by Vicki Lane
Pook nodded in approval. “Okay, one less thing to worry about. Now, while your mama is still doing her act, most likely the mark won’t notice nothing for a while. You go this way, I go that way, and when your mama gets done, she limps off—remember, she’s supposed to have a bum ankle—she goes in another direction, blowing kisses back at the mark. Hell, sometimes the mark’ll try to follow her and make a date but that’s when she starts going on about the big ol’ jealous boyfriend that she’s on her way to meet. That kind of talk usually cools ’em down right quick. Meanwhile, you and me is going to the different places that we’ve set and Darrell comes and picks us up. We get down out of sight and then he picks up Prin—the big ol’ jealous boyfriend, just like she said, in case the mark is watching. Slicker ’n owl shit—if everyone does their part. You reckon you can handle pickup, Good Boy?”
Without waiting for an answer, Pook moved to the small table that divided the living area from the kitchen and began to paw through the plastic grocery bags heaped in its center along with the heavy flashlight Darrell had carried the night before.
“Where’s the peanut butter Nabs? I know we bought some of them. I can’t eat those stinking toaster tarts or whatever the hell they are.”
Calven shivered at the cold menace in Pook’s voice and watched as Darrell began to sidle uneasily toward the front door. Pook’s shaven head jerked around. “Did you eat my fucking Nabs, you greedy son of a bitch?”
The big man hung his head but didn’t speak. Three quick steps and Pook was at his side, the long tube of the flashlight in his upraised hand. Without pausing, Pook swung the flashlight, burying the metal butt in Darrell’s belly. The big man doubled up with a single gasp and then was silent.
Turning back to the table and pulling a bottle of Pepsi from one of the bags, Pook spoke again in a quiet, conversational tone. “Now take the van and go get me some more peanut butter Nabs. You know I don’t eat no sweet shit.”
Without speaking, Darrell hurried out the door, still crouched and clasping his stomach. There was the sound of dry retching, then of the van door slamming and the vehicle starting up and pulling away.
Pook twisted off the bottle cap and took a long pull of the drink, swallowing almost half the contents before stopping for a breath. Then he dropped onto the sofa beside Calven and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes.
“Want one, Good Boy?”
Calven looked at the pack in Pook’s outstretched hand. “No thanks … wouldn’t care for none … not now. But I was wondering …”
Calven frowned and studied his feet. I got to do this right. Make him think I’m not scared of him. “That thing you did—the way you pulled the pocket up—it wouldn’t work if the guy was wearing jeans.”
“The boy’s paying attention—reckon he’s as smart as you said he was, Prin.”
Calven jerked his head up to see his mother sidling out of the door across the room. She looked pale and sick—one eye was swollen and bruised and there was a round red mark on the side of her neck. She made her shaky way to the table and grabbed a bottle of Pepsi, then shuffled back to the bedroom, glancing once toward Calven but not meeting his eyes.
“The princess ain’t quite ready to be sociable, I reckon. You and me’ll just have to pass the time someways.”
The blank black gaze turned on him again, looking him up and down, and Calven had to fight to suppress the shiver that was threatening to sweep over him.
“How old did Prin tell me you was?”
“Fourteen … almost.” Calven had to force the words out. There was something in the pale man’s face … in the tone of his voice … a hunger, a need, that made this simple question terrifying.
“Fourteen …” Pook nodded, speaking low and to himself. “… a long lifetime of years ahead. That’s good … very good.”
He seemed to consider an idea that was forming, to weigh it, and then, somewhat reluctantly, to put it aside. He leaned back on the dusty cushions and lit a cigarette.
“You was asking about jeans. Now, I can snake a wallet outta a pair of tight Levi’s as pretty as you ever saw. But what we’re after is cash and credit cards. Reckon who’s likely to have the most cash and the biggest credit line—a fella in jeans or a dude in high-class trou?”
Pook blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling.
Act like you want to do this. Like you think this is cool. Calven leaned back, in imitation of his mentor, and yawned. “Yeah, I see what you mean. So that’s what you come and got me for, to work with you uns. I can do that pickup stuff, no problem.”
The colorless face was turned toward him, nodding slightly in what looked like approval.
“Maybe I will take one of them smokes now.” Calven stuck out his hand. “And then whyn’t you show me how to do that trick with the pocket? I bet you I could do that.”
Part of an article from a travel magazine
Guarding Against the Professional Pickpocket
The pickpocket wants your cash … and your credit … maybe even your identity. Your ATM card, driver’s license, passport, checkbook, Social Security card … all have value in today’s criminal market, and the pickpocket is happy to relieve you of them.
A pickpocket is always on the lookout for a “mark”—someone whose attention is elsewhere and someone whose wallet or purse is easily accessible. The pickpocket sees the mark but the mark rarely notices the pickpocket—who may look like a harried suburban mom, a distracted senior, a respectable businessman—anyone who blends into a crowd. The professional pickpocket is very different from a “snatch and run” amateur; the professional pickpocket’s goal is to take your possessions and vanish before you realize that you have been robbed.
