John Crow's Devil

by Marlon James

  “Well, church, what if I tell you that was no man that you killed? You believe me when I talk to you, Lucinda? Listen to me. God made man in His own image, but He made the Devil in His own image too. And His demons. You babes in Christ, don’t you see what’s happening? I know what the problem is, your hearts are too hard! If your hearts weren’t so hard, God wouldn’t have to put so much pressure on you. Don’t you see? Church?

  “God is opening your eyes, so that you see sin the way He sees it. What does Leviticus Twenty, verse fifteen say? I read, And if a man lies with a beast he shall SURELY be put to death. And after cows, my brother and sisters, what’s next, boys? Is that where you want that pervert’s penis to end up?

  “Turn with me to Exodus, Chapter Thirty-two, and verses twenty-six to twenty-nine:

  Then Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said, Who is on the Lord’s side, let him come unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

  And he saith unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man and his brother, and every man his companion, and every man and his neighbor.

  And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses, and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.

  “Follow me. What did Moses do to the Israelites who were worshipping the Golden Calf? He butchered every single one. Three thousand. And yet look at us, crying over one. God is God. And He will kill your own mother if she is serving the kingdom of darkness. Had the Israelites refused to obey the Lord, do you think they would have made it to the promised land? And if you don’t kill the sin that so easily entangles, how will you ever come into the true promise of God?

  “Christianity is not a romping business. Men of God, this is war! And the Devil don’t fight fair. Look at what that Massa Fergie was doing. Cut it out! Cut it out! Cut it out! If people come here with the smell of Satan, send them right back out. Anything that is of the Devil needs to be driven right back to Hell.

  “And the quickest way to send something back to Hell is to kill it.”

  The Apostle saw him first. The second he passed Mrs. Fracas, the Rum Preacher sparked a disquiet in her that took over the church. The congregation was silent, but standing. Bligh was in his white suit, all clean and sparkling except for the right shoulder that bore the weight of a filthy burlap sack. The Five came from five directions on the Apostle’s orders, but to the shock of all, Bligh raised his hand high and pointed two fingers. All five stopped. Bligh marched slowly to the altar and stopped directly in front of Apostle York.

  “You’re like a boil on my arse, Bligh. I squeeze you out, you grow back. I drive you away, you keep coming back. Maybe I should just whip you? You think I should? Maybe I should—”

  “Then I’d be lucky, cause word is you whipping young men and killing old ones. But who you going to kill for this?”

  He threw the weight down but held onto the sack. It fell to the floor. Those who were closest screamed first. Brother Vixton vomited from the smell. The congregation, most of whom had not seen what he threw down, stormed out of the church anyway, knocking down chairs, benches, the christening fountain, and the children. Within seconds, the church was empty, save for the Rum Preacher, Apostle York, and the goat, cold and muddy with a head twisted upside down, yet seamless with the body. Mud marked the floor. The stench of death woke the altar. The Apostle looked up, furious. The Rum Preacher could see right through his eyes to a second face. Before words were said, a wind whipped itself up into a tempest and slammed the doors shut.

  PART TWO

  LUCINDA

  Aweek shy of her tenth birthday, Lucinda’s papa struck her mother, called her a whore, and disappeared like Nicodemus, a thief in the night. Lucinda kept herself awake for several nights after that, waiting for his return. Her mother said he had left because his daughter was ugly and impudent. That was her earliest memory.

  Little girl Lucinda was at school, fidgeting with her uniform as she sat at her desk. An hour had passed since the bell rang and the school was empty. She heard the breeze whistling through the louver windows. On the floor below the blackboard was a stick of orange chalk. Usually, she would have leapt for the thing, shoved it down her pocket, and ran straight home where she would teach the plants how to write, in between beating off every single leaf with her belt. Otherwise the silence would have scared her out. She had never been the last to leave the classroom before. The room had never looked so huge. With children in them, desks seemed to be alive. But here, with the wind whistling and the noon brilliance fading, they were coffins with legs. She had been holding her piss for an hour. A cramp would come back, sometimes mild, sometimes monstrous, and she’d squeezed her thighs tight, hoping to send the piss back up. But little drops escaped and damped her bloomers.

