Black Water

by Bobby Norman

  “I’m cold ‘n th’light hurts m’eyes.”

  “That’s cause it was dark inside. You’ll get used to it in a minute.” He picked up his coat off the ground, laid it over her shoulders, and took her by the hand, shocked at how cold it was. He looked back over his shoulder at the shack and the triple-legged terror gnawin’ on the bone. “Let’s go.”

  He hadn’t dragged her a hundred yards when she started gaggin’. She was bent over, kneading her cramping stomach. She scrunched her eyes shut and told Roach, “Papa, I’m gonna be sick.”

  “Try t’hold it down. I wanna keep movin’ as long as we can. I wanna get home ’fore sundown.” Too, the futher he could get from the witch and her yellow-fanged minion, the better. He started to pull her along, but she slapped her hand to her mouth and fell to her knees. Her body contorted and she wretched like her guts were gonna come out. Roach knelt to her, pattin’ her on the back. That and givin’ her his coat was a whole gob of concern for Roach. When the attack finally abated she raised her head, and when Roach saw her eyes, he fell back and scuttled off like a spider.

  Her hair was plastered to her head, she was deathly pale, lips purple, and her one good eye was no longer brown, but black as liquid tar and fathomless as Cob’s. There was somethin’ else, too. The pact made between Roach and the witch wasn’t anything he woulda put much stock in. It was simply tit for tat. The medicine that could possibly save Pearl’s life in exchange for a simple favor, and when she told him what it was, he couldn’t believe it.

  That was all?

  Naturally, Roach had heard all the goosebumply tales about witches, spells, hexes, haints, and nasty child-gobblin’, wooly and scaly boogers inhabiting the swamp. He thought most of ’em were silly. Some he wasn’t so sure about. He did believe in witches. Hell, there was mention of them in the Bible. But he didn’t believe in Sin Eaters. Stories o’ folks consuming the sins of the dyin’, takin’ on the weight of their life’s transgressions before they went to meet their maker, all ceremoniously baked into a loaf of bitter, salted bread. And as the story went, the Sin Eater’s unpardonable soul was sentenced eternally to a fiery Hell and no reprieve. There was no such thing as a Sin Eater for a Sin Eater.

  Puckie! They were great stories when you wanted to scare the Hell out o’ skittery niggers and little kids…that was always fun, but anybody with a lick o’ sense knew they were nothin’ more than that. If he had to put Lootie through some backwater superstition to get the medicine needed to cure Pearl, it was worth it.

  Now, though, he wasn’t so sure. The child in front of him was still Lootie, but not. There was a hardness, a coldness, an oldness, in her face. Still the child, but not the child. Well, whatever it was, it was over and done now, and they had the medicine. They’d be home in three or four hours, and in a couple o’ days everthing’d be better, back to regular. It’d all work out. He got Lootie back on her feet and for the next few miles he kept tellin’ hisself it’ll work out. It’ll work out. It’ll work out.

  CHAPTER 12

  They got home just before the sun set, and bangin’ in the front door, all excited that he had the medicine, Roach saw that Pearl was layin’ just as he’d left her that mornin’. If the sun had been up, or if he’d helt a lantern to her, if he’d taken a good look at her before he and Lootie left, he woulda seen it was already too late. And now, unlike the old woman on the cot in Cob’s shack, Pearl’s mouth hung open, her jaw hung over like it’d slipped out o’ joint, and her half-closed eyes were lookin’ at the ceilin’ but not seein’ it. Flies buzzed around her face and in and out of her mouth. Her nose. Her ears. Lootie’s black eye blinked in empathy as one of the hateful things walked right acrost Pearl’s half-open right eye. She’d already started turnin’, stinkin’. Lootie recognized the smell. Just like where Cob lived.

  The next mornin’, Roach hitched up the mules and took the wagon into Oledeux. He had to make arrangements for the undertaker man to come out and fix up the body for buryin’ and the preacher to say the words. Lootie noticed he’d said the body instead of Pearl. She didn’t wanna be left alone. She asked if she could go with him but he told her he didn’t think it’d be a good idea. He didn’t want the body left alone. What’d he think, somebody’d steal it? He told her he’d be gone no longer than he had to.

