Blue Bottle Tree

by Beaird Glover

  “Can’t you let Velvet punish me? Like we did the other night?”

  “You exhausted her with flailing you. We did not expect you to enjoy it so much.” He made ready to go down the steps. “I didn’t think the old madam had it in her. If she had the power to get his soul back, why didn’t she do it sooner?”

  “So, where is it?” Mad Dog asked, looking around the room. Like Seven’s soul was lurking somewhere and could be corralled back into the drum.

  “She has it. I underestimated Marie LaVey. But no matter. We still have the zombie. We’ll use him to get it back.” Mad Dog stood at the spiral staircase, his belly hanging over dingy white drawers. “We will have to send a message to her. I will employ Penny Langston to correct what Marie has done. Give the old lady a taste of what can happen if she toys with me again.” It would be easy enough to use Penny Langston. The Return to Me conjure was almost done. “Run!” I roared. Mad Dog tripped backward, and fell sprawling down the steps.

  26 Frog And Toad’s Revenge

  I cowered in my hole, balled up and crying like a baby, like a child lost in a haunted house, hiding in the closet. Among the big shoes of adults. He had allowed me a shoe for a pillow, another for a pet. I had been terrified by a toad outside the blue kiddie pool.

  It was a foot or so away, and had leapt upon some piece of garbage, between the dump’s one light and the pool, casting a huge shadow. I gathered that he had come for me. He opened his mouth and jaws gaped wide enough to swallow me whole.

  The toads had been waiting for this. Now my time had come. Generations had past but the toads had not forgotten. Just as I am the seventh of Marie Laveau, the toad that I killed had sent a distant generation for revenge. It had come to this—Hoof making me a zombie, a toad taking what was left to take. My muscles ached, too stiff to move. Holding myself in a fetal ball was painful but I wanted to be smaller, to hide better, small enough to disappear.

  It was fitting that I be slain by a toad. It lingered outside the kiddie pool, taunting me. The toad’s obscene tongue lashed out like it could seize me in an instant. I had nothing left to live for, so it was just as well. And fair enough, considering what I had done, ripping open a toad’s soft underbelly with my bare hands for morbid curiosity—for nothing! To cast it into the pond—suffering, dying, to drown, and I go on as if nothing happened. Years passed but the toads remembered. The frogs and toads were in league, shadowing me, spying on my every move. I had developed a horror for them. I knew this time would come. Certainly, my life was worth no more than theirs.

  And then Hoof peeled the blue kiddie pool away, rolled it over, and beckoned me out. It was past midnight and my work was finished. The drum no longer played. After an episode of madness, the drum had simply gone silent. “Out,” Hoof said.

  I climbed up from my hole and Mad Dog stared. He smirked and sneered, too pleased with my captivity. It satisfied him that I was reduced to this, that I was so far beneath him. Characteristically, he said, “Yeah, get out!”

  There was nothing left of the Rickey Smith I used to know. We were into wilderness survival a few years ago, which is to say we liked to go camping and tried to make it on as few conveniences as possible. We struck sparks from flint stones, tried to trap rabbits, ended up using lighters and eating cans of soup. But we tried. On one of those trips, we were a mile away from any road, in the forest that stretches into Kentucky, and he had found a rattlesnake. It was a timber rattler, camouflaged tan, brown, and dark gray like leaves on the ground. It was all coiled up, hiding. It wanted to be left alone, which made perfect sense to me. It didn’t even start rattling till Mad Dog poked it with a stick. He had the idea he could stab it. We would cook rattlesnake fillets.

  He sharpened his stick and stabbed, but the snake struck faster, and sank its fangs into Mad Dog’s wrist. Mad Dog dropped the stick and shook it off, but the damage was done. He sucked out the venom and spat, then he puked. We had to get him back to Bellin. He held his arm above his head. I told him he was crazy, that the blood would go to his heart faster that way. Which it did and he got sick again. He fell down, cried, said he was going blind, begged me to carry him. So, I carried him. I loaded him up on my back and plodded through the woods to the highway. Mad Dog was a big guy, and I didn’t even weigh a hundred pounds. It would have been much faster for me to run back and flag down help, but he did not want to be left alone. I carried him, and he was passed out. Later he complained that I needed to work out more, so I could have gotten him out of the woods faster.

