Gone Fishin’

An Easy Rawlins Novel

Copyright © 1997

Chapter One

Mouse had changed

Before he announced his engagement to EttaMae he was a happy man, full of himself. It’s true that he was especially pleased when misfortune happened to someone else, but at least he kept us smiling. Life was hard back then and a good laugh was worth a month of Sundays.

But just when he had a reason to be glad, Mouse turned sour and moody. He let his appearance go to seed (he was usually a natty dresser) and nobody wanted to be around him because when a small, rodent-faced man like Mouse got ugly he was no company even for the harshest man.

He stopped going to parties altogether. If you happened to run into him on some corner, or back alley, and asked how he was doing, he’d say, ‘What the hell you think? Here I am gonna get married in two months an’ ‘tween me an’ EttaMae we ain’t got enough money for dip an’ crackers.’

Mouse didn’t go out looking for work. All he did was get mad whenever he had to let go of a few coins.

So it was no surprise that his crowd started to shun him.

I mean, even if you wanted to see Mouse it was hard work because he changed apartments almost every month - one step ahead of the landlord, as we used to say.

I didn’t want to see him. Mostly because I was jealous. You see, EttaMae was the kind of woman you had on your mind when you woke up in the morning. She was big and friendly, and always knew the right thing to say. But she never lied; Etta spoke her mind, and when she laughed it came from her heart. Everybody loved EttaMae, and she loved the only man I ever knew who didn’t have a heart at all.

So between me being jealous and Mouse being so taciturn I was surprised late one Tuesday night when a racket broke out on my apartment door. It sounded more like a fight than a knock. I dragged myself out of a deep sleep trying to think of who might be after me. I knew that it couldn’t be the police, they just broke the door down in that neighbourhood, and I hadn’t seen any seriously married women in more than six months.

‘Hold on!’ I yelled, thinking about the back window. I was reaching for the butcher’s knife on the nightstand when he called, ‘Easy! Easy! Open this do’, man, I gotta talk!’

‘Mouse?’

‘Yeah, man! Lemme in!’

I snatched the door open with a curse on my lips but when I saw him I knew he’d changed again. He had on a plaid zoot suit with Broadway suspenders and spats on his black bluchers. He wore a silk hat and when he smiled you could see the new gold rim and blue jewel on his front tooth. For someone who never worked, Mouse knew how to keep himself in style.

‘Man, what you doin’ here this time’ a night? I gotta work in the mo’nin’!’

He pushed by me saying, ‘that’s all right, Easy, I’ma buy some’a yo’ time this week.’ A tan rucksack hung from his shoulder. I could hear the chink of bottles as it swung against his side.

We gotta talk, man,’ he said.

He led the way back into my apartment. All it was was a big room with a Murphy bed. He sat down on the good chair and I sat on the bed, facing him.

‘Mouse, what do you...’

He held up his hand, half smiling like one of those saints in the illustrated Bibles.

‘Easy, I have got it.’

He pulled Johnnie Walker from the sack.

‘I have got it,’ he said. ‘Now do you got some glasses? ‘Cause this here’s Black Label and it won’t do to swig it from the neck.’

‘Man, what do you want?’

‘I want some glasses, Easy, so we can celebrate my good fortune. You the first one gonna know.’

‘Know what? All I know is I gotta get me some sleep.’

‘Then get me sumpin’ t’drink wit’ and I will deliver you the potion of dreams.’

There was no use in trying to argue when Mouse was in a preaching mood. There were glasses in the closet at the back of the room. I rinsed them in a tub I kept back there.

‘Jelly glasses?’ Mouse turned up his nose while he poured.

‘Just... just... what do you want?’

He laid back in my stuffed chair and put his feet on my sheets. He flashed his new gold tooth at me and drank whiskey like it was water.

‘You know I’m from down Pariah, Easy. Yes, sir! Just a country boy.’ He poured another glassful. ‘Down home, that’s me.’

I poured three fingers and waited. Mouse needed room to tell his story. He was afraid that the idea would get confused unless you had all the facts. If he was to tell you about a nail in a horse’s foot he’d start off explaining coal and iron and how they make steel.

‘... an’ you know us country boys is slow to get a idee, but once we got the picture we ain’t never gonna let go... You got a cigarette?’

‘Got some papers an’ shag.’

‘Uh-uh, no thanks. You know I cain’t stand them leaves in my mouf.’ He twisted his lips and slugged back his second glass of scotch. ‘I guess you know I been kinda worried with the weddin’ an’ how me an’ Etta ain’t wit’ much dough.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Well, I got it all figgered out now.’ Mouse smiled so satisfied that I felt good.

But I said, ‘Com’on, man, it’s midnight...’

‘My stepdaddy.’

‘What?’

He looked at me real close then, like a dog does when a new smell comes by. Like he was wondering if I was food or foe or some love interest.

He said, ‘You like Etta, don’t ya, Easy?’

‘Yeah, sure I like her.’ I didn’t like that question, though. ‘Etta been hangin’ out wit’ us fo’ years.’

‘Yeah, that’s true,’ Mouse said, staring down into his jelly glass. Then he looked up at me. ‘But you like’er more’n just some friend. I mean she’s a good-lookin’ woman, right?’

‘She look fine. Now what’s this about yo’ stepdaddy?’

But he wouldn’t let it go.

‘She look good, but that’s not what make her so fine. Etta ain’t no bow-down woman, she stand up fo’ what she want. An’ no one better be foolin’ wit’ her ‘less she like ya, ‘cause Etta got a strong arm.’

I laughed and said yeah but I was watching Mouse then. For all my size that small man scared me.

Mouse was laughing too, but his eyes were in mine.

‘That’s the truth,’ he said. ‘An’ they ain’t a real man who don’t wonder what a powerful woman like that can do. ‘Cause you know the first time I seen Etta sit down to a plate’ a food I knew she was a hungry woman.’ He ran the length of his hand down his crotch. ‘Yeah, that Etta will eat you up!’

I poured out a little scotch and wondered if that was going to be my last drink.

He held my eye while he poured whiskey, while he drank. I could hear the house settling, it was so quiet.

‘Why’ont you roll me one, Ease? You got the touch.’

The pouch was on the end table, next to the knife. I reached for it slowly so he could see what I was doing.

I had to suck my tongue to get enough spit to wet the paper.

‘Yeah. You know Etta wring me out and in the mo’nin’ she tell me that if I wanna keep that good stuff fo’me I better do right.’ He laughed. ‘And she knew I had plenty’a women t’buy my clothes. An’ I knew she weren’t no virgin neither... But I can understand a man, Easy.’ Mouse leaned back quickly and put his hand in his pocket.

I flinched and the tobacco and paper fell to the floor.

‘... a man,’ he continued as he came out with a red handkerchief to wipe his nose, ‘who run after a woman-like that wit’ his nose open an’ his tongue hangin’ down.’ I had been down in Galveston once when EttaMae lived there. I spent the night with her even though I knew she was Mouse’s girl. He must’ve found out, but he couldn’t know how bad I felt about it.

The next morning all Etta could talk about was how sweet a man Mouse was and how lucky I was to have him for a friend.

There I was facing a jealous fiancé when Etta had glazed over me like so much meat.

Mouse was smiling and I believe that he knew what I was thinking. I gave up trying to roll the cigarette; all I could do was stare at him and try not to look concerned.

Somebody might wonder why a big man like me would be scared of a small man, half his size. But size doesn’t count for much in this world. I once saw Mouse put a knife in a big man’s gut. I was drunk and that man, Junior Fornay was his name, was after me because he thought the girl I was with was his. He ripped off his shirt and came after me bare-fisted and bare-chested. They cleared the barroom and we went at it. But I was drunk and Junior was one of those field hands that you would swear was born from stone. He pounded me until I hit the floor and then he started kicking. I balled up to try and save myself but you know I could hear my dead mother that night: She was calling my name.

That’s when Mouse strolled up.

Junior waved a piece of furniture at him but Mouse just put his hand in the air. I swear he couldn’t reach as high as Junior’s forehead but he said, ‘He got his lesson, man, you gotta let him live so he can learn.’

You better git...’ was all Junior could say before Mouse had his stiletto buried, maybe just half an inch, in the field hand’s gut. I was lying between them, looking up. I could see Mouse smiling and I could see Junior’s face grow pale. Mouse quick-grabbed Junior’s neck with his free hand and said, ‘You better drop that stick or I’ma stir the soup, boy.’

I think I would rather have the beating than to see that, and smell it too.

So I was listening to Mouse with great respect.

‘... but you know, Easy, all that is past. I ain’t the type’a man to bear no grudge. Po’ men cain’t afford no grudge. Shit! It’s hard enough for a po’ man t’get through the day.’

He slapped my knee and leaned back in the chair. When he threw his leg over the armrest I knew I was safe.

‘S-so what ‘bout yo’ stepdaddy?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’ Mouse stared at the ceiling with a smile. ‘You got that cigarette yet?’

I started rolling again.

‘Yeah, my stepdaddy got a big pile’a money out on that farm somewhere. Big pile.’

‘He wanna give you some’a that?’

‘Well, we ain’t on the best terms me an’ daddyReese. You know he’s a farm boy down t’his nuts an’ he see everything like a farmer see his world. So when I come along he figgers I was the runt’a the litter and I should be put in a burlap sack and dumped in the river.’

Mouse was smiling but he wasn’t happy.

‘Shoo, man! Even a farmer love his chirren.’

‘I ain’t none’a his. My momma had me when she was still footloose an’ feelin’ good. DaddyReese come nosin’ around later.’

‘So how’s that gonna help you and Etta?’

Mouse pulled up his pant leg, leaned forward, and slapped my knee again. He said, ‘That’s just what I been thinkin’, Easy. How one rich ole hick gonna help me when he cain’t stand my face? I been thinkin’ ‘bout that fo’ days. I go t’sleep thinkin’ ‘bout it an’ then I wake up in the same frame’a mind.

‘You know I went down to Galveston ‘cause Etta wanted me t’see if I could get sumpin’ down on the docks. Could you see me in that filthy water? Shit! But I went down there because you gotta respect yo’ woman.’

That was Mouse to a word. Children loved him and their mothers did too.

‘I was down on the docks eatin’ a sandwich and watchin’ the boys down there. They had this game they played. You see, in the hot day them ship rats crawl up on the top’a the pilin’s to git some sun. They just lay out in the sun an’ bake with they long nekked tails hangjn’ down an’ wavin’ ‘round the logs. Uh! It’s disgustin’. But anyway, them boys sneak up to where the rats is an’ they wait real quiet right next to the tail.’

Mouse sat up straight and clapped his hands like a gunshot.

‘Then they grab the tail an’ swing that rat through the air till it smash on the pier! Oh, man, that was sumpin’! I watched ‘em do that fo’ a long time. Shoot, they musta killed twenty’a them things... Then I caught a ride on a vegetable truck comin’ back t’Houston. I was still thinkin’ bout them boys, when it hit me. You know I kept thinkin’ that those boys couldn’t hesitate a minute ‘cause that rat is ready t’bite the first thing you touch’im, an’ you know the on’y thing worse than a rat bite is a man bite.’

Mouse sat back, showing his teeth.

I handed him the cigarette and he lit it up. He laid back and took a deep draw.

It looked like he was through talking, so I asked, ‘So what, man? What you gonna do ‘bout the money?’

‘I’ma go up to Pariah an’ get it, that’s what.’

‘How you gonna do that?’

‘I don’t know, Easy. All I can tell ya is that I ain’t gonna hesitate one minute.’

Mouse wanted something from me, and he wanted me to ask him what that something was. But I was too stubborn to give in to that.

So he puffed on his cigarette and I fumbled around with my glass. When he’d look at me I’d just look back. Mouse had light gray eyes.

Finally he said, ‘So, Easy, what you workin’ at now?’

‘Gardenin’ for the Lewis fam’ly. They man is sick.’

‘You know how t’drive a car, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I tell you what. I give ya fifteen dollars t’drive me to Pariah fo’a couple’ a days.’

‘Shit!’

‘Yeah, man, I ain’t lyin’.’

‘Let’s see it.’

Mouse got that wary dog look again and said in a quiet voice, ‘I ain’t never asked you t’prove nuthin’, Easy.’

I knew right then that he wanted to trade; that he’d forget about me and Etta if I’d drive him to Pariah for a fifteen-dollar IOU. That’s how Mouse was, he didn’t care about me and his woman; the only thing that ever got Mouse mad was if you played with his money or caught him in a lie. This was just business, plain and simple.

‘What kinda car you got?’

‘Thirty-six Ford. Drive so smooth you think you was in a boat.’

‘Now where you gonna get a car like that an’ you don’t even drive?’

‘Otum Chenier want me t’take care of it while he gone down Lake Charles.’ Mouse grinned and rubbed his chin. ‘Seem like one’a his folks is sick.’

‘And when you wanna go?’ I asked.

‘Maybe half hour ‘fore dawn.’

‘Tomorrah?’

‘Com’on, Ease. It’s late. I got business down south an’ I’ma pay you fo’it too. I ain’t got no time t’waste.’

‘I got a job, man.’

‘Easy, you work fo’them three weeks an’ you be lucky t’get fifteen dollars. Soon as they man is back you know they gonna put yo’ butt out. An’ I got food, an’ whiskey, an’ gas money. I know ev’ry pretty girl in Pariah. An’, man, Etta deserve a good weddin’, ‘cause you know she sumpin’ else.’ He winked at that.

I wanted to go. I knew it from the minute he yelled in my door. I was a young man then, barely nineteen years old, and alone in the world. Mouse was my only real friend, and even though he was crazy and wild I knew he cared for me - in his way. He made me mad sometimes but that’s what good friends and family do.

I wasn’t mad because Mouse had won Etta. I was mad because when they got married I was going to lose my friend to his wife and family. This was going to be the last time we would go running in the streets together. I’d’ve gone with him without the threats and the IOU.

‘I want my fifteen dollars, man,’ I said, ‘You know I ain’t doin’ this fo’my health.’

‘Don’t you worry ‘bout a thing, Easy. We both git sumpin’ outta this.’ Mouse was curled up in my second-hand upholstered chair like a little boy. The room was all kinds of gray from light that leaked in through the torn shades and the cracks in the door. He fell asleep as soon as the light went out, but I woke up then. I laid there in the dark thinking about the time Mouse had saved my life.

I remembered Junior holding his bloody shirt and running from the bar. Then I thought of what Mouse had said when I tried to thank him.

‘Shit, man, I din’t save you. I just wanted to cut that boy ‘cause he think he so bad... See what he think now...’ And we never talked about it again.

Chapter Two

Early morning is the best time. You’re fully rested but not awake enough to remember how hard it all is. Morning is like being a child again, and morning before the sun is out is like those magic times that you hid under the bed and in between the clothes hanging in your mother’s closet. Times when any kind of miracle could come about just as normal as a spider making her web.

I remember waking up in the dark once when I was very small. I jumped right out of bed and went up next to the screen door on the back porch to see what kind of fantastic thing was going on outside. At first I couldn’t see anything but there was a clopping sound, nickering, and a deep voice that made me feel calm and wondering. Slowly, coming out from the darkness, I saw a gray shimmering next to a tall black pillar. The shimmer turned into a big horse and the pillar became my father holding out an apple and cooing hi his bass voice, ‘Ho! Yeah, boy,’ even though the horse was tame and eating from his hand.

I drifted into sleep thinking that we were poor and didn’t own a horse. When I woke up it was light and there was no horse to be seen. I asked my father about it but he told me that I was dreaming - where were poor people like us going to find big gray stallions?

But there were horse chips behind the barn and hoof-prints too.

I decided that it was a magic horse and man that I’d seen. From that day on I believed that magic hides in the early morning. If you get up early enough you might find something so beautiful that it would be all right if you just died right then because nothing else in life could ever be better.

