The Amulet

by Michael McDowell

  “Maybe if we knew how it worked. Maybe if she told you how it worked, Sarah, we could find out how to find it and stop it. Maybe you can talk Jo into telling you about it.”

  “I’ll try,” said Sarah. “I’ll try anything, but I don’t think she will. She won’t admit anything about it and keeps saying it was burned up in the Coppage house. She won’t admit it, ’cause if she did, then she would be responsible.”

  “And where’d she tell you she got it?” asked Becca.

  “Montgomery Ward catalogue,” replied Sarah, “but I just bet she made that up.”

  “Well,” said Becca, “when you and I get home this evening, we ought to go through them catalogues—I never throw anything out like that—and see if we can find a picture of it. I don’t know what good it’ll do us even if we do find it, except to tell us how much she put out for it, ’cause it’s doubtful if the catalogue is gone say something like: ‘Comes in black and gold only. Good for getting rid of people you don’t like.’ ”

  Sarah laughed; both women laughed, and then spent the remainder of their lunch hour together carefully talk­ing of things that weren’t so unsettling.

  Chapter 48

  The back room of Morris Emmons’ country store on the Pine Cone road was large, squarish, and low-ceilinged. The walls were roughhewn wood, one with shelves at­tached at every height, another with hooks for the hanging of carcasses. More hooks were set in the crossbeams of the ceiling. Now the room—chill but perhaps not so cold as it ought to be for the preserving of meat—was burdened with the slaughtered carcasses of Jack Weaver’s hogs and sows. They hung from the back set of hooks in two rows against the back wall, stalactites of livid pink flesh. The heads of the animals were stuck in a square pattern, four down and five across on hooks in a side wall; they were to be picked up soon by a black butcher whose clientele were much taken with head cheese and certain soups that were best made with the head of a pig.

  Late in the morning, Morris Emmons entered this back room in the company of two farmers—hard, thin men, poor and dirty, with evil smiles, and great curiosity to see the animals that had killed Merle Weaver. The two farm­ers, Jim Coltrane and Mal Homans, had married sisters and their farms were adjoining. They got drunk together, they played practical jokes together, and they banded to­gether in general to protect themselves against the on­slaught of their wives. Mal Homans was the senior of the two farmers, and though it is difficult to judge such things, was probably the sneakier of the two—though Jim Coltrane, from inclination and long practice, was acqui­escent in anything that the other suggested or opined.

  “Which one of ’em was it got Miz Weaver, Morris?” said Mal, with a wicked smile. Peculiar delight flashed in his eyes. His brother-in-law laughed conspiratorially.

  Morris pointed vaguely toward the heads on the wall; they looked like the trophies of a cowardly hunter. “That one right there,” he said, “the mean-looking one.”

  “They all look alike to me,” said Jim, “which one you talking about? All hogs look mean to me. You know what I mean, Mal?”

  Morris walked over to the wall and pointed to the head in the lower left corner. “It was this one,” he said, and nodded significantly.

  Mal had moved over behind him, and he placed his hand over the snout of another glassy-eyed pig. “You sure it wasn’t this one, Morris?” Mal and Jim laughed boister­ously at this, which they considered to be a fine joke. “Sure looks meaner to me . . .” added Mal, and the two farmers erupted into more unpleasant laughter.

  “Naaaah,” said Jim, “I think it was this one!” And he stuck his finger right into the eye of yet another pig’s head. The eye burst and fluid poured down the snout and over Jim’s hand. He wiped his fingers off on his trousers, but did not stop laughing.

  “Yep,” said Mal, “I think Jim’s right, this one looks the meanest to me, it must have been this one that done away with poor Miz Weaver.”

  Morris Emmons was patient through this teasing, and when the two brothers-in-law had quit their snickering, he said, “That’s not the one. This is the one, and I tell you how I know. ’Cause Jack Weaver shot the sow that got his wife, and this is the only one that was already dead when we got out there.” Again he pointed to the sow’s head in the lower left-hand corner.

  The two farmers shook their heads seriously, and dis­puted.

