by David Boop
Zach had been good to me. He was teaching me a trade, two trades, like he had. I got three meals a day, and I had a bed in the back of the shop. It was set on top of a pentagram, surrounded by all the protections Zach had made for me. Blue bottles full of dead flies and horny-toad guts, crosses, silver doodads, and a salt circle around the inner circle of chalk that made up the outside part of the pentagram.
Early on, I wondered if there was any sense to all that stuff, until I woke up and seen sitting there in the dark, all around that chalk and salt circle, a series of squatting toad-like things. It was frightening, but I knew then that it was the circle and all that other stuff that kept them out. During the day I didn’t have to worry, Zach told me, but at night, if I wanted something like water or a good book to read, a fresh candle for my night table, I needed to bring it in before the dark got deep and the clock beat twelve. Straight-up midnight was the time the demon door opened and the things came out in search of those that were involved in the hoodoo.
I told Zach I didn’t never have to do that before he took me in, and he said, “I know, but them demons want me, and now they want you, or anything to do with me and you. You want a girlfriend, have your fun, but don’t never fall in love, ’cause you can’t have it, not really. You love someone, you’re bringing them into something slimy and dangerous, and, once you’re in the life, it takes something really special and goddamn biblical to get out of it.” He said there were days when he hated having pulled me into all these dark shenanigans.
I told him I was glad to have been rescued, and that Mama and Pa were a lot worse than the demons, because wasn’t no spells and diagrams that could keep them out, and besides, he had educated me some. I could read and write and do my ciphers, and I was learning the gunsmith trade, as well as that other trade of his.
I know I’m wandering, but I think for you to understand it better, you got to know Zach’s circumstances, about them good deeds. You see, I was good deed number fourteen of the one hundred he owed. I’ve seen him do all the others up to where he is now. I helped him do quite a few.
He told me once that he had gotten as far as ninety-eight good deeds once, then messed up by doing something bad, and had to start over, and when he did, the baggage got heavier. When I say baggage, I ain’t talking about no grip, or a tow sack full of possibles.
In the back of the shop there’s a long hallway, and off the hallway are two rooms, one on the left, one on the right. I’m off to the left, and Zach is off to the right. But at the end of the hallway, hanging on the wall, is a big old mirror made of silver, and it’s shiny as a baby’s ass all greased with lotion. The mirror is framed in Hawthorn wood painted red with hogs blood and grave clay, and the painted wood is treated with hoss apple juice.
When Zach enters the hall, if even the light is bad, you can see him and me in the mirror, but you can also see the baggage, and no matter how many times I see it, even expecting it, it gets to me, makes my bones tremble inside of me like an old house rotting its lumber.
It looks a little like an old woman, and she’s got her arms around Zach’s neck, and her legs wrapped around his middle, and her head rises just above Zach’s. Her face is long and she has a possum jaw, with a lot of jagged teeth in it, and once a month she smells so bad Zach can hardly stand it. Just once a month, and on that day he doesn’t work, just rides off in the country and lives with the stink, which when the morning breaks and the sun gets warm, goes away, like a visiting in-law you don’t care for.
He can do whatever he would do without her on his back, but she’s there, in dark spirit he says, and he can feel her arms around his neck and her legs and feet around his waist, and he can always feel her hot breath on the back of his neck, and on that stink day, he says it’s the breath that nearly kills him, ’cause it reeks like a feed lot for cattle. She’s his baggage for killing a child to save his own. Both children died, his and the one he sacrificed to the dark ones. I don’t know much more than that, but let me ask you, would you kill a child to save your own? You can bet my folks wouldn’t have done a thing to save me or any other child either. They sold me for thirty dollars and was glad to get shed of me.
* * *
I was telling you about the man that came in, all dressed in fading black, and the first thing he sees is me, working on some leather, designing a holster for a pistol, using the pattern laid out for me by Zach.
