Black Water (16 page)

He scuttled back to the wagon, wriggled up the ladder onto the seat, and, using a rope attached to the bottom o’ the hinged ladder, hauled it up and into the bed. He grabbed the reins and hyaw-hyaw’d the mule into action.

Lootie Komes had been much too preoccupied to pay any attention to Tr’tl. She was consumed in the preparation of a potion comprised of mysterious and deadly ingredients. If she’d not been so involved in her current project and had given it a thought, she woulda recognized the irony in Tr’tl’s deliverin’ the still-living ingredients to be used in the concoction of a curse. Although, as opposed to Tr’tl’s, a death curse.

The years hadn’t been kind to Lootie. Consuming the sins o’ the dyin’ had taken its toll. Heavily. At forty-eight, she looked seventy-eight. She was the epitome of a nightmarish, storybook ogress, with a ragged scar runnin’ from her left cheek, through the milky, blue/blind eye, and up into her scalp, creating a streak o’ snow-white, stringy hair. Although, now, her whole head was white. As she ambled about, she drug one leg, the by-product of a degenerating hip, scratchin’ out a memorable sound. Step-drag, step-drag, step-drag. Her mind was as sharp as ever, but thirty-four years o’ bein’ a Sin Eater’d destroyed her body, and just stayin’ one step-drag ahead of death had become a full-time job.

She had to be careful raisin’ an arm because done too quickly, her shoulder kind o’ popped and was sore for days. She had to watch where she stepped. She’d fallen she didn’t know how many times, and tryin’ to get up with a bum leg and weak shoulders was Hell. It took her an hour or two each day to collect enough vegetable matter to make it count. Meat was actually easier to come by, as she still had the power to pull a rabbit, a squirrel, or possum right to her front door. They’d come squealin’ and kickin’, like they had a noose snugged up tight about their necks. But there wasn’t any noose. Only the power of her mind. She’d stand in the shack door and keep her one eye trained on ’em ‘til they got close enough she could club ’em with a stick, then ask for their forgiveness for takin’ their life so she could have one more painful day. She wouldn’t thank God. It wasn’t Him ‘at had to give up his life. She knew God didn’t think much o’ her, but she didn’t think much o’ Him either. What kind o’ coward did it take to create a Son to die, nailed to a splintery cross? Someone else to do the dirty work. If God was so tough, why didn’t he do it Hisself? Lootie did believe in God, though. She had to. Because she believed in the Dark Lord, and ever force in the universe had an opposite and equal.

The very people who damned her and her name in public paid handsomely in private to have theirs and their loved ones’ souls cleansed. Everbody believed she had an iron pot filled with the gold she charged, hidden in the shack, maybe tucked in a hole under the floor. Not so. It was in a wooden box without a lid, and set along the wall in plain sight. Just a box. She had no use for gold, although she did think it was pretty. No, gold was power only to them that had none.

Lootie, being born of a witch, had innate abilities, but over the years, with the addition o’ the consumed sins, her power had increased many fold. With her reputation, no one came to her to purchase a cure for warts or to get even with a lover proven false. Lootie Komes had become a specialist, and in her final years, all she offered was death. If you had the gold, Lootie Komes had the power, and you didn’t subscribe to her services unless you were serious. With her will alone, she had the power of death over life. But today? Today was the climax, the apex of her career. She was preparing for her final act, her biggest ever.

Completing the first part o’ the potion, she set it aside, allowing it time to work. It set in a pot on the stove with no fire, bubblin’ of its own accord. To the uninitiated, the fumes alone were lethal. To Lootie, no more than a nose-runnin’, eye-waterin’ annoyance. Over the next two days, her knobby, arthritically tortured hands hung up the boar, the snake, and the gator, and slit their throats, allowing the blood to drain into ancient wooden bowls settin’ under ‘em, one apiece. Each one gave freely more than the required few ounces, except the cottonmouth. She’d had to wring it out tight so she could get ever drop.

Her poor ol’ hands.

Next, she cut her own left wrist with her knife, enough to allow her life force to drip into each o’ the others’. Finished, she wrapped a rag around her wrist and added the potion prepared earlier to hers, the boar’s, the snake’s, and the gator’s blood. After she’d given ’em time to work, she filled two little bottles with the concoctions, one with the boar’s, and the second, the snake’s. A third little bottle she filled with a mixture o’ the potion, her blood, and verminous, fetid swamp water. It was also finished and went on the shelf with the other two. The blood from the gator she set aside and left to work a little longer—for a special project.

