The Resurrectionist (10 page)

Hampton was waiting for him in the front room when he hurried in with the pitcher, smiling as he moved through the crowd. Hampton handed a cup of punch to a stout woman in a satin toque and stepped aside for Nemo to fill his cup. Nemo poured with one hand and crushed a sprig of mint into the cup with the other. Hampton took it and tossed it back in a gulp. Nemo cleaned the rim of the pitcher with a napkin very slowly, watching Hampton from the corner of his eye as the white man coughed and wiped his lips. Eyes watering, Hampton stretched out an arm, pointing at Nemo.

“Now that,” he said, “is whiskey. Hit me once more.”

Again Nemo filled the cup, his smile even broader than before. Hampton turned to the waiting line and raised his glass. “To the Confederacy!” he shouted. The others raised their glasses, cheering, happy to toast everything that was right in the world, the preservation of the old order. Nemo was pleased to see that Lieutenant Hampton drank the deepest.

T
HE FRONT PORCH
of Walton's Commissary sagged under the weight of the dozen black men gathered there to while away the hot Saturday afternoon. Summer was coming on strong this year and the cicadas seemed to be singing praises for the heat. Their droning whine all but drowned out the rare comment from the loungers and the murmuring of the milk cows in their stalls behind the store. None of the men complained about the heat. They were glad not to be working in it, with their weekly half day completed at noon, leaving them the welcome expanse of forty hours free of labor until Monday's dawn. Later this afternoon the more industrious slaves, who hired out their Saturday time, would begin to arrive, crowding in the store to spend their new pennies on hard candy and cuts of meat, spreading their aura of prosperity and enterprise. But for now, in the weekend reprieve of hard work, there was only the cicadas' song and the men's lassitude, a quiet time of contentment, of being owned by no man.

Several of them napped in cane-bottomed chairs they had leaned against the front wall of the store. One of these, awakened by a mosquito's bite, opened his eyes and gazed down the road leading to Walton's place. He squinted into the distance, then leaned forward, the chair's legs clapping down on the porch planks. “Here come Nemo Johnston,” he said.

The others followed his gaze, knives stopping their carving on sticks of yellow pine, chair legs scraping. In the shimmering heat they saw Nemo coming up the sandy road with his deliberate gait. He wore a black driving coat that set off the white of his boiled shirt, and his head was capped with a Panama hat made of straw dyed black. The heat was so intense in the road that the black shapes of the coat and hat seemed to waver as he came on, his outline shifting in the humid air. But all of the men knew that when he reached the shade of the porch he would have not a drop of sweat on his brow or lip.

“Ain't he dressed fine?” one of the younger men asked.

“Yeah, he dressed fine. He going to dress your ass out someday.”

“Won't get me. My brother Abe going to sit up by my grave. We made a deal. Two weeks of nights he'll be there. I do the same for him if he go first.”

“Sammy, you a fool. You think Abe going to leave Sally alone nights for two weeks?”

One of the men laughed. “I'll check on her.”

Sammy looked uncertain. “Abe promised.”

“Sure he did, child. Promise is a good thing. But some promises hard to keep. What if Abe went on first? What would you do if you saw that black bastard coming up on you in the dark graveyard?”

Someone hissed, and the men's conversation stopped abruptly. They looked over at old Renty Tucker where he sat perched on a barrel by the screen door. His wife, Melissa, had died the week just past. Though he sat erect and impassive, a single tear had trailed through the dust on his weathered cheek.

No one heard Nemo's approach until he propped a boot heel on the porch steps. He greeted them, doffing his hat, and began wiping the dust from his foot with a handkerchief. His boots were covered in snakeskin.

One of the men whistled. “Where you get them boots, man?”

“Mister Carlton made them for me. I killed the snake down by the Congaree.”

“Mister Carlton?”

“Snake was four foot long. He wouldn't die till the sun went down.”

“Mister Carlton a white cobbler.”

Nemo nodded. “Still white the last time I saw him.”

One of the young men sitting on the porch floor spoke up. “They say a copperhead can put his tail in his mouth and roll after you like a wagon wheel. Run you down.” He said it a little too loudly. Some of the old men grunted.

“I'm doing his only rolling now,” Nemo said. No one spoke up to contradict him. He climbed the steps and crossed the porch, pausing at the door. He took the Panama hat off his head and turned to old Renty.

