Southern Gods (10 page)

Ingram sat down in the opposite chair and said, “Have you seen him? You know, the dark thing.”

Miller looked at Ingram. The two men locked gazes for an instant.

That answers that.

“Okay, Derwood, here you go.” Ingram used the matches again and lit a candle. Moving behind Miller, Ingram dripped a pool of red wax onto the linoleum floor directly behind his chair. He seated the base of the candle in the wax, the candle standing upright and only an inch or two below where Miller’s hands were tied. Miller moved his hands as far away from the candle flame as he could.

“It’s gonna take you a while, and hurt like hell, but you should be able to burn your way out of there before morning, if you start right now. I’ll be seeing you.”

Ingram walked out of the kitchen, out the front door, and back to the coupe. He drove back through Brinkley, now dark in the early hours of the morning, back through the night and away from the town, regaining Highway 70 and heading west again until he came to Lonoke.

At the first church he could find, Ingram parked the coupe as near as possible to the front doors, locked the car, and fell across the front seat, sleep overtaking him.

Chapter 6

L
ife was good in the Big House.

Now a week into their stay at her family home, Sarah and Franny found a rhythm to life here, a cadence as irresistible as the voices of children, begging them to play. Mornings were bright, dappled with sunlight, filled with the scent of muffins and minced-meat pies, of coffee and newsprint and cigarettes and white vinegar, and the cacophony of children running rampant through the house, of bright voices in old dark halls, through the kitchens and sleeping porch, in and out of Alice’s bedroom, the old servant’s quarters. Other than the library, which stayed closed at all times, the Big House rang with the sound of laughter.

Sarah never realized how lonely Franny had been until now, never realized how much she needed the company of other children. Franny was like some sun-loving plant put in the shade too long. Gone was the drowsy, languid child of their old home; Franny flew through the house, a jittering ball of energy with wild hair streaming behind her, yelling and chasing Lenora or Fisk. Gone was the child ready for bed at seven; she now had to be calmed for bed, her hair a dirty nest above her luminous face. Sarah felt a twinge of shame at what she’d denied her daughter all these years. Water seeks its own level, Alice would say, and Sarah would amend, love seeks its own height.

The children made lords of themselves, basking in the late glow of summer. In the morning, they gorged themselves on biscuits and honey and ham, then raced through the fields to the hen house to gather eggs with tremulous shaking fingers, shoes and socks heavy with dew. In the kitchen, with the sky lightening in the east, Franny, Lenora, and Fisk would grin at each other, proud and secret, each one keeping their happiness held close, pulling brown, still-warm eggs from a rough basket. After breakfast, when Alice reached the limits of her patience and shooed the children into the yard, they raced around the pecan grove, unharvested nuts crunching underfoot, their imaginations running wild, pistols made from index fingers, swords made from branches.

But Mimi terrified Franny. The child never overcame the idea that her grandmother was transforming into a wolf. Daily, Sarah cursed her absent husband for his insolent play on words.

“Mimi is turning into a wolf,” Franny would say.

“No, baby, she’s just sick. She’s got lupus, honey. It makes her face dark.”

“That’s what I said, Mommy. Mimi’s turning into a wolf.”

After the first meeting, Franny absolutely refused to spend any time with her grandmother. When, driven to distraction by her daughter’s obstinacy, Sarah exclaimed, “And why not? Why won’t you say hello to Mimi?” Franny’s face became pale, and then her lip quivered. Sarah felt ashamed, bullying her own child. Franny whispered, “Mommy, if I go up there she’s gonna bite my head off.”

Sarah barked a little laugh, and said, “No, baby, she won’t bite—” and then stopped. Biting is what her mother would surely do, had done for years. It was her nature.

