Joplin's Ghost

by Tananarive Due

  “I’m going to ask Father to send Lovie,” Freddie said. “You’re too busy to be a nurse, and I won’t put out the Dixons this way.”

  “We pay for boarding, so we’re a help, not a burden. There’s no need to bring Lovie, Freddie. Your sister has a family of her own. I can care for my wife.”

  Freddie sighed, not sounding convinced. “Are you sorry you married me yet?”

  “Never.”

  “Maybe you should have married Lovie instead. You were only a year too late. She’s never sick, and her name is so much prettier than mine.”

  “Your name is unique for a woman, and it suits you. I’ve never known another like you.”

  “Father wanted a boy. He wouldn’t give up even when he saw my sex.”

  Scott was glad Freddie had moved her thoughts from her illness, since it wasn’t like her to be so morose. Her mood was a contagion, and it was hard enough to fight low spirits while Freddie was sick. “What would you rather be named?”

  “Something refined and feminine, like a name from one of my English novels,” Freddie said, brightening the way he remembered when he’d asked her favorite type of flower. She propped herself up higher on her pillows, a sign that she was regaining her stamina. “I’m married to a prince, so my name should suit a princess, not a boy.”

  “Gwendolyn? Juliana?”

  Freddie made a face, laughing. The sound of her laugh cleansed his heart. “No, I gave myself my own secret name when I was little.”

  “Tell me, then.”

  “It might sound silly to you. I’ve only told Lovie.”

  He kissed her hand and rubbed it to his cheek. Touching her always stirred desire in him, but he’d learned to quell it. It was not yet time to lie with her again, no matter how much he wished it. Sharing a bed with a woman he hesitated to touch was torture, but it was a torture he could withstand as long as he must. “Tell me, or I won’t bring you any of Olivia’s pound cake.”

  Freddie paused so long, he thought she’d decided to keep her secret. Then, she said it so gently, he almost didn’t hear. “Bethena.” He heard a girl’s wonder as she spoke it. He could imagine her in pigtails, christening herself while she gazed in a mirror beneath a crown of flowers.

  Scott had never heard the name before, but it did suit her face. “Bethena is a pretty name,” he said. “But not nearly pretty enough for the woman who dreamed it.”

  “It sounds perfect when you say it,” Freddie said, her eyes bubbling with pleasure. Then, she began coughing, that horrible sound that originated far too deep in her lungs, raking her chest. Something so stark and shadowed veiled Freddie’s face that Scott squeezed her hand, alarmed until she quieted. Freddie let out a small gasp as she found her breath.

  “Will you remember me that way, Scott? Will you remember me as Bethena, too?” She sounded as if she’d dunked her head beneath a pond’s surface and was coming up for air.

  “Shhhh. Nonsense, dear heart,” he said. “You’ll be the one left remembering me.”

  Scott held his wife’s head to his breast, gently caressing her hair, as silken as an Indian squaw’s. He prayed Freddie couldn’t hear his resounding heart, still excited from her coughing fit that had filled him with foreboding. He prayed she wouldn’t heed the tiresome ticking of the clock on the mantel marking her long imprisonment, and, most of all, that she would ignore the angels’ clarion call if they ever tried to hasten her Home.

  The next night found Scott in Windsor, where he’d been engaged to play for a private party at the home of a white family celebrating their eldest son’s admission to an Eastern college. At seven o’clock, Scott stood at the wood-frame depot with four newly earned dollars, waiting for his train home in the waning daylight. He was glad it was early, so he’d be back at home before Freddie fell asleep. As he’d feared, her night out to the concert had set her back, and she’d barely eaten today. He wanted to be sure to kiss his wife’s lips before she drifted into her dreams. Whenever he got home too late to bid her good night, he dreaded that something might steal her from him while she slept.

  Windsor seemed a ghost town, with no one else in sight as the setting sun lit up the rooftops in gold paint. Six crows lingered near Scott at the empty depot, fighting over an ear of corn near the tracks, and Scott remembered how upset Olivia Dixon had been when she’d discovered a crow on the kitchen table that morning, making tracks in spilled flour. The bird must have flown through the open kitchen window.

