by Eden Royce
“I never meant—”
Hutu’s voice lost its cool, disinterested tone. It thundered out of her like a Baptist preacher’s brimstone sermon, vibrating the walls. She trembled. “Each time I touched you, I could see them, the women you ran with. When I picked up your shirt to wash it, I could see each one… see their faces as you took them. Touched them.”
The music slowed, deepened into a pulsing, and the dancers responded without changing steps. Jump. Stomp. Sliiide…
Hutu dropped the spent cigarette into the empty glass. “A root lady told me one time she could help me. Surprised she didn’t want to live forever too. But she wanted something else.”
He nodded. “That’s good.” His throat felt thick, coated with flannel. “You don’t need some witch woman giving you anything. They always want something and it’s never good.”
“But I did give it to the old thing. What she wanted. Because I have a soft spot for people in need.” Her eyes pinned him. “Did you know the elixir can create life as well as extend it?”
A fly buzzed in his ear and he waved it away. Undaunted, the insect returned, its threadlike legs tickling the side of his neck. Hutu leaned forward on the makeshift table, gold bracelets jingling like wind chimes.
He gripped the knife. This was it, what he had come for. Be strong, now.
All he saw was her staring at him, ready to claim her vengeance. It had taken over two hundred years for him to come crawling to her, asking—begging—for help. Or was it mercy? Two hundred years since he’d brought her to this country as his property and then sold her. Her screaming and wailing and the thump of drumbeats. In his head, still there after all this time. In truth, the sounds were always there, following him from life to life and person to person. He’d been William, and David, and Franklin trying to wedge his way into the lives of the upper class and failing each time. This time around, he’d chosen to be Lucius, a smaller fish in a smaller pond, in his attempt to prosper. No matter who he was, the noises stayed in his mind, hovering like a nosy aunt. What relief he found lay in drowning himself in strong drink and soft women.
Eternity. He’d wanted those years to get rich, take advantage of the eons of time spread out before him to prosper. Get smart and strong and important. But it hadn’t happened. He’d asked for his body to live forever, but he hadn’t asked for strength of character. He drank and threw money after horses and dice and whores. He’d adopted persona after persona in an attempt to enjoy his gift. There was always another tomorrow to become great. Plenty of time, he’d thought.
She’d never told him what it would be like. That he’d have to live with himself and his choices throughout all time. That no identity change would ever allow him to escape who and what he really was.
He pulled what was left of his fading vision to focus on Hutu and saw her smiling broadly, her teeth blindingly white, as if she knew his thoughts. And she may have. His anger flared again as she lit another cigarette. Lucius lifted his arm and struck down with the knife, polished and sharp, intent on ending his torment. To end the magic, you must kill its creator.
A yell pierced the air, loud and masculine. Almost blind from the music, he hadn’t seen old man Artie return to sit another drink in front of Hutu, to replacing the one Lucius had guzzled in defiance. Lucius looked down, vision reduced to almost nothing, and saw three thick brown fingers on the overturned barrel table, leaking red. Artie pulled his hand to his chest and hurried away, leaving his severed brown fingers behind. In that moment Lucius realized his error. It took him a few more moments of sweeping his gaze from one corner of the joint to the other to realize he could see clearly.
The music had stopped.
All attention—from the dancers, from the band, from the drinkers—was directed at him. Their laughter bubbled up like salted water in a pot, filling the juke.
“I know what you want, Lucius. You got your eternity and now you’re tired of it.” Her laugh joined the other chuckles. “Your stupid little game of suicide was beneath you. It was certainly beneath me.” Artie’s crimson blood twisted down into the glass of rye whiskey, then dissipated in the amber liquid. Hutu pulled a clean white handkerchief from her bosom and carefully placed each finger inside before wrapping the bundle tightly. Someone, likely one of the dancers, spirited the grisly package away to the corner where Artie now crouched. “What was I supposed to do when you slashed at me, get angry and kill you? Oh, please.”
