by Eden Royce
It jerked again and made a sound like dragging a stick over a brown paper bag.Shhhhup.
I looked over at white LeRoy and Jay, but I didn’t say nothing. Just waited. Waited and stroked the crepe wool curls in my pocket.
The soda was keeping me from getting sleepy and the cookies were good too. Soft in the middle, like I like them. I walked over to the empty desk across the room and got another one.
Shhhhup.
“What was that?” Officer LeRoy’s eyes ran across the room from corner to corner like a trapped jackrabbit.
“I dunno.” Must have been Jay’s move, cause he sounded like he didn’t care as he studied the tiles on the table.
“That sound. Didn’t you hear it?” LeRoy was trying to pick up the trail of something. Felt like he was about to get up and start investigating so I answered.
“Only me getting another cookie.” I dragged the tin box across the calendar taped to the desk and it made a soft scraping sound. “Was it that?”
His face didn’t quite relax but he went back to the game. “Yeah, maybe.”
Jay was staring at me so hard the policeman had to poke him because it was his turn again. He dragged his eyes away, but my brother got the message. It was time to go. Doc was starting to get up.
Part of me wanted to stay and watch, maybe from under one of the desks, but Mama would have a fit. I only saw him wake up once before and it felt like a long time ago. The spanking I got felt like it was yesterday.
Because he was a boy, Jay got to spend more time with Doc when he was brewing. When I cried about it, Doc said spirits and such were drawn to girls that hadn’t been with no man before and he couldn’t watch out for me and do his work. That’s when he gave me the gunny sack doll. She had a faded denim dress like mine and no eyes and black crepe wool hair. I named her Dinah ’cause there’s enough “Js” in this family.
Dinah was good company. She sang and told jokes. Sometimes her little red stitched smile would whisper secrets to me in the words Grandma used to use. She knew how Reverend Hollis really paid for his new Cadillac. She told me not to be jealous because Barbara Duncan’s beautiful long braids were made of horsehair. When I told her Jay’s secret late one night, the little red smile flattened out to a straight line.
“Dissun ya tok. Gwine da Buzzad.”
Tears made my eyes burn and I shook my head. “I can’t tell Doc. Jay will hate me. I promised not to tell anybody.” I held her close, her coarse hair scratching under my chin as I curled up and cried myself to sleep.
But she wouldn’t leave me alone. Day and night she talked to me in her thin, crackly voice.
“E neber ken. Gwine tok.” Gran’s words coming out of cloth and crepe wool. But Gran was gone now and she couldn’t fix everything like she used to. And somebody had to do something. So I snuck out after supper and found Doc one evening in the woods where he was digging in the hard packed dirt near a pine tree. And I told him what Larry John did to my brother.
He listened with his fist pushed up against his mouth. Then he sat there at my feet for a while before he said anything. “Your Mama can never know this, you hear? She’d blame herself and she don’t need to.” Doc scraped deeper into the dirt with an old spoon and pulled another devil’s shoestring from the ground and added it to the tiny pile of herbs next to him. “Way back I made a promise to Janey to never work root on this family.” He looked in my eyes and I felt the doll stir in my pocket. Crepe wool curled around my fingers. “I’m fixing to break that promise.”
The grey in Doc’s hair looked like paint smudges as he nodded at Dinah where she wiggled in my pocket. “She tell you to come to me?”
“Yessir.” I rubbed my shoe over some pine needles on the ground to make the Christmas smell come out.
“Y’all did the right thing.” He looked over his shoulder at the sun dipping low in the sky. “We got a little day left. Help me dig.”
I crouched down in the soft, black dirt and started digging with my hands. Even though the day was hot, the dirt still felt cool and moist. It was that kinda dirt Doc told me he had to lie in to work the hex. Always remember—before you take a man’s life, you need to know how the end’s gonna feel for him. And you have to accept it. That’s the only way God won’t punish you.
I wiped sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm. I already knew to tell Mama when Doc was ready for the coffin, so we could get him inside and she could bury it for a few hours. “Will you show me how to do it?”
