The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  He had known they were going to see someone who could help him, according to Orchid, and he’d thought maybe it was another doctor but now he realized she was pulling him toward a reckoning with two of the most powerful and strangest characters who had ever cast their shadows in the Treme.

  Lady and her husband, Mister Moon. As a matter of fact, he had never seen them out by the light of full day, and so they likely only cast their shadows by the pale of the moon and the dance of red flame that spat sparks in the wicks of their lamps.

  But there they were. Standing behind them was the young woman with the red headwrap, and she came forward to meet Orchid and Curtis as they approached, one hauling and the other near bawling.

  “Comes Mister Curtis,” he heard Lady say, in a soft voice that for some reason made him think of cool water, but he was shocked because never in his life had anyone called him mister and he wasn’t sure he liked being so high in this voodoo woman’s regard.

  The other mister on the scene stood up from his chair and gave Orchid and Curtis a little bow. “Pleased,” he said nicely, but Curtis thought his voice was like the rattle of dry bones in a haunted house.

  “I’ve brought my boy,” Orchid said, as if they needed to be reminded, and she shoved Curtis forward like giving up an offering.

  When Curtis had regained his balance he stood like a statue and stared at the two of them. In the lamplight that could have resembled the flickering of crimson-eyed ghosts in St. Louis Cemetery Number One, Lady and Mister Moon might have been dapper phantasms, only they were all too real.

  It was said that Lady was born in the year 1858, which made her sixty-five years old. In this low light and with the wide-brimmed violet-colored hat she wore, her face was a mystery of shadows. Curtis had never seen her up close before, so he had no idea what she looked like. He had heard plenty, though: about her being a slave, and running away from the plantation with her mama into the swamp before the Civil War, and growing up in a colony of lepers, escaped convicts and other slaves in the bayou below New Orleans, and down there was where the voodoo gods and goddesses had found her and annointed her to be one of their own. He had heard more than plenty, and more than he’d wanted to hear: about the cottonmouth snake she kept in her house on St. Louis Street and called “Sister” for all the secrets it told her; about the trunk she kept full of shrunken heads of young’uns just his age who had stupidly wandered up behind the green wall of Giant Salvia, umbrella plants and huge Devil’s Trumpets that bloomed like tropical furies in her front yard; about the glowing purple orbs that constantly circled over and around her house as spectral watchmen, and sometimes at night it was said those orbs could be seen crawling spiderlike across the roof.

  There were other frightening things too, and Curtis kept them firmly in mind when he stared at what deceptively appeared to be a thin human woman in her violet-colored hat and dress and violet-colored gloves on slim-fingered hands at the end of spindly arms. She was the blue-black color of deepest Africa, untouched by the white explorer.

  As scary as Lady was, Curtis found Mister Moon to be downright spine-shiveringly creepy, no matter that he was a polite gentleman. It was certainly not Mister Moon’s fault that he’d been born with or been afflicted by a condition that had turned one side of his face pale yellow while the other side remained ebony, the two halves merging in a war of splotches down his forehead, the bridge of his elegant nose and his gray-tufted chin, but it was not easy to look upon. He too was a long tall drink of arsenic, dressed to kill in a trim-fitting black suit, a thin black tie decorated with red squares, a black top hat and black gloves, and on each wrist glinted the faces of two wristwatches. On a chain around his neck hung a gilded crucifix the size of the biggest pig’s foot ever cooked in a Treme stewpot.

  “Come closer, young man,” Lady said.

  Curtis didn’t move until Orchid pushed him forward some more, and even then his shoes dug up near-sacred earth.

  “I understand,” Lady said from beneath her hat, “you say you hear voices in your belfry. The ringin’ of other bells not your own, let’s say.” Her head cocked slightly to one side. “That true?”

