by John Farris
As soon as he did so, fingers making contact with her palm, she trembled and her thin lips parted in dismay. Teeth gone, others askew. She pressed back against the wall again. Her eyes seemed paler still, almost transparent, as if they had lost their seeing of this world. Her expression gave him skin crawls.
"What's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?"
The coins fell from Leona's limp hand, rolled on the floor.
"No. No! Don't be a-touchin' me again!"
"Are you crazy? I wasn't trying to buy your skinny ass."
Leona's head fell back. Something, a slow shock, crawled through her body.
"She waits. She waits at the Crossing for you to come. I don't have the get of it. But there be pity in her for what you have done. The destruction ye will visit upon yourself!"
"Heyyy snap out of it, woman."
"I see the reckoning."
He wanted to grab, to shake her, but he was afraid of the way she was winding herself against the wall, head flipping one side to the other. He squinted hard at her, as if there was blood in his eyes.
"I haven't done anything. It wasn't me, do you understand—you old hoodoo bitch!"
Leland broke suddenly. With a low whine in his throat he dug out his wallet, snatched bills from it. Leona, released by the powerful current that had snugged her against the wall, slumped to the floor, eyes open and unblinking.
"From the throne of Jesus ye will tumble into the everlasting fiery pit."
"Here take it take more money it's all I've got on me take it and go back to the hills you came from! Never open your mouth about this. Never speak my name to anyone. It just happened! Nobody's fault. You hear me? She didn't have to run. You can't hold me responsible. I will not take the blame!"
He stepped over her and ran out into the street and looked around wildly. Saw the rooftop neon of his hotel mistily uphill. Inside Leland Howard for U.S. Senate headquarters, Leona Tuggle was on hands and knees picking up the money he had flung at her. Not acting in haste. A dollar for her silence; if she betrayed him, another dollar to see her dead. She would know. Her posture, except for nakedness, was exactly the one he had forced Mally to assume in his farmhouse the third and final time he mounted her. Damn it, nigra women were the white man's prerogative, always had been. Mally knew that. They all knew it.
In his hotel room at last he recalled a superstition handed down to him by a half-crazed great aunt also thought to be in touch with spirits. Thus he could not lie down until he had used a jackknife to slice up a pair of silk undershorts. With these pieces of fabric he plugged up the drains and spigots in the bathroom sink and tub so that nothing of an unearthly nature could visit him through these popular means of entry into the living's false sanctuary.
All lights ablaze in the room, Leland fell asleep at last on his side with knees drawn up, grasping his limp penis in one hand like a baby holds a rattle.
"He's here," Francie Swift said a moment after opening the front door to Bobby Gambier. A moment after that she added, defensive on Alex's behalf, "Is he in trouble? He wouldn't tell me a blessed thing." She was fresh from her bath, slight frame in a cotton kimono, tortoiseshell hairbrush in one tanned hand.
"I don't know yet, Francie. Your mom or daddy at home?"
"No. They're horse-dealing in Kentucky. Hank's upstairs in his room and I don't know where Cotton's got to tonight, probably parked somewhere with Miss Watermelon Festival. Please come in. I think Alex fell asleep. He's using the hammock on the side porch."
He followed her through the living room of the Colonial house with its French furniture and gold-framed antique horse paintings to the all-weather porch. Painted concrete floor, stone hearth, a pool table, and a poker table with six captain's chairs around it. Alex was sprawled asleep in a hammock in one corner, bandaged right hand dangling near the floor.
"You fix him up?" Bobby asked Francie.
"Wasn't the worst burn I've seen. His eyebrows were singed pretty good, though. His clothes, phoo. I dumped everything, including his moccasins, in the trash. Doesn't he wear undershorts in the summertime? Those shorts and the shirt he's got on now belong to Fuller, but he won't miss 'em. He's lifeguarding at the underprivileged camp at Reelfoot 'til school starts up again. Do you know what happened to Alex?"
"House fire where he didn't have any business being at."
Francie's eyes got bigger. "Oh no."
"Wasn't Alex that burned it down, according to a reliable eyewitness."
Hearing voices caused Alex to twitch in his sleep. He didn't open his eyes.
