The Amulet

by Michael McDowell

  “What else?” demanded Becca of her friend.

  Sarah’s mouth was grim. “Who’s next?”

  Both expected that the planchette would move, but there was not even a quiver. Sarah pushed a little, but the wooden triangle did not budge.

  “Who’s next?” repeated Becca sternly.

  Now the planchette moved, unsteadily and slowly, spelling out: A N R A B U A N N R B R Y.

  Sarah was nervous, and all the concentration on the board, after a good hour and a half poring over the cat­alogues, had enervated her. “That don’t make no sense.”

  Becca shrugged. “See if you can make something out of it. Looks sort of like Robert and maybe Andrew. The thing about the wee-gee board, Sarah, is that it don’t spell real good, and sometimes you got to use your imagination. I mean the spirits aren’t moving the thing around them­selves, they’re on the inside of our brains, telling our fingers what to do, without our fingers knowing what’s going on, and they probably don’t have complete control, you know what I mean. I mean, it’s like they got a stutter or something . . .”

  Sarah nodded. She was nervous, and didn’t know whether she wanted to go on with this at all. It was a painted piece of wood, and how could it tell the future? How could it know about Dean and Jo? How could it tell who was going to die next? But their questions were being answered. She wanted to stop, she—“How many more are there going to be?” she gasped, and wondered where the question had come from. It hadn’t been in her mind.

  The planchette wavered, swung around the numbers without pausing, and then returned to the alphabet where it spelled out B A K A B L E R K A B L A R.

  “Well,” sighed Becca and sat back, “I think that’s about it. It’s just doing nonsense. I don’t think we’re gone get anything more out of it tonight.”

  Sarah stood up hastily. “Honey, thank you so much. It was exciting, real exciting.” Becca looked at her friend strangely; it wasn’t like Sarah to depart precipitously. And she was acting as if the whole thing had been a game, and Becca knew her friend well enough to know that she had been very much troubled. “It’s late,” Sarah faltered, “I got to get back and make sure Dean’s all right. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “We could wait a few minutes and try again,” sug­gested Becca, but Sarah shook her head emphatically.

  “No, no, no. I probably just don’t have the knack for it. It’s probably never gone work for me, and right now, I’m dead on my feet.” She hurried out the door. Becca stood on the back steps, and stared after her friend. Then she returned inside to put up the Ouija board and the planchette, and only then did she notice that Sarah had taken the envelope on which they had transcribed the messages that had been indicated on the board. Becca shrugged, and with only the tiniest shiver, put the board back into the closet.

  Sarah Howell went directly into her husband’s bedroom and turned on the dresser lamp. She was alone in the room with Dean, but after glancing at him briefly, she ignored him. She smoothed out the crumpled envelope, which she had secreted in her closed fist, and stared at the last set of letters, B A K A B L E R K A B L A R, that had appeared as the nonsensical answer to the question of how many more deaths. She drew three slashes to divide the letters, thus, BAKA/BLER/KA/BLAR, and could see nothing but her friend’s name—Becca Blair—written out twice.

  Chapter 56

  Pine Cone, Alabama, was not a large town, but it was sizable enough for two mortuaries, one catering to the white population and the other to the black. This was still only a few years after the great Civil Rights legislation and there were many institutions, many customs in the Deep South which remained segregated at this time. Con­gress had not even stated at the time that undertakers must accept the dead of any race, and so, as had been the custom in the past, corpses of different skin colors were kept separate.

  The black and white morticians were not in direct com­petition since their prospective customers were already slated to take the service of one or the other, and so it was not with any great envy that Washington Garver counted the number of white people who had died in Pine Cone in the last couple of weeks. The white undertaker had even had to come to him and purchase a casket in which to bury one victim but he had taken the merchandise away in the middle of the night—so that no one would know that the farmer was to be buried in a “Negro” coffin.

  The black community in Pine Cone did not number above a thousand persons, and that included babies who had not even yet been given a name. Washington Garver was therefore almost sure to know any corpse that he laid out and embalmed; that made even sadder a profession that was not known for its cheer.