  They’d covered the body with an old sheet so they wouldn’t have to look at it. Too, it helped keep the flies off. Covered or not, though, Lootie wasn’t settin’ foot past the door frame until Roach come back. Lootie may have loved her, but a dead body was a dead body was a dead body. She just sat on the porch in the sun, her clammy little hands in her lap, nervously holdin’ onto each other, or practicin’ writin’ her name in the dirt with a stick. Ever so often she’d get up and walk in the direction Roach would be comin’ back from, hopin’ to hear the harness, the wheels, or a bray. For the first time in her life, she was lookin’ for’ard to seein’ him.

  Ever little bit, she thought she heard somethin’ from inside the shack. A crackin’, a creakin’, or a poppin’. It was actually nothin’ more than the shack contracting from the day warmin’ up ‘n coolin’ down. But she’d get up and cautiously step to the door, expectin’ to look in and see Pearl walkin’ around in her ol’ moth-eaten nightdress, her mouth hangin’ open, eyes half closed, and her hair laid flat to the back of her head from layin’ on it for so long. Lootie wished she might be. Kinda. But scared she would be. Mostly. Settin’ on the porch by the door, she did hear a gurglin’ one time. Like a belly that needed somethin’ t’eat. She cautiously stepped to the door, planted her hands on the jamb, leaned in, and saw there was a kinda roundness under the sheet where Pearl’s belly was.

  He finally come home and they skipped supper.

  Come morning’, Roach told Lootie he wanted her to take a walk before the buryin’ man got there with the box. He wanted her to run down to the crick and play with the croakers or somethin’, and he’d fetch her after the fella was gone. She figured it was because Roach didn’t want her to see ’em load Pearl’s body up in the box, but actually, what’d happened was, the buryin’ fella said he wouldn’t come out if Lootie was anywheres about. If he even thought he saw her peakin’ around a tree or somethin’, he’d pack up and leave. Right then and right there. He warned Roach that if they had Pearl’s body halfway in the box and he saw Lootie, he’d walk out the door, get on his wagon and that’d be that. Workin’ with a dead body while a witch-in-training hung around made for a bad combination.

  The next day, Roach, Lootie, the Preacher, and two black gravediggers stood around a rough hole in the ground that housed the cheap wooden box where Pearl was, and in which Roach told Lootie she was gonna spend the rest of her life. The comment made Lootie think that if Pearl was in the coffin, and dead, the spendin’ the rest of her life thing didn’t make much sense, but she wouldn’t pursue it. Pearl had told her more than once that Roach only ever talked about two things: things he didn’t know much about and things he didn’t know nothin’ about. She said she coulda had a more meaningful conversation with a stick of firewood than with Roach.

  Cornelius Demacles Lusaw was the black-suited, multiple-chinned, holier-than-thou pulpit-pounder from Oledeux who was gonna say the words. Preacher Lusaw was weavin’ from the influence of half a dozen shots of liquid courage, a dangerous thing to do standin’ beside a six-by-six-by-three-foot hole.

  Lootie looked around while he droned on, and thought that it woulda been a nice day for her and Pearl to work in the vegetable garden. The Kentucky Wonders and squash was ready to pick, and it wouldn’t be long before the melons would be ripe enough to drop. It was so hard for Lootie to think about Pearl not bein’ around any more. Ever time she turned around she saw somethin’ she wanted to show or tell her. More than once she’d jumped up and started for the shack, sometimes even callin’ out “Mama, Mama” while she was runnin’ and then she’d remember. Like runnin’ face-first into a wall.

  She was standin’ alongside the hole, next to Roach
, wearin’ Pearl’s old shoes. They were so big on her she’d had to wrap her feet in cloth and stuff leaves in the toes so they wouldn’t just fall off. She was hopin’ the extra wrappings would help warm her feet, but it didn’t. That was all right, though—the shoes were Pearl’s, and they helped comfort her. Not far off stood the weathered board that had George scratched on it. George was the baby that’d only lived a couple o’ hours. The board had split and Geor was on one side and ge on the other.

  Lookin’ down the hole at the box, she wished Pearl would push the lid open and sit up, gaspin’ for air and madder than a scalded chicken at Roach for not makin’ sure she was all the way dead. She also wished Pearl’d looked a little more like the old lady at Cob’s, with the rag tied around her head, instead of her mouth hangin’ open and her dead-lookin’ eyes starin’ up at nothin’. She knew better than to ask, but she hoped that either the buryin’ man or Roach’d thought to close ’em and her mouth before hammerin’ the lid down. Pearl was worth more than to go through eternity with her mouth hangin’ open. She wondered if he’d put pennies on Pearl’s eyes.