"Sheriff, could I fetch you something cold to drink?"
"No uh thank you much, Francie. Sorry for keeping you up this late."
"That's okay." She cast a long look at the boy in the hammock. "Are you taking him home now?"
"Well I uh—"
"He's fine here! Really. We don't mind. I mean, it's just for tonight."
"Then if you're sure he's no bother. We've had a lot of upset at our house past couple of days. You know Alex."
"Been knowing him since kiddie Sunday School," Francie said quietly. "Whatever toy I had, he wanted to play with it. Didn't dream he'd turn out to be such a big old boy. From the size of his hands and feet he's got two-three more inches to grow don't you think?"
"Wouldn't doubt it."
"Want me to go somewhere else so you can talk to him?" Francie said, looking Bobby in the eye but crossing her arms to resist the request. "How do you do that, mind my asking?"
"Would you bring me that scorepad and pencil there on the poker table?"
Bobby pulled a wicker-basket chair to the hammock and turned on a brass standing lamp, illuminating Alex. He'd had a shower and didn't stink of smoke. Francie gave Bobby the writing tools and stayed behind the chair, slowly skimming down her blonde hair that wafted, glistening, like spider's silk in a woodland sunrise.
Bobby gave his brother a shake. "Hey, pardner. Need to have some words with you."
Alex tensed and peeped at him.
"Did you get a look at who was chucking those firebombs tonight?"
He could see reflected in the louvered glass of the outside door Francie's hand with the brush suspended a couple of inches from her head, the tortoiseshell oval like a floating third eye of inquiry.
Alex made a slight negative gesture with his bandaged hand.
"Take you by surprise then?"
Nod.
"Ramses Valjean told me you were in Mally Shaw's kitchen looking for something when the house went up. What was it, and how did you come to know about it?"
Alex closed his eyes as if determined to go back to sleep. Bobby rocked the hammock. Alex gathered himself with a scowl and sat up, licking sore lips. Francie had provided him with Vaseline. He put his feet on the floor one at a time and looked for her. Then he sighed and took the pad with his left hand. He scrawled awkwardly with the pencil in his bandaged hand, showed Bobby the page.
"Mally told you? Told you what?"
Alex wrote one word. Key.
"What key? When did she tell you to look for it?"
Alex studied the porch beams overhead and shrugged. "Where was this key supposed to be?"
Another word. Kitchen.
"Mally had a key that meant something, and she wanted somebody else to know about it just in case? That meant—what? She was afraid—but she didn't say a word to you, what the key was for? Padlock? Lockbox? Bus-station locker?"
Alex shook his head unhappily.
"What do you think it was for? Come on, Alex."
This time Alex printed two letters, then handed the pad facedown to Bobby so Francie couldn't catch a glimpse of them. Then Alex made a gesture of dismissal, a curt that's all motion with his hands.
Bobby knew the letters on the pad were probably initials. He tore the sheet of paper off, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket. Alex glanced up and met Francie's eyes again. Smiled in a troubled way. He stretched out again in the hammock with his back to Bobby.
&n
bsp; "Okay, pardner. I understand. See you tomorrow at the funeral. Better come by the house first thing and get a suit of clothes to wear."
Francie walked with Bobby to the front door. Not taking her eyes off him.
"Is this something real bad, sheriff?"
"I believe it is, Francie."
"Will Alex be all right?"
"Yes."
"But you can't be sure."
"I've always taken the best care of him I know how, Francie."
"You just look so worried."
She went outside with him to the flagstone veranda. Bobby pausing to look over the hilltop property. Mostly open pasture with white fencing, isolated lightning-scarred old trees. But no trees near the house. He wondered if anyone had followed his brother here after the fire. There was a colored family in the caretaker's house well out back, but at fourteen Francie was the oldest at home in the main house. He decided to put a dep in a prowler at the Swifts' gate for the rest of the night, not saying anything to Francie about the arrangement.
"There are things going on, it's a matter of the law, I can't tell you about."
She nodded. "Maybe you could set me straight about something?"
"What's that, darlin'?"
"Alex's voice. A lot of the kids say he doesn't talk because he wants everybody to feel sorry."