With the aid of a walkin’ stick, she struck out for the woods, and with her one good eye closed, she let the third eye lead her to a cypress branch about three foot long, felled and scorched by lightnin’. She lugged it back to the cabin, took her old knife to it, and slowly, the end started to take on the crude shape of an alligator head. In what would be taken for the mouth with no lower jaw, she burrowed out six holes, three to a side. That alone took her all day and half the night. (Her poor ol’ hands.)

She gouged out six teeth from the dead gator’s maw and with a sticky goo made of tree sap, pushed ’em solidly into the holes bored into the wooden gator’s mouth. The next couple o’ days she sat in the dark, dank cabin, kneadin’ and rubbin’ the gator blood potion into the wooden gator’s teeth. While she worked, she thought about her life, the four people she’d loved, and why.

Pearl…her first mother, because Pearl had loved her. Unconditionally.

Cob… her sister and second mother, because Cob had taught her how to survive in a barely survivable world.

And finally, George and Matthew…simply because they’d erupted from between her legs. Unfortunately, like pus from a boil. She tried not to think about the men they had become, but remembered the snot-nosed little scamps who’d scurried about out in the yard, playin’ in the dirt, chasin’ bugs and each other. The smart one watchin’ over the feeble-minded one.

Pearl. Cob. George. Matthew. They were gone now, all of ’em— and soon, very soon, so would she.

The sheriff’s hastily deputized posse lasted all of two days. The fun of the chase lasted as long as the bottle and the jug, and then they went home. Three days after that, a mud-caked and bedraggled Hub Lusaw walked down the streets of Oledeux, headed for the sheriff’s office. Passersby were shocked not only at his condition but at seein’ him at all. Everbody figured him long gone after sendin’ the Komeses to answer for their sins.

Rowe was bent forward, perched on the edge of his squeaky swivel chair, takin’ aim with a switch-blade knife at a badly scuffed boot worn by Toad, his one official deputy—mid-thirties, skinny, pock-faced, head back, gurglin’, sound asleep. Toad’s real name was Ernest Froget (therefore, the nickname), pronounced
Fro-jay
with a mushy
j
. Rowe was tryin’ to see how close he could come to ol’ Toady’s boot without hittin’ it. Splintery puncture marks on the floor attested to his progress.

Suddenly, the office door banged open and Hub entered just as the sheriff launched the knife. The shock created a hitch in the launch, causin’ a slight alteration in its intended trajectory. Just enough. It harpooned Toad’s boot toe, jerkin’ him from whatever Hellish landscape he’d been inhabiting in his sleep.

“God Damn,” Toad yelled, jumpin’ up. He lifted the blade-festooned boot and pulled the knife out with a little screech, and pressin’ on the boot toe, noticed that neither Rowe nor Hub seemed to be overly concerned that he’d been shishkabobbed.

Rowe slowly opened a desk drawer and, without takin’ his eyes off Hub, pulled out and cocked one o’ Mr. Buntline’s long-barrel .45s. While pointin’ it at Hub’s heart, the sheriff had a thought. He uncocked the cannon, laid it back in the drawer, and closed it. “What th’fuck’re you doin’?”

“Turnin’ m’self in,” Hub replied, casually. “I didn’t have anything t’eat and got tired o’ waitin’ f’you t’come ‘n get me.”

“I don’t want it like this.”

“I awready give ya five days, you think five more’d make a dif’ernce?” He nodded toward the street. “Gimme a fifteen minute head start ‘n you’cn try again.”

“You’re a fool.”

“And you’re a fat piece o’ shit,” Hub countered, tired of the verbal swordplay. “Now what?”

Rowe grabbed the key ring off the desk and tossed it toward Toad, who by that time’d pulled off his boot, vigorously massaging his blood-stained sock. Rowe motioned to the back. Toad stuck his boot under his arm, picked up the keys, worked up a face, and hobbled off.

“I’da gotcha,” the sheriff informed Hub.

“Not settin’ on yer big ass in here, stabbin’ Toad’s foot.”

Rowe wheeled Hub by the shoulder and shoved him roughly through the back door. Toad was standin’ beside an open cell, rubbin’ his foot, put-out that still nobody was payin’ attention to him or, in his mind, what’d already become known as the knife wound.

Hub entered the cell and Rowe braced hisself by grippin’ the bars on either side o’ the door and slammed his boot heel hard into Hub’s low back, smashin’ him face-first to the back wall. Blood was already runnin’ from his split brow when he turned around. Rowe nodded for Toad to lock the door. Then he exited, followed by a limping, pissed-off Toad.