I didn’t really need the pattern anymore, but I liked to keep it near, just as a way of feeling like I always had it in case I needed it. Working on the guns, well, that’s a different story, especially some of the guns Zach worked on, and certainly the ones he made to his own design. I liked him nearby to make sure I was doing that kind of business right.
“Boy,” the old man says, “maybe you ought to leave the room. I got to talk to this man here.”
“He doesn’t leave the room,” Zach said, his hands on the glass-top counter that held a number of Colts and Remington pistols. “He’s my apprentice. Name is James.”
“What is he? A high yella?”
“I suppose you could call him that. I call him James.”
The man nodded. “All right then, but I got the kind of business to talk about that you pull out of a deep dark sack.”
“I understand that kind of business, and so does the boy.”
The old man nodded again.
“I been trying to find someone for years to help me do what I got to do, ’cause there’s someone stolen and riding a kind of train that don’t never let a passenger off. They say you’re the man I need. A hoodoo man.”
“Go on,” Zach said.
“I heard rumor of you from an old man out in West Texas. Thing is, the whole thing that happened to me happened here in this very town, and now I’m back in it. I find that strange, that I didn’t know you were here all along.”
“Fate makes circles,” Zach said. “I keep a low profile on the hoodoo business, and you got to be in the hoodoo to know who I am and where I am. In the hoodoo, like you. But, I don’t work for free.”
The man came closer to the counter, opened his coat, took out a small bag and set it on the counter in front of Zach, and said, “That there is silver dust. It’s what I can pay you. It’s worth a lot.”
Zach pulled the draw string loose and pinched some of the dust and worked it with his thumb and forefinger, and let it fall back in the bag.
“All right,” Zach said. “Tell me about it.”
* * *
Zach locked the door and turned the sign to CLOSED, and we went into the back room and sat at the table where me and him eat. I got out the bottle and poured them both little glasses full of a dark whisky.
They took their sips, and I sat silent, and then the wrecked old man said, “Some years ago, right here in this town, I made a mistake. I wanted to be rich and powerful, and, well, there was a woman, and she was a fine-looking woman, dark, dark skin, with a heart like a lump of coal. Name was Consuela. Skin like black velvet, long legged and high breasted, but she had a gleam in her eye they made you weak.”
“I know who Consuela was,” Zach said. “We had what you might call a rivalry. Before her house burned down with her in it.”
“Again, I had no idea there were two hoodoo masters in town.”
“You don’t really master the hoodoo. It masters you.”
“True enough. Consuela had me do things for her, bad things. I stole and killed for her. She had spells, you see, and she needed certain things and certain events to make those spells happen. Items and sacrifice. She used them spells to help me along with money and for a long time magnificent health, ’cause that was before the hoodoo was in me. She owned my pecker, owned my soul. I dressed nice, had money in my wallet and fine clothes, of which these I’m wearing are remnants, but there were restrictions and prices to pay. One was, she kept me in her sight. Didn’t want me to let on what I knew, I suppose, but mostly she kept me like a pet. All that I was missing was a collar and a bowl on the floor.
>
“Got so the only time I could get away from her was when I was on one of her errands. It’s hard for me to talk about those errands, because sometimes they were bad errands. Really bad. I really don’t want to talk about that.
“Then come a day I’m on my own at night, and I’d done a thing so bad I was sick, and I couldn’t make myself go back to Consuela, not right then. I went to the café just to have some place to go where the light was bright and the voices in the room weren’t demonic whispers.
“There was this young woman worked at the café. She was petite, soft looking as a puppy, skin the color of coffee with a splash of cream. Not as wildly beautiful as Consuela, but she was certainly pretty. I went there every chance I got, just to be in the warmth and the light, to smell fresh coffee and frying eggs and bacon. But mostly, I went there for her.
“When things were slow in the café, she would pause and talk to me. I learned she lost her parents to a fever, lost everyone she ever loved in one way or another, and yet, she was cheerful, positive, and I could feel the meanness I had in me, that Consuela had encouraged, easing out of me, like a snake going away from the chicken house.
