Black Water (7 page)

Without going into any great detail—in fact, deliberately leaving out most of it—Roach told Lootie the day before where they were going and about the nice old woman…

“Her name’s Cob. Ain’t that a funny name?”

…who was gonna give ’em the medicine that could make Pearl all better, but the old woman had somethin’ she wanted Lootie to do first. She had somebody who needed help, another nice old lady who was feelin’ low, and Lootie could help the poor thing, and if she did, they’d get the medicine for free. Lootie asked him what it was she wanted her to do. Roach cooked up a whopper about how the old woman’s children hadn’t come to see her, even with her bein’ so sick and all. How she’d cared for ’em all the years they were young, but it didn’t make any difference now that they were grown up and moved off. She was sick and lonely. She might not even get better, it might well be the end. It was one of the saddest things Lootie’d ever heard. She thought for sure everbody loved their mamas like she loved hers. It woulda been a pretty good piece of fiction, except that Roach’d dragged it up out of his own conscience. He’d done his mother thata way, and even heartless, didn’t-care-for-nobody-else Roach Komes felt guilty about not bein’ with her when her time come, and maybe, although through somebody else, namely Lootie, he could come clean…kinda. Sorta. Somethin’ akin to gettin’ into Heaven, taggin’ along on somebody else’s good deeds.

He told Lootie the old lady’d heard what a nice little girl she was and she wanted to meet her. She was bakin’ a fresh loaf of bread she wanted to share with her, and after she’d eaten it, Cob would give ’em Pearl’s medicine.

Lootie asked him how somebody she never met knew she was a nice girl, but after a left-handed baring of his soul—and bereft of the intelligence to cook up something remotely logical—Roach told her, “Don’t ask silly questions, she jes does, don’t worry ‘bout it!”

What was making Lootie more nervous than anything was how nice Roach was being to her.

It was just before noon when they reached the witch’s shack. The day had warmed considerably, and the humidity was so high they looked like they’d just clumb out of the crick. Roach had taken his coat off and draped it over his arm. His shirt was soaked and Lootie’s hair was plastered to her head like a stringy helmet.

The witch was outside the shack in the shade of the little porch overhang, bare-footed, sittin’ on the tree stump with one leg over the other, suckin’ on the pipe. Because of the heat, she’d pulled the raggedy hem of her long black dress above her knees and Roach noticed how ugly her legs were, especially her feet. Long and bony, and— except for the coarse, dark hair—they looked like a frog’s.

The Devil Dog was curled up at her feet mouthing another bone. A thinner one than before. It was a leg bone, but it wasn’t one Roach was familiar with. He knew cow bones; it wasn’t that big. Sheep, hog, and goat, too, but it was bigger than them. Then he sucked in a lungful; he knew what it was. He looked in the mongrel’s eyes and a low, slow growl clawed up its throat.

The witch raised her head, and Lootie was unnerved by the old woman’s face, mostly veiled in the shadow of the wide, floppy-brimmed hat. She only had two teeth Lootie could see. Her face and hands were more gray-white than regular hand colored, and her eyes were black as pitch. It frightened her how it seemed that eyes she couldn’t look into at all seemed to be lookin’ clean through her. The only other times Lootie’d ever felt that naked was when she didn’t have any clothes on. Blood was thumpin’ through her heart, and her head but felt like it’d dried and caked up everwhere else.

The witch toed the dog in the rump, “Git!” Reluctantly, it picked up the bone and hobbled off.

When the old woman turned her attention back to Lootie, she felt like she’d been squeezed around the throat, gasped, and grabbed Roach’s pant leg.

“Now don’t be like ‘at,” he told her. “This’s th’nice lady I’s tellin’ y‘bout. The one with the med’cine that’ll make yer Mama all better.” He dug his fingers into Lootie’s shoulders and turned her to face the witch. “This’s my little girl, Lootie.”

The old woman took a long time to look her over, like she was a mule at auction, and the whole time, Lootie was tryin’ to get her breath. The old woman’s bottomless black eyes roamed over the scar, followed it up into Lootie’s scalp and then back down to her one good eye. The choking feeling stopped the instant the old thing faked a smile. “G’monin’, little sistah,” she crooned, hoarsely. “My name’s Cob.”

Lootie swallowed and blinked. “How do, ma’am. I ain’t got no sistah.”

Cob rocked back, slapped her bony knee, and cackled hard. “No,” she said, hawked up a gob and spit it on the ground, “notchet.” She laughed again. “Ain’t she jes th’most precious thang evah was?” She cocked her head toward the shack door. “Didjer…” she glanced at Roach, “…yer Papa. Did he tell ya I had a lady friend inside wantin’ t’meetchew?”