“I was sorry to hear about Mrs. Melissa,” he said.

Renty Tucker clenched his jaw. It looked as though he were trying to grind his teeth down to nubs.

“Mrs. Melissa was a good woman,” Nemo said. “Always kind. She resting peaceful, now, Mister Tucker. I'm sure of it.”

Renty Tucker put his face in his hands after the screen door slapped shut. He shivered like a cold wind had just blown over him.

Inside, Nemo set his hat on the counter as he spoke to Walton, who was always glad to see his only customer who had never put anything on credit, always paid in cash. He followed Nemo now as he sauntered down the aisles with his hands clasped behind his back, walking slowly between baskets of dried beans and the tins of crackers and baking powder, sacks of coffee beans and potatoes. Now and then Nemo would pause and nod at a shelf and Walton would sack an item up. His croker sack was getting heavier by the minute.

Nemo stopped in front of the meager toiletries display against the back wall.

“I'll take four of those Ajax collars,” he said, and Walton picked up the white crescents gingerly and wrapped them in tissue paper.

Nemo nodded at a pink bottle up on the highest shelf, well out of the reach of children. “How much that toilet water?”

“Dollar-fifty. Lubin's Lavender Water. That's the best perfume I carry.”

“Guess it is. Look at the dust on the bottle.”

Walton wiped at the bottle with a rag hung from his belt. He grinned slyly.

“You courting somebody, Mister Nemo?”

Nemo almost smiled. “Bag it up,” he said, and strode to the front counter. Walton followed him with the croker sack in one hand and the collars and perfume in the other. He reached below the counter and took out a box, began arranging the expensive items in it with another sheet of tissue paper. When he finished he totted up the purchases on the back of a paper sack. His neck flushed when he had the total.

“Ten-fifty, Mister Nemo.”

Nemo put a double eagle on the counter. Walton shook his head as he stared at the outstretched wings on the coin.

“Can't change that, Mister Nemo,” he said sadly. “Don't have enough in the cashbox.”

“Keep it, then. Put the rest down for next week.”

Walton's mood lifted. He was bundling up the package when the screen door swung open. Prince Sparkman stood in the doorway, hands propped on his hips. He wore his carpenter's apron, and there was sawdust sprinkled in his black hair. People called him the bishop; he was a freedman who hired himself out as a carpenter during the week and spent every Sunday preaching. He made the rounds of the Midlands churches and came into Columbia every sixth Sunday, regular as clockwork, to feast on the last chicken of some slave family after the services, to consume thigh, breast, and wings while the children watched hungrily.

“Well, well,” Prince said loudly. “Seems the devil
do
walk by daylight.”

Nemo ignored him, but Prince walked on into the store. One by one, the men from the porch filed in behind him. Though they made a careful show of examining merchandise, every ear was cocked toward the men at the counter. Nemo saw that Renty Tucker was not among them.

“And here he is spending his ill-gotten money.”

“Just came down to do some trading. Didn't come for no sermon.”

Prince snorted. “Ain't you the big nigger.”

“Only one bigger than you, reverend.”

A few of the men snickered.

“Money's the root of all evil, the good book says. I can believe it.”

“The book don't say that. Says the
love
of money is the root of all evil. How long it been since you read it right?”

But Prince would not be put off so easily. “The good book also says the devil can quote scripture like a wise man. What you say to that?”

Nemo shrugged. “Wasn't quoting. Just correcting. And I don't see a wise man here.”

Prince stepped up close, as though he meant to strike a blow. When he spoke, his voice had risen to its full oratorical level, playing to the entire store. “I buries good folk every month, every year. Put them into the ground with the word of God. And this hell-spawn brings them back up from their slumbers like so much meat.” He looked at Nemo and hissed, “What you doing to your own
people
, man?”

“Yeah, you try that Sunday voice on me, Prince, won't do no good. I know your weekday talk.” Nemo raised his voice nearly an octave. “Yassuh, Mistah Smith, I build that corncrib for you right nice, yassuh.”

“Don't be misled, brethren. The Lord loves a faithful servant. His reward will be great when the meek shall inherit the earth.”

“That the best you can do for your people? I'm a here-and-now man, brother.”

