All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By

by John Farris

Tears sprang to Champ's eyes. He made a conscious effort to hold the saber high and steady, but his arms trembled. He snuffled from weakness, and let the blade drop, the point narrowly missing bare toes as it struck the hearthstone.

  In command, but not ready. And so he would be killed like the others. Knowledge that had awakened him so early on this cheerful morning. Death was coming, he would fall.

  He replaced the saber in its tarnished scabbard and laid it on the mantel. It was no good to him anyway; too damaged to repair.

  But there was another, useful saber. Not far away.

  His old bedroom was next door. Nothing had been changed during his years away from Dasharoons. His metal locker from Blue Ridge Military Institute was at the foot of the bed. Champ opened it. He took out neatly packed cadet uniforms. Mothballs rolled along the floor. Near the bottom of the locker, blade protected by a soft and elegant jewelers' cloth, was the dress saber he had received from the company on graduation day. The hilt was gold, the blade unflawed Swedish steel.

  With his weapon in his hands he felt nerveless again, satisfied that, whatever his fund of strength, he need not die disgraced.

  He took a whetstone from the locker and, sifting on the edge of the bed, placidly concentrating, seeing nothing but his own quick reflection in the mirror surface, he began to work.

  "Jackson!"

  He heard her faintly, as if she were years away, separated from him by time rather than distance; it might have been his mother's voice. He was conscious then of the radiance of the sun, his eyelids glowing and warm. Something moved, he felt a shifting weight against his ribs, the sun was blocked. He heard himself groan. Drops of ditch water pattered on his face, collected in the hollows of his eyes. He trembled in irritation and raised a hand to skim away the lingering drops.

  Nhora caught his hand and held it tightly.

  "Be careful, you're still bleeding."

  Pressure against his chin, he couldn't open his mouth to answer. He grunted something.

  "Here, let me help you sit up."

  As he was lifted, supported by an arm across his back, pain arrowed from a cut and throbbing chin; he felt a chipped tooth with his tongue. His neck was stiff and painful too. Nhora's face, when he opened his eyes, was very close, somewhat blurred. He blinked to clear his vision. Didn't work. There were bits of leaf mold in her hair, a smear of blood—his?—on one cheekbone. A fly buzzed them both, then vanished.

  She took her other hand away from his chin and he glanced down at the bloody handkerchief she was holding, darker blots in the crimson.

  "How deep a cut?" he asked, moodily calculating stitches, not yet concerned about what might have befallen him. His memory was as bad as his eyesight. But there was a lump of foreboding in the region of his heart.

  "I don't know. It's almost stopped bleeding now. For a few minutes you were like a—a gored ox, I was scared." She turned her head to drop the wadded handkerchief into a rust-flecked coffee can filled with water. The sun jumped at him again. He traveled back an instant, to the flash in a bureau mirror, the stateroom aboard the tottering old Stephen Mulrooney. A room draped in shabby red velvet and oddly claustrophobic, like a chamber in a dead heart. The room had contained some kind of threat, and now he felt alarmed. What was it?—Just an old dress, a wig, some snakeskin. A childishly executed version of a voodoo goddess, but which one? That was crucial.

  Another flash-jump, to a little piece of time slick as ice: His mind slipped and slithered as he tried to grasp the significance of the locket and the portrait which he had—

  The next thing he knew he was pushing Nhora roughly away from him. She sat down hard, heels in the air, almost going over backward. Jackson scrambled to his feet and swayed like a drunk. Nhora was very close to tears.

  "Jackson, what's got into you? You'll start pouring blood again."

  He leaned against the car and looked at the river; the sun was much higher than it had been back in the thicket.

  Now he was shuddering. His shirt was sticking to the hairs on his chest. He looked down. Bloodstains everywhere, drip drip drip to the cuffs of his trousers. He stared at his clenched empty hands, dimly aware that he was missing something. But the blood baffled him.

  He looked at Nhora. She was standing but hadn't made a move toward him. She swam into sharper focus.

  "What happened?" he asked her.

