She buried her face in her hands. “I told you we were the carriers of death.”
=TWENTY-ONE=
“Listen to me, Kat.” Mitch pulled her hands away from her face. “You cannot fall apart now. I know you’ve been through hell, but if you don’t get a grip, the hell is going to start all over again.” He watched her struggle with her demon emotions. After a few minutes the lines smoothed as her facial structure was reshaped into a mask of strength.
“All right,” she said, smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress. She met his eyes. “Explain yourself.” The hysteria was gone, her voice calm and determined.
Impressed by his partner’s incredible willpower, he felt immediate relief. Could she keep it together once she learned the latest twist in their nightmare? “A few minutes ago we had a green light to head home at 12:45 A.M. on Friday.” He handed her the printout. “Take a look at this.”
She read down the Arson/Fatality names. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered. “No one died on the April 5th? How can it change?”
“I guess we’re having a much more interesting discussion than I thought.”
Kat stared at him. “But how?”
“Voodoo.” He ran his fingers through his ginger hair. “Hell, I don’t have the answer. All I know is Jane Doe’s name is gone and Lettie Ruth has been added. Along with three brand-new victims.”
She shook her head. “Not three, Mitch. Count again. There are four new names on that damnable list.”
“Four? There were only three names when I handed it to you.” He walked over to her chair and knelt in the grass. “Show me,” he said, pointing at the paper with a shaky finger.
“These last four, not counting Lettie Ruth,” Kat said, touching each name as she read them aloud. “Maximilian Devore. Lamar Gordon. Kathleen Templeton. Louis Smith.”
“This is a very weird piece of paper,” Mitch said, taking the list out of her hand. He got up and began to pace in front of her chair. “It all goes down on the 7th now. Let’s run it through and see what turns up.”
“You mean a connection to us?”
He ignored her question and said, “Besides Lettie Ruth, we have Maximilian Devore.”
“Which is Taxi,” she said. “And we know him.”
“What about Lamar Gordon?”
“Lamar is the Webster Avenue preacher’s son. I met him on Monday.” Kat choked back a sob. “Mitch, he’ll be thirteen on Friday … but because of our chance meeting, he’s gonna die on Sunday.”
“Hold on a minute. You saw him once and only for a few minutes.” He shook his head. “There’s no way to connect that brief encounter to his name on the list.”
“If I’m right, and we’re the eye of this storm, the more we interact, the greater the danger.”
He stopped pacing and trapped her honey-colored eyes with his blue ones. “You just negated your own argument. You’re not interacting with the kid,” he said slowly.
“Yes, I am. Yesterday, Lamar and his cousin, Virgil, took me to the Gordon’s house to change clothes, then on over to the church. He’s a kid, Mitch. A kid with a great story to share with his buddies. Lamar will be talkin’ and then all of Maceyville will be gossiping about the black woman raped by three white boys.” Kat took a deep breath. “When April 7 rolls around, those three animals will be poundin’ on his door to make sure he keeps his mouth shut.”
“Then why isn’t Virgil on the list? You know him too, so if your theory is on target, his name should be right beside Lamar’s.”
Kat played with her dress hem. “Wait another five minutes then check again.”
“That’s not funny, Kat.”
“Knowing what’s going to happen is a heavy burden. The power of life over death.” She looked up, her eyes sparkling with tears. “Mitch, how did you get here?”
“The door opened at 6:12 Monday night.”
“I left that same morning and I know there wasn’t a 6:12.”
“Stop right there,” Mitch said. “I know what you’re thinking … and it’s wrong.”
“Let me see the name.”
He stepped away, hands behind his back. “The way your mind is working you’ll find a vague connection whether one exists or not.”
“There was not a 6:12 when I left,” she repeated. “I want to know who’s in that time slot now.”
Mitch glanced at the list. “It’s no one you know. Let it go, Kat.”
“I can’t let it go. Who is it?” Her tone was hard, demanding.
“Mr. Josephs,” Mitch said quietly. “Mr. Tupelo Josephs.”
