The crazed naked guy in the cruiser smears his bloody nose against the glass and keeps nodding me over. I walk to the patrol car and stand there staring at him.
He’s pretty furry. Overgrown beard and a wild mustache with thick thatches of hair on his chest and shoulders. I’m grateful I can’t see his back. His nose gushes. He’s maybe thirty but already there are spots of gray showing through and he’s got cigarette burns all over. A sure sign that he falls asleep smoking and will go out of this world in a fireball. His eyes blaze with a raw eagerness to get something accomplished. Straining at the cuffs, his bony clavicles stand out harshly beneath the fuzz. If he keeps going like this his shoulder blades will crack.
“I think you better calm down a little,” I say. “You’re only going to hurt yourself.”
“I know you! I know you! Brother Thomas! You’re—”
His face is a crimson splash with flaring nostrils. He bashes the window some more and I can see that his nose will have a permanent tilt down and to the left from now on. The two other naked guys back there are in the happy zone, mellow and sort of swooning. They’re having a quiet but intense discussion about butterflies and cyanotic children suffocating because of their umbilical cords.
Maybelle has made a buttonhook move that would put Jerry Rice to shame, completely outmaneuvering Burke and both deputies, zigging and zagging among the tombstones.
I feel like clapping but I don’t want to take my fists out of my pockets just yet. I’m not sure what’ll happen and don’t feel like finding out. She’s tossed all her clothes by now and I wonder what the hell is in the LSD that makes everybody around here suddenly want to strip and streak.
Fuzzy is getting even more excited and now he’s torn a gash above one eyebrow that has him blinking madly. “Brother Thomas!”
“Listen, you need to relax and ride it out. Don’t fight. In a few hours you’ll be okay.”
“You are Brother Thomas, the breadmaker, aren’t you?”
He’s a fan of my baking. Twenty minutes of kneading the dough does the job. Plus the raisins, they all like the raisins. “Yes.”
He has to spit blood out before he can say anything more. “The lights, all these lights—”
I admit, it perks me up. I lean in closer. “Carnival lights?”
He frowns and looks at me like I’m nuts. “The hell you talking about, man, you stoned? These are God’s lights!”
“Oh.”
“God’s here and he’s got a message for us all.”
“Of course he does.”
He catches sight of Maybelle rounding a sumac. “Damn, look at that old lady’s tits flopping around! I hope they catch her soon, that sort of thing offends me. I mean, it’s just rude to crank up an old lady like that! One of these assholes here must’ve turned her lemonade on.”
He’s still struggling wildly against the high-tensile steel bracelets but there’s absolutely no exertion in his voice. The tiny bones in his wrists, elbows, and shoulders are cracking and popping loose. He’s going to need an entire upper body cast when they finally get him to a hospital.
“Goddamn, Brother Thomas, there’s a Ferris wheel. It is a carnival! The carousel is whipsawing around and all the horses are black, their eyes crazy, ruby red, vicious. They’ve got horns too, not unicorn horns but more like goats’. Like the devil’s! How did you know?” He snaps his head around and more blood splashes against the glass. “Hey, man, before I forget to mention it, I love your bread. The raisins, man. Most monks can’t bake for shit but you’ve got the touch.”
“Thank you.”
He shuts his eyes, looking at something deeper inside himself and not liking it. His temples tighten and throb, even his eyelids are quivering as he grits his teeth and flops back in the seat. “Ah, hell. Some skanky dude here wants a drink.”
“What?”
“Oh fuck! What’s he doin’ with that snake? Jesus, that’s twisted! I’m gonna be sick.”
There’s a loud snap and for an instant I think he’s actually managed to twist the cuffs off. But that isn’t it at all. His left arm has given out and a jagged stake of bone is poking through. He glances at it, gives a manic titter, falls back against the seat, and passes out.
The other two guys continue their heated discussion, which has moved on to Victorian literature, namely the poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the pages of verse he buried with his wife, only to dig her up again years later. Fuzzy slumps sideways and bleeds all over the dude. They don’t seem to notice much.
