by Sean Wallace
Dixon stroked his throat. One thing was for sure. Jos Splitz wasn’t feeling the effect of no drought. In fact, she was sucking up the juices of the land while the rest of the state died of thirst.
The question now was what to do with that knowledge.
He walked back around to the front of the workshop. The kerosene lamp gave out jaundiced twilight, and it occurred to him what a curious thing it was to find outside the workshop at that hour. The old gal was hee-hawing in her bed like a sunbaked mule; he’d heard the housemaid remark on it. So, some fool musta lit the thing for the ghosts, or more likely, as a deterrent against starving hobos, of which there were plenty.
One side of the double door’s latch wasn’t quite caught in its slot. Careless keepers make for loser-weepers, Dixon thought acidly.
He was about to secure the door when it occurred to him that a late night check of the grounds, along with the investigation of any mysterious circumstances, might well fall within the duties of a yardman. He gave the door a gentle push and stepped inside.
Great black rafters overhung a room divided into two separate work areas by a mottled, semi-opaque glass sliding screen. Since this “wall” was at most eight foot, he was able to see the upper section of the vast machine referred to as the Burrower at the far end of the workshop. Moonlight filtered in at high narrow windows, reflecting off the tip of a colossal metal bore like an exploding star.
Dixon tucked his arms in tight to his body. Either side of him were shelves laden with cartons, jars, bottles filled with some milky substance, balls of string, small plump sacks lined up like Humpty Dumpties, and boxes containing preserved weed, bark strips, tubers, cotton bolts, and all manner of weird in-between.
“I’ll be damned,” he whispered, leaning in to study a jar. He wasn’t much for learning but his daddy had insisted on him getting his alphabet licked. “U . . . S . . . E. Use. A.T. At . . .” He spelt out the words phonetically. “M.I.D.N.I.G.H.T . . . Use at midnight?” Puzzlement wormed up at his brow. The contents looked like something scraped outta pig sty.
Dixon peered closer at the racks of jars. Seeds, burs, dried flower heads . . . it hadda be a gardener’s store. Carrie-Anne liked to mix dirt, he thought, remembering how her cotton dress had scooped tight across her buttocks as she’d worked her trowel into a flower bed that afternoon. But no, that didn’t sit right somehow. Carrie-Anne was too refined to stock that queer larder. What he did suspect was that this corner of the workshop had been given over to the house Negress who used it for potions and witchdoctoring.
Coloreds know no betta than to side with the devil. Their womenfolk’ll entice ya and ride ya with all kinda words and intoxications. Sap the spirit from your manhood and leave ya outta dry.
His daddy’s words played over and over in his head. Dixon felt parched even as sweat glistened at his brow. Placing one foot carefully behind the other, he started to back off from that devil’s altar.
It was the small catch of breath which made him pause mid-step. He listened intently. There. A whisper of sound, girlish and sensual. Momentarily he was afraid that the housemaid’s brews had attracted some intoxicating spirit come to steer him to sin and feast on his soul. Then he heard a second murmur, a man’s baritone that was distinctly human and coming from the other side of the glass screen.
The baking heat crested and broke over him as, through the thick, lichened glass of the sliding screen, he made out the outline of their rutting bodies. His nostrils flared. It hadda be the sorceress, squeezing the life from some poor soul between her flanks.
An old parlor chair rested on two legs against the screen. Dixon eased it back down, placed one boot on the seat and tried out his partial weight on it. Reassured the chair would hold him, he stepped up level with the top of the screen and tentatively peered over.
The air was torn from his lungs. In place of black flesh, he saw the bow of a pale breast, the crush and rise of white thighs, and unsoiled nails that cut in at a man’s spine, causing him to buckle and thrust harder. As moonshine spilt out into every corner of the workshop, revealing an ocean of dust motes, he saw Virgil Roberts with his pants down and Carrie-Anne Valentine’s angelic face twist in grotesque ecstasy.