  Now that’s a sure sign of death, Olivia had said after a startled scream, then she’d noticed Scott in the doorway and given him an embarrassed smile. Scott’s mother would have been equally upset about the event, God rest her soul, and her mother before that. Scott had chided Olivia for such old-timey superstitions, but he couldn’t deny feeling uneasy at the sight of the crows. His mother had counted crows, assigning significance to their number: One was bad luck, two was good. Three was health, or was it wealth? He couldn’t remember the portent of six, but it probably wasn’t promising. Sickness or death, no doubt. Remembering that, the terrible sound of Freddie’s coughs followed him here, even miles from where she lay.

  The train arrived at the near-deserted station with a gush of smoke, the churning brakes screaming in a racket. Only one man climbed out of the colored car, and Scott was surprised to recognize him: It was the same bearded conjurer he’d seen when he was riding with Freddie. Yes, this had been the man’s stop, Scott recalled. The man wore the same filthy clothes and strange, ritualistic necklace that had caught Scott’s eye before. On closer look, the conjurer looked about sixty. The conjurer mumbled to himself, not looking in Scott’s direction as he debarked the train, and Scott meant to wait for him to pass and board the car unseen. But he didn’t.

  Instead, Scott watched as the man walked away, carrying himself with a slight limp Scott hadn’t noticed before. The sight of him was strangely fascinating, taking Scott away from the train’s waiting doorway. Before Scott realized it, he was following a few steps behind the stranger, away from the depot and toward the dirt road to town. Windowpanes flared in the dusk light as he walked past. A dirty yellow mongrel with pronounced ribs sleeping outside a closed hardware store came to its feet and shook itself, watching their approach.

  “Got any chicken today?” Scott called after the man.

  The man hardly slowed, and didn’t turn. “Chicken’s sold,” he said, and walked on.

  Scott’s next words shocked him. “How ’bout you tell my fortune, then?”

  The man stopped walking. Scott regretted his words when the conjurer turned to look at him, his chin turning first, slumped shoulder following. He had struck up a conversation that would likely make him miss his train. What had possessed him?

  Guilt, perhaps. He had been sharp with this man before, and maybe he hoped to make amends. Or, perhaps the conjurer’s accusations had stung him deeper than he thought. But why? He wasn’t the first to accuse Scott of abandoning his race, especially when careful diction alone could invite the insult. Not an hour ago, the man who’d hired him—a retired banker who traveled frequently to Sedalia—had shaken his hand heartily with parting words he’d intended as a compliment: You don’t seem like a nigger at all!

  The conjurer walked toward Scott in his half-lurching gait, resting more weight on one leg than the other. He fumbled inside a cloth sack slung across his chest and pulled out a pair of spectacles, which he fitted across his nose. He peered at Scott with curiosity while a handful of white passengers walked between them as if they were not there.

  The eyeglasses made the conjurer look almost scholarly, and Scott’s guilt surged. He’d treated him more rudely than he deserved.

  “I know you,” the conjurer said. “I know that suit. You the biggity nigger from the train, few weeks back.” It wasn’t a question. He pronounced his th sounds more like d’s, akin to Scott’s father’s dialect. Scott guessed he’d been born a slave and never had a day of schooling.

  “I wanted to apologize,” Scott sa
id. “I had no call to act that way.”

  “Folks gon’ act how they gon’ act,” the conjurer said. “Call or no call.”

  A ramshackle wagon turned toward them, creaking under its own weight, driven by a boy who might have been fourteen. The wagon was harnessed to a gray nag that walked nearly as gingerly as the conjurer. The nag’s eye visible to Scott was filmed over, white. By the look of it, the wagon was ready to collapse into kindling and the nag was half-blind. It would be faster to walk, Scott thought. He felt pity for them. To people like these, the inventions of the new day—speeding motorcars, “snapshot” cameras, radios, and electric trains—might as well be a fairy tale. They had been left to wallow in ignorance and poverty not unlike their fathers and grandfathers, free or not. And how many generations of Negroes would follow?

  The train’s whistle sounded. Windsor was a small stop with no line of passengers waiting, and the train would not linger. Yet, Scott did not turn away. “I wondered if—”

  “How yo’ pretty wife?” the conjurer said.