  “How do you feel?” Hoof asked. He walked around me and examined my wretched state. Made me hold my arms up and I did not know what he was looking for. “There’s been a development.”

  I nodded, but there was no point in trying to speak now. I had given up trying to make words. He gave me a bottle of the green liquid and I drank. My mind went wild with skyrockets and thoughts blaring, suddenly faster and all ramped up, yelling at me, stampeding in my head that I was a zombie. Dead. I was dead!

  Hoof’s calm voice cut through it all. “I need you to do something,” he said. Inwardly, I cringed. My most recent assignment had been to sort the garbage a second time, to move my pile back onto the original. I had displaced everything that I could move, and now I had to put it back. “I was wrong to keep Penny Langston from you,” he said. “I told you she was gone, and I lied. But now she needs to be dispatched. I have to make a point. Midsummer’s Eve is soon approaching. I will make her believe she has a chance to save you. She’ll come running for that.”

  He paused, letting this information settle. Letting me drink again from the bottle before he took it back. “You will have to kill her,” he said.

  Even through the zombie haze, through the derangement, the delirium that only allowed the most simple thoughts to make sense, I knew I did not want to kill Penny Longstocking. She was alive! That in itself was a relief and a joy. If he admitted he lied, then she had truly been there before. She took the string. She was bound to me. Maybe she was even trying to help. Whatever Hoof wanted, I would not comply. He would have to kill me first.

  “I’ve given you a good life,” he said. “If you were to be ungrateful, I would have to punish you. You would not know there was horse hair in your mush, until you vomited blood.”

  How could it be worse? Then the whip cracked on my back. Mad Dog had hidden it. The whip had been silent for days. My sores were healing. It was true that my life had improved. He had told me so. He had told me many times. But now the whip, again.

  “You will kill her,” he said. “You will bring me what is mine.” He set a bucket of clear water on the concrete slab. “Look here,” he said. I saw my reflection, the monster I had become. As I was making out my features and taking some solace in the thought that I was indeed still alive, he stabbed my reflection with a knife. It splashed and my reflection bled. The water turned red. He stabbed again and the knife came out bloody. The water was opaque, my reflection gone. I felt the knife in my gut. As he had done to my image, he was doing to me. I keeled over, weak and dizzy. I groveled on my knees. Mad Dog responded with another crack of the whip.

  It went on like this for a night, and the next. I don’t know how long. I was beaten and starved. I never agreed as much as I submitted. I was required to kill Penny Longstocking. I did not have a choice. I never had a choice.

  So he told me how I was going to do it, and repeated himself on a looped recording that played when he was gone. He played it while I slept and I awoke hearing the method in which I would kill Penny. The method in which I already had. It was very confusing, to dream of it happening, and I did not know if it had happened yet or not. The time came to practice. I was to lure her into my cave, and sacrifice her as I had done her clarinet. They were linked, Hoof said. She could not live without it. As I had smashed it, so it must be done to her. She wanted this to happen, he said. Despite any protest she might make at the time, this was how it had to be. Hoof seemed to know exactly how I had smashed the clarinet, though I d
o not remember him being there at the time.

  She’s the goat without horns Hoof said, and he explained what I had done years ago—the child in my cave. I mumbled that I didn’t do it and my memory was poor. But he assured me I did kill the child, and I had to do the same with Penny. And he repeated that I already had. It was bewildering, whether Penny was the child I killed, or I had killed her more recently for taking my string. I could not absorb all the information I was given. The zombie water was getting richer again.

  “She has a sealed medicine bottle, and you need to bring it to me.” Hoof said this over and over too. “Do not open the bottle. Bring it to me as it is. You will be rewarded. I will give you a rat, which you may coddle. Or eat. As you wish.”

