The Girls With Games of Blood (4 page)

“You gonna ask directions?”

“Certainly. What sensible man would not?” He did an awkward U-turn and drove back to the one mail box they’d passed. The name on it was incomplete: only the letters BOL remained. It marked a driveway that disappeared into a thick stand of pine trees.

They emerged at one end of a long, unkempt lawn that was browned by the drought. At the far end rose a two-story house that, like the landscaping, looked sun-battered and dried up.

Zginski stopped the truck. He reached out with his vampiric senses, but in their daylight-weakened state he could not tell if anyone occupied the house. It certainly looked neglected, if not fully abandoned.

The house was built in a mixture of Greek and Colonial Revival styles, with columns around the front door and a carriage entrance on the building’s left end. A tree shadowed part of the roof, the branches just touching the shingles. The brickwork was intact but gaps in the mortar indicated incipient weaknesses. The shrubbery grew tall and unwieldy, blocking
most of the lower windows. Yet someone had recently painted the columns to a height of about ten feet. Was this a restoration in progress, or one abandoned?

As if sensing his uncertainty, Leonardo said, “I saw mail in the mailbox. Somebody must live here.”

“Go and ask if they know where the Crabtree family lives.”

“Me? Why me?”

“Because you are less threatening than I am.”

“You really ain’t learned shit about the South, have you?” But Leonardo opened the door and dutifully trudged down the driveway toward the house, muttering to himself about Zginski’s racial cluelessness.

The four big columns rose to a level with the second-story roof, sheltering the porch and front door. Hornets and dirt daubers had long ago claimed it, and buzzed warnings that Leonardo ignored. Footprints showed in the dust and detritus, although none were as recent as Leonardo’s own. He sensed no life inside, but thanks to Zginski he knew the sun weakened his powers.

He knocked firmly on the door, then stepped back. A short distance away, hidden behind a row of thick untended shrubs, he saw the black fence around a private cemetery. A lone mausoleum rose among the few tombstones. The lords of this decrepit manor would rest inside it, and their families and children in the ground around it. He knew that if any black people were buried on this land, their graves would be untended and likely unmarked.

After a long moment he heard the door lock click open. He put his hands in his pockets and lowered his head, a submissive stance that would, he hoped, prevent any trouble with the white folks.

The door opened no more than six inches and an elderly female voice said, “Yes? Oh, good Lord, a colored boy. What do you want?”

“Ma’am, I’m looking for the Crabtree farm. Am I anywhere near it?”

He glanced up at the source of the voice. He could make out the general silhouette of a small-framed, stooped woman in a floor-length dress long out of style, but could see no detail.

“Dark Willows?” she repeated. “You’re looking for Dark Willows?”

“Yes, ma’am. My boss is supposed to pick up a car there, but we can’t seem to find the turnoff.”

She peered past him to the distant truck. Zginski stood beside it, plainly Caucasian even at this distance. The old woman seemed to take that as a comfort. She said, “Tell your employer to go past the four-way intersection and look for the sign on the right. Their driveway is considered its own street by the state.”

“
Past
the intersection,” Leonardo repeated. “That’s what we did wrong. Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome. Now you run along.” She closed the door, but he knew she’d peek out to make sure he did as he was told.

As he walked back to the truck, he shook his head at the sheer predictable madness of it. Even when a man dies, the color of his skin still puts him in his place. Of course, to be fair, most black folks who died didn’t keep walking around. So perhaps his experience wasn’t really typical.

“Did you get the information?” Zginski asked.

“We go past that four-way stop. It’s on the right.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Leonardo mumbled as he got back in the truck.

They followed the old woman’s instructions and found the state-issued green sign proclaiming
DARK WILLOWS ROAD
. Below it was a yellow diamond-shaped marker that said
DEAD END
. One corner was ragged from a close-range
shotgun blast. The name on the mailbox confirmed the location:
CRABTREE
.

Dark Willows Road was no more than two gravel ruts with a grass strip in the middle, so narrow there was no room for two vehicles to pass. The house was hidden from the highway by thick stands of trees, but once it came into view Zginski stopped the truck and leaned forward to stare through the windshield.

Like the other house they’d just visited, this one stood two stories high at one end of a large, neglected lawn. But it was a considerably larger structure. The porch went along the entire front of the building and around either end, with columns braced by arches holding up the awning roof. The windows beneath it were tall and narrow, and when opened allowed those inside to directly exit onto the porch. The place carried the unmistakable aura of wealth and grandeur, of a home built to the specifications of a man used to getting his way.

Then Zginski blinked back to the moment. The house was in terrible disrepair: sections of shingles were missing, shutters were lost or broken, and one column stood at an angle so that the end of the porch sagged. Many of the windows were glassless and boarded up. For fifty feet around the house the yard was mostly dirt, with three old tractors parked in it. The sun-baked weeds protruding through the engines and empty tire rims said they had not moved in months.

“That is a shame,” Zginski murmured to himself. “I had no idea that houses of such scale existed outside the city.”

Leonardo, still annoyed by the old lady, snapped, “It’s a goddam plantation house, you know that, right? A hundred years ago I’d have been worth no more than them busted-down tractors.” He pointed to a row of roofs visible in the overgrown field to one side of the house. “See those? Slave quarters. Dog houses, except people like me were the dogs.”

Zginski scowled at him. “That was some time ago. The world has changed since then, as you so often inform me.”

Leonardo started to snap back, but Zginski was right: Leonardo had pointed out the other man’s inherent racism many times, and always with the admonition that times were different. He couldn’t very well claim now that they were the same, could he? Even though he had no trouble accepting the contradiction himself.