  With a little anger, Morris Emmons then said, “Look here, you two, you can still see the woman’s blood on the snout here!” He pointed to the two little streams of dried blood that could be discerned through the bristles round the snout of the animal.

  “That’s hog blood, Morris, you can’t fool us!” cried Mal.

  “Hog blood! Hog blood!” Jim echoed, with choking laughter.

  “No, it ain’t!” shouted Morris Emmons, in indignant reply. These two men were getting on his nerves. They would talk this kind of nonsense throughout the day; they could maintain a falsehood through months of ribbing, just for the hell of it—and Morris Emmons didn’t like to be made a fool of. “Damn it!” he cried, “you just put your hand up there, and look at it, you touch it, that’s real human blood.”

  “Women’s blood,” snickered Jim.

  Morris Emmons reached out and touched the snout of Louise, the hog that had killed Merle Weaver.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said, “so I’m gone open her snout, and I bet you she’s still got part of Merle Weaver’s throat in there. And I’m gone give it to you, and you can take it to the funeral, and lay it in the coffin with the rest of her body! You can take her throat away with you, you hear me, Mal Homans!” Mal and Jim laughed again, uproariously, at Morris Emmons’ excitement and anger.

  Morris Emmons pried open the mouth of the decapi­tated sow; ligaments in the jaw were torn apart, and the mouth fell suddenly open. A piece of jewelry on a chain fell out into Morris Emmons’ hands.

  The two farmers drew back in surprise, and both cried, “Heeeey!”

  “Morris, you son-of-a-bitch!” cried Mal Homans, very much rattled by the effect, at once bizarre, surprising, and uncanny, of the amulet dropping out of the pig’s mouth. “Morris, you put that thing in there!”

  Morris was as amazed as the two farmers. He turned the amulet over in his hand. “No, I didn’t,” he protested. “I didn’t know it was in there!”

  The three men stared a few moments at the piece of jewelry.

  “Miz Weaver must have had that thing ’round her neck, and the hog just tore it off,” said Jim.

  Mal Homans shivered a little to let off superstitious steam, and then jocularly remarked, “Hog must’ve liked jewelry.”

  Jim and Morris Emmons laughed a little nervously, but were obviously glad that the incident was going to be taken lightly.

  “Well,” said Mal, pleased with the tack he had taken, “not never gone wear my wedding ring in the hog pen no more, I tell you!”

  “Get your finger bit off!” shouted Jim. “You wear a wedding ring in the hog pen! Finger bit right off at the knuckle!”

  The three men then indulged in a spate of laughter that relieved them somewhat; it had been a fright to see the amulet pop out of the hog’s mouth, almost as if it had been cast up in derision.

  Mal choked off a final laugh, whistled, and commented in a breathless whisper, “Sure must have been a mean one to do what it did.”

  Morris Emmons looked thoughtful a moment, and then said to the farmers, “You know who Dean Howell is?”

  It was Mal Homans who commonly made the joke about Josephine Howell having poisoned her own hus­band by biting him in the ankle. And he had heard of Dean’s accident, as had, in fact, the entire county. Jim Coltrane was reminded of the accident by his brother-in-law. “You ’member—got his face blowed away at Rucca.” Jim nodded, and grinned, but then said, “But what’s that got to do with Miz Weaver or that thing? He’s laid up now. They say he’s got the brain of a winter tur­nip.”

  “His wife was out to the Weaver farm,” said Emmons, “looking for
this thing. She described it ’xactly.”

  “It was hers?” asked Jim. “It was Miz Howell’s?”

  “But Miz Weaver was wearing it,” protested Mal.

  “She must’ve been wearing it, if it just then fell out of the pig’s mouth,” agreed Jim.

  “But how’d Miz Howell know about it then?” asked Morris.

  The two farmers shrugged.

  “She told me to call her if I found this thing.”

  “Maybe it’s worth something,” said Mal, “maybe she knew it was worth something, and when she heard Miz Weaver was dead, she thought she might just as well try to get hold of it for herself. Take it to Montgomery to sell it in a pawnshop or something like that.”

  “Maybe it’s made of gold,” suggested Jim.