I always asked and he always said no. But this time he closed his eyes and just breathed in and out for while. Then he said, “Watch, Jezebel. Be quiet and watch.”
Right then, Mama and the Sheriff came out of the meeting room and I stopped remembering.
“If you ain’t arresting me, I’m going home.”
“Now look, Janey—”
“No, you look here. I got two children ’posed to be in bed by now. I’m done answering questions for tonight.” Sweat was shiny on her upper lip when she turned to us. “Let’s go, y’all.”
The door to the police station opened wide and the Dog creeped in.
“Why you letting her go?” Deputy Dog asked, his hand still on the doorknob. “The kids, okay, I understand. But I caught her red-handed.”
“Red-handed, with no weapons, no motive and not a mark on the body.” Sheriff put his hat on, making him look like a giant cowboy. “No reason this won’t keep till tomorrow. Let these kids get some sleep.”
“I don’t believe this.” He started toward us, wild eyed and breathing hard.
White LeRoy stood up, his chubby chest puffed out. “Now, Darryl…”
It didn’t help things. Dog knocked Miss Brenda’s cookies to the floor with one swipe of his arm and the tin container banged and clanged until it came to a stop next to the coffin on the floor.
“No, it ain’t right. I smell something and it sure enough ain’t right.” He wiggled his finger in the Sheriff’s face. “What’s wrong, you scared these witches gonna put a mojo on you, huh?”
“That’s enough.” Sheriff bent over, nose to nose with the deputy. “We will talk about my decision in detail when I get back from the Turner farm. Until then, you need to cool your heels.”
He kept an eye on the deputy as he talked to LeRoy. “Did you get Marcus on the phone?”
“No, sir. No answer.”
“Better see if you can get over to his place and fetch him to check out ol’ Doc. I didn’t want to rattle him in the middle of the night, but by the time you get that old coot outta bed and back here, it’ll be daybreak.”
“What about me?” Deputy Dog sounded like a puppy, lost and upset about it.
“You stay here with Doc.”
“I ain’t staying here alone with him. Where’s Third? And Kyle?”
“On patrol. You can radio, but they’re probably all the way out past the plantations by now.” LeRoy tipped his hat and left.
“Can’t imagine what you’re worried about, Darryl,” Sheriff held his hat to his chest while the corners of his mouth twitched. “What’s gonna happen? You said yourself, he’s dead.”
All three of us followed Sheriff out the door.
Shhhhtuppp.
***
“Fine,” Darryl muttered as he stomped over to the coffeepot. The percolator was cold and he cursed as he yanked it free of the cord and went to the small kitchen off the main office to rinse and refill the pot. Most of the men here didn’t care one way or another if their coffee was fresh or if it tasted like boiled sewage.
The sound didn’t come to him at first, probably overcome by the running water and his sloshing dish soap around the filter to remove all the dead grounds. When the pot was cleaned to his satisfaction, he heard it—a scraping slide like someone dragging a sack of potatoes across a hardwood floor.
He glanced back into the main office of the station, his hands dripping with soapy slush. “Kyle? Third? Y’all back?”
Nothing.
In the ne
xt room, the dilapidated air conditioner emitted a whining grind that set his teeth on edge, then settled down into its normal asthmatic hum.
The wind mewled outside and he returned his attention to his task, rinsing his hands and filling the clean pot with water. He wiped the trails of water from the silvery pot and slung the towel over his shoulder. His heavy footsteps stumbled to a halt as he passed the pine box on the floor. “Shoulda left this thing outside. Why the hell would them two fools bring it in here?” Darryl pressed his lips together as soon as he realized he was talking to fill the silence. He gave the box a vicious kick and leapt backward with a shriek trapped in his throat when the lid lifted from the coffin. It settled back slightly askew, but Darryl backed up and strode off to plug in the percolator. He’d take his coffee outside and wait until the boys got back.