  She looked up at Roach’s lumpy, unshaven face, his turkey neck, ears that stuck out, the hair in his nose, and thought, I’m alone now. All by myself.

  She was still daydreaming, waitin’ for Pearl to push the lid off the box when she heard the Bible Thumper mumble somethin’ about abody walkin’ through a valley somers, with shadows o’ dead things. Gettin’ forgiven for doin’ people wrong and forgivin’ people who’d done them wrong. She hoped he wasn’t talkin’ about Pearl, ‘cause the only thing Lootie could think of she’d ever done wrong was dyin’ and leavin’ her alone, all by herself. With Roach. She didn’t think the Preacher was talkin’ about his ownself either, ‘cause he was so big and fat and looked like he’d break an easy sweat, she doubted he’d ever walked anywhere, let alone some far-off valley with shadows o’ dead things. Fat scardey cat.

  Ever little bit, the Preacher snuck a wary eye in Lootie’s direction. He knew the rumors about who the little girl’s real mother mighta been and didn’t like the look of her lightnin’-scarred face or the eyes, one blue/blind and the other, black as a chip o’ tar. His lip almost curled back in disgust, lookin’ at the dirty dress, and he thought that surely she had another pair of shoes. He mighta spouted Holy Scripture from the Good Book and carried a raggly one with him everwhere he went so everbody could see him wavin’ it around and poundin’ it on the pulpit, makin’ his point, but underneath he was as superstitious and demon-minded as everbody else.

  He finally said the Hallaloo and Amen words, pressed the Good Book to his puffed-up chest with his left hand, and helt his right out toward Roach, palm up. Roach reached in his pants pocket, pulled it out, slipped him somethin’, and then, lookin’ at the ground, toed the dirt like a little kid caught in the act. The ol’ boy looked in his hand, like a chicken’d shat on it, then back at Roach. Roach was still lookin’ at the ground and blinkin’ like a sleepy toad. Fat Boy shook his head disgustedly, slipped whatever it was in his vest pocket, and waddled his big ass off to climb on his poor old sway-back mule.

  Cornelius Lusaw couldn spur it away from the evil-eyed, Devil-possessed brat quick enough. Ever once in a while, his faith slipped some, and he wondered if there really was a God or a Heaven, there was so much evil in the world, but he’d never doubted whether there was a Devil or a Hell. And that putrid little heathen, Lootie Komes, that little bitch with the Devil’s eyes, was the absolute, perfect example, proof o’ their existence. That innocent demeanor might fool some, but he was a man o’ God, dammit, and he knew evil when he seen it. She was a forked-tongued, demon-in-training if there ever was one. He was sorry he’d ever agreed to grace them with his presence. And then Roach had slipped him half a dollar. Half a dollar! God Damn! What the hell kind o’ service had he been expectin’ for half a dollar? This was the last time he’d allow his soft-hearted, good-naturedness get the best of him! He’d made up his mind about the Komeses. The Lusaws’d never never never have a damned thing to do with the Komeses again. Never!

  Just before Lootie and Roach turned to leave and let the diggers earn their pay, Lootie took out the little vial that Roach had traded her soul to the Devil for, and dropped it into the hole. The vial into which Cob had laughingly dribbled the last few drops of her tea.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was six years later that the war which began some months earlier was coming, inexorably, to its final battle. The war between lust and guilt. Winter had moved in, and when the sun went down, it took what feeble warmth there’d been during the day. Lootie sat at the dinner table with a thin blanket laid over her lap and wrapped around her legs, studyin’ her McGuffey while Roach heated up a big pot o’ water on the squat, pot-bellied stove.

  “I’m heatin’ this up,” he said, his speech slurred, “so you’cn take a bath. Gettin’ too cold t’take ’em in th’crick anymore.”

  The cold of the weather didn’t bother Lootie like it used to. Ever since the trip to the witch’s shack. She hadn’t been truly warm one time since. Engrossed in the book, she was only half listenin’ and nodded. She was settin’ on one of the two straight-backed chairs, with her legs drawed up and her bare feet propped on the other, warmin ’em by the stove. Roach’s courage, pumped up by tippin’ the bottle all day, he tried to get into position to look up her dress by pretending to get more wood for the fire. She put her feet on the floor to give him room.

