by Libba Bray
“You’re persistent, Memphis Campbell, I’ll give you that. What are you doing here besides reading library books?”
“Oh, you know. A little of this, little of that.”
Theta arched one thin brow. “Sounds like trouble.”
Memphis spread his arms in a gesture of innocence. “Me? I’m the farthest thing from trouble you’ll ever know.”
“Mmm,” Theta said, walking around the room.
“Why aren’t you upstairs in the club?”
Theta shrugged. “I was bored.”
“Bored! That’s a first. Don’t you know the Hotsy Totsy is supposed to be the swankiest club in town?”
Theta shrugged again. “I’ve been to a lot of clubs.”
“That a fact?”
“Yep.” She dragged on her cigarette. “Poet, huh? Why don’t you read me something?”
“Whatever you say, Creole Princess.” Memphis opened the book and read while Theta once again flipped casually through his journal. He had a nice voice, one well suited to poetry. “ ‘I sing the body electric/The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them/They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them/And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul….’ That’s Mr. Walt Whitman. One of our finest poets.”
Theta had turned another page. Now she stared at the radiant eye-and-lightning bolt symbol somebody had doodled in the corner of the page. Her heart beat faster. “Did you draw this?” She tried to keep her voice even.
“That? Oh, just something I saw in a dream.”
“In… a dream?” Theta repeated. She felt hot and dizzy. “What is it? What do you know about it?”
“Nothing. Like I said, just something I saw in a dream.”
The drawing seemed to have upset the girl for some reason. Memphis wanted to ask her why, but he also didn’t want to scare her off. “Here, let me show you around the club.” He reached for his notebook, but Theta held on to it. She looked right at him, but she didn’t seem angry; she seemed astonished, maybe even a little scared.
“I’ve seen that same symbol in my own dreams,” she said.
Memphis didn’t know where to start. “Do you know what it is or where it comes from? Have you seen it somewhere before?”
Theta shook her head. “Only in my dreams.”
“When did it start?”
“I don’t know. About six months ago? You?”
“ ’Round about then.”
“How often do you dream it?” she asked.
“Twice a week, maybe more. Used to be only here and there, but lately, it’s happening more often.”
Theta nodded. “I’m having it more often, too.”
She dreamed of the same symbol. Memphis dealt with odds every day, and he knew the odds on this were staggering. It had to mean something, didn’t it? “Tell me exactly what you dream.”
Theta sank into a chair. She was shaking. “It’s always the same. I’m somewhere a long way from New York. I don’t know where. No place I know. I’m standing on a road, and the sky’s lousy with storm clouds—”
Memphis could feel his heart thundering in his chest. “Is there a farmhouse? An old white farmhouse with a porch?”
Theta’s eyes widened. “Yes,” she whispered. “And wheat fields, or corn. Some kind of fields. And in the distance there’s this tree—”
“With no leaves on it. Just a big old gnarled tree, with limbs as thick as a giant’s arms.”
Goose bumps rose on Theta’s back and neck. “And something’s coming on the road….”
“Just behind a wall of dust,” Memphis finished for her.
Theta nodded. She felt cold all over. What was happening? “The worst part is the feeling,” she said softly. “Like something terrible is coming. Something I don’t want to see.”
“Something you’ll be called to do something about,” Memphis said.
“What does it mean?”
A loud crash came from above, followed by screams and the sounds of police whistles being blown. Frantic footsteps thudded across the ceiling. Memphis ran to the door and poked his head out, only to see a full squad of policeman barging their way into the kitchen.
Theta’s eyes widened. “Holy smokes! It’s a raid.”
“Can’t be,” Memphis said, throwing his knapsack over his shoulder. He still held the book in his hand. “Papa Charles has the cops in his pocket.”
“That pocket’s got a hole, Poet.” The terror of the shared dream was replaced by the real fear of being arrested. “How do I get out of here? I can’t afford to get pinched.”
“This way!” Memphis offered his hand. “I know this place like my own skin. I’ll get you out of here. Trust me.”