  They had laughed at her. Even Elsamire, who shared her desk, covered her mouth to hide the slowly growing front tooth. Now their laughs seemed to come back every time the piss came back. She squeezed her thighs tighter, clenched her teeth, shut her eyes, and counted backwards from one hundred to one. If only she could get to one, then the piss would go back. If she could just get from 100 to 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 91, 90, 89

  88, 87, 86, 85, 84, 83, 82, 81, 80

  79, 78, 7—

  “Lucinda! What in Heaven’s name you doing in here chile? What kind of idle skylarking you up to?”

  The teacher was upon her before Lucinda could speak. She was so tall that she seemed to scrape the ceiling with her hair. She had no eyes. The thick glasses reflected light in Lucinda’s face. But her hands were strong. When she gave you a beating, you stayed beat. The teacher clutched Lucinda’s cheeks and squeezed.

  “You ill?”

  Lucinda shook her head.

  “Toothache? All them godforsaken sweeties rotting your mouth?”

  Lucinda shook her head.

  “What about your house? You mother lose her head again?”

  Lucinda shook her head.

  “Then what is the reason for this dillydallying? Look how long school dismiss?”

  There were five voices with which an adult spoke. Lucinda recognized them, because her mother had only one. Mary Palmer’s mother had three. There was the “dinner ready” voice, the “get off the veranda that a just clean” voice and the “never mind, baby, it soon get better” voice. No matter what was said, everything that came from the teacher’s mouth sounded like an inquisition. The “you’re idle and you’re evil” voice.

  “Girl chile, do it look like is breeze me talking to? Speak up, little girl, why you not going home?”

  Lucinda would not speak.

  “I losing my patience with you. Why pickney ears must always hard? Why unu always begging for a beating?”

  Lucinda looked down in her lap.

  “You want problem? Is problem you round here looking for? Answer when big people speak to you! I will give you nuff problem. Get up this blinking instant. Me say, git up!”

  The teacher grabbed Lucinda by the collar and yanked her up. She screamed as the bench rose with her for a second then fell back, tearing off her uniform at the waist. Now you have you throne, Lucinda Queenie, Elsamire had said, chuckling as she waved the bottle of glue at Mary and the others. Lucinda was confused until she tried, one hour later, to go to the bathroom.

  “Oh for Heaven’s sake, what is wrong with these pickneys! Is the Devil in them, Jesus, must be the Devil. Them know how much money me pay for that glue? Them think say glue cheap? Straight a Kingston me, meself go buy the glue and look how them waste it. Idle hands, Jesus. Devil’s workshop for sure. Devil’s workshop. Gal, go to you bloodclaat yard before me give you reason to stay. And if you tell anybody what me just say, is me and you tomorrow.”

  Outside the wind whispered laughter as Lucinda’s legs felt the warm stream of piss.

  She went home on secret roads. She crossed the river instead of the bridg
e and waited until evening. Her mother’s house was not part of the Gibbeah Plan. It hung like the other shacks on the outskirt but still within the boundary of the river. There were two rooms, a bedroom for her mother and the kitchen-dining-sitting room that was the bedroom for Lucinda. The house was overrun with old furniture stolen from an abandoned plantation. Luxurious red chairs blackened by coal and black magic. Four of these chairs were scattered around the room as if they had placed themselves. A bamboo coffee table with a vase of plastic flowers sat in the center of the room. There was a gray Formica dining table to the right but no chairs, and the tabletop was littered with dried plants, glass jars filled with vinegar and water, spoiled mangos, and shriveled apples. Lucinda opened one of the cupboards and pushed past the jar filled with lizard skins and dog paws to find the last bag of police-button cookies.