  “You didn’t need t’move,” he said, slippery. “I coulda got it.”

  She was growing up. Her pea-sized nipples, pushin’ against the dress’s thin material, and her thighs, too long for the dress, drove him to distraction. Just the day before, she was sittin’ on the porch, leanin’ over a basket, stringin’ and snappin’ green beans. Although cooler weather was comin’ on, the midday sun warmed her up enough that she’d hiked the dress well above her knees and stuffed it ‘tween her legs to keep her underpants hid. There were a couple o’ buttons missin’ on her shirt at her chest, and ever so often Roach was lucky enough to be standin’ beside her when she bent over for another handful o’ beans and caught a glimpse of a wrinkled little nipple fronting a tight young tittie. More than once, between then and that evening, he’d had to relieve hisself, rubbin’ out the swelling, and his thing was gettin’ raw. He’d done it so much, the last couple o’ whackins he’d had to use a pinch o’ lard to cut the friction. His right hand smelled like stale urine and chitlins.

  Pretty quick, the shack was hot and Roach poured the steaming water in the tub they used for washing clothes. He laid a lumpy cake of lye soap and a cloth on the floor beside it. “Okay,” he said, like it was nothin’ out o’ the ordinary, “it’s ready. Gitcher clothes off ‘n hop in.”

  She closed the book, set it on the table, pulled the blanket off her and stood up.

  “Come on,” he said and clapped his hands, impatiently. “Gitcher clothes off. Let’s go. Water’s gettin’ cold ‘n I ain’t agonna heat it up agin.”

  She noticed he’d said, “Gitcher clothes off” twice in the last ten seconds. “I ain’t takin’ m’clothes off with you standin’ there.”

  “Whadaya speck me t’do?”

  “If I’m takin’ m’clothes off, I speck ya t’go outside.”

  “It’s cold out there. If I’s takin’ a bath, you think I’d ask you t’go out?”

  “You never take a bath, but even if ya did, you think you’d hafta ask me t’leave? You nekkid’s ‘bout the last thing I wanna see.” She sat back down and started to rewrap the blanket around her. “I’ll wash up in th’crick t’morrow. It ain’t that cold.”

  “Awright, I’ll go,” and easy as that, he opened the door and stepped outside.

  She waited a few seconds, unwrapped the blanket, set it on the chair, stepped to the tub, and swished her hand around in the water. It was hot. It felt good. She hadn’t had half a dozen hot baths, ‘n none since Pearl died. She quickly unbuttoned and slipped off her dress, holey underpa
nts, dropped ’em on the floor by the tub and oozed in. She reached over the side o’ the tub, picked up the soap, the washrag, and after workin’ up a lather, started on her arms. She jumped when Roach’s voice muffled through the door.

  “It’s cold out hyere! You in yet?”

  She smiled, picturin’ him turtled up, tryin’ to keep warm. He’d been nice enough to fix her a hot bath, the least she could do was hurry it up. “Yeah,” she replied and went back to washin’.

  Then the door opened...

  Lootie dropped the soap and the rag in the water...

  …and he stepped in...

  …wrapped her arms around her knees, and slunk down.

  “What’re you doin’?”

  “Whadya mean, what’m I doin’?”

  “You said you’d go outside!”

  “I did! You didn’t speck me t’stay out there!”

  “I meant when I’s takin’ th’bath, too.”

  “Oh, shaw, ‘at’s silly,” and with a dismissive gesture he closed the door and stepped to the tub. He picked her dress and underpants up off the floor and Lootie watched him casually drop ’em in the bath water. He felt a lot better now. Yes, sir, the plan was finally comin’ together. And a fine plan it was, too. He had her where he wanted her, in the tub. He had her how he wanted her, nekkid. And best of all, there wasn’t a dadgum thing she could do about it. Before she could say anything, he was on his knees next to the tub. “Don’t make no sense t’take a bath ‘n then put on th’same dirty clothes, does it? This way we kill two birds with one rock.”

  She tensed up when he stuck his hands in the water, swishin’ the dress around and brushin the back of his furry fingers over her legs. “Yeah…we’ll get this real clean.” He made a show of scrubbin’ the dress between his knuckles, lifting it up, and wringing the water out. Then he stood up, shook the dress out, laid it across the chair by the stove, and went back to repeat the process with her underpants. Lootie was still hunkered down. “Ain’tchu gonna wash up? Water’s gonna get cold.”