It was still dark when we made it down to Lucinda Greg’s house. She was Otum Chenier’s girlfriend. I warmed up the engine while Mouse changed clothes and made lunch inside. He came out in gray pants and a gray shirt, work clothes that fit him like dress clothes.

When we drove off it was still way before dawn. Mouse was sleeping against the passenger door and I was driving with the few feeble lights of Houston behind us. It was going to be a warm day but the air still held a light chill of night. I wanted to sing but I didn’t because Mouse wouldn’t have understood my feelings about magic and the morning. So I just drove quietly, happy on that flat Texas road.

People don’t understand southern Texas. They think that the land there is ugly and flat. They take their opinion about the land and put it on the people but they’re wrong on both counts. If they could see Texas in the early dawn like I saw it that day they would know a Texas that is full of potential from the smallest rock to the oldest woman on the farm.

The road wasn’t paved or landscaped. On either side there were dense shrubs and bushes with knotty pines and cherry and pear trees scattered here and there. I was especially aware of the magnolias, their flowers looking like white faces staring down from shadow.

They say it’s like a desert down there, and they’re right - at least sometimes. There are stretches of land that have hardly anything growing, but even then it’s no simple story. Texas is made up of every kind of soil; there’s red day and gray sod and fertile brown, shipped in or strained over by poor farmers trying to make the land work. That earth gives you the feeling of confidence because it’s so much and so different and, mainly, because it’s got the patience to be there not ever having to look for a better place.

But there’s no such thing as a desert down near the Gulf. The rains come to make bayous and swamps and feed every kind of animal and bird and varmint.

As the night disappeared the last foxes and opossums made their way to shelter. Animals everywhere were vanishing with the shadows; field mice and some deer, foxes, rabbits, and skunk.

‘I’ma show you how t’fish while we down here, Ease.’

I jumped when Mouse spoke.

‘Man, ain’t nuthin’ you could tell me. I been droppin’ my line in the water since before I could talk.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said with a sneer. ‘But I show you how the master fish.’

He took a fried egg sandwich from a brown paper sack and tore it in half.

‘Here you go.’

We were both quiet as the sun filled in the land with light. To me it was like the world was growing and I was happy to be on that road.

After a while I asked Mouse how it was that he happened to get Otum’s car just when he needed a ride.

Mouse smiled and looked humble. ‘You know Otum’s a Cajun, an’ them Cajuns is fam’ly down to the bone. They’d kill over a insult to their blood that normal folks like you an’ me would just laugh at. An’ Otum is a real Cajun. That’s a fact.’

Mouse knew how to tell you a story. It was like he was singing a song and the words were notes going up and down the scales, even rhyming when it was right. He’d turn phrases that I wanted to use myself but it seemed that I couldn’t ever get the timing right. Sometimes what he said fit so perfectly I couldn’t ever find the right time to say it again.

‘.. . I always known that a message from his momma would light a fire under Otum. An’ puttin’ out fires is my especiality.’ We laughed at that. ‘So that night I come home from Galveston I stayed over at Lucinda’s, for a weddin’ gift she said. I thought ‘bout how she take care’a Otum’s car an’ how they got a phone down at that beauty shop she work for. . .’

Mouse smiled with all his teeth and put his foot against the dashboard so he could sit back comfortably, ‘You know once Otum got that message from Lucinda he knew he couldn’t take his car down there. The bayou ain’t no place t’drive no good car. So Lucinda tole him that you would start it up for him and look in on it every once an’ a while.’

‘Me?’

‘Well, yeah, it had t’be you, Easy. I cain’t drive no car. Anyway, Otum never did trust me too much.’

We had been going southeast for dose to two hours when we saw two people with thumbs out on the road. A big young man and a girl, maybe fifteen, with a healthy chest and smile.

‘Pull on over, Ease,’ Mouse said. ‘Let’s pick ‘em up.’

‘You know ‘em?’ I asked as we passed by.

‘Uh-uh, but oppu’tunity is ev’rywhere an’ I ain’t passin’ up no bets.’

‘Man, you don’t know what they’s up to. They could be robbers fo’all you know.’

‘If they is then this here gonna be they last stand.’ I shifted the clutch down and put on the brake. As soon as we stopped, Mouse was out with the door open and the seat folded up. He waved at the couple and they came running. The boy was dragging a duffel bag that was bigger than his girlfriend.

‘Come on!’ Mouse shouted. ‘Jump in the back wit’ me, man. ‘Cause Easy got all kindsa dirty rags back here an’ you don’t want no girl in that.’

‘That’s all right. We sit together,’ the young man said in

a gruff tone.

‘Uh-uh, Clifton,’ the girl complained in a high voice. ‘I don’t wanna get filthy! Go’on an sit back there wit’ him.

You can still see me.’

Mouse smiled and gestured for the boy to get in. Clifton did as he was asked to do, but he wasn’t happy about it.

I could see in his face that Clifton hadn’t had a happy day in his life. His jaw was set and his eyes were hard but he couldn’t have been over seventeen. He was what Mouse called ‘a truly poor man.’ Someone who doesn’t have a thing and is so mad about it that he isn’t likely to ever get anything.

‘Where you-all goin’?’ I asked.

‘Down t’N’Orleans,’ the girl said. She looked in my eyes to see how surprised and jealous I’d be. She had a wide face and a forehead that sloped back. Her eyes were so far apart it looked as if she couldn’t focus both of them on the same thing. Her look was careless and lazy, and I looked away before I got myself into trouble.

‘Where you people from?’ Mouse asked in his friendliest tone.

‘Nowhere special,’ Clifton mumbled. ‘Where you-all goin’?’

‘Pariah,’ Mouse announced. ‘Farmin’ capital of south Texas.’

‘Hm!’ The girl frowned. ‘I ain’t never even heard’a that place.’ She turned her back to the door and put her bare feet on the seat, her toes grazing my leg.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked as I shifted gears.

‘Ernestine.’ She showed me her full set of teeth. ‘What’s yours?’

‘They call me Easy, an’ they call him Mouse.’

She laughed and dug her toes under my thigh. ‘Them ain’t even names at all. What’s yo’ real name?’

I never liked telling strangers my real name, but with her toes wiggling under my leg and Clifton breathing down my neck I didn’t feel like arguing.

‘Ezekiel.’

She guffawed at that and got her whole foot under my thigh. I had a hard time keeping the car in the road.

While we rode along Ernestine flirted with me in the front seat and Clifton pouted in the back. Mouse was telling us a story about how a bad man in Houston shot his foot off while trying to shoot Mouse. It was a funny story and we all laughed, even Clifton, in that respectful way you’re supposed to laugh when complimenting a well-told lie. But I knew that Mouse wasn’t lying. That gangster, fat Joe Withers, died from gangrene poison. He had made the mistake of grabbing EttaMae one night and we all knew that Mouse would get him one day.

Ernestine was still giggling and wiggling her toes when Mouse started checking Clifton out.

‘Ain’t I seen you wit’ a guitar down in Fifth Ward? I swear I seen a big man like you down there playin’.’

‘Ain’t me, man. I ain’t the least bit musical.’

‘Well, yeah, I guess you must know. It’s just I seen this boy who looked powerful like you and I wondered why such a big man would waste his time on music.’

‘I cain’t tell ya. I mean I like t’listen but, uh, you know, I ain’t never gonna play nuthin’.’

‘Uh-huh.’ I could see Mouse nod in the mirror. ‘That’s just how I feel. You know I go on down t’ George’s saloon an’ get all the music I needs. You ever go there?’

‘Naw. The way them men in the bars an’ juke joints be lookin’ at Ernestine gets me mad.’ Clifton talked slowly as if every word he said had to be exactly right.

Ernestine stopped wagging her foot long enough to say, ‘He just jealous, that’s all. ‘Cause the men like a girl wit’ big titties like I got.’ She sneered at him; Mouse and I looked away.

‘You shouldn’t be talkin’ like that, honey. What these men gonna think?’

‘Well I am nice t’look at, ain’t I,’Zekiel?’ she said as she arched her foot.

I swear that I meant to look out at the road but I found myself staring down at her. Clifton would have opened my head if he saw my eyes but I guess he was too busy looking at her to notice what I was doing.

‘Ernestine, stop it!’

‘I will not! I will not! On’y reason we here is ‘cause you so jealous an’ you don’t know that a girl can get a compliment an’ not do nuthin’ ‘bout it!’

‘That’s enough now, girl!’ Clifton was threatening but Ernestine didn’t care.

‘What difference it make? If that boy die you know they gonna fines you an’ they gonna get you too!’

Mouse had a talent, he could smile without letting it show. You could be looking at him and if you didn’t know it you’d think his face was just plain, but if you knew what to look for you’d see how his eyes got larger and how his mouth lost its hardness.

He was smiling then.

‘You in some kinda trouble, Clifton?’ Mouse spoke the boy’s name like they’d known each other for years.

‘Ain’t nuthin’, man. Just a little disagreement.’

Ernestine frowned and turned to look out at the road. I missed her toes under my leg.

‘I wanna know, man, ‘cause we here wichyou in the car an’ if the po-lice stops us I just wanna know,’ Mouse said.

Clifton didn’t say a word.

‘You know you can get in trouble wit’ the law fo’just he’pin’ somebody done done sumpin’ wrong. . .’ Mouse let that one hang for a minute then he said, ‘An’ you know a guilty man more nekked than a baby, the patrols see you out here. . . I mean I wouldn’t wanna put you out or nuthin’, but me an’ Easy cain’t afford no dose look by John Law ourselfs. ..’

‘Ain’t nuthin,” Clifton said again. ‘Man was lookin’ at Ernestine wit’out no respect an’ I showed him a little sumpin’, that’s all.’

‘He beat that boy so bad that he prob’ly dead!’ Ernestine shouted with her lips stuck straight out.

‘Is that true, Clifton?’

‘He wasn’t movin’ much when we lefted,’ the sullen boy admitted.

‘But that don’t mean he dead.’

‘Anybody see it?’

‘We was in a bar fulla people!’ Ernestine had turned completely around. She was like a little girl in that dirty blue dress with litde pictures of cows stamped all over it.

Mouse shook his head and hummed his dissatisfaction, ‘Mmmmmm-mm! An’ you out here in the road for any hick sheriff t’haul you in? Mm! You two headed fo’a rope.’

‘I tried t’tell ‘im,’ Ernestine said. ‘But he won’t listen t’me. He think he so smart an’ they gonna hang him.’

‘You ain’t gonna be too frisky in jail neither,’ Mouse answered.

‘What you mean? I ain’t done nuthin’!’

‘But you wit’ a bad man. The law see you wit’ him an’ they call you the same. An’ if you a woman they call you a bad man’s girl an’ that’s even worse.’

Ernestine pouted and turned to put her face against the window. Clifton hunched down in his seat and glowered. And Mouse sat back with his plain face secretly grinning from ear to ear.

I started thinking about my magic horse and how far away he was. It was closing in on noon and there wasn’t a shred of my morning left.

We drove for a little while in silence. The land was getting more lush as we pressed south into bayou country. Our passengers were brooding and Mouse was waiting; waiting for them to accept his wisdom.

Finally he said, ‘Look, kids, I know you got troubles an’ I ain’t tryin t’be no bad man to ya. It’s just that I know what’s goin’ on. . . But me an’ Easy got a heart.’ Ernestine turned her face to him, reminding me of a flower being drawn to the sun. ‘An’ we wanna he’p ya, right, Ease?’ I didn’t say a word, but that didn’t bother him. ‘Now listen: You cain’t stay on the road, ‘cause that’s where the po-lice be lookin’. An’ you cain’t stop out here, ‘cause country folk is suspicious’a strangers an’ anyway, if Ernestine let sumpin’ slip like she just did, then you in it deep. So what you kids need is a place where they gonna look out fo’you. What you need is Momma Jo.’

‘Who?’ That was me.

‘Friend’a mine, Ease. Momma Jo. They call her a witch an’ she be ‘lone most the time. If we bring her a strong man an’ pretty girl she be one happy woman.’

‘But I thought you said that these country people ain’t got time for strangers?’

‘True, true. But I ain’t no stranger. I been bringin’ homemade an’ store-bought liquor t’Momma Jo fo’years. She trust anybody I brang.’

‘But why you wanna he’p us?’ Clifton asked.

‘It’s a favor, man. Maybe you he’p me someday.’ That time Mouse smiled for real.

‘Uh-uh, I don’t think so. We plan t’go out t’Loozdana t’my folks,’ Clifton said.

‘You done kilt a boy an’ you gonna hang that on yo’ folks neck?’

‘That’s across state line, they cain’t do nuthin’ down there.’

‘An’ you don’t think the white man gonna be down there? You don’t think that if he know you at your momma’s that he cain’t go get you?’

‘How anybody gonna know where I am ‘less you tell’em?’

‘Boy, you better get that chip offa yo’ shoulder an’ listen t’me.’ Mouse sat back and frowned. ‘Now the first thing is that the cops know your name. I know that ‘cause Ernestine was there an’ she love t’yell “Clifton.” Second thing is they know you headed fo’ the state line ‘cause that’s where a man scared’a the law always be headed. An’ last thing is they know you gonna go whey it’s safe, an’ seein that you already wit’ yo’ girlfriend they know you gonna go see Momma.. . The man ain’t no fool, Clifton.’

Mouse actually scared me. I was amazed and proud of him. He revealed to us the police mind in a way that I never even considered. I could see hi the mirror that Clifton felt the same way.

‘Com’on, Clifton,’ Ernestine pleaded. ‘Let’s do it. He right ‘bout these country cops.’

Clifton didn’t say anything. The only change hi him at all was that his jaw set a little tighter.

Mouse tapped my shoulder and said, ‘When you see a ole beat-up sign that say Rag Bayou, follah it.’

The turnoff to Rag Bayou was rough and unpaved. We bounced along. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was lost in their thoughts. I kept thinking about that horse in the backyard and how it got there. I was five when I first saw it, and then, fourteen years later, it came to me, from nowhere it seemed, that my daddy had stolen that horse and sold it for meat.

Chapter Three

A mist of gnats and mosquitoes swarmed along the road. Mouse was shouting over the whining cicadas, ‘Turn down there, Easy! . . . That’s it! ... Take a left! ...’ The path was so rutted that I worried about breaking an axle - and I knew Otum loved that car more than his whole Cajun family.

‘You can stop it right here, man!’ Mouse yelled at last.

‘We in the middle’a the road, fool! I gotta park.’

‘Okay.’ He shrugged. ‘But Otum ain’t gonna like his Ford knee deep in swamp.’

‘But we cain’t leave it in the road. What they gonna do when they come drivin’ down here?’

Mouse laughed. ‘Man who gonna drive down here but a fool?’

I wished I had an answer to that. I pulled the car as far over to the side of the road as I could, and hoped that there was enough space in case some other fool decided to drive by.

‘Com’on, Clifton, you safe fo’the first time since you laid that boy down,’ Mouse said.

‘Hey, man.’ Clifton put up his hands. ‘Keep it quiet.’

Mouse smiled and followed Ernestine out of the car door. Clifton went too.

But I stayed in the car putting on my heavy shirt and pulling my cotton cap down to my ears.

Mouse leaned in the window and said, ‘What you doin’, Easy?’

‘It’s them bugs,’ I said. ‘Just one mosquito in a room will bite me twenty times and every bite swells up into a hump on my skin, and every hump itches me until I scratch it hard enough to draw blood. I hate bugs.’

‘You just too sweet an’ sensitive,’ Mouse said. ‘All I gotta do is wave my hand in front’a my face once or twice and the bugs leave me be. An’ if anything bite me he ain’t never gonna bite nuthin’ else.’

I came out finally. Mouse slapped my shoulder and said, ‘Right this way, honey boy.’

