The Elementals

by Michael McDowell

  Certainly she did not think that Odessa’s ideas were entirely accurate. Odessa didn’t think straight, that was a fact. Odessa’s ideas were confused and contradictory, and she said this and that about the third house, and this and that taken together didn’t make an ounce of sense. There was something to it, of course, but not what Odessa suggested. India suspected that it was indeed the ghost of Martha-Ann inside the house, and that was all. Lots of houses had ghosts, she supposed—people had done research. Even the Encyclopaedia Britannica had an article on ghosts—so that was probably what it was. A decent exorcism would dissolve Martha-Ann, and all this business about Elementals and “eat my eyes”—whatever that meant—was a lot of confused hocus-pocus. Odessa couldn’t help it. What with segregation and an illiberal state legislature, she had never had the educational benefits that India herself had enjoyed; it was even possible, she considered with a shudder, that Odessa had not finished high school. She meant to ask her.

  But if India chose to discount Odessa’s theories about the unreal occupants of the third house, she yet trusted the black woman’s sensibilities. Odessa would feel these things before and more surely than India herself. India suspected that the third house was not always operative in the matter of ghosts and spirits—that at times it was relatively benign. Perhaps it was a matter of the tides or the phases of the moon or large-scale weather patterns. In any case, she hoped that this second part of their vacation would coincide with a period of low activity in the third house, and though the unnaturally heavy rain didn’t augur well, it was with this hope that she searched Odessa’s face.

  In it she could read nothing, and Odessa refused to understand India’s prods and winks. At last, when India was helping take groceries into the Savage kitchen, she stopped and asked Odessa directly, “Listen, is everything all right?”

  Odessa shrugged.

  “You know what I mean,” persisted India. “You should be able to feel something. I want to know what you feel. Is everything all right or are we all going to be in trouble again?”

  “I don’t feel nothing,” said Odessa at last. “When there’s rain like this, when it’s being like it’s been today, I cain’t feel nothing.”

  But next day, even India could sense the change that had come over Beldame. The rain had let off just at suppertime the night before. The moon had reached full on July second and was now on the wane; it shone through India’s bedroom window and lighted the foot of her bed. Dauphin’s thirtieth birthday had dawned splendidly clear; the lagoon was higher than usual and a dirty chain of detritus marked high tide on the beach, but there were no other indications of the previous day’s storm. All the sand that had been blown against the house in months previous and lodged in crevices and dried against the windows had been washed away by the rain.

  The third house appeared to be no more than it was: a house which hadn’t been lived in or repaired in three decades or more, and which moreover was being slowly consumed by a dune of sand. It looked somber and picturesque, but not menacing. India even smiled when Luker dared her to peer through a window; but even the bright day and her intuition that nothing was wrong any more (perhaps Martha-Ann slept in the lagoon now) would not permit her to go so far as that. “Oh, no,” she said to her father with a smile, “I’ve had just about enough of that place.”

  “But you’re not afraid any more?”

  “I’m not afraid today.”

  “What about last night?”

  India shook her head. “I thought I was going to be scared, but I didn’t even have any bad dreams. I got up once to go to the bathroom, and when I came back in I went to the window and looked out at it. And it was just a house. You know what I think the problem was?”

  “What?” asked Luker.

  “I think I got cabin fever. But it had never happened to me before, so I didn’t know what to expect. I just went a little crazy, that’s all. I remember what happened inside the third house, but it’s as if it didn’t happen because it was so crazy. Luker, I’m glad you raised me in New York. Alabama’s weird.”

  “Yes,” he laughed. “I guess it is. But what about the pictures? How do you explain those?” India’s cavalier attitude toward the third house encouraged Luker to bring her fears into discussion, in hope they would all be dismissed.

