by John Berendt
“A lot a people does this kind of work,” Minerva said. “But it look like we got the garden all to ourselves tonight.”
We walked single file into the graveyard, taking a winding route and stopping finally at a grave under a large cedar tree. My first thought was that this was a new grave, because unlike the others the soil appeared to be freshly spread on top of it. Minerva knelt by the headstone. She reached into the shopping bag and gave Williams a trowel.
“Go to the other end and dig a hole four inches deep with this spade,” she said. “Drop one of the dimes into it and cover it up.” Williams did as she said. The earth came up with no effort at all. The grave had clearly been dug into and churned so often that the soil was as loose as sand in a sandbox.
I stood a few yards back and watched. Minerva and Williams were like two people kneeling at the opposite ends of a picnic blanket. They faced each other over the bones of Dr. Buzzard.
“Now’s the time for doin’ good,” said Minerva. “First we gotta get that boy to ease off a little. Tell me somethin’ about him.”
“He tried to kill me,” said Williams.
“I know that. Tell me something before that.”
“Well.” Williams cleared his throat. “Danny was always getting into fights. He got mad at his landlord once and threw a chair through the man’s window. Then he went outside and tore up his car with a brick. Another time, he got angry at an exterminator who’d been hired to spray his apartment, so he punched him in the eye, banged his head on the pavement and then later, after the man had sworn out a police warrant against him, took a baseball bat and chased him around Madison Square, screaming that he was going to kill him. He bragged to me once that he’d fired five shots from a pistol at some guy on a motorcycle because the guy was trying to date the same barmaid Danny was seeing at the time. One bullet hit the guy in the foot. His mother had to get police protection from him. She took out a peace warrant against him, which meant if he came within fifty feet of her he’d be arrested.”
Minerva wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “It ain’t doin’ no good,” she said. “That boy is still workin’ hard against you.” She thought for a moment. “Tell me somethin’ good he done.”
“I can’t think of anything,” said Williams.
“All he ever done was bad things? What made him happy?”
“His Camaro,” said Williams. “He loved that Camaro. He used to zoom around in it and see how many wheels he could get off the ground at once. If he turned a corner real fast, he could usually get two wheels in the air. When he drove out to Tybee, he liked to shoot up over that bump in the road leading onto the Lazaretto Creek Bridge, because if he hit it just right he could get all four wheels off the ground at the same time. He loved doing that. He wouldn’t let anybody touch that car. It was his pride and joy. He painted it with a spray can, flat black, just the way he wanted it. He’d spend hours fixing it and cleaning it and painting those racing stripes on it. And he was very good at that, painting those stripes and the little curlicues. He was very creative. That’s something most people didn’t understand about Danny. He was an artist. He flunked every subject in school but art. He always got an A in art. Of course, his talent wasn’t developed. He didn’t have the patience. I have a couple of his paintings. They’re full of fantasy and they’re wild, but you can see he had talent. I used to tell him, ‘Danny, do something with this. You’re good at it.’ But he could never apply himself to anything. He never got past the eighth grade, but he was quickwitted and bright. One time I paid him to dismantle two crystal chandeliers at Mercer House and clean them. When he was just about finished reassembling them, I noticed he’d attached all the little prisms backwards. There were hundreds of them. I explained that each of the prisms was like a diamond ring and that the flat surface had to face out and the pointed surface had to face inward, otherwise it wouldn’t sparkle. I told him he’d have to take them all off and put them back on the right way. I said I’d pay him for the extra time it took. Well, he looked at that chandelier. He looked at it real long like it was a rattlesnake. Then he climbed down from the ladder and said, ‘The hell with it. I’m outta here. I ain’t servin’ no prism sentence!’ I laughed at his pun. I thought it was delightful. He turned around and stormed out of the house, but I could see the corner of his mouth was turned up in a little grin. It pleased him that I’d laughed at his joke.”
Minerva smiled. “I felt him backin’ off a little,” she said.
“What do you mean?” asked Williams.
“I felt it just as you was sayin’ those things about him. I felt that boy ease up some.”
