“He had a book of defense stamps in bed with him,” said Ben.
“He’s scared of the dark. But he’s a lot less scared than he used to be, now that Grandpa’s back.”
Ben sat down beside her and pulled her toward him, but her body stiffened against his. Time. It would take time. He slid his arm around her waist, and she leaned her head against him. Close to them but outside the screen, a cricket chirped, regular as a heartbeat. Though it was still enough to hear time passing, now Ben did not notice the seconds ticking away like water. Cooper and his death were a thousand miles away. He can’t touch us, thought Ben. He’s powerless. He’s dead.
“When you came as a bird,” said Ben, “why didn’t Cooper see you?”
“He did see me. He just didn’t recognize me.”
“The next time your Ancestress comes, ask her if she’ll throw the dice my way,” said Ben. “Make me lucky.”
“She won’t do it,” said Clare. “She can’t give you anything you don’t already have.”
“Would she turn me into a gorilla?”
“You don’t turn into a gorilla. You go into the body of the gorilla.”
“Could I go into the body of a gorilla?” asked Ben.
“Maybe. But it’s better to start with something small. I started by going into the body of a cat.”
“I don’t want to go into the body of a cat,” said Ben.
“A bird’s, then.”
“No.”
“Whose?”
“Yours.”
30
Death He Is a Little Man
IF THE TIGERS HAD NOT defeated the Yankees the day before, if a twenty-three-year-old rookie right-hander named Virgil Trucks had not pitched eight innings of shut-out ball in Briggs Stadium, if the Dodgers and the Cardinals had not ended up in a free-for-all in the sixth inning after Ducky Medwick slid into second and spiked Marty Marion and if shortstop Creepy Crespi had not come between them, punching with both fists, more people might have noticed another story that appeared in the Ann Arbor News: the story of a local team, the South Avenue Rovers, whose members, through good luck and happy coincidence, had received furloughs and who had agreed to play an exhibition game with an unknown team from out of state, the Dead Knights. Proceeds to be given to the Red Cross.
Along with the story appeared a photograph of the contract. Many who read it found it disquieting. A new lease on life—what kind of trophy was that? And who was this challenger who called himself Death?
What one heart finds hard to believe, a hundred find easy.
It started with the sons, gathering every morning to work out, and it spread to the fathers, who had not played this hard since their boys were youngsters but who had never forgotten how. In slacks and undershirts they showed up on the field with their bats and gloves. Mr. Clackett was the first convert. He’d coached a church league when George was a kid, and he’d pitched softball for a couple of years till he fell on his knee and his body gave up running. But not hitting. And Mr. Clackett knew the game as well as if he’d invented it. When Ben asked him to coach the South Avenue Rovers, he accepted with pleasure. He made plans for a team picnic in Island Park on the eve of the game. He would hire a bus draped in bunting to carry them there.
“Make it the eve of the eve of the game,” said Mr. Lieberman. “I want that we should enjoy ourselves.”
When Mr. Clackett and Mr. Bacco and Mr. Lieberman closed their shops every afternoon to play ball, their customers took notice. By late afternoon there was a crowd, a gathering of the faithful. The bleachers filled up by four o’clock, and latecomers brought blankets and sat on the grass. The hot-dog truck, which usually appeared for evening games, opened at nine in the morning and stayed around till dark.
And word spread, from old to young, from husband to wife, from mother to daughter, from professor to car mechanic, from bank teller to tailor, that never had any team played for higher stakes.
This was the reason why Father Legg, who for five days straight never missed a practice and who had his own regular spot in the bleachers the way some of his parishioners had their own pews, took Ben aside one morning during warm-up and said, “Mr. Clackett is a fine coach but not, I think, the man for the job.”
“Who else is there?” asked Ben.
Father Legg held up a warning finger, as if Ben had just said something dangerous.