So Franny avoided her grandmother and ran wild. In the late afternoons, the children tended the peafowl that stalked the Big House grounds like emperors, their beady eyes inscrutable and cold, their tails flaring in aggression or in love, no one could tell. The children scooped coffee cans full of feed from the barrel on the back porch of the Big House and then walked about the ground, scattering the feed into the grass or gravel, calling in high, bright voices, “Here Pea! Here Pea! Come on now, fowl! Here Pea! Here Pea!” and the birds would come, some high stepping their way through the orchard, through the grounds, from the back acres, and even the edges of the dark wood. All the fowl made haste, except for Phemus, head high and proud, taking delicate steps, tail rampant and viridescent, his dead eye lost in some long-ago fight for a hen, the other baleful eye ever moving, ever watching, his spurs long and vicious. Phemus tolerated nothing; no human nor machine could make the bird give ground. The children avoided Phemus, especially Fisk. Once, he’d moved too slow getting out of the old bird’s way, and Phemus leapt up in a flurry of feathers, hissing like a cat. He landed on Fisk, gashing his thigh with a well-placed spur.

At night, they all ate dinner together, everyone except Mimi gathering round the dining room table, sharing meatloaf or hash or bologna sandwiches, drinking sweet tea and lemonade and coffee in turns. They talked about the day, the children still excited about new discoveries, words tumbling out one after another, breathless and exhausted and in pure heaven.

Sarah couldn’t remember a time she’d felt more content, happier with the ebb and flow of days, the companionship of Alice and the wonder and excitement of her child, her dirty happy child.

But at night, Sarah felt lonely and her body ached for comfort.

Franny yearned too. Every bedtime, she begged and pleaded with her mother to sleep with Lenora and Fisk. It was the only point of segregation that Sarah forced on Franny.

One night, Alice overheard Franny’s pleas as she brought fresh linens to Sarah’s room.

“It’s fine if she wants to,” Alice murmured. “I know Fisk and Lenora would be happy as clams to let that girl sleep with them. They fight over her, you know.”

But what about me? Being alone here without Franny?

Instead, Sarah shook her head and said to Alice, “No, they’re all tired and need their rest. This way, they’ll have energy for the morning.” The excuse sounded lame even to her ears. Alice nodded, and went about stacking linens in the closet.

And while the days were filled with light and laughter and activity, in the dead hours of night when the old house settled, wrapped in a wreath of darkness, the fields and dark wood pressing close all around, Sarah felt an unease creep upon her. She made a point of checking on her mother after Franny fell asleep, filling in Elizabeth on the day’s events. And administering the constantly growing doses of port. Sometimes she would even take a glass herself, to her mother’s great delight.

Late at night, the library drew her.

After giving her mother her port, Sarah would pad back downstairs, barefoot and silent, tray in hand, and quietly slide back the doors of the library and enter the dark room. She’d sit at the desk and smell the musky leather of the old books, and remember all those evenings so long ago when her father, uncle, and grandfather poured over these tomes, searching for something.

And now Sarah found herself doing the same almost every night, lingering in the library, running her fingers down the spines of ancient books.

It had been a long day; they’d taken the children to Old River Lake to swim. Sarah had wanted to take them to the Lonoke municipal swimming pool.

Alice grimaced and then said, “Naw, there’s too many chemicals in them waters. Let’s take ‘em where we used to swim, the Old River Lake.”

Sarah looked at Alice, puzzled.

Alice shook her head, sharply. Later when the women walked to the car to get the picnic basket, Sarah asked, “Why didn’t you want to take them to the pool?”

“We ain’t going to that pool cuz it’s whites only, you little fool.”

Sarah immediately felt ashamed. Such a stupid world they lived in, keeping children who loved each other apart.

“It’d break all them kids’ hearts—Franny’s too—if Lenora and Fisk got turned away. And I aim to keep
that
hard truth away from them as long as I can. Look at them.” Alice pointed to the three children in the lake’s green water, screeching and screaming with delight, throwing mud at each other and dashing around the shallows, water and muck running in rivulets down their small frames.