We walked into a wall of vines and baby bamboo. It was reedy and mulchy and thick with gnats. It was hot too. Ernestine squealed every time a frog jumped or one of those bright red swamp birds got startled and croaked its hoarse swampsong. I was sweating heavy in all those clothes and still getting bites on my face and hands.

‘How far is it?’ I yelled over the cicadas.

‘It’s up here, Ease.’

‘How far?’

‘Dont rightly know, man.’ He smiled and let go of a bamboo stalk.

‘What you mean you don’t know?’ I had to duck down to keep the bamboo from hitting me in the face.

‘Ole Momma Jo’s a witch, an’ witch houses on out here is like boats.’ He made his voice sound ghostly. ‘Floatin’ on the bayou.’

He didn’t believe in that voodoo stuff, but Clifton and Ernestine got quiet and looked around as if they expected to see Baron Samedi looking out from under his skull mask.

‘You can tell you gettin’ close t’Momma’s when the cicadas stop singin’ an’ the mosquitoes die down,’ Mouse said.

I thought he was still trying to scare us, but after a while there came a sweet wood-burnt scent. Soon after that the whining of the cicadas receded and the ground became firmer.

We came to a clearing and Mouse said, ‘Here we is,’ but all I saw was a stand of stunted pear trees with a big avocado rising up behind them.

‘She live in the open?’ Clifton asked.

A cloud shifted and the sun shone between two pear trunks. A light glinted from the trees. Mouse whistled a shrill warbled note and in a while the door came open.

It was a house hidden by trees way out there.

The house was a shock, but it was the woman standing there that scared me.

She was tall, way over six feet, wearing a short, light blue dress that was old and faded. Over her dress was a wide white apron; her jet-black skin shone against those pale colors so brightly that I winced when I first saw her. She was strongly built with wide shoulders and big strong legs.

When she strode toward us I noticed the cudgel in her broad fist. For the first time in my life I felt the roots of my hair tingle. She came to within three strides of us and pushed her handsome face forward like something wild sniffing at strangers. There was no sympathy in her face. Ernestine jumped behind Clifton and I took a step back.

Then she smiled. Big pure yellow teeth that were all there and healthy.

‘Raymond!’ The swamp behind us got even quieter. ‘Raymond, boy it’s good, good to see you.’ She lifted Mouse by his shoulders and hugged him to her big bosom. ‘Mmmmmmmmmmmm-mm, it’s good.’ She put him down and beamed on him like a smiling black sun. ‘Raymond,’ she said. ‘It’s been too long, honey.’

Raymond is Mouse’s real name, but nobody except EttaMae called him that.

‘Jo, I brung you some store-bought.’ He held out the sack that still had two fifths of Johnnie Walker. ‘An’ some guests.’ He waved his hand at us.

Momma Jo’s teeth went away but she was still smiling when she asked, ‘These friends?’

‘Oh yeah, Momma. This here is Easy Rawlins. He’s my best friend. An’ these chirren is the victims of a po-lice hunt. They in love too.’

She took the sack and said, ‘Com’on then, let’s get in.’ We followed her in between the trees into the house, passing from day into night. The room was dark like nighttime because the sun couldn’t make it through the leaves to her windows. It was a big room lit by oil lanterns. The floor was cool soil that was swept and dry. The whole place was cool as if the trees soaked up all the swamp heat. In a corner two small armadillos were snuffling over corncobs and above them was a pure white cat, its hair standing on end as it hissed at us.

The cat was on a ledge over a fireplace. Also on the ledge were thirteen skulls. Twelve of them were longsnout opossums, six on either side of a human skull that had been dried with the skin still on it. The skull leaned back with its teeth pushed forward, dried black lips for gums. The teeth were brown but here and there white bone poked through cracked human leather. The eyelids were shut and sunken but there was no repose in the broad features of that face. It was as if the agony of life had followed that poor soul into the after world.

‘Domaque,’ Momma Jo said, and I turned to see her looking at me.

‘What?’

‘My husband,’ she said. ‘Com’on, chirren, have a seat.’ She gestured for us to settle on the dirty blankets and piles of pillows she had surrounding the fireplace. There were only two pieces of wood furniture in the whole room. A three-legged stool and a rough-hewn plank table that had six legs. The table was piled with dried plants and all kinds of powders in glass jars and bowls. I didn’t look too close at the table because I didn’t want to see any other keepsakes like Domaque.

She opened the sack and smiled when she saw little Johnnie. She said to Mouse, ‘You brought me lightnin’,’ then she looked at me, ‘an’ sugah.’

‘That’s right, Momma, you know I take care’a you.’

‘Uh-uh, baby, you takes care’a Raymond, an’ that’s why I loves you,’ Momma laughed. ‘Yes, yes. Raymond take care’a hisself.. .’

We settled in and Momma broke out the scotch with hand-carved wood bowls that she used for glasses. She poured us each a drink, and then another one. We were down to the bottom of the second bottle. Mouse was talking about the wedding when Momma turned to Clifton and asked, ‘An’ why is the po-lice chasin’ you, honey?’

‘Well they ain’t really aftah me at all. Just sumpin’ come up an’ me an’ Ernestine had ta go, that’s all.’

Momma Jo had been smiling and pleased the whole time, but she frowned then.

‘He kilt a boy in a bar fight, Momma,’ Mouse said. And before Clifton could speak, ‘Momma don’t always know what’s truf, Clifton, but she sure’n hell can smell a lie.’

Ernestine was staring up at Momma’s face like she had never seen anything like her. ‘Tell’er, Clift,’ she said. ‘She ain’t gonna hurt us.’

‘You just trust ev’rybody, huh, girl? I might as well go on back there an’ give up, huh?’

‘No!’

Momma Jo smiled and said, ‘Com’on, honey, you tell me the truth an’ I he’p.’ Those yellow teeth against her face and the armadillo spoor brought to mind a bear in her dark den. She seemed wild and violent and I could feel my heart working.

‘She the best chance you got,’ Mouse told him. I didn’t say anything. I knew that Mouse was working those kids for his own purposes but I didn’t care. I was just a driver, a cabbie waiting for his fare.

Clifton was fair-minded, you could see that by the way he worried over the pressure those three put on him. He was sullen and sulky but his arms and shoulders were jerking so that you knew that the story wanted to come out.

Mouse poured him another scotch and Clifton busted open like an overripe melon.

He told Momma the same story he told in the car; he used the same words exactly. I knew right then that Clifton couldn’t lie to save his life.

It was a strange day. That house was always midnight with its oil lamps burning and the armadillos and the cat skirting the edges of the room. Mouse was slouched up against the wall staring at the dead fireplace as if it were raging. Clifton was looking into his lap and Ernestine had her eyes glued to Momma Jo.

Jo was taking it all in. She looked at each one in his turn. But when she looked at me she’d catch my eye and smile so it seemed like that old witch was flirting. She was more than twice my age but she was still a handsome woman without a wrinkle on her fine-featured face. And I knew that in women it’s the face that gets old first.

She was sitting on the stool with her legs crossed like a man, it was only that long white apron that kept her modest. She was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette for a long time before she said, ‘You chirren got two thangs to do. First off you gotta hide while they look fo’you. That is if that boy really is dead. But that’s easy, ‘cause you kin stay here. I could use a strong boy like Clifton and Ernestine can help me wit’ my herbs.

‘But you got a worse thing ‘cause Clifton cain’t satisfy this young girl’s womanly needs an’ she ain’t woman enough t’teach him yet.’

‘Wha?’ Clifton was drunk by then so he staggered to his feet to challenge the witch. Clifton was a big boy, about my height with more heft to him, but Momma Jo had him by a head and twenty pounds.

She stood up to his face and said, ‘Sit’own boy.’

And he did.

‘I ain’t worried ‘bout yo’ pride, honey. You can see that Ernestine is out tryin t’make men appreciate what she got. That’s ‘cause she want sumpin’. She want satisfaction.’

Ernestine started crying.

Mouse had that invisible smile across his face.

‘I can he’p you chirren,’ Momma said. ‘I got a powder bring out what’s sleepin’ in you, make you see each other a whole new way.’

She went to her table and started working with her powders and spoons. Mouse crawled over and nudged my arm. ‘Oh this gonna be a gem, Easy,’ he whispered. ‘Momma Jo’s especiality is love.’

‘But what’s this gotta do wit’ yo’ stepdaddy?’

‘Dont know, but it’s lookin’ good,’ he said. ‘Aftah while I’ma go out t’see a friend. Don’t you be worried though.’

‘I go wichyou.’

‘Uh-uh, Easy. These country folks don’t like crowds too much.’

Right then Momma Jo interrupted, ‘Ezekiel? Honey, reach over on that shelf and bring me that blue jug. Yeah, that’s it. Bring it over here, baby. Now, Clifton an’ Ernestine you’all bring me yo’ cups.’

She poured a strong alcohol liquid into their bowls and then carefully measured some powder and dried leaves into each one.

Clifton got a brown powder and Ernestine a white. ‘Now drink it all down at once, don’t leave nuthin in the cup... yeah, that’s it.’

They did what she said like they were children. But I didn’t question it either, because that’s how life was back then. You listened to older folks and did what you were told. Even if you knew better you’d follow the rules because that’s how we were raised. Everybody but Mouse.

Mouse never took an order unless that’s what he wanted to do. Mouse wasn’t the only man I knew who’d stand up for what he believed, but he was different in one way: Most men who stood up for themselves would rather die than be slaves; Mouse would’ve rather killed.

‘Okay, babies,’ Momma said to Ernestine and Clifton. ‘You go sit together next to the hearth. Ezekiel baby? Why don’t you blow out some’a them lights an’ I tell you all a story.’

Chapter Four

I went around the big room blowing out lamps. It became more nighttime than ever but I knew it was afternoon not ten yards from where we sat.

Momma Jo brought her stool in front of us and looked down on the two lovers.

‘How you chirren feelin’?’

‘Fine,’ they said together.

Clifton had softened with the drink. I think he felt better too, once he told Jo his story. Good men always need to confess.

‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘You was lookin’ at my husband, huh, ‘Zekiel?’

I felt her attention burning on me even though she was looking at them.

‘What husband?’ I asked.

‘That’s him up on the mantel place,’ she said, nodding at the row of skulls. ‘I met him more’n twenny-three years ago. I’as just a girl, hardly in my teens. He was a big man with a great big laugh and powerful arms. Ev’rything about Domaque was big.’

A shiver ran through Ernestine.

‘But the biggest thing about him was his heart,’ Momma Jo continued. ‘He loved chirren an’ animals an’ trees an’ even dirt. He used to say that he wanted everybody to know him an’ he wanted to get to know ev’rybody he could.

‘If a man had a job to do and it was too much for him, he’d call on Domaque an’ that job was done. Dom didn’t ask fo’money or barter or anything; if you give him somethin’ he was glad t’take it and if you couldn’t pay, well, Dom knew what it was like t’be poor too.’

The lovers were frozen like startled deer. But every once in a while Ernestine shook.

Momma Jo flashed her yellow teeth and said, ‘Well, you know it’s the same old story over and over again. I was a big girl fo’my age. Matter’a fact I was bigger’n most women by the time I was thirteen, and womanly too. My parents wanted t’fool themselves that I was still a chile, but when I saw Dom my li’l dolls fell away. When I see him an’ hear him laugh, ‘cause he was always ready t’laugh, I’d just swell up inside so it felt like the clothes was gonna split right off me.

‘You know, Dom knew ev’ry fam’ly to a child fo’twenty miles ‘round Pariah. He did work on ev’ry farm an’ backyard we got here but he kept findin’ excuses to be ‘round our place. Dom was what we called a rover. He slept wherever he could in trade fo’labor. He worked a lot at the Fontanot place next to ours or at the Hollis farm down the road. And ev’ry chance he got he’d drop by t’say hi t’Daddy, but you know his eyes was on my woman’s body in that little girl’s dress.

‘My titties stuck straight out when I’as a girl.’ She looked me in the eye when she said that.

‘Fin’ly one day I got t’get away down to the Hollis place when Dom was workin’ to pull a stump from their field. I go down there with some bread an’ sausage an’ I told him ‘bout a place where we could eat. An’ when we get t’my l’ll hideaway in the trees I hand him the paper bag an’ then pull my dress off. That’s all I could think about, I stripped down an’ looked at him. An’ do you know that big man went limp on the ground just like a sack’a bones. I shoulda seen somethin’ was wrong right then but before I got a chance he come over me like a tidal wave.’ She frowned, remembering pain and pleasure at the same time. ‘He got me on my back and on my knees; he made me ride’im like a horse. And once he got in me he didn’t want out, uh-uh. I was sore and raw and bloody but Domaque kept comin’. When I fin’ly couldn’t hold back and started t’cry he got up an’ said, “Gimme that sausage,” an’ I thought he was through an’ had t’eat. But he scooped up the fat that hardened in the paper an’ rubbed it on his thing. Then he started slippin’ hi an’ outta me like a fish. You know they put spices hi that sausage an’ it burns ya if you got a cut. Yeah...’

Clifton had his hand on his crotch and Ernestine hugged her chest but they didn’t touch each other. They looked like tired children, about to throw a fit.

‘That was Domaque. First he taught me how men hurts women and then he started t’cry. He was afraid ‘bout how my daddy would have to fight ovah what happened. Seem like Domaque had a wife down hi Looziana so he couldn’t do right by me and he liked my daddy so he didn’t want t’kil’im.’ She sat back and took a draw on her cigarette.

Momma Jo’s face was handsome and hard, almost like a man’s face but you could see she was a woman. ‘I got a room behind that blanket, Ernestine. Anytime you want you an’ Clifton can go on back there.’ Ernestine was pushing a small homemade pillow down between her legs but she shook her head, no.

‘So he ran off.’ Momma shifted over to me. ‘He come out here when they wasn’t nobody in the swamp and he built this house. And as soon as it was good enough t’sleep in he come an’ got me. I din’t wanna go but he needed me so bad that what I felt din’t seem t’mattah. He took me out here and he started callin’ me a witch. He said that I had spelled him an’ he had t’have me, an’ he did too. Ev’ry night he’d come out here his pants was halfway down by the time he was in the do’. At first I liked it but then it got to be too much, too much...’

‘Uh!’ Ernestine had her hand down the front of Clifton’s pants, pulling back and forth, hard; I didn’t know if he called out in pleasure or pain.

‘You chirren better go on back now. Go on, get in there behind the blanket,’ Momma Jo said, and she walked across the room to pull the blanket back for them. Clifton staggered like a drunk with Ernestine pulling on his dick; she tried to hide what she was doing, but you could tell.

When the blanket swung down they started making love noises. I was on my feet and headed for the front door when Momma touched my arm.

‘Oh yeah, Clifton!’ came Ernestine’s voice from the other room.

Momma Jo said, ‘Come sit’own wit’ me, Daddy. Over here.’

I looked over to where Mouse had been sitting but he was gone. There was no sign of my friend. I remembered that he planned to see someone. I wondered if he planned to leave me in that house.

‘Com’on, sit’own, Daddy.’ Jo was leaning back on a pile of pillows, pulling on my thigh. Ernestine was yelling in short coughs. The armadillos wrestled in the corner. I got weak and fell to my knees.

‘I ain’t finished my story yet.’ She put her arms around me and rested my head back against her shoulder. I was too dizzy to fight her.

‘Oooooo-uh!’ The voice was so twisted I couldn’t tell if it was Ernestine or Clifton.

‘You wanted t’know how Dom’s head came t’be here, din’t you?’ Jo’s whisper smelled of tobacco and whiskey, of garlic and sweet chili. When she laid her hand on my thing I realised it was hard.

‘I cut it off myself,’ she said on a slender breath.

Ernestine had settled down into long breathing sighs that cut into the room like hot spoons into lard, but I didn’t pay much attention. My stomach had started churning. I was sure that I was going to vomit, but Momma Jo put her big hand against my chest and pressed, then released, then pressed.