He felt the resolve flee from him like roaches from bright light. “I’m tired, Anna Lee. Tired of…everything.”
Hutu nodded. “I know, Sugar. But you couldn’t do it, could you? Not on your own.” She leaned over the rickety barrel turned table and took his face in one hand. Her skin smelled like sandalwood and newly formed ash. “Do you want me to help you?”
“I’m sorry.” His voice was soft, near inaudible, and his shoulders slumped.
“I know that too.” She stubbed the cigarette out in her hand, leaving a tiny circle of ashes in her palm before she took hold of his fingers in her smaller ones.
Fire seeped from her fingers and engulfed their joined hands, bringing a rich glow to the now stoic faces surrounding the pair. The flames grew around both of them, sparking and arcing, purifying his flesh and muscle and bone. Liquid pain flowed through him. He flinched but did not pull away from the searing heat. Lucius sagged under the weight of their combined gazes, but once again, he only had eyes for the woman holding his fate in flame-drenched hands.
“Impuzamugambi,” he said, her name falling from his lips for the first time.
Her smile was tender as the room filled with steam.
Doc Buzzard’s Coffin
It took three of us to get Doc Buzzard in the coffin.
Mama had his arms, I had his feet, and Jay had his narrow shoulder under Doc’s backside, propping it up. Wasn’t just that he was heavy, but it was black as an ant’s hiney in our backyard and hard to see. Trees covered most of the land out here allowing tiny slices of moonlight to slide through. The night was quiet, like all the crickets and frogs had stopped singing to watch what the Turner family was doing.
Plus it was hot as fire out here in the marsh and the mosquitoes were biting me twice as fast because I didn’t have a free hand to swat at them. Even though it was nighttime, heat still lay over everything like an itchy blanket. Marsh gases bubbled in front of us, smelling like a match blown out.
Gran’s old kerosene lantern was the only other light. The lantern swung on an iron pole shoved into the moist black dirt—good growing soil—and the watery beam cut a narrow path that disappeared into the darkness each time Doc’s body swung toward it. The soft light wiggled like candle fire and I could barely make out the white paint on our little clapboard house at the end of the dirt road if I stretched on my tiptoes and learned over.
The body swung again and the glow from the lantern hit Doc’s face and I swore I saw him smile. Sweat ran down my face and arms, making my hands so wet and slippery I almost dropped my share of Doc’s weight. He was dressed in dusty dungarees and a worn out work shirt with the name patch torn off it. He was barefoot and the bottoms of his feet were the same burned toast color as the rest of him and felt thick but smooth as a worn-out tire. Paying so much attention to Doc I tripped over my own feet, but I didn’t fall.
“Ow, Jezzie. Watch out.”
I hissed at my twin brother. “Quiet. You think we’re out here picking cotton?”
“That ain’t even funny.” His voice was higher than mine even though we were both almost thirteen. “It’s your fault we’re doing this.”
“No, it ain’t.” We kept plenty of secrets from other people, but never from each other. Telling his secret was the hardest thing I ever had to do. My belly squeezed when I thought about it. I took a deep breath of that matchstick air and tried not to think too much.
His voice hardened around his whisper. “You should a kept your mouth shut.”
“I tried to.” I could feel my face get even
hotter than it already was in the sticky heat.
“Both of you keep your mouths shut. This ain’t nothing to play with.” Mama’s pretty dark curls had already melted from the moist air. She hefted Doc’s shoulders higher on her chest. His body dropped to one side and Mama scrambled to catch his arm and shift him back into place. We kept shuffling with ol’ Doc, getting him to the coffin where it lay open on the ground next to a mound of dirt.
I got his feet in and then helped Jay push in most of Doc’s weight. We were trying to fix the body real good and neat in the box when headlights came over the rise toward our farm.
“Shit,” I said.
“Jezebel!” Mama still managed to scold me at a time like this. “It’s just Larry John. Always late. Should a already been here helping us with this mess.” She dropped Doc’s head into the coffin with athunk.