Hub lay on his bunk when, an hour later, Rowe entered, followed by Hub’s big-bottomed wife, Raeleen, and their two sons, six-year-old Harvey and three-year-old Henry. “Don’t take all day,” he growled. He gave Raeleen’s back-side the once-over on the way out. He liked ‘em a little on the meaty side. Hub rolled off the bunk and stepped to the bars. Raeleen noticed the swolen, blood-caked brow.

“Whad ya do t’yer eye?”

Hub passed it off with a nod to the front office.

“I been worried sick. You okay?”

“Time’ll tell.”

“Papa,” Harvey inquired with six-year-old innocence, “What’cha doin’ in there?”

“Hush, Sugar,” Raeleen said, pattin’ him on the head.

“Why’d ya bring them here?” Hub asked, like she didn’t have a brain.

“Well, I was gonna leave ’em at home with a book o’ matches ‘n a butcher knife t’play with, but I thought I’d bring ’em so they’cd see their papa in jail. Whadaya think I oughta done with’m?”

“Awright, awright, keep it down.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

“What’s there t’talk about? They killed her ‘n I killed them.”

“The funeral was nice. You oughta been there.”

“Don’t tell me I oughta been there, Rae. I had other things on m’mind.”

“You heard anything about a trial?”

“Sheriff says it could be anywhere from two weeks to a month ‘fore they get to it. I’m ‘sposed t’get a lowyer.”

“I’ll do that.”

“It’d help.”

“You scared?”

“Not a whole lot. What they done to ‘er? Ju see her?”

“I’s told I didn’t want to. Doc Ben signed the papers identifyin’ ‘er so I wudn have to.”

“He done ya a favor, b’lieve me. They ain’t nothin gonna happen t’me f’killin’ them bastards.”

“You don’t know that! The way I see it, they’s a chance our life’s maybe shot t’Hell!”

“Whad you expect me t’do? Huh? Let ’em get away with it? What if it’d been you ‘stead o’ her? You think I wouldn’ta done the same thing? I’ll tell ya what, I ain’t in th’mood f’yer negativeness ‘n yer scardiness ‘n if that’s th’best you’cn do, you’cn go!”

“Don’t get short with me, God Dammit! I’m doin’ th’fuckin best I can!”

“Don’t say
fuck
‘round th’boys.”

“You said Hell ‘n God Dammit!”

“
Hell ‘n
fuck
’re two dif’ernt things.
Fuck
’s a sex word ‘n I don’t wanna hear no more sex words ‘round ’em!”

“Fine,” she barked. “What if you don’t get off? What’m I gonna do? I cain’t b’lieve this is hap’nin’!” She started shakin’ and looked like she was gonna cry…or maybe she was gettin’ mad, he couldn’t tell for sure, but then she brushed away a tear.

“What’s people sayin’?”

“I been bothered s’much by newspaper people, I’m scared t’leave the house. Couple of ’em come right up on th’porch, bangin’ on th’door ‘n twistin’ the latch like they’s gonna walk right in. What few people I talked to, though, said they had it comin’.”

“Well, there ya go. It’ll go t’court ‘n it’ll come out how they done ‘er ‘n I’ll get off, you’ll see. They might not be able t’let me go clean, so I might get a little time, but it won’t be much. Listen, they ain’t nothin’ you’cn do here, ‘n th’boys’s scared. Take ’em on home.”

He got down on one knee and asked, “Y’all wanna stick o’ Black Jack?” They nodded. “Well, come ‘ere, gimme a big hug ‘n I’ll give ya one.” They came to him sheepishly. “Don’t act like ‘at,” he scolded. “Are you roly poly bugs ‘at curl up ‘n hide like sceeredy cats ‘r pincher bugs, givin’ what for?”

“Pincher bugs,” the boys dueted and giggled.

“Awright then. What’s bugs do when they greet one another?” The boys pushed their little faces through the bars, snorted, and rubbed their noses over his like they’s smellin’ him. “‘At’s better,” he said. He reached through the bars and mussed their hair, then he pulled a pack o’ Black Jack from his pocket and gave ‘em each a stick. “Y’all be good ‘n mind yr’mama ‘r I’ll blister yer b’hinds good when I get home.”

The boys nodded, already smacking gum. Raeleen motioned toward the door. “Y’all wait out there a minute. Ask th’sheriff t’show ya ‘is gun.” The older boy took his brother by the hand and started for the door. Once they were around the corner, she stuck her hands between the bars and took his. “I’m sorry. I’m just scared.”

“I know, but if I had to, I’d do it again. Don’t worry.” He squeezed her hands. “Everthing’s gonna be awright. And when it’s over, things’s gonna be a lot better.”

There was somethin’ in his face and the way he said it. “What makes you think so?”