Maybelle makes a bad turn and falls headlong into Lucretia Murteen’s open grave. She lies on top of the coffin laughing wildly and, from the sounds of it, thumping her head. Burke doesn’t want to go down there and get her and the deputies appear very uncomfortable about the entire afternoon’s events.
I collect her clothes, walk down the hill, jump into the grave, and ease Maybelle up until Burke can haul her out. Burke takes her home and the deputies drive off with the three naked guys in the backseat. Nobody’s left in the cemetery except me and the gravedigger, who fills Sister Lucretia’s grave the old-fashioned way, using only a shovel and the muscles in his back.
I look around for Maggie, scanning the distant cottonwoods. I don’t see her but I know she’s here someplace, along with many of my ghosts. I can feel her nearby and I want to ask her to protect me again, to guard me through these dark hours, but I can’t even manage to call her name.
THAT NIGHT WHEN I SAW MY FATHER SITTING ON THE edge of my bed, snapping photos from out of the depths of hell, was the last time I slept in my—my brothers’—bedroom. After that they shut the door to me and I’ve seen no reason to force my way in.
The tension can be felt throughout the whole house, and my side hurts constantly now. But the time is approaching when we’ll have to face each other again. We are all very patient men. Dodi continues to care for them during the day, but she spends most nights with me. She’s usually asleep when I come to bed and she’s gone by the time I awaken.
Tonight, though, she’s waiting for me.
Another storm is brewing. I can feel the heavy pulse inside my bones and far in back of my eyes. Thunder groans in the roiling silver-laced clouds, and lightning occasionally dips over and hits the swamp like a striking viper. The rain comes softly at first, and the sweet scent of mimosa and loblolly pine drifts on the wind. My mother’s curtains rustle and sweep across my bare shoulder.
“It’s back,” Dodi says.
The restrained terror in her voice works against me in all the wrong ways. Her heavy breath is tinged with good scotch. She’s never taken a drink in front of me yet, but she can hold her liquor well. Now come the chants and the invocations and all that shit about my vinegar again. “You can’t expect to go through the rest of your life and never see rain again, Dodi.”
“This is different. It’s gonna get bad, just like before.”
“No, now listen to me—”
“The river’s gonna flood, people will be drowning facedown in the parking lots and gutters. Bog town gonna fall into the swamp. You jest watch. The dead get up, the past comes around again. Mama says—”
“I don’t care what your mother says.”
“Yes, you do, Thomas, though you don’t want to confess it. I done told you once. This is a storm of souls. That’s what she calls it, and I see no reason to argue with that a’tall. Neither should you.”
“I’m not arguing. I’ll handle things in my own way.”
“How?”
“Shh.”
“But how?”
Dodi is afraid of listening to all the gurgling, sluicing water pounding at the roof. That thumping at the walls is too much like the knocking of the dead and doomed just waiting to come inside. It seems like such a long time since she’s run across the yard in her cotton summer dress and swung on the old tire hanging in the yard while the rain darkened her hair and splashed down her legs.
She smooths herself against the mattress, sheets twining tightly around
her body, her breasts damp and shining white in the dim light.
“The ghosts, they coming back.”
I say something to her that I know I shouldn’t, but it’s like a whisper that’s been forced out from inside. “They’ve never left.”
“More fool you then to deny what’s happenin’. It wants us. It’s always wanted us. Everybody, the whole town.”
There’s no point in continuing this way, we’re not getting anywhere fast. “You want me to go see your mother again?”
“I’m not sure. I thought maybe she’d know what to do, but now I ain’t so certain. Mama’s strong in her ways but . . .”
“But what?”
“Well, the truth is she can’t fight this too good no more. She’s down to only six fingers.”
“Jesus Christ!” I blurt out.
She nods, shrewdly, cannily, aware of more than she should be. She rubs her feet together like a little girl. “I’m just talking because I need to, that’s the only reason. I don’t mean to unsettle you none.”