Sunday April 14,1935
There’d been many occasions in the past when Carrie-Anne and Julie had exchanged words. When she’d pulled the rags from her hair and worried out the ringlets an hour before Great Aunt Rita’s annual visit. Or when she’d cut down a bed of sweet potato fern to use as a posy for her “marriage” to a five-year-old Ben Richards. Or when, more recently, she’d scolded Wesley for beating a carpet near the spot of lawn where she was resting. Listening in from the porch, Julie had puffed up like a prizefighter and stomped on over. “Carrie-Anne Valentine!” she’d embarked with a shake in her voice. But even though Carrie-Anne demanded then cajoled then begged her to continue, Julie seemed to think better of her anger and just take herself back off inside the house. It was a different story yesterday afternoon. Then Julie had decided to stick around and say her piece . . . although, as it turned out, it was Carrie-Anne who dug up sentiments that should never have been voiced.
Arranging her gloves on her lap and leaning back against the hard pew, Carrie-Anne was haunted by Julie’s blank expression when told to remember her place. And it occurred to her that she had seen that look before, on the faces of the field Negroes who toiled and starved and hated their master.
The thought festered. Boxed in on either side by Mrs Lisa Goodwin’s plump respectability and old Mrs Johnson’s hoary bones, Carrie-Anne felt jostled into a slot that didn’t fit. Somewhere at the back of that dull stone coffin of a chapel, Julie and Wesley were amongst the other colored’s standing because the lord’s house didn’t see fit to offer them a chair.
“Your aunt is not with you,” shot Lisa Goodwin suddenly. Her tone sat the wrong side of polite.
Carrie-Anne watched Preacher Richards lean in to discuss the sheet music with his wife, the organist, and willed him to start his sermon.
Old Mrs Johnson peered over her. “Josephine Splitz? Ain’t she dead?”
Lisa Goodwin bundled her arms beneath wasteful breasts. Her eyes betrayed a mind full of nasty. “Word is she’s alive but no one’s seen hide nor hair of her at chapel for three months. What do you say, Carrie-Anne? Is your aunt still with us?”
Carrie-Anne sensed the weight of her respectable gloves on her lap. Humming lightly, she rocked forward onto her toes and back.
“Is she dumb?” Mrs Johnson squirted sideways, sucking her bottom lip like a teat. “You dumb, girl?”
“Dumb, no. Ignorant maybe.” Lisa Goodwin’s hot fat fingers branded Carrie-Anne’s arm. “Your coltish act don’t work with me, girl. Just like your aunt, think you’re better than the rest of us. In her case, because she got brains and money. In yours, because you’ve got beauty and you know how to spread it.”
A mind full of nasty, thought Carrie-Anne. She kept humming, imagining the tune dispersing through her like sunlight.
There was an undercurrent in the chapel that morning, half-whispers that left a shadow on the glorious day outside. Young men, who usually snatched off their caps and shuffled whenever she walked by, had watched her with a new, hawkish intensity. One even spat on the floor. Everywhere she’d looked, she’d seen the folk of Bromide grouped about the chapel walls like a swarm; they’d stung her a hundred times with their barely disguised distaste.
Let them judge, she decided, stilling herself as the preacher took to his pulpit. They’d find fresh meat inside the month. What’s more, she couldn’t help agreeing with them in part. Aunt Jos should’ve honored Palm Sunday, should’ve cared enough about events on the surface to let alone what lay below. But instead, at six a.m. that morning, the Burrower had lowered its nose and descended with a tremendous roar of grit and steam. And she’d been left to drape herself in fresh cotton, put a tea rose behind her ear, meet Julie’s stone-faced silence, and come alone into the lion’s den.
&n
bsp; It’s a dark spell, Carrie-Anne thought to herself. Virgil’s fresh absence so soon after the last, Julie’s cold-shouldering, the hungry, bored minds of the townsfolk. A dark spell. But soon the clouds will pass.
She fixated on a shaft of sunlight streaming in at the nearest chapel window. Dust whirled in its soft golden element. She could hear the preacher’s voice as from a distance, and for a moment she imagined that she was back on the porch again, head resting against the corner strut, listening to the stillness of the plains. Virgil had come to her then . . . just as he came to her now as a memory of tenderly bruising lips and franticness. She smiled secretly.
“Smears up her mouth even now,” hollered a male voice, piercing the illusion so that she refocused to find a sea of eyes turned toward her.
“What’s that?” Her voice sounded set adrift.