As he scooped grounds into the filter basket, he listened. The sound he’d heard earlier was like his scraping of the metal spoon against the metal can. He scooped again and again, convincing himself this was it. But how? He’d not been on night shift in a few weeks, so it may have been that the branches had gotten out of control and scraped the building as the wind tossed them. He’d check on it. These boys wouldn’t know what to do without him here.
The next scoop wouldn’t fit in the basket and he realized he’d over filled it. He cursed and shook some grounds back out into the tin of dry coffee, not caring about the water droplets clinging to it.
With the coffee brewing, he rolled his shoulders, shrugging off the tightness. He hadn’t known being alone in this station would play such tricks on him, that strange scraping being the worst of it. He longed for a drink to settle his stomach, but knew his boss didn’t stand for drinking on the job, even on a quiet night. Sheriff had told him about it once when he’d had a belt or two, and he knew he wouldn’t get another chance, so the bottle stayed hidden in his desk. He dragged it out now and sat the liter of rye on the desk next to his typewriter. He stared at the amber liquid, rubbing his fingertips over the cool curves of the bottle.
“Shit.” He pushed himself away from his desk and headed to the back table.
Darryl poured coffee into a white mug and ignored the brief pain of the first scalding sip. Its bitterness cleared his head of all the strange happenings of the night. That woman had been the start of it. Making his mind go to corn mush. He knew what the darkies said about them Turners—Doc especially—and those were the rumors, the ones of root magic and such, that had his senses off kilter. He leaned his head against the cabinet above the side table where the coffee worked its own daily magic and took in a few humid breaths just as the scraping resumed.
This was crazy, Darryl thought as he turned. Now it sounded like dry skin—
And it was.
Doc’s bare feet shuffled across the bare wood floor of the station toward the stunned deputy. Darryl’s mouth opened and closed, soundless.
“Must finish,” Doc said, his voice raspy. His feet had left a dusty red trail from the pine box as though he’d walked through crushed bricks. He tore the front pocket from the worn work shirt, exposing his concave chest.
The coffee cup crashed down, sending shards of porcelain skittering along the floor. Doc kneeled stiffly, and picked up the handle, using the jagged edge to first slice the base of his thumb, then carefully print a name on the ragged pocket.
Deputy Darryl drew his revolver and held it out in both hands, arms trembling. “You—you are dead, Mister. I-I saw you dead. Fuck, I touched you.”
Doc placed the scrap of cotton in his mouth and chewed as Darryl emptied his gun.
***
Mama didn’t make us go to school that day. We helped clean up the house. Washed crusty jars and pots. Threw out dried owl bones and scraped wax off tables and walls. When we finally went to bed, I was tired and my fingers and my back hurt. It felt good to lay down, but I couldn’t sleep for the noise outside. Jay crawled into bed with me a few minutes later cause he heard it too.
It dragged like a man with a wooden leg. It scratched like nails on a blackboard. It scraped like a stick over a brown paper bag. The sound dug in my ear and made my head feel like a million drums beating all at once inside of me. Even the breeze stopped, holding its breath to see what was gonna happen next.
Doc was home.
***
The next day, the Sheriff and Third drove up to our cabin. I was snapping beans on the front porch steps and Jay was trying his best to catch a chicken as it scooted across the yard. We both stopped as the men came up.
“Where’s your Mama?” He asked me.
“Fine, thank you, Sheriff. And yourself?”
Sheriff about growled at me, but Third laughed. “No reason to forget your manners, Boss,” he said.
“Mornin’, Miss Jezebel.” He touched his hat. “Where’s your sainted mother?”
I smiled at my little victory. “Inside.”
“And where’s Doc?”
I grinned even wider. “Inside.”
The men knocked on the screen door. Mama shooed us away before she let them in. Me and Jay counted to ten before sneaking back up on the porch and peeking in, one of us on either side of the screen door.
“I need to know what’s going on here.”
“Just taking some biscuits out of the oven, Sheriff.”
Jay looked at me and we both rubbed our bellies.
“Can I offer you one?” Mama continued.
“This is serious, Janey. My deputy is in Carter Rose and we still can’t find Larry John.”