Theta grabbed his hand and they set off running down the narrow hall.
Mabel gasped as the doors to the club were broken down and two lines of police stormed the club. One grabbed her by the wrist. She tugged, but his grip was strong.
“Right this way, Miss. I’ve got a car waiting,” the officer said, smiling.
“My mother will kill me,” Mabel wailed as he dragged her away from the chaos unfolding behind her.
Theta and Memphis ran. Behind them, the police stormed the place, breaking open walls, knocking chairs over. Two flappers and their beaus screamed and stumbled drunkenly into the wall of cops. A clearly intoxicated man whose face was covered in lipstick pulled out a gun and fired off shots indiscriminately. One of his bullets passed through the book of poetry in Memphis’s hand. Memphis stuck his finger through the hole. “That was a library book,” he said, gasping.
“Poet, we’ve gotta scram!”
Memphis ran with Theta around a corner, where he pulled her into a telephone booth. She looked up through heavy lashes into Memphis’s handsome face. She’d seen plenty of handsome fellas before, but none who wrote poetry and shared the same strange nightmare. Deep down, Theta felt stirrings she’d guarded against since Roy and Kansas and what had happened there.
“You pull me in here to hide or to neck, Poet?” Theta joked, trying to catch her breath.
“Trust me,” Memphis said. He turned the crank on the telephone three times and gave a hard push on the back wall, which opened onto a secret passageway.
Upstairs in the club, it was chaos as the police stormed the doors. The bartenders moved quickly. They flipped the bar over, sending about two dozen bottles of good hooch down a chute to their untimely end, then pulled a lever on the bar itself, emptying the bottles and glasses there down another chute and wiping the evidence away with rags. Patrons screamed and climbed over tables, knocking one another over in their panic to get out. Some of the flappers continued dancing, thrilled to be arrested and make the papers. “You sure you gents don’t need a drink?” the club manager quipped as the cops walked him toward the door. In the midst of the hysteria, Henry walked calmly to the piano, took a seat, and began to play.
“Don’t look at me, officer. I’m just the piano player,” he said, but the man in blue cuffed him anyway.
In the melee, Sam and Evie were separated. Evie dodged and wove her way toward an exit just as a fresh wave of cops barged in. She doubled back, passing the dim blond from earlier, who was pouring her heart out to the cop arresting her: “These chumps are all the same—one minute they’re trying to get you into the struggle buggy, the next, they’re giving you their typhoid.”
Trapped, Evie dove under a table and hid beneath its white cloth, watching. She reached up just high enough to grab an open bottle of champagne and pull it down with her. It seemed a shame to let good hooch go to waste, and if she was going down, she was going in style. After a few minutes, she peeked out and saw Sam gliding easily out the door, untouched. Or rather, she thought she saw him. He moved so quickly she couldn’t be sure. She only knew she was angry again. She bolted after him, calling his name, but a second wave of policemen rounded the corner. Evie ran back into the club room, keeping low. She spied a dumbwaiter hidden behind the bar and m
ade a break for it, wriggling herself in. Her long necklace caught on the hook, scattering pearls all over the floor, which tripped an officer heading her way. There was no time to mourn the jewels, so she slammed the door shut and hoisted herself toward freedom.
“Didn’t I tell you to trust me?” Memphis said. He and Theta stood in the dank wine cellar beneath the club. A lone worker’s bulb over the door cast dim light across the dirt floor and the barrels stored in the deep room.
“What is this place?”
“It’s where they store the hooch when it comes in from Canada,” Memphis explained. “Come on. Be careful—the steps are tricky.”
“Where to now?”
Memphis stood for a moment, trying to get his bearings. He didn’t spend a lot of time down here, and he wasn’t certain of the room. He only knew there had to be a door somewhere. Up the steps, the doorknob jangled. There were shouts.
“Cops,” Theta whispered.
“Hold on, hold on,” Memphis whispered back. “Let’s see if they go away.”