“Why do you suppose that happened?” Williams asked.
“He heard you say you loved him,” Minerva said.
“What?! But that’s … he tried to kill me!”
“I knew he was workin’ against you, baby, and now I know what he was tryin’ to do! He was tryin’ to make you hate him. He wants you to show the world you hate him. That way, they’ll think you hated him bad enough to kill him in cold blood. If you do that, you will surely go to jail, and he knows it.”
“I have every right to hate him,” said Williams. “He tried to kill me.”
“And he paid a heavy price for it. Now he’s tryin’ to make you pay a heavy price too!”
Minerva turned her shopping bag upside down and hurriedly spread its contents in front of her. “We ain’t got time to argue! That was the openin’ I was lookin’ for. Now I can get to work. Quick, we ain’t got much time left. It must be nearin’ midnight. Dig another hole and put another dime in it, and this time think about that boy’s Camaro! Come on! Do it! Think about them pretty stripes the boy painted on it and how good he done it.”
Williams silently dug another hole and dropped another dime in. Minerva dug a hole at her end and slipped a root into it. Then she covered it up and sprinkled it with a white powder.
“Now dig another hole, and this time think about that boy’s two paintings you got. Think how good they was. We tryin’ to keep him off your case. He’s backin’ off. Oh, he’s backin’ off. I feel it.”
Minerva took a twig and poked it into the ground several times, mumbling and chanting as she did. She sprinkled some more powder and then drew a circle in the dirt. “You through, baby? Now do it another time and think about that ‘prism sentence.’ Think how it made you laugh. And think how your laughin’ made the boy smile. Do that for me.”
Minerva continued her ministrations over the head of Dr. Buzzard, while down at the old man’s feet Williams silently dug yet another hole.
“Now do it one more time,” said Minerva, “and this time drop the rest of the dimes into the hole and think about all them things together. And think about anything else that was good about that boy that maybe you ain’t told me yet.” Minerva watched as Williams followed her instructions. “Now take that bottle and pour a little water on each of the covered-up holes, so your kindly thoughts about that boy will take root and flower and come back to bless you.”
Minerva closed her eyes and sat in silence for several minutes. A church bell began to chime the hour of midnight. She opened her eyes again and quickly picked up a pink plastic purse. She scooped a trowel of dirt into it. “Graveyard dirt works best when it come from a grave right at midnight,” she said. “This ain’t for your job, though, baby. This is for my private use.” She sighed. “Black magic never stops. What goes from you comes to you. Once you start this shit, you gotta keep it up. Just like the utility bill. Just like the grocery store. Or they kill you. You got to keep it up. Two, five, ten, twenty years.” The purse was now bulging with dirt. She put it back into her shopping bag.
“It’s after midnight now,” she said. “Time for doin’ evil. I’m gonna work on the D.A. He’s a man, so I will cross sex with him and go to nine different dead women. Nine. I will call them three times. I can’t guarantee they will all be in your favor. But somewhere down the line there will be an opening, and the dead will sett
le with him the way they did the last time. Take that piece of paper out of your pocket, the one with his name written on it, and lay it flat on the ground with the writing up.” Williams did as he was told. “Now fold the paper over once, and then fold it again. Then put it back in your pocket. Okay. Now you just sit quiet while I call on the dead.”
Minerva spoke unintelligible words in her dreamy, half-whispered voice. All I could make out were the names of the dead women: Viola, Cassandra, Serenity, Larcinia, Delia. Minerva used every prop she had brought with her—roots, charms, powders, squares of cloth. She put them on the ground in front of her and stirred them with two sticks as if mixing a voodoo salad. Then, one by one, she put all the items back into her shopping bag. When she was done, she looked at Williams.
“Walk to the edge of the graveyard and wait for me there,” she said. “And don’t look back. I got some more work to do here.”
Williams and I walked away. After a few steps, I ducked behind an oak tree where I could still see Minerva. She began to mutter. Her muttering became moans, the moans turned into wailing, and the wailing grew louder and louder. Minerva’s arms fluttered and wheeled like small propellers. When she was finally out of breath, her hands fell to her lap. She bowed her head in silence for a moment. The only sound in the graveyard was the thunk, thunk, thunk of the basketball bouncing in the distance. At length, Minerva spoke in an urgent whisper.