“You believe that if you lose the game, you and your friends will die. Of course that’s nonsense. But I have seen nonsense more powerful than sense. I have watched patients die because their doctors told them they would die. When I was a missionary in the Congo, I saw people die because an enemy had laid a curse on them—a promise that death would come to them on such and such a day. And if they believed that death would come to them on that day, they died, though they were in the best of health.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Let me be your coach. Clackett is a fine man for a game between the South Avenue Rovers and the Broadway Rangers. But I do not believe he is the man for a game between life and death.”
Ben was silent.
“I also know a lot about baseball,” added Father Legg. “Your brother may have told you.”
“No, he didn’t tell me,” said Ben. “I don’t know what Mr. Clackett can do if he’s not coaching. He’s got a bad knee.”
“Let me talk to him,” said Father Legg.
The next day Father Legg bustled into the job. He scolded; he praised, he made rules. He allowed Tom to anoint his glove with Fix-All, which filled the air around him with a smell like rancid meat. He forgave an injured knee but not an injured dignity, and he knew the difference between Mr. Clackett’s slow, painful gait and Mr. LaMont’s slow, portly one. For Mr. LaMont he borrowed a nippy terrier and released her at the crack of the undertaker’s bat. But with Mr. Schoonmaker, who was nearly as slow as Mr. Clackett, Father Legg was all patience, as if he knew without being told that Mr. Schoonmaker had never owned a new bat or ball in his life but always one handed down through four brothers. He could never lift the new bat he’d bought for Henry without pausing to admire it, to run his fingers over the satiny wood and to wonder: what kind of wood do they use that it hits so nice? And the glove—what kind of hide is this, and how is it tanned that it comes out so soft, fitting so good? And the ball—what do they stuff it with that makes it so strong that nothing breaks or loses its shape? Even in left field, he was shy at finding himself so near Mr. Lieberman, the jeweler, and Mr. LaMont, the undertaker with the pretty wife. Mr. Lieberman was so polite, so slim, so quick! Father Legg liked to kid him about being at home on any diamond.
The only player not at home in Father Legg’s fold was Willie.
“Willie, don’t try to kill the ball,” Father Legg urged him as he took his stance at home plate. “Just meet it.”
Willie stood straight as a pole, gripping the bat like a weapon, and Ben pitched a fast one right over home plate.
“Strike one,” tolled Father Legg. “A bit late there, my boy.”
Ben threw a curve and Willie lunged for it.
“Thou shalt not lunge,” Father Legg cautioned him. “And choke up on the bat. Strike two.”
Willie looked up for the next pitch and his glance caught a bright figure settling herself into the bleachers: purple shorts, pink halter, huge sunglasses. His heart raced. He longed to do something spectacular, something that would astonish them all. The ball sped from Ben’s hand, and Willie lashed out with the bat. To his astonishment he heard a crack, as of a tree splitting, and Father Legg shouting at him, “Run! Run!”
He flew down to first, and at the burst of cheers he grinned up at Marsha. She was pawing through her huge purse. She had seen nothing.
“Ben, you bat now,” said Father Legg. “George, you take the mound.”
George went into his stretch. A high fastball.
“Let’s see your fastball, Clackett!” shouted Ben. “I could count the stitches on that one.”
Willi
e turned to look once more at Marsha. She had taken off her sunglasses and was watching the game through binoculars. No, not the game. She was watching Ben, and Willie knew she had always been watching Ben, waiting for him, and in her sly way, faithful.
That night, eating supper with his mother, Willie rearranged the universe in his head.
“I don’t ask for much,” said Wanda, “but wouldn’t you think he’d want to eat supper with his own mother?”
“Terrible, just terrible,” said Willie. On the playing field of his mind, the South Avenue Rovers were losing to the Dead Knights.
“He could see Clare after supper,” said Wanda. “There’d be plenty of time after supper. He doesn’t listen to me.”
“He doesn’t listen to me, either.” said Willie. The game was over. The Rovers were gone, erased, presumed dead. Father Legg and Willie alone were spared.
“Still, I wish you’d talk to him,” said Wanda.