Lootie nodded, cautiously.

“You’ll like ‘er, mm-hmm, yessssss, yes, she’s a nice lady, but feelin’ a mite pohly of late, ‘n yer Daddy ‘n me, we thought mebbe a little girl bein’ nice to ‘er’d make ‘er feel so much bettah.”

“Did ‘er children come t’see ‘er yet?” Lootie asked, innocently.

Cob and Roach locked eyes. Roach could always think ’em up, but had no talent at follow-through. Thank God, Cob could think faster than he and put two and two together. “No, dahlin, notchet, poah ol’ thang. Don’t ‘at beat all? But we’a still hopin’.” Then she put her elbows on her knees and leaned for’ard, her eyes piercing into Lootie’s like needles. “I betchew got up early this monin’, dincha ya? Had a long trek? I betchur hongry, too. You ain’t had nothin’ t’eat this monin’, have ya?”

“She ain’t had nothin’,” Roach jumped in. “Nothin’ since yestedee. Not a crumb.”

“Is ‘at right, you ain’t had nothin’ t’eat?”

“Yes, ma’am, I mean, no, ma’am,” Lootie replied, politely. “I ain’t.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cob said, convinced. “Such mannahs. Yes, well, ‘at’s a long time for a little’n t’go ‘thout eatin’ somethin’, ain’t it?” She gestured over her shoulder. “Th’lady inside’s fixed somethin’ special, jes f’you.” She pushed her flat ass off the stump, stepped to the edge o’ the porch, and helt out a knuckly hand. “Why donchew come inside with me now ‘n I’ll inaduce ya, then we c’n eat, awright?”

Lootie still had a deathgrip on Roach’s pant leg.

“Dahlin’, I thoughtchu said you hadn’t et. If ya ain’t, you mus’ be hongry. You’d like somethin’ t’eat, wuncha?”

Roach nudged Lootie from the back.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am, no, ma’am,” Cob cackled. “Ain’t ‘at jes th’sweetest. I c’d jes hug you in half.”

Roach felt Lootie press into him when Cob again approached with her hand helt out, scared to death the old woman was gonna try to hug her in half. Lootie just looked at her hand. “Lootie!” Roach said, and gave her a sharp nudge.

Lootie took Cob’s hand, shocked and appalled by the cold, clammy, waxey touch. Cob led the way to the door. Roach started to follow but Cob turned her black orbs on him. “You’ll wait outchere.”

Catching Roach’s reaction, Lootie started to balk. “I want my daddy t’come with me.”

“I blieve it might be bettah if I went in with ‘er,” Roach said, while a nervous smile twitched his face, “If it’s awright.”

“It ain’t,” Cob said, leaving no doubt. “I b’lieve…it’d be bettah…if you’s t‘wait. Outchere.”

Roach gave it half a moment’s thought while the witch gave him the evil eye, and, finally, he got down on one knee in front of Lootie. “It’s awright. You go on in with Cob ‘n I’ll be right out here, and after you meet th’othah lady ‘n eat a bite….” He looked up at Cob like maybe he was reconsidering their agreement. But then, steeling his resolve, “You have a bite…then we’ll take th’med’cine ‘n go back home.”

Lootie was more scared than she’d ever been in her short little life. There was somethin’ about Cob, besides the obvious, and whoever, or whatever it was in the shack, that made her head itch.

Roach clenched his jaw. “Lootie! Listen t’me! If you don’t do what th’lady wants, we don’t get th’med’cine, and Pearl needs it…bad.”

Lootie’s love for her mother and the need for the medicine was stronger than her fear of the unknown, and so, without taking her tear-laden eyes off Roach, allowed Cob to pull her through the door and into the dark recesses of the shack. From just inside the door, she watched Roach wringing his hat in his hand.

“I’ll be right heah.”

He waved, Lootie thought, like he was wavin’ goodbye, and the door closed.

The door latch clicked, and the Hound from Hell took it as an invitation to pick up the bone and take up his duties back at the door. Roach saw it hop-stepping his way so he thought he might like to go somers else to wait and moved off to the shade of a tree a good thirty yards from the front door. Devil Doggie got to the very spot Roach had vacated and whumphed onto the dusty ground. Roach looked at the hateful thing and thought for sure the animal’s earlier surly sneer was now more a kind of a smile.

Cob tugged Lootie through the shack. Because her eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darkness, Lootie couldn’t see the candles themselves, just the flames of the dozen or so set about the room. They looked like they’s floating. Neither did it register to her that they’d all bent toward her, like compass needles, the second she came through the door. Cob had, though, and wondered: were they bending...or bowing? It was just one more proof of Lootie’s dark royalty.