“Her name was Jenny. She liked a simple life, and I decided I could like one too. I had to get rid of Consuela. I figured the best way to break her hold on me was to kill her. I thought I was most likely able to do that when she slept. You see, at night we slept in a bed inside a circle drawn on the floor, with diagrams—”
“We know all about that,” Zach said.
“Why I come to you. You got a reputation for knowing your business. When Consuela was asleep, and I was lying in the bed next to her, I eased over to the side of the bed and pulled the hammer out from under it, where I had placed it earlier in the day, and hit her in the head. She could keep those demons out, but she couldn’t keep me out. I hit her and hit her until her skull and wicked brain were nothing but a splash on the sheets. And these demons that were all around us, they cackled.
“I waited until morning, when the cock crowed, and the demons around the bed became mist and wafted away. I got out of bed and fell to my knees, weak from fear and guilt and excitement. I’d broken the hold she had on me. I cleaned myself up and waited until Jenny was at work. I was thinking me and her could go away together. It might take some time to convince her, but I was determined. That’s how much I loved her. You seem perturbed.”
The old man had noticed that Zach’s expression had changed and that he had cupped his hands together and let them rest on his chest. He seemed to be holding something inside of himself.
“You’re blaming Consuela for the very things you wanted,” Zach said. “She didn’t make you do nothing. You did bad things on your own to get money and power, and now you want to lay it at her feet, justify what you done. You weren’t under any kind of spell, because if you were, you wouldn’t have been able to plan killing her, or even want to.”
The old man nodded slowly, the feather on his hat bobbing like a big white finger. “Yeah. I can’t disagree with that. That doesn’t change the fact that she was evil and killing her was a good thing. Shall I go on with my story?”
Zach nodded.
“When morning came, I felt weak. It wasn’t like I had slept. I ended up going into the front room to lay down on a pallet. Woke up and it was near dark, checked the big clock in the hall. It wasn’t long before midnight. That’s how much what I had done had taken out of me. I had slept the entire day and part of the night away.
“I realized, of course, that the demons would soon be out. I had to get back in that bed with Consuela’s corpse so I could be protected by the charms and the pentagram. I was in the hoodoo life, a minor hoodoo man, but minor or major, the results would have been the same. These days I make my own pentagram and lay out the protection. It’s second nature now. But right then, I didn’t have the time. Not that I slept that much with her body in the bed, and after me sleeping all day, I was wide awake. The sheets were bloodstained, her brains splattered about, all of it beginning to stink. And I swear, her dead body twitched in the bed all of the night.
“Still, next morning, I felt happy, just as free and happy as I could be. I cleaned up, fixed me some food, and then I began to feel like I was carrying something heavy on my back.”
“You’re toting the baggage,” Zach said.
The old man nodded.
“I can see its reflection in pools of clear water, and in things that are silver. It looks a little like Consuela. In one way it’s heavy, and in another it’s not.”
“Your baggage is different from mine, but it’s still baggage,” Zach said. “And it’s soul weight, not weight by the pound.”
“I know that now, but that day and that night, I was figuring it out, consulting the tomes Consuela had, the books she never let me look in, only allowing me to read the pages she chose, teaching me little spells and having me run her errands, but never teaching me the big things.
“I boarded up the room where Consuela lay, took all the protections into the front room and drew a new pentagram and set myself a fresh pallet inside of it. Next night I could hear a lot of pounding and ripping in that other room. The demons were having their way with her body. Doing whatever they do. That night I started going back to the café to see Jenny.”
“You had killed a woman with a hammer, and you went to courting?”
“Consuela was a monster. I had rid the world of her. I wanted a new life, a better one. One without murder and spells. Is that so bad?”
Zach didn’t reply, but he sighed heavily.
“After a couple weeks and a lot of sweet talk, I convinced her to walk with me down by the river. She brought a blanket, and we sat on it and looked out at the water. Soon we were kissing, and then we did what men and women do. We hadn’t no more than made love, than I felt that baggage on my back grow heavy. I had a moment of joy, and that seemed to make the baggage grow heavy.