The best prevention is awareness—women should never leave their purses unattended. Nor should they be left open. Shoulder bags should be worn cross-body and carried in front. A wallet in a back pocket is an open invitation to a skilled pickpocket—carry it in a front pocket or, better yet, use a hidden money clip.
Often pickpockets work as a team—one doing the actual thievery while the other acts as a …
Chapter 43
Witchery
Friday, May 4
(Birdie)
I got to wondering about witches because of something Aunt Belvy said in her prophecy, ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”
Dorothy is pacing about my living room, looking at my pictures and fiddling with my doodads on their little bracket shelf. Every few minutes she goes and looks out the door like she was expecting someone to drive up. She says she has gotten too fidgety to sit home and wait for Calven to call again, so she has brought her new cellphone over and is spending the day with me. She also says she wants to help me with some cleaning but all that she is doing is worrying the life out of me.
Now she is looking out the window that faces the road. “That’s from the Bible, those words about not suffering witches, isn’t that so?”
“Why, yes, I believe it is,” I tell her, and look at the Bible there on the table by my recliner, knowing I could name chapter and verse, since I’d read it over and over during the past few days. Seeking understanding, as you might say, but getting none.
The sound is turned low on the TV but I can see from their faces that Ashley is right upset with Brent—probably along of him stepping out with her best friend. She has just slapped him across that good-looking face of his and he has caught hold of her wrists and begun to kiss her but Dorothy don’t seem to notice and goes right on jabbering.
“Now, the old folks always used to talk of witchy women,” says she, running her finger along the slats of the venetian blinds to see if they need dusting, “but never like there was anything wrong with them. My mamaw—Uncle Luther’s own mama—had charms to get shed of warts. Why, she even called it ‘witching the warts.’ ”
Dorothy ain’t going to leave off, I can see that. And now there’s a commercial coming on anyways, so I mash the button to cut the sound all the way
down.
“Well, everyone knows about water witches,” I say, “the kind that can show you where to drill a well. And the thrash doctors what blows in a baby’s mouth to cure the thrush and the folks who can take the fire out of a burn. But—”
Dorothy waves her hand like she is shooing flies. “I reckon those are all good witches. Or maybe not even witches at all. But what about the bad ones—the kind that Bible verse means? What about those? Have you ever heard of a kind of witch called the Raven Mocker?”
Though the day is unseasonable warm, the sound of that evil name sends a chill over me. I start to turn the TV back up, hoping not to hear more, but Dorothy has got a bug in her bonnet and just keeps going.
“I never had heard of any such, but last week Calven brought a book home from school that he has to do a book report on. He always struggles so with those reports and I’ve taken to reading the books myself so as to be able to help the child and to make sure he gets all the way through … otherwise he’ll try to make do with reading just the first and the last chapters.”
Dorothy leaves off messing with the window blinds and goes and sets on the sofa facing me, I reckon so’s she can quiz me all the better. For the first time I see how tired and wrung out she looks. Her eyes is all red like she ain’t been sleeping and, even setting down, she can’t stop fidgeting while she talks.
“This book is all about the Cherokee Indians and their stories and what all they believed. Some of the tales is really nice and have a good little lesson at the end, almost like a Sunday school piece—but there’s this one about these Raven Mockers …”
She trails off and don’t say no more but just sets looking off into space. I don’t want to talk about them old Cherokee witches, not with Dorothy nor anyone else, and I mash the button to turn up the sound on the TV.
I am just in time to hear Ashley tell Brent that her best friend is carrying Brent’s baby. I can see that this is a surprise to him and he don’t want to believe it, but then, at the same time, that he reckons it could be so. Huh! That so-called best friend is nothing but a common huzzy and, if it was me, I wouldn’t give her air in a jug. And Brent ain’t never—
“Birdie?”
“What is it, Dor’thy?” I cut the sound plumb off and set up in the recliner. I can see I’m going to have to give some kind of answer to all these questions.
“Do you know about the Raven Mockers?” she asks. “Great awful old things like evil birds …”
She looks as pale and frightened as she did back at the Tennessee church and she is doing her hands like she was washing them, rubbing them over and over without seeming to notice.
“Birdie.” Her voice is low and trembly-like. “Birdie, I keep having these dreams … And every night I dream that it isn’t Prin what’s got Calven, but one of them Raven Mockers like in the book.”
On the TV screen, the people in my story all of a sudden look like paper dolls moving around and I wonder why I have spent so much time worrying about their sorry doings. I point the remote control at them and watch them disappear.
“Dor’thy,” I say, “let’s us step outside into the sunlight. If we have to talk of such things, the daylight is the place to do it.”
“The first night after Prin took Calven away, I had the dream … that there was this thing … well, you know how it is in dreams … I couldn’t rightly say if it was man, woman, or a great huge bird. But it had big black wings … and it made a horrible laughing sound.…”
We have pulled our chairs to the sunny end of the porch, and though it is warm aplenty, Dorothy’s words strike a chill to my bones. But I know I must hear her story and so I have brought her out into the open, where the winds can blow away the ugly words and the sun can burn off the cold dark evil.