She said, ‘Shhhh, baby. Be quiet now,’ so softly that I could barely hear her over Ernestine.

I laid there and let her breathe for me. I could feel her heart pounding from a vein throbbing in her thigh against my leg. Ernestine was chanting Clifton’s name over and over. Momma Jo’s hand was pressing down and letting go. I closed my eyes, wishing my mind back home.

‘My daddy s’pected Domaque of takin’ me,’ she said. ‘An* Dom was worried. He brought a old woman he called his auntie out t’take care’ame ‘cause he din’t come out too much, he was so scared that one’a daddy’s friends would catch on. An’ Luvia, that was his auntie, started t’teach me about herbs an’ other things.’

‘That how you become a witch?’ My voice cracked; there was the taste of bile in my throat.

‘It was Domaque made me a witch.’

‘Oh-ohhhhh,’ Ernestine softly sighed.

Momma Jo pressed my chest, then she moved her hand down over my belly to press my thing; then she pressed my chest again. She did that over and over while she said:

‘Then one day Daddy shot ‘im. He got tired’a waitin’ an’ he shot Dom down. He came after Dom with a shotgun fulla buckshot. He tole Dom t’bring me back but Dom turned his back an’ started walkin’. He din’t say nuthin’; not where I was or if he had taken me. An’ Daddy kilt ‘im. Luvia tole me about it an’ she got his body an’ brung it out here t’me. She knew how wild Dom was fo’me, she knew how Dom died rather than t’hurt my daddy. She said that if I kept a piece’a that love wit’ me then I’d be powerful an’ my baby would be healthy, male, an’ strong.’

She worked her hand down into my pants as Ernestine spoke my mind from behind the curtain.

‘I cut off his head an’ put it in a barrel’a salt fo’ five years. Dom Jr. was born an’ Luvia passed on. Daddy died.’ She squeezed me hard when she said that. ‘An’ here we is’

Her kisses were salty and thick.

What I remember most are the smells: her mouth and her musky armpits, the strong smell that almost burned from between her legs. Her feet smelled like earth along with the weak scent of manure. She tasted of salt. And after Ernestine quieted down, the only sound was the deep breathing and the rise and fall of Momma Jo’s body. The sound filled the room like God watching from some dark corner.

I didn’t want to do it but Momma Jo was strong; she clenched her arms and legs around me so powerfully that my ‘No’ was crushed down to ‘Yes.’ She whispered in my ear what she wanted and I lost my mind for a while; lost it to her desire.

After a long while I found myself pressing down hard on her and yelling something, but I can’t remember what it was. I felt pain in my head and realized that she was pulling my hair. She was yelling too, ‘You done, Easy! It’s over...’

‘No,’ I cried.

‘Shhhh, baby, it’s okay. You too excited to know you come.’

When I came to myself and realised what I’d done I turned away from her.

‘That’s okay,’ she whispered, rubbing my butt with her palm. ‘You already loved me enough, baby. Sleep now.’ She was quivering against my back as I fell asleep.

Mouse and I were standing in the swamp and mosquitoes were all over me. My crotch was the worst bit, and I scratched until it was raw. Mouse told me that I was going to scratch it right off, then he started laughing.

‘If you stop scratchin’,’ he said, ‘they stop bitin’ you, fool!’

The wind was blowing in a loud rush all around. I turned to see Momma Jo making the wind with her breathing. She came up to me like a big cloud, and made like to kiss me but instead she breathed down my throat. It was a powerful smell but I couldn’t pull away from her — she was too strong.

I was pushed to the ground. She was so heavy that I could hear my bones snap, one at a time. At every crack Ernestine moaned.

Momma came up with my butcher’s knife. I knew she was going to cut off my head to make her young again. I wanted to yell for Mouse to come save me but I couldn’t catch my wind without her breath in me.

We were all at the dinner table. Daddy and my mother and two little girls that I had never seen. A big gray stallion was heaped on the table.

It had been roasted with potatoes and carrots, and it smelled like Momma Jo’s pussy. My mother (who was a big woman) stood up and came toward me. All I could see was yards and yards of her gray plaid dress coming at me like a freighter coming into the Gulf.

‘Easy! Easy!’ Mouse was whispering in my ear. ‘Wake up, man! We gotta go! Com’on!’

I was sick in my heart. I moaned out loud, and Mouse said, ‘Shut up. You gonna wake’er.’

Mouse pulled me by the arm but I was too weak to move. I could see that he was wearing a long gray coat.

‘Lemme ‘lone,’ I said.

‘Easy, this ain’t no time t’play.’

‘Raymond?’ Her voice came from somewhere in the dark room. ‘Raymond, that you?’

‘Yeah, Jo. I come t’collect Easy.’

‘What time is it?’

‘It’s still dark.’

‘When you be back?’

‘I dunno. In a few days, or less.’

‘What you need Easy for?’ She said it like a challenge.

‘He my friend, Jo, like I tole you.’

‘Well. You go on out an’ I sen’im in a minute.’

Mouse leaned dose to me and smiled his golden smile. He winked, then he was gone out the door.

A match struck and Momma Jo was there lighting an oil lantern. Shadows jumped around the room and I wondered if it was really night outside. She was just as tall but she looked different when she was naked. Her breasts made her look more human, they didn’t stick straight out anymore but they didn’t sag very much either. The hard nipples curved upward like blunted black barbs on thornbush.

‘Mo’nin’, Easy,’ she said gently. ‘How you?’ There was a moan and the rustling of blankets and I could see Ernestine laying on the pillows from where Momma Jo came; Clifton was nowhere to be seen.

Momma tossed a blanket over the girl and wrapped another one around her own shoulders. She asked me to sit down there on the floor, but I shook my head and picked up my pants.

She stood close to me while I dressed, letting her shoulders sag down so she was dose to my height. ‘You gonna come back wit’ Raymond, baby?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, I gotta job you know, an’ we jes’ gonna say hi to his fam’ly, then we gone.’

‘Raymond say he comin’ back.’

‘I ain’t got the time.’ I looked her in the face for a second. Her eyes were full of sympathy or pity; I didn’t know what for.

‘You had some time las’ night.’

There was nothing to say to that so I concentrated on the buttons of my shirt.

‘Why’ont you come back t’say bye?’

‘Okay,’ I lied to keep her quiet, but she looked down at Ernestine and then back at me.

‘You shouldn’t be mad ‘bout us girls gettin’ together, Easy. She just excited an’ you an’ Clifton was out. Girls need t’talk ‘bout they men.’ She smiled and looked coy.

I wanted to tear off my skin.

‘I don’t care bout them. I gotta go an’ I’ll come say bye fo’ we get back down.’

I moved to go to the door, but she touched my arm.

‘Come back, Easy,’ she said, and I felt something.

‘I cain’t, Jo. This ain’t right, an’, an’ you don’t even know me.’

She looked at me for long time. While she did she seemed to get older and older; her eyes were tired and there were folds in her face. It was like she was aging to death and I was killing her. The lantern was fluttering, maybe it had been the whole time, but right then I thought that if the light went out she’d die.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But just to say bye.’

When she kissed me I felt sick but excited too; I wanted to scream.

When I got to the door she said, ‘You watch out fo’Ray-mond, honey.’

‘Mouse don’t need me t’help him.’

‘I mean you make sure you don’t get hurt. Raymond hate this place an’ he don’t have no good reason t’ be down here.’

‘I be okay, Jo.’

She put her hand on my throat like she was going to choke me, but softly. Then I left.

Chapter Five

The sky was black and crowded with stars. The land was like a heaven too; everywhere there were dusters of fireflies, glowing white with glints of green and yellow and blue. They covered the ground in a shimmering net of light. In the middle of that light was the dark form of a man holding a yellow lantern.

‘Hey, Easy! She let you go, huh?’

‘Where’d you go?’ I asked Mouse. ‘How come you left me there?’

‘I had t’go see my friend, Easy. I figgered you could take care’a yo’self.’ Mouse snickered. ‘Who gonna figger you for runnin’ after witch pussy?’

I took two steps toward him with my fists clenched.

‘Hole’it, man.’ He was laughing and holding the lantern out as a play shield. ‘If Momma go after somebody, then what can they do? We just people, Easy, and she is more’n that.’

‘What you go’n leave me for?’

‘I had t’see somebody. I din’t know what’s on that crazy woman’s mind.’

‘Shit!’

Mouse was laughing so hard that he had trouble holding the lantern steady; his whole body shook.

‘Easy, you shoulda been born rich,’ he said, letting out a long sigh of pleasure. ‘I mean up on the hill with servants and tea.’

‘What you talkin’ ‘bout?’

‘Look at you. Here you go wantin’ t’pick’n choose like you too good fo’Jo. But you don’t un’erstan’ that’s Momma Jo in there. If she like you then you halfway got it made. She feed you and fix you up if you get cut. Shit! An’ I bet she fuck you bettah than all them chippies you be chasin’ in Houston. I tell ya. You got a woman wanna take you home you better not be turnin’ up yo’ nose...’

‘Shut up, shut up!’

‘All right.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘All I gotta say is...’

‘Just shut up, all right?’

And he did. He turned and walked away without another word. I followed him, my head about to come open with all that had happened.

With those stars and lightning bugs I barely made out the path we walked on from the heavens. It was like walking in the black skies of night; my whole sense of up and down was gone. The only thing that kept me from getting dizzy was keeping my eye on Mouse’s black silhouette, rushing on up ahead. We walked for quite a while until we came into a stand of cypress trees.

‘This it,’ he said.

‘This is what?’

“This is where we gonna meet’im.’

‘Meet who?’

‘Now you gotta make up yo’ mind, Easy.’

‘What you say?’

‘Well, either you want me t’talk or you don’t.’

‘I don’t want you talkin’ ‘bout that woman or nuthin’ t’do wit’ what happened back there.’

He shook his head, saying, ‘I cain’t go along with that. When I talks, I talks an’ that’s it. If you don’t wanna hear me then I shet my mouf. But if you wanna hear, then you gotta take whatever come inta my head, ‘cause that’s the way I am. I cain’t be bothered wit’ you wanna be hearin’ one thing but you don’ wanna be hearin’ nuthin’ else...’

He went on like that, running his mouth. The drift of his palaver was that he couldn’t afford to hold back anything because it might be something important and he’d never know unless he got it out.

‘I think wit’ my mouf, Easy. I might say sumpin’ that sounds like shit t’you, but once I say it then I know sumpin’ else ‘bout what I be needin t’do.’

I could see that he was excited and that he needed to talk, so I let him go on; as long as he didn’t bring up Jo I was happy to let him rave.

After he ran out of things to say we just sat there. I could see a little better by then because morning nosed at the horizon.

‘What’s standin’ out here in the middle’a the night gonna do ‘bout yo’ weddin’?’ I asked, wanting to break the silence.

‘Sh!’

There came the sound of rustling branches.

‘Ray?’ A man called out.

‘Over here, Brother Dom,’ Mouse cooed.

Out from the trees came something. I knew it was a man because I heard him call to us but it could have been something else. He leaned way over to the side, one arm hanging down almost to the ground. He walked in a shuffle that made his whole body twist like a silkworm hanging from her thread. His back was hunched over so his head looked like it sprouted from the chest. His mouth was open wide with misshapen teeth grown in all directions; the giant maw glistened.

‘Hey, brother,’ Mouse said, then he did something I’d never seen him do with a man before — he hugged the hunchback. A real hug with their cheeks touching.

‘This here is Easy, the one I tole you ‘bout,’ Mouse said. ‘Easy, I want you t’shake hands with my oldest friend,

Domaque.’

The hunchback swung his long arm at me and it was all I could do not to jump back. His hand was leathery, dry, and strong.

‘Easy!’ he said like I was old and deaf. ‘My brother tole me ‘bout you. Glad t’meetcha.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

‘This here’s Jo’s boy, Easy. Easy stayed wit’ yo momma last night, Dom.’

‘Uh-huh. Wanna go fishin’ now?’ As it got lighter I could see that one of Domaque Jr.’s eyes was dead; it was brown and receded into the socket.

‘Sure, I got my rod here in my pocket.’ Mouse slapped his pants. ‘But you got what I want?’

Domaque ducked his head even lower, I couldn’t tell if he was ashamed or happy. He said, ‘Yeah, I got it out to the house.’ Mouse smiled. ‘Well then, com’on. Let’s get us some fish!’

Domaque screamed and jumped and hurried away; Mouse went after him, and I followed Mouse.

‘I tole ya I’ma show you how t’fish, Easy.’

‘You ain’t even got no fishin’ pole,’ I said.

‘Ohhhhh, but I do.’

‘Yeah, Easy.’ Mouse leaned back against an old elm looking out into Rags Pond. It was a largish body of water with a thin mist clinging to its sleek surface. ‘Me an’ Dom go way back. Huh, Dom?’

Domaque ducked his head and chortled. ‘That’s right, brother. We been friends since we was little.’

‘God’s truth, Ease.’ Mouse held up a hand in a swearing motion. ‘Me an’ Dom went through it when we was kids. You know they picked on me ‘cause I was so little, an’ they pestered Dom cause’a his hump. But you know wit’ my mind an’ Dom’s size we roughed up they little butts.’

The morning was darker than it was light but day was coming on fast. Live oaks completely surrounded the pond. The oaks had gray moss hanging from them into the water. Mouse reached under his coat, into the back of his pants, and came out with a long-barreled .41-caliber pistol. He smiled. Domaque howled and waved his fists in circles.

‘Shhhh.’ Mouse waved at him.

Dom put both hands to his mouth.

‘You know we cain’t be yellin’,’ Mouse said. ‘It’s time. Easy, you an’ Dom go sit on the rocks an’ keep quiet. You got that sack right, bro?’

‘Yeah, Ray. I got it,’ Dom said.

‘All right then! Let’s get us food fo’ the wintah!’

Mouse rolled up his cuffs to just below the knee. I couldn’t figure out why he did that, because then he waded into the water up to his waist. In one hand he had the pistol and in the other he had some crackers or dry bread that he pulled from his shirt pocket. He sprinkled the crumbs in the water and stood stock still.

Behind Mouse stood the half-circle of twenty-odd live oaks. A jury of old men with gray moss beards. Over them was the glimmer of a weak yellow sun in a sky that just hinted blue. There was no breeze or sound at all. Mouse looked like a big man, bigger than life, out in that water. He was taller than the trees, and the only thing that stood out from the pond.

‘In the beginnin’ God made the heavens an’ the lands,’ Domaque said from behind me. ‘An’ there was darkness in the land and the face of God was on the water...’

Dom went on and on whispering with his version of Genesis.

Out in the water, just to the left of where Mouse stood, came a sucking sound and a droplet of water leaped up into the air. Then to the right, two droplets, also with sucking sounds.

‘And God went beyond the waters and he called that heaven...’ Domaque said, while dozens of droplets plopped in the water. It was the sound of rain under a clear sky. Mouse slowly scattered the last of his bread into the pond. Then, carefully and slow, like a cat stalking raising his claws, Mouse brought the pistol over his head, holding it with both hands so that the barrel pointed at the water; his thumbs were on the trigger and his fingers were laced around the butt.

When he fired, dozens of mallards and pelicans started from behind the oaks. Dom Jr. let out a yell that started at a low warble and peaked at a siren’s whine.

Mouse yelled, ‘Com’on, Dom! Get yo’ sack out here fo’ they get away!’

Dom looped the sack around his neck with a rope that was stitched around the lip of the bag. He splashed in, bouncing up and down in the water like a very small child at the shore.

‘Com’on, Ease!’ Mouse called. ‘We need some help wit’ all’a these here!’