  Scott’s spine was an iron rod in his back. “She’s not well,” Scott said, stopping short of demanding why he had asked, as if he knew she was sick. “How much to have my fortune told?”

  The conjurer regarded him with what might be a sneer. “A dollar,” he said.

  Scott remembered why he had first disliked the man: He was a swindler. Twenty-five cents for a fortune was bad enough, but a dollar was outrageous. A dollar could buy two or three records for Freddie’s Talking Machine, if he could spare it. As the train’s wheels geared up for departure, Scott felt foolish in a dozen ways. If he missed this train, another wouldn’t come for hours. “Never mind,” Scott said, trying not to show his irritation. “There’s no time.”

  The conjurer tossed his sack into the back of the wagon, unconcerned. He shrugged. “Don’t make me no diff’rence,” he said. “My wife ain’t the one in a bad way.”

  Scott could not walk away, and he felt the boy’s eyes on him, impatient. Scott couldn’t believe he was considering squandering a full quarter of his day’s earnings on nonsense, but he felt himself reaching into his pocket, as if he no longer had control of his own hand. He wanted reassurance, he realized. He wanted to hear the man say Freddie’s going to be fine, even if this conjurer had no more knowledge of the future than the pitiful nag who pulled his wagon.

  Scott pulled out a folded bill. “A dollar, then.”

  The conjurer showed no change in his face, but he took the money and gave it to his son. That elicited a smile from the youngster, whose teeth were already gray from lack of care.

  With a grunt, the conjurer tugged down the wagon’s loading door, which whimpered on its hinge. Taking his time, the man pulled his sack toward him and rifled through it. The train’s second whistle sounded, and Scott fidgeted with a sigh. You’ve missed the train, so accept it and stop fretting, he told himself, but he still felt sullied, the way he had on the rare occasions he’d accepted a whore’s invitation upstairs after a night of entertaining at a bawdy house. Now, as then, he was determined to see his desire through despite his displeasure with himself. Sure enough, he heard the train pulling away behind him.

  Now he had lost a dollar and Freddie’s good-night kiss, with no one to blame but himself.

  The conjurer pulled out a handful of small bones that might be from chicken, beef or pork; Scott couldn’t tell because their distinguishing features were worn away. The conjurer held ten or twelve pale bones with jagged edges. These bones were smaller than the beef ribs his father and uncle had cleaned and played to accompany fiddles at family dances when he was young.

  The boy was curious, and he hopped down to the empty bed of the wagon to watch. He was barefoot, the soles of his feet nearly black. “Those bones don’t never lie,” the boy said.

  The conjurer shook the bones in his loosely closed palm like a pair of die in a sidewalk craps game. “What you gon’ axe? A dollar’ll buy three questions.”

  Scott hesitated, feeling both ridiculous and strangely troubled. Was he afraid? He couldn’t make himself ask the question most plain in his thoughts, so he chose another. “How long will my wife and I be together?” Scott said.

  The conjurer tossed the bones, and they landed on a heap on the flat wagon door, crisscrossed among the swirling patterns of the wood. The conjurer peered at the bones a long time, and Scott’s breath was thin as he waited. He watched the conjurer’s face as carefully as he watched the face of Freddie’s doctor when he visited, looking for news in his expression.

  “A hunnert years,” the conjurer said. “Prob’ly mo’.”

  “Excuse me?” Scott said, thinking he’d misunderstood his dialect. “A hundred years?”

  The conjurer nodded, his face vacant. “Ya’ll’s souls is stuck like cold sap to a tree.”

  “Then she’ll be well soon?” Scott said, feeling more foolish than ever for his relief.

  The conjurer gathered his bones, and tossed them again. This time, gazing at whatever messages were supposedly hidden in their random positioning, the conjurer’s face slackened. He chewed his bottom lip, shaking his head. “She ain’t gon’ be well,” he said at last.

  Turn and go on your way. Don’t listen to another word of this, Scott told himself, but he couldn’t walk away. He hadn’t realized how unburdened he’d felt by the prediction that he and Freddie would live together for a hundred years until it had been wrested away.