  Now to figure out how to slip outside without stirring her mother, whose room she had to pass. Her mother sounded busy. Maybe she would not see. Lucinda tiptoed past the room but looked when she heard the comb fall and bounce on his shoe. She followed his legs, moving up from one dot of curled body hair to the next. She moved up to his sweaty buttocks that clenched tight when he plunged in and spread wide when he pulled out. She moved up to his shirt, so orange that the glow tinted her mother’s feet, both of which where on the man’s shoulders. Her mother was on the dresser, her sweaty back greasing the mirror as the man rammed inside her. Lucinda imagined his cock as stubby as he was plunging in and out of her mother’s vagina that was as loose as she was. Then he shifted and she saw it for a second, his penis disappearing into her mother and his jerky balls bouncing like elastic. Her mother had two gentlemen a week, sometimes three. By the time Lucinda looked in the dresser mirror, he had long seen her. The man raised one of his bushy eyebrows and smiled, rounding his fat face. He gyrated, swirling his hips and thrusting harder, as her mother held on.

  “Woi! Woi, you donkey sweet, Daddy. Woi, me womb a shif. Take it easy with you donkey-la-la. Easy with you donkey-la-la.”

  The man grunted and stepped away.

  “Come, black bull, give me the milk.”

  The man grunted again. Lucinda heard little drops fall to the floor.

  “God no like when man spill him seed, bitch.”

  “God no like when you fuck for free either, donkey la-la.”

  “If me hafi pay money,” he said, throwing the bills at her crotch, “then the pussy better more tight. How bout fi her own next time?”

  “Fi who? What you talking bout?”

  The man motioned to the mirror but the woman turned to the doorway, to the blur of Lucinda running away.

  “What the—”

  Lucinda sat outside on the steps eating police-button cookies. The force came so sudden that she felt nothing. The bag of cookies flew high in the air and landed in the dirt after she did, hands first, then face, as she skidded in the dust. Her mother nearly lost balance after kicking her.

  “Nasty nayga bitch.”

  Lucinda knew the underbelly of the country. She knew the secret springs, winding roads, and invisible spirits more than anyone twice her age. Most she had learned from her mother. Two weeks later, on a moon-tinted night, Lucinda helped her mother brew the callaloo tea, then watched her drink. They were behind the house, close to the river to hear the flow, but hidden between trees so thick that no light could be seen. Her mother grabbed a bottle filled with river water, took some into her mouth, and spat into the bonfire. As the vapor vanished, so did she.

  Lucinda had stopped speaking to her classmates after the pit toilet incident, but spoke the day before Christmas Eve. There was nothing remarkable to the day. Some passed it with lethargy, some with industry. But Elsamire, who sat beside her in class, was dead.

  They found her on the rocks, by the spit of the sea. She had landed with violence, her body exploding like a smashed tomato. Above, back on the cliff, looking down, were her fellow students of the school outing, including Lucinda, who whispered to Mary, “Ah bet she wish she could a fly.”

  She had seen the body, but it was at Elsamire’s funeral, where the casket was closed, that Lucinda saw the devastation of death. She vomited on one of Mr. Garvey’s nephews, infuriating those around her for trying to steal attention at the poor little girl’s funeral. They wouldn’t have known, but her mother knew. She raised her chin and looked down at her daughter from the ridge of her nose.

  Lucinda went home to her cot and fell asleep. When she awoke, night had fallen and a candle burnt in the room, throwing jagged shapes on the wall. One of the shapes broke away from the others and sat down beside her.

  “Me know what you did,” her mother whispered. Lucinda said nothing. “You hearin me? I say, I know what you did.”

  “Mummy?”

  “Don’t Mummy me. You think you fool everybody? You nearly fool me too until me see say me missing a few ingredients. Special ingredients. Things you mix and brew if you want a certain bitch out of the picture.”

  “Out of the picture, Mummy?”

  “Go on, play fool to catch wise, but I know you. It start sweet you, don’t it? Me see it in you face. You starting to like how blood taste. Make sure what happen a night no come back in day.”