Prince shook his head. His face glowed as though he were under an anointing. He reached into his apron pocket and pulled out a small Bible and held it aloft for all to see its sweat-stained leather cover and worn pages. “Bible says the devil can't confront righteousness head-on,” he chanted. “And I feel the power of the Spirit in this room, yes, Lord.” He held the Bible out to Nemo. “Take it, sinner,” he said. “See if it don't burn your hands. You sold your soul to the devil. Tell us you ain't.”

“I could tell you that,” Nemo acknowledged. “I could tell you I met Old Scratch down at the Camden crossroads in the fall last year. Nine nights—midnights—one after another. And on that ninth night we done the deal. Carry a lucky bone from a black cat with me now and I can put my hexes on anybody I wants to.”

One of the men in the aisles dropped a can of sardines.

Nemo took the Bible in one of his long-fingered hands. He lowered his voice and leaned close to the preacher's ear. Prince seemed to shrink back instinctively.

“I could tell you, that, reverend. But I won't. Would be a lie. Only devil I know is white as a sheet, and yes, he walks around in the broad daylight. I works for him and you works for him.” He pressed the Bible into the reverend's hand and clasped it. “So maybe you and me are closer than you think.”

Prince looked down at the book in his hands as though it were a tool that had malfunctioned. Nemo smiled and took up his package from the counter.

“Walton,” he said, “put that credit of mine on the reverend's tab. See if that filthy lucre can't do some of the Lord's work.”

He walked out of the commissary in the ensuing silence. Later he learned that the silence had not lasted long, that within days the story of Nemo and the preacher had made the rounds of Rosedale and was acquiring the sheen of a legend. In the weeks that followed, the women began to look at him differently, and the men—they thought often about Nemo's power, whatever its source.

But that afternoon he heard only the slam of the screen door behind him and the drone of the cicadas in the trees. With the afternoon waning, the insects had redoubled their song against the twilight, as if to fight off nightfall by desperately celebrating the brief resurrection from their thirteen-year sleep.

Renty Tucker watched him disappear into the shimmering haze, muttering beneath his breath. “Melissa,” he said. “Oh, my Melissa.”

Wednesday

I
N THE PREDAWN HOURS
C
OLUMBIA IS
a somnambulist's dream. It seems that every car in the city but Jacob's is still parked for the night, still sleeping in carport or garage, leaving him to enjoy complete sovereignty over the roads. Most of the traffic lights are blinking yellow, and he wrings the BMW's engine through the intersections, pushing the tachometer up high as he rows through the gears. As he leaves the suburbs he realizes that he has even beaten the paperboys up this morning; today's edition of
The State
has not yet made its rounds. In a half hour or so, the rolled papers will begin slapping down on driveways with news of the city, tidings of the world beyond. But for now there is only the growl of his engine and the silence that trails in its wake.

He punches the engine up to 70 on Devine Street, where the curtains of live oak and crape myrtle give way to the four-lane leading to Five Points. Coasting down the hill to the big intersection, he begins to see signs of life in the college town's main bar district. Here the neon still glows an hour after closing time, and there are indications of recent inhabitance: the glint of empty beer bottles left on the sidewalks, the stray car abandoned in favor of a cab ride home. With the top down and the cool air rushing over his face, he can almost smell the decadent odor of stale beer coming up from the storm gutters. He shakes his head and takes a gulp of his coffee, thinking back to the days when the ER shift would finally end and they would stumble out into the dawning day, sorely missing the carefree undergraduate years when they kept a similar schedule—but drank spirits instead of the tainted coffee of the interns' break room. He takes the right onto Harden and heads up the hill to Rosedale.

Rosedale, it seems, never really sleeps. Though most of the streetlights here have been broken, Jacob can make out dark figures on the corners and on the steps of the old shotgun bungalows even at this hour. In the darkness they look spectral, their movements languid as a dream. But at Mary's house the front porch light is on, the bare bulb shedding forty watts of light on the hulking form of Big Junior in the metal glider chair next to the front door, his outline blurred by the screening Frank has put up between the porch posts. While Jacob idles at the curb, Big Junior rises from the glider, as though by stages, and shuts the screen door behind him softly. When he settles into the passenger seat the car lists toward the curb. Jacob is glad he has opted to put the top down. Big Junior nearly fills the front seat by himself.