Larry John was sweet on Mama. That was the only reason he said he would help us tonight. But I knew it couldn’t be him.
“Help! He got me, Mama!” Jay screamed like the Devil had him turned cross his knee. He pulled and yanked against the pine box but he kept getting jerked back.
“Lord, James. Doc ain’t got hold of nobody right now.” Mama grabbed his arm and held him still while she followed the frayed denim strap of Jay’s overalls and wedged it out from under the witchdoctor. “Now, hush that foolishness,” she said.
I got that bad feeling again. The one where my head felt light and my heart started beating real fast. Mama said it was my nerves, but I could tell it made her scared when I felt it. So I didn’t tell her anymore.
“Uh, Mama? That don’t look like Larry John’s truck.”
Mama looked up as the lamplight hit the slow-moving police car.
“Shit,” she said.
“Run,” I said to Jay.
“Don’t move,” Mama said, straightening up her back and dusting off her hands on her house dress. “Neither one of you move a hair. Turners don’t run from nobody.”
The police car pulled up right alongside of us. The headlights were so bright it made my eyes water. We all waited like statues while the door creaked open and Deputy Darryl “Dog” Collins waddled out. I wrinkled my nose at the smell of stale cigarettes that came out when he opened the car door.
I called him Dog because he had a mashed in face and big floppy cheeks like a bloodhound. And he was always showing up where he thought he smelled something.
“Damn.” Me and Mama said it at the same time.
Jay backed up against me, his close-cropped head just in front of where my chest was. I was glad he did because it hid the fact I was getting to be a lady.
“Well, now. Evening, Miss Janey. Children.” His skin was pasty and shiny with sweat.
Mama’s back was stiffer than old Doc’s. “Deputy Collins.” She threw a look at us and we both mumbled a greeting. Getting caught burying a body was no reason to forget your manners.
“Sure is a nice night. Little late in the season for planting, though.”
“Why you here, Collins?”
“Is that any way for someone such as yourself to address an officer of the law?”
Mama put on her best talking-to-white-people voice. “To what do I owe thepleasure of your visit?”
“I think you know.” He walked up to the crude pine box and shined his flashlight inside. “Got a phone call something was going on at the Turner place, so I made sure to get myself straight down here.”
“Who called?”
“I’m afraid I can’t divulge that information.”
Mama put her hands on her hips. Deputy Dog’s eyes followed the movement. “Where’s Larry John?”
“Oh, I suspect he’s having himself a little late night snack somewhere. Maybe with a lady friend.” He turned to us kids. “You know, Officer LeRoy’s wife made a fine bunch of ginger cookies today. I bet he’d give your Ma a few.”
“She ain’t done nothing wrong,” I said.
“Oh no? She’s standing in the yard ‘round close to midnight with her brother’s dead body in a handmade coffin.” He hitched up his pants at the waist. “I’d say that was plenty. Plenty of somethin’.”
“He ain’t dead!” Jay shouted.
I put my hand in my pocket. When I rubbed my doll’s rough cloth body, its crepe wool hair wrapped around my fingers and I felt better.
“Hush up, both of you,” Mama said.
The deputy looked at each of us in turn. “Now don’t tell me no hoodoo voodoo stories about how Doc is gonna wake up soon because he’s just tired from some spell wearing him out.” He reached into the box, pushing his fat fingers along Doc’s neck. “I might not be no doctor, but I do know if a man’s heart don’t beat, he’s dead.”
Jay squirmed and shifted from foot to foot. I put my hands on his shoulders ’cause it felt like he was thinking about running off, in spite of what Mama said. With a couple of squeezes, the tightness was gone and he leaned back against me.
“There a question in there somewhere, Deputy?”
“I’m smelling something and the time ain’t come when my nose is wrong. You got this last chance to come clean with me, Janey. What happened here tonight?”
“Oh, so it’s Janey, now?”
