The Liminal War

by Ayize Jama-everett

  Early in the evening, the stomping tunes from inside only threaten full volume. The bullfrogs still win the sonic contest out here. But there’s a body cacophony raging inside. Bones compacted by labor, far denser than I’m used to, melanin counts much higher as well. Half of them are infested with hookworms and damn near every penis inside is infected with some STD we’ve eradicated in modern times. But most importantly, they’re all human.

  I should’ve had Tam mask us before we walked in. Between Mico’s dreads and Tamara’s comparatively light skin tone we might as well have walked in naked. The two guitar pickers and piano player on stage doing their version of “Don’t Start Me Talking” make it all about Tamara as she makes her way to the bar, unperturbed by the turned heads.

  “Heard you pour the best applejack in the country.” Tam slings her accent and pilfered knowledge at the thick-necked Big Sally behind the counter.

  “Where you from, girl?” Sally almost laughs at Tam as she sets each of us up with our own mini mason jar with dust-chafed hands.

  “Back East, Ma’am.” Mico steps in. Sally’s not feeling Tam’s lack of manners. “We were sent by the W.P.A. to work on classes in reading and writing at the library. Figured we’d come down early and get with some of this legendary music of yours.”

  “Nigga, you lie worse than you comb yo hair!” She says it with a voice that dwarfs the stage act. “Dis what the devil look like if a Bible was a comb.” Everyone starts laughing.

  “He one of them Garveyites,” I say, tapping my empty jar for a refill. That alone gets her notice. This applejack is definitely more jack than apple. “He read something said the Israelite preachers of old never cut they hair. He figure he gonna try it.”

  “Umm-hmm,” she says, filling my jug, peeping my eyes and then my hands. “And what about you, dead eyes? You ain’t look like you following no God ’cept death. You trying to stab a nigga in here tonight?”

  “We ain’t here for trouble.” I scan her quick, making sure I didn’t miss any liminality. Nope, she’s just a smart black business owner in the South. She knows how to read people.

  “Only time I know that ain’t true is when I hear it. Dolla buys your first round, fried chicken dinner come with hush puppies, fried tomatoes, and gravy. That fifty cent.”

  “Got rooms to let?”

  “Only one. Dollar for two of you. One of the men can sleep in the car. This ain’t no freak house.”

  “My daughter ain’t a freak,” I say calmly, laying out the only comprehensible thing about us: twenty dollars in 1938 money. “We’ll take four dinners, another round, and a night’s lodging, at least.”

  She’s about to fight me on it when Tamara’s voice starts coming from the piano at the side of the makeshift stage.

  “She ain’t getting paid for that,” Big Sally barks.

  “I didn’t even know she could sing.” But I know the song.

  “Some father.”

  In our early days together, Tam, Prentis, and I all slept in the same room, under pressure from the girl who couldn’t have her pack of snakes, rats, dogs, and cats around her at all times anymore. My version of a lullaby, really an absent tune I hummed more than sang, was Tom Waits’s Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis. The tragic mythomanical tune always calls to my most sympathetic parts. But I’ve never heard it in a woman’s voice. Didn’t even know Tam had a woman’s voice when she wanted. Didn’t know she could play the piano. I almost tear up at the delicate beauty of an open secret between us.

  “Been shielding that from you for months now.” After appropriate applause and props, she smiles when she comes back to the table Mico secured for us.

  “Why?” I ask, wiping chicken grease from my mouth.

  “Birthday gift.” She’s fully aware of my discomfort with her display, but she doesn’t care. One of the guitar players is launching into “Lord I Just Can’t Keep From Crying” with a voice weaker than Blind Willie Johnson’s.

  “Everyone’s going to be talking about you and that song,” Mico says.

  “My plan,” Tam says with a fried tomato in her mouth. “We’ve been chasing them for literally seventy years now. And they let us, yeah. I mean it’s obvious they wanted us here. Why else send the sharks if not to let us know we’re on the right track? So let’s get the show on the road. We’re here. Let’s get the whole county, state, whatever to be talking about the hot chick, the old man, and the snake-headed weirdo hanging at Big Sally’s.”