"It was diphtheria, Francie."
"Oh."
"With a lot of effort, maybe he could get out a few words. Maybe you'd halfway understand him. But we don't know for certain, and no doctor has been able to tell us."
"I just hate to think—"
"It's part of his life now. Not getting over it, but getting on in spite of bad odds. What we all need to do to ever amount to anything." He started down the steps to the gravel drive and his station wagon, then turned. "Francie?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Alex saved a man's life tonight. That house was an inferno before either of them had a hope of getting out. This was told to me by Dr. Valjean, Mally Shaw's father, who was in the house sorting her effects. Alex needed to chop a hole in the kitchen floor and pull Dr. Valjean out of there before the roof fell in. I wanted you to know that."
"Thank you. I'm glad you told me. He probably wouldn't have let me know." Francie regarded him gravely, eyes blue punctuation in the open book of her youth. "I'm going to sit up with Alex a little while longer. In case he needs anything. His hand really pains him, but he won't admit it. You know, he's strong in his own way. Even if nobody but us sees it yet."
Before calling it quits for the night, Bobby drove to the remains of Mally Shaw's house, his second visit in two hours. About an acre of brush and small trees had burned around the concrete-block foundation. A layer of smoke hovered in the windless night. One fire truck remained handy while the last pieces of blackened, smouldering wood were axed and doused.
He didn't get out of the Packard but slid the seat back and relaxed, smoked a cigarette and listened to the last half hour of Dewey Phillips on WHBQ Memphis. Red, Hot and Blue. "Tomorrow's forecast is for high winds, followed by high skirts, followed by Phillips." What a character. And the music was good rhythm and blues. When Phillips went off the air, Bobby dialed aimlessly around the clear channel stations. New Orleans, Del Rio, Texas. A radio evangelist worked his unseen flock like a pickpocket works a carnival lot. Bobby thinking about the possible significance of the key Alex had tried hard to find. According to Ramses, Alex was unscrewing lids from Ball jars of preserved beans or tomatoes in the kitchen when a person or persons unknown—get back to that later. Bobby pictured a small key pressed into a half-inch round of warm paraffin before Mally had sealed one of those jars. Safe there. Vital to Mally that the key be safeguarded. Maybe she had managed to put by a small fortune in money somehow, or possessed a valuable heirloom. Bobby didn't think so, given the circumstances that had immediately followed Priest Howard's death and burial.
Priest Howard, Bobby thought with a jolt of lawman's intuition that felt exactly right to him. Who had that old man been able to trust in his dying days except his lawyer, and him not overly much; and Mally Shaw, who spent nearly every day at his bedside with the deft hands, the centeredness, that conviction of calling the best caregivers had; man could fall in love with a woman like that, never mind his age or the insufficiencies of the flesh. Suppose Priest had a secret to deal with, a secret that might lay waste the future of the unloved son? A secret under lock and key but also slyly on his tongue at an unguarded moment with a woman kinder to him than any of his wives had been.
And Leland knew, or suspected, his pitiless father's intentions. On the night Priest Howard was barely settled into his newly refurbished mausoleum, Leland came calling on Mally Shaw. Could have been a coincidence, and sexual favor was all he had on his mind. Sex with certain safety; what could Mally do?
Had his fun, but then . . . he took Mally away after. If he knew about the existence of the key and what it might bring to light, obviously it was causing him great anxiety. What if Mally already knew exactly what was in the hand his father had dealt him before dying? If she hadn't given the key to Leland, he required time to work on her. No call to damage other than her spirit. Best accomplish a breakdown in her resolve by handing her over to a couple of good old boys for a week of sport in the backwoods, then pay her some money and show her to the westbound bus.
But something went wrong; Mally died, and Bobby knew where it had happened.
As for the possibility of a key . . .
Bobby looked through his dusty windshield at the black crust of a house still wisping smoke, thinking of jars exploding in the intense heat.
No rain forecast. But by morning it should be possible to start raking through the coals, sifting the ashes.
Unlikely a key would be found. If one did show up, probably couldn't be determined what lock the key was meant for.