“Listen to me, old man! Why you doin’ me this way? Tell me why! I give you dimes and ask for a number, but you won’t give me one for shit! You lay there night after night just laughin’ at me. Didn’t I do right by you? Didn’t I wait for you in the bed when you was old and tired and your teeth was rotten? Dammit, listen to me!” Minerva poked the ground with her trowel. “Give me a damn number! Give it to me!” She poked the ground again. “I ain’t givin’ you no peace, old man, till you give me a number. Look at me havin’ to wear this nasty dress. I need to buy me a new one. The roof is leakin’. The boy’s in trouble with the police. I gits graveyard dirt on my porch. I be blocked. Business gits po’.” With each complaint, Minerva jabbed the ground in the vicinity of Dr. Buzzard’s ribs. Finally, she dropped the trowel into her shopping bag and pulled herself to her feet with a sigh.
I slipped away and joined Williams at the edge of the grave yard. Moments later Minerva approached us, muttering. “Stubborn old man,” she said. “I cuss he ass, but he still won’t give me a number.”
“Haven’t you won that damn numbers game by now, Minerva?” Williams asked.
“Yes, I won it,” she said. “One time I put thirty-six dollars on triple three. And that was the number.”
“How much did you win?”
“I should have won ten thousand dollars, but I didn’t git one dime.”
“Why not?”
“The bookie changed the number!”
“How could you let him get away with that?”
“He didn’t git away with nothin’, baby. I fixed it so he don’t work no more. I went to the garden and gave him back his kindness. Now he’s sickly, and we got us a new bookie.”
As we walked up the lane from the graveyard, Minerva gave Williams his parting instructions. He was to put the paper with Spencer Lawton’s name on it into a jar filled with water that had not run through any pipe. He was to place the jar in the darkness of his closet, where it would not be touched by the light of the sun or the glow of the moon, until the trial was over. He was to cut a photograph of Lawton’s face out of the newspaper, black out his eyes with a pen—first the right eye, then the left—draw nine lines across his lips as if sewing him up, put the photograph in his coat pocket, and make sure a preacher touched his coat. Afterward, he was to burn the photograph in the exact spot where Danny Hansford had died.
“Do that,” said Minerva, “and Spencer Lawton will lose your case. But you must do one more thing too. Once a day, every day, you must close your eyes and tell that boy you forgive him for what he done to you. And deep in your heart you must truly forgive him. You hear?”
“I hear,” said Williams.
Minerva stopped at a turnoff to another road. “Now, you go on back to Savannah and do like I say,” she said.
“Aren’t you going home?” Williams asked.
Minerva patted her shopping bag. “Baby, I never takes graveyard dirt into my own house. I will deliver it first, and I must do that alone.”
Williams was silent as we began the drive back.
“Are you going to follow Minerva’s instructions about Spencer Lawton’s picture?” I asked.
“I might,” said Williams. “It’s a little corny, but it could end up being good therapy—sewing up his mouth, blacking out his eyes. Yes, that’s something I might be able to get into.”
“How about the daily message of forgiveness to Danny Hansford? Are you going to do that too?”
“Definitely not!” he said. “Danny was nothing but a would-be murderer.” Williams picked up his glass and drank what was left of his vodka and tonic.
“My case has come down to one thing and one thing only,” he said. “Money. Danny knew I had twenty-five thousand dollars in cash in the house. When my lawyer, Bob Duffy, arrived at Mercer House that night, he walked around inspecting the merchandise, picking up little objects and turning them bottom side up. When I asked him what he was going to charge to represent me, he said, ‘Fifty big ones.’ Later, when I realized I needed a good criminal lawyer, I hired Bobby Lee Cook. Bobby Lee brought his wife to the house, and she picked out fifty thousand dollars’ worth of antiques. That was his fee. His expenses were in addition to that. He was assisted by John Wright Jones, who got twenty thousand dollars. And now I will have to pay all over again for another trial.
