Chariot - [Millennium Quartet 03]

by Charles L. Grant

  “Child,” Eula whispered. “Child.”

  Without thinking, Lil took a step. Froze. Looked down, looked at the old woman, then lifted her left leg, which bent easily at the knee.

  “Dreaming,” she said.

  “Walking,” Eula countered. “And,” she said with a slow, careful smile, “riding.”

  Pointing to the familiar pinto that stood in the yard, just beyond the direct reach of the kitchen light.

  * * * *

  3

  talking

  * * * *

  Ricardo paced angrily through his house, muttering, shaking his head, pausing each time he reached the bedroom and telling himself to just get the hell undressed, get the hell into bed, and forget he’d ever even heard of that fat old woman. Then, the first thing in the morning, it didn’t make any difference whether it was Sunday or not, he’d drag his sorry ass to the hotel, drop to his knees, and beg forgiveness for cutting out like he did, without even having the courtesy to call in sick. And if they took him back, fine; if they didn’t, he had no doubt he’d be able to get another job in the city. Men like him, who knew all the right things to say to customers who were pissed off because they didn’t get the right table or the right food or the right waiter, men like him were not a dime a dozen.

  He had skills.

  He would never starve.

  “But you can’t do that,” he said as he reached the living room for the fifth, the dozenth time. “You told her you’d go over, and as long as you’re going to do the thing tomorrow, you don’t have anything to lose, you jerk, and you’ll just make her mad, and you got to live with her as long as she’s around, so why not go over, do the polite talk and smile thing, then tell her you have a headache or something, and leave. No problem. She stays happy, you get no guilt, and son of a bitch what the hell am I doing?”

  He was on the porch, arms at his sides, bouncing a little on his heels.

  For crying out loud, words were his living, right?

  “Look,” he said, looking around for the moon, “you talk to people every day who think you’re crap but put up with you because otherwise they get stuck by the kitchen door, so why can’t you just go across the street, talk the way you talk, make her smile, maybe tell her a joke or something, and maybe even go down to the Boulder place on Monday, let them whack off your goddamn hand, it doesn’t do you a damn bit of good anyway, at least with some plastic thing you’ll be able to tie a tie again from scratch, and son of a bitch what the hell am I doing?”

  “I sure don’t know,” Eula said, chuckling in her doorway, watching Ricardo prowl back and forth on her porch as if he couldn’t decide which side to jump off. “But you sure do make a lot of noise doing it.”

  “Eula, look, I am really sorry, honest, but—”

  She waved him silent. “No need, son, no need, just come on in, I got something I need you to do for me.”

  A look back at his house, his nice safe house, and he followed her inside, back to the kitchen, where he heard the same song he’d heard earlier that evening. Only louder, and seemingly faster.

  “See,” she said with a heavy, weary sigh, “this old woman, she don’t have the strength she used to when she was a girl and could whip any man in Alabama, one hand tied behind her back.” Her laugh was infectious, and he laughed along with her. “Age is a bad thing, Ricardo, you know. Good that you get to live so long, bad that you remember the things you could do when you was younger and didn’t have so many bones aching all the time.”

  “Eula,” he said, giving her a sideways look and grin, “you’re not that old, and you know it. Hell, you could probably arm wrestle me into Utah if you wanted to.”

  “With that hand,” she said, nodding at his glove, “probably so.”

  He stared at her, shocked into silence, trying to believe she hadn’t said what she said. That wasn’t like her. Cruelty wasn’t like her.

  She turned away to the table, and pointed at a can of vegetables and a can opener, slapped at them disgustedly, and sighed loudly. “Used to be, I could do this in a snap. No more. Can’t hold both at the same time anymore.” She wiggled her fingers in front of her face. “No strength left, you see? They fat, they like sausages, but they got no real strength anymore. But you, you got the age and the strength, and I’m starving in here,” she poked playfully at her tummy, “and if I’m gonna eat, I need you to help.”

  Still smarting at the crack about his hand, he shrugged and pulled the can toward him. “Well, that’s easy. I’ve gotten so that I do a lot without—”

  She grabbed his wrist, squeezing until he looked down at her. “No, boy,” she said quietly. “Two hands. You got to use two hands.”

  “That’s not funny,” he told her, tugging to get free.

  “No. It’s not.”

  He didn’t know whether to smile or scowl. “C’mon, you’re not weak, Eula. I can’t. . .” He tugged again; she wouldn’t release him. “Eula, please.”

  “You want something from me,” she said.

  “I. . .” He looked at the can, at the opener, and couldn’t believe it when he felt the tears. “Just once,” he whispered. “You know? Just once, that’s all.” He held the gloved hand up between them. “They want to cut it off, put on a fake one. Wires and springs and things.”