  “Let me see it,” said Mal, and Morris handed it over to him. Mal turned it in his hands and held it up to his eyes. Jim watched his brother-in-law jealously, and as soon as he could, reached for the piece and took it away, examining it in exactly the same fashion.

  Morris turned his back on the two farmers for a mo­ment in order to peek through the door into the store to see if there were customers or if he were wanted there.

  Mal glanced at Jim mischievously, and took the amulet away from him. In the transfer, the chain came apart, and the two farmers glanced with wondering grins at one another, for they had not seen the catch in its length.

  Then Mal snuck up on Morris, Jim following only a step or two behind. The first farmer draped the amulet round Morris’ neck, and—just as surprisingly as before—the two ends of the chain came together and locked shut. Mal laughed loudly and backed away, knocking into his brother-in-law.

  Morris protested in a gruff voice, “Hey, what you do­ing? You’re both good-for-nothing bastards!”

  Mal and Jim convulsed themselves in laughter at the sight of Morris Emmons wearing a necklace. “Goddamn trouble-making hippie!” Mal cried, and Jim echoed, “Goddamn hippie! Goddamn hippie!”

  Then Morris laughed too, and pushed Mal and Jim out of the cold storage room into the front of the store. He flicked off the light, and pulled the door closed be­hind him.

  Chapter 49

  When Morris Emmons, Mal Homans, and Jim Coltrane emerged from the storage room in the back of the store, there were only two customers to be seen in the long wooden aisles. A little boy was standing in front of the counter near the cash register, picking through the cookies in a large display jar. An old countrywoman in a poke bonnet, who was the little boy’s grandmother, was peering at cans of vegetables and soups on the shelves, trying to find the cheapest among a lot of containers that were all marked with the same price. She glared at Morris Em­mons when he came out of the back.

  “Can’t hardly hear myself think out here, trying to de­cide about little Fred’s dinner, come to visit me, with all that racket there in the back of the store,” she murmured, and then commanded in a large voice, “Fred, don’t you put none of them cookies in your mouth!”

  The child paid no attention to his grandmother, but broke one of the large flat cookies in half, and then pushed both pieces into his mouth at once.

  Morris Emmons rolled his eyes in consternation that it was old Miz Baines, who would be a trial to the devil himself, come to do her afternoon shopping. “You two get on, I got Miz Baines to wait on out here.”

  “Don’t you let the hog head bite you, Morris!” cried Mal, and his brother-in-law echoed, with variation, “Don’t you let it get its teeth sank in your arm, Morris!”

  “You better open up all them mouths, on all them ani­mals, Morris, and make sure you ain’t got wedding rings and bracelets and belts and things all hidden inside there! Might be a treasure trove in them pigs’ mouths!”

  The two men laughed again, and Morris shooed them out from behind the counter. Their stupid jokes and taunts infuriated him. He had put up with these two brutes for close on to ten years, and they had even annoyed him when they were boys. But they were good customers now, and he had had to put up with it. Well, he considered, and cursed himself that he had never thought of it before: they needed him more than he needed them. He kept them supplied with their machinery, with the parts for those machines when they broke down, with the best seed, with the right fertilizer for their impoverished soil, with the only decent advice on how to run their dilapi­dated farms that they were likely to find in the whole of the Wiregrass. No matter what he did to them, they would continue to come back, because they had to. If they went into Pine Cone for their supplies, they’d soon enough fall over into bankruptcy—and then Morris Emmons would have a fine laugh himself.

  Those two sorry men: they spoke evil, they smelled evil, and they were always willing to do a bad turn for someone, always ready to kick a staggering man. Their farms were falling to racking ruin, their wives—the ugliest two women ever to come out of the same womb—would fall down in the dirt not to have to speak to you when you passed ’em on the road; and them bird dogs that the two men claimed they “raised” couldn’t tell a quail from a polled Hereford.

  Morris Emmons glanced angrily down the center aisle of the store, through the screen door, at Jim Coltrane’s truck, parked just outside. In the cab, one of those stupid bird dogs was barking furiously at having been left for so long a time in the stifling enclosed space.

