Gunsmoke Blues

by Balogun Ojetade

  “I’d hug you too if you weren’t such an ugly bastard.”

  Scobell made no reply. His breathing was noisy and irregular, as if he’d just run up a hundred stairs. The hospital lights seemed to be bothering him and he squinted to look at her.

  She sat down in the chair next to the bed. “I was going to bring you some grapes, but I thought you might prefer pralines.” Scobell normally guzzled pralines by the box load. She showed him the big box she’d picked up on the way.

  Scobell closed his eyes, murmuring something in reply. It might have been, “Not hungry,” but she couldn’t really tell.

  She placed the box on a small pedestal next to the bed. There were some flowers and a bowl of fruit there, but the fruit hadn’t been touched. “I’ve just been to see that man we rescued on Halloween,” she continued. “The one who stabbed the teacher. Do you remember?”

  Ida and Scobell had attended the incident with Robert the evening before Scobell had been bitten by the giant rat. Scobell grunted in response, but gave no indication whether or not he remembered. Ida persisted anyway. “His name is Robert Charles. He’s a nice man. He seems to be making a good recovery.”

  Scobell made no reply.

  Ida told him, “I bet you’ll be fine in a few days, too.” Her words sounded hollow though. Scobell had sustained a much more serious injury than Robert—a rat bite, not a human one. He’d been unconscious for almost ten days following the attack. She sat with him for another fifteen minutes, but he said nothing more. Eventually she guessed that he’d drifted off to sleep.

  A nurse came over and gave Ida a smile that couldn’t completely disguise her weariness. “How’s he doing?” she asked. The name sewn on her uniform read Susie.

  “Sleeping, I think,” Ida said. “But I was hoping you might tell me how he’s coming along?”

  The nurse leaned over the bed to take Scobell’s temperature. She frowned and made a note on a chalkboard at the end of the bed. “Are you family?” she asked.

  “Next best thing.” Ida gave the nurse one of her winning smiles, the kind she normally saved for old ladies and small children. “We’ve been colleagues for the past five years.”

  The nurse looked grim. “I’m no doctor, but it doesn’t look good to me. The bite wound’s actually not that serious, although he did lose a lot of blood. It should heal with just some scar tissue left behind. But he’s got a nasty infection from where that dog bit him. That’s what’s making him so weak.”

  “Dog?” Ida shook her head, and found herself saying, “It wasn’t a dog.”

  The nurse gave her a skeptical look. “You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.” She was referring to the Beast stories, Ida guessed.

  “I don’t,” Ida said. “I was with him when it happened. I’m pretty sure it was a rat.”

  “A rat did this? Was the rat the size of a dog?”

  Ida shrugged her shoulders. “Crazy, I know.”

  “What makes you think it was a rat?” the nurse asked. “It was probably just a mangy dog. Rats don’t come that big, not even in Africa, where they say rats are double the size of a New York City rat.”

  “I’m not an expert of course, but the way it looked, the way it moved. I’ve never seen a dog act like that. There was a human intelligence about the way it behaved, too, like it knew what we were thinking. There was nothing submissive about it, not like a dog.”

  “A giant rat as smart as a human, Nurse Susie said with a smirk. “Describe it to me.”

  “It looked like a typical rat, I suppose, but much larger, about the size of a human, with a rage even a rabid dog probably couldn’t match.”

  The nurse was studying her intently. “Go on.”

  Ida visualized the beast in her mind. Picked out in the dark, beneath the street lamps, she remembered the way the creature had stared at her, with those glowing eyes like lanterns in the night, seeming to see right into her soul. “It had fine fur, almost a light brown. Its head was disproportionately large too, like a human head. But perhaps the most startling thing was the bright yellow eyes. I’ve never seen a dog with eyes like that.” She shuddered. “I don’t think rats have yellow eyes, either, though.”

  The nurse continued to study her face. Eventually she spoke in a hushed voice. “It’s not the first.”

  “What do you mean?” Ida asked. Now it was her turn to sound disbelieving.