Zginski drove slowly up the driveway. To one side of the house was a low barn, the kind used to house other farm equipment. It, too, was in bad shape, crumbling and filled with rusted devices whose purpose Zginski could not fathom.

He stopped in the space between the barn and the house. For a moment he worried that the place might be deserted. Certainly there was no sign of recent tending: the yard was worn down to bare dirt, dried to a clinging, clay-based dust by the drought.

Then a beagle bounded down the porch steps, barking loud enough to be heard over the truck’s engine. In a moment an unmistakably female form emerged from the house and stood in the shadows against one of the porch columns. She seemed in no hurry to welcome them.

Zginski opened the door just as the low, floppy-eared dog reached the truck. The animal skidded to a halt and stared at him. Then it gave one last growl and scampered away, yelping.

Leonardo did not immediately climb out. The place recalled things he never wanted to remember, with a vividness only possible to a vampire. He had not been a slave, but the life he was born into had been little different, and the old people around him all bore the scars of whips, branding irons, and manacles. He’d seen the world change in amazing ways since then, but this brought back all those old resentments and fears.
What good is being a vampire,
he thought,
if you still have to ride in the back of the hearse?

Finally the woman on the porch said, “Y’all scared my dog.”

“I merely looked at him,” Zginski said calmly.

She stood with her back against one of the columns, her legs straight out and crossed at the ankles. She held a cigarette in one hand. “Only time I ever seen him run like that was when he started up a bobcat over in the barn. So what you want?”

“I am here about the automobile,” Zginski said.

“Oh! You must be that Russian fella Daddy’s waiting for.” Her tone now verged on excitement. “Hold on, I’ll go get him.”

She disappeared back into the house. The dog ran from wherever it had hidden and rushed to follow.

Leonardo opened the door and got out. “You gonna have to do something about that accent pretty soon, you know.”

“This is America, a land of foreigners and immigrants,” Zginski said dismissively.

“Uh-huh. And this is Tennessee, the land of carpetbaggers and the Klan. They hate foreigners and immigrants as much as they do niggers.”

Zginski grinned. His teeth were very even, his fangs not visible. It was a minor trick he’d mastered, a way of sliding his lower jaw slightly forward to hide the tips of his elongated canines. Not even the great spiritualist Sir Francis Colby had detected them on that fateful night in Wales. “Then between the two of us, we shall confuse them as to which to fear the most.”

In a moment the girl returned, followed by a larger figure whose steps resonated on the wooden porch. They emerged into the sunlight together.

The man was wide, potbellied, clad in khaki shorts and a T-shirt. His hair was matted with sweat and sleep, and salt-and-pepper stubble covered his chin. To Zginski he said, “You the Russkie who called about the car?”

“I am,” Zginski said, and turned to Leonardo. “And this is—”

“Your nigger boy can just wait here,” the man said. “You can follow me.” As he turned he glared at his companion. “Girl, I done told you about that smoking.”

She made a dismissive wave with her hand. She was tall, with bright red hair and freckles, clad only in denim shorts and a red tube top too small for her burgeoning bust. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Faint swimsuit lines were visible on her broad, smooth shoulders. She looked about sixteen.

Her father sighed and led Zginski toward the dilapidated barn. “I tell you, I can’t keep her from smoking, drinking, or fooling around with boys. Look at her, half-naked and smoking like a chimney in front of that buck nigger. I swanney, if you ain’t got no kids, don’t have none . . .”

When they were out of sight, the girl turned to Leonardo. “Getting an eyeful?” she said disdainfully.

He shrugged. He knew that, to her, they appeared roughly the same age. “You showing it. I’m just appreciating it.”

She smiled very slightly. “My daddy heard you say that, he’d drag you all the way to Covington behind his car.”

Leonardo started to fire back another sarcastic reply, but there was something in the girl’s tone that stopped him. He realized she was attracted to him, in a way that had nothing to do with a vampire’s ability to sexually fascinate a victim. He said, “He didn’t hear me say it. Just you did.”

She took a drag off the cigarette and pulled it from her lips with a pop. Some sort of light pink lip gloss circled the filter. She pulled the smoke up into her nose, then let it slowly out. Her exposed skin now gleamed with sweat in the hot sun. “What’s your name, boy?”

He gritted his teeth against the term “boy.” “Leonardo. You can call me Leo.”

“I don’t call colored boys by their names unless I’m wanting ’em to do something,” she said, her smile growing.

He stepped closer. This wasn’t the first white girl he’d
encountered intrigued by dark skin. “So is there something you want me to do, Miss Crabtree? I’s just dyin’ to be of service.”

Now she fully smiled. It made her look very young, in direct contradiction to the paraded ripeness of her body. “I’m sorry, I was just teasing you. I ain’t got nothing against colored folks. When I was little, that’s all I had to play with besides the dogs.” The girl extended her hand. “My name’s Clora.”

He took it lightly. “Nice to meet you.”

Her eyes opened wide in surprise and she snatched back her hand. “Lordy, your fingers are like icicles.”

“I was drinking a Co-Cola on the way here.”

She nodded, then looked up and shielded her eyes. “Man alive, wish I had a cold Co-Cola. Come on, let’s get up in the shade. I don’t want my shoulders peeling for two weeks again.” She turned and went up the steps.

Leo didn’t move. “Are colored folks allowed inside through the front door?”

She stopped and turned, the movement both gracefully feminine and clumsily teen. “Course not. But Daddy won’t mind if you’re on the porch.”

J
EB
C
RABTREE
S
TRUGGLED
to open the barn door, which hung by one rust-seized hinge. As he dragged its edge across the ground, a swarm of disturbed yellow jackets boiled up and around him. “God dang it!” he said, swatting and waddling back a few steps.