  Lucinda sat alone at her desk for the rest of the year, never approached by anyone.

  Adolescence was brutal for all except Clarence. His looks were miraculous, especially considering the ugliness of both parents. Pretty and ugly were loose words in Gibbeah, and as such, his beauty had as much to do with light skin and pink lips as anything else. Pity about the picky negro hair, his mother would say. His growth was a matter of pride, and shame for others. Clarence knew this from the day the boys stopped bathing together. They had stripped naked as they always did and dove into the frigid water screaming and laughing. But as Clarence climbed out, the other boys knew for the first time that he was different. They saw a patch of hair where there wasn’t before, hair that they didn’t have, and it was red. Lucinda saw the red hair too. A day would not pass where she did not sneak down to the river and hide under the cover of banana leaves as she watched the boys frolicking naked in the water. She watched as day by day all the boys stopped coming to the river except Clarence.

  “Them things you want to do, you can do to me,” she said to him from the river bank, half hiding in the shadow of banana trees. Clarence knew where to look. He had been watching her watching him for months.

  “Oh? You think so? You don’t even have titty yet,” he said. He waded through the water toward her. Lucinda tried not to look at his red patch.

  “Is not titty you goin use, or you didn’t know?”

  “What? Look yah, cross-eye chi-chi, me know everything.”

  “Then show me, nuh?”

  “You want me to show you big-boy things? You think you ready for big-boy things? Alright, big girl, see me here.”

  “No now. Tonight.”

  “Little girl catch her fraid.”

  “Me not fraid! Is you fraid. Me say tonight.”

  “Tonight, then.”

  “Me want it in the cemetery.”

  “The cemetery?”

  “The cemetery. Or you nah get the pokie.”

  It turned out that Clarence knew nothing of female genitals. He cursed her tightness for minutes until he remembered that he too had an anus. When he finally stuck her aright, he pushed her down on a dirty concrete grave. His hips slammed into hers a few times before he pulled out and sprayed her thighs with semen. Then he left her in the cemetery. She heard her papa’s footsteps. Lucinda cried for days.

  A week before Lucinda’s twenty-second birthday, her mother found Jesus. She told Lucinda to throw away all the witchery things, and she did, keeping only some of the jars and potions for herself. She spent the next two years beside her mother, wearing white as she wore, standing when she stood, shaking when she shook, and screaming Hallelujah! when she screamed. Her mother had a second stroke, but was still coming to church—praise God. Now if only Lucinda
would go get herself a man before her pokie dry up and she can’t have no pickney. Look how she make good man like Mr. Greenfield get way and go married that Mary girl who live in her dead mother house.

  “Lucinda, go cream you hair.”

  “Lucinda, God don’t need no wife.”

  “Lucinda, you think is only pissing it make for?”

  “Lucinda, what you doin round the back? If me catch you with no spirit business, I goin broke up you backside in this house.”

  “Damn fool you is, fi make man like Mr. Greenfield get way. And a town man at that. You know say him buy Mary Palmer house from Mr. Garvey and give she?

  “Lucinda?”

  “Me reading me Bible, Mummy.”

  As a Kingston man who had experienced piped water, Mr. Greenfield resented bathing by the river. But he and Mary Palmer were not married and she would not have a man getting naked in her mother’s house. At least he was alone. As he washed himself, what should he hear but the indelicate splashing of Lucinda, who had come to wash herself too? Her polka dot dress around her neck, hanging like a noose.

  “Me know you want to do nastiness with me,” she said.

  She was a church-going sister who was known as such. Nobody who knew Day Lucinda could find out about Night Lucinda. But as she released her buttocks to his coarse hand, a feeling came over her that in the past had only come from spirits. Lucinda reached to embrace, but he kept her away and they stood apart at the head, apart at the feet, slamming in the middle. When he came, he stepped away and spilled his seed into the river. She went over to him, rubbing her breasts on his shoulder. “So me and you goin married now?”