That night Sarah woke from a strange dream. She stood at the edge of a swimming pool in her yellow bathing suit, but it was night with low clouds and no stars. In the pool stood children, black children. Twenty or thirty of them, each one standing absolutely still in the water, some underneath, some chest deep, but so still the water rippled not at all but lay smooth as glass. At first Sarah thought the figures in the pool were Negro children, that maybe the Lonoke city board had set aside one night this summer for all of the black children in the county to be allowed to swim in the municipal pool. But then, with a gasp, she realized they weren’t Negroes, they were absolutely black, silhouettes made flesh, each one staring at her with malevolent coal eyes in jet black bodies. She heard the wet slap of feet behind her on the swimming pool’s concrete rim, then cold, clammy hands grasped her arms and shoved her into the pool.

She woke, gasping, bed linens tangled and sweaty around her. For a moment she couldn’t recall where she was, if she was back with Jim in Little Rock. But then the Big House settled a bit, a fractional subsonic movement of the old timbers that even in the dark let Sarah know she was home.

She stood up, straightened her nightgown, and moved in the dark toward where Franny slept in the single bed by the window. The window was open, and the sheer drapes fluttered in the hot breeze blowing in from outside.

Jesus.
She scratched at a bite on her arm.
There must be a million mosquitoes in here.

She shut the window as quietly as possible and turned. Half asleep, she reached out to brush Franny’s hair, moving past the girl’s bed, toward the fan. She felt nothing except empty sheets. She stopped.

“Franny?” She ruffled the covers of the single. “Franny?”

She raced to the door, threw it open, and bolted down the gallery, calling for her daughter in a half-whisper, half-scream.

“Franny? Baby? Franny!”

Her heart jack-hammered in her chest. She ran down the hall leading from the gallery, jerking open doors, peered into linen closets, bathrooms. An empty guest room. She paused at her mother’s door. Slowly, she turned the knob and entered, her breath tight in her chest.

Her mother snored in the darkness, mouth open. Sarah turned from her mother’s sleeping form and stepped quickly back to the hall. She raced down the grand stair, her feet slapping on the hardwoods.

Alice, frumpy and wrinkled with sleep, stepped into the light of the kitchen door, a plate of pecan pie in her hand. She looked at Sarah with wide eyes. “Girl, what the… what the devil are you playing at? You look like you seen a—”

“Franny’s missing. She’s not in her bed.”

“Shit, girl, why ain’t you screaming? Lemme get my shoes.” With a clatter, Alice dumped her plate in the sink and dashed toward her quarters.

After a moment, she came back out of her room, smiling. She crooked at finger at Sarah, and said from the door, “Come look at this. I must not have heard her come in the room. Maybe I was having a snack.”

Franny lay snuggled between Lenora and Fisk, arms wild, one leg thrown over Lenora’s, a smile curling her lips. Sarah stood at the foot of the bed, tears running down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook as silent sobs wracked her body.

Alice put a warm hand on Sarah’s back. “It’s gone be all right, Sarah. Kids is kids, and you can’t separate them. We were the same, remember?”

Sarah nodded, smiling through her tears at Alice’s turn of words; so many circles within circles. Kids is kids. There’s broken and there’s broken. Everything is everything. She hugged Alice back, fiercely.

“You had a scare, girl. I got something to settle you down.” Alice moved to the counter, pulled out a small glass, squirted raw honey into it from a bee-shaped plastic container, set a pan of water on a blue burner of the stove, and set the glass in the water. When she cut the lemon, the kitchen was filled with the bright scent of day, pushing the shadows and uncertainty away. Alice squeezed the lemon into the hot honey, stirred it with a spoon, and handed the drink to Sarah.

“Go on to the library and add a finger of whiskey, stir it up good, girl. A hot toddy’ll settle anybody down. Sometimes, it’s the only way I can get Fisk to sleep. Should do just fine for you. Go on.” She winked, and shushed Sarah out of the kitchen, Alice’s slippers whisking on the old floorboards. She yawned. “Whoo, girl, I’m tired. Big day tomorrow. Running. Playing. Cleaning. Gotta go get some sleep.”

In the library, Sarah flipped on the small lamp near the desk and looked around at the shelves of books. She went to the dry bar, unstopped the bourbon decanter, splashed a good amount into the toddy, and stirred.