Fear of the Dark

Chapter 9

Cleetus came by exactly a week after the death of Tiny Bobchek — I had learned his last name from his driver’s license before I burned it along with the wallet in the incinerator in my backyard. I spent the rest of the day trying not to worry about the police asking about the big white guy chasing me down the street.

Fearless dropped by that evening.

“You think I need to worry about Sir and Sasha?” I asked my friend.

“Sasha Bennet?” Fearless asked.

“I don’t know her last name.”

“Girl named Sasha Bennet called up to Milo’s the other day and asked for me. She said that she was a friend’a yours and that you said maybe we should all get together sometime.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s her. They the ones saved me from Tiny.”

“Then you better not think about ’em, Paris. Let it ride. Don’t talk to nobody about problems you worried about. Especially don’t talk to Van about it. You know he only know one way to solve problems.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. I ain’t talkin’ to him. I’m talkin’ to you.”

“Nobody thinkin’ that the white dude chased you is the one dead out there, man,” Fearless said. “You think it ’cause you know.”

“Cleetus said it.”

“But he didn’t think they was the same guy.”

“I’m just scared, Fearless. What if the cops come around here askin’ ’bout that boy? What if Jessa go to them?”

Fearless hunched his shoulders.

“We could run,” he suggested.

“Run where?”

“I ’on’t know. New York. We could check out Harlem. I bet you you could start a great bookstore there.”

“Just pull up stakes and go?” I asked.

“Why not? You know we always on the edge, brother. You don’t have to do sumpin’ wrong for the cops to get ya and the judge to throw you ovah. All you got to do is be walkin’ down the street at the wrong minute. Shoot, Paris. You always got to be ready to run.”

He was right. My mind was about to get me in trouble. I had to forget Sir and his wayward girlfriend. I had to forget Tiny in his makeshift grave.

I nodded and Fearless poured me a shot of peach schnapps.

“Drink deep and sleep well,” he advised.

I walked up to my bedroom, slept nine and a half hours, and woke up free from fear. The cops might brace me, but I was innocent in my own heart.

The next morning I was sitting down to a plate of pinto beans, white rice, and chicken necks that I had simmered in tomato sauce. The whole meal, including the gas it took to cook it, couldn’t have cost more than a dime. I had learned from a lifetime of poverty to live on almost nothing.

I nearly missed the soft knock at my front door.

Two days earlier I wouldn’t have answered it.

I shouldn’t have answered that morning.

In my secret mirror I spied a middle-aged Negro woman of normal height and slender frame. She was wearing a blue-and-white dress that was loose but stately. She also wore a dark brown hat which brought an extra touch of elegance to her presence.

I wanted to slip away, to call Fearless and say that I was ready to hightail it to Harlem. I wanted to run, but I had not been raised to turn away from that knock.

I opened the door and said, “Hi, Aunt Three Hearts. How are you?”

“Fine, Paris, and you?”

“Fine. Good. Great.” I took a deep breath. “Come on in.”

There was a carpetbag on the porch next to her. I hurried out and picked it up, ushering her inside as I did so.

I carried her bag past the entranceway-reading room, through the aisles of bookshelves, and into my back porch and hot-plate kitchen. That was my social room.

“Paris,” she said. “I like your store. You live here too, right?”

“Have a seat, Auntie. What are you doing here? Do you want something to drink? To eat?” Maybe I thought if I overwhelmed her with hospitality I wouldn’t have to give her news about her son.

“Water, please,” she said.

I got ice water from a pitcher in the refrigerator and a glass from the high shelf. I poured her drink, staring into the clear liquid, hoping to find a cue in there.

“Have you seen Ulysses?” she asked after nodding her thanks for the water.

My voice sank deep into my chest and refused to come out.

According to legend and myth down in southern Louisiana, there were all kinds of witches and warlocks and people of power. Some could speak to the dead, others had the power to reanimate corpses. A few could look into your future in the hope of steering you out of harm’s way. There were benign practitioners who made charms and amulets that would assist in matters of the heart or when you were looking for employment, and there were those accomplished in casting curses upon your enemies.

These fallacies governed the lives of many weak-willed and superstitious people who lived out in the country. As a rule I looked down on these people and the so-called witches that took advantage of them. I was a modern man, an educated man who didn’t believe in hocus-pocus or magic spells. But I am a firm believer in the adage that there is a grain of truth in anything you hear. I do believe that there are those who have abilities and influences barred to most mortals.

Three Hearts Grant was one of these special individuals. She had what is commonly known in Louisiana as the evil eye. People who crossed Three Hearts were bound to come to grief. There was no question about that.

There was once a white man in Lafayette who accused Useless of stealing molasses from his larder. The boy was only seven, and one could hardly blame him for being attracted to such a treasure. But that white man, Michael Ogleman, chased Useless down with a cane. He struck the boy twice before Three Hearts interposed her body between the cane and her son. Ogleman struck Three Hearts seven times, kicked her once, and then returned home to die of a heart attack three hours later.

Her boyfriend of some years, Nathan Shaw, stole a jar that contained Three Hearts’s life savings and moved to Lake Charles with Nellie Sweetwater. The lovers were to spend their first night in the Alouette Inn, a colored establishment on the outskirts of town. There was a fire that night that started under Nathan’s room. He and Nellie were the only ones to die.

Three Hearts’s power extended beyond humanity.

Once, when she and a twelve-year-old Useless were walking along Gravedigger’s Mesa, they were set upon by a wild dog that was as large and vicious as a wolf. The beast growled and slavered and then cornered the pair at the edge of the elevated plateau. Three Hearts was yelling and waving at the monster, hoping to draw its deadly attention toward her. But the dog, like any other cowardly predator, was after the weakest victim. It was stalking the boy. When finally it leaped, Three Hearts jumped to get in the way, as she had with Michael Ogleman. But the defending mom tripped and knocked Useless down. The dog flew above both of them, went over the side, and broke its neck on a live oak.

Three Hearts did not believe she had the power, but everyone else, including me, did. These examples that went through my mind when she asked about her son were only a few of the terrible consequences that befell any man, woman, or beast that crossed her.

“Yes,” I said, forcing the air through my larynx. “He came by about a week or so ago.”

“Where is he now?” she asked.

“Ain’t he home?”

“I went by the last address I had for him, but they said that he moved. I was hoping he might’a told you where he’d moved to or where he’d gone.”

“Maybe he left L.A.,” I said lamely.

“Ulysses wouldn’t do something like that without telling me.”

I don’t like to think of myself as a superstitious man, but when Three Hearts looked into my eyes with her steady, serious gaze, I was as frightened as I had been bunged up with Tiny Bobchek. Haltingly, I told her about her son’s last visit without letting on that I had turned him away. I made it seem as though we’d had drinks and talked about his problems, after which he’d left of his own free will.

“I had trouble of my own right then, Auntie. There was a girl I was messin’ wit’ and a man after me.”

Three Hearts stared at me from under the brim of her hat. I didn’t know which eye was the evil one, but I was sure that it was doing its work while I sat there.

“Come on,” I said, standing up from my chair. “Let’s go find your son. He got to be out there somewhere.”

That turned Three Hearts’s grim expression into a grateful smile. I could only hope that that smile trumped the evil eye. And for once I was hoping to find Useless and embrace him.