Southern Gods (19 page)

That evening, after taking her mother her sip and enduring a long harangue about getting the man out of the house, Sarah went to the guest room and sat in the wing-backed chair nearest the bed and watched the giant. He hadn’t moved much since earlier, but his skin looked less pale in the thin light of the lamp.

As she watched, his face occasionally hitched in pain. In those moments, he seemed older, tired and weary. Then his face would relax again, regaining the appearance of a boy. Sarah felt herself attracted and repulsed by the man in turns. And she found herself fantasizing about what he might be like, concocting explanations for his wounds and imaging the story of his life.

In the dim room, she smiled at her own foolishness. Standing, she walked over to his bed and placed her hand on his forehead, feeling for the fever Dr. Polk warned about before leaving. The man’s skin was cool to the touch. He moaned and turned his body in the bed.

“
No
,” he whispered, unknowing. “
No
. Rabbit… don’t sing… the dead—”

“Hush,” Sarah murmured to the man.
Lewis. His name is Lewis.

Later, after Alice made her an extra strong toddy and she seated herself in the library, she pulled the telephone close to her on the desk and picked up the receiver. After a moment, the operator came on the line.

“This is Phyllis,” said a voice, high and tinny.

“This is me… um, Sarah Williams. Sarah Rheinhart, I used to be.”

“Sarah! How are you? Your mother and Alice tell me that Franny is precious. My lands, I can’t wait to see her, but come to think of it, I haven’t seen you since you were in pigtails. Why don’t you come by the Central?”

Sarah smiled and tucked her feet underneath her in the office chair, fiddled with a pencil.

“We’ll try to get by next week. But I need to ask you a question.”

There was a loud click. Phyllis said, “Hold on, sweetie. Caller, this is Phyllis at the Central, how can I help you?”

A man’s voice came on the line. “I need to make a phone call to my niece in Little Rock, Mohawk two, one, one—”

“I’m sorry sir, there’s already a call on this line. I will ring you when the connection is complete.”

The man said, “Phyllis, it’s me, Ray. That’s fine, let me know.”

Another click sounded as he rang off. Phyllis chuckled. “Ray’s niece is having trouble with her help, and Ray keeps calling her with ideas on how to get them in line.”

“I don’t…” Sarah stammered. “Um… that’s not really my—”

“That’s OK, honey. I hear things, you know. I’m always listening. It’s my job.”

Not really. Your job is to complete calls, not eavesdrop, you old biddy.

But she said, “Phyllis, I need to contact the nearest Catholic church if I can. Do you know what that would be?”

“Probably St. Thomas’ in Stuttgart. Father Andrez might could help you. You converting, honey? I thought you were Episcopalian like your mother and father.”

“No, not converting. I need help translating a… well… translating something. I don’t have anyone to turn to so I thought—”

“That’s right,” Phyllis said. “You’re a college girl. I forgot that your momma and daddy sent you off east. What’re you translating?”

Sarah felt her back tighten. She couldn’t remember what Phyllis looked like now, so Sarah pictured her as an enormous spider, black and foul, spinning its web, spinning lies, its fat carapace beading with condensation. She saw the spider reclining, one long digit curled around a receiver and holding it up to a head crowded with a multitude of eyes. But not really a spider, some bizarre hybrid between woman and arachnid; a black shell with flabby human breasts, insect eyes perched over a wicked red over-ripe mouth—

Sarah shook her head.
What’s happening to me?

Phyllis said, “Honey? You all right? You still on the line?”

“Yes… uh, yes.” Sarah wiped her face, clearing the imaginary cobwebs. “I’m still here. I dropped my pencil.”

“Oh, that’s OK. Oh, I almost forgot. I heard you’ve got a house guest. What’s his name? Was he hurt bad? Everyone is saying he was badly hurt—”

Sarah’s blood went cold.
She knows, the old harridan!

“No… no, he’s not hurt badly. Um… can you connect me to St. Thomas’? Father Andrez is his name?”