He kept on shouting while I got off my shoes and socks and put them on my sitting rock. By the time I waded out to them they had turned away, catching fish with their hands and shoving them into the large burlap sack. When I was up to my hips in water I saw the unconscious fish. It seemed like hundreds of them but I guess it couldn’t have been so many. Pale white underbellies of gar, catfish, carp, and other fish I had never seen. They shuddered in the water like they were dead. Mouse told me later that it was the force of the hollow-nosed soft-lead bullet hitting the water that knocked them out.

‘That’s why you gotta catch’em quick,’ he said. ‘Fo’ they come awake an’ slip down ‘tween yo’ legs.’

It was terrible.

Mouse lunged one-handed, because he had his pistol held high in the other hand, going for fish after fish. Dom was yucking and yelling. He was clumsy and barely got as many with two hands as Mouse did with one. I didn’t grab any. It was like a bad dream to see all those fish quivering and half dead. I don’t mind catching a fish or wringing a hen’s neck, but that slaughter left me sick.

On the last day I saw my father he took me down to the slaughterhouse. It was an awful place. They had cows walking down an aisle that came to a sharp turn. When the cow took the turn she came to a window and a big man hit her on top of the head with a sledgehammer; she’d hit the floor shaking just like those fish. From there a conveyor belt took the body to a man with a curved sword. He caught a mean-looking hook in her carcass and then had his helpers lift her up off of the ground. Then he cut her jugular. At first the hot blood sprayed out; then it slowed to a pumping ooze. When the bleeding had almost stopped he cut her open from crotch to throat. The blood flowed down the sides of the killing floor into gutters underneath the room. The blood and the leavings down there were what made the room smell rotten. The smell of death by the dozens and by the hundreds; death so strong that my eyes burned and I gagged, but I wouldn’t let myself throw up because I was afraid to vomit in blood.

The foreman was a white man with great big arms and blood all down his thick apron. His curved knife was black and pitted, but you could see it was sharp by the way it cut through the cow’s shoulder joint; it made a tearing sound as it reaped. He was taller than anyone else in the slaughterhouse.

My father stood up straight and said, ‘You said it was seventeen dollars an’ this here is only ‘bout half that.’

‘I ain’t got time t’talk to you, boy. You take what you can git.’

My father stood up taller as if he was trying to get to be as tall as that white man; I got behind him and grabbed onto his pants.

‘You made me a deal, Mr. Mischew, and I want what’s mines.’

‘Niggah?’ the white man exclaimed as he slapped the flat of the blade on his apron. ‘You want sumpin’? ‘Cause you know I’m just the man give it to ya.’

If that white man did much business with my father he must’ve known that he was always soft-spoken and respectful. But when you cheat a man and call him nigger — and his boy is standing there too? Well that was why Mr. Mischew looked so surprised when he found himself flat on his back on the bloody floor.

Mouse cut open a fish and handed the limp corpse over to Dom, who scooped out the entrails and rinsed it in the pond.

I was sick and ashamed of being sick. My head felt hot.

‘Hey, Easy. You don’t look too good, son.’ Mouse smiled gently. ‘Why’ont you take a little nap. We get ya when it’s time t’go Dom’s.’

‘What you need all them fish fo’, man? We cain’t eat all that.’

‘Put ‘em in the smoker,’ Domaque said. ‘Smoke’em up an’ we got fish all the time. Go down t’Miss Alexander an’ trade some fo’drinks in the bar.’ Then he laughed and Mouse laughed and they kept on pulling guts out and tossing them in the water.

‘I’ma go back on t’Houston,’ I said. ‘I ain’t got no mo’ time fo’this mess.’

‘Com’on, Easy, gimme a break.’ Mouse’s mouth made a smile but his eyes were deadly. ‘Dom got a weddin’ gift fo’me but he wanna go fishin’ first. I tole you in the car we gonna go fishin’.’

‘How much longer you wanna be down here?’

‘Just a couple’a mo’ days. Anyway I need ya t’go out t’my stepdaddy’s wit’ me.’

‘Why?’

Mouse pointed a limp gar at me. ‘That man is the devil, Ease. Ain’t no way I can go out there alone.’

‘Com’on, Raymond, I ain’t never known you t’be scared’a nothin’.’

‘I am afraid of him,’ he said.

‘Abraham had cattle and silver and gold,’ Dom was saying as he led us through deep thickets toward his house. ‘An’ Lot was wit’ him an’ so was Abraham’s wife.’

‘What you always sayin’, Dom?’ I asked.

‘Rememberin’ the Bible like Miss Dixon say.’

‘What’s that?’

‘She say that to know the word you gotta make the Bible yo’ own. You gotta know the stories just like they happened t’friends’a yours.’ He laughed and went on, ‘An’ they was so rich that they built diffrent houses an’ after a time they vied fo’the land.’

Mouse came up next to me and said, ‘Dom wanna be a preacher, Ease. He always readin’ the Bible an’ whatnot. You know he’s a well-learnt boy, that ole white woman Dixon make him read ev’rythang.’

‘Who’s that?’ I asked, suddenly jealous of that freak’s knowledge. ‘How come she gonna teach him his letters?’

‘Just a crazy white woman, Ease. She ain’t got no knittin’ so she take on charities.’

We came to the clearing after an hour or so.

Dom’s house was an abandoned molasses shack. It was small and dilapidated but it was also nice because he had flowers growing all around it. Sunflowers on either side and golden wild rose bushes along the pebbled path that led to the front door. There were thick leafy bushes of pink dahlias at odd places in the yard. It looked as though all the flowering plants were wild but I knew they weren’t because there were no weeds to be seen. Sweet pea vines wound up the loose timbers that shored up the east wall of the shack. Purple passion fruit flowers knotted through the ash branches that surrounded the dale. There were other flowers of white and red but I didn’t know what kind they were, and neither did Dom.

Underneath the sweet peas was a clear patch of earth that was covered with the body parts of hard-rubber baby dolls. Arms and feet and heads with golden and brown hair. Mostly they were white dolls like the well-to-do white children have but there were some colored ones too. It looked like a pile of infant corpses washed up from their tiny graves in a terrible storm.

‘You got chirren, Dom?’ I asked.

He gave a high squeal that might have been pleasure and said, ‘Them there is my chirren, Easy.’ Then he chuckled and Mouse did too.

Dom said that his ‘room’ was too small for all us guests, so he went in and came out with three crates for us to sit on. It was very pleasant to sit out there in his wild yard. A garden as beautiful as any I’d seen in the rich part of Houston; it was almost like an inside room or greenhouse only with the sky for a roof. I told Dom how much I liked it and he smiled.

‘I’m always doin’ sumpin’ t’make it bettah,’ he said. ‘I’ma start puttin’ in fruit trees next year an’ by the time they grows maybe I have me a wife t’share ‘em wit’.’ He looked out over his garden with that terrible smile and dead eye.

‘Well, Dom, we got yo’ fish, now what you got fo’me?’ Mouse said in his taking-care-of-business voice.

‘I got it, Ray, right in the house.’

‘Well let’s have it. Easy an’ me got some miles t’cover fo’ we can rest.’

There were hummingbirds at the sweet peas, flicking in and out of the blossoms so fast you could hardly tell they were there. I felt funny, light-headed, but I didn’t want it to change. It seemed to me that this was the Eden Dom talked about; like he built his own garden right out of the Bible.

‘Here you go, Ray.’ Dom handed Mouse a doll that had been burned and mutilated. It had once been a white baby doll but the hard-rubber skin was now burnt black and the clothes it wore were the overalls that a farmer wore. The brown hair was clipped short and the arms were straight out as if it were being crucified on an invisible cross. The eyes were painted over as the wide white eyes you see on a man when he’s frightened and trying to see everything coming his way.

Mouse smiled and took the doll from Dom. It seemed that Dom was a little uneasy about giving away his ugly toy but I knew that it was hard saying no to Mouse.

‘Thank you, brother,’ Mouse said. ‘DaddyReese gonna just love it.’

Mouse’s laugh filled Dom’s garden until all the flowers seemed to vibrate with it.

Chapter Six

‘What’s that doll fo’?’ I asked Mouse.

We’d been walking for miles. He was moody again, the way he’d been when he and Etta first got engaged.

‘Just sumpin’, man. Nuthin’.’

‘You went th’ough all that fo’nuthin’?’

‘It’s sumpin’, I tole ya!’

It was a quiet country path, far enough away from water to be light on insects but dose enough to have trees and wildlife. I was coming down with something. My hands were cold and the inside of my head felt like cotton wadding.

‘How come Domaque make them dolls?’ I asked.

At first I thought he was going to ignore me, but after a few steps he said, ‘Dom started makin’ ‘em when we was small. Ya see, Dom got a crazy mad temper. He ain’t slow or nuthin,’ ‘cause you know he can read as good as that white woman teach’im. But he got nerves. Somebody make fun’a him an’ he start to shake an’ the next thing you know he’s actin’ crazy. When we was little the other kids would mess wit’ us, ‘specially when we all get together after Sunday school. One time this little boy, Bunny Drinkwater, started to rag po’ ole Dom till Dom was a tremblin’ leaf. An’ that just made all the other kids join in laughin’. But they didn’t know that Dom had carried a butcherin’ knife wit’im that day. He never said why but I guess he was tired’a bein’ the fool. Anyway he took out after Bunny but Bunny was quick an’ Dom couldn’t move fast t’save his life so we all was expectin’ Dom t’throw that knife down an’ cry... But that’s not what happened.’

A red fox ran out into the road ahead of us. It looked up at Mouse and pulled its head back like it recognised Raymond. Then it turned tail and slipped off into the brush. Mouse laughed and seemed to get in a better mood.

‘Anyway... Dom went out after Bunny swinging his knife so wild that I half expected he was gonna cut his own self; but then Bunny tripped. All the little boys screamed like girls. Dom swung down t’gut little Bunny but he missed and just kinda cut him on the arm. Bunny was so scared by that little cut that he was frozen on the ground an’ Dom raised his hand fo’ the kill...’ Mouse stared off into the woods remembering something. I was afraid to hear the rest. ‘Shit. One’a the big boys runned out and grabbed Dom fo’ he could finish it. You know I always feel bad when I think’a that; like I’m missin’ sumpin’.’

‘But what ‘bout the dolls?’

‘Yeah.’ Mouse picked up a thick branch from the path and started snicking off the switches to smooth it into a pole. ‘I tole Dom that he had t’git hold’a hisself ‘cause the folks ‘round there didn’t like humpbacks killin’ they babies. That’s when he got his first doll. He dressed it up like Bunny. He tore at it and pissed on it; threw it in a sty an’ let the pigs stamp it.’ Mouse laughed to himself. ‘Yeah, Easy, he had a fine ole time wit’ his dolls. An’ only me an’ Jo knew it.’

After a while the path grew crooked and rutty. The branches hung so low that I had to walk stooped over half of the time. Mouse said that the road had once been the way to town from his stepfather’s farm but that Reese let it go to seed years before, after Mouse’s natural mother died.

‘The ole man fell apart after Momma died,’ Mouse said.

When we got close enough to see the place Mouse stopped, wiped his mouth, and stared.

I was feeling tired so I said, ‘Well, let’s git on wit’ it. That’s it, right?’

Mouse didn’t say a word.

‘Raymond.’ I hoped his real name would shock him into moving.

‘Yeah?’

‘Let’s go.’

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, but he didn’t move.

‘What we waitin’ fo’?’

His eyes were colder than all winter long.

‘I’m scared, Easy.’

‘We cain’t turn back.’

‘Why not?’ he asked like a child might.

‘What kinda fool you gonna feel like if you come all the way out here an’ then you don’t even ask? You cain’t tell, you know, he might reach in his pocket an’ come out wit’ the bread.’

That seemed to tickle Mouse. The winter passed and he smiled.

‘All right, Easy. We see what he got t’give.’

The yard, if you could call it that, was a mess. There was an old wagon that had both of its axles broken, the rusted-out metal hulk of a steam boiler, and pointy-spouted oil cans scattered around. There was a jumbled pile of old bales of hay that must’ve laid there for five years and more. Old furniture tossed anywhere and many things I couldn’t even put a name to. I got the feeling that the old farmer went into a rage, taking everything he had and throwing it from the house and barn.

Little animals scurried in amongst the junk; there were mounds of ants; an opossum had made its nest in a hollow tree full of old clothes, rags.

There was a large stack of rotting timber that must’ve been intended for building at one time, laying in front of the house like a giant pile of dropped kindling.

A few wild roosters hopped around and four mongrel dogs sat in the shade of a sweet olive tree. The ground around them was scattered with dried turds and dead blades of grass.

The house was even worse.

It looked as if the main beams had been broken. The roof was caved in; all four walls leaned inward. The old two-story farm house had been folded into a squat hut. There was a pipe sticking out near the top of one of the slanted walls, a weak rag of smoke coming from it. If it wasn’t for that I’d’ve thought we had come on a deserted wreck.

One of the dogs got up, snarling and slavering at Mouse. It snapped and growled but just when it got near, Mouse slammed it on the side of the neck with his pole. It was a very simple thing; he did it almost like breathing, he was so blasé.

The dog’s yelp was so sharp that you could feel his pain. He rolled in the filth under the tree, making a terrible racket. The other dogs jumped up and started pacing, back and forth.

That’s when some boards that were once the front door of the house moved outward. A strong-looking black man stood in the wreck of that doorway. He wore overalls with no shirt and you could see the strength in his arms and chest like flats of dark steel. He looked like he belonged in the fields all day long, tearing up the sod and yanking trees out by the root.

Mouse dropped his stick. ‘Hey there, Reese,’ he said.

The big man came out of the doorway but he seemed to bring the shadows along with him.

‘This here’s my friend - Easy Rawlins.’

I said hello but the farmer didn’t even look at me. He was watching his dog, who by then had stopped wallowing and was simply laying in the dirt, shivering like one of the fish Mouse had stunned earlier that morning.

‘Wha’ happen my dog, Raymond?’

‘Search me. He run up like he knew me an’ then he fell into a fit.’ Mouse stared Reese straight in the face. He wasn’t letting anything show, except a slight squint from the sun.

‘Ain’t no room in the house fo’no guests, Ray. What you want?’

Mouse hunkered down against a rotted bale of hay and said, ‘Just wanted to shout at ya, Reese, you know it’s been some years an’ I thought I’d see ya while we down here.’

‘I ain’t got no food and no drinks fo’ guests neither. So if you got sumpin’ t’say then let’s have it.’

I was sorry I talked Mouse into coming.

‘Looks like you could use a hand out here, Reese. Farm’s goin’ to shit if you ask me.’

Reese took a deep breath, you could see the rage. Watching Mouse bait him was like watching a man striking matches over a vat of gasoline.

‘I mean you might need some help out here an’, well you know I’m kinda settlin’ down nowadays... gettin’ married to a girl down in Houston.’

Reese was through with small talk.

‘So I thought maybe we talk some business. You know after my weddin’ I might wanna come on out here an’ do some honest work.’

That got a smile from Reese. He said, ‘No, uh-uh. You go on an’ do whatever it is you doin’. I stay out to here.’

‘Well we don’t have to worry ‘bout that now. I thought you wanna come on out an’ celebrate wit’ me an’ Easy. You know it ain’t ev’ryday you get a daughter-in-law an’ maybe some grandkids.’

‘I gotta take care’a my dog...’ Reese said. He turned to go back into the house.

‘Reese!’ Mouse shouted as he jumped to his feet.

The older man stopped. Without turning he said, ‘I don’t take to folks raisin’ they voice t’me out on my farm, an’ I don’t take t’folks comin’ out an’ hurtin’ my dogs. So I guess you better go back to wherever you come from or I’ma go get my gun an’...’

‘I come fo’my part’a Momma’s dowry, Reese,’ Mouse said. ‘I know she had some jewelry an’ some money from her folks when you two got married an’ you leased land wit’ it. I know you got money out here now, an’ I want some for my own weddin’. It’s mines, Reese, an’ I want it.’

The last three words turned Reese around.