  “But you’re introducing a song into the universe before it was intended,” Mico says.

  “Come on,” I tell him. “Even that hellhounds song has antecedents somewhere. When you jammed with Marley you didn’t play anything recorded past 1971? It’s music, man, no one owns it; it flows. You know that. Besides, Nordeen’s already done worse. Trust. It’s a good plan, girl. Get on it, Mico. Jam with the band. Make Big Sally’s the place to be. That’s what you do, right? Rock it hard enough and your boy Robert Johnson will come, as well as Nordeen and whoever is backing his play. We’ll be in wait for whichever comes first.”

  “And Prentis,” Tamara adds.

  “Exactly.”

  “You want to square off here? It’s . . . it’s not near any powerful ley lines, it’s . . . you want to take them on at a juke joint?”

  “Notice the floor? Freshly mopped but still stained with blood. What is this? A Thursday? That means someone got stabbed on a Wednesday. It’s not yet six o’clock and already they’ve got an opening act for a bigger band. This place will be jumping come Saturday night. And with the liquor Big Miss in the back pours, there’s gonna be some more blood spilt. This isn’t a juke joint, this is a bucket of blood. And when you’ve got blood, passion, and music—well, you’ve got power.”

  I share the vague outlines of a plan that might give us the upper hand, just this once. I make it sound like there’s more to it than there is. They nod like I’m deep. I lie and say I’m going to check the perimeter as one of the guitar players busts out a harmonica for “Pony Blues.” As soon as I hit the porch, I know who I’ll see.

  With the sun down, the baking earth smell fades into the scent background with the uniformity of cicada mating chirps. I try to make it a calming meditation as Nordeen strides calmly through the nearby unkempt field. The same dark hood keeps all but his yellow glowing eyes and occasional red-sparked mouth shrouded.

  “That’s close enough.” I’m fighting pulling the blades.

  “As if you could stop me,” he tells me in the old Berber tongue he first taught me. He doesn’t stop advancing, so I descend from the porch to meet him in the parking lot.

  “I mean it, Nordeen,” I tell him in English, one of the blades now in my hand. He stops hard. A near-caution takes his body. “Where’s Prentis?”

  “You know exactly where she is. I took one. I left you your blood. You should have accepted your loss and kept—”

  “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. And you don’t get to kidnap my kids!”

  “How much of an idiot are you? You think I took your charge out of choice?”

  “Don’t pawn this off on the Alters!”

  “I told you from the beginning we all serve someone. They’ve wanted someone like her since before I even found you.”

  “But why serve them at all? Entropy? How can you get behind entropy?”

  “I acknowledge the futility of doing any less.” He tries to circle toward Big Sally’s, but I side step so he has to rotate towards the parked cars. “Besides, you’ve met the root god’s champion. Does he seem a savior of humanity to you?”

  “He sings a good enough song. What do you want here?” I ask harshly, scanning for Mico and Tamara.

  “They sent me to keep you fixed,” he tells me, stroking the Duesenberg. “But I’ve come to give you an out. Take your child and return to your time. Enjoy what relative peace you can muster and leave Mico to his fate.”

  “This just coming from the kindness of your heart?” I ask, trying
to stay focused on him as he slips in and out of the wooded shade, and not the deep green glow coming from our ride. “Or do we pose a problem for you?”

  “I’d sup your soul in a bowl made from your daughter’s skull,” he tells me in a casual voice lacking everything but conviction. “But for the fact that I once had hopes for you to sit by my side—”

  “Oh, shut it, old man,” I shout, feeling rage from the blades calling to me. “I’ve heard enough of your manipulations to know when you’re lying. I’m not leaving—we’re not leaving without Prentis. Bring her back if you want us to leave.”

  “Out of time, weakened, a child, and an excommunicated prophet as your only allies. Do you truly believe you’ve got bargaining power?”

  “I’ve got you here talking to me,” I smile.

  “No.” His sparky mouth smiles wider. “We’ve got you here.”

  The Duesenberg explodes with a deafening roar. I only take my eyes off him for a second, but Nordeen is gone.

