Sighing, she walked to the front of the trailer and popped her head out the door. Her soldiers were ever present. “I do not wish to be disturbed.”
Zinsa and Efe touched fists to chests, and Ahiku closed the door and retreated behind the dark curtain at the rear of her trailer. Back to the world of the demon spirits.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STRANGE FRUIT
For this occasion, with the wife and kids in tow, he left the white robe and pointed hood at home. Instead he wore his favored navy, wide-legged trousers and white shirt. The wife had scoffed when he added the bow tie, but she’d planted a kiss on his cheek all the same.
His little girl slipped her hand in his as they strolled around the carnival grounds. He winced at the chafing in his palm where, a week back, he’d nobly earned the rope burns from a righteous killing.
“I see you made it.” It took him a moment to place the stranger. Then he recalled the way he’d looked like the devil himself when he’d stepped out of the truck that night at the Negro lynching. That bright-red hair had caught the glint of the fire in a way that was off-putting.
“Clay Kennel, owner of this here carnival.” The patron of the evening’s entertainment introduced himself with a little bow that made his boy giggle.
“Much obliged for the invite, Mr. Kennel,” the man said.
“Couldn’t think of anybody more deservin’. You folks enjoy yourselves, then.”
Inhospitable not to offer us a personal tour of the place, the man inwardly scoffed. But you can’t expect much in the way of manners from his kind. Any decent sort of man would find steady work and settle down with a family. Probably why he’s hired so many darkies too—no upstanding white man would settle for this kind of life for too long.
He left his family in a longish line for a ride with enough money to see them through a few games to boot and then went in search of the beautiful woman from the poster plastered on the outside wall. The one his wife had caught him gawking at.
He swore he’d circled the place twice. Now he stood scratching his head, looking out at the empty field behind the last tent, when the lights flickered and flared. Yes, it made sense that they’d move the burlesque show off a ways.
The tent was a grimy white and otherwise unadorned. Man-size shadows jostled around inside. Hoots and hollers and sultry music drew him forward like the righteous to the pearly gates. A slow smile spread across his face. He didn’t break into a run, but his pace did quicken.
At last, he yanked back the tent flap, stepped inside.
He blinked at a sudden fog. Shadows dissolved. The man screamed.
In the standing room–only space, every seat, every corner was filled with an abomination more horrific than the next. On the stage, a horned monster held court. In a sickening parody, the twisted form jerked its body through suggestive movements—hip thrust, shimmy, a behind slap.
The man turned to the entrance, but each time he ripped back the flap, another appeared. Translucent hands fell on him, searing his skin. The devil flew from the stage, grabbed him by the throat, planted a fiery kiss on his cheek, and pulled him into the underworld.
There, the man awoke to the flames. A rope tugged at his neck. He couldn’t see what his feet were propped up on, but when a demon—of that he was certain—stepped away from a jeering crowd and kicked it out from beneath him, he swung from an unseen tree. He mumbled a blubbering prayer as his life thankfully ended.
Until he awoke again.
The rope and stool in place. The devil and his minions howled as, once again, he hung limp from the rope.
The man lost count of how many times this happened. A millennium later, he would still be counting.
Liza stood outside her trailer gabbing with Hope like old friends. It was one of her favorite pastimes; she’d never had a girlfriend before. Women understood other women in a way that a man couldn’t, or refused to. She’d been able to relay how she’d foolishly gotten herself so excited about finding her mother’s baskets in the Fifth Ward and her disappointment when she discovered Twiggy wasn’t with their parents. Hope had listened and understood, sharing her own family woes, and Liza already felt better.
Jamey, meanwhile, inhabited a space a few feet away, trying hard to act like he wasn’t watching her. The poor boy probably had no idea how distressed he looked. Sweat already stained his armpits, and he took to flapping about, probably in an attempt to dry himself off. Liza smirked, and Hope followed her gaze and soon took in Jamey’s suffering.
“If you got something to say, may as well come on over here and be done with it,” Hope said. “We don’t bite.”