“And in the dream, Calven is laying there and I can’t tell is he dead or asleep. And this great Rav—”
“Hush, Dor’thy,” I say, “there ain’t no need to speak that name. I know what you’re talking of.”
She cuts her eyes over at me. “I had thought that you might. I heard Uncle Luther telling Mommy, oh, many and many a year ago, that you had learned a lot of Injun ways from your granny … and that he didn’t reckon they squared with scripture.”
I had figured as much. Once I made my promise to Luther, him and me never spoke of the past no more. And I know that I never spoke of it to ary soul. But from things folks in his family let slip now and again over the years, I was right sure he had told at least part of my story to some of them. And Dorothy’s mother was the sister he was fondest of.
“Well, Dor’thy,” I say, feeling somehow aggravated with poor, long-gone Luther, “it’s been a right smart of time and I believe I’ve been as good a Christian as most. But go on and finish telling me about these dreams. You say you been having them every night?”
She closes her eyes. “Every night I put off going to bed because I don’t want the dream. I been sitting up in the living room with the TV on, trying to stay awake, but every night, sooner or later I drop off—I can’t help it.
“And then I’m back in the dark place where Calven is laying so still and this black thing is coming for him. I try to holler or to run at the thing but I can’t move and I can’t make a sound. And then I wake up.”
“Dor’thy honey, have you—”
She looks at me and her eyes is wild. “Birdie, I have prayed and prayed. I have fallen asleep with a prayer on my lips and the Bible in my hands and still the dreams come. But the worst is that every night, in the dream, I am farther away from the boy and every night the black thing is closer to him. And in the dream I know—”
She is crying hard now and I say, “Hush, honey, it’s all right; you don’t need to talk about it.”
But she don’t pay me no mind. She is sobbing and choking but at last she says the words I had dreaded to hear.
“B-Birdie, last night it was leaning right over Calven, and its black hand or its claw, everwhat it was, was reaching down to the boy’s chest.” She grabs hold of my arm and she is wailing like a crazy woman now. “I know … I know as sure as I’m alive, if I have the dream tonight, that thing will reach in and pull out Calven’s heart.”
She looks around again and now her voice is naught but a whisper. “Birdie.” I can’t hardly make out the words but I see them on her lips.
“Birdie,” she says, “the creature means to eat it.”
Chapter 44
Going to Water
Friday, May 4
(Birdie)
They was a time when I had bad dreams … I dreams of Old Spearfinger standing by my bed, and I would wake crying and shivering and crawl in bed with Granny Beck for her to hold me and comfort me with her soft words. But when I got to crying out in my sleep two and three times every night, Granny said that we must get rid of the bad dreams for once and all. That was when she showed me what the Cherokees called Going to Water.
And because I fear what will happen if Dorothy dreams that one last dream, I decide at last to break my promise to Luther.
I think I already knew I would, back at the Holiness Church when the Voice in the whirlwind told me that they is more than one way of knowing God and so, “Dor’thy,” I say, “let’s you and me drive down to the river. I believe that I can stop those dreams.”
“This here is something my granny did for me when I was little and had real bad dreams,” I tell Dorothy as we are driving along the dirt road that runs from the bridge back up to the burying place.
“It seems to me,” I say, trying to convince both of us that I am right in what I purpose to do, “it seems to me that if your prayers and your Bible ain’t helping against this Cherokee witch that has got into your dreams, then maybe a Cherokee spell will do the trick. Do you have a handkerchief or some such with you?”
She looks at me, kind of doubting, but I know that she is past arguing. “I have a bandana there in the glove compartment. A blue one.”
“That’ll do just fine,” I tell her. “Now here
at this wide place in the road, you can pull over and park. The riverbank ain’t too growed up and it’s easy to get to the water long about here.”
She pulls over, cuts off the engine, and starts to get out but I say, “Now, Dor’thy, I’m trying to remember the words my granny said more than seventy years ago. So while I’m working this charm, I don’t want you to speak for fear I’ll get bumfuzzled and not be able to finish, do you understand?”
Dorothy is wide-eyed but she presses her lips tight together and nods, then reaches over and pulls a folded blue bandana out of the glove compartment. She offers it to me but I tell her to hold on to it. And so we make our way to the water, just as Granny and I did so many years ago.
Me and Granny couldn’t get all the way down to the river, though she said that it would have been better. It was hard enough for her to hobble out the back way and to the little branch that bordered the field back of the house. But it had been a wet April and there was water enough.…
When we have reached the river’s edge and the water is lapping around the toes of our shoes I am happy to see that long-leggety gray bird is out there. He is most always somewhere on the rocks of the river and it wouldn’t seem natural not to see him.
“Now, Dor’thy,” I say, “you hold the bandana in your right hand and close your eyes. I’m going to dash some water over your head. When I’ve done it seven times, then you open your eyes and throw the bandana in the river. As it goes to float away, I’ll say the charm that’ll end the bad dreams.”
She nods and squinches her eyes shut. I lean on my stick and bend over to catch some water in the jelly jar I have brought for the purpose. It ain’t much but it is enough that Dorothy jumps when I pour it on her head and it dribbles down her face.