Slowly, her eyes adjusting, Lootie saw that the only other light was what knifed in through the loose, splintery skeleton of weathered, hand-hewn planks poorly passing for walls. The hovel was so decrepit it looked like the dust-ladened cobwebs in the corners were helpin’ hold it together. Besides the dark, there were unfamiliar smells. Thick, smoke smells. They weren’t like the smoke at home from the wood stove, though, but stronger, and they burned her eyes, her nose, and her throat. She swept her free hand from side to side like a blind man with a stick to keep from bumpin’ into somethin’ while Cob hauled her through the shack. They came to a stop when Lootie’s shins banged into somethin’. Instinctively, she put her hand down to keep from fallin’ over, but jerked it back when she touched somethin’ cold. Somethin’ not wood, or metal, or glass.

She found herself at the foot of a narrow cot just off the floor. She knew she was comin’ to see some sickly somebody, but she didn’t know she was gonna be accompanied by four other age-ravaged, toothless old biddies sittin’ on rickety little chairs alongside the cot, two to a side, all dressed in black shawls draped over their scarce-haired skulls. They were all cocked away, lookin’ at her like she was a double-headed, stubby-legged fetus floatin’ in a jar in a carnival freak show. Lootie wondered if they might be family members. Cob said the lady’s kids hadn’t showed yet, so maybe they were her sisters or cousins, or even friends.

She couldn’t tell what they were sayin’, but they were quietly mumblin’ to theirselves, and as her eyes got more used to the dark, she saw they were fiddlin’ with somethin’—necklaces with little crosses on ’em. The necklaces looked like they were made up of black beans.

Cob took one of the candles from a shelf and brought it in front of Lootie’s face, clamped her fingers onto Lootie’s chin and turned her head this way and that. The old women moved their faces all around to get a good gawk. Lootie didn’t know Cob was givin’ ’em the opportunity to peruse the scars and the blind eye she’d told ’em so much about. The desiccated old lizards, who’d never laid eyes on Lootie, knew far more about her than she knew about herself.

After starin’ and weighin’ for a few seconds, they looked at each other, then, as if coming to a mutual agreement, turned their creaky, turkey-wattled necks to Cob and nodded. Cob smiled and nodded back, like she was relieved. She let go of Lootie’s chin and put the candle back on the shelf.

Lootie’s eyes were finally used to the dark, and she saw, layin’ on the cot, the purpose for this strange gathering. The lady’s eyes and cheeks were sunk way down in the skull that seemed to be shielded by no more than a thin layer of parchment. She was laid straight out, her head on a little pillow, her emaciated, meatless arms straight down to her sides. Her hands were horribly twisted, like tree roots, all knuckles and joints. She had a kind of rag looped from the top of her head, down to and tied under her chin. Her flappy cheeks puffed in and out as she pulled in hard-fought breath.

Lookin’ down her body, it hit Lootie that the cold thing she’d touched with her hand had been the old thing’s bare foot. Although she couldn’t tell what color it was—black, blue, or purple—she could see it was much darker than the rest of her leg. The hem of the dress they had her in only went down to just below her knee. Knee. As in singular. Her other leg was gone.

If this was the lady Cob had been talkin’ about, there wasn’t any way she was gonna know Lootie was there, let alone eat with her. The poor old hag had the death rattles and the room was filled with the rancid, musty smell of a body takin’ a long time to die, yet had wait only moments to live.

It was when Lootie’s eyes worked their way back up the old woman’s body that she noticed the little loaf of bread, the size of a muffin, restin’ on the wretch’s slatted chest, risin’ and lowerin’ with each wheezie breath. It was the wheezin’ that made Lootie look at the old woman’s face. She almost took a step back. Somebody’d already placed pennies on her eyes. Pearl’d told Lootie about the pennies. How they were put on the eyes of the dead. How they were payment for the ferryman to take the souls across The River. But it was frightening to see ’em on one who wasn’t yet dead.

Lootie jumped when Cob nudged her toward the old woman, and the two women on the closest side of the cot stood up and moved off a little to give her room. She felt Cob’s hand at her back, pushing.

“Eat th’bread, Lootie,” she said, her voice catchin’.

Lootie helt back. “No, thankee, Ma’am, I ain’t hongry no more.”

The Old Testament priests made sacrificial offerings to God, a God of Abstinence, using the unblemished calf, kid goat, or lamb as payment of a sort for the forgiveness of sins; and any sign of a blemish, an affront, was punishable by an instant, fiery death.