“Morning, my man,” he says as he pulls the door closed and offers a hand. Jacob takes it and smells the sweetish taint of gin on his breath. It seems to come from his pores as well. “You got you a sweet ride,” Big Junior says.

“It's not mine, actually. It's a lease.”

“How about that?” he says as Jacob noses the car out into the street. “Mary says you don't commit to
nothing
. Where we heading?”

“The school. We've got what you might call a sensitive assignment.”

Big Junior laughs and the car sways. “Man, I like to hear you talk. What you mean by sensitive?”

Jacob looks straight ahead. “We've got to dig up some bones in the basement of Johnston Hall.”

“Say
what
?”

“Don't worry. Old bones, from way back. They're buried shallow, just scattered across the floor, maybe a foot down. You won't even have to touch them. You just dig and I'll sift them out of the dirt. I've got a box of plastic bags in the back. I want to bag them up and haul them out later.”

With considerable shifting, Big Junior produces a pint bottle from his hip pocket and takes a drink. “Damn,” he says. “Mary don't never put me up for any good work.” He drinks again. “Wish I had me some Dr Pepper, man.”

Jacob almost laughs. “That's it? I was afraid I'd be turning this car around. I thought I'd have to at least talk you into it.”

Big Junior shakes his head sadly. “I know about that basement. Half of Rosedale knows. And we know
you
all know about it. Why you think we don't come up to the hospital unless we're about dying?” He looks out the windshield as if there were nothing beyond it to see. “Used to work with a guy liked to fight. Knives. Every time he was about to scrap, he'd tell everybody around him, ‘Don't let 'em take me to Memorial.' Said it like it was a joke, but I knowed he wasn't kidding.” Big Junior looks at Jacob intently. “Nobody wants some doctor experimenting on them.”

“It's a free hospital, Junior. And nobody does any experimenting on anybody.”

“Tell that to them bones. Bet it was a free hospital they walked into.”

Because he cannot think of anything to say, Jacob asks for a drink. Big Junior passes him the bottle and he upends it. The liquor is oily and bitter and he sputters as he swallows it.

“Jesus Christ.”

Big Junior laughs. “That's Gilby's, boy. Made in Augusta, right on the Savannah River.”

“It
tastes
like the Savannah. Is it downstream from the nuclear plant?”

“Hell if I know.”

“You ought to. You might wake up one of these nights and see your liver glowing in the dark.”

“And then I'd be out of work,” he says soberly, capping the bottle.

“Right,” Jacob says. They are nearing the college now. Ahead, he can make out the lighted cupola of Memorial Charity Hospital, all-hours beacon to the city's injured drunks and battered wives. He has never thought before that any of them would be reluctant to seek its shelter. “So are you good for this? I can make it an even hundred for the job.”

After a moment Big Junior begins nodding. “All right,” he says. “But where your shovel, man? Can't even fit a suitcase in this car.”

“It's at the school. Got a real pretty one just waiting for us.”

N
EARING FIVE A.M.
now and only two of the garbage bags are full; Jacob is beginning to think that this job is hopeless. In half an hour they have covered only a few yards of the basement, sifting through the loose clay, sandy and striped with old lime in layers above each new set of bones. Big Junior seems to be moving slower by the minute. Once he nearly fell over when they uncovered a skull with its dome neatly sawed off. Jacob is sympathetic. Before they started, he had allowed himself one more drink, and now, with another belt of Big Junior's gin in his system, this task is seeming more surreal by the minute.

Jacob has a tibia in his hands when they hear sounds of movement outside, drifting in through the grated casements just above ground level. Quickly he stuffs the bone into the black garbage bag by his side and motions for Big Junior to be still. He hears the great front doors swing open, followed by the chirp of the security system he disabled when they entered. He curses himself for not rearming the alarm as footsteps sound on the boards above. Big Junior looks like he is ready to swoon for certain this time.

On his hands and knees, Jacob stares up the steps as the first-floor door swings open on its creaking hinges.

A pair of oversized hiking boots appears on the stairs, followed by white legs and knobby knees capped by tan Bermuda shorts. Above a Sam Browne belt, the visitor wears a khaki shirt as well. When the man's face comes into view, it is owlish behind huge spectacles resting above a red mustache that would have been more appropriate for the previous century. All he is missing, Jacob thinks, is a safari hat and a butterfly net.