She noticed that Willie’s attention was wandering, and she got up and turned on the radio that she kept in the kitchen for company while she scrubbed the floor. Its green eye flashed. They waited for it to warm up.
“Let’s listen to the news,” she said.
Lowell Thomas’s urgent voice made them both sit up straighter.
“A smashing blow delivered yesterday by waves of German tanks, heavily supported from the air, crushed the defenses of Tobruk in Libya. The War Office tonight confirmed the loss of the town, already claimed by the enemy, who said twenty-five thousand prisoners, including several generals, had been captured.”
“Pass the bread,” said Willie.
“A bus carrying fifty-two children to a summer camp in Keene, New Hampshire, plunged into a ravine yesterday. All the passengers were injured, none critically. The driver of the bus claimed that the steering wheel broke off as he made a sharp turn. No charges have been filed against him.”
“Fifty-two children!” exclaimed Wanda.
Willie saw in his mind another bus, draped in bunting, carrying the South Avenue Rovers to their team picnic at Island Park.
He saw the front left tire blow as it reached the bridge.
He saw the bus skid.
He saw the steering wheel break off in the driver’s hands.
He saw all the passengers injured, unable to play.
He saw himself saved. He and Father Legg would have arrived earlier. And it would look like an accident—perhaps an oil slick? He could work out the details. He had time.
Although Ben came to visit every night, although he said he looked forward to seeing Davy and called him his special pal, Davy always remembered to ask him: “Will you tuck me in tonight?” And Aunt Helen said, “Davy, he came to see Clare.” And Ben said, “Davy’s my special pal. I always tuck him in, Mrs. Bishop.”
Nevertheless, in the crumb of silence between question and consent, Davy feared that this one time Ben might say, “Not tonight, Davy. I can’t tuck you in tonight,” so that when he heard the promise spoken, “I always tuck him in, Mrs. Bishop,” he felt as happy as on the first night he’d taken Ben’s hand and led him up to the third floor.
They said good-night to Grandpa, who expected it, and Davy climbed into bed and checked under his pillow for his defense stamps and thought of little ways to keep Ben sitting on the edge of his bed just a few minutes longer.
“Do you know any scary stories?” he asked.
“No,” said Ben, smiling.
“Do you know any gory songs? Do you know ‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout’?”
“Everybody knows that song.”
“Do you know ‘Be kind to your web-footed friends’?”
“Oh, sure,” said Ben. “I was kicking the slats out of my cradle at that one.”
Those were funny songs, not scary songs. Only one song had the power to terrify Davy, and he did not sing it often, though he did not know if it was the tune, which was slow and wandering, or the words, which were simple and not gory or terrible, nothing that would make his mother say, “For God’s sake, quit singing that terrible thing!” Sometimes he thought it was the way Ernestina sang it to him, crooning it, never looking at him when she sang but way out in the trees where the owl lived. But even when he sang the song to himself, he shivered, just as if she were singing it.
Ben stood up; in spite of all Davy’s enticements, he was leaving.
“I know a really scary song,” said Davy. “I can sing it for you.”
“Tomorrow night,” said Ben. “Save it for tomorrow night.”
But Davy, who never took it as certain fact that there would be a tomorrow night, sang after him:
“Death he is a little man
And he go from door to door.”
Ben, who was on the stairs, turned back.
“Where’d you learn that one?”
“Ernestina,” answered Davy.
“Stilts’s mother taught you that song?”
Davy nodded. He saw Ben turning to go again. “She got it from the rude doctor on Catherine Street.”
“What doctor?”
“Dr. Cold Friday.”
It was his last secret, and he gave it up gladly to keep Ben there.
“Who?” Ben exclaimed. “Who did you say?”
“Cold Friday. Five times she died. Five times she come back—”
Ben did not wait to hear more; he was running down the stairs, whooping and shouting.