  “What do you mean?” Scott said. There was anger in his voice.

  “Her lungs ain’t right,” the conjurer said, and shrugged.

  Scott forced himself to laugh, although a laugh was the furthest thing from his heart. “You tell me in one breath we’ll live together a hundred years, and that she’ll never be well in the next? I deserve more clever lies for my dollar. You can do better than that.”

  “I ain’t said a hunnert years in this world,” the conjurer said. “I ain’t said nothin’ ’bout livin’.” He was gazing at Scott head-on, challenging him. One corner of his lip turned upward, the beginnings of what would be a vicious smile if he loosed it.

  Scott stood rooted, his heart crashing in his chest, stanching his breath. This stranger was playing a cruel game with him, yet it was nothing like a game, at least not any Scott knew. Suddenly, he felt as if he were bargaining for his soul. “Living is the only damn thing I care about,” Scott said. “Tell me what you see for me in this world.”

  The conjurer picked up his bones again, and threw them for the third time. They fell across the wooden plank with a scrabbling clatter.

  Scott’s hands trembled, and he took a single step away, but not so far that he couldn’t see every weathered line in the conjurer’s face as he leaned over to peer closely at the bones, or couldn’t smell the sharp scent of the conjurer’s sun-broiled skin and old chicken grease on his fingertips. Scott had led himself into a trap. He didn’t know how he knew, but the realization made him want to run the entire twenty-seven miles home.

  The conjurer looked up at him, this time with a grin. Several of his teeth were missing, making his smile hideous. “This world ain’t got no luck fo’ you. All yo’ luck’s waitin’ in the next,” the conjurer said. “So I guess you ain’t so biggity now, is you?”

  “I apologized for that,” Scott said, his voice unsteady. “There’s no reason to—”

  “Any bad turn you can think up, that’s what’s gonna pass yo’ way in this life. That’s what the bones say.”

  Scott shuddered. “You’re a trickster,” he whispered.

  “Your wife won’t never git well. She won’t live to harvesttime. You sick an’ don’t know it, and you won’t never git well neither. You gonna lose them fingers, too. Time comes, you won’t be able to hold yo’ own dick to take a piss. You been bit by the dog, ain’t you?”

  Scott’s blood had drained from his face at the reference to his fingers, but he felt faint when the conjurer said the dog. Impossible! He took two more steps backward, nearly stumblin
g over a block of wood half-buried in the dust. The boy’s eyes watched him, doleful.

  “Don’t t-try to make me think you’re putting a curse on me,” Scott said, pointing a shaky finger at the conjurer. If he’d been wearing a cross the way his mother had always advised, he would be clutching it now. It was as if the devil himself had stepped off the train and crossed his path. “I’m a Christian man, and I don’t believe in hoodoo.”

  “I ain’t one to throw curses, but if I had underworlded you, you’d know it,” the conjurer said. “You axe me fo’ the future, an’ that’s what the bones say. The future ain’t nothin’ to be skeered of, boy. The future’s already came an’ went. Yo’ wife’ll be lost from you fo’ a time, but we all gits lost. You’ll see her agin by and by.”

  “The bones don’t never lie,” the boy said, shaking his head, and climbed back to his berth.

  Scott felt his stomach heave, and it took all of his body’s restraint to keep from spilling his last meal on the ground. He pressed his hand to his mouth, hardly daring to move. He watched in silence while the conjurer climbed up into the wagon’s bed and pulled the door up behind him. The half-starved mongrel sniffed near Scott, lured by the lingering chicken scent, and Scott didn’t move to shoo the dog away. He stood in a fog of fright.

  “I don’t believe you,” Scott said, desperate to break the man’s strange hold on him.

  “I ain’t axe you to b’lieve me. You the one axed me,” the conjurer said. His smile was gone, and he looked at Scott as impassively as if they’d been chatting about the train schedule and last night’s rain. “I ain’t the one skeered o’ what’s gon’ come.”

  The boy clucked to the nag and snapped the reins, and Scott watched the sorry wagon jounce away. The conjurer gazed back at Scott from where he sat with neither malice nor pity, a man untroubled to deal out death every day.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN