The Listener

by Robert McCammon

  He had lost his connection with Nilla. He was about to call her again when Ludenmere came into the room, gray-faced and weary-looking, and eased himself down into a chair opposite Curtis.

  “I was just speakin’ to Nilla,” Curtis explained. “She says they’re in a cabin, maybe past Kenner but for sure on the lakeside ’cause they made a right turn off the main road.”

  “Doesn’t help much,” Ludenmere said in a tired voice. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “Lots of cabins and fishin’ camps up in there. Even if I was to know the exact cabin…I’m not gonna do anythin’ to bring harm to my children. Our children,” he corrected.

  Curtis had heard a single heart-wrenching cry from upstairs about ten minutes ago, then silence. “Was it bad?” he asked.

  “Bad. She has some prescribed sedatives, so I gave her one and maybe she can sleep for awhile. Jane…keeps up appearances to outsiders, but she’s fragile.” His eyes opened but they looked bleary, the blue color washed out. “Her father is a wealthy corporate attorney in Shreveport. What people don’t know is that he’s an alcoholic and a ragin’ bully. He didn’t treat Jane or her sister very well growin’ up. Both of them can put on a good show…but both of them paid for the abuse and they’re still payin’ for it. Any issue that causes what I’d guess you’d call stress…it’s doubly hard on her.”

  “Maybe you should call a doctor?”

  “I thought about it. Maybe I should. Maybe that would be what a good husband should do…but the doctor’ll be askin’ questions, Jane’s liable to blurt out the story, the doc goes to the police in spite of my tellin’ him to stay quiet or he tells somebody else who goes to either the police or the newspaper…I can’t chance that. Not right here with everythin’ set for Friday mornin’. No, I’ve got to handle this on my own.” Ludenmere turned his tortured face toward the picture window. “I was Jane’s knight in shinin’ armor,” he said quietly. “But I guess…in time, all armor gets tarnished.”

  “I think you’re doin’ what you believe to be the best,” Curtis said.

  “Yeah. The thing is, if somethin’ happens to our children…I’ll lose Jane too. She’ll drift away from me, I know. It’ll be the end of…well, of everythin’ I’ve ever found good and worthwhile in this world.” He suddenly shook his head and gave a mirthless laugh. “Listen to me! Talkin’ to you like I’ve known you all my life! Like you’re a family friend and not a—” He paused, his mouth still open.

  “Not a Negro?” Curtis prompted, but it was spoken calmly and with truth.

  “Not a stranger,” said Ludenmere. “I don’t give a damn what color you are. You’re my connection to Nilla and that’s all that matters. Maybe you’re her knight in shinin’ armor.”

  “My armor’s not too shiny,” Curtis said.

  “Well, bein’ a black knight, I guess that’s true.”

  In spite of the trials and tribulations of the day, that struck Curtis as just being doggoned funny. He couldn’t suppress the laugh that spilled out. And in spite of the heaviness he was feeling—and maybe because of it—Ludenmere had to give up a genuine laugh too, and after the laugh came out and rang around the room he felt both lighter and steadier.

  “What’s gonna happen tomorrow,” he said when the laugh had faded, “is…Victor’ll bring the box of money in the early afternoon. Then you and me are gonna drive out to find Sandusky Road and that fishin’ pier. I don’t want to be tryin’ to find it in the dark.” He stood up from the chair. “I’d best go sit with Jane. Listen…you can have the guest bedroom upstairs. Mavis’ll show you. It’s got its own bathroom. Anythin’ you want to eat…we’ve got a lot of food in the kitchen. Mavis is a good cook, too. Steaks, ham, bread for sandwiches…ice cream and cake…got a whole fresh—” He paused again, looking like a man who was desperately trying to avoid a step that would send him plunging off a cliff, and then he said lamely, “Melon.”

  “Watermelon?” Curtis asked.

  “Yeah. That.”

  “One of my favorites,” Curtis said, with a slight smile. “Haven’t had but two all summer.”

  “Help yourself, and like I say Mavis’ll cook you up whatever else you’d like.”

  “Thank you.” Curtis motioned toward a telephone on a table across the room. “Can I use that? I’d better call my mama, she’ll be worryin’.”