  “Normally we get one or two dog attacks a month, but in recent months the number has been rising steadily,” Susie said. “They’ve been much more serious than the usual cases too. The wounds become infected and the patients develop a fever.”

  “What kind of animals were involved?” Ida asked.

  “The descriptions vary—sometimes an animal with light fur, sometimes brown or even black. Some say it was a dog, some say a big raccoon, even a monster and now you say it was a rat. But the other characteristics are always the same. People always remember the eyes—the bright yellow eyes.”

  “But that’s crazy,” Ida said. “One animal running wild in New Orleans, I can believe, but several? Were they reported to the constables? Normally we handle the goings-on in Back of Town.”

  Susie shrugged. “I guess so. But if the animals ran off, maybe nothing was done. What happened to the animal that attacked your colleague?”

  “It ran away. There was nothing I could do.”

  The nurse nodded then turned to leave, but Ida grabbed her arm. “What happened to the others?” she asked, fixing Susie with her gaze. “The patients, I mean. Did they pull through?”

  Susie hesitated. “Some got better, some worse.” She trailed off, seemingly unwilling to continue.

  “Did any die?” Ida asked, not certain she wanted to know.

  A bell rang from the other side of the ward and Susie looked toward it. “I’ve got to go,” she said, her eyes pleading with Ida.

  “Did any die?” Ida repeated. “Please, I have to know.”

  “About half of them,” Susie said. She smiled apologetically then walked briskly away, leaving Ida alone with Scobell.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roman Street, New Orleans, crescent moon.

  Doctor Laveau had wanted to keep Robert in the hospital for another day at least, but he’d begged to be sent home. In the end, the doctor had reluctantly agreed. Robert hadn’t eaten anything in the hospital, but at home his roommate, Leonard Pierce, brought him raw fish and watched in amazement as he devoured plate after plate of it.

  “You’ll make yourself sick,” Leonard warned.

  “Naw,” Robert said. “I’m ravenous. I couldn’t eat any of the food they gave me in the hospital. But now I could eat a horse.” He wasn’t joking either. He really could have eaten a horse, a small one at least. The raw catfish and brim was okay, but he really craved red meat—raw steak dripping red with blood. Leonard had said no to that, however.

  He’d allowed Leonard to keep him home for a day, then he insisted on going to work the next morning. He was bursting with frustrated impatience at having been cooped up indoors for so long. He needed to get out and burn off some energy. And there was something else he desperately wanted to do.

  Robert attended and worked at the St. James African Methodist Episcopal Church on Roman Street in the Storyville section of New Orleans. Storyville was the red-light district of New Orleans, established by municipal ordinance to regulate prostitution and drugs. Sidney Story, a city alderman, wrote the ordinance, which designated a thirty-eight block area as the part of the city in which prostitution, although nominally illegal, was tolerated. The area was originally referred to as “The District,” but its nickname, “Storyville,” soon caught on, much to the chagrin of Alderman Story.

  The church’s pastor, Reverend Molson M. Clark, was old and quite severe, but Robert needed to speak to him urgently. He needed to confess his sins.

  Coming back to work felt very strange. Although he’d been away for just two weeks a
nd not much seemed to have happened in his absence, for Robert, everything had changed. He struggled to talk to any of his old friends. They all wanted to know about the madman, and how it had felt to stab someone with a knife. Robert refused to talk about it. The men he had regarded as his peers now seemed to Robert like dullards, emotionally underdeveloped and with trivial concerns. There was no point trying to tell them anything about what he felt, because they just weren’t equipped to understand.

  Only God would understand his thoughts and feelings. And the nearest thing to God was Reverend Clark. Robert crossed the graveyard that bounded the old stone church, stopping halfway to sit on a wrought iron bench.

  At that time of the year, the afternoons quickly turned to dusk and then to night, and Robert enjoyed watching the day fade. With it came a growing sense of peace.

  The pecan trees that screened the church from the attached graveyard had already been stripped bare by the winter wind, but the churchyard itself was far from bleak. A squirrel darted across the top of a headstone, gray on gray, life in the midst of death. Robert found the churchyard a strangely comforting place.

