The Amulet

by Michael McDowell

  The fat woman sat by while Sarah fed Dean, and Sarah began to think that she had got away with it. But she also wondered about Jo’s strange and unexpected behav­ior in this. Sarah had come back from Becca’s with new resolve to take control of her life again, to fight Jo—and fight Dean—to the last drop of her blood, and if necessary, theirs. Now she felt as if she were lying in wait for them, preparing herself for a long siege against the mother and son.

  That would take time, however, and while she played her games with Jo, other people in Pine Cone might die. But Sarah knew that haste and hysteria and strident ac­cusations against Jo would do no good, and that the only way to get at Jo was by the same methods she used her­self: silence, deviousness, and treachery. All Sarah’s strength was gathered up from her heart, from the whole of her body, and set right against the backs of her eyes. Nothing would escape her, and she would feel no remorse for anything that happened, for anything that would have to be done.

  At last, after Dean had finished his supper, Sarah’s patience was rewarded. Jo said, “Becca told me about them two colored girls that died in the beauty parlor.”

  Sarah looked up but said nothing. She doubted if Jo was telling the truth.

  “She said you went in there, and saw where it hap­pened, and all.”

  Briefly, Sarah told what she knew of the circumstances of the deaths of Martha-Ann and Ruby.

  “Becca said that you told the sheriff about the amulet.”

  Sarah nodded. “I told him I was looking for it, and I described it to him.”

  “What else did you tell him about it?”

  “Nothing else. I just told him I had lost it, and was looking for it, that’s all. If I had told him . . . anything else, he wouldn’t have believed me.”

  Sarah saw that this lie pleased Jo, and relieved her of some anxiety.

  “But you told Becca . . .” said Jo.

  “Becca believes in all sorts of things. Becca would be­lieve anything you said to her. You know, we were watch­ing The Song of Bernadette on TV the other night, and Becca made Margaret sleep in the same room with her, ’cause she was afraid that the Virgin Mary was gone make an appearance in the bedroom closet . . .”

  The two women were in a standoff now, and neither said anything for a few minutes. Jo continued with her sewing, and Sarah read through two short articles in Redbook.

  “What you gone do now?” said Jo.

  Sarah folded the book in her lap, but kept her place. “I’m gone see what happens tomorrow . . .” Then she smiled, and opened the magazine again.

  That had been an act to scare Josephine Howell; Sarah really wasn’t sure what she would do next—but it was above all necessary to keep Jo on her guard. That morning, as she prepared herself for the beginning of the week at work, Sarah had noticed with satisfaction that Jo was nervous, and so distracted that she forgot to be irri­table.

  Sarah dreaded the beginning of this week, another forty hours on the assembly line in which she would have noth­ing to do except think of Jo, and Dean, and the amulet. But she had drawn her strength up, and was, in fact, re­assured to know that she was willing and prepared to fight, that she was ready to risk everything. She had got beyond despair.

  Chapter 69

  The Monday morning on which all the young people were to be let out of school was bright and warm. And though it was the first day of the week, the great crowd of workers that entered the Pine Cone Munitions Factory did so cheerfully. Playfully they shoved one another up the small narrow flights of wooden steps into the factory and managerial offices of the place.

  After Sarah and Becca had parked the car in the park­ing lot and had got out, they became separated, moving along with different groups of acquaintances into the building. It was a happy morning, for the end of the school year, even for those who hadn’t been inside a class­room in thirty years, still meant the beginning of summer in Pine Cone. And summer in south Alabama despite the worsening heat meant trips to the Florida coast, going fishing in the late afternoon after work, picnics, and bar­becues.

  A couple of minutes before the whistle was to blow, Becca and Sarah seated themselves at the assembly line, arranging for two hours of work before the coffee break.

  Becca checked over her religious artifacts on the boards beside her, and then pulled the amulet out from under­neath her blouse, setting it to best effect. Sarah stood up and leaned over the partition that separated them, in­tending a final few moments of conversation before the belt started up.