  “Sure, go ahead. Oh…would you speak to Nilla again, tell her I’ve got everythin’ under control and it won’t be long now before she and Little Jack are home?”

  “I’ll do it right now.” Curtis was anxious to restore the connection with Nilla, since she’d been interrupted in mid-sentence before. :Nilla,: he sent out. :You okay?:

  :Yes,: she answered. And then, :Kind of okay, I guess.:

  Her sending was weak, fading in and out like a device with dying batteries.

  Curtis said, :You need to rest yourself. Get your strength back. Will you be able to sleep any?:

  :No, I don’t think so.:

  :Well, try. It’ll be good for you. Your daddy’s here with me. He says to tell you he’s got everythin’ under control and it won’t be long before you and Little Jack are home.: When she didn’t respond after a few seconds he asked, :Can you hear me?:

  :I hear you…but I’m awful scared, Curtis. That man Donnie keeps pounding on the door every few…seems like. Maybe they don’t…sleep. We’re getting hungry too, we don’t have any…use the bathroom in a…have to go pretty soon, I think, but at least…any light at all.:

  :You need to rest,: he insisted. :Rest your body and your mind.:

  :What? I didn’t…all that.:

  This was new and disturbing, he thought. Nilla was worn out and her sending was wearing out too. If she didn’t get some rest he might lose her completely, and obviously her tired brain wasn’t able to pick up all his sending either. :I’m gonna sign off now,: he told her. :I’ll try back later, but please…please…you try to—:

  :What? What did you say? I can’t…so far away.:

  :Your daddy says he loves you,: Curtis said, and with that he looked up at Ludenmere, spent a few seconds refocusing on where he was and to whom he was speaking, and he said, “She says they’re doin’ all right. Says they’re ready to come home.”

  “I’ll get them back safe and sound. I swear to God I will.”

  “Yes sir,” Curtis said.

  “The phone’s yours,” Ludenmere told him. He started to leave the room but hesitated.

  “I was so wrong about Nilla…about this…gift of hers. And yours too. I’ll never understand it if I live to be a hundred and ten, but I thank you for bein’ here to help, and I thank you for bein’ my daughter’s friend.”

  “I appreciate her bein’ a friend to me,” Curtis replied. “She’s a mighty good listener.”

  Ludenmere nodded, turned and left the room, and Curtis sat in the chair thinking it was best he didn’t know that Nilla’s power was weakening, and that if she didn’t sleep—or at least rest her burdened mind—it might be impossible to reach her. He figured she likely knew something was wrong, and why. It would be up to her to find the strength of will to fix it, and he thought she would just have to make herself go blank to recharge her mental energy, if she could.

  He had never realized there was a limit to it. He didn’t know if he liked that or not because as much as he was pleased at being called someone’s knight in shining armor he was also pleased to know that there were chinks in the armor and someday it might weaken on him too. It made him feel a little more like everyone else in the world and not as much as the supernatural rarity Lady had made him out to be that night in Congo Square. He was just a young man, after all, a Redcap and proud of the work of helping people get from here to there and back again.

  He got up from the chair and went across the sand-colored rug to the telephone.

  Orchid answered on the fourth ring. She had trained herself to sound near dead even in her most excitable moods. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Mama.”

  “
Curtis! Oh my Lord, are you callin’ from the jailhouse?”

  He gazed around the wonderful room. “No, I’m not. I guess Mr. Crable called you?”

  “Yes he did! Told me the whole tale! Who’s got you messed up with the law? That Rowdy Patterson fella, that big ol’ loudmouth piece a’ skunk?”

  “Mama,” Curtis said calmly, “just listen, will you? I’m not messed up with the law. I’m—”

  “When are you comin’ home, then? I’m gettin’ sick worryin’!”

  “I’m…doin’ somethin’ important,” he told her. “I won’t be—”

  “Come on home, now! Hear? I’ll leave the lights on, you come on home right this minute.”

  “I won’t be home tonight, Mama,” Curtis pressed on. “Likely not tomorrow—”

  “That’s a fool talkin’ a fool’s talk! Boy can’t run off from home and leave a sick mama behind, Lord God mercy no! You don’t sound y’self, you’re with somebody gonna get you all messed up!”

  Curtis felt her swaying him, as she always did, but on this day he was rooted. “Mama, what I have to do is—”

  “I don’t wanna hear it, I don’t wanna—”

  “Listen to me!” he said, and the sharpness of his voice shocked him as much as it did Orchid because both of them became silent. When he’d recovered himself, he went on into her silence. “I’m not gonna explain it. It’s somethin’ important I have to do. I won’t be home tonight or tomorrow night. This is for me, as much as for anybody else. Can you understand that?”

  It seemed a long time before she answered.

  “Come home,” she whispered, in a broken voice. “Joe, come home.”

  “Mama,” Curtis said quietly, “you need to get back into life. You have to. You’re not dyin’, you’re not sick. You want to be, but you’re not. You’ve turned away from the neighbors, and the church, and ever’body who matters. I think you have to find a new start, Mama. Put all this behind you…just let it go. Maybe it would be a good thing for you to go visit Maw and Pap. A healthy thing. Just for a few days, just to hear somebody else talkin’. And you know how Pap likes to play his guitar. I’ll bet he’s come up with a whole slew of new songs.”

  She didn’t reply, but Curtis could hear her slow and shallow breathing as if she were trying to urge up a cough.

  “Nobody feels sorry for you but yourself,” Curtis said. “I love you, and that’s why I’m tellin’ you true because you’ve got a whole life ahead of you that you’re tryin’ to throw away. Joe is gone and he’s not comin’ back, Mama. That’s the real of things, and that’s where you need to start.”

  She didn’t answer for so long that he had to prompt her to speech. “Hear what I’m sayin’?”

  Orchid said, “I’m leavin’ the lights on ’til you come home,” and then she hung up the phone.

  Curtis listened to the dial tone for a few seconds, as if from it he were gathering some kind of message. He figured the message was that his mama was going to go to bed the same as always and tomorrow would be the same as always and the day after that without change. How he could push her back into life, he didn’t know. He replaced the receiver in its cradle, walked to the window and looked out upon the grand Ludenmere property, which to him was truly another realm and beat all to pieces the measly Gordon estate. The rain had stopped but everything was still dripping. The light was beginning to fade, the world turning a darker gray under a cloud-covered sky. He thought about trying to contact Nilla again, but dismissed it because her batteries needed a rest and maybe his did too.

  Someone cleared their throat behind him. He turned around and found that the maid, Mavis, was standing at the parlor’s threshold.

  “Suh?” she asked, with that softness in the word designed to carry the note of subservience, “would you be havin’ supper?”

  “I would be. And I’m not a ‘sir’, I’m just plain Curtis.”

  She nodded but she looked confused, because obviously he was a guest in the house and, though he was a Negro and never had there been a Negro guest in this house and surely not one to sleep in the guest bedroom as Mr. Ludenmere had told her this young man was going to be doing tonight, he must be of some important status or he would not have been allowed to set foot in here.

  She cast her gaze up and down his uniform and then glanced at his red cap on the table where he’d placed it. “Mind my askin’, are you a soldier?”

  “No’m, I’m a Redcap at the Union Station.”

  “I didn’t hear that Mr. and Mrs. Ludenmere are takin’ a trip,” she said. Her own world had never included train travel. Her brow furrowed. “Mind my askin’, where are the children tonight?”

  Curtis figured she couldn’t ask the master of the house that question without seeming to overstep her boundaries, but to him she could. “They’ll be home soon,” he answered, and she knew that was all she was going to get even though she’d heard Mrs. Ludenmere give a pitiful cry and something was very wrong with the orderly nature of the house, but in keeping with her place she continued what would be her usual duties by asking, “What would Mr. Curtis like for supper this evenin’?”

  It was a question he had never been asked before in his life.

  “You decide,” he told her.

  Her mouth opened and then closed again and she looked completely lost. Curtis thought that maybe no one had ever offered her the chance to make her own decision…so here they stood in the beautiful room, neither speaking, each uncomfortable in their unaccustomed freedom, both waiting on the other like shadows soon to pass.