  He sat alone on the bench for a good while, watching the last rays of the sun dip behind the white stone church. The whole churchyard seemed to hesitate for a while, as if waiting breathlessly for twilight to slip away to nothingness. He felt calmer than he had felt for days. Then a boy walked past on the gravel path that led to the church, and the hunger rose up inside him once more. He wanted to jump at the boy, grapple him to the ground, rend and tear his flesh, and taste the blood and meat.

  To his alarm, he found that he had unconsciously risen to his feet and followed the boy several steps before he even knew what he was doing. He had fallen into a natural hunting pattern, probing the boy for weakness, looking for an opportunity to strike.

  Robert turned abruptly away from the boy, covering his face in his hands. The sooner he spoke to the pastor, the better.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Crescent City Bone Marrow Center, New Orleans, crescent moon.

  “Virginia Banks?” the nurse enquired. She was petite and pretty, her curly black hair tied back sensibly in a ponytail, her skin tawny-brown, her arms toned and firm beneath her navy-blue tunic. She smelled of blood and antiseptic, and underneath that, the faint but appetizing aroma of living human flesh.

  “That’s correct,” Virginia confirmed. She nodded and smiled broadly at the nurse—Dawn, according to the name embroidered on her shirt. The nurse was being very attentive. Everyone at the center had been very polite and professional.

  “Have you given bone marrow before?” she asked Virginia.

  He shook his head. “First time, I’m afraid, Dawn. But I wanted to give something back, to play my part in society, you know?”

  She nodded. “I’ve got the results of your test here, Ms. Banks, and everything seems to be in order. We’ll be screening your marrow for any infections. Using the Bello Test for Blood Types, we found that your blood group is O Negative, which is particularly useful, because it means that we can safely give your bone marrow to patients with any other type of blood group.”

  “That’s good to know,” Virginia said.

  Mary would be pleased about that. This was her idea after all. She was determined to spread the condition as widely and as quickly as possible. Their research indicated that spreading it through food and through medical procedures would be effective ways to transmit it, and this was as good a way as any to get started. It was a lot less risky than running around the Tremé at night searching for strangers to bite.

  We’ll write to you if we find any infections in your sample.”

  “Excellent news,” Virginia said. “So, what happens now?”

  “Now we take your bone marrow,” Dawn said, smiling. She pulled Virginia’s skirt up over her muscular belly and cleaned her pelvic region with an antiseptic sponge. “You don’t feel the cold?” she asked, indicating Virginia’s thin silk blouse and lack of any kind of winter jacket.

  Virginia shook her head. “Not at all. I like the cold. It helps me relax.” This small talk was intended to distract her while the nurse inserted the huge needle into her pelvis. But Virginia wasn’t bothered by needles. “The ramus superior,” she remarked, as Dawn drove the sharp point of the needle through the wall of Virginia’s pelvis.

  Dawn looked at Virginia in surprise. Usually, patients wailed in pain, even after the dose of opium given. But she was more surprised at Virginia’s use of medical terminology.

  “I have a very high tolerance for pain,” Virginia explained. “And I’m a medical student.”

  “Ah,” Dawn said, knowingly. “Y’all are usually the worst.” She secured the needle in her pelvis and began to draw out the dark crimson liquid.

  Virginia allowed herself a hearty laugh. The rich smell of the marrow had put her in a mellow mood. “Not me,” she said. “You won’t get any complaints from me. Take as much as you like.”

  “Just one vial will be fine,” Dawn said. “I’m going to leave you now to rest and come back in around five to ten minutes. If you need any assistance, just raise your arm.”

  “No problem,” Virginia said. “I’m enjoying everything so far.” She lay back in the reclined chair. She had always been comfortable in the hospitals and clinics. A capsized boat had killed her parents and younger brother and left her in critical condition when she was twelve. Doctors had spent two years rebuilding her, carrying out emergency surgery to treat a collapsed lung, repairing more than a dozen broken bones, and grafting skin onto her burned arms and legs—using her for their study of surgical procedures. She still had metal rods in her left thigh. The experience had left both physical and mental scars that remained with her to that very day, but it had also kindled a strong interest in medicine and a desire to become a doctor herself. It had led her to that fateful trip to Chicago.