It was quiet for a spell; all they heard was their own breathing. Then a loud thwack broke the silence, and Theta yelped as a policeman’s ax splintered a slit in the cellar’s big wooden door.
“Tell me you know a way out of here!” Theta said.
“This way!” Memphis said, and hoped he was right. They threaded through barrels of liquor. Behind them, the door gave way, and someone shot into the air, shouting, “Stop right there!”
“Should we…?” Theta panted.
“Not on your life, Princess,” Memphis said, pulling her on.
Footsteps echoed in the cavernous space. The cops had made it in and were gaining on them. Memphis had paid off some of these men for Papa Charles; most would look the other way and let him go. But a few were quick with their clubs, and finding a black man with a white woman in a cellar full of booze didn’t bode well for Memphis’s case. The shouts of “Stop! Stop!” came again, this time punctuated by gunfire. Where was the way out?
Against the far wall, Memphis saw the silhouette of stairs. He followed them up and saw the outline of a door. It had to lead to a fire escape.
“This way,” Memphis gasped out as he half dragged Theta up the rickety staircase.
“There they are!” a cop yelled from below.
Memphis tried the knob but it was stuck. He threw himself against the door, once, twice, and it finally swung open on rusted hinges. He pushed Theta out onto the fire escape. Down below, two officers stood smoking cigarettes. “Go up!” he whispered.
Theta nodded and started the climb up to the roof. A rotting cafe chair rested against the railing. Memphis lodged it under the doorknob, and while the cops banged against the door, he climbed after Theta. The harsh glare of a neon sign advertising Lucky Strike cigarettes turned the roof into a white haze. They ran to the edge of the roof, stepping over the half wall to the next roof, and then the next, climbing at last down another fire escape into an alley. Memphis jumped first, then helped Theta, enjoying for that brief second the feel of her against his chest. The two of them ran out and joined the nighthawks still walking the city streets.
The dumbwaiter had reached the top. Grunting, Evie pushed against the door with her fists, then her feet, but it was hopelessly stuck.
“Hello?” she whispered. “Hello? Anybody there?”
A moment later, the door opened. A man’s hand appeared and Evie took it gratefully, slowly unbending her arms and legs and stepping out of the cramped box, still holding fast to the champagne bottle.
“Oh, swell! Thank you, baby!”
“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” the policeman said, slapping handcuffs on her. “You’re also under arrest.”
Sam slipped easily through the crowd and back through the corridor into the building next door. Whenever a policeman looked his way, Sam would think that same thought—Don’t see me—and before the cop could figure out what had happened, Sam would have moved on, leaving him to shake his head and chase after someone else. He hoped Evie had managed to escape. He had to hand it to her, she had moxie. He liked girls with moxie. They were trouble. And Sam liked trouble even more than moxie.
“Did we lose them?” Theta panted. Her legs shook and the white fur of her coat was grimed with dirt.
“I think so.” Memphis held up the pulp of the book and sighed. “Mrs. Andrews is gonna kill me.”
“At least you’ll have something to write about,” Theta said and laughed. It was a solid bray of a laugh, completely at odds with her jaded demeanor. The cool she’d shown him earlier was gone. Their narrow escape had made them giddy, and they stood on the corner of Seventh Avenue laughing at their good fortune like a couple of kids on Christmas morning. Theta tilted her head back and caught the breeze. In that moment, she was so beautiful that Memphis wished they could keep running.
“You jake, Poet? You look like someone slipped you a mickey,” Theta said.
Memphis forced a smile and spread his arms wide. “Me? I don’t wear worry.”
“Let’s go sneak a peek.”
They crept down the block and crossed the street to where they had a good lookout for the action at the club. Sirens wailed on the street and police wagons lined the block in a long line. The men in blue pulled patrons from the club while the neighborhood looked on. The press had arrived, and the flashlamps popped; they could smell the burning magnesium in the night air.
“Papa Charles isn’t gonna like this,” Memphis said. “He pays the cops enough not to raid his clubs. I hope your friends got out all right.”