  “Tell her,” Orchid said before Curtis could even think how to answer. “Go on, this ain’t the time to be all stitch-lipped!” When Curtis again hesitated, Orchid said to the voodoo woman, “He don’t know how he’s killin’ me with this, ma’am! My back…somethin’ ain’t right…I’m weak all the time…can’t think straight, with all this weighin’ on my—”

  “Mrs. Mayhew,” Lady interrupted, but softly. “Why don’t you go over yonder where Mrs. DeLeon is cookin’ up a pot full of gumbo. See her over there at the fire?” She waited until Orchid nodded. “Go tell her I said the word ‘Biddystick’, and she’ll laugh and give you a free bowl.” She glanced at the young woman in the red headwrap and then at Mister Moon. “Both y’all go on with her, leave Mister Curtis with me. Scoot, now.” She waved her gloved fingers toward Orchid as if brushing crumbs off a table.

  The young woman moved silkily forward and hooked Orchid’s arm with her own, while Mister Moon plucked up an ebony walking-stick that had been resting beside his chair.

  “Tell her true, Curtis,” Orchid said; it had come out as a demand. She turned her sad eyes upon Lady once more, the corners of her mouth downturned. “You know my husband left me,” she said. “It happened six years ago. The accident at the dock, I’m sayin’.”

  “I know all ’bout that,” returned the reply. “I was sorry for you then, and I’m sorry for you now. Go on, get y’self a bowl of gumbo and be a little piece happy.”

  Orchid started to speak again but the young woman was gently pulling at her, and so Orchid gave Curtis a last look that had a pinch of urgency in it and then she allowed herself to be moved. Mister Moon swept past Curtis with his walking-stick, leaving in the air the scent of sandalwood and lemons.

  When the three had gone on toward Mrs. DeLeon’s gumbo pot, Lady drew in a long breath and let it out. “Now we can talk,” she said, with some relief in there. She lifted her face toward Curtis. He saw the light catch the sharp bones of her cheeks, the formidable ridge of her nose and the intense emerald-green of her eyes, which startled Curtis because they looked like spirit-lamps glowing with a fierce energy that could burn something to destruction if she allowed.

  “I imagine,” she said, “you’ve heard all kinds a’things about m’self. Things that give young’uns bad dreams. You know what I’m sayin’.”

  Curtis forced himself to nod.

  “We ain’t here to go over all that…” She paused, searching for the correct word. Then: “Description,” she said. “I want to know ’bout the voices. Your mama’s awful worried, and you know she loves you. If she didn’t, you wouldn’t be standin’ here. Oh, listen…ain’t that pretty?”

  The crickets had started up, and from the oaks came the shurrah…shurrah of the night’s insects awakening from their daily slumber.

  Curtis felt himself shiver, though the air was warm and humid. He pushed whatever fear he had down, because now was the moment to speak and there was no point in holding back any longer. “I don’t…exactly hear voices,” he said. She was silent, and he went on. “I hear my own voice. But…it’s hard to explain, kinda…I know that what I’m hearin’ are other people speakin’. In my voice, I mean. That’s the voice I know. It’s just that…the way things are said…it’s not me talkin’ to myself. I know that for sure.”

  “For sure?” she asked, and it sounded like a challenge.

  “As sure as I can be without the Good Father steppin’ down and tellin’ me,” he answered, and thinking it had been spoken too impudently he added, “Beg pardon, ma’am.”

  “And how can you be so almighty sure? Your mama says it started after your daddy left home, and she thinks that made your head go bad. Says she took you to see two doctors but both of ’em said it was your imagination and a passin’ thing. Says she’s at her wit’s end tryin’ to figure how to help you, and it’s
breakin’ her down day after day. So how can you be so almighty sure?”

  Curtis couldn’t help it; the way the voodoo woman had spoken, with more than a dash of hot pepper in her voice, made his own pepperpot start to boil. “I heard somebody talkin’ in a different tongue,” he said. “I think it was what Mr. Danelli at the market speaks. Eyetalian.”

  “The word is Italian. Say it like that. The other makes you sound like you don’t have any learnin’.”

  “Yes’m,” he replied. He shrugged. “I couldn’t understand any of it. It was just there, and I didn’t hear it again.”

  “But there’ve been others?”

  “Sometimes. One of ’em sounded real far away…somebody yellin’ at somebody else, it sounded like. He used some bad words.”

  “How’d you know it was a he?”