  Virginia had been the first of Doctor Daniel Hale Williams’ three students to succumb to the condition. She had only herself to blame for that. She’d been careless with one of the test subjects they’d managed to bring back to their lab. Six months of careful tracking and trapping to catch a live rat-kin, then just a single second to ruin everything. They’d captured a woman from the North Side of Chicago. The residents, mostly Black and immigrant white workers in the stock yards, had told them of a huge beast that attacked and killed livestock at the yards and had once tried to break into someone’s house. It hadn’t taken long for the Doctor and his team to identify the infected resident—a Black woman in her early thirties, the widow of a man killed by an “animal” attack the previous year. Loose talk among the residents themselves confirmed the conclusion.

  Virginia had been working alone in the lab late one evening, tired and thirsty. She should have stopped, but she was close to finishing her tests for the day. Just one momentary lapse in concentration and she’d felt the jaws of the woman lock onto her arm. She’d struggled to free herself, but she knew it was too late. There were no exceptions. Every documented rat-kin attack had just two possible outcomes—death or infection.

  At the time, she’d hoped for death. How foolish that wish had been. Becoming rat-kin herself had been so much more rewarding than she could ever have imagined.

  Since returning to New Orleans with Mary and Mose, she’d been studying Dr. Williams’ extensive writings on the rat-kin—’bawegundane’, Dr. Williams called them. The word came from the Zulu, among whom Dr. Williams had studied from 1885-1885. It was a synthesis of igundane or rat, and abantu, meaning human or people. Among the Zulu all manner of shape-shifters were a surprisingly well-researched and documented topic of study. Stories of shape-shifters were as old as the Zulu, and the wise Sanusi, or Zulu scholars, treated the rat-kin like victims of a disease as serious as smallpox and leprosy.

  The bawegundane, second oldest of all shape-shifters after the bagwenya—crocodile people—existed for thousands of years on the margins of humanity. Unlike other shape-shifters, however, th
e bawegundane sought to infect others, to swell their ranks. The drive to infect was like an instinct—an all-consuming need.

  The rat-kin persisted quietly, infecting small numbers of victims in localized areas, until conditions were right for them to suddenly explode into a worldwide epidemic. All it needed to take root was a high enough population density.

  Epidemiologists should have spotted the signs a long time ago. But perhaps because of its early associations with witchcraft and superstition, nobody had taken the stories seriously. Scientific orthodoxy had not permitted it. Only Doctor Daniel Hale Williams had been brave, or foolish, enough to study shape-shifters scientifically, and he had been ridiculed and betrayed by his ignorant and racist colleagues.

  Well then, people deserve whatever they get, Virginia thought.

  The nurse, Dawn, returned. Virginia waited patiently while she applied a dressing to her pelvic region.

  “Keep the dressing on for at least six hours,” she advised. “And now go to the discharge room and drink two cups of mint tea or a cup of café au lait, and help yourself to the complimentary beignets, too.”

  “Thanks,” Virginia said, standing up. “But I’m good to go.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saint James Church, crescent moon.

  Robert sat on the wooden pew at the back of the church waiting for the others to leave. He was scared as hell, if he was honest, although he wouldn’t say it out loud. He had two sins to confess, and they were far, far worse than anything he had confessed before. He had killed a man. And perhaps even worse than that, he had developed a taste for human flesh. He hadn’t eaten any. Not yet. But he couldn’t get the thought out of his mind. He feared what he might do, if he couldn’t put an end to that lust.

  So he had no choice. He went to Reverend Clark to tell him about his bad deeds and his bad thoughts. The good Reverend would tell him what to do, and he would be forgiven.

  While he waited, Robert said a quiet prayer, asking the Holy Spirit to help him deal with what lay ahead. Usually praying made him feel more relaxed and able to make a good confession, but today his thoughts were too agitated. He could not still his soul to let the Holy Spirit enter, and God remained silent. As he sat staring up at the crucified white Jesus that looked down upon him from above the altar he found himself becoming more and more agitated.