  “I know,” she said, so sympathetically he didn’t bother to stop the tears when they fell. “I know.” She brushed a thumb over his cheek, wiping away the moisture. “Don’t have to be, Ricardo. Don’t have to be.”

  He listened to her talk, felt a crushing pressure in his chest, heard himself ask her what he had to do.

  And when she told him, he didn’t hesitate. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, hell, a small price to pay. He’s a creep anyway.” Tears still flowing. “Oh, God, Eula, they want to cut off my hand.”

  “Not anymore,” she said.

  She took the withered hand in both of hers, brought it to her lips, and kissed it on the palm.

  “You sure, boy?”

  He nodded.

  She pulled off the glove.

  * * * *

  4

  singing

  * * * *

  Muriel sat in the Boston rocker, unable to think, unable to find the words, unable to do anything but use her feet to push her back and forth. Back and forth. Rocking slowly in the dark, feeling her heart strain.

  Maybe a hymn, she thought; that’d be fitting.

  She sobbed.

  She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, and she sobbed.

  A tiny voice, but rough and stumbling: “What a friend we have in Jesus . . .”

  Her hands dropped away and she looked to the ceiling, chin quivering. Silly, but all she could think of were things she sang when she was a kid. Twenty years, more, since she had been inside a church; she didn’t know what they sang anymore.

  When she stood, using her forward momentum to help her to her feet, she nearly fell, and clamped a hand hard to her chest to stop her heart from getting out.

  Now or never, she told herself; Lillian’s gone, you going to wait or are you going to do it right for a change?

  There was no hesitation at the front door, none in the street.

  “Jesus loves me ...”

  None when she knocked on Eula’s door.

  “. . . this I know.”

  When the door opened, she couldn’t speak, could only sing in a voice she hadn’t used in forty years, “. . . for the Bible tells me so.”

  “Well, now,” Eula said, reaching out, taking her hand. “What a sweet song you got there, Miz Carmody. Ain’t heard that one in ages. Makes this old heart of mine feel real good.” A smile, a wink. “You ready?”

  Muriel swallowed, and nodded.

  “Good.” She took Muriel’s hand and pulled her gently inside. “You know, Miz Carmody, I been looking around, I found something in that Oklahoma I think you’ll like. Got it in the kitchen, you just come with me.”

  Muriel followed numbly, not s
eeing Lillian, not wondering where she was. She would have asked, but on the kitchen threshold she jerked and stopped as if she’d been grabbed from behind.

  Eula passed a hand over the table. “You like it? Not fancy, don’t go for things like that, but I saw it in this store and I thought of you right away. Hope you don’t mind. Hope you don’t got anything against taking gifts from a poor stranger.”

  A simple black dress, with raised black-stitched roses across the breast, and a black leather belt at the waist.

  A size she hadn’t worn, hadn’t been able to fit into, in decades.

  “Say yes,” Eula whispered, “and it’s yours.”

  * * * *

  5

  shouting

  * * * *

  Stephanie wanted to scream.

  It had been bad enough she hadn’t been here when Eula finally came home, and Cable, shaking like a leaf, had bellowed at her for an hour, threatening her, stomping around the house, lashing out at everything he passed with a fist, a foot, telling her, screaming at her that he’d been through enough, goddamnit, and he wasn’t about to make a damn jackass of himself crawling up the street to some voodoo black lady’s séance or whatever the hell she was running up there, just so Stephanie, who couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket, could pretend she was finally going to be a goddamn star.

  An hour, while she cringed by the front door.

  A full hour before he exhausted himself, hoarse, sweating as if it were noon in August, and begging her, practically weeping, not to make him do this thing.

  Now he was in the street, throwing punches at the sky, doing his best to yell loud enough to wake the dead but too hoarse to do much more than croak, which only made him angrier.

  Eula stepped out beside her, hands clasped in front of her, shaking her head. “My, that boy sure is afraid of something, ain’t he?”

  Stephanie tried to talk and gulp air at the same time. “He won’t... he won’t. . .”

  “Sure he will, child, sure he will. He just needs a little time, that’s all. A little time to work off that hate he got there, all that fear.”

  Cable spotted her then, and Stephanie froze when he pointed a finger, trembling with rage, and marched toward the porch.

  “Don’t worry,” Eula assured her. “He won’t hurt me. And he sure won’t hurt you none.”

  At the foot of the steps he glared at each of them in turn, his face dripping perspiration, his eyes wide and insane. “You tell her,” he said to Eula. “You tell her this crap isn’t going to—”

  Eula reached out and touched his face.

  Stephanie braced herself for the slap, or the punch; even in bed, she wasn’t allowed to touch his face.

  Cable stiffened.

  And Eula said, “How bad you want that Trey to be gone, not look at your woman the way he do? How bad, Mr. Cable? How bad?”