  "Jackson, I don't know! You came running out of that stateroom and hit a post or something, then you fell facedown on the deck." She was trembling, from relief or fear. "Just good luck you didn't knock yourself out. I don't know what I would have done then. I stopped the blood as best I could, and led you back to the car—now what's the matter? Are you going to faint?"

  "You had," he said carefully, trying not to shy away from the new horror occupying his mind, "a snake in your hands."

  "Oh, God, is that all?" Nhora said with a look of irritation. She lowered her head and picked at bits of dried mud on her dress. "I don't know where it came from. I was waiting for you, I looked down, there it was right at my feet. I knew I had to get rid of it before you came out, or else—" She shrugged, raised her eyes. "Jackson, I told you, from the time I was a little girl I could handle snakes, even poisonous ones like the cottonmouth. I suppose I learned not to be afraid when I was with the Ajimba, they always had hundreds of snakes and lizards around. They prayed to them. Snakes were their gods."

  "This one was a monster—tall as you."

  "I think you're exaggerating, it's just your phobia." She spread her hands, indicating a length of three feet. "I don't give a snake any more thought than a june bug, now can we change the subject? And I hate the way you're looking at me. I'm not unclean, or some kind of freak, just because I picked up a snake. Why don't you tell me what you saw in that room that upset you so badly."

  "Nhora, I had a locket. What happened to it?"

  Nhora reached into a pocket of her dress and came up with the locket. It spun on the chain, spraying the light of the sun at him. "I gave it to my mother when I was seventeen, a year before she died. There's a picture of me inside. I haven't seen the locket for a couple of years, I thought it was lost. Where did you find it?"

  "In the stateroom. Hanging from the neck of a filthy ritual effigy."

  "How did it get there?"

  "Don't you know?"

  "Of course not!" she exploded. "Somebody found the locket, or else it was stolen—oh, I don't know." She opened the locket and studied the tiny portrait of herself. Then, dismayed, she snapped the locket shut and put it away. She turned with a look of bewilderment and walked a short distance from Jackson, head down again, brooding.

  Jackson waggled his sore jaw with care, but there was no grit and grind of a broken bone despite swelling on the right side behind the chin. He was no longer dizzy and in danger of losing his balance, and his vision was coming around nicely. He took off his jacket, stripped the ruined shirt, used a clean portion of it and water from the coffee can to scrub his chest, put his jacket back on. He made a pad for the cut and taped it securely in place, swallowed two aspirin and decided he would live.

  "What was it like, the effigy?" Nhora asked.

  "An antique dress, a wig, some snakeskin wrapped around a cross of iron."

  "Was it supposed to be—me?"

  "That's obvious. Still, it's quite unusual for someone other than a god to be depicted in the holy of holies—"

  She came stalking back to him, mad and frightened. "I swear to you I have nothing to do with voodoo rituals!"

  "Nhora, I believe you."

  "Oh, yes, you say that but your eyes look kind of sick and it's not just because you knocked yourself silly down there, you look as if you're afraid I'll touch you."

  "I'm grateful for your quick thinking; I admire you tremendously and I've accused you of nothing sinister, so please don't go flying off the handle at me."

  Nhora's face was dark red with anger; she was out of touch with reason as she raged, "I just want to know who's picking on m
e! And if I don't find out I'll get the sheriff, I'll come back myself with a can of gasoline and burn it, all of it!"

  She brushed past him and went flying along the rutted wagon road to the top of the levee. The ignition keys were in the Chevrolet. Jackson backed it around and drove slowly after Nhora.

  As soon as he stopped the car beside her, she got in. She wouldn't look at him. She was stiff with suppressed grief, eyes swollen but tearless. He drove on.

  "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have attacked you. I guess I was getting back because you scared the wits out of me. I couldn't stand seeing you hurt. Going to the river was a bad idea."

  "No, it wasn't."

  Nhora smiled then, gratefully, gave him a glance. "How many of us have you told about yourself, Jackson?"

  "You're the first."

  "Why?"

  "For the first time it's important—no, essential—that I separate reality from illusion at the beginning of a relationship, instead of saying nothing and encouraging the usual bad end, a spasm of conscience that's merely an excuse for skipping town with heavy heart and a full baggage of ego-serving remorse. But I can't give up my unsanctioned practice of medicine. My life is, and will be, based on self-deception, and I warn you that it's a habit of narcotic tenacity."