  The Silver Pine Funerary Home was not so grandiose as its name, but was merely a one-story house of eight rooms that Washington Garver had set up business in. One room he had saved for himself, and another for his son Roosevelt, who assisted him in the business, but all the other areas of the house were given over to the prep­aration of the corpses, and the holding of services.

  A large addition to the back of the house, adjacent to a screened driveway, was where the corpses were brought by the ambulance, by the police, by the family; and it was here that the bodies were drained of their blood, and in­jected with fluid that would preserve them through a funeral in July. This room was cluttered with tables and shelves holding chemicals, with surgical instruments that never wanted sterilization, with racks of clothing, and boxes of makeup and perfumes. It was nearly always decorated with flowers—chrysanthemums and carnations mostly—smelling of florists’ coolers.

  Washington Garver was a large man with shining black skin and a wheezing voice; he stood at the foot of one of these embalming tables now. He was having some dif­ficulty in pulling the shoes off the corpse of Audrey. The pool of blood and water in which she had lain had swollen her flesh and shrunk the leather.

  A bright white lamp directly over the girl’s body was the only illumination in the room; every crack in her skin, every speck of dried blood upon her damp dress was clearly visible, but all the edges and corners of the room and the things that were stored there were invisible in the surrounding darkness.

  A young black man, not much more than eighteen, and looking much too young to be doing this sort of thing, was cutting through Audrey’s wet dress with a pair of scissors. Her body was already stiff, and since the dress was ruined anyway, there didn’t seem much point in trying to salvage it.

  Washington Garver finally succeeded in getting the shoes off Audrey, and quickly he pulled off her socks as well; these he tossed into a large box that rested by the side of the door. They would be given to the black Baptist church ladies’ group, who would discreetly mend and clean the items, and then distribute them through the community, never letting on that they had belonged to the homicidal baby-sitter.

  Washington Garver spoke to his son, who was very carefully peeling the dress from the corpse. “Real bad what this girl done, Roosevelt, and I feel bad for her daddy, real bad. He was in trouble, you ’member, ’bout killing somebody, and he got out of trouble. Audrey would’ve been in trouble too, if she’d have lived, but now Audrey’s out of trouble forever. Ain’t gone be no jury for her, Roosevelt.”

  “Why you think she’d do it, do something like that?” Roosevelt Garver stared a moment into the face of the corpse, as if he thought he might read an answer to the question there.

  “Just a accident, I reckon, Roosevelt, just a accident, but I still think it was real bad.”

  “Well, Pa,” said Roosevelt, “it can’t have been no ac­cident, not putting a white baby in the washing machine, and then killing herself with a butcher knife and a elec­trical plug.”

  “Had to be a accident,” Washington reiterated. “Black people don’t kill white chil’ren. Black folks don’t kill theirselves either. Black folks only kill their family and their friends. It’s the white people that kill just anybody. Only the white people do that.” Washington Garver shook his head sadly over this melancholy reflection.


  The doorbell rang, and Roosevelt looked up. “You better get it. I probably smell of her, and if it’s her father there, he’ll smell her on me, and that’ll make him feel bad.”

  Washington nodded, and walked out of the room. While his father went to get the door, Roosevelt cut Audrey’s slip in half, from the bottom to the top, and pulled it open. When he did so, a necklace slid off her breast and onto the floor at his feet. He glanced down at the floor but could not see it. He stooped to retrieve it, feeling all around beneath the table, and in a few seconds brought it up to the light.

  It looked expensive, not the sort of thing that a fifteen year-old black girl would have when she was just about to commit murder. The chain was still hooked—and that was strange. If Audrey had been wearing it around her neck, then it would have had to come unhooked to fall off the way it did. And if she hadn’t been wearing it around her neck, why was she keeping it in her dress like that? It was just possible that she had stolen it, Roosevelt thought.

  After all, he considered, a girl who was capable of throwing a baby into a washing machine was certainly not above taking a piece of jewelry off a white woman’s dresser. He stared at the necklace a moment longer, lifted his head at the sound of his father’s footsteps, and then thrust the amulet into his pants pockets.

  Washington Garver entered the embalming room. “It was Audrey’s daddy,” he said. “I told him to sit out on the front porch till we’re done. There wasn’t no sense in letting him see her like this.”