Jamey shoved his hands in his pockets and then yanked them out again. He pulled off his baseball cap, then huffed, put it back on, and walked stiffly toward the women.
Unbidden, Liza’s hand straightened her long dress, smoothed at her hair. Hope rolled her eyes at her.
“Ladies.” Jamey took off his hat and inclined his head toward them. “Uh, Miss Liza, Clay wanted me to ask you to come take a look at one of the chickens. Having some trouble passing eggs. Maybe you might be able to help out some.”
“I guess that’s my cue to go and find my husband.” Hope smiled and strolled off without another word. Liza was stripped bare without her.
Jamey fidgeted with his hat, and Liza let him. Eventually, he calmed himself. “You coming, or you gonna stand there ogling at me?”
Liza allowed a hint of a smile. He was shy—that she liked. But she’d also seen him directing folks around the carnival, working side by side with Clay. He wasn’t a pushover. She liked that even more. The tip of his right ear tilted down, giving him the look of a sweet puppy dog. And from what she could tell, he wasn’t actually part dog, like someone else. The ice chip that she’d lodged in her heart when she’d had to say goodbye to her family melted a little. “Lead the way.”
Glancing down at her from the corner of his eye, Jamey said, “So how you gettin’ on?”
In her mind, Liza said, What are you worried about it for? Instead, with effort, she got her mouth to say, “Well enough.”
The sweat came back with a vengeance, and it seemed that Jamey struggled for something else to talk about. His armpits soaked, his back a swatch of black on his blue shirt. Liza imagined the sweat even dribbled down his backside. She stifled a laugh and let him off the hook. “You seem to like it here.”
Jamey exhaled. “I do. Clay treats me fair. Earn a good wage and everything. Man couldn’t ask for more.”
It’s hard to change one’s nature, and Liza wasn’t even working on it, so it was no surprise, at least to her, when she said, “And what about whoever sits in the red wagon?”
“Ain’t nobody in the red trailer,” he said. “Clay runs this show. That’s all I worry about.”
After that he clammed up, and Liza abandoned that line of questioning. They made it to the chicken coop, where Mabel stood stewing and complaining. Jamey shuffled off without a backward glance, and Liza felt bad, but by then Mabel had hold of her arm.
“Hasn’t laid any eggs in days,” Mabel said. “She waddles around, slow-like. Suspect she might be gettin’ on in age, maybe her egg-layin’ days is over. Don’t know for sure, but Clay said you could talk to her.” The last was a statement, not a question, so Liza swallowed and settled her gaze on the chicken.
It started running around the coop. Liza didn’t want to shoot off her message to the wrong bird, so she ran after it, feathers and muck kicking up. Laughter rang out as others gathered to watch the ruckus. Finally, she caught the chicken and turned to sneer at the onlookers while she caught her breath. Busybodies. She swallowed the tongue-lashing they had coming; she had more important things to do.
Intent, Mrs. Margaret used to say, is half the battle. Liza’s intent was to send the chicken an image of itself settled down and passing eggs like chickens do, but instead an image of a fine plate of scrambled eggs slipped across the connection. The chicken squawked. It shuddered in her hands a
nd went limp.
Mabel gasped and cursed. “I told you to talk to it, not send it to its maker. Well, least I can salvage it for a good stew.” She snatched the dead chicken from Liza and stalked off. The onlookers watched Liza warily, mumbled among themselves, and dispersed.
She looked up to find Jamey back, staring at her with his mouth open. He looked away but not before his eyes had betrayed him. She got that look from everybody sooner or later. It pronounced her a monster.