“This is serious and I need to know what’s going on. Did Larry John put his hands on you? Then Doc tried to step in and he killed him? That ain’t really your fault. A woman can make a man do some wild things.”
“You crazy?” Mama pushed one of her limp black curls off her forehead, when it fell back down again, she tucked it behind her ear.
“Though I understand how you could drive a man to do things that wasn’t the usual.” The lamplight danced around with the car headlights as the deputy grinned and adjusted his uniform pants.
“I told you nothin’s wrong.”
The deputy went over to his police car and opened the back door. “Well, then you won’t mind telling that to the Sheriff.”
Mama said nothing. Just walked over to that car like she was the Queen of Sheba and got right on in. We followed.
“Where you two going?” Deputy Dog asked me.
“With Mama,” I said. “We ain’t got nobody else.”
***
I was kinda disappointed nobody was locked up when we got to the police station. The jail cells were all empty but the bars looked like they had fresh paint. Big wood desks like the ones school principals had lined up along two walls. One of those new air conditioner things was in one window, but it sounded like it was struggling to breathe. The whole place smelled like man sweat and burnt coffee.
Sheriff Edwards was the tallest man I’d ever seen. He pulled his hat off and ducked to come in the meeting room in the back of the police station with me and Mama and Jay. His brown hair was damp around the edges where the hat had been resting on it but his shirt was still pressed straight with sharp creases in it. Before Larry John came along, he used to come by our farm and buy our eggs and corn. He and Mama would argue over the price and when they finally got it all figured out and agreed on, he would still pay extra.
He smiled at us, but his eyes looked tired. “Janey, let me call somebody to watch these kids for you. We need to talk.”
“Somebody like who? No good church folk gonna come here at one in the morning.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Talk if you need to talk.”
“You are not making this easy.”
“Nothin’s ever easy. Especially not me.”
“Right about that.” He turned his hat over and over in his big wide hands before he called out. “LeRoy!”
A short policeman opened the door and stuck his round head in. “Yessir?”
Jay leaned over and whispered to me, “When you ever seen awhite LeRoy?” I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing.
“Please take these kids out front there with you. Give ’em a few of them cookies Brenda made.” He motioned to us and we slid out of the hard wood chairs and headed for the door.
White LeRoy held the door open a
nd we both walked under his arm. “Oh, Sheriff? What you want us to do with ol’ Doc?”
“What do you mean?” Sheriff’s eyes went squinty sharp.
“Kyle and Third are bringing him in the door now. Where do you want us to put him?”
“Why in the blazing hell—” He stopped and put his palms on either side of his head. “Never mind. We’ll take him to the morgue soon as I’m done here. No, wait. Call Doctor Marcus and see if he’ll come up here and get him.”
“Sure, Sheriff.” LeRoy patted the top of Jay’s head. “Got some dominoes at my desk. You know how to play?”
Jay nodded, but he had to be smiling inside. He loved any kinda game from hide and seek to chess. I knew he would beat the pants off the man. Last thing I heard as I closed the door to the meeting room was the Sheriff and Mama talking all serious.
“Do I need to take him to the morgue, Janey?” he whispered.
“Best if you didn’t,” Mama said.
***
Jay beat white LeRoy for the third time in a row while I sat in a spinning chair and twisted from side to side. My soda was warm, but I sipped at it anyway as I picked at one of the holes in my worn out dress.
Jay’s shirt was worn out, too. He didn’t have to push up his sleeves to rub at the welt on his arm.
“How’d you get that?” LeRoy asked.
“Bug bite.” He didn’t even think about it. Musta been working on that one for a while.
LeRoy didn’t look like he believed him at first. Then he said, “Looks real ugly.”
“Your mama’s ugly.”
“Yours.”
He lifted his skinny little arms over his head in a stretch. “Nope. My mama’s pretty.”
Officer LeRoy nodded sadly. “Yeah, she sure is.” Between the game and the arguing, they were so deep into it neither one of them noticed the coffin move.