  Tam and Mico are the first ones out the door, followed by an angry shotgun-wielding Big Sally.

  “What I tell you?!” she says, pointing at me. “These niggas ain’t nothing but trouble.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mico had to grind hard to keep Big Sally from kicking us out. I missed most of the negotiations, being outside manning the fire brigade. I boosted all the volunteers’ dopamine and endorphin levels and made their bodies toxic to hookworms. They came back to the juke joint in better health than when they left. By the time I walk in, Mico’s pimp-slapping a banjo with one hand and using a bottle to slide notes with his other hand. Somehow he’s got the whole crowd—some eighty-plus farmers, drivers, maids, hustlers, servants, skinflints—all stomping and clapping in unison.

  “Wot was that then?” my daughter demands. I give her the quick and dirty. She fumes in silence then punches me playfully. “Look at you, backing down your custom-made boogeyman.”

  “Ready to do the same?” I’m checking her eyes for confidence.

  “You think that Poppy chick will be here?” she says almost below the music.

  “Makes sense. She was the only one at Nordeen’s.”

  “Bitch took me down with a whisper.”

  “You tossed her into an ocean.”

  “You got her to stop that chaos yapping.” Tam moves to the bar and orders a shot with a double knock on the wood.

  “What? You want a pep talk?” I ask after we both take a shot.

  “Fuck off! I need to . . . practice.”

  “That’s my girl.” I catch myself, but she lets it go. “Me too. We keep an eye on this madness, sleep as much as we can. Tomorrow morning we get at it.”

  “What about the blues brother?” she asks through another wave of applause.

  “Shit. He’s getting stronger by the minute.”

  “Can’t right study you two.” Big Sally, drunk, one breast almost free of its oppressive stained yellow captor, shotgun in hand, greets us as we descend the stairs just after seven. “But that snake-headed monkey up there can blow down them Jericho walls.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that along.” Tam laughs.

  “Hey!” The heavy woman points her shotgun at us like a giant finger. “’Sploding car is about as much weirdness I’m fitting to tolerate, long green or not, understand?”

  “What other weirdness is there?” I ask, chilling Tam out with a hand on her back and healing up some of Sally’s drunkenness.

  “Not three days ago heard about ol’ gal over there in Natchez. Middle of town, bright as day, they swear a hundred or so rats attack an old girl. Just her and her alone.”

  “She live?” Tam asks.

  “Ever seen a barn rat tear through an egg? Times that by a hundred and ask that question again.” Sally puts her shotgun down and aims for water. “Two things I don’t allow in my business. Rats and white folks.”

  “Racist,” Tam says under her breath. Then to me, “Prentis has never used her animals to kill in her life. What’s that psycho done to her?”

  “Same thing he did to me for years. And I survived. She’s stronger than me. Come on. Time to train.”

  We find a small tributary of the Mississippi river about fifteen miles from Big Sally’s. In our time it’s probably a pool of toxic sludge, but in 1938 it’s teeming with life and tastes almost sweet. We build a silent meditation the whole run there, me spot-healing anyone I feel in a fifteen-yard radius while Tam snips visions from their eyes or sounds from their ears. We stay to the weeds in part because no one jogs yet but also to track animals, checking for signs of Prentis’s influence. Every squirrel, coyote, rabbit, and hawk seems natural as we go by. By the time we hit the lake, we’re both in our liminality.

  We don’t speak in this state. She doesn’t have to read my mind to know the only place it’s safe to practice is away from prying eyes. We know each other’s instincts on a physical level, and so it’s no surprise when she follows my dive into the lake. On instinct I grow two complex gill-filtering systems, complete with a gall bladder–like organ to hold the gunk I can’t make use of. Tamara makes another telekinetic bubble, much like the one that held us up over the Atlantic, but smaller and pulling in oxygen from the surface. Through it I hear her say, “Bring it.”