“But Danny’s mother takes the prize with her ten-million-dollar lawsuit against me. After all the anguish and grief Danny had caused her, after she’d thrown him out of the house and gotten police protection from him, Danny was suddenly her beloved dead son, miraculously transformed from a dangerous liability into an asset worth ten million dollars. Lord knows what it will cost me to defend myself against her lawsuit.
“So, you see, it’s all about money. And that’s one of the reasons I love Minerva. You can laugh at that voodoo stuff if you want, but she only charged me twenty-five dollars tonight. I don’t know whether or not you got her point, but no matter how you look at it, she’s a bargain.”
I did not answer, but it occurred to me that, yes, I did get Minerva’s point. I got her point very clearly. What I wondered was, did Williams?
Chapter 19
LAFAYETTE SQUARE, WE ARE HERE
Glass in hand, Joe Odom stood on the roof of his new home and looked down at the floats and the marching bands passing through Lafayette Square below. It was a perfect spot for watching the St. Patrick’s Day parade. From the rooftop, Joe could see green-tinted water bubbling out of the fountain in the center of the square. He could see crowds lining the streets wearing green hats and carrying big paper cups full of green beer. St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah was the equivalent of Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It was an official holiday; the whole town turned out for it. There were to be more than two hundred marching units today, plus forty bands and thirty floats. A cheer rose up from the crowd as the Anheuser-Busch team of eight shaggy-hoofed Clydesdale horses trotted around the square, past the front of the house.
Like most St. Patrick’s Day parades, Savannah’s was an ecumenical affair. Blacks, Scots, and Germans marched along with the Irish, but this parade had a distinctly southern flavor. At one point, that flavor took a bitter turn. A column of marchers dressed in gray Confederate uniforms came into the square, with a horse-drawn wagon bringing up the rear. The wagon had low wooden sides, and from the street it would have appeared empty. But from the roof we could see a blue-clad Union soldier sprawled motionless on the floor of the wagon. It was a chilling tableau, the more so because it was meant to be surreptitious.
“Poor damn Yankee,” said Joe. “Look at h
im down there, all bloody and dead.”
“The Civil War’s been over quite a while,” I said. “Isn’t it time all that was forgotten?”
“Not if you’re a southerner,” said Joe. “But you know, that dead Yankee isn’t just about the Civil War. He’s sort of a symbol of what could happen to any Yankee, even a modern-day Yankee, who comes down here and gets folks all riled up.” Joe looked at me and lifted his glass in tribute. “He could be some fella from New York who decided to write a book about us and started filling it with drag queens and murderers and corpses and bottles of poison and—what’s that you were telling me about just a minute ago? Oh yeah, voodoo! Voodoo! Witchcraft in a graveyard! Damn!”
“I’m not making any of this up, Joe,” I said.
“I’m not saying you are.”
“So I take it you don’t really disapprove.”
“No. As a matter of fact, when I think about it, it suits me fine. See, with all these weirdos you got filling up your book, I figure somebody’s gonna have to play the good guy, and it’s beginning to look like it’ll be me.”
Joe Odom’s new residence was by far the grandest of the four he had occupied in the short time I’d known him. It was an ornate four-story mansion, a Second Empire château built by a former mayor of Savannah in 1873. It was the only house of its kind in Savannah, and it stood out. People often referred to it as “The Charles Addams House,” because it had a mansard roof topped by a lacy ironwork cresting. The Hamilton-Turner House was its proper name, and it was so fine an example of its type that it was featured in A Field Guide to American Houses. Tall, paired windows opened onto elegant balconies, and a cast-iron picket fence embraced the site. All in all, the Hamilton-Turner House was so imposing and yet so fanciful a structure that passersby often stopped in front of it for no other reason than to marvel at it. Joe was not one to let such an opportunity slip through his fingers; he posted a sign on the gate a few days after he moved in: PRIVATE RESIDENCE: TOURS 10:00 A.M. TO 6:00 P.M.