  Curtis shrugged again, but she was waiting for an answer so he gave it to her. “He said somebody should bite his pecker.”

  “Oh.” Did she smile a little? It was hard to tell, under that hat.

  “But I can tell if it’s a he or a she,” he went on. “I don’t know how, it’s just somethin’ in the way it’s said.”

  “And you can tell the distance?”

  “Some are stronger than others. I mean…I don’t hear a whole lot of ’em. They come and go.” He squared his shoulders and looked directly at her. “It didn’t start when my daddy left. I was eight when that happened. I started hearin’ the voices when I was nine.”

  “Can you answer ’em?”

  “I don’t know, ma’am, I’ve never tried.”

  “Could you try now? By sayin’ somethin’ in your head and seein’ if I can hear it?”

  “Yes’m,” he said, and he closed his eyes and thought :Hello:. He saw not the word but the blur of a faintly golden iridescence moving out of his head and picking up speed, faster and faster away until it seemed to take wings and fly like a quick bird through the trees and gone.

  “Nothin’,” Lady said. “Try again. Stronger, if you can.”

  He did, and this time he squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth and thought of the word as a shout through space, and there it went—:Hello:—flying away in its luminous blur.

  “Nope,” Lady said.

  “That’s about the best I can do,” he admitted.

  Lady was silent but the oaks in the Square were thrumming with life, which Lady seemed to be listening to as if the small creatures were telling her secrets the same as her snake “Sister.” “They called your daddy ‘Ironhead’, didn’t they?” she asked.

  “Yes’m.”

  “You know why?”

  “No’m.”

  “That accident. As I heard it, the tar barrel fell off that platform and hit him in the head before it busted his shoulder and his ribs. But his head was like to be made out of iron, didn’t even leave a mark. Yessir, he must’ve had a mighty hard head.”

  “I guess,” Curtis said.

  “Come right up to me,” she told him, though he thought he was standing too close already.

  She started taking off her gloves. When he obeyed—however reluctantly—she put her hands on his head and started feeling around on his skull. “You have headaches?” she asked.

  “No’m.”

  “You know what’s gonna happen tomorrow, or the next day?”

  “No’m,” he replied, and he nearly smiled at that one because if he’d known about this yesterday he would’ve played he had a stomachache and stayed in bed.

  She kept running her hands over his head. Her fingers felt like bands of metal. “I’m gonna tell you somethin’. I’m havin’ some trouble with somebody here. Another woman. She don’t like me very much. I’m gonna think her name and you tell me if you hear it. Go ahead.”

  He listened, but all he heard were the trees speaking. “No’m, I don’t.”

  “All right, then. I’m ponderin’ over leavin’ N’awlins right soon. Got three places in mind to settle in. Nice quiet places where nothin’ much ever happens. I’m thinkin’ the names of those places. Can you tell me one of ’em?”

  “No’m,” he said, “I can’t do that.”

  “Huh,” she replied, a sound of both consternation and maybe confirmation. She ran a hand across his forehead, the fingertips pressing into the flesh, and then the examination seemed to be ended. “You ever see double?”

  He shook his head. “Just single, like everybody else I guess.”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t really think you’re like ever’body else. Run over there to Mrs. DeLeon and fetch your mama back here. Bring me a cup a’ gumbo while you’re at it.”

  When Curtis had done so and Orchid, Mister Moon and the young woman in the red headwrap had returned to where Lady was sitting, Lady took the offered gumbo cup and Mister Moon settled himself back in his chair with the ebony walking-stick propped against his knees.