The firebombing might have been designed for this purpose. Mally wouldn't reveal to him where she'd hidden the key, so burn her house down. She wouldn't be needing it any longer. And another plus for Leland Howard, who so far had survived his late father's animus, dodged a wrongful-death charge, and was up twelve points in the weekend polls. Bound for glory with a grin and a hi-yo wave of his hand.
But Alex Gambier could be a charred mummy in a rubber sheet right now, because Leland Howard couldn't get enough of covering his tracks.
There were those things you had to get on with, Bobby thought, not without a taste of fear on the back of his tongue. In spite of bad odds. He yearned to see the face of his wife on her pillow and his infant son by moonlight in his crib.
Also he could use a beer.
He put his station wagon in gear and drove home.
TEN
Dog-Eared Deuce
Ghosts Don't Dream
Robert Mitchum Did It
The funeral service for Mally Show, eleven o'clock Tuesday morning at Little Grove Holiness Church, was well attended: friends and relatives of the deceased plus a few older souls who had barely known Mally but had time on their hands and always enjoyed a good funeral when one was in the neighborhood.
Various artistically minded parishioners, a few of whom had a little talent, had painted so many Biblical scenes on the church windows that the sun barely penetrated the sanctuary. Mally's coffin was of necessity closed, banked on all sides by floral tributes. Bobby and Cecily Gambier sat with Ramses Valjean, who stoically endured a Bible reading, a hymn, a soprano solo by Ike and Zerah Thurmond's middle girl Jadie, and two eulogies, the last delivered so sorrowfully by Mally's erstwhile suitor, Mr. Poke Chop Burdett, while he strummed his banjo that almost no one could understand what he was saying; but his grief was powerfully eloquent, and tears were falling everywhere in the one hundred and twenty-seat church. Ramses remained dry-eyed, but he was tense, perspiring and coming up on time for his second morphine fix of the day.
Alex Gambier, to Bobby's thinking, was neglectfully absent from the funeral, although he allowed it was possible Alex preferred keeping h
is distance somewhere outside. Not contrary but protective of his own feelings. While Mally's coffin was carried to the prepared site at the foot of her husband William's greened-over resting place, Bobby looked around but couldn't spot Alex. Contrary after all, but put it down to anger, Bobby thought.
After a fast graveside ceremony, mesh curtains were lowered on all sides of the canopy, and there the coffin would remain until the shovelers came to put Mally under in the cool of the evening. On the road, Bobby beckoned to Eddie Paradise Galphin, who had kept some distance from the proceedings. Bobby, Eddie, and Ramses had a heads-together conversation. Eddie nodding and nodding and trying not to look as if he'd just been offered a journalistic nugget of pure gold.
Bobby went back to work, and Ramses returned to the house on West Hatchie to lie down for a while in a cocoon of morphine.
One-ten in the afternoon.
Jim Giles sat in his pickup truck with the windows down to benefit from a mild cross-breeze and read the funnies from Sunday's Memphis Commercial Appeal while he enjoyed a chew from a luxury plug of tobacco. He used a Hopalong Cassidy glass with a chipped rim he'd found in a trash basket for a spit container. Kept an eye on the courthouse square and the black-marble facade of Dunkel's Department Store. The boy whom he had spotted right here yesterday and who ought to have burned to death in Mally Shaw's house last night was in Dunkel's with his girlfriend. Except for a bandaged hand apparently none the worse for his experience.
The boy's reappearance had given Giles, a man with little imagination, a decidedly creepy feeling to complicate his slowly simmering sense of anger and dismay that nothing seemed to be going quite as it should. Leland Howard had forbade him to get rid of the Catahoula hounds when Giles's instinct demanded they should do just that. Leland had sounded mentally out of kilter, more than a little spooked during their most recent cryptic telephone conversation. Trying to explain something woefully prophetic he'd heard from a fortune-telling hillbilly woman. Giles's opinion was that Mr. Howard needed to stay the hell away from the women for at least a week. But he just had to have that pussy after a long, hard day on the stump getting all worked up by his own rhetoric. Keep up his present pace with all that was worrying him, the day after the primary he would need a straitjacket and a cold hosing down to straighten him out.