The man claps his hands together as he surveys the basement. He seems delighted by what he sees, the gold shovel in particular. “What a splendid welcome,” he says. He takes the remaining stairs two at a time and crosses the dirt floor toward Jacob, talking all the way.

“I worked all night to get a team together, and let me tell you, traveling in the wee hours, taking the back roads from Clemson wasn't even necessary. We made excellent time on the roads.” He sticks out a hand, and Jacob slowly rises to shake it. “David Sanburn,” he says as he pumps Jacob's hand. “Forensic anthropology, Clemson University.”

He wears the thickest eyeglasses Jacob has ever seen. Behind the Coke-bottle lenses his eyes are refracted, so that when he speaks it seems he is addressing not Jacob but a point a few inches above his left shoulder.

“Professor Claybaugh, I presume?”

Jacob smiles bitterly. “No. I guess Adam is sleeping in. I'm Jacob Thacker, the college's public relations officer.”

Sanburn takes another look at the gold shovel and the plastic bags, as if truly seeing them for the first time.

“And I'm sorry to tell you, Doctor Sanburn, but the party's over already. There's nothing here to merit your interest.”

Sanburn takes off his glasses and begins to wipe them on the tail of his shirt. Without them, his eyes look tired and sad. “I had hoped there would be minimal friction in this matter, but perhaps I can head off some unpleasantness by telling you that Professor Claybaugh gave an entirely different account. So different, in fact, that I took the measure of notifying the South Carolina Historical Society last night, immediately after his phone call. Their offices are here in Columbia. There will be a delegation here at nine o'clock to determine whether the site is as extensive as Doctor Claybaugh indicated.”

“Not possible. This is a working building, and under construction to boot. There won't be any visitors.”

Sanburn smiles as he puts his glasses back on. “An office building, yes. But this building and its grounds are also a designated historical site. Which means that a discovery of archaeological significance places it under the aegis of the Historical Society until such discovery can be properly researched and catalogued.”

Jacob begins to speak, but Sanburn raises a hand to silence him. “I mean you or the school no disrespect, sir. I am merely citing state law on the preservation of sites of cultural importance. We will work as quickly as we can, as I can see there is a construction schedule to be maintained.” He looks over the basement. “Salvage archaeology. Far short of ideal conditions, but we must do what we can.”

“I'm guessing there's no legal avenue to stop you.”

Sanburn shakes his head. “I could refer you to a number of precedent cases, all of which dragged out in the courts and resulted in great expense for the plaintiffs. The interests of science prevailed in each case.” Jacob would like to say a thing or two about science, but the man never seems to pause long enough for him to break in. “Medical College of West Virginia, 1980. Boston University, 1988. And Ann Arbor just last year. But that was only a disposal pit. Nothing of this magnitude. Disarticulated remains, clandestine medical practices in those cases, as here, but nowhere near the scope this looks to be.”

“You seem almost happy about it.”

“I'm happy whenever fugitive history gets a proper hearing.”

Jacob snorts. “You're happy, all right. So you can write your article or what have you.”

“Article?” Sanborn gives a dry laugh. “This is not the material for an article, my friend, but for a book.”

“Good for your career, no doubt.”

“That's incidental.”

“The hell it is. Nothing is incidental.”

Sanburn seems to think this over. “Perhaps I misspoke. Ultimately, I suppose, nothing is incidental. I stand corrected.”

There is more activity upstairs. Jacob hears the front doors opening again, and soon the steps are full of people, mostly graduate students he guesses, coming down with shovels and picks, boxes and wooden stakes. Sanburn begins giving them their various assignments as efficiently as if he has spent days down here, dispersing them in groups to begin their work. A camera starts to flash, strobelike in the near darkness.

Jacob picks up the shovel, its gilded blade nicked and scraped down to the humble steel, and motions for Big Junior to follow him out. Sanburn interrupts his shouted instructions to thank him for his cooperation, and his assistants all turn their attention to the departing white man with his hulking black companion and gold shovel. Curious sensation: Jacob feels his cheeks burning as he files past all the quizzical faces with the shovel clutched tight in his fist. Unbidden, a phrase from the past has come into his mind:
First, do no harm
.

Upstairs, he hurls the shovel into a supply closet with a clang, knowing that neither he nor McMichaels will be wanting to see another shovel for a long, long time.