She sought solace behind the cook tent. The earth was still, the sun hazy. Grasses stood tall and green, a few brown tufts mixed in. She sat staring out at the peaceful surroundings until, after a time, Hope came and sat beside her and slipped her hand in hers.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
Liza had been trying to get a few minutes alone with Ishe ever since the incident in Lake Charles. The alley, Ishe as a hyena, the man he’d attacked lying in a pool of blood. She hadn’t mentioned it to Autumn or Hope. Clay wouldn’t even want to hear it. The man could be so obtuse when he wanted. And Ishe was like a ghost, materializing and disappearing right before her eyes. When she did catch sight of him, he’d find a way to get away. But not this time. Here was a human whom she could communicate with as she did with animals. She wasn’t about to let that go.
He had been testing out adding a penny to his milk-bottle pyramids. His back had been turned, and Liza startled him. He paused, the penny hovering over the lip of a bottle. She almost expected him to spin like a top and zoom off over the horizon. Instead, he said, “You give yourself too much credit.”
Liza hauled herself up on the bench in front of the trailer and crossed her legs. Moving from her shoulder, Mico used her hair as a makeshift swing, grasping hold of a braid and swinging out widely, tumbling in the air and landing in front of Ishe. The little monkey sent her an image of the hyena in the savanna and, almost as an afterthought, an image of herself all reddened and blistered. She ignored it.
“Do I?” Liza planted her chin on her fist and stared at Ishe, who tried to ignore her and go on with his work. “You trying to find another way to fix the game?”
Ishe seemed relieved to talk about something other than himself. “A good gamesman is always looking for the advantage. Trick is balance. Another trick is not resting on your old tricks.” He chanced a glimpse at Liza, and she couldn’t hide the fact that she was sizing him up, measuring like a tailor fitting him for a new suit.
“Your parents never told you it wasn’t ladylike to stare at folks?”
Liza almost chuckled. “Lady” didn’t even crack the top ten of the names people had slung at her before. “They didn’t keep me around long enough to get to that one, I suppose.”
“You ain’t the only one left home a little early.” Ishe set up the milk bottles again, dropped the penny in the one to the left, and continued adjusting and readjusting the bottles. “Been on my own longer than most myself.”
“How . . . how does it feel?” Liza tried another line of questioning. “I mean, does it hurt?”
Ishe stopped his arranging and turned to Liza. “You don’t know when to quit, do ya?”
“That man in Lake Charles—I think he died.”
Glaring down at Liza, Ishe said, “Hear tell you done a fair amount of killing of your own.”
Liza bristled, tried to straighten her back. “I don’t kill people.”
“And if you think that make you any different than me, you dumber than you look.”
At that, Mico screeched. Even if he couldn’t understand the words, he picked up on the heated exchange easy enough. Ishe hissed an inhuman sound, and Mico clamped his mouth shut and darted to safety behind Liza.
It was silent as Liza took in the barb and turned it around in her mind like a puzzle. No matter how many ways she tried to make a different answer come up, she couldn’t. The half man, half hyena had a point.
Unable to contain her curiosity, she let an image slip from her mind to his like a fish flapping out of her hands. The image was a simple one: a large male lion, standing atop a mountain, surrounded by his pride. A pack of hyenas in their sights.
Ishe doubled over at an injury that she couldn’t see or fathom. She scrambled off the bench. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Eyeing her dubiously, he said, “Did you put that image in my head?”
Liza blinked. She’d sent it but meant it only as a barb, a way to aggravate. When she didn’t answer, Ishe, who had composed himself but still clutched at his head, asked again, “Well, did you?”
“I only meant to upset you,” she said. “I didn’t know it could hurt you.”
He pondered this before he took a seat next to her. “Tell me what you sent.”
“A lion with a pride staring down a pack of hyenas. I swear it. Nothing more.”
Shaking his head, Ishe said, “That lion attacked me. I don’t know how it did, but it did. What the hell kinda curse you saddled with?”
Liza sank back to the bench. Was this what happened? It didn’t make any sense. She’d always assumed that the images she sent were received exactly the way she’d sent them—the animals couldn’t tell her otherwise.
“From the look on your face, I’m guessing you didn’t know that. And I’m guessing you’ve got no idea how to use it.”
He’d figured out her secret. She stammered a response. “I, uh . . .” She gulped.