Kat’s face turned a shade lighter. “When I first ran into the three men, Tupelo Josephs stood up to them. He tried to make them leave me alone. And now he’s dead.”
“Kat, everything is turning upside down. I’m not capable of rational thought any more.”
“Well, I am. The wheels all started turning with my … my rape.”
“Not all the wheels. Mr. Josephs was an old man, Kat. Old people die every day because of natural causes. Who’s to say that’s not what happened to him?”
“That’s not the case this time. His death is my fault.”
“Stop saying that. Let’s examine this logically. You can’t be responsible for every new name that pops up on the list. For example, what about this last name, Louis Smith? Are you going to claim responsibility for him too?”
“He’s one of the— He’s the fat one.”
Mitch slapped his forehead. “Of course. I ran into that jackass at Bubba’s.” The realization suddenly hit home, Kat’s interaction theory was right on the button. “I guess you’re not the only one with connections, Kat, seems I’ve got two of my own, Taxi and Louis Smith.”
“You skipped Kathleen Templeton.”
“It ain’t gonna happen.”
“April 7 is going to be a lousy Palm Sunday for the Rayson family.”
Mitch studied the list one more time. “Kat, did you notice the time of death and the addresses?” He sat on the end of her chair.
“Which ones?” She leaned forward.
“The last five,” he ran his finger down the names.
Devore, MaximilianN
Gordon, LamarN
Rayson, Lettie RuthN
Templeton, KathleenN
Smith, Louis
“See, Kat, they’re all the same. The address is 119 Webster and the time is 9:45 P.M.,” he said.
“Lord in heaven, Mitch, we’re all gonna die in the Freedom Methodist Church on Palm Sunday.”
Mitch took Kat in his arms, rocking her like a small child. “You’re reading an out of date document, partner. We’re going to make five changes in that timeline.”
She pulled away. “How about cutting it down to four?” she asked, her eyes hardening into crystallized honey. “Louis Smith can eat shit and die for all I care.”
“As you wish, m’lady.”
=TWENTY-TWO=
Lettie Ruth locked the front door, officially closing the clinic for the day. So many changes had taken place in just a few days. She couldn’t remember the last time she or Timothy had locked the doors at the end of the work day. Before Kat came along, they may have had a little trouble with the local boys, but nothing that would have called for bolting the door shut.
Nervous, without knowing why, she peeked out the window. The street was quiet, folks all inside getting ready for their suppers. She rubbed the goose bumps on her arm, then hurried out to the kitchen.
In between the afternoon patients she’d managed to fit in a little kitchen duty. After all her huffing and puffing yesterday about cooking, she’d put together a fine supper of honey cured ham, sweet potatoes, green beans, and biscuits. And to make it up to Timothy, two pecan pies.
She took the ham out of the oven and slipped the pies onto the cooking rack. She double checked the oven’s temperature gauge, then gave it a good hard tap with her finger. The cranky old stove overheated lately and she didn’t want them to burn.
The oversized kitc
hen table made it difficult to move around the room, so she removed the extra leaf. Dreama and Taxi had begged off, claiming they were too tired to eat. Lettie chuckled. They might be too tired to eat, she thought, but they ain’t too tired for much else.
She counted out five place settings. Once she got everybody rounded up, they could sit down for supper. Alvin and Timothy were napping upstairs, trying to make up for their sleepless nights guarding the church. Her house guests were still out back. She glanced out the kitchen window.
Kat and Mitch were sharing one chair, their heads bent close together over a piece of paper. She never knew two people to do so much serious talking. It would be nice to see one of them smile ever now and then.
She pushed open the screen and called, “Supper’s ready, y’all get washed.” Not waiting for a response she shut the door and started for the second floor, time to wake her sleeping beauties.
Lettie Ruth could hear Alvin’s snoring before she got half way up the stairs. She found him sprawled flat on his back on the bed in the first hospital room. The ceiling fan made slow lazy circles over his head. The outside shutters kept most of the late afternoon sun out of the room, but his face was sweat beaded and his damp undershirt clung to his skin.
