by Jones, K. J.
“Connected bathroom,” said Ben.
“It isn’t going to work,” said Mazy.
“Just checking.”
“No time for a pee, Marine.”
He chuckled. “I’m not trying to use the facilities.”
“Raven. The house isn’t cleared. There’s still more floors.”
“Two seconds.”
The faucet ran. The toilet flushed. He returned.
“Brown. Smells. The dregs of what was left in the pipes.”
“What did you expect?”
“A man can dream.”
“A man better be dreaming of a portable copper tub and some chamber pots.”
“This is where the catastrophe grows rough. Moving to the stairs.”
“With you,” said Phebe.
He climbed the risers, aiming up at the next floor landing.
The layout of the third floor was identical to the second floor. A few bedrooms were fully decorated. Bathrooms to each room, but no closets – armoires for hanging clothes. The house predated the invention of the closet.
Mazy kept calling out, “Hello?” Either for a healthy hiding person or a zom to come out. Nothing.
No windows to the north, where the solid brick wall ran along the narrow alley.
They reached the bedroom on the street-side, east of the house.
Ben turned the knob and pushed the door open. A musty smell. Sunlight beamed between shutters. Seemed an overkill to shutter third-floor windows. No hostiles flew. Nonetheless, they were shuttered from the inside.
The scent of a fire once burning mixed with the musty. Ashes piled under the grate in the fireplace.
Their flashlight beams illuminated a four-poster bed. Heavy, dark furnishings. Silver candlesticks and candelabras throughout the room. The candles burned down. Wax drippings frozen in cascades.
“Oh,” said Ben. “Here we go.” He moved towards a chair by the windows. It had a crowded side-table. His flashlight held and he looked to Mazy. “May I introduce the owner?”
“Oh, wow. Pheeb.”
Phebe’s footsteps across the old floorboards. She squatted. “Hello, sir.”
“A sir?” Ben asked.
“Yeah. Look at the brow ridge.” Her gloved finger pointed above the eyes. “It’s more substantial with adult males than females.”
“How long has he been dead?” asked Mazy.
Ben said, “Guessing a while.”
“The house is not hermetically sealed,” said Phebe. “Insects got in and worked him over. See the casings on the floor.”
“That mess ruined the floorboards.” Mazy scrunched up her nose.
“That mess would be his organs.”
Mazy made a disgusted sound and moved to the door.
“Gun on the floor,” Ben said. “Ivory handled revolver. Nice piece. Expensive. Looks antique.” The cop in him prevented him from reaching out and picking it up. Evidence.
“G-S-W,” Phebe said. “Right through the side of the skull.” She looked to the off-white shutters. “Blood splatter. Brain matter.”
“He blew his brains out?” Ben asked.
“Sure looks like suicide.” She used her pinky finger to lift an empty pharmacy prescription bottle. “Shine your flashlight here, please.” She read the label. “Lorazepam. Filled just before the outbreak timeframe.” Putting it back down, she pointed to a crystal goblet. “Red wine residue.”
“Empty bottles of wine. Looks expensive from the labels. Nothing but the best for going out.” He leaned over and examined the side table contents. “What is in the glass? A big ass roach?”
“They call them palmetto bugs in the South. Or water bugs. Yes, a roach. They are attracted to the fermentation in wine. Their fav is red wine. We used to draw them that way.”
Mazy at the doorway laughed. “Now, that’s the way to go out. Drowning in some wine.”
“The place has roaches?” Ben asked Phebe.
“Not necessarily. They’re outdoor bugs. The chillier temps can drive them inside. But they don’t usually nest indoors.”
Mazy said, “They can draw big ass hairy spiders.” She shuttered. “They eat those palmetto bugs.”
“Afraid of spiders, Marine?” Ben smirked.
“I will discover your clown-pig, Running Elk.”
“Um, it would be alcoholics.”
“That doesn’t qualify.”
He snooped among the contents of the side-table. “An irrational fear.”
“That’s not irrational. It’s like saying you have an irrational fear of being set on fire.”
“Well, yeah, a little about that, too.”
“Be evasive.”
“You are really that afraid of spiders?”
“No. Big ass hairy spiders. It’s a special taxonomy in the South. Ever seen a wolf spider? They can be big enough to carry away a chihuahua.”
He chuckled. “Sure, they are.” He read the spines of leather-bound books. “This man was into the classics. Homer’s Odyssey. Not that I’d read that in my last moments.”
“No. It would be Penthouse, huh, Running Elk?”
He turned to see Mazy’s cheeky smile. “You think that of me?”
“Am I wrong?”
“Yes, you are. It would be … well. Actually, probably a comic book.”
She laughed. “Such a boy.”
Phebe said, “The chair is ruined. We will have to dispose of it along with him. Sad. It looks like a Chippendale. Not the strippers. Or the cartoon.”
“We’re gonna move into a suicide man’s house?” asked Mazy. “Then we are gonna bury him and do things proper. Or he could haunt us.”
Ben laughed. “You are that superstitious?”
“Don’t pretend. I know you better than that. Your people ain’t exactly throw a dead body in a ditch.”