I fell back a step while he and Mouse faced off.

‘You ain’t got the right t’say her name, boy. She up ev’ry night worried ‘bout you an’ who knows what you doin’, or where? She worried herself sick an’ then she died an’ who you think brought it on?’ There were tears in Reese’s eyes. ‘She died askin’ fo’you. It broke my heart, an’ where was you? You weren’t nowhere. Nowhere. An’ my girl layin’ in that bed all yellah an’ sick ‘cause she so worried ‘bout a rotten chile like you...’

‘What good it gonna do, huh?’ Mouse shouted. ‘I’s barely a teenager an’ you come after me wit’ sticks an’ fists. What good it gonna do her t’see you beat me?’

‘You was a rotten boy, Raymond, an’ you’s a rotten man. You kilt her an’ now you want my money, but I see you dead fo’ I give up a dime.’

‘I kilt’er? You the one. You the one ravin’ ‘bout how yo’ boy so good an’ how I ain’t even legal. You the one beat on her an’ beat on me which hurt her even more cause my momma was a good woman an’ you is the devil! The devil, you hear?’ Mouse reached in the back of his pants for the second time that day. He pulled out that long-barrelled .41 and blasted that poor shivering dog. Then he shot the other three: crack, crack, crack; like ducks in an arcade. Reese hit the ground thinking that Mouse was gunning for him.

‘I’ma have what’s mines,’ Mouse said as he brought the bead down on Reese.

‘You can kill me an’ you can take my soul but I ain’t gonna give you a drop’a what’s mine!’

‘Raymond!’ I shouted. ‘Let it go, man! You cain’t get nuthin’ like this. Let it go.’

Mouse lifted the barrel a hair and shot over Reese’s head, then he turned to me and said, ‘We better get outta here.’

We went fast down the way we had come.

Half a mile down, Mouse stopped and pulled the baby doll from his jacket. He took out a string and tied it roughly around the doll’s neck and then he hung the doll from a branch so that it dangled down over the centre of the road.

‘He gonna come down here with that shotgun but you know he gonna be stopped by this,’ Mouse said loudly, to himself.

We took so many turns and shortcuts that I was lost. I think Mouse was lost too, because when it started getting dark he said, ‘We cain’t get nowhere’s good t’night, Ease. We better find some shelter.’

Nothing could’ve sounded worse to me. When we were running I’d started coughing and it wouldn’t go away. I was feverish and dizzy and I wanted my bed and my room in Houston more than anything.

‘Ain’t they noplace?’

‘Uh-uh, Ease. Anyway, I want to go to ground. Reese is good at night.’

He left me to rest next to a dead oak and went out looking for shelter. While I sat there, beginning to fade into my fever, I saw a barn owl glide through the low branches. It moved fast and silent and it never hit a twig, it was so sure. I thought to myself that some rabbit was going to die that night, then I started to shake; whether it was from the fear of mortality or chills I didn’t know.

‘There’s a lea some hunter musta used just a ways down, Ease,’ Mouse said when he returned.

‘What if Reese use it?’

‘He ain’t likely to be in no lea t’night. If he go out huntin’ it’a be wide awake.’

We laid side by side in that flat tent of leaves and baling wire. The grippe came full on me.

‘Wh-what you kill them dogs fo’?’

Raymond put his arm around me and held on tight to keep me from shivering. He said, ‘Shhh, Easy, you sick. Git some sleep and in the mo’nin’ you be fine.’

‘I-I-I just wanna know why. Why you kill them dogs?’

I felt like a cranky baby half napping on a Sunday afternoon.

‘I was mad, that’s all, Ease,’ Mouse whispered. ‘Reese talk ‘bout my momma like that an’ I’m like to kill’im.’

‘But them dogs didn’t hurt you.’

‘Go t’sleep now, Easy. Shh.’

I never knew Mouse to be so gentle. He held me all night and kept me warm as much as he could. Who knows? Maybe I would’ve died out there in Pariah if Mouse hadn’t held me to his black heart.

Chapter Seven

When I woke up things seemed better. Dew weighed heavily on the grass and leaves around us. It was bright and early. A jay stood not five feet from us with a grasshopper crumpled in its beak. The jay looked at me and for some reason that made me happy.

I could smell Mouse’s sour breath from over my shoulder; there was a tiny wheeze coming from him. Dead dogs and crazy family were far away for the moment. I felt a cough coming on but I stifled it to stay quiet just a little longer.

‘You ‘wake, Easy?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How you feel?’

I tried to say ‘fine’ but that started me coughing.

When I finally stopped Mouse crawled out of the lea and said, ‘We better get you someplace inside so you can rest. We better git you back t’Jo’s.’

‘Uh-uh. I ain’t goin’ there.’

‘Jo ain’t gonna do nuthin’ when you sick, Easy. And she’s the closest thing to a doctor for twenty miles.’

‘I ain’t goin’ t’Jo’s. No!’

‘You cain’t be comin’ wit’ me, Ease. Reese come up ‘hind me an’ I gotta move, fast.’

‘Why’ont we go on home?’

‘I ain’t finished yet. I made up my mind I’ma git what’s ines outta that man an’ that’s what I’ma do.’

‘He tole you no.’

‘That’s all right. I ain’t hesitatin’ yet. We got some more ground t’cover - me an’ daddyReese.’

‘I ain’t goin’ t’Jo’s.’

‘Okay. I take you over to Miss Dixon’s. She always willin’ t’he’p if she think you know Dom.’

‘Who is she?’ I asked, not trusting Mouse too much anymore.

He laughed a good laugh and said, ‘Don’t worry, Easy, she too old t’be thinkin’ bout love. Anyway, she’s white.’

It was a beautiful day.

We made it down to some railroad tracks and followed them for a few miles. It was one of those sultry southern mornings when all of the sounds of birds and insects are muffled by the heavy air. I was so weak that I couldn’t bring myself to worry about what Mouse was planning; all I wanted was a bed somewhere and some food.

After almost an hour we came to a large field that abutted a smooth dirt road. Across the road was a house. It was a real house with a garden and a fence and all the walls standing straight.

‘That’s Miss Dixon’s place,’ Mouse said. ‘Now you let me do the talkin’, all right?’

‘Uh-huh. But I ain’t gonna stay there if I don’t like it.’ ‘Don’t you worry, even a white man’d like this.’ There was a swing chair out front. The porch was dosed by a lattice covered with forsythia. When we walked up the front stairs Mouse took the lead, but before he could knock on the screen door the inner door opened.

‘Raymond Alexander.’ It was a statement. ‘What you want here?’

Mouse doffed a make-believe hat and said, ‘Miss Dixon, I come out here on a piece of business for Domaque.’

‘I didn’t know you were back in Pariah, Raymond. Why is that?’

Whether she was asking why she wasn’t told about Raymond’s return or she just wanted to know why he had come back I couldn’t tell, but Mouse didn’t even try to figure it out.

‘Dom axed me t’ax you t’keep Easy here for a night ‘cause Easy’s sick. Come on up here, Ease, an’ let Miss Dixon see ya.’

I moved up to his side, looking as hard at that little old woman as she was at me.

‘Anyway,’ Mouse continued, ‘Dom has got business down in Jenkins an’ he wanted Easy someplace where he’d be warm. You know he’s got the grippe an’ that can come to pneumonia in a second.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ she said.

‘Dom said that he gonna come get Easy tomorrah if he can please stay in some ole corner t’night.’

‘Domaque asked you this?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And how am I to know that Domaque asked you this?’

‘Well you know ma’am that Dom an’ me is the best of friends...’

‘I know,’ she interrupted, ‘that you are a sinner, Raymond Alexander, and a bad influence on the ground you trod. I was hoping that you were gone forever and that that sweet poor chile Domaque was free of your evil ways.’

‘I’m just visitin’, ma’am.’

She looked at him and then at me. ‘Why, this boy could be as bad as you. How’m I to know?’

She moved to dose the door but Mouse spoke up again. ‘Ma’am, I’m not lyin’ to ya. Dom wants Easy t’stay wichyou ‘cause Easy got the grippe, an’ if you don’t believe me then you feel his head an’ see if I’m lyin’.’

She looked suspicious for a minute but then she pushed open the screen door and came toward me. I moved back a halfstep, out of reflex I guess, but Mouse grabbed me and made me stand still.

Miss Dixon was a small white woman with pale hair that was pulled straight back against her head. She wore a floor-length flat green dress that had long sleeves and a neckline at the throat. She was very thin but not brittle-looking like many old white women; she could’ve been made from solid bone from the way her hard hand felt against my forehead.

‘Lord, he’s burnin’ up!’

‘I tole you,’ Mouse said.

‘You a friend to Domaque, son?’ she asked me.

The porch beams started shaking gently before my eyes, like leaves on a breeze.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.

‘Dom come over by noon, ma’am,’ Mouse said. He already had a foot down the stairs.

‘You tell him to bring Mr. Dickens’ book, Raymond,’ she said to him. Then to me, ‘Come on inside.’

I turned to say something to Mouse, but he was going down the stairs with his back to me. He was whistling and moving fast. I almost called to him but then a feeling came over me: I wanted Mouse to be far away and I didn’t care what happened to him or his family; I didn’t care about weddings or a good time anymore. I just wanted to sleep.

‘What’s your full name, son?’

‘Ezekiel Rawlins, ma’am.’

‘Well come on in ‘fore you burn a hole in my porch.’

The entrance to her house had three coat racks, six umbrella stands, and more mirrors and knickknacks on the wall than I could count. There was a darkwood chair of a different make against each wall and on either side of the door. It was a small entrance room and so crowded with furniture that we two could barely fit in it at the same time.

She led me quickly through to the parlour.

This was a large room with blue velvet wallpaper from the ivory-carpeted floor to the cream-colored ceiling. There was a blue sofa, with a matching chair, and a red love seat with two matching chairs. There was a yellow couch and a brown one too. Each of them had matching chairs. The sofas and chairs were so dose together that you couldn’t sit on them.

There were the coffee tables: maple, cherry, pine, and mahogany; all of them stacked with every different kind of tea setting and little china sculpture that you can imagine. She had bureaus and cabinets, one behind the other; some of them had glass doors and you could make out the piles of plates and stacks of teacups.

I looked at that old woman again - she must’ve been in her late seventies.

I’d seen it happen before. The oldest member of the family outlives all of her husbands and siblings, and even her children sometimes, and all the belongings of all the families come to her in a big lonely house. She lives with five houses’ worth of furniture and dishes, old clothes, and knickknacks.

‘Come on, Ezekiel, you’re in my charge now.’

The next room was the music room. There were three upright pianos and different leather bags in the shapes of guitars, fiddles, and even a tuba.

‘Go on, take your clothes off and get in that tub.’ She opened a door that led to a small washroom. I hesitated a minute but she just shook her hand back and forth to show how impatient she was and I went in.

‘You’re lucky I take my bath on Wednesdays; I just filled the tub,’ she said, leaving me to my toilet. ‘And I have clothes from my uncle you can wear, he was ‘bout your size.’

The washroom smelled of soap. There was a brass sink and a commode and a large washtub on lion feet. Next to the sink was a table with a giant clamshell on it. The clamshell was filled with hundreds of little flowers made from soap. Red, green, and yellow soap, and violet and blue too. Each one hinted of a different spice but mostly they smelled like soap.

I took off my clothes and realised how bad I smelled after the last two days. I tried to pile them in a corner where the smell wouldn’t be too offensive in that sweet-smelling room, and then I jumped into the tub.

‘Ow! Oh!’ The water was so hot that I nearly jumped up. I thought she was trying to kill me.

‘Nice an’ hot, huh, Ezekiel? Secret to a long life is a hot bath twice a week and no liquor,’ she called through the closed door.

I got used to the water after a bit. The heat along with fever made me even more light-headed and tired. The sun was shining in through the lace curtains on the window. Miss Dixon - I found out later that Abigail was her first name - turned on a radio somewhere in the house and it was playing big-band music. The house was filled with the sound of scratchy clarinets and pianos. That was the finest living that I had ever experienced up to that time.

I’d wake up now and then and look at how my fingers and toes wrinkled in the water. Finally the water turned cold and I started shivering. So I got out and put on the green suit Miss Dixon had hung outside the door.

‘Welllll... don’t we look so much better,’ she said when I came into the kitchen. ‘Clean and scrubbed is halfway back to health.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘You hungry, Ezekiel?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Well you just sit down and I’ll give you some stew.’

There was already a plate on one of the three tables she had in the dinette. I went to a chair next to that setting but she yelled, ‘Not there! Sit at one of the other tables.’

I didn’t know what she meant but I went to the pine table near the back door and sat down.

‘You know I cain’t sit at the same table with you, Ezekiel,’ she said as she put a bowl of beef stew in front of me. ‘You know it’s not proper for white and colored to sit together. I mean it’d be as much an insult to your people as mine if we were to forget our place.’

I watched her go to her separate seat and I thought to myself that she was crazy but I couldn’t keep my mind on I it because that was the first food I’d had in almost a whole day. It was good stew too. I can still remember how it tasted of black pepper and wine.

‘How do you know Domaque, Ezekiel?’

‘Well, uh, well I wanted t’learn t’read bettah, an’ Mouse, I mean Raymond, tole me ‘bout him.’ I was lying but I wasn’t, not really.

‘Do you read?’

‘A little, ma’am. I can sign my name and make the sounds of letters... I know that a “p” and a “h” together sound like a “f.” ‘ I thought about Domaque quoting the Bible and about my father then. My father always told me that I should learn to read. Maybe it was because I was so weak but I felt about ready to cry.

‘Reading is one of the few things that separates us from the animals, Ezekiel. You’d know all about the man they named you for if you could read.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And all you have to do is to keep on reading those sounds and asking Domaque and others about how you read. Maybe you can have someone read to you. Then you read it to yourself...’ she said and then she drifted off into a daydream.

We finished eating and she told me to go find a couch in the parlour to sleep on and that she’d come out there later to see how I was. But first she put a brown powder in some tea and gave it to me.

‘Josephine Marker makes this out to the swamps. She’s a real wonder at flu powders and the like.’

I was nervous about drinking any tea that Jo had a hand in making, but I took it to be polite.

After that all I remember is laying down on the yellow couch. When I opened my eyes again it was night.

Miss Dixon was standing at the open door in a long white dress, and the moon was shining in on her. There were so many chairs and tables around that it was like being in an auditorium after a big function when all the chairs and whatnot are stacked for storage.

‘You still got a fever, Ezekiel,’ she said out of the open door. ‘But I’ll get some more tea and all you got to do is to go back to sleep and you’ll be fine.’

‘Thank you, ma’am, I mean fo’ the sleep, I mean.’ I was very uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to spending much time with white people and I knew that colored people are always in danger of doing the wrong thing when they have to deal with whites. It was fine in Fifth Ward down in Houston, or in little colored towns like Pariah, usually, because there weren’t any white people around for the most part. The only time I had ever spent around white people was when I was working, and then how I was to act was clear because whites were always the boss. That was easy because all I ever said was ‘yes’ and ‘no;’ but mainly Yes.’

‘That’s all right, Ezekiel.’ She turned from the door and came back to the brown chair, about three pieces of furniture away from me. The room was dark except for the moonlight. ‘You know I’m a good woman if they let me be.’

‘I’m sure you are, ma’am. You sure been good t’me.’

‘You think so because you’re not from around here, but if you lived here you’d be like all the rest of them.’

‘Dom speaks mighty well on you, ma’am.’ I was wishing that I could be away from there. Why did she have to talk to me? One wrong word and I could be in jail or worse.

‘Domaque and his momma live in the swamp, so they’re different,’ she said.

‘They sure are diffrent but they still like you.’

Miss Dixon laughed. It was a nice laugh and she almost seemed like a normal person to me.