  “Margaret told me yesterday she was going picnicking today,” she said. “She told me—”

  Becca had turned to face her friend, and Sarah stopped short when she caught sight of the amulet around Becca’s neck.

  “Becca!” Sarah cried.

  “What?” said Becca, with surprise.

  “Becca, where’d you get that thing?” said Sarah, in great alarm. Sarah was very frightened, and completely at a loss to know how Becca had come by the amulet. She could not even stop to think of possibilities.

  Becca stared at her friend blankly and grasped the amu­let protectively to her breast.

  Sarah reached for the amulet, and actually had her fin­gers around it, but Becca pushed her hands away vio­lently.

  The machinery ground up suddenly, and the assembly belt quivered and moved forward. Sarah again spoke to her friend, but her question could not be heard over the sound of the machinery. Again she lunged for the amulet, but Becca jerked away. The partition behind her was up­set and fell against another female worker. Two figurines smashed to the floor.

  Becca stared around her, as if in panic, and Sarah made a move to come around the partition to get at her. The women in the immediate vicinity, those who could see what had happened, stopped to stare. What had come over these two women, who were best friends in all the world?

  Becca fled from Sarah down the aisle. Workers stopped and looked, and tried to shout their curiosity and wonder to one another over the sound of the machinery. Sarah ran after her, determined now to get the amulet, no mat­ter the cost, no matter the embarrassment.

  Becca turned a corner into an aisle bordered with much larger pieces of machinery. These were die presses and the like, all operated by men. She whirled around to see where to go next, and then fled down the aisle, heading toward the door that opened onto the parking lot. All the men turned and stared, but none tried to stop her. Sarah was almost as quickly around that corner as well and gave chase. Becca was an older woman and not as quick, so that Sarah soon caught up with her. Sarah reached for­ward and grabbed at the amulet. Becca lunged to the side to get away from her friend, stumbled and careened; she fell beneath the dies of a metal-punch machine.

  The operator of the machine, even as he saw Becca stumbling, moved to turn off the machine’s switches. He was too late. Two of the large circular dies, like pistons in an automobile engine, cut through Becca’s body. The sickening sound of crushing bones could be heard above everything else. Sarah screamed Becca’s name.

  The dies came up again, dragging Becca’s body a cou­ple of feet into the air before letting it drop again. The machinery halted. Blood gushed from the obscenely large wound in Becca’s body. The operator had run away, and Sarah continued to stare at her friend’s corpse. Bec­ca’s eyes remained open. Sarah could no longer see the amulet about her neck.

  She screamed at the corpse, though she could hardly hear herself over the machinery. “Where is it, Becca, where is it?”

  Sarah spun around in panic. Becca was dead, Becca had died in front of her eyes, Becca had died because Sarah had chased her through the plant. Sarah had wanted to protect her friend against the prediction of the Ouija board, and had succeeded only in fulfilling it. Becca had had the amulet around her neck when she fell into the machine, and now it was no longer there.

  With revulsion matched only by her determination, Sarah knelt beside the corpse, ignoring the crowd of men that in the past few seconds had begun to gather. She tore open the
top of Becca’s blouse. Blood dyed Sarah’s hands to the wrists. The amulet wasn’t there; it must have come loose in the fall, and dropped somewhere near. Maybe it had been smashed in the machine. Sarah dropped to her hands and knees and scurried around on the bloody hard­wood floor searching for it, and violently resisting the ef­forts of the men around to raise her.

  Because of the great size of the factory, and more es­pecially because of the tremendous volume of noise in the place, only a few people realized that something terrible had happened. Because the machine in which she was killed was set back a little from the others, only a couple of people had actually seen Becca Blair die. The women who worked on the assembly line had only seen the two women running off, and with the rifles still coming through they had not the leisure to follow after them. The two women on either side of Becca’s and Sarah’s places had to work double-time while those two were absent and per­form their tasks for them on each rifle that was to go through. They cursed Sarah and Becca both.

