’s reckoning. I’ve seen just about everything there is to see, at least when you talking ’bout your fellow man.”

  Rabbit walked back up the pier, around to the front of the building. Ingram followed. A gigantic man took their cover inside the front door, giving Ingram a suspicious glance.

  It was hot inside. The building was as Rabbit described, long and narrow with the stage in the back. Somewhere around a fifty or sixty people sat or milled about, drinking and smoking. He scanned the tables.

  People held bottles in brown bags, pouring liquor into cheap blue chipped glasses provided by the house. Each table had candles and no tablecloths. Where the bar stood, two smiling men took dinner and drink orders, greeted friends and patrons.

  Ingram whispered to Rabbit, “Are white people allowed in here?”

  “White people allowed wherever the hell they want, Bull, especially when they’re as big and ugly looking as you.”

  Ingram glanced at Rabbit. “Ugly? Hey—”

  Rabbit held up his hands. “All white folk is ugly until you get to know them. Then they usually get uglier. But I wouldn’t worry none. You’re a big—I mean big—fella. Ain’t nobody here gonna mess with you.”

  A jukebox pushed the faint strains of blues into the air, its lit face crowded with men and women, smiling and talking.

  “Let’s see if we can get a table, Rabbit. Close to the stage.”

  The two men elbowed their way to the front of the room. Dim lights barely lit the stage. There were two amplifiers, a drum set, and a microphone stand. Cables snaked across the stage and disappeared into the PA system.

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine. We got least an hour to wait. There’s a table right there.”

  Ingram pointed at the bar and said, “Get me a whiskey, willya?”

  Rabbit raised an eyebrow, said, “I look like a waiter to you?”

  Ingram held his bandaged hand in front of Rabbit’s face. “No, you don’t. Do I?” Ingram pulled a bill out of his jacket’s inner pocket, crumpled it in his fist, and threw it at Rabbit. “I think maybe a one-armed white man might stand out in this crowd. Keep the ten I gave you, take this. Get us some drinks. And listen. Tell what folks are talking about. I wouldn’t be able to get that info.”

  Rabbit cocked his head, considering. “Well, there is the ladies to consider. What you want to drink again?” He winked at Ingram then turned and moved through the crowd to the bar.

  Ingram found a table close to the stage, occupied by one man, an overweight fellow with blunt features. He stood over the table, hand held close to his chest, and fumbled at his wallet with his left. He gave the man a dollar to get up, and took the man’s seat. There was a low red candle burning in the middle of the table. With his good hand, Ingram pulled the candle toward him, and idly played with the wax dripping down its sides.

  The lights came up on the stage. A man dressed in an expensively cut suit, slicked hair, and tightly groomed facial hair came onto the elevated platform from the hallway behind the stage. Guitars and drums glinted in the light behind him. He approached center microphone. A smattering of applause came from the audience.

  “Hello,” he said, squelching the microphone. He looked toward the servers at the bar. One of the men ducked down underneath the counter, adjusting something, and gave the man on stage thumbs up.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.” He had a smooth voice, deep and rich.

  I’ve heard this guy’s voice before.

  “I’d like to welcome y’all to Ruby’s. We’ve got a real exciting evening planned for you. First up, we got Helena’s own Jim Cannon, a great bluesman who’s gonna go places with his new sound. After that, we got Roller Winslow, straight from Memphis, on a Southern tour of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. We’re
real excited about hearing his new single, ‘Miss You When You’re Gone.’” A few women hooted and whistled.

  The well spoken man cleared his throat, then dabbed at his forehead with a white handkerchief. A sheen of sweat beaded on the man’s forehead, glistening on his oiled mustache. With the kitchen, the press of human flesh, the room had become stifling; the fans that hung from the ceiling did very little to move the air in the building.

  “My name is Grover Johnson, and I’m honored to be your emcee tonight. But of course, all you fine and beautiful people didn’t come to hear me. You came to hear the last guest of the night. Curiosity might’ve brought you, rumor might have led you, or you might even be here by chance. But the man you’ve really come to see is at the end of the night, the Tattered Man, the Rambler—” He raised his voice a bit and said louder, “Ramblin’ John! Here tonight. That’s right. So whatever brought you, sit back, listen, dance and drink and enjoy yourselves, because all of your questions are going to be answered. But for now, I’d like to invite you all to put your hands together for Jim Cannon and the Cannonballers!”

  Clapping, the people in the crowd moved forward to the stage, some with drinks in hand, others hopping excitedly. Men came from the hallway by the performance area, joined it, taking up their instruments, some grinning, some serious. Couples pressed the stage, men and women dressed in their finest, holding hands. But there were a few single women going toward the stage as well.

  Once some of the throng moved away from the tables, more of the audience became visible, the observers. There were people here, like him, who weren’t interested in having a good time; they were interested in Ramblin’ John. Ingram didn’t need a degree or a telescope to tell him that, he could see it written clearly on their faces. Maybe they were preachers, maybe they were folk who had brushed up against the same mystery he had.

  Across the room he spied a man sitting alone, watching the stage intently.

  He felt a small jolt.