“It’s all right.”
The familiar sound of branches tearing at the shingles consoles me in some odd fashion. It reminds me of the nights when my parents would make a fire and we’d sit in the glow of the television screen taking comfort in each other’s company. Rain splashes and murmurs. Dodi reclines against the pillows, drawing me forward onto the bed. I move beside her, and she groans and pulls me closer. When I try to press her legs open her small fist comes up to my chest like a rock and stops me. I wait, listening to the growling in the skies. I like the sound.
“You’re the only one who can save us,” she tells me.
“Shh.”
“Stop shushing me, dammit.”
She lies back, displaying her thick but well-trimmed pubis mound. She squirms a bit but not from desire. A harsh frowning line appears between her eyes. From her position she can look out the window and see the distant tracks of lightning at work in the bayou. Her hand slides over her belly, ranging across the silken loveliness of her pale, cool skin.
“Will you save us?”
I need affirmation too. It’s why we’re here. A whippoorwill calls and she flinches so forcefully that she cracks the back of her skull on the headboard. She rubs the spot and her hair is suddenly wild and unruly. I find that deliciously erotic and my breath grows heavier. She glances up at her own shadow on the wall, brushing her riotous curls out with her hands.
“Thomas—”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore tonight.”
“It ain’t your choice.”
But it is. I press myself toward her and mash her lips with mine. She moans out of annoyance and not passion, wanting to scold me some more. In another part of the house my brothers are angry. Jonah’s poetry is caustic and piercing but no worse than Sebastian’s laughter. Cole’s love is the love of the night-world and he alone understands the true liberty of darkness. The water on the window throbs and streams, reaching like splayed fingers.
I shut the light and Dodi halfheartedly protests once more, mewling louder and perhaps shedding tears against my chest. Maybe it’s only sweat. The storm keeps rolling in. I take what I’m after. Thunder settles on the property. Poetry be damned. Let them grouse in their dirty corners.
THE DEAD KID IS WALKING AROUND THE BACKYARD again, and this time he’s brought Herbie the child murderer with him.
The rain drizzles in gentle waves, wind nudging it to part here and there. Our lawn is flooded and covered with large puddles six inches deep in places, like miniature ponds. Mallards and ducks will have a good time swimming in them tomorrow morning. The cypress and willows swing and crackle, like old men laughing. Johnny’s mouth drips skimmer dragonflies and Herbie carefully avoids them, crutching his way across the grass. They’re having a quiet conversation, laughing a lot, Johnny nodding heartily in agreement. When he does, the mosquitoes fly from his lips and a dark cloud wreathes his head. Herbie is good on the crutches, fast, and he manages to skitter away before he can get bitten.
It’s a thing to watch. Herbie has his trouser leg pinned up to the stump and wrangles ahead easily. He looks twenty years older but just as powerful. Those arms have broken the back of a bull gator and I figure he’s still strong enough to do the same now. It gets me smiling a little.
I put on my pants. I remember how embarrassed I was last time when I went downstairs naked to meet with Johnny Jonstone. I take the steps three at a time and turn the corner into the kitchen, waiting to see my brothers.
Instead, Sarah reaches up for me from where she sits on the floor beneath the phone.
“Don’t go out there, Thomas,” she tells me.
“Sarah,” I whisper. I get the vague sense that this isn’t how things are supposed to be, but I don’t follow up on it. Still, I’m curious. I touch the back of my skull and wince and she does the same. “What are you doing back here?”
“They won’t let me go,” she says, her voice heavy with anguish. “Not just Jonah. All of them.”
“But you left with Fred.”
“No, not quite.”
I cross my arms and lean against the cupboard. The stitches in her belly have gotten infected and the skin is raw and torn around the thick white bandage. There are wads of cash scattered around her. I’d guess it’s the five thousand I paid her to leave. They’ve sent her to haunt me because my conscience has failed to do so.
“Where are they?” I ask. “Where are my brothers?”
“They won’t help you anymore.”
“I figured that.”