She said, ‘You don’t see, Ezekiel. What I mean is that Domaque and Josephine don’t mind me because I don’t own the bayou lands.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘I own just about everything else. My family owned it at first. The Dixons, the MacDoughs, and the Lambert family owned all of this way back. But they married each other and they died or they moved away and I’m the only one left. Our families had sharecropping and plantations down this way for more’n a hundred years... Now it’s all back to the tenants. I don’t even collect rent but they know that the land is mine.’ She looked over at the window as if all the people of Pariah were there, looking in. ‘They know that one day I’m going to die and some strangers are going to come down and reclaim my property.’

‘Why cain’t they just buy the land from you?’ I really wanted to know.

‘The country people are poor, Ezekiel, they couldn’t get the cash to buy. But even if they could — this is my land,’ her voice became hard, ‘for me and mine. I can’t just hand it over to strangers.’

She was quiet for a while and I didn’t dare to speak.

Then she said, ‘I’ll get you some covers and that tea.’

When she’d given me the blankets and medicine she said good night and went up to bed.

I was feeling tired but better and I could think for a while before going to sleep. I thought about that grasshopper crushed in that jay’s beak and about Miss Dixon; how she was like a bird too.

A lot of people might not like how I acted with that white woman. They might ask: Why didn’t he get mad? or Why would Mouse be breaking his butt to get money out of a poor farmer when this rich white lady would be so much of a better target?

Mouse was just doing what came natural to him. But there’s a reason I wasn’t angry then, why I’m still not angry and why the people of Pariah didn’t rise up and kill that woman: It’s what I call the ‘Sacred Cow Thinking.’

Miss Dixon lived alone out in a colored community that hated her because she owned everything, even the roads they walked on. But Miss Dixon, and every other white person, was, to that colored community, like the cow is to those Hindus over in India. They’d all starve to death, let their children starve, before they’d slaughter a sacred cow. Miss Dixon was our sacred cow. She had money and land and she could read and go to fine events at the governor’s house. But most of all she was white and being white was like another step to heaven...

Killing her would have been worse than killing our own children; killing her, or even thinking of it, would be like killing the only dream we had.

Chapter Eight

The next morning we had breakfast but I pretended to be sicker than I felt and lay back down on the yellow couch after we ate.

It was nice that she took me in but it was strange too. I felt in danger whenever she looked at me.

At noon I was saved by a knock on the door.

‘Domaque Harker,’ Miss Dixon said through the closed screen.

‘How you do, Miss Dixon?’

‘Very fine, and how are you?’

‘I’m fine too, ma’am.’

‘And your mother?’

‘I ain’t seen her in two, three days, ma’am, but I’m sure she’s fine and would wanna know that your health is fine too.’

Dom was speaking slower than he had when I was with him. I figured that Miss Dixon was teaching him how to talk as well as read.

‘And what story are you working on now, Domaque?’

‘I’m workin’ on Noah’s tale, ma’am.’

All of this talk was still through the dosed screen.

‘And how does that go?’

‘How Noah saw the storm comin’ an’ how he gathered all the married children an’ all the pairs of animals. How he rode the storm of God’s righteous anger in love of his wife and his chirren an’ their chirren...’

‘That’s the way you have to do it. Make it your own.’

She opened the door with that and Domaque shambled in. That skinny woman and barrel-shaped hunchback looked so strange standing there amongst the umbrella stands and mirrors. To look at them you would say that they had nothing in common. But there they were understanding each other so well that they could have been good friends, or even blood. They would never even sit down at the same table to break bread. But they’d get together and tell each other stories and laugh and be happy. I remember feeling loneliness watching them.

Miss Dixon asked us to stay to dinner but Dom said that we had to be going, being polite I guess. She gave us some sandwiches and fruit in a paper bag to eat on the way.

I was hoping that she’d let me keep her uncle’s suit but she didn’t. My clothes smelled all the worse for the few hours of cleanliness that I’d been given.

She waved goodbye from the front porch like a mother sending her kids off to school. I felt bad about leaving in some ways. I had never stayed in such a fine house and I liked it; but I was glad to be clear of that strange white lady.

‘She funny, huh?’ Domaque asked.

‘Yeah, I guess. She comes right out and says what she thinks and don’t care how it sounds.’

Dom smiled to himself and then closed his lips over his giant mouth. When he did that his lips came together in a point as if he were trying to kiss something very small.

He said, ‘Yeah, that’s why I like her, I guess.’

‘I don’t know if it’s too good always sayin’ anything you feel.’

‘Yeah, but that way you don’t get beholdin’ t’some’un. She teach me how t’read but not so’s that I owe her nuthin’. I know she do it fo’her pleasure, not mine.’

Afternoon was overcast and cooler than it had been. I was feeling better but after we’d walked a few miles I was ready to rest. Dom said that Pariah was only a short ways and I had a bed wailing for me there.

‘A bed where?’ I asked him.

‘Out at Miss Alexander’s.’

‘She any kin to Mouse?’

‘She Raymond’s momma’s sister.’

‘An’ what’s she like?’ I didn’t want to tell Dom about me and his mother, that wouldn’t have been proper. But I didn’t want a repeat of my one night in the woods either.

‘Mouse said you might be worried ‘bout stayin’ there. He tole me t’tell you that you be safe wit’ his auntie.’

When Dom walked he put his right foot forward and reached into the air with his right hand as if he were carrying a staff; his left hip would fall back and then he’d bring the left leg up with a dragging movement, straightening his shoulders as he went. He was able to walk very fast in that odd way. When I asked him what else it was that Mouse said, that walk became even more peculiar.

‘He said...’ Dom couldn’t go on for laughing and drooling.

‘What?’ I was worried that Mouse had told him about Jo and me; that this grinning came just before Dom pulled out his butchering knife.

‘He said...,’ Dom ducked his head.’...that maybe he knows a girl be my friend.’

Pariah looked wilder than the woods. It was a crooked town, not more than two blocks of unpaved red day street and all there was to it was the one street. The north side of town was at least eight feet higher ground than the south side. Crossing the rutted and eroded road between them was more like going up or down hill. All the buildings were made from the same weathered wood and only one of them got to three floors.

There were no telephone wires or cars or any sign at all that we were in the modern age. If people were out in front of a building, on the raised wooden platform they had for sidewalk, and they were sitting in a chair - well, it was a homemade chair, something somebody threw together one morning before breakfast and then they sat in it for the next thirty years.

But there weren’t too many people outside. A couple of women carrying large baskets on their heads and one lone buggy drawn by a spotted mare. The buggy was at such an angle on that slanted road that I expected to see it turn over at any minute. But it didn’t, of course, it’s only cars that need flat pavement.

All the buildings looked more or less the same. You could tell them apart though, by the signs. The church had two white crosses on the front doors and the barbershop had a red-and-white-striped candy cane painted on the wall. The general store, which was also the bar, had a wooden Indian out front.

‘Here we go,’ Dom said when we got to the wooden Indian. ‘Miss Alexander’s general store and music bar.’

It was a country store. Canned goods along the walls and fresh food on a counter at the back. There was one rack for dresses and men’s jackets and a table full of shirts, socks, and shoes. Three men were playing cards and drinking at a table in the centre of the room. It was a big room and, for the most part, empty.

‘Hi, Dom,’ one of the cardplayers said.

‘Afternoon, Domaque,’ hailed a big woman from behind the counter.

‘Miss Alexander!’ Dom yelled. ‘This here is Easy, friend’a Raymond.’

‘Well...’ She smiled and showed us a mouth full of gold-rimmed teeth. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, baby.’ She smiled again, turning her profile on us. ‘Raymond think the sun rise and set on you.’

‘But he still don’t come out till night,’ I said.

That big, colorful, woman let out a laugh so loud that it almost knocked me over. She was wearing a bright white dress with giant blue flowers embroidered on it, a dress like the Mexicans wear to Carnival.

‘He said that you was all taciturn ‘cause you was sick but he didn’t say that you was funny too.’

She had large eyes that followed everything happening in the room. If somebody raised their voice at the card table she was taking it in. If someone walked in the door her eyes said hello to them but the whole time she was talking to me and Dom.

‘Raymond say he want you t’stay wit’ us a couple’a days,’ she said. ‘I got a room right out back that you can use, an’ on weekends we got entertainment. I mean we ain’t got nuthin’ t’compete wit’ Houston, Fifth Ward, but it’s nice.’

She put her hand on my forearm. ‘You can take some clothes from the rack while I clean what you got.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I hope you like it while you here.’

‘I ain’t too worried ‘bout that, ma’am. I been a little sick an’ I could use some sleep. But when I get better I’ma go get our car an’ head back down t’Houston whether Mouse come back or not.’

‘Oh, he be back fo’ then. Raymond ain’t gonna miss no free ride.’

‘I hope not. But either way I’ma be gone by day after tomorrah at the latest.’

‘Uh-huh, yeah.’ A woman had come in the door and Miss Alexander went over to talk with her. As she left she said to Dom, ‘Show Easy t’his room in the back, honey.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ the hunchback said.

Dom showed me to a little shack behind the store. It was put together pretty well and there was no need for heat. It had a spring bed against the wall and a crate table in the middle of the floor. There was a big tin pitcher full of water in the corner and sheets and towels neatly folded on the bed. There was a stack of old newspapers next to the door.

‘I’ma leave you now, Easy. Momma want me t’come out to her place an’ see her guests, an’ Raymond might come by.’

‘You tell Mouse t’get his butt down here fo’ I leave him.’

‘He be here soon, Easy. But you know he gotta finish up business wit’ Reese first.’

I wondered how much Dom knew about the crazy violence Mouse had in his heart for daddyReese.

‘Can you read them papers, Dom?’

‘Oh, yeah, I already read mosta them. Not all of it, but what I could. Them is Sweet William’s papers.’

‘Who?’ .

‘Sweet William. That’s Miss Alexander’s entertainment. He’s a barber down in Jenkins but on the weekends he come up here t’play guitar an’ sing.’

‘He reads?’

‘Oh, yeah. William read the whole paper.’

‘Must be a lot in that.’

‘Uh-huh, Easy. Things you couldn’t even believe if you ain’t read ‘em yourself. It use t’be that William read t’us an’ I always say, “No!” like I didn’t believe what he said. I said, “No!” an’ that was it. But since I can read I know that a colored man runned a race in Europe an’ beat all the rest of the runners of the world. Yeah, an’ he was from America just like us. Uh-huh. You know Bunny Drinkwater say that the best thing we can do is run, but that’s just jealousy talkin’. Yeah. Readin’ is sumpin’.’

I wanted to ask him more but I was tired and a little shy of how ignorant I was. Being a young man I felt I should be able to do anything better than a hunchback, and the fact that I couldn’t rubbed me wrong.

After Dom left I laid down on the bed and thought about things again. It was the first chance I’d had to collect myself in a few days and I wanted to get my head straight.

But no matter what I tried to think of my mind went back to those dogs. I could see them jerk around as the bullets tore through their skinny bodies. Just a quick jerk and they hit the ground, dead. I had seen dead before and not long after that I was in the world war where death came by the thousands and the tens of thousands; but I never felt so close to death as when I saw those dogs die. Just a twitch in the air and then they fell to earth, one by one, heavier than life can ever be.

I’d close my eyes but then I’d start awake thinking about what must’ve crossed before their dog eyes as they died; I was so upset that I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid to sleep; afraid because I had seen death in a way where it was real for me and I worried that I’d never wake up. I wanted my father again; wanted him for the thousandth time since we ran out of that slaughter house and he ran out of my life forever. I wanted him to come back and protect me from death.

That’s when I decided to learn how to read and write.

I looked at those papers and thought that if I could read what was in them I wouldn’t have to think about those dogs; I thought that if I could read I wouldn’t have to hang around people like Mouse to tell me stories, I could just read stories myself. And if I didn’t like the stories I read then I could just change them the way Dom did with the Bible.

That was a big moment for me. And I’d say that the whole trip was worth it just for that, but I can’t say that because I lived to tell about it and not everybody else did.

Just thinking about reading calmed me down enough to get to sleep. I rested for a long time and then I found myself awake: I was laying back on the bed, staring out of the window, thinking how pretty the moon was. A man was sitting on the crate with a tin guitar in his lap, pulling on the frets and plucking odd notes. When he noticed my eyes he lit a match and set its flame to a candle at his feet.

‘Well... you back wit’ the livin’, eh?’

He was a well-dressed, dark-skinned man. He was wearing a tapered white suit, like the deacons wear in church on Easter, and a black shirt with pearl buttons that were open down to the middle of his chest. His hair was long and processed straight back. His face was so dean and shiny that I remembered thinking that he must’ve shaved three times before he oiled his skin.

‘They say you come out here wit’ Mouse?’

‘You call ‘im that too?’

‘Shee... I’m the one named him.’ Sweet William ran his red tongue along black lips. ‘You could say that I was a buildin’ block that help t’make Mouse who he is.’

‘Might not be too much t’be proud’a,’ I said.

William leaned back and gave me a leery stare. ‘I thought you an’ him was friends?’

‘We are friends, yeah, but I been th’ough some things out here in the country, man... I wanna go back t’Houston.’

Instead of talking he started playing a slow blues tune. I’ve always loved blues music; when you hear it there’s something that happens in your body. Your heart and stomach and liver start to move to the music.

‘What kinda things?’ he asked, still playing.

‘Things.’

‘Like what?’

He kept on playing.

‘Man, I don’t even know who you is. What you gonna be askin’ me all this?’

‘My name is William. I play music here on Friday an’ Saturday. An’ I wanna hear ‘bout Mouse; I ain’t seen him in, oh, ‘bout four years. That’s all, I don’t mean nuthin’.’

All this time and he was still playing his guitar.

I shook my head and said, ‘It’s just that I ain’t been in the country for a while an’ it kinda gits t’me. An’ Mouse don’t know no normal peoples. He know witches an’ hunchbacks an’ old white ladies an’ everything.’

William’s teeth were pure white.

‘Yeah, that Mouse don’t be foolin’. But you know folks is diffrent from country than they is in the city.’ He was rocking back and forth to the rhythm. ‘In the city they all wear the same clothes and they get t’be like each other ‘cause they live so close together. It’s like trees; when they real close they all grow straight up to get they li’l bit’a sun. But out here you got room t’spread out. They ain’t no two trees in a field look the same way. Maybe one is in the wind an’ it grow on a slant or another one be next to a hill so one side is kinda shriveled from the afternoon shade.’ Then he began to hum a tune in a strained high voice that sent shivers down my backbone.

After a while he started talking again. ‘It’s like my music; I ain’t so good at it. Once Blind Lemon Jefferson played here, it was more’n fifteen years ago but I remember how good he played like it was last week. An’ you know if ole Lemon lived round here I wouldn’t never even look at a guitar. Why would I bother when I could hear him?

‘But I can play out here an’ be who I wanna be ‘cause it’s only me who does it. Uh-huh, uh,’ and he started his wordless song again. I could see where Mouse learned a lot from William. He was a smooth character from his slicked-back hair to his way of talking in song.

When he stopped again he asked me to come listen down in the store. ‘It ain’t Houston but we get pretty wild on a Friday night. Uh-huh.’

They had cleared out the tables from the centre of the store and a dozen or more people were there drinking and talking. The cardplayers had moved their table into a corner. William went to his chair and started playing as soon as we walked in. Miss Alexander came over to give me a tumbler full of moonshine.

‘You feelin’ better, honey?’ she asked.

I lied and said I was.

‘How you like it out here so far?’

‘It’s pretty nice, ma’am. I’m not used to all this fresh air though.’

She knew that I meant more than I was saying. She laughed and took me by the arm and introduced me to various folks.

‘...this is Nathaniel Peters,’ she said when we came up to a stout farmer with hamlike hands. ‘Our best farmer and minister. This here is Easy, reverend.’

‘Please t’meetcha, son. I hope we see y’all on Sunday.’

‘If I’m still here, sir.’