“Dixon, please.” Preacher Richards gripped the lectern, his face lined with irritation. “This sermon is about aiding your fellow man not abusing him. If there is tension in our community, let us resolve it at an appropriate time and without resorting to verbal attacks.” After a brief pause, the preacher held his arms out from his sides. “My words are a lesson in scripture. They illustrate that . . .”
“‘Their god is their stomach . . . their mind is on earthly things.’ Ain’t that what you read out just now, Preacher Richards?” Dixon Goodwin rose up out of his seat on the far side of his mother and stared over at Carrie-Anne, an angry crease between his eyes. “Some folk fatten themselves like hogs while the rest don’t have a bean.”
“Need I remind you this is a house of God, Dixon, not a two buck brawl pit?” said Preacher Richards in the deep voice he reserved for children who couldn’t sit still in the pews. There was a waver in his tone though. Anger at the interruption or something else? Something like fear he could not control his flock?
Carrie-Anne wanted to start humming her song again. She wiped her gloves between her palms. Heat pawed at her.
“You better sit your backside down, son,” said Lisa Goodwin quietly. Carrie-Anne detected a trace of indifference, pride even. Yes, I have raised my son well. He takes a stand when no other will. He is the rock all others hide behind.
“Sure, Momma. Just as soon as I get the measure of what preacher’s teaching. ‘Their God is their stomach?’ Well, I’m here to tell ya there’s one home near Bromide where that sure does apply. Boar House. Seen it with my own eyes. I work there as a yard man . . .”
Not anymore. Carrie-Anne dabbed the moist hollow of her throat with the gloves. Not content to pore his eyes over her – oh yes, she’d felt their weight, familiar, uncomfortable, and a sensation she’d labored under before several years ago – it appeared that Dixon wanted to invent some hocus-pocus about those she held dear.
Go on then, she urged. Expose the darkness in the hearts of Boar House’s occupants. Tell these good folk all the horrors you have witnessed.
“Take a seat or leave, Dixon.” Preacher Richards was flushed. His son, Ben, got to his feet at the fore of the congregation – Carrie-Anne marveled at the height of him and thought again of the potato fern posy she’d picked as a child. Had time ebbed so quickly that Ben Richards was now built like a quarterback while a squirt of a kid could evolve into a creep like Dixon Goodwin?
“All I’m saying is there’s a reason why they’re growing crops while the rest of us are struggling to harvest soap weed. More than that, ain’t we preaching abstinence from earthy things?” Dixon jabbed two fingers at his eyes. “Out there, I seen filth. I seen fornication. I seen witchcraft.”
A few folk gasped audibly. Carrie-Anne felt a squeezing tight up inside. She resisted twisting about in her seat and staring at the back of the chapel; best thing she could do in that moment was sit soldier-straight and offer no emotion.
“Witchcraft?” Preacher Richards’s eyes appeared to supplicate his wife from her seat in the organ pew. Whatever he saw there must have reassured his indignation because he rose up out of the girdle of his hips and asserted, “A vicious accusation, Dixon, and not one that we abide inside the lord’s house. I repeat, I must ask you to leave. Mr and Mrs Goodwin . . .”
The preacher would not win over Lisa and Dixon, Senior. They rose to stand alongside their son, oozing superiority and righteousness.
“Preacher, my son’s got news about Josephine Splitz and her kin which is of interest to this congregation,” said Dixon Goodwin, Senior, a barrel-bellied man with a circlet of white hair and the same bristled baby face as his son. He planted his hands on his hips and revolved at the waist. “So I ask ya, folks. If my boy says what he’s got to tell ya is in keeping with the preacher’s sermon, shouldn’t the rest of us rightly hear it?”
“This is not the time or place to discuss disputes between individuals,” embarked Preacher Richards. He was immediately shot down.
“Ain’t no matter between individuals. This is town talk.” Dixon, Senior thrust a finger toward the back of the chapel. “This is about one of ’em Negresses and her pantry of potions in Jos Splitz’s workshop!”
There was a second expulsion of air from listeners’ lips. Ugly words were spoken under breath.
Dixon, Senior rubbed a hand around his bald spot. “You seen it, ain’t you, son? And that ain’t all he seen? Tell ’em about the giant maggot, a burrowing machine that sucks up all the water.”