He leaned forward. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s nobody’s business but your own.”
Acceptance. It began as a fluttering in her chest that spread its warmth throughout her limbs. As she looked into his earnest eyes, it was as if the knot of anxiety she bore like an incurable disease suddenly had been cured.
“But maybe I could help.”
Liza blinked back the unexpected tears. “Half the time the animals I try to communicate with end up dead. Sometimes when I get too excited and send too many images at once, a jumble, it seems to overwhelm them.”
“It’s pretty obvious what makes me different than the other animals, don’t cha think?” Ishe said as he leaned forward.
“You’re half-human—”
“I’m one hundred percent human,” he corrected. “Got an evil passenger—a soul that shares my body.”
He was splitting hairs, in her opinion.
Ishe stood and began pacing. “Got a couple of what they call theories that might shed some light on your predicament. Need to test ’em out.” He eyed Mico and gestured with his head. “And what makes this little rat immune?”
Mico looked worriedly between them both as if something had changed but he didn’t know what. Likely the jealous stirrings of a new and unwelcome alliance forming. He chittered nervously.
“Guess we’ll have to figure that out,” Liza said. As excited as she was by the prospect of working with Ishe, she couldn’t help wondering if she might one day end up like the man they’d left for dead in a Lake Charles alley. But despite what lived inside him, he had a calm, strong manner. He didn’t judge her. And he wasn’t unpleasant to look at, either, even if he was part dog.
At last, she’d found someone to fill the gap in her practice that her father had left.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ELOKO’S SONG
Ishe and the new girl were in an open field not far from where the carnival had camped after a long day of dusty travel when Eloko noticed them. Liza sat on the ground, a small animal of some kind, a raccoon or a possum, lying sprawled between them, legs stiff as a shot of corn whiskey. Ishe stood with the look of a man long past the point where his patience was spent.
Eloko moseyed up to them. “I don’t believe Mabel is in need of roadkill for dinner, so I suppose you two are up to something else.”
Ishe looked down at him and scowled. His mouth worked, but then he turned back to Liza, threw up his hands, and stormed off.
Liza got up. “Pigheaded, impatient quitter!” she called. Ishe kept walking. When she turned back, Eloko stretched his snout into a grotesque grin. The ne
w girl—she smelled delectable—took two steps in the opposite direction before his words stopped her.
“Used to running away, are you?” Eloko asked. He sat on the ground and leaned casually on a grassy elbow that someone had told him had the look of a bent log covered in moss. His eyes traversed the length of her body, a deep hunger stirring within him. A satisfying layer of meat coated her bones. She gawked back at him.
“Yes,” he drawled, crossing one leg over the other. “Take it all in. This once, I will allow you to leer like an uncivilized roadie.”
Eloko endured the appraisal. Like most, she probably struggled with his age, his grass-coated skin, his origins. Boring, unimportant matters. Finally, she gingerly lifted the dead possum and took it a few feet away, where she laid it gently on the ground. Hmm, what’s this now? he mused. Genuine remorse? Exhausting. A useless emotion that did nothing to change one’s circumstances. Stripped of the comforting veil of Zaire’s lush, verdant forests, he’d done the only sensible thing he could and purged any sense of regret for doing what his nature demanded.
Taking a seat on the ground as far away as she reasonably could from him, she snatched a blade of grass from the earth and twirled it around her finger. Judging from her furtive glance, the irony was not lost on either of them.
Tilting her head up, squinting at the sunlight, she asked, “What are you?”
Eloko stiffened at the affront but then softened. At least she was direct, didn’t waste time like most people. “A creature not much different from you. I walk, talk, shit. It’s a wonder that I can even read and write.”
“You know what I mean,” Liza said. “You sure don’t look like anybody else I ever seen.”
Inclining his head, he agreed. “A point I can’t argue. An exchange, then. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
The girl frowned but didn’t run off, so he continued. “You can’t control your power. That mongrel tail-wagger was trying to help you, but still, you killed that possum.”
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