31
Where Your Treasure Is
WHEN YOU CROSS MAIN Street into the west part of town, the streets that carry you over change their names: Liberty Street turns, after many adventures, into Goose Turd Lane. The roots of the elms run deeper than the roots of the people who live there and who will move on, looking for work in bigger cities. The houses are mostly duplexes, set close together, though here and there you see a small frame house with a hand pump in the yard. If you entered that house, you would find a wooden sink and a smaller pump in the kitchen, and you would admire how neatly some residents have tacked old sugar bags and newspapers on the bedroom walls for insulation.
If you walk along Catherine Street, just off Main, you will notice that on the left side live the black people and on the right side lives everybody else. On your left you will pass the barbershop, the Paradise Bar & Grill, and the harness shop; also the Oasis and the Promised Land. A sign in the harness shop says Furniture Cheap. The only suggestion of furniture for sale is a small table on which someone has arranged a family of old bottles. Those who know the owner of these bottles say that she has hidden something of herself in every building on this block—a bit of hair, a nest of nail parings—and this gives her power over the people who live there. It also gives them protection from devils, perturbed spirits, and the evil eye.
If you are a white man, it is unlikely you will ever meet this woman who lives over the harness shop and is known to everyone who cares to know such things as the root doctor, as if her name were too powerful to be pronounced. Her birthday and her given name, which she has never given out, were written in a family Bible and burnt up in a fire. So she says. She might be fifty or seventy, depending on the time of day, the light, and the weather. Sometimes she can be seen in the upper window over the harness shop, her conch shell applied to her ear; from this she receives messages, though in what language nobody knows. Probably Gullah, say the families who have come from one of the islands off South Carolina and speak that dialect. Trinidad, says the barber, whose father was born there and who hears his father’s voice in her most casual greeting. Others claim she has a mynah bird’s ear for picking up the accent of whomever she’s healed, a chameleon’s instinct for making a local color universal. She is a deep, brilliant black, as if newly arrived from the dark continent.
Several years ago she put her only competitor out of business. A conjure man from Georgia moved into the room over the barbershop and put his sign in the window there:
DOCTOR BUZZARD
MEDICINE—WATER
S
INSPECTOR OF FISHING LICENSES FOR THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
He had skin the color of buckwheat honey and half a dozen testimonials from grateful patients which he hung on the barbershop walls. Shortly thereafter, the table of bottles vanished and a sign, of a size equal to his, appeared in the window of the harness shop:
COLD FRIDAY
MEDICINE—WATERS
INSPECTOR OF FISHING LICENSES FOR THE STATE OF ETERNITY
Below the printing was a little sketch of Elijah flying over the mountains of Detroit, an error to which Doctor Buzzard drew her attention.
“I never saw no mountains in Detroit,” said Doctor Buzzard.
“You just ain’t looked,” snapped Cold Friday.
His medicine failed, his waters cured nothing, and Doctor Buzzard departed. What were his testimonials next to her power? She had stood in the very heart of healing. She had seen God sitting in his armchair, in full armor with a breastplate of feathers from all the birds that ever were and ever shall be, and He had handed her a pass, signed with her name, good for traveling between the lands of the living and the dead. She had a duster made of the feathers of the skypoke, which flies to the devil and back, and an ostrich egg laid on Good Friday over a hundred years ago, and the yolk of that egg was a pearl, which anyone could see when she candled it. The sight of that pearl had cured many a case of pinkeye on Catherine Street.
Further, she had a little whip made from the bristles of a hog named Bathsheba that ran five hundred miles from Virginia to Georgia with the devil in her. And she had personally met the Whooping Slave of North Carolina, who was buried with his master’s treasure to guard it, and he had given her spells from beyond the grave and a speaking owl. Oh, there was no disease that a single feather from that owl could not heal. And she could beat off bad spirits with her cane which lay down and wiggled like a snake when she gave the command, but she never gave the command.
The illnesses of white people did not interest her, Ernestina explained, when Helen called to ask if Cold Friday was coming today. It was out of friendship for Ernestina that the root doctor had agreed to come at all. Possibly she might come today.
Things Invisible to See Page 22