  “Well, ma’am?” Orchid asked anxiously. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Lady took a moment to eat some gumbo with the small wooden spoon that had come with the cup. “Let me tell you a little story,” she began. “When I was a girl on the plantation, the cook’s daughter—’bout thirteen or fourteen years old, I recall—said she was talkin’ to a man who lived in Buscarole, and that was maybe seven miles from where we were. Said she listened to him, and they talked back and forth in her head. Believe that or not, but she said he was an old man and he was a carpenter, and all of a sudden she was knowin’ ever’thin’ ’bout hammers and different types of saws, and all kinds of lumber and joints and pegs and…just things she could never have known unless somebody who did know was tellin’ her. Now yes, we did have a carpenter for the plantation but he was a white man with his own family and he lived at a distance, wasn’t no hanky-panky goin’ on. Ended up when Savina’s carpenter friend went silent, and she figured he must’ve either moved or passed away. So…I’ve heard of this kind of thing since then, but let me tell you it’s very rare. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with your boy, Mrs. Mayhew. Seems to have good sense and got an older soul than most. Seems to be a good boy. I swanee, ain’t nothin’ wrong. You just got yourself a listener. Early yet, still growin’, but a listener all the same.”

  “A what?”

  “I said…your boy’s a listener. Same thing I called Savina McCabe and Ronson Newberry. Only two I ever knew, but I’ve heard of others ’round and about. Like I say, they’re rare.”

  “A listener,” Orchid repeated, and Curtis saw that his mama’s expression was as dull as if she’d just been whacked in the brainpan with a mallet. “Just what does that mean? Is he out of his head or not?”

  “Not,” said Lady. “If you can’t understand what I’m tellin’ you, think of a radio. You set up the wire and it pulls in the different stations that are sendin’ out their signals. Hang me if I know the particulars, but it’s plain to hear that some stations are stronger than others. Well, your boy’s kinda like a radio. He can pull in signals from other listeners…only I’m bettin’ a lot of ’em don’t know they’re what they are, they just think they ought to go to the funny farm ’cause they’re gettin’ thoughts that are not their own. Or I’m reckonin’ they’ve got mamas and daddies who figure they’re sick in the head. Your boy don’t hear the sound of other listeners’ voices, ’cause that would be a real doin’ there, but he’s pickin’ up the thoughts…the signals comin’ out that are everywhere, floatin’ through the air like from the radio, but you got to have another radio to pick ’em up.”

  “We don’t have no radio,” Orchid said.

  Lady sighed. She ate a few more spoonfuls of her gumbo. “Mrs. Mayhew,” she said after she’d dabbed her mouth on a paper napkin Mister Moon had brought back for her from the gumbo seller, “I don’t know exactly how this works. I’m figurin’ nobody does. How far away can your boy hear another listener? I’m thinkin’ he doesn’t have any idea. How does he know if he’s hearin’ a man, a woman or a child? Well, he seems to know that but he can’t tell me in words. Will it get stro
nger in time, or will it drift away and someday be gone? Can a person even guide somethin’ like this? If so, how?” She let the questions rest in the air. “Can’t tell you much more,” she said after another moment. She made a sound with her lips like air escaping a balloon. “Sometimes I wish we didn’t have a radio. Charles is fiddlin’ with that thing and listenin’ through them earpieces day and night, drives me batty. What’d you favor to hear this week?” she asked Mister Moon.

  “Orchestra playin’ a nice tune called Night On Bald Mountain,” he answered in his bony voice. “Kinda gave me a shiver.” Then he grinned so wide it nearly cracked his face.

  “Can’t hardly wait to see what they’ll come up with next,” Lady said, speaking again to Orchid. “Or…maybe I can. But ’bout Mister Curtis here, you don’t have to worry. He’s not out of his mind. Fact of it, he has a rarity some might envy.”

  “I’m sorry,” Orchid replied, and she repeated it more forcefully, in her downtrodden way. “I’m sorry. I can’t help but worry ’bout my boy! What’s ahead of him, if he has such an affliction as this? Who would envy such a thing but a person out of his mind? To hear other people’s thinkin’? It ain’t natural and it ain’t right and it’s just more of a burden on me, and Lord knows Joe left me with a heavy heart and a heavy load on my back! So I am sorry, ma’am, but I can’t just put this aside like it was yesterday’s newspaper! Lord God, no!”

  Curtis saw Lady’s green eyes linger on him for a few seconds, and then she said quietly, “Take him home, Mrs. Mayhew. Appreciate him and the gift the Lord has chosen to give him. And start feedin’ him better, put some meat on them bones and get him more like his daddy was.”