  “I don’t know.” India shrugged. “It was just one of those things, I guess. I guess that part of it won’t ever be explained. I left ’em at the Small House, I didn’t see any point in bringing ’em back here just to scare myself. But when we go back to the city, what you’ll do is blow them up real big, and we’ll see what’s really there. You can’t really tell anything from a print that’s only three by five. You’ll make some eleven-by-fourteens and then we’ll see what we can make of it. Till then, I just won’t think about it.”

  “Very sensible,” said Luker. He stooped and pushed aside the thick narrow leaves in a bed of greenery in the yard. “That’s odd,” he said.

  “What is?” asked India.

  “This day lily. It’s already withering.”

  “I thought lilies died and then came back the next year.”

  “They do. But not till much later in the season, and certainly not till after they’ve bloomed. But this day lily is definitely withering.”

  “Maybe something got in the roots. It’s a wonder they live at all in all this sand.”

  Luker pulled the plant up and examined the roots for insects or scale. “The roots look fine,” he said. He knocked the heavy pendulous bulbs against his jeans to dislodge the loose soil. He tore off the dried and yellow foliage and tossed it aside.

  “You think it’s the bulb?” asked India.

  Luker peeled away several of the cloves that surrounded the central bulb of the plant then, pressing his thumbnails into the top of the bulb, gently pried it apart.

  It split suddenly open in his hand, and dry white sand spilled out over his bare feet.

  CHAPTER 28

  While India and her father were examining the strangely decayed lily in the yard, Dauphin and Odessa sat on the front porch of the McCray house, in the swing out of which Marian Savage had tumbled dead. “I’m glad we came back,” said Dauphin.

  “You got no work to keep you in Mobile?”

  “Oh, ’course I got work. Always got work, Odessa, you know that. But cain’t work all your life. If I was to go back to Mobile and work, I wouldn’t ’complish a thing in this world ’cept make more money. And what’s the point of having money ’cept to enjoy yourself and take care of the people you like taking care of?”

  “I don’t know,” said Odessa, “I don’t know nothing ’bout having money. Never had any, never gone have any.”

  “You got what Mama left you.”

  “That’s right, but long as I work for you and Miz Leigh, I’m not gone touch that money. I’m counting on you taking care of it for me.”

  “You bet I will. Odessa, you know me and you know I’m not good for much. But there’s one thing I can do, and that’s make money. I turn round and there’s money hitting me on the head. I don’t hardly know where it comes from. I tell you, it’s a good thing there’s something I can do. I’ll take care of your money and ’fore you know it, you gone have it rolling out your ears.”

  Odessa shrugged, lowered her head and rubbed the back of her neck. “Anyway,” she said, “it’s good you come back out here. You was always happiest at Beldame.”

  “I know it. Ever since I was little. Times I think I’m happy at Beldame and unhappy everywhere else. I’m sitting in that office in Mobile or I’m driving down the road or I’m listening to somebody talk to me about how much money I ought to lend him, and I think, ‘Lord how I wish I was at Beldame right this very minute sitting on the porch talking to Odessa or Leigh or Big Barbara or somebody!’ I’m just surprised I wasn’t born here! ’Cause if I had my way I’d live here and I’d die here and I’d be buried here! When I get to heaven I hope there’s a corner of it off somewhere that’s so much like Beld
ame I cain’t even tell the difference! I could sit on this front porch in heaven till the stars come falling down! You ever read in your Bible there’s some place like Beldame?”

  “Well,” said Odessa, “there’s ‘many mansions’—so maybe they got a few of ’em on a beach somewhere for you and me.”

  “Oh, that’s bound to be right, Odessa, that’s just bound to be what it’s like! Mama and Darnley are probably sitting there waiting for me right now. Darnley’s out in the water—he’s probably got a boat just like the one he had here—and Mama’s lying down upstairs. And at supper they sit down and they say to each other, ‘Where’s Dauphin? Where’s Odessa?’ Listen, Odessa, you think they’re thinking about us? You think they remember who they left behind?”

  “No way to know what the dead are thinking ’bout,” said Odessa. “Probably a good thing they not letting us know either.”