“Stereotyping us?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. Okay. You got me on that one. We’ll give him a proper burial so he won’t get pissed off at us.”
“We need to ask him for permission to live in his house.”
“Are you gonna get Voodoo on us, Miss Mazaline?”
“I reserve the right.”
Phebe scrunched up her nose. “I thought you were Catholic.”
“It’s the end of days. I am covering all my bases.”
“You know Voodoo? Or are we talking hoodoo?”
“What’s the difference?” asked Ben.
“One’s a religion. The other a collection of superstitious magical rituals.”
“Huh. Learn something new every day. Hey, Maze, we’ll do all of them. Some of mine too.”
“Cover all bases. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Theoretically,” said Phebe, “wouldn’t worshipping other entities annoy the Christian god?”
“It’s Catholic,” said Ben. “Not Christian.”
Mazy’s voice held an edge of annoyance. “Catholic is Christian, Protestant boy.”
He laughed. “That’s a terrible superhero name.”
Phebe asked him, “You’re Protestant? I thought …”
He shrugged. “We sort of were made to be. They didn’t want us running around all savage and shit.”
“He means naked,” said Mazy. “We know how y’all were clothing challenged.”
“There were loincloths.”
“Loincloths are nothing more than underwear with a little miniskirt in front of them.”
“My people wore pants. Hard to ride a horse in miniskirt underwear. Get chafed.”
“Bet y’all do.”
Phebe said, “Ya know, Highlander Scots didn’t wear anything under their kilts.”
“Talk about chafed when riding a horse,” said Mazy.
“Did they ride horses?” asked Ben.
“Not really, no,” Phebe answered.
“They were badasses defending their freedom, weren’t they? I mean, ya know, Braveheart. Was that accurate?”
“You mean was William Wallace a really
short man from Australia?” Mazy chuckled. “I heard he was well over six feet tall and looked like a Viking. Or a biker. Big mustache.”
“He died a brutal death.” Phebe continued to study the owner’s remains. “Drawn and quartered. He ended up less articulated than this man.”
“Articulated?” asked Ben. “You’re losing me.”
“It means connected. We’ll need to wrap him up to move him. The bones are connected by dried sinew that can easily break.”
“Argh,” expressed Mazy. “That’s nasty. No, no, we gotta ask permission first. We ain’t moving him or doing anything but finishing clearing his house until we give proper respect.”
Ben asked, “Will there be a bonfire and channeling spirits? Snakes and sacrificing the chickens?”
“There could be if I knew how to do any of that and wasn’t scared shitless of all their gods. They got some questionable characters. New Orleans Voodoo deities are like those Greek gods. They really don’t give a shit. Except they can get mean on ya to laugh at ya.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Interesting.”
Phebe asked, “Isn’t it similar to the Gullah beliefs and rituals?”
Mazy shrugged. “Didn’t get much chance to chat with them, did I? But I reckon it is similar. They came here via the Caribbean just like my people did.”
Ben asked, “Creoles come from the Caribbean? I thought you came from slavery.”
She cocked a brow at him. “How long have you known me and you thought I came from slaves?”
“I don’t know these things. I’m an Indian from the Midwest. We just have red men and white men.”
“Sometimes you sound like you’re trapped in one of those Westerns.”
He smiled. “But we drive trucks instead of ride ponies.”
She shook her head. “Slaves.”
“Explain then.”
“I come from gens de couleur libres.”
“Okay. Don’t speak another language to me.”
“Free people of color. Heard of us?”
“Not really.”
“Did you attend school?”
He snorted. “You assume you were taught in my school?”
“Yeah. I may have been delusional on that point. We were barely taught about us in our own schools.”
“I didn’t see any of this in Roots.”
She cringed. “You had to watch Roots in school?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Phebe said, “So did I.”
“How old were y’all?”
They exchanged looks and shrugs.
“Think,” said Phebe, “freshman year of high school. So, fifteen, sixteen years old.”
“That movie is too violent,” said Mazy. “My mama wouldn’t allow it to be shown to us. Don’t know if the school wanted to try. You know how nervous white people get about slavery.” She laughed.
They looked at her with confusion.
She cleared her throat. “Why y’all looking at me like I grew a second head?”
“We’re thinking you may be an alien,” said Ben.
Phebe chuckled. Her heart felt too heavy for a full belly laugh, though she needed one to clear the rock living in her stomach.
“I am no alien. Y’all! My God. Bunch of backwards people.”
“Us? No, better, her.” Ben pointed at Phebe. “Pheeb, was he a white man?”
“Yes.”
“Share with Miss Superior why.”
“I know she can do that, Mister Running Elk.”
“The nasal passage is narrow,” said Phebe.
“You mean, apart from only white people live in houses like this?”
“Ben,” Mazy reprimanded. “That is not true.”
“How is it not true?”
“My ancestral family home is historic.”
“Like this?”
“Well, no. We don’t really do houses this big. Except maybe the Garden District. But those were Americans.”
“Again. Your strange talk, woman.”
“The Louisiana Purchase. Surely they taught you that in your backwards education.”
“I seem to recall something about it.”