She reaches up to the phone and pulls the receiver down with her, and I can hear a harsh buzzing, possibly a voice, emanating from it. A couple of long-jawed orb weaver spiders creep across the floorboards leaving threads of web against her legs. She says, “My father hates me. He wants to fuck me. It’s worse now than when I was a child. He wants me dead.”
“Sarah, don’t listen to . . . to whatever you’re being told.”
“You don’t understand!”
“It’s all lies. Your father loves you. He always has. Everything’s all right. You need to go home now.”
She shakes her head. The tattooed masks of Tragedy and Comedy leer and grin at me, and their mouths are full of blood. “I never should have left. Fred’s just going to get wired again, there’s no way he can break his habit. He burgles houses and sells whatever crap he can. He’s in and out of rehab every few weeks. I belong here. I love Jonah. You all need me.”
“You might be right,” I say, “but you still have to go. Your parents care about you. You’ve got a life waiting.”
Her nostrils are red and cracked once more. Maybe she’s back on cocaine or maybe that’s merely how Jonah wants her to be—broken without him. He keeps her tangled up in our minds.
The murdered boy is at the back door gesturing for me to come outside. The scent of sweet gum trails inside and the rain makes the world smell clean. There are more black fingerprint marks around his neck, as if Herbie has been practicing over the last couple of days, trying to get back into shape. Johnny raps at the screen door exactly the same way that Eve tapped on the glass in my office. He leaves behind a smudge of crushed milkweed bugs.
Sarah says, “Thomas, can’t you feel it, can’t you get a whiff of it? Stay out of the yard tonight.”
“You people are always telling me that.”
“Follow good advice,” she cries. “They told you once that the man isn’t dead. He’s come looking for you. Go run and hide.”
“I’d rather get to the bottom of this and be done with it.”
“You’ll never be done with it, don’t you know that?” The buzzing on the phone is getting louder but I still can’t hear any distinct words. “You’ll just wind up deep in the swamp again.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing.”
“Don’t you believe it. You’re—”
“—no longer safe, I know. Everybody’s said it. But I still think it’s time Herbie and I had a discour
se.”
“He doesn’t want to just talk.”
“I know that. Hang up the phone.”
“No, I can’t, I’ve been trying . . .” She grips the receiver so hard that the plastic case is cracking.
“Go back home, Sarah.”
“But my father. He hates me! He wants to screw me. He has ever since I was a little girl. His eyes, you should see them, they’re always bloodshot and on fire, like roadside flares burning. Oh God, if only you could see his eyes.” She presses her mouth to the phone. “Hello? Yes, Daddy . . .”
“That’s somebody else talking, Sarah. Who is it? Jonah? Sebastian?”
“Let me stay with you,” she pleads.
“No.”
I grab the receiver out of her hand and put it to my ear. The buzzing of voices has stopped but I can still hear breathing on the line. I hang it up and walk to the back door. Johnny’s gone, and when I turn back I see that the phantom Sarah is too. Spiderweb strands flutter to the kitchen floor.
I walk out the back door into the yard.
The night is slick as crude oil. The rain continues to fall and it feels good against my heated forehead. It’s as if I have a fever, but I’m not ill. The pain in the back of my skull begins to recede. I brush my curls out of my face and I hear my mother calling after me, high-pitched but not quite wailing. Mama has enough of her own troubles. I don’t bother to look for Maggie or Drabs hiding in the brush. They’re not there. For the first time in my life I feel completely alone, and I’m not sure what to make of it. Mist swirls at my ankles as I wander across the muddy grass. Herbie’s here someplace, come back to put the squeeze on me.
CHAPTER TEN
THE MOON’S A WET SMEAR ACROSS THE crashing, boiling clouds. Silver bleeds down against the windswept, shuddering trees. Cottonmouth snakes slither beneath the cabbage palm and shagbark hickory, tails slapping hard in the water.
If he hadn’t been smiling I wouldn’t have seen him.
A Choir of Ill Children Page 14