  Sarah stared round her. She had no idea what she ought to do now. The man who operated the die press had gone off to get help, but had not yet returned. Several more men, also mechanics, stood staring aghast at Becca’s corpse. Two workers had pulled it out into the aisle and hidden it, as best they could, beneath a canvas cover. They stared at Sarah in great apprehension, for in their eyes it was she who had caused the horrible death of Becca Blair. Sarah staggered away. She came around an­other corner and was once again within sight of the conveyer belt and the long line of her friends and ac­quaintances.

  Sarah looked about her distractedly and attempted, without knowing what she was doing, to wipe onto her dress the blood that stained her hands. Suddenly she gasped. The amulet, gleaming gold and black, was caught around the barrel of one of the weapons on the con­veyer belt.

  A woman with a drill faltered when she saw the amulet appear before her, and in her surprise she drove the drill through the palm of her hand. She screamed shrilly in pain, and all the workers near her pulled back in alarm. The injured woman overturned her chair, and lurched across the floor. In another moment her friends rose and gathered around her.

  Sarah tried to get at the amulet, but could not reach the assembly belt through the knot of people blocking her path. She screamed for them to get out of her way, but they only stared at her uncomprehendingly, and then turned back to the woman whose hand was being band­aged.

  Sarah knew now that she had to get hold of the amu­let before anything else happened, so she picked up a rifle that lay atop an unclosed box along the outside wall. She waved it round menacingly, and though the women all knew that it was unloaded, instinctively they drew back. By this action, and by the blood on her dress and her hands that they noticed for the first time, all the women were sure that Sarah had gone entirely out of her mind.

  A woman, who had never liked Sarah, ran up and at­tempted to wrest the rifle from her. Sarah pushed her down onto the floor with the butt of the weapon, but had to work to disentangle her foot from the woman’s crossed arms.

  On the other side of the building there was now a large amount of shouting and a general commotion over the discovery of Becca Blair’s mangled body. Nothing was intelligible because of the noise of the machinery.

  The men gaping around Becca’s corpse had no idea of what was happening on the other side. Most of the women from the assembly line had abandoned their positions, and were now crouching behind their partitions, or the shelv­ing, and stared in wonder at Sarah Howell, who scrambled among the partitions, knocking the incomplete rifles onto the floor.

  A very few workers had remained in their places as long as possible, but they had now given up in frustration, when the rifles shuddered past them having been ne­glected in the previous stages of assembly.

  Never before had the Pine Cone Munitions Factory fallen into chaos. Machinery had broken down before, even the conveyer belt, and people had sat on their hands until it was repaired. But now everything moved on, and none of the machinery was still—but nothing worked properly. The male workers attempted to shut off their machines, but the switches were ineffectual in cutting the power. Even the die machine under which Becca Blair had perished so miserably suddenly reactivated itself, and punched at a terrible speed, as if greedy for another victim. The men cautiously backed away from their ma­chines with the growing, terrifying realization that they no longer had control over them.

  The chief electrician ran to the main power boxes at the end of the great room, and though he changed the position of all the levers, no alteration was apparent. None of the machines was shut off.

  Beneath all this, the conveyer belt had continued to move, and even to accelerate beyond its accustomed pace. The rifles shook and danced around on the belt; some were shaken off onto the floor. The wail of the machinery increased in volume and in pitch, until it was a piercing, unavoidable scream. All the shouting stopped, and every worker—even the woman who had pushed the drill through her hand—stood still, with their hands over their ears, and looked open-mouthed at the assembly belt. When they turned around again, Sarah was nowhere to be seen. The belt went faster and faster, and all the rifles were shaken apart into their components. Those scraps of metal bounded, and flew about, and were thrown off the belt. Several women who had sought to retrieve their purses and other personal belongings from the partitions, were brutally injured by the flying bits of metal, which seemed to seek out their eyes, mouths, and throats.