“Yes. But about the man—”

“Phyllis, I’m a little tired right now, and I need to make this call. Can we talk about it when Franny and I come to see you at the Central?”

Phyllis paused. Sarah worried for a moment that she might have offended the operator, but then Phyllis came back on the line.

“That’d be wonderful, sugar! I can’t wait to see your little one. You can tell me all about it then.”

Fat chance.

“Will do, Phyllis. It’s been so nice talking to you again.”

“Same here. Now let me connect you, and I’ll stay on the line so I can let Ray know when you’re done.”

The phone rang four times before someone answered. The man’s voice sounded hoarse and cracked, but cheerful enough. “Hello. This is Andrez.” He had a heavy accent, but spoke the words clear and slow.

“Father? My name is Sarah Williams, and I recently came home to Gethsemane—”

“Yes? How can I help you? It is nearing Compline but I have a bit of time, so if you would—”

“Of course. Well,” Sarah chewed her lip, then blurted, “I need help translating a book. And I thought you might be able to help me?”

The man on the other end of the line was silent for a moment, but when he came back on the line, he could hear the smile in his voice. “This is good, though it depends on the book. And the language, of course.”

“It’s Latin. I assumed that all priests—”

He chuckled, the sound dry and brittle across the line. “Well, in the best of all possible worlds, my,” he paused, as though embarrassed, “brothers of the cloth would be able to read Latin, but unfortunately many of the clergy just memorize the Liturgy and… hem… get by.”

“Oh,” Sarah said, letting the disappointment in her voice show through. “Well, maybe the seminary in Little Rock will have someone.”

He chuckled again, then exhaled. He was smoking. “So easily discouraged, eh? Ye of little faith? You are in luck, Mrs. Williams, but it has been awhile since I’ve translated anything other than the Vulgate. What work is it that you’d like translated?”

“Well, I’m not looking for you to translate it for me,” Sarah said. “I’d like for you to help me with my translation.”

“Ah! You are translating! A veritable Margaret More, you are. Your father and mother must be proud.”

Sarah couldn’t tell, but she felt that this man, this priest, was making fun of her. She could feel a blush coming on.

“Yes, well. I took Latin in college and recently picked up
Opusculus Noctis
in my family library…”

He was silent for a long while. “Hmm.
Opusculus Noctis
you say?”

“So can you help me?” Sarah asked.

“Yes, Mrs. Williams. I would be happy to. However small my parish is, I must still tend to my flock. Which means you’ll have to come from the garden, Gethsemane, and bring the work and manuscript to me here. I have some time tomorrow afternoon, if you would like? After four?”

“Yes, that would be wonderful. Thank you so much.”

“It is not a difficulty. I have translated nothing yet. But I look forward to seeing you and the manuscript. I prefer chicken. Chicken salads are good, or fried if you can manage, but chicken is truly my favorite.”

“Um … what? Chicken?”

“Yes. Correct. Chicken is my favorite. But you can bring ham if you have to. Or cake. I like cake. Pies are… ehh… so so. It is up to you, of course.”

What a funny, strange man.

“All right,” Sarah said. “I will see you at four.”

“
Do Widzenia
, Mrs. Williams. Goodbye.”

After he rang off, Phyllis came back on. “I guess you better get cooking.”

Sarah hung up and went to find Alice.

Chapter 11

T
hey landed on Tulagi in the Solomons in the dark of early morning. After hours of bombing from the Jap Bettys, each one streaking in screaming, wreathed in flak like bolls of black cotton, the deep foliage of the jungle was quiet and still. Deathly still. The heat enveloped his troops, causing their fatigues to dampen and cling to them, each face white and wide-eyed, each hand white knuckled on a rifle and sweating, sweating through the morning gloom, sweating into the Solomon heat. Through the fetid green wall they went, pack-heavy mules moving forward to the enemy.