  And as they talked, a little breeze blew up from the west; and the wind sifted a glaze of white sand over the porch of the McCray house.

  Leigh and Big Barbara had been in the living room of the Savage house all that morning, happily talking over their plans for the coming months.

  “Mama,” said Leigh, “I am so glad you are taking this thing the way you are!”

  “You mean your baby! Well of course I’m happy about it, we’re all—”

  “No, Mama, I’m talking about your divorce. Luker and I were sure you were gone be upset, and have setbacks and get hooked on pills and I don’t know what all, but here you are talking like you cain’t wait to get out of your house and into mine!”

  “Well I cain’t!”

  “Well good!” laughed Leigh. “I tell you it’s gone be such a help to me to have you around. I’ve never had a baby and you’ve had two, you know what they look like and all that. I don’t know a thing about ’em, and I don’t think I want to know, either. Mama, when I go into labor I want you and Dauphin right there in the operating room. Dauphin’s gone hold my hand and soon as that baby comes out, you’re gone grab it up and run off with it. I don’t even want to see it till it starts first grade!”

  “Leigh!” cried Big Barbara, “you’re talking about your child! You’re gone love that baby! You’re not gone want to let it out of your sight!”

  “You take a Polaroid and send it to me and I’ll stick it in my billfold. I think I’m gone go live with Luker and India till that child is six years old.”

  “Luker doesn’t want you living with him,” said Big Barbara with a laugh.

  “I know,” said Leigh. “There’s a lot about Luker’s life that he doesn’t tell us about.”

  “Shoot! And don’t I know it!” cried Luker’s mother. “And I don’t want to know it either! But I tell you something. India knows all about it. She’s been talking to me—we’ve gotten real close in the time we’ve spent here together—and times are she starts to say something and then she holds back. That child has probably seen things and heard things that you and I never even read in those magazines you look at under the hair dryer.”

  They had wandered out on to the porch, but found that all the furniture there was filled with sand. Pools of it had gathered in the seats of the rockers and the glider and no amount of shaking and tilting could get rid of it all. “Yesterday that rain washed all the sand away, and it was so clean this morning! Now look at it! We’re leaving prints everywhere we walk on this porch! Mama, let’s walk down by the lagoon, and see how high the channel is now.”

  Big Barbara assented to this and mother and daughter strolled along the level shore of St. Elmo’s Lagoon, their conversation reverting to the limitless ramifications of Big Barbara’s divorce and Leigh’s pregnancy. When they reached the point where the houses were small and indistinct behind them and the channel was just visible before them, growing wider and deeper as the tide rose, Big Barbara pointed suddenly at the surface of the lagoon.

  “Law have mercy!” she cried.

  “What, Mama?” said Leigh. “What is it?”

  “Look there, Leigh. Don’t you see it?”

  Leigh shook her head, and her mother grabbed her arm and pulled her a few steps over. “You can’t see anything from there because of the reflection on the water, but look here, look what’s under there!”

  What Leigh could see when she moved nearer her mother was a submerged truck. All they could actually make out was the top of the cab: the windshield, back window, and part of the door frame. The rest was buried in the sandy bottom of the lagoon.

  “I never!” exclaimed Leigh. “Mama, have you ever noticed that before?”

  “Well of course I haven’t! ’Cause it wasn’t there before! I would have noticed a truck in the middle of the lagoon if it had been there, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know. Except, Mama, it must have been there a long time to get buried like that.”

  “Then we would have noticed, wouldn’t we? ’Course maybe it was buried a long time ago and that storm yesterday disturbed it and it came floating up.”

  “Oh, I bet that’s what happened,” said Leigh. “Listen, why don’t I swim out there and look inside?” Leigh was already in her bathing suit.