“We hadn’t no more than gotten dressed than I heard it. A little toot at first, then a long low whistle coming from the north, heading in our direction. Jenny heard it too, said, ‘There aren’t any trains near here.’
“But there was. We could hear it, and then we could see its smoke rising up above the forest, floating into the moonlight. It was coming closer. The whistle grew louder, the smoke grew thicker, and my courage grew smaller. I didn’t know it right then, but I know it now. It was the Midnight Train.”
I saw Zach stiffen.
“Then we saw the tracks. One moment they weren’t there, then they were. Not on any bridge mind you, they lay right on the water, and ended at our feet. There was a split in the woods and the split was shiny like a polished coin, and then we could see the train. It had one big ol’ red light in front, and the smoke it was puffing had turned thick and dark. We were frozen to the spot. It looked as if that train was going to run right over us, and wasn’t a thing we could do about it.
“Jenny took my arm and squeezed it. Instinctively we knew there wasn’t any reason to run. It would catch us. The train stopped. No metal screeching, no sliding. The engine stopped right where the tracks ended. There was a hiss of stinking steam, and the cool air crackled against the hot engine.
“Then a door on the side of the train opened up, and some steps was rolled out. A little creature so white you’d have thought it was made of snow, bounced down the steps and landed on the ground and looked at me and Jenny. It looked like a huge white frog, but kind of human too. Its mouth cracked wide, and it was toothless, all pink gums, showing bright in the moonlight.
“Then another one of them toads hopped down. This one was black as a raven’s wing, and it had a mouthful of shiny teeth, pointed and long. It looked like it could have chewed its way through an angle of iron.
“Then both them things turned their heads and looked up at the open doorway, like they were scared. First there was a boot, hanging in midair. Blood red, and tipped at the toes with shadow. Then there was a leg stuck in the boot, clothed in white pants w
ith thin black stripes. As the boot put a heel on the top step, another boot and leg appeared, and the owner of the boots and pants stepped into view, ducking its head to come out of that door on the train. He wore a big white hat with a thin black band around it. He was eight foot tall if he was an inch. I could feel that burden on my back swell and grow heavy on my soul.
“This tall man, pale of face with the corners of his mouth upturned, like he might break into smile, came to stand on the ground by the train, the toad-things on either side of him. He looked at us. His eyes were dead looking. You could barely see his moonlit pupils through the milky covering over them, but now and then in that rich moonlight, you could see red shadows move in the whites of those big, dead eyes. He had on a long, white duster and his hands were big and his fingers long and many knuckled. He lifted one hand, extended a finger and pointed right at Jenny. Then he turned his hand over and wiggled his finger for her to come to him. Jenny clutched my arm harder, and the tall man smiled. It was a smile where the edges of his lips slid up to touch his earlobes, widening so that I could see some blocky white teeth like tombstones and a thin, forked pink tongue that licked at the air like a snake.
“The train had come for Jenny, but the taking of her was to punish me for what I had done to Consuela. Her hex reached out beyond her death to make sure I stayed unhappy.
“Jenny says, ‘Pray. Pray to Jesus.’ But I knew there wasn’t any Jesus that could help us. That’s when the tall, white man pushed that duster back with his long-fingered hands, and I could see on his hips, in snow-white holsters, two big ol’ pistols. He kept that horrible smile on his face, linked his fingers, flexed, popped them so loud, both me and Jenny jumped. He pointed at Jenny again and nodded toward the train.
“Now the windows, which had been foggy, cleared, and what I saw through them windows I can’t explain. It was full of passengers and they were screaming and howling, had their faces pressed against the windows. They looked as if they had been boiled, fried, and generally shit on. I looked at the tall man, and he cocked his hands above his guns, and though I was wearing a pistol and wasn’t a bad hand with a gun, I knew right then I couldn’t beat him, and if even I could, my bullets wouldn’t do a thing to him. It was obvious to me that I either had to draw and lose, or give up Jenny.