“Me, too,” Theta said. She still held Evie’s handbag. “I suppose I’d better blow home and see if they did.”
Memphis felt his heart sink. He didn’t want the evening to end. “I could take you for a cup of coffee first, if you like. I know I could sure use one.”
Theta smiled. It was a sweet smile, almost shy. “Thanks, Poet. But I should get my beauty sleep.”
Memphis started to say something clever—“Why? You’re already the best-looking girl in town”—but didn’t. It would seem like charm, and he didn’t want to charm this girl. He wanted to know her. But the magic of their escape couldn’t extend everywhere.
“Maybe I’ll see you in my dreams tonight,” he said instead. “On that road.”
Theta’s smile faltered just a bit. “I suppose I’d feel less scared if you were there.”
The cops patted the doors of one of the wagons and sent it on its way. The streets were clogged with people now. Theta stuck out her hand. “Thanks for the daring escape, Poet.”
Memphis shook Theta’s hand, marveling at the softness of it. “Anytime, Creole Princess.”
Theta ran toward the subway. At the corner, she turned to see Memphis still watching her. He wasn’t watching her the way that audiences or the occasional fan on the street did. It didn’t make her feel odd or imagined; on the contrary, she had never felt more real. “Hey, Poet!” she called back to him. “It’s Theta!”
“Pardon?” he shouted.
“My name. It’s Theta—”
The crowd thickened between them just as someone pulled Memphis into a choke hold from behind. He whipped around, ready for a fight. Laughing, Gabe put his hands up in surrender, backing away. “Easy, brother. Just me. Can you believe they raided the club? Somebody’s putting the squeeze on Papa Charles. I’d gone out back for a smoke or I’d be in one of those wagons, too. Hey, Memphis—you even listening to me?”
Memphis had turned away from Gabe and was craning his head, searching for some sign of Theta, but she was already gone. How would he find her again? Beside him, Gabe was talking a mile a minute, but Memphis wasn’t listening. Something had shifted in the cosmos. His future seemed to have thinned to a point of destiny, and it had a name: Theta.
When Memphis let himself into Octavia’s apartment, he found Isaiah standing at the foot of the bed in a pale wash of bluish moonlight. The boy stared into the gloom of the bedroom, his head shaking slightly.
>
“Hey, Ice Man. Whatcha doin’ up?” The boy didn’t answer. “Isaiah? You all right?”
Isaiah’s eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible. His eyelids fluttered wildly.
“The seventh offering is vengeance. Turn the heretics from the Temple of Solomon. And their sins shall be purified by blood and fire.”
“Isaiah?” Memphis whispered. Hearing these strange words coming out of his brother’s mouth made him cold with fear.
“Anoint thy flesh and prepare ye the walls of your houses to receive him.” Isaiah’s thin body jerked with small spasms.
Memphis gripped his arms. Should he run for Octavia? The doctor? He didn’t know. “Isaiah, what are you talking about?” he whispered urgently.
“They’re coming. The time is now.”
“Isaiah, wake up now. You’re having a nightmare. Wake up, I say!”
Isaiah went limp and calm in Memphis’s hands. His eyelids closed as if he might drift back to sleep. Suddenly, he stiffened. His eyes snapped wide open. He stared at Memphis as his small body shook. His words were a choked whisper: “Oh, my son, my son. What have you done?”
Isaiah swayed, but Memphis caught him in time and put his little brother into his bed, where he resumed sleeping as if nothing had happened.
Memphis sat shivering on his own bed. Unable to rest, he watched the rise and fall of his brother’s chest for some time, until early dawn filled the room with a weak, milky light. How could Isaiah have known? No one knew except Memphis. It was what he’d seen when he was under the healing trance in those last moments with their mother on her deathbed. As he’d walked in that other place, a misty land between waking and death, he’d seen her spirit, mournful and afraid, her hands reaching out toward him just before she was swallowed by some vast dark, her last words both a benediction and a warning:
Oh, my son, my son. What have you done?