  I grow the lenses as I pull the entropy knives and beef up my arms and legs. Tam’s only tell, licking her lips, gives me my impetus to attack. The worse menstruation cramps ever double her over as I launch myself despite the eighty feet between us. Halfway across she focuses through the pain and crunches my spine like an annoying piece of cartilage between teeth. I switch all my pain receptors to cortisol inhibitors and stretch my spine back out, not stopping. Neither is she.

  No lens could clear my eyes of all the sludge and muck she’s pulling up from the bottom of the lake. It only took five seconds to get to where she was, but she’s gone. Before I can scan for her I’m tagged hard from behind. Feels like a fire-hose flow. I go with it, curling into a ball, then spin to the direction it’s coming from. I get hit with a harder flow from my right, at my knees. I hold on to the branch of an old fallen tree to keep low. I clear my mind so she can’t track me, and wait. Smart moves on my girl’s part. My tactic would be to rain down as much damage in the murky area as possible. Not Tam. She likes getting close.

  Oxygen-filled lungs tell me her strategy. She went for air before she descended into the muck. She swims right by me. I nerve-strike her leg and watch her concentration go. I’m on her quick, python-wrapping my legs around her stomach. I sheathe one knife and come around her throat with it. I feel the blade’s excitement.

  Tam pushes both her forearms against my super–yoked, knife-wielding bicep. Her panic is just fueling the blade. I have to beef up my arms even more when she adds telekinesis to her strength. The blade wants to see what Tamara’s body will look like without a head. I have to think back at it.

  “One drop of her blood and I’ll leave both of you at the bottom of this lake. No flesh for you to pierce, no blood to wet you, I swear to you, blade. You are mine. I am not yours.” Instantly the soul weight of the blades lightens. I think it’s happening physically until I realize it’s Tam. She shoots both of us out of the lake and high into the air with the force of a cannon. In the instant it takes me to switch back to an air-breather, she lands seven telekinetically aided shots to my face, ribs, and groin—no doubt learned from Chabi. I fall to the lake beach hard on my back. Tamara lands efficiently, her knee half a millimeter from my throat.

  “Not bad,” I tell her. Not moving.

  “Bull.” She falls to my side, observing the same sky. “I panicked.”

  “Should’ve kept higher ground. Taken your time with pot shots until you hit my location. Then you bring the hammer.”

  “I know. How the was the blade work?”

  “We’ve come to an accord for now. But you’ve got to learn to work with the resources you’ve got. That was the point of going to the water . . .”

  “Shut up,
” she tells me as she sits up on her elbows. Across the lake a brown rabbit sits at the bank, head half-cocked, staring at us in that Prentis-touched way.

  “Oy!” Tam barks to the rabbit. “Ya hear me, gal?”

  “Prentis,” I join in. “Time to come home.”

  I think the rabbit is about to leave when it turns around. Instead it stands on its rear paws to meet a speckled coyote with the same Prentis head cock. I try to say something, but the attack is over before I realize there’s nothing to say. The coyote savages the rabbit with a near-human maliciousness. There is no desire to eat in it. The bite is designed only to kill and discard. The mangy coyote stares at us, blood and fur stuck to its mouth, then ambles into the lake with deadly intent.

  “She doesn’t . . .” I hear the tears in Tam’s voice. “She knows that coyote can’t hurt us.”

  “It’s already dead.” I pull her up to her feet and turn my back on the scenario. “It’s a message from the other side. Hunter and hunted are both damned.”

  The southern heat dries our clothes as we walk slowly back to the gas station that pointed us to Big Sally’s. In full afternoon light we see more houses, people, and shops. Sheet metal is a luxury here. Most buildings are haphazard constructions made from repurposed ancient local wood. The difference between shacks and houses in this town seems to be porches and a floor made from anything other than dirt. And again, the damn hookworms. Barefoot or not, rich and old, mostly black but even the white people are teeming with worms.

  At the general store-gas station I grab cans of sardines, rock candy, five pickles, half a pecan pie, six apples, two quarts of milk, two cokes, and half a pound of sliced salted beef. I expect some smart-alec comment from Tam, but she stays quiet even as she works the subtle trick of convincing the shopkeeper our money is dry and the amount of food I buy is normal.