  Roosevelt nodded his head in agreement.

  Chapter 57

  Johnny Washington sat on the front porch of the Silver Pine Funerary Home, rocking disconsolately in a cane-back chair. It was the middle of the evening, not much past nine o’clock, and Johnny had just brought over the choir robe in which his daughter was to be buried. He had seen Audrey’s body when the ambulance brought it to the funeral home, and Johnny was disturbed that his daughter had appeared so ill-content in death. The dead ought to lie peaceably and calm. But even motionless as she was, Audrey appeared sullen and nervous. Johnny had asked that the coffin be closed during the service. But the undertaker replied, “Not no need, Johnny. No marks on her ’cept the butcher knife cut on her wrist. We gone cross her hands, palm down, and not nobody gone see it, ’less they lift up her hand—and who’s gone do that?”

  The evening was warm, and bullfrogs in a ditch nearby croaked loudly, trying to drown out the crickets. Johnny Washington sat and rocked, and tried to think of nothing at all. An old black man came down the sidewalk pres­ently, saw Audrey’s father there, and called out to him in a friendly voice.

  “Hey, Johnny, what you doing here?”

  Dolefully, Johnny replied, “They got Audrey inside.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said the old man, “I’m just sorry for you, Johnny Washington.”

  Shortly thereafter, Johnny Washington got up from his chair and descended the steps of the mortuary. On the sidewalk he met a young girl, not much older than Audrey had been. He would have passed on by, but she stopped him.

  “It’s Ruby, Mr. Washington,” she said. “I heard about Audrey, and I just want to tell you how bad I feel about it, how bad.”

  “Thank you, Ruby,” said Johnny.

  “We wasn’t close, you know, Audrey and me, but that’s no reason why I shouldn’t feel bad for you, and that’s no reason why I shouldn’t go in that house right now and do her hair up right for the service.” Ruby was a beautician, and a capable one. She had been Roosevelt Garver’s girl­friend for two years and so it was she who got all the business of fixing the hair of female corpses. It was not a task that she was particularly fond of, but Roosevelt al­ways stayed by her and she was never alone with the body, so that it wasn’t too bad. And she was well paid for her services.

  Ruby was subdued when she spoke to Johnny Wash­ington, but normally she was energetic and voluble. She stood at the top of the steps to the Silver Pine Funerary Home and watched the bereaved father disappear around the corner. Then she knocked on the door, and presently Roosevelt appeared. Instead of letting her into the house, he came out onto the porch, and led her to the swing at one end of it. He wanted to spend a little time with Ruby in the dark before they started in again on Audrey, ready­ing her for the service the next day. He was about to tell Ruby just how tired he was, but she didn’t give him the chance.

  “I heard ever’thing,” she gasped, “right thirty minutes after she done it, and I knew they’d be bringing her right here. Didn’t wait for you to call me over. Lying in that blood and them soapsuds, gone be a real mess, and I know it’s gone take me a hour and three-quarter to get her hair done. Audrey,” she whispered, “wouldn’t come to me to get her hair done, she’d go ’cross the tracks to Marjorie, ’cause she’s cheap. Her daddy’s a cheap man, wouldn’t give her no money, wouldn’t hardly let her keep what she earned for herself over at the Taylors—and I bet the Tay­lors are sorry now they ever gave that girl a dime, after what she did to that baby. Her daddy’s a cheap man, and I bet she’s only gone get a pine coffin out of him.”

  “Cedar,” Roosevelt sighed.

  “Well,” said Ruby, unabashed, “I tell you, right now I am glad she didn’t come to my place, ’cause I don’t want to do the hair of people what’s gone go out and put white babies in washing machines.”

  “If white people gone spend their money on washing machines,” said Roosevelt sententiously, “then that’s what they got to expect . . .”

  Ruby laughed shrilly, then stopped short, and whis­pered: “But I am glad that I’m gone get to do Audrey’s hair, ’cause it will serve her right! Serve her right for go­ing ’cross the tracks when I was right there ’cross the street from where she lived and if she would have walked ten steps out of her way she could have looked at me through my own picture window. She thought I wasn’t good enough to do her hair, but now she don’t have no choice. She gone look real good in the church tomorrow.”