  * * * *

  6

  Moonbow stood resolutely beside her sister, and together they formed a barrier at the front door. Their arms were folded over their chests, their faces as hard as they could make them. It had been nearly half an hour since Cable Olin had gone bellowing up the street, more than that since Mrs. Carmody had wandered around, singing to herself so badly they wanted to cover their ears, and couldn’t because it was so horribly fascinating. Twice in the past hour, Moonbow had raced down to Trey’s, but he still wasn’t home. The chariot was still in the carport, but there were no lights on inside, no response to her banging on the door, and the house . . . smelled . . . empty.

  He hadn’t come back.

  Maybe, she had thought, he wasn’t ever coming back.

  But she didn’t believe it. He had promised her, he had promised all of them that he was here to stay. Never again vanishing for weeks or months at a time, coming back in moods so black it made nighttime look like noon. Sometimes coming back like the last time, bruised and cut and wearing a cast.

  He promised her a birthday present, a necklace of pearls.

  But he wasn’t back.

  Tonight they were on their own.

  “Momma,” Starshine said, trying to imitate her mother’s most stern voice, “you can’t go. We . . . we’re not gonna let you.”

  “That’s right, Momma,” Moonbow agreed. “You heard what’s going on, we can’t let you go.”

  Jude stood in the living room, back in the shadows where the end table lamp didn’t quite reach. “I have to,” was all she said.

  Moonbow felt her sister wavering, and nudged her with a hip, reminding her she had an ally.

  “We can’t, Momma,” Starshine said. .”We can’t let you do it.”

  “It isn’t right,” Moonbow said. “You know it isn’t right. You know she can’t do anything. If you’d just wait a little while, until Trey—”

  “He’s not coming back,” Jude snapped. “You saw the suitcase, you told me he had a suitcase. He is not coming back.”

  “How do you know?” Moonbow answered, practically screaming. “You don’t know that. You don’t!”

  “They’re all there,” Jude said patiently. “I have to be there, too.”

  “Roger isn’t,” Starshine said.

  They had changed clothes as soon as they’d run back into the house once they’d greeted Eula, and they had huddled on the porch after the sun went down, watching them going up to Eula’s one by one. It was spooky. None of them acted right. Muriel singing, Rick talking loud to himself, and Cable the worst with his yelling and screaming and looking like he was going to jump on Steph and beat her up.

  But Roger wasn’t there, hadn’t shown his face.

  Starshine took a deep breath. “Momma ... if she can do what you ... what you think she can, why doesn’t she fix Roger, huh? Why doesn’t she get him to stop drinking? If she’s so good, she could do that with her eyes closed.”

  “Listen,” Jude said, that patience growing thin enough to raise her voice, “in the first place, you do not tell me what I can and cannot do. I know you’re concerned, but this is my decision, not yours.” She moved out of the shadows, a long white dress, hair brushed to a shine, eyes glittering wetly above the veil. “And secondly, I cannot read her mind, so I don’t know why she hasn’t done anything for Roger.”

  “If she can,” Starshine said sullenly.

  “Maybe she already has,” Jude countered. “Now let me pass, girls. I don’t want to be too late. I don’t want to miss... I don’t want to be late.”

  They didn’t move, and Moonbow was afraid her mother would push them both aside, and what would they do then, fight her? Really fight her? A look at her sister’s face showed her she was thinking the same thing. And she knew that they wouldn’t touch her. They would have to let her pass.

  “Momma,” Starshine said, “I’ll make you a deal. We’ll make you a deal.”

  “Yeah,” Moonbow agreed. “We’ll make you a deal.”

  Jude shook her head. “No deals, girls. Please move.”

  “You go to Roger’s,” Starshine said quickly. “You go to Roger’s and see. Just see, okay? You do that for us, and we won’t bug you anymore. Just go see him, Momma. Just go see.”

  “Yeah,” Moonbow said, adding a firm nod. “For us, Momma, okay? Do it for us.”

  Jude put a hand to her brow, briefly covering her eyes. “No more trouble?”

  “No, Momma,” they answered quietly.

  “You’ll stay here?”

  This time they hesitated, until Starshine finally said, “Yes, Momma. We’ll stay here. We’ll wait on the porch.”

  “No trouble,” Moonbow said. “We won’t cause any trouble, promise.”

  Jude looked at each of them carefully, weighing the strength and sincerity of their promise. Then, with a decisive nod: “All right. But you stay on the porch? You don’t come sneaking after me?”

  They agreed, adding a hint of you don’t trust us? hurt that made Jude laugh without losing the frown they could see above the veil.

  “Okay, then.”

  Moonbow moved firs
t, and Jude walked between them, pushed open the screen door and waited for them on the porch.

  The street was dark, except for Eula’s place; and silent, except for the music they could hear, so happy, so excited, it made Moonbow want to spit.

  “No cheating.”

  “No, Momma.”

  Starshine poked her arm. “But you have to come back and tell us first, okay?”