“That’s when the Americans came into French New Orleans. They built big ole houses in a place we call the Garden District. Because, apparently, Americans have to have big ole houses to feel rich. That’s where my daddy is from.”
“Thought he was black.”
“He is. He calls himself African American.”
“This is your step-father?”
“Yes. My daddy. Since my papa died when I was little. He was Creole. But Daddy’s from American slavery. That’s his history.”
“But not yours?”
“No, sir. If my ancestors were ever slaves, it was so far back no one remembers. Centuries. Before the United States existed. You are giving me such a look, Running Elk.
Phebe chimed in, “Your ancestors were from Haiti?”
“Ha! Somebody knows something around here. Yes, ma’am. Saint-Domingue, as it was called before the revolution there. Or slave revolt, as my family always insists on calling it. My ancestors fled for their lives. Went to French New Orleans, like everyone else from the island.”
Phebe searched the room. “Were they slave owners?”
“Yes. Until New Orleans. They became abolitionists then. Helped with the Underground Railroad.”
Phebe stopped and looked at her. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I never heard of it in the South.”
“A railroad needs its first station to get on board, doesn’t it?”
“Huh. Makes sense. I wonder if abolitionists were helping here in Charleston, too.”
“Wouldn’t doubt it was. But it would be hard as hell to find out since it was a crime. It had something like six-year hard prison for a white man.”
Ben said, “There’s another floor, isn’t there?”
“Think so,” answered Mazy.
“I’m going to check it out.”
“I’ll give you back up.”
“No. You stay and do your Voodoo and sort out the history of the South.”
“Smartass.”
He flashed her a smile as he passed.
Phebe asked, “How do you know your ancestors were part of the railroad then?”
“They kept journals.”
“They were literate?”
“Honey! They were more literate than ninety percent of white people. They were multilingual, including reading and writing in Latin. They sent their boys to Paris to be educated.”
“What about the girls?”
“They established a school for their young ladies.” Her tone changed to resentment. “Of course it was closed down during goddamn Jim Crow.” She opened an old chest and snooped in the contents. “Jim Crow ruined the lives of most gens de couleur libres. They were pushed down into the same category as freed slaves, who were usually illiterate country bumpkins. Many fled North.”
“The Great Migration?”
“My family back then did not leave. You don’t leave New Orleans. It gets in your blood. In your bones. And nowhere else is French in the United States. Up until recent generations, French was the main language. Nowadays, it’s usually just Cajuns speaking it.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Don’t you have things from your family?”
“What? Speaking another language?”
“Yeah.”
“No. I was shocked to learn my paternal grandparents could speak Italian. Didn’t find that out until my grandma became senile and would spontaneously speak Italian to my brother and me. Then she’d go back to English and deny she ever spoke Italian. It was weird. Like speaking Italian was a taboo.”
“America has that way. They made us speak English. They have been pushing Cajuns to speak English nowadays. French hasn’t been allowed to be spoken in schools for a while. Get in trouble for it. I mean, other than that which is taught in a foreign language class. Funny, isn’t i
t? You can speak another language if it’s in a foreign language class, but not if it’s your home language.”
“I wish I was bilingual. Is that why you are multilingual?”
Mazy shrugged. “Doubt it. Creole French wasn’t spoken too much in my home growing up. Except when Mama got mad. She always cursed in French. She thinks it’s more lady-like that way.”
“I’ve always wanted to do that. Go into another language when I get angry. Like how Julio did.” She smirked, remembering Julio yelling at Peter in rapid Spanish.
Then her heart hurt, remembering. Julio was dead. Syanna and Dock Cat. And the guys still hadn’t arrived.
She shook her head, trying to release the threatening depression, and turned her attention back to snooping. In the Before, she had not been able to turn emotions off. Now, it felt automatic. Maybe it was PTSD. Or some kind of survival default embedded in the human brain.
Phebe touched her abdomen. There was hardly any sign of what was brewing within. A slight bump that could be gas as much as a fetus.
She thought of what she’d be like as a mother.
A cringe. Motherhood was a dreadful thought in the Before. Now, beyond comprehension.
Shake of the head. Focus on the now.
Mullen appeared in the doorway. “What’s up?”
“Check on Ben,” said Mazy. “He’s upstairs.”
“He’s downstairs.”
“He’s cleared upstairs?”
“A while ago. He found stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?” She exchanged a look with Phebe.
“The owner was a supplies hoarder. We lucked out. What are you doing?”
“Searching.”
“Is the guy’s underwear important?”
Mazy looked down and realized she was rummaging in the dead man’s underpants drawer. “I’m looking for his identification.”
“Who cares about who he is? He’s dead. We get the house. Right?”
“Nice attitude, Mul.”
“What?”
“Respect the dead.”
“I’m not saying throw him out the window.” He entered the room and headed towards the dead body.
“I’m doing this. Y’all need to work on securing this property. Find weak points. Relay to Ben. Oh, and bring the damn chickens over. Keep a guard on the Molly and take the key out of the ignition.”
“Pell’s got the key. Tyler’s guarding the Molly and the Jacksons. And the chickens.”
Mazy blew out air. “I don’t know how to deal with Angela yet.”