He looked so tired she hesitated to wake him. It wouldn’t be any trouble to stick a plate in the oven and let him sleep on. She’d turned away to tiptoe out when he spoke.
“Hey, Sister. Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine, honey,” she said, facing him. “I came to wake you for supper.”
He sat up and sniffed the air. “Something sure smells good. You make a pecan pie?”
“I made two. Thought I better try and make up for the mean way I’ve been treating Timothy lately.”
Rayson laughed. “Shoot, he didn’t pay you no mind.”
“Even so, I should try to be nicer to him.” She swatted his foot. “Now, get yourself together and come on down. I gotta go wake Timothy. He’d never forgive me if I let him sleep through a meal.”
“Miss Kat and Mitch still here?”
Lettie Ruth stopped half way to the door, puzzled by his question. “You expecting them to be going off somewheres?”
Rayson shrugged. “I don’t know what I’m expecting. It’s a strange feeling I got about those two.”
The knot she’d carried around in her stomach since yesterday’s confrontation in the cornfield with the three men cinched up another notch. She called it her worry knot, and it had a good record of letting her know when things were about to go wrong.
“What kind of feeling?” she asked.
“If I tell you about my feeling, well … you’ll be thinking I’m crazy.”
“I’m your sister, Alvin, and I already know you’re plum crazy. So go ahead.”
“You know all those folks we been talking to about the ghosts? And that tingling feeling up and down our necks?”
“Yes.”
“I get the same feeling from Miss Kat and Mitch.”
“Those were old folk’s stories, Alvin. Probably not one real ghost in the whole lot.”
“Maybe yes and maybe no. You ever get a strange sense about something or someone?”
Lettie Ruth thought of her nervousness downstairs when she locked the door. Now she felt a bad time coming on and her worry knot tightened. “I reckon most everyone has from time to time.”
He watched the fan blades circle for several seconds. “Like I said, I got a feeling. And that feeling is telling me Miss Kat and Mitch ain’t supposed to be here. Like they don’t belong.”
“Maybe you sense that because they’re from another town. And don’t forget, Mitch is a Yankee boy.”
“It’s more than coming from another town or being a Yankee, Lettie Ruth. It’s like…” He paused, scratching his head. “You remember that book by H.G. Wells, The Time Machine?”
“I remember you reading it.”
“In the book, the main character—The Time-traveler—didn’t belong in the places he visited. His clothes were all wrong. The way he talked. Everything about him just didn’t fit in.”
Lettie Ruth laughed. “Are you telling me you believe Kat and Mitch traveled here in a time machine?”
“Of course not. But something about them isn’t right.”
“Like what?”
“Mitch’s shoes.”
“What’s wrong with his shoes?”
“Take a look for yourself, then you tell me.”
* * *
As soon as he heard Lettie Ruth’s footsteps descending the stairs, Alvin fished around under the bed until his hand landed on the slick nylon fabric. He pulled the navy blue backpack free, but left it lying on the floor. Poking around in somebody’s property, without them knowing, seemed a bit sinful. But then, sometimes you couldn’t avoid crossing the road. He needed answers and those answers were zipped up tight inside this bag.
When one of the men had brought it to the church Monday night, Alvin’s intentions were honorable. He’d only looked inside to learn the owner’s name. But what he’d found was a whole lot more than a name.
He wiped the sweat beads off his forehead and took a deep breath, before pulling the photograph out of the small inside pocket. No matter how many times he looked at it, he still couldn’t control his shaking hands or the churning in his stomach.
Alvin slowly unfolded the wrinkled photo. The three people, captured forever on the glossy paper, caused his heart to hammer. Father, Mother, and Daughter. He turned it over, in a childish hand someone had written:
“My family, May 14, 1983. Pop: Alvin Paul Rayson. Momma: Dolores June Rayson.
And me: Kathleen “Kat” Ruth Rayson.”