  I mused on this more than anything else. If I were given a rat, would it befriend me? The cats would not let me touch them, but they liked it when I found them food. What would a rat do? Could it live with me in my hole? Protect me from the toads? This gave me hope.

  I was transported to my cave that night, and made to walk up the hill between Hoof and Mad Dog, a collar on my neck with leashes going to both of them. There I was given the axe. Hoof had sharpened it and it gleamed in candlelight, a pretty silver edge. They would not be there, but I had been well versed in what to do. The sequence of events had been pounded into my head. The routine practiced a million times. It might have already been done.

  My muscles were so stiff and aching, it would be a wonder if I could accomplish such a thing on the nimble Penny Longstocking. But Hoof believed the element of surprise would be enough. She had not fled immediately when I demolished her clarinet. Escape from the cave would be more difficult. At the very least I should be able to land a blow to her back, to sever her spinal cord if she tried to crawl out, and it would be easier after that.

  Hours passed and the candles drew down. I may have slept.

  I did not recognize her immediately. I saw freckles in the candlelight. I had forgotten about them. She must have been out in the sun because they looked more intense, radiated. The candles lit up her face, and it was almost totally covered in freckles—freckles right up to her lips, and the thin line of her lips was tight. I was delirious but it was impossible not to notice how cute she was. I could have kissed her freckles one by one. But she did not look happy. She had a blue bottle in her hand which she clutched with fierceness. It looked familiar. I played with it as a child. My mind veered back to the rehearsed act.

  “They told me you’d be here,” she said.

  She held up the medicine bottle and shook it. There were things in there, clinking noises. “You want this, don’t you?”

  I was drawn to the bottle in a way I had not expected. Hoof had programmed me, but I wanted it more than just being told. I yearned for it, suddenly, instantly. I came at her with arms outstretched. Yes, I did want it. I wanted it like my life depended on it. Maybe if I were able to just snatch it from her, then I wouldn’t have to kill her. How could I kill Penny Longstocking? I already have. I have to do it again now for practice, like I killed the kid. I had left the axe leaning against the wall. I groped for her without it. Must get the axe. Must take the bottle back to Hoof. Axe first, then take bottle. Axe first, then take bottle back to Hoof. I stumbled and fell. My head conked against a rock.

  27 The Toads Forgive You

  Hoof is insane. I can’t believe I even liked him. A guy like him has a deformity, a hoof for a left hand. You try to look past that because it’s the right thing to do. And because he’s charismatic, and the rest of his body is rock hard and hot. He’s got all that money, the great car, and the nice house. He’s got his own place in Nashville and he’s a star at Vanderbilt too. Everybody’s afraid of him. He’s got the most popular girl and an attendant who does his dirty work. That’s impressive. That’s powerful stuff. And I admit I did like him, or I was infatuated. Sometimes I like a boy for a few days. I get a crush—so what? I’m not required to marry him.

  Victor Radcliffe is not a nice guy. Victor Radcliffe is an asshole. And a coward. He was not even able to approach me about this himself. He sent his servant Mad Dog to tell me that I had to go to the cave. I had to! Last chance to save him, Penny. You know you want to help. Just steal the bottle from Marie LaVey. She’s behind all this, Mad Dog had said. Having changed his tune from the bold man in the turret. He had new talking points and was sticking with them. Easy enough. Just go to her house and pretend to be sad for Seven. Find the bottle and steal it. You’ll know which one it is.

  Little did they know. Since they did not know what they were doing, and Marie was not strong enough, it fell to me to get this job done. I had to bring Seven back.

  So, on an early June morning, yellow sun cutting through the mist, I went to the cave. Seven was sleeping when I came in. Then he roused up, like he had at the dump, with his arms stretched forward, coming at me like a monster. I knew what to expect this time—I showed him the medicine bottle. He must have felt his soul in it because he gasped. He fell down, then he was crawling toward me and reaching back for an axe that was propped against the wall.

  It was pathetic. I gathered that Victor wanted him to kill me. Ridiculous. Seven couldn’t kill a bug. He pawed at my legs, not even strong enough to stand. I helped him up. I could have sent him reeling with a thump.