Was she laboring under a brain-fever or were folk speaking in tongues? Carrie-Anne glanced back at Julie; the woman had the look of a startled jack rabbit and was working hard to push Wesley away. Carrie-Anne recognized why; when colored folk were accused of something, only way to protect those they loved was by disassociation. Wesley didn’t get a bit of it though and kept wriggling his head up under his mother’s arm, all the while nervously flashing that broad smile of his as if he’d found it got him fuss before and he figured it might work now.
Carrie-Anne stood, her upper body bathed in the rich sunlight so that she was forced to squint against its brilliance. She tried to speak. Her throat clamped around her vocal cords.
“I am in no way a scientist, Mr and Mrs Goodwin, Dixon.” She nodded at each. “But it is my understanding that my aunt and her assistant, Mister Virgil Roberts, have been excavating below ground in a bid to find water and to understand what it is about the land beneath our feet which has left us in such dire straits.”
“Except, you ain’t in dire straits, are you, Miss Valentine? Not only have you water to feed the soil where you wanna, but a sorceress to raise them crops up with spilt rooster blood, devil’s weeds, and every other kinda wickedness. ‘Use at midnight.’ That’s what I read, Miss Valentine. Written stark clear on a label it was. Use at the devil’s hour!”
Dixon’s expression was seven ways of wrong. And he wasn’t alone. More voices were cutting in.
“What a slave doin’ with her own store while we’re left to scrape around for seed and other provisions?”
“Always said Jos Splitz was lead-lined.”
“Heart of stone, that one.”
“Except when it comes to coloreds. Then she’s soft as marshmallow.”
“Coloreds with the know-how to mix magic? That’s a straight up sin. Ain’t no defending that.”
The eyes moved from Carrie-Anne to Julie. There was fragility in the air. One audible breath and the line between peace and pandemonium would be muddied.
“Exodus 22:18. ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live’,” said Lisa Goodwin, soft as the wind.
Carrie-Anne felt as if she was suffocating. So much white flesh crushed in around her like pulped pages from a Bible.
“Enough with your accusations!” she spat. Her heart pulsed violently. Forcing her way past old Mrs Johnson, who shrunk into her desiccated bones, Carrie-Anne strode to the back of the chapel. Twice, a figure stepped into her way. Twice a voice told them to let her be. Through the smear of angry human shapes, she made out Samuel O’Ryan and George West. Good, honest men in a town awash with hokum.
She found J
ulie, fear and unshakeable knowledge etched into the lines of her face. Wesley was a phantom limb at his mother’s hip, arms encircling her.
Carrie-Anne reached out. The air inside the chapel turned shroud gray; she parted it with her hands like scissors slipping through silk. When her fingertips made contact with Julie’s wrist, she felt the housemaid shiver in spite of the tumbling waves of heat.
“Let’s go home, Julie.”
Out the corner of an eye, she saw a figure lurch from the back pew in a jilting motion. Cold dread poured down the inside of her ribs. She would not meet that vile stare. She would gather up Julie and Wesley to her side and she would walk with them out of chapel that day and deliver them safely home.
“Know what else I saw?” continued Dixon, a serpent at her back. “Last night, I was checking the grounds as is my employment when I find the workshop unlocked. Lotta fancy engine gear in that shack. This day and age, lotta folk in need of stealing such. So I slip inside. And I hear this ruckus. Any idea what I’m talking about, Miss Valentine?”
Eyes swirled toward her from every angle. The sun went in.
As Dixon went on with his sordid description, Carrie-Anne sensed the young men of Bromide wipe her from their palms like chaff. In a barren town, she had been the one sweet-smelling flower they could admire and dream of owning. Except now she was gone over. Another clean thing corrupted.
Their agitation was immediate. No insult was spared inside those hallowed walls. She was Jezebel, Salome, the Babylonian whore, and every other breed of temptress. But their anger was good. Anything to deflect attention from Julie.
Carrie-Anne made her way to the chapel door, Julie’s blistering handhold in hers, Wesley bundled into Julie’s folds . . . Only to find the exit was guarded by its own gargoyle of hunched flesh and mangled bone.