  “Oh, no!” protested Big Barbara. “Don’t do any such of a thing! What if there’s somebody under the dashboard, you don’t want to be diving under the water and then run into a dead body or something. Maybe long time ago somebody got drunk on the Dixie Graves Parkway and lost his way and drove right in the lagoon—the highway’s not more than a few hundred yards on the other side—drove right in and sank in and drowned. And nobody ever found out about it. If somebody drowned in that truck he’s probably still in there.”

  “Then I sure am not gone swim out there and look in!”

  “But I don’t imagine that’s what happened, really. It was probably kids, some kids from Gulf Shores getting drunk on Saturday night and driving a truck in the lagoon because it was a fun thing to do. It could have happened on July Fourth for all we know. I always suspected that bottom was soft. Poor old Martha-Ann! No wonder we never found her!”

  Half an hour later the entire population of Beldame was standing on the edge of St. Elmo’s Lagoon, peering into the water at the submerged truck. As soon as they had returned to the house, Leigh and Big Barbara had sought out the others and told them what they had seen. The discovery of a submerged truck in the lagoon was of more than sufficient novelty to draw them all out. The six of them in concert could make no better sense of it than Big Barbara and Leigh alone had managed. The truck had been there a long time, or it had not; there was a corpse in the cab, or there was not; someone had best swim out to look inside, or they had better remain on the shore. In any case, further investigation was put off until tomorrow—or the day after.

  To India’s eye, Odessa appeared disturbed by the discovery of the vehicle in the lagoon; and India then partook of some of that discomfort. However, when India asked Odessa if the truck meant anything, Odessa replied, “Mean, child? Trucks don’t mean nothing to me.”

  “But wasn’t it just an accident-like? What else could it be?”

  Odessa whispered so that none of the others heard her words: “D’you see, child, how far out that truck was in the lagoon? Didn’t nobody drive it out there. Somebody had, it would have gone down a lot nearer the other side—and it’s right out there in the middle! Something put that truck there, put it where we’d see it and know it wasn’t no accident—”

  “But why?” demanded India.

  Odessa shrugged and would say nothing more.

  The curious discovery provided their conversation through most of supper—smothered steak and little white peas and fried okra. These were Dauphin’s favorites, prepared in honor of his birthday. It was only toward dessert—a German chocolate cake with thirty candles that Odessa had baked before they left Mobile—that they returned to the infinitely interesting topic of the dissolution of the marriage of Lawton and Big Barbara McCray. They were all for it, and even Odessa, as she brought out a tray with five cup
s of coffee on it, ventured her approval in this manner: “Miz Barbara, I tell you, we sure are gone be glad to have you at the Great House. It was always a happy place when you was visiting Miz Marian there . . .”

  Luker and India drank their coffee black; Big Barbara and Leigh and Dauphin took sugar and milk. Luker and India sipped at theirs and repeated the family litany of gratitude, “Sure was good, Odessa.”

  To which Odessa replied invariably, “Glad y’all enjoyed it.”

  Leigh took a swallow of her coffee and immediately spat it out all over her cake. “Good lord!” she cried, opened her mouth wide and energetically wiped the back of her hand across it.

  “What’s wrong?” cried Dauphin.

  “Leigh?” said Big Barbara.

  “Don’t taste that coffee!”

  “Nothing wrong with it,” said India. “Mine’s fine.”

  “So’s mine,” said Luker.

  “It’s got sand in it,’ said Leigh. “I got a mouthful of sand! It’s all over my teeth and my gums and I hate it!” She got up hurriedly and ran into the kitchen. In another moment they heard the running water from the sink.

  “Ugh!” said Dauphin, tasting his own coffee, “it is full of sand.”

  “Must be in the sugar,” said India, and they all stared suspiciously at the sugar bowl. Luker reached over and stirred the sugar with a wetted finger; he brought it to his mouth and tasted. “Almost all sand,” he said with a grimace and wiped his tongue on his napkin. Beldame sand was that pure and white, that it could be easily confused with sugar. “Who’s the joker?”