  “Service gone be held here,” said Roosevelt.

  “Why? ’Cause she murdered that baby? Her daddy’s not never gone be able to look a washing machine in the face again!”

  Ruby’s nonstop conversation wearied Roosevelt as much as working on a corpse, so he asked, “You ready to go in, Ruby?”

  “Your daddy through with her yet?”

  “I think so,” said Roosevelt.

  “Don’t you help him no more?” asked Ruby, with a little friendly sarcasm. “Lazybones!”

  “I’d rather sit out here with you.”

  “Um-hmh,” said Ruby with a doubting smile, but she was evidently pleased with the compliment.

  “I got something for you, Ruby,” said Roosevelt slyly.

  “Ohhh?” she cried, “what you got for me, Roosevelt?”

  Roosevelt pulled the amulet from his pocket and dan­gled it before Ruby’s eyes. It glinted softly in the distant light of a streetlamp.

  “Where’d that come from?” said Ruby.

  Roosevelt did not answer her.

  “Lot of colored people got to be dead in this town, ’fore you can afford something like that for me, Roosevelt Garver.”

  “Didn’t cost me nothing,” said Roosevelt.

  After a pause, Ruby leaned over and whispered harshly in her boyfriend’s ear, “You got that thing off Audrey!”

  Roosevelt nodded slowly.

  Ruby drew back, and whistled loudly. “And you are giving it to me?” she squealed.

  Roosevelt knew Ruby. He smiled and nodded.

  “I don’t want it,” said Ruby hastily.

  “Audrey got no use for it,” said Roosevelt.

  “Something like that,” said Ruby, “somebody’s gone miss.”

  “But they not gone know I got it,” replied Roosevelt. “Audrey’s mama’s dead. Buried her two years ago. It was after her funeral that Johnny Washington got in trouble, killing that man. Dying and killing runs in that family, looks like.”

  “What ’bout Johnny Washington? He’s gone know
something is missing off his little girl’s body, and he’s gone know what it is, and he’s gone know who took it!”

  “He’s not gone notice. He’s tore up ’bout Audrey. I don’t even think that the thing belonged to Audrey”—He swung it around by the chain—“I think she took it!”

  Ruby whistled again.

  “He may not even know about it. I don’t think he does,” continued Roosevelt. “And even if he does, how’s he gone know I got it? Or had it? ’Cause I’m gone give it to you.”

  “I can’t wear it,” whispered Ruby, “ ’cause people’ll see it, and then they’ll ask me where I got it, and what am I gone say then, Roosevelt Garver?”

  “Put it down your front. Nobody’ll see it!”

  Ruby grinned, and laughed, and then took the amulet from her boyfriend.

  Roosevelt stood, pleased that Ruby had taken the amulet. “Now you come on in with me, ’cause you got to do Audrey’s hair.”

  Ruby remained seated. She shivered dramatically. “You not gone leave me alone, are you? You know I can’t stand them dead bodies, just can’t stand the way they feel. Shampoo don’t never take right on a corpse . . .”

  Chapter 58

  The news of poor Audrey Washington and her diminu­tive white victim spread all through the black section of Pine Cone that Thursday night. On those evenings when the lights of the back room of the Silver Pine Funerary Home were burning, the neighbors did not rest until they had discovered who was dead, and of what cause. Some­times, when there was no other way to obtain the infor­mation, one of Washington Garver’s domino cronies would knock softly on the front door and ask of the un­dertaker, or his son, who it was that they were working on in the back.

  Audrey’s body lay in its coffin in the front parlor of the Garver establishment, and three of her good friends from high school, and the black Baptist preacher’s wife for chaperone, sat up all night with the corpse. They ate popcorn to keep awake. At his own home, Johnny Wash­ington did not lack for company either. Many of his good friends came over and helped him to demolish that after­noon’s paycheck in red wine and liquor. Johnny even bought Scotch whiskey, “ ’cause it’s the best, and Audrey was the best too.” Women from all over that section of town came over, and in an effusion of sympathy, cooked enough ham to send hog futures soaring, and wept enough to raise the water table.