  "You haven't deceived me," she said calmly. "We all lead unresolvable lives, Jackson. As for bad ends, I've had them, and I can't afford another one either. I still want you."

  "Come what may. Nhora—delicate question, but I must ask—I saw the way you responded to Champ last night, and I know you care about him. I wondered if—"

  "Yes. I did make love to him. Once. The night after Boss died. We were alone, bewildered, so deeply wounded by the murders, by the terrible revelations in Clipper's diary, that sleep was impossible. It was a way of sharing pain, diluting it. I'm not ashamed, but I wouldn't want to do it again. Even with Nancy dead, I haven't given a thought to the possibility of—Champ and me."

  They jolted over a bump in the road and Nhora slipped easily to his side, clung to him. She sighed.

  "I've been thinking about something, since we were at Old Lamb's. It can't be coincidence."

  "What is that, Nhora?"

  "The day Clipper went crazy in the chapel, something else strange happened near there—on Railroad Ridge, which overlooks the town of Gaston and the military school. A little boy named—Jimmy, I think—was on the ridge picking flowers for his sick mother. A terrible thing happened to him in the woods. No one is sure what it was, he died just a few hours afterward. But he told his brother that a huge ball of light came out of the woods at him. There was a wind strong enough to tear the clothes from his body. He was burned, yet there wasn't a mark on him. I saw Jimmy at the hospital soon after it happened. Tried to comfort him. He was in such pain that when I touched him he fought and screamed—I accidentally scratched him, there was blood and skin under my nails."

  She looked at her nails now; they were dirty and broken.

  "It wasn't determined how the boy died?"

  "No. Do you remember what I told you about the chapel bell, swinging as if it were caught in a small tornado?"

  "Yes."

  "That was happening about the same time Jimmy ran into—whatever the light was, on the ridge. The next day I went to visit Jimmy's father and brother. We walked, in a drizzle, up the ridge and found the approximate spot where Jimmy had been gathering flowers. The flowers were all dead. Everything in a circle about fifty feet in diameter was withered, devastated, as if by frost. Even to the tops of the trees, dead leaves in May. I stood in the center of the circle, and looked across at the chapel on the campus a mile away."

  "This was near a railroad line? Perhaps a piece of ordnance was stolen from a train, carried uphill by the thieves and abandoned in the woods. A timing device may have set it off just as Jimmy—"

  "Don't you see? The same thing happened at Old Lamb's tonight! That powerful, withering light, Arabella blinded, the little girl dying like Jimmy in Virginia, twisted out of shape, her bones all but snapping from convulsions. Horrible."

  "There are similarities between the events, but we're nearly seven hundred miles from Virginia, and two years distant in time. I don't see why you insist there has to be a connection—"

  "I don't know either, but I feel so—guilty, as if I should know, as if the explanation's perfectly obvious and I'm willfully overlooking it."

  Jackson started to shake his head, but pain in the back of his neck gave him pause.

  "Nancy died in some mysterious way—you're not satisfied that she had a heart attack. It's as if we've been struck by lightning, again and again, wherever we go—the wrath of the gods. Why? Because of Clipper? Clipper paid, Boss paid. Who else has to pay? There's no refuge at Dasharoons. Will Champ be next?"

  "Nothing's going to happen to Champ."

  "Nothing good," Nhora said hopelessly, and was appalled. She made a small sound of distress and stifled further conversation by biting hard on a knuckle of one hand. She didn't speak again until they pulled up in front of the house. Servants were already at work, sweeping the veranda, watering flower beds. The house was filled with light and air, it had nobility in the morning: a monument to men, and an era, never to be seen again.

  "Take the keys," Nhora said. "You'll need the car to get to town."

  "Do you want to go?"

  "No. Will you be seeing Champ?"

  "As soon as I bathe and change."