  ****

  Night had fallen, the full dark of the countryside far away from the smear of lights and the sound of cars on concrete. Around the cabin on the lake the crickets, cicadas and other insects in the woods were sending out their music of clicks and chirrups, clacks and drones. The air had turned heavy, the rain had ceased, and in the wet heat the mist rose from Lake Pontchartrain and slowly drifted through the forest leaving pieces of itself hanging in the pines and oaks like old fragments of fragile and yellowed linen.

  In the total darkness of the prison room, Nilla heard the sound of the heavy table being moved from the door. Several times she had tried to sleep and had failed. Little Jack’s bravado had broken again what might have been two hours ago, and he had begun to cry in the dark until she had gotten up next to him, shoulder-to-shoulder. Hartley had attempted to ease their situation by starting the game of Twenty Questions but Little Jack wouldn’t play and Nilla felt so tired and listless she couldn’t concentrate.

  “Everybody stay still,” Hartley cautioned from his sitting position on the floor across the room.

  The door opened and a glare of light intruded. It was only the flame of an oil lamp, yet its brightness stung their eyes.

  “Three blind mice,” said Donnie as he followed the light into the room. He closed the door behind him and stood directing the lamp’s glow all around the cramped little chamber. “Now it smells bad in here,” he said. “Who had the runs?”

  Nilla longed to tell the man to get out and leave them alone, but she feared even speaking to him.

  “Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Hartley asked.

  “Naw. The others are out smokin’ on the back porch, thought I’d step in and visit for awhile. Hey, how do you like this?” Donnie knelt down on the floor and lifted the lamp so Hartley could see the gleaming glass eye stuck to the center of his forehead with electrical tape. “Now I’m a three-eyed sonofabitch. How ’bout that?” When Hartley remained silent, Donnie said, “I asked you a question, asshole face…how ’bout that?”

  “Fine,” said Hartley.

  “Fine, he said,” Donnie grinned in the light at Nilla. “Ain’t I pretty, little girl?”

  “Yes,” she answered, staring at the opposite wall.

  “Damn right. Handsome, I should say. Got three eyes the better to see you with, Little Red Ridin’ Hood. Hey, what’s your daddy call you?”

  “Nilla.”

  “I mean…like…a pet n
ame. I’ll bet he’s got one for you. Like…Sugarlips, or Sweet Fanny, or—”

  “Why don’t you leave us alone?” Hartley said. “Isn’t it enough that we’re in here with no food or water, and—”

  “Shut up,” Donnie said, with a harsh rasp of dread menace in his voice. “If I want to hear you fart, I’ll kick it out of you.” He moved the lamp a few inches so it shone more fully on Little Jack, who had pressed up close against his sister and clenched her fingers as much as he was able with his hands bound before him. “Look at the tough guy now,” said Donnie. “You been cryin’, toughie?”

  “No,” the boy said, throwing the word like a poisoned dart.

  “Well now, that’s a damn lie, ain’t it? Your eyes are all puffed up, looks like somebody’s been doin’ a two-step on your face. How do you like where you are, toughie? Kinda a far piece from your rich daddy’s mansion. Bet you’ve got all the toys and games and shit you ever wanted, don’t you? Bet you just have to name somethin’ you want and it’s handed right to you, no sweat. Huh? Ain’t that so?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll bet.” Donnie sat in silence for a time, as Nilla’s heart continued to thud in her chest with fear of the man. “One thing your goddamned daddy has failed at, boy,” Donnie went on, “is teachin’ you respect for your elders. You’re supposed to call me ‘sir’ when you speak to me.”

  “I won’t speak to you anymore, then,” said Little Jack. “Go back to your hole.”

  Hartley winced. Nilla thudded her shoulder against her brother’s to warn him to silence, but the words were out and gone.

  Donnie gave a hard laugh followed by a low whistle. He brought the lamp over closer to Nilla and Little Jack and crouched there barely two feet away, while Hartley was gathering his strength to scrabble into action if need be.

  “You,” said Donnie to Little Jack, “are a piece a’ work. I might admire your balls if you didn’t piss me off so bad. Hey, think fast!” He reached out and slapped the boy across the side of the face. “Think fast!” he said, and slapped him again on the other side.