Ingram paused to check his BAR, popping the magazine and inspecting the rounds. The men moved past him, swallowed by green, disappearing into the brush and palms and dark, their passing marked by faint clinks of weapons and the soft whisking of damp fabric. Ingram peered into the dark, looking to the sides and to the rear, making sure nothing was flanking or a beam. The dark had textures, rich fabrics and patterns. The sounds from the carriers and transport ships, the dull thrum of the ship’s diesel dynamos pushing the enormous screws, the .30 and .50 cals answering the screaming of the Bettys strafing in, Ingram felt lost without those sounds at his back. He turned in the dark, trying to find the direction of the landing, of the shore, and could hear and see nothing. He turned back to where his men had disappeared and moved into the dark green, deathly lush interior of Tulagi.

The bullets came then, making spluttering sounds as they perforated the thick, oily leaves. Ingram heard distant reports. Nearer he could hear his men, screaming into the dark, screaming into the green, firing.

Ingram ran.

His body felt slow, suspended in oil, the air around him thick with smoke and screams and sharp, hard trajectories of rifle fire, each bullets
fttthing
by, clipping tree and leaf and branch.

Ingram ran.

His body heavy, moving into the fire and the dark, screaming now for his men like Cap Hap, gone but not forgotten, Ingram moved further into Tulagi, further into the dark edges of stygian Guadalcanal darkness. Through the trees and brush and lush undergrowth, he ran. He heard his men shrieking in pain, men calling for their brothers, men calling for mothers, men calling for Ingram.

This isn’t how it happened.

Ingram ran and something snapped, the heaviness lifted. He moved forward with ease and burst through the undergrowth into a clearing. No more bullets whizzed past, no more screams or reports from weapons. Everything was still, and the smell of gunpowder floated upon the air, clouds of it obscuring the far side of the clearing, obscuring the ground.

Then came a breeze, and the thick fragrant smoke moved past him like a gigantic albino creature wrought of gauze and the evil of men. It moved past and through him, back into the green.

He saw the dead bodies of his men.

This isn’t how it happened! We took the airfield!

All around him were bodies. They were ravaged, chewed up by the fusillade, missing faces, missing limbs, guts pooling into the loam. The men lay face down, or in tangled heaps that obscured their faces. Ingram stood panting among the dead. Off, in the green, he could feel something there, something immense and malevolent and waiting.

It grew lighter in the east. For a moment Ingram thought the sun rose, then he smelled smoke, the gunpowder creature’s cousin, bigger and noxious and coming for him, through the green, consuming the green, coming for him. He could see the fire now, to the east, like a wall, a cliff of fire stretching up into the heavens and behind it blackness, the blackness coming on.

Ingram twisted in place, hands sweaty on the BAR’s stock, and raised the gun as if to fire into the inferno. He barked a short laugh.

Oun tulu dundu nub sheb tulu onnu ia denu fin de nulu sheb lar stir rub neb
, a voice came.

Ingram looked down and saw his men—empty faces, bloody eyes, tongueless mouths, riddled with gunshot—turning toward him, each face a study in blood and hatred and hunger; each one, eyeless or not, peering at him through the shroud of smoke, each one moving his mouth in time with the strange utterances.

Again, the dead rose. Ingram had been pushed to his limits in the bar, in Ruby’s.
Ruby’s! The dead had risen, they had risen!

The Pale Man had stripped them all of their masks of humanity and revealed them as they truly were, abject creatures of hate and spite and lust and hunger.

Ingram shook his head in the green dark of Guadalcanal.
This isn’t how it happened!
His dead men clawed at the earth now, some rising to their haunches, some crawling, some levering themselves up, looking at Ingram with horrible blood-rimmed eyes.

The weird sounds took new shapes and forms in Ingram’s ear. Wet and guttural the words came, for they truly were words, forgotten or forbidden but words spilling out from the bloody tongues and hateful mouths of his men.

Oun tulu! Dennu tulu! Re’nub shelub tulu ia dennu! Tulu!

Ingram hesitated. At Ruby’s, he’d fought them, shooting and snapping necks. But now the fire was coming and these dead, these things that were once men, rose against him. And he knew nothing except fear and shame because he couldn’t raise his hand against those who once were his brothers.