“Carter Rose? Isn’t that the loony place? What’s he doing there?”
“Checked himself in. Said with the things he saw, he had to be crazy.”
“Oh, my.” Mama busied herself at the stove.
“We need to know what happened is all, Miss Janey.” Third’s deeper voice came around the corner and my face got hot. He was the newest of Sheriff Edwards’s officers and the youngest of Mayor Fox’s three boys. And he had dimples.
“How would I know?”
The back door creaked open and slammed. “Maybe I can help out,” Doc sounded rough, the way he always did when he first woke up. “No reason to bother my sister, Edwards. I am far from dead. You start today with no problems.”
“Except for being short a deputy.”
“Ahh, yes. Collins, right? But is that really a problem? He didn’t seem like the law abiding type, if you know what I mean.”
Sheriff’s back got stiff. “You gonna tell me what happened in my jail last night?”
“Not much to tell. Seems your deputy passed out and hit his head just as I was getting up. Now, I would have helped him more if I was able. Lying in the cool earth has such restoring powers. Above ground, with this heat, putting myself back together takes a bit more effort.” He thanked Mama for the biscuit she placed in front of him and kept right on talking. “Possible he might have caught sight of me before I was decent.”
“What about Larry John? Your sister said we needed to talk to him.”
“Grown men run away from responsibility all the time. Probably out doing what every other man is out there doing. Trying to survive.” Doc chuckled, all warm and delighted as he spread sticky molasses on the biscuit and then licked his thumb. “It’s hard for some.”
“Think we’ll see him again around here?” Sounded like Third had already worked things out. I knew I liked him for some reason.
“I doubt it. Highly doubt it.”
“But…” Sheriff said, sounding frustrated.
Doc patted his thick fuzzy beard with a napkin. “You a good man, Sheriff. If you wanted to see Janey, you’d have my blessing.”
“I don’t need your blessing or no one else’s. I do as I please,” Mama said as she took off her apron and tossed it on the table. She stomped out of the kitchen with her nose in the air. A moment later, a door slammed.
“Ain’t that the truth from the Devil’s mouth?” Doc looked over at the taller man. “Janey sure got her ways about her.”
“No secret to me, that’s for sure.” Sheriff looked like he wanted to say something else, but he didn’t.
Doc put on his I’ll-keep-your-spirit-in-a-jar face. “Larry John is gone from here because I found out he wasn’t fit to be around little boys. And I wanted to make good and sure Janey never had to know and feel like she was the cause of it.”
“I see.”
“Now, you, Sheriff. I’d approve of you seeing Janey.” Doc lit his pipe and the smell floated outside, sweet and spicy. “Maybe take her to a picture show. Think on it some.”
“I might just do that, Doc.”
“Anything else, gentlemen?”
“Not at this time.” The men turned to leave.
We scrambled away from the door when we heard the men’s footsteps getting closer. The screen swung wide and out came Third, followed by Sheriff. He ducked to get out the door and put on his hat. Third got behind the wheel, but Sheriff Edwards stood there for a time looking up at our house. Then he got in and the car pulled away, up the long trail to the main road, leaving little dust devils behind.
Me and Jay climbed back on the porch and watched the farm go back to normal. Chickens pecked at bugs in the front yard. Mama was back at the stove. Doc’s chair creaked off and on.
“Thanks, Jezebel. I was mad at you before, but now…” Jay wouldn’t look at me.
I rubbed my hand over his head. It was warm and his short hair felt like the gentle scrape of a cat’s tongue on my palm. “I know. Now is different.”
We sat there watching the police car disappear, hidden by road dust, until Mama called us in for dinner.
9 Mystery Rose
Gabe gave a long, productive cough, then scrawled an address on a faded receipt and passed it to the man across the table.
Mike cringed and took the paper with two fingers, glancing at it quickly before slipping it into his suit jacket pocket. “Are you sure about this?”
“If there’s any help for you, it’s there. But I don’t know, man.” He shook his woolly head like a broken puppet left to dangle without a master. Empty coffee cups sat between the men, ignored.