  “Can’t you keep that dog shut up?” Morris demanded.

  “He’s a watchdog,” said Jim, “and watchdogs s’posed to bark.”

  The constant hoarse barking of the bird dog was ir­ritating. Morris Emmons twisted the amulet between his fingers; it was still around his neck.

  “What you got to be watched, Jim Coltrane? You got nothing,” snapped old Miz Baines.

  “Don’t you pick on him,” said Mal, in an amused teasing voice. He actually relished the idea of a little verbal altercation between the old woman and his brother-in-law.

  “Your no-good dog bit my little girl’s little girl last blackberry season. I hope your no-good dog barks his throat out!” said old Miz Baines.

  Jim Coltrane had moved over to the screen door; he was a little afraid of the old woman’s tongue, and had just as soon depart Morris Emmons’ store. But Mal lingered behind, leaning against a wall of canned goods and paper products. He leered at old Miz Baines, and said, “Your little girl’s little girl was pulling down my scuppernong vines, and I catch her over at my place again, Miz Baines, I’m gone bite her!”

  During this short exchange Morris Emmons squatted down behind the counter, and from the small rack just below the cash register, took the shotgun that he kept loaded, just in case of robbers. Laying this across his lap, he carefully filled his shirt and pants pockets with am­munition. Slowly he stood, pointed the gun directly down the aisle, and fired it at Jim Coltrane. Coltrane saw what was happening, but did not have the time to protest or move at all, before he was struck in the chest. He fell back­ward through the screen door into the red dust of the bare ground outside. He writhed a moment, twisted over on his stomach, and was dead. Mal was so surprised he fell back against the shelves, knocking over a whole row of tinned peaches and pears, but he was much too fright­ened to say anything.

  “You gone crazy, Morris Emmons?” shouted old Miz Baines, shaking in her poke bonnet. “What you want to do that for?”

  Morris stepped from behind the counter, pushing little Fred out of the way, whose mouth, full of cookies, had gone suddenly very dry. Emmons walked slowly down the center aisle of the store toward the screen door. Mal Homans crawled down along the lowest shelf, upset­ting whole rows of canned goods as he proceeded. He imagined that if Morris had killed Jim for no reason at all, then it was probable that the man would turn on him next. Morris reached the door, and stepped through and over the corpse of Jim Coltrane.

  Old Miz Baines turned to her grandchild and com­manded him, “Fred, don’t you go looking at the dead man now, you get out of here before Morris Emmons comes back for you!”

  The child grabbed a handful of cookies an
d scampered out the side door of the store. The old woman looked at Mal Homans and sneered, “That’s what you get for rais­ing scuppernongs, Mal Homans!” and then she followed her grandchild out of that place of sudden death.

  Mal crawled to the front window of the store and peered through; he saw Morris advancing slowly on the truck. Mal stared a moment at the corpse of his brother-in-law, watching the blood form a thick pool underneath the body, and then he began to shake. He faltered back­ward and staggered out the side door, running after old Miz Baines and little Fred. They were stepping gingerly over some electrified fence into the safety of a neigh­boring cow pasture.

  Morris Emmons walked slowly and deliberately to the truck that had belonged to the man he had just killed. The bird dog inside, sensing that something was terribly wrong, had stopped its barking and set up an even more fearsome howl. Morris peered through the window by the driver’s side of the cab, and the dog leapt viciously against the glass. Morris Emmons stepped back a couple of feet, raised the rifle and fired directly at the panes. The side windows on both sides of the cab were blown out in an instant. The dog had dropped below the level of the glass and was uninjured; it jumped through the window and smashed against Morris’ chest. The animal careened to the ground, and set up another round of barking, snap­ping at Emmons’ ankles and pulling at his pants legs. In a moment the dog went and sniffed at the corpse on the ground, while Emmons tried to kick it. The dog turned and bit Emmons’ leg, and then ran off, barking.

  Emmons fired at the dog, but missed, and only blew up a great cloud of red dust. When that had cleared, Em­mons could see that the dog had crawled between the rails of the border fence, and was running away across a pecan orchard, heading for the peanut and cotton fields a few hundred yards away.