  Two rifles at the very end of the line unaccountably exploded, with bright sparks and terrific reports. A woman standing nearby threw her hands above her face, and col­lapsed onto her knees, swaying widely in intense pain.

  On the other aisle, several of the largest pieces of ma­chinery, which were operating at twice and three times their normal speed, began to smoke. White gasps of clouds shot out from their tops at first, but soon the double row of machines was billowing forth black smoke along its entire length. In another few moments, these dark clouds were shot through with shooting sparks and small, licking flames.

  One worker, who took hold of the handle which con­trolled the velocity of his machine, had his arm wrenched out of its socket when the handle suddenly reversed the direction of its circular motion.

  Every worker in the building at once directed his gaze upward. The incandescent lights in the rafters above had suddenly increased in brightness. Then the workers, who were standing together in the aisles, as far from the ma­chinery as possible, stared down at the floor, so as not to be blinded. The lights went searing white and then burst, showering hot glass everywhere and on everyone, inflict­ing small painful cuts on every inch of exposed skin.

  Throughout the building, windows shot up so suddenly and so forcefully that the glass in the panes shattered, and the frames of the windows splintered. The factory workers turned and gaped, astounded by the sight of the factory falling apart around them. They had not yet the sense to leave the place, so surprised were they by the extraordinary events themselves. Because of the noise, no communication was possible. Each worker was alone in his fear.

  The clothing of two workmen was ignited by stray sparks and the men ran down the aisle followed by a third, spraying a foaming fire extinguisher at them. The sight of these two men, fleeing in their flames, scared the workers more than anything else, and as one man they started to run for the door. It was as if they had realized, each at the same moment, that they were doomed if they remained inside a moment longer.

  Shelves and cases filled with tools and spare parts top­pled over in quick succession, as during an earthquake. Three women were caught beneath the largest and heav­iest of these.

  A man was jostled by his own wife in their attempt to escape and he fell against a machine used to fashion and attach serial-number plates to the rifles. Two small bolts drove through his arm, riveting him to the machine. He tore away from it, leaving behind two bloody mounds of flesh, muscle, and splintered bone, but fainted from the shock before he could
reach the exit.

  In the managerial offices in a different building, all work had stopped for a moment while everyone discussed the news that had just been phoned over: that one of the assembly line workers had died on the job. They won­dered who it might have been, how she might have died, and whether the accident would entail an investigation. The machinery in the plant was a distant, constant hum under these whispered conversations, only a little louder than a refrigerator motor.

  Conversation stopped altogether when that hum greatly increased in volume, peaking in a piercing whine. All the office workers—executives and secretaries and stock-room clerks—ran to the windows that faced the factory build­ings to see what had happened. They all gasped to see the first few workers spilling out of the plant. They cried aloud when a young woman fell down the stairs and was tram­pled in the rush.

  “Let’s go see what’s wrong!” someone shouted and there was a general movement to the front door of the offices. But before even one man had gone through those double doors, every telephone in the building rang at once, setting up an intolerable jangling. The workers looked at one an­other in perplexity. A secretary lifted one of the phones; there was no one on the other end, but as soon as she replaced the receiver, it began to ring again.

  Two frosted-glass partitions between executive offices shattered noisily and the glass poured onto the floor, again with small but painful injury to those standing nearby.

  All the water fountains in the corridors suddenly arched their jets of icy water far into the air, and could not be stopped. The floors became spotted with slippery pools of cold water. In hurrying from one room to another, people skidded and fell in their haste.

  Bracketed walls of shelves gave way in every office, sending hundreds of pounds of books and supplies onto the heads of those who turned helplessly about in the rooms, unable to conceive of what was happening to them. Filing drawers shot out of their casings with force great enough to crack the ribs of those unlucky enough to be standing near them. All the toilets overflowed at once so that even more water poured out into the corridors.