  It helped that I knew what to expect. I had devised the plan with Marie. Seven’s mother Louisa had been out of her room, lucid and conversational. She went to the hospital where she used to work and begged another nurse to swipe a couple of banana bags from floor stock. These contained a solution of normal saline with mega-doses of Vitamins A, C, E and K, folic acid and thiamine, magnesium and potassium, calcium and iron. It was what they administered via IV to people who came in starving and dying of dehydration.

  I popped the IV line off the first banana bag and squirted the yellow liquid into Seven’s mouth. He guzzled it down, sucked out half a liter in seconds. I took it back so he wouldn’t get sick. He stared in my direction as the murk slowly cleared. Minutes passed and I gave him the bag again. He sipped, squinted at the words to figure out what it was. “It’s like a sports drink,” I said. “Professional level.” I sidled down between him and the wall, let him lean against me. I put my arms around him and wrapped my hands around his, holding the bag with him. “Only sips,” I said. “There’s more. You don’t have to drink it all at once.” We stayed like that for a while. His whole body twitched and he jerked with spasms as the electrolytes activated muscles and neurons. He stretched out his arms and legs, astonished as they came back under his conscious control. He blinked hard and his eyes came into focus.

  Tetrodotoxin and datura are metabolized by the kidneys and even small amounts are nephrotoxic. They act as diuretics, causing the kidneys to open like floodgates and let everything pour through. Usually the kidneys are very discriminating about conserving electrolytes and keeping the right amounts of nutrients and minerals. But these drugs effectively leech vitamins and minerals from the blood, not only dehydrating the victim, but depriving the body of all that most important stuff. Folic acid and thiamine particularly, are essential building blocks. Magnesium is required for nerve conduction and muscle function. Fate had brought this great news to me in my latest National Geographic, and Louisa filled in the rest.

  Having drunk one banana bag, Seven tried to stand. It didn’t work and he swooned, fell back into me and I held him. I popped off the top of the other bag. He sipped and nodded thanks. He suddenly tensed again, tormented by a memory. He muttered something but I could not understand him. Slowly, and enunciating each syllable he said, “I killed a toad.” He moaned. His tongue was so swollen the words barely garbled out. “They’re coming for me.”

  “You told me about that,” I said. “It’s okay. Everybody makes mistakes. The toads forgive you.” I twisted a corkscrew through the candle wax which we had used to seal his soul in, popped out the cork and passed the blue bottle under Seven’s nose. He inhaled and grinned, then he was overcome wi
th giggling. As his soul took up residence again, light came back to his eyes. “We’ve got to get you home,” I said.

  He stopped laughing and stretched. “It’s gone,” he said. “I saw my house burned. My mother and grandmother. They’re gone. I thought you were gone too.”

  “Slow down, I said. “I can’t understand you.”

  He put all his energy into every word. “It …was like …a dream. No. Nightmare. Worse.” He touched his head and looked at his fingers with disgust. “You got …a brush?”

  “Now you’ve discovered vanity?” I trembled and patted down his matted hair. He had come through it and was making jokes again. I was the one about to cry.

  “Not a zombie anymore, Longstocking.”

  I sniffled. “Back to your old self again—the kid who watches me from a cave.” Our eyes met, and he really was coming back.

  “Watches over you, from a cave.”

  “Oh, Seven.”

  “Thank you, Penny. You saved me.” He held my hands. The puzzle pieces were coming together. “Wait. What are you doing here? I remember. I was—was I dead?”

  “Close, but very close. Then he made you into a zombie. Drink the rest of that.”

  “Hoof.”

  “Yes. You were a good zombie, though. You gave me a string.” I fished it out of the bottle and handed it back to him.

  “You weren’t really a monster. But I saw your forked tongue.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him, the tip was lower than my chin.

  “That’s the one. Yes, I remember. The kiss of that would have brought me back.” He wrapped the string around his finger. “It bound you to me, didn’t it?”

  “It’s how we caught your soul.”