“Why are you here, daughter?” Alvin whispered. “Why have you come back in time?”
* * *
Lettie Ruth dropped her napkin and bent over to pick it up. Mitch’s shoes were no more than ten inches from her face. She stared hard, trying to see what got Alvin so worked up.
Mitch wore scuffed white leather shoes, with little blue check marks on the sides and heels. But nothing about them made her think they’d come out of a time machine. Or did they? She took a second look. They seemed a bit unusual, all that leather, but then Lettie didn’t shop for men. For all she knew this was the kind of play shoes all the men in his town wore.
She grabbed the paper napkin and began to back out from underneath the table when Mitch shifted his feet. She caught a glimpse of the bottom of one shoe. The sole, carved in fancy patterns, had writing on it.
MACEYVILLE, AL. P.D.
IT’S A NEW MILLENNIUM—1/1/2000
At first the words didn’t register, the meaning jumbled in her head. Then she understood.
Alvin’s head poked under the table and Lettie Ruth put her finger to her lips and pointed up. They withdrew, their eyes locked across the table.
The conversation swirled around her as she pieced together the scraps of information. What other new things could she discover if she looked? Go slow, she warned herself, don’t fancy up the facts. Stick to what you know.
What did she know about them? Kat, found naked in a cotton field, didn’t have any clothes to examine. Other than the rape, nobody knew anything but her name. And not even the whole thing. What kind of a name was Kat? Sounded like a dang pet.
The most striking thing was how strongly she reminded Lettie Ruth of Alvin. Same eye color. Same dimples. They even displayed similar behavior characteristics. As though to confirm her theory, Lettie looked at Kat’s plate, then at Alvin’s. They’d both nearly drowned their meat in tarter sauce. And putting tarter sauce on ham was a disgusting habit Brother had carried over from childhood, and he’d picked it up from their daddy. How many other folks shared this trait? And another thing, Alvin always ate his biscuits dead last. Both his and Kat’s were still sitting on the side of their plates.
Lettie Ruth pinched her arm resting in her lap, annoyed that she’d allowed herself to get caught up in Brother’s fantasy. These mi
ght be odd coincidences, but they didn’t mean a darn thing. No reason why Kat couldn’t like tarter sauce as much as Alvin. And could be she wasn’t saving the biscuit, maybe she just didn’t much care for them.
According to Taxi Devore, Mitch was a Yankee policeman from out of town, with a colored woman friend. His shirt and pants looked fine. As for the words on the bottom of his shoes, she believed folks could write pretty much what ever they wanted. They sure didn’t need Lettie Ruth Rayson’s stamp of approval first. But it did seem a bit odd.
=TWENTY-THREE=
Lamar Gordon, suffering from a bad case of the heebie-jeebies, just had to do something when he heard the engine. He poked a finger through the kudzu and pressed his eye to the leafy peep hole. This same white stake-bed truck had rumbled past his house four times now, kicking up road dust and filling the air with black exhaust. The Confederate flag on the back snapped and flapped so hard he thought it might jump right off the broom stick.
“They still ridin’ on our street, son?” Pastor Jackson Gordon’s deep voice rumbled softly, like far away thunder.
Lamar glanced over his shoulder. His daddy stood in the doorway, his Sunday shirt glowing ghost-white in the fading light. “Yes, sir. This makes four times I seen them.”
“How many men in the truck?”
“Three in the cab, six in back.”
Pastor Gordon nodded. “You keep watch a bit longer. I got to make some phone calls.”
Lamar shivered slightly at the words. If his daddy was phoning folks, he must be expecting trouble. And he truly hated this kind of trouble. In his twelve years on this earth, he’d seen lots of Negroes get bloodied for no good reason. He’d seen it too many times to count and it looked like before the sun came up, somebody in the east Hollow would be bleeding in his yard.
He folded his hands and closed his eyes, sending a little prayer to Heaven. “Please God, don’t let my daddy get hurt again.”
Beyond This Time: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel Page 19