  Hackaliah must have observed their arrival; his bathwater—lukewarm—was ready when he reached his room. He scrubbed and thought of Nhora: her touch. Out of the bath Jackson studied the cut on his chin with a hand mirror and decided the scar would be trivial. He put down the mirror and stared vacantly out the window; the glass was loaded with light. Nhora's grave, elliptical eyes, shimmering with the same insubstantial daybreak gold. Eyes and the soul; vision and comeliness. The inevitability of his need for her. He tightened his buttocks in response to heated pressure in the groin, the thickening penis. But that wouldn't do, not yet. We all lead unresolvable lives, Jackson. His bloody suit had been whisked away to be cleaned. He put on a tan tropical worsted suit and went upstairs to call on his patient.

  Champ was alone in the playroom, half-dressed, wearing an old striped robe over army pants and undershirt. He was skinny in the trousers, which were bunched at the waist. He had shaved himself. He was seated at a small table eating breakfast, doggedly because his hand wasn't steady. He looked up from the plate with eyes free of fever, looked through Jackson not as if he were absorbed in thought but rather steeling himself for something unpleasant that might also be coming through the door.

  "Getting your strength back?" Jackson said amiably.

  "I think so." He tried to refocus, but Jackson was made uneasy; it was as if apiece of Champ's mind had disappeared during the night, crumbling away from the mass.

  He stared at the bandage on Jackson's chin. "What happened to you?"

  "I took a tumble."

  Aunt Clary Gene came in without a sound, very nearly sleepwalking. She unpinned a black hat with a veil. She looked grave-marked, thin as moon shadow, as if each death in the community reduced her closer to invisibility. "Thank you, doctor," she said. "For all you did last night."

  "I'm sorry I couldn't do more."

  Champ put his fork down. "What about last night?"

  "Old Lamb passed on," said Aunt Clary Gene. She began brewing tea, filled with her usual quiet passion for whatever small task was at hand.

  "Oh." Champ gazed at his plate. "I don't think I can eat any more."

  "I'll just listen to your lungs then."

  As he was applying the disc of the stethoscope Champ said, "I need exercise. Too weak."

  "You can walk up and down the hall. No stairs." He completed his auscultation. "You're sounding much less congested, Champ. I'd still like X-rays, but I think they can wait for a couple of days."

  "When is Nancy's funeral?"

  "Tomorrow, I understand."

&
nbsp; "I'd like to go."

  "You aren't strong enough yet. The ordeal could give you quite a rugged setback."

  Unexpectedly tears began to drain from Champ's eyes, but his expression was more sullen than sad. "We only had a little time together. Now I'll never see her again."

  "I know how difficult it is for you," Jackson said, preparing an injection of penicillin.

  "Nobody's been kind enough to tell me what happened to Nancy."

  "It was her heart, Champ."

  "Her heart," he repeated, without emphasis, but a shudder flicked across his shoulders. "Where was she going when she died?"

  "She was on her way to San Francisco, to be with you."

  "San Francisco," he said worriedly, making fists, testing his strength. A prolonged shudder this time. There was something black and threatening in his downcast brow. "That's a lie, isn't it?" he said, as if he were talking to a third person in the room.

  Jackson hesitated, too long. "Why do you say that?"

  "Because she called me, at the hospital. I don't remember when. Said she had to get out of here, because of Beau."

  "She was afraid of Beau?"

  Champ lifted his eyes. "Ask him," he said, smiling thinly and suspiciously, as if he had always been sure that Jackson and Beau were the best of friends.

  "I can't, I don't know where your brother is. Could you roll up your sleeve for me?"

  Champ's attention shifted to the syringe. "Putting something in or taking something out?"

  "It's penicillin. I've been giving it to you right along."

  Champ watched the syringe as if he were destined to be eternally fascinated by it. Then a dreary change came over him, he lost the keyed-up suspicious look and wandered from his line of attack. ". . . Okay. Just don't take anything out. Too much of me has disappeared already. You understand what I mean."

  "Not exactly. Tell me more about Nancy. She called you in San Francisco and—"

  "Had to find Beau. Nancy was trying to get to Beau. Or something like that. I meant to ask her what it was all about, coming home on the train last night. Was it last night? We talked for a long time. I told her how it had been for me in the war. There are men who love war. But I'm not one of them. Found that out once and for all. Nancy understood."