‘Well... you know the Lord wants to see ya.’

‘Then I want you to meet a girlfriend’a mine, Theresa.’ Miss Alexander turned and waved to a woman across the room. ‘Com’on over, honey, an’ meet Easy.’

‘You from Houston, huh?’ the skinny black girl said. She was missing one of her front teeth. ‘My cou’in Charlene live down there, on Avenue B.’

‘What’s her last name?’ I asked.

‘Walker.’

‘Yeah, I think I know her. She like to dance?’

‘That’s Charlene,’ she laughed. ‘She love t’dance.’

We lied like that and drank and danced to William’s songs for the rest of the night. She told me all about her dreams and her plans and her family but I forgot everything she said; I was just being friendly. The only thing I remembered was that she told me how to get out to her house - which wasn’t too very far away.

I don’t remember passing out.

I woke up in the bed out back, alone and hungover.

Chapter Nine

By the time I had the heart to get out of bed it was noon. Miss Alexander was sitting at the counter in the back and the cardplayers were still at their table in the corner; Sweet William had joined them. He waved at me and I smiled, or at least I tried to.

‘How you sleep, Easy?’ he asked.

‘Like a corpse,’ I groaned. ‘Woke up like one too. But when I looked in the closet I saw some clothes there... I din’t mean t’kick you outta yo’ room.’

‘They’s lotsa beds in Pariah.’ He winked at me and for a second I felt like I was talking to Mouse.

I could see that Miss Alexander was waiting for me at her counter. I felt like a whole flock of wayward sheep; like I needed a herder to set me straight.

‘You don’t look so good, Easy,’ Miss Alexander said.

She was wearing a red dress that was so bright I had to look away.

‘No, I just look bad right when I wake up,’ I said. I was sick but, like a fool, I didn’t want to tell her because I was afraid that she’d keep me from leaving. ‘I be ready t’leave tomorrah mornin’.’

‘Ain’t you gonna go t’church wit’ us tomorrah?’

‘I gotta be gittin’ back.’

‘Even a sinner got a little time fo’the Lord, Easy.’

‘Well, maybe... What time is the service?’

‘Reverend’s a farmer too, so he start early; us’ally ‘bout eight.’ Then she smiled. ‘Theresa wasn’t too happy ‘bout you last night.’

I felt my face flush.

‘I think she likes you,’ Miss Alexander went on. ‘An’ there you was laid out just like a pile’a dead wood.’

She laughed and I did too.

‘Why’ont you go over wit’ the men an’ I get you some food.’

I sat in a chair against the wall and listened to the men talk while they played. Miss Alexander brought me a plate of dirty rice and greens but I didn’t have any stomach for it. I put the plate on the floor and a dog climbed out from under the table and wolfed it down. It looked like one of Reese’s dogs; hungry, near death.

The men talked about everything: gardens and women and white people. It felt good to listen to them laugh and trade lies. It’s good to be a man with no worries, among friends. I remember every story they told but, for the most part, they didn’t have anything to do with me.

One of the men was called Buck. He was older, maybe sixty, and he had a high strained laugh.

‘Hit me!’ he said to William, then he flung down three cards. He was a sly card player. You could tell he was tricky because every time he’d take some cards he’d try to keep the others’ attention distracted by bringing up some shocking news.

‘Reese Corn is dyin’,’ Buck said as he shuffled his cards.

I don’t know how she could tell from across the room but Miss Alexander strolled over as soon as they started to talk about Reese.

‘What?’ That was a young man, tall and skinny, name of Murphy. I never did get his last name.

‘It’s true.’ Buck was studying his new cards. ‘My boy’s girl was down there yestiday an’ she said he looked bad.’ He looked up from his cards and smiled. ‘I raise ya five,’ and he pushed a nickel to the pot.

‘What you talkin’ ‘bout, Buck?’ Miss Alexander said.

‘That’s what Yolanda said.’ He hunched his shoulders.

‘What’s Yolanda doin’ out to there anyway?’

‘She do piecework. Ole Reese ain’t bought a new shirt in thirty years but he cain’t sew fo’shit neither. So Yolanda go out there every two months or so an’ patch him up.’

‘I see ya,’ Murphy said.

‘I’ll take that an’ I go up five.’ William threw two buffalo heads in the game.

‘But the weird thing is his do’,’ Buck said and then waited for one of the men to ask. No one took the bait, because they knew he was just trying to break their concentration.

But Miss Alexander didn’t care about the game.

‘What about his door?’ she asked.

‘It was painted black; jet black with doves of garlic hangin’ from it.’

‘Yeah?’ Miss Alexander opened her eyes wide. ‘Maybe my sister come back t’haunt his evil soul.’

‘I meet ya, William, what you got?’ Buck nodded. ‘I don’t know what’s happenin’ wit’im, ma’am, but sumpin’ got him scared; scared to death, almost.’

Miss Alexander shook her wide mane. ‘Evil calls on itself.’

‘Amen,’ William said. Tair’a red queens.’

I could still see that doll hanging from the tree.

Later on in the game Murphy told William that he had been down to Jenkins the week before.

‘Oh yeah?’ William grinned. ‘You down at the saloon when Big Jim got there?’

‘Mmmm-hm, you better believe it! He come in wit’ that badge stuck in his hat an’ that nightstick in his hand an’ yell, “You fellahs better duck,” an’ he pult out that long-snout pistol he got.’ Murphy laughed. ‘Man, we was kissin’ the boards like it was true love.’

They all laughed. Jim was the colored deputy for the county. He was tough and mean and it seemed that he was pretty well liked in the district.

The gambling and talk went on that way. I leaned against the wall and faded in and out of sleep until a long time later.

Clifton came through the door in the late afternoon. He looked worse than I felt. His clothes were soiled and so wrinkled that it was clear that he had been sleeping outside. His jaw was set so that he looked like he couldn’t ever talk again. When I called to him he jumped and his hands started shaking. Then he turned, headed for the door. He would have run out if two men hadn’t been walking in right then. He turned back to the room, then around to the door, but the men, just two old sharecroppers, were looking at him and he backed away. I got to him before he could run.

‘What’s wrong, Clifton? Someone after you?’

‘Shut up!’

The look he gave me was the look of a hunted man; I’d seen it in my own father’s face, and I respected it even in a fool like Clifton. I told him that I had a room in back and he was happy to go there. I sent him on, then I went over to Miss Alexander. She had watched the whole scene very closely.

‘What’s wrong wit’ yo’ friend, Easy?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know yet but I’m fixin’ t’find out when I get back there.’ Then I hesitated a minute. ‘You been pretty good t’me, ma’am, but I have to tell ya that I ain’t got no money right now, t’pay ya. I mean Mouse ‘posed t’give me a little change but...’

‘Don’t you worry, Easy. Raymond sent a few dollars over wit’ Dom the day ‘fore you got here. I thought you knew.’

‘Uh-uh.’

‘Yeah! You want sumpin’ fo’ your friend?’

‘Maybe some food and a little whiskey.’

‘Sure thing.’

She went out to the kitchen and came back with a tray full of food and a half-full whiskey bottle. There was only one glass.

‘Glass is fo’ yo’ friend, Easy. I don’t think you need any more.’

Clifton was standing in the corner of the room with his fists at his side, clenched just as tight as his mouth. He looked past me to see if anyone else was coming.

‘Take it easy, Cliff.’

When I handed him the tray he hunkered down on that crate, eating like a hungry animal.

He started in with the chicken and didn’t even stop when he licked the plate clean. He took the chicken bones, cracked them open with his teeth, and sucked the marrow out from every one.

I went over to the bed to wait for him to finish; when I laid back I felt all the strength go out of me.

‘What’s your problem, Clifton?’ I asked when he was through.

‘What you mean?’

‘Com’on, man, you know what I mean. What you doin’ here shakin’ like that and so hungry you eatin’ bones?’

Clifton downed a whole glass of whiskey and doubled up trying to keep it down. I was sure he was going to vomit but he just put his hands on his knees and made snorting noises until he could straighten out.

‘Yo’ friend come out to the witch’s house night before last.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Uh-huh, an’ he said that the word come down to a deputy out here called Jim, an’ Jim is on my trail.’

‘He said that?’

‘Then he say that I gots ta run ‘cause Jim is a quarter injun an’ he always find what he looks fo’. He say I’m a sittin’ duck out at the witch house so I better run.’

‘What Jo say?’

‘Witch don’t say nuthin’. She just ask yo’ friend if it’s true an’ he say yeah.’ Clifton took another big drink and went through the same pain.

After he was sitting up again I asked, ‘Where’s Ernestine?’

‘He say that I cain’t run wit’ no girl so I should go alone. But I tole him that I ain’t gonna listen t’that shit an’ Ernestine comin’ ‘long wit’ me!’ Clifton yelled the last words and I could imagine Mouse smiling right then; it gave me goose flesh. ‘But Ernestine tole me t’go. She said she don’t wanna run from the law an’ she said that I gotta take this on myself.’ Clifton wept and took another drink. ‘When I seen she ain’t gonna come I said I be back but she said don’t even bother wit’ that.’

He put his head to his knees and cried.

I was too weak to comfort him but I knew what was right. I knew that I should tell him everything I knew about Mouse; what a rotten man he was and how he messed with other people’s lives. Even if Clifton didn’t believe me I should have told him and then my conscience would’ve been clean. I should have taken that boy in the car and gone back home to Houston, but I was sick and tired. Even when he told me Mouse’s plan I stayed quiet.

‘Yo’ friend tole me t’meet him t’night. He showed me a place in the woods where I could sleep an’ then he said I should meet him t’night an’ he gotta plan fo me t’get away. I axed why he doin’ all that for me an’ he said he doin’ it fo’ Ernestine so the law don’t get on her. So what can I do?’

I wake up nights remembering Clifton sitting there with his hands stretched out. I had the answers but I didn’t give them to him because Mouse was my friend and you don’t cross your friends.

Or maybe I just didn’t care. Maybe that’s what was wrong with us back then. Life was so hard that we were too tired from just living to lend a hand.

Clifton left after a while and I didn’t even think about going with him. He knew that Mouse was up to no good but he needed someone else to say it so that he could change his mind.

He’d have been lucky if it was Big Jim on his trail.

The second-night drunk never feels as good as the first. I finished the whiskey and laid in a funk all night. I didn’t sleep at all. I just had visions of people coming in and out of my room; some of them I knew and some I didn’t.

My daddy came in and sat on the bed. He looked at me with sad eyes and I felt I had done something wrong. I asked why he never came back and he said that he died; that he wanted to come back but death was too much and he finally gave out.

Mouse came in with a young woman. He was talking to me but feeling on her at the same time. I asked him to stop but he said, ‘You know you like t’watch, Ease.’ And then he pulled out his thing, it was so big that the girl got scared but Mouse sweet-talked her and she said okay...

Then the door opened and Domaque came in. He stood next to the bed and said, ‘You up, Easy?’

‘Do I look like I’m up?’

‘Well... you lyin’ down but yo’ eyes is open...’

I just waited for him to disappear like the rest of my dreams but then he said, ‘I wanted t’talk wit’ someone, Easy. An’ you Raymond’s friend too...,’ He went on, ‘I met that girl an’ she real pretty, an’ she be out to Momma’s house.’

‘At Jo’s?’

‘Uh-huh. She called Ernestine an’ I like her an’ she said she come out an’ look at my house if Momma wanted her to.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Uh-huh, Easy. She kinda pretty an’ she wanna stay out to there wit’ momma...’

When I saw the sky lightening into dawn the dreams went away. I knew that I had fever but it didn’t matter because I was sure now that I had to go home. I was going to go to church with Miss Alexander and then I was going to find the road to Rags Pond. And when I got back to Houston I was going to learn how to read and write. That was all I knew; in that I guess I was lucky.

Chapter 10

‘Easy! Easy! Time fo’ church, hon!’

It was Miss Alexander calling from the door. I guess she didn’t want to come into a man’s room uninvited.

‘All right,’ I called back. ‘I be up in minute.’ But I was asleep before my mouth closed.

In my sleep I saw my parents sitting at breakfast. My father was reading a paper even though he couldn’t read. My mother was making griddle cakes, singing...

‘Easy!’ Miss Alexander was shaking my shoulder and calling in my ear. ‘We gotta go, honey! Jo gonna be there.’

I remember sitting on the side of the bed with my head between my knees. I had fever and cramps and a pain in my head but I thought it would pass in a day; it’s an amazing thing that young men get any older at all.

I’d slept in my clothes, which was lucky because I don’t think I had the fingers to do buttons and zippers that morning.

Miss Alexander was wearing a plain white dress with a lace green hat and William wore a brown suit with black lines crisscrossing it. Momma Jo was with them. Domaque and Ernestine were behind her. Dom had on the same overalls he wore when I first met him and Ernestine still had on the blue dress with the red-brown cows printed on it. She’d washed that dress though and she had a necklace of tiny red flowers, the kind of flowers that grew at Domaque’s house.

‘Hi, Easy,’ Jo said in a soft voice. ‘You look a little tired, honey.’

‘Hi, Easy,’ Dom yelled. ‘This here is Ernestine.’

‘Easy,’ she said simply.

I looked down at her feet; they were still bare.

We all walked down to the building with the white crosses on the doors and went in. A woman sat at the front playing an upright piano.

It was a lively tune but I couldn’t put a name to it. Theresa was there in a nice violet-and-white dress; she came over and sat next to me. I recognised almost everybody from the dance at Miss Alexander’s but I didn’t remember any names so I just nodded when people said hello.

The room was almost full, about sixty souls there. A big woman and a shrimpy little man went up to the piano and started singing hymns. There was a hymnal underneath each chair and, one by one, people lifted them and started to sing along. I didn’t because I have a bad voice and I just didn’t feel up to it.

When I heard the door open in the middle of ‘Sweet Baby Jesus,’ I turned around to see who it was.

The chill I felt when I saw daddyReese was the cold that a corpse might feel.

He wasn’t the same Reese that I had seen a few days before. That Reese was a powerful man, that Reese had muscle like black iron and a thick mane of nappy black hair. But the Reese who walked through that door on Sunday was an old man. His arms and chest sagged down like flab but he wasn’t fat; he must’ve dropped ten pounds in those few days, I’d never seen a man lose weight so fast. His hair was sprinkled with white, not gray. He was stooped, just a little, and when he walked he had a slight limp.

Some men believe in evil. They’ve seen so much of it in the world and in themselves that it becomes a part of what they know as truth. And when you believe in it the way daddyReese must have, you open yourself up to people preying on that fear. The strength of hatred turns to weakness.

But with all that Reese was bowed - he wasn’t broken. He was wearing a black suit, the old kind that my grandfather wore with five buttons on the jacket. He had a starched, high-collar white shirt and a hat kind of like a bowler.

When he saw me I thought he was going to come in my direction but just then Jo turned to see what I was looking at and that changed Reese’s mind. He took a chair in the back.

Just about then the minister entered the room. Reverend Peters was a fat man with a wide mouth and a black suit; he strode down the middle aisle shaking hands and saying good morning to the people he passed. He was bristling with energy, the kind of man that pious women have sinful dreams about. The kind of man who feels so confident that other men don’t like him too well.

‘Mornin’, brothers and sisters!’ he shouted.

‘Mornin’, reverend,’ said an old woman in a raspberry dress. She was sitting right up front.

‘Yes, it is a good morning. Every one of God’s mornings is a good one.’

‘Mmmmm-hm! That’s a truf,’ the old woman said.

‘And the only thing that’s a bad mornin’ is a mornin’ that you wake up an’ you don’t find Jesus in your heart.’

‘Yes, Lord!’ That was Miss Alexander.

‘Oh, yeah! When you wake up and Jesus ain’t wichya, then it truly is a bad day. Not only for you but for every one of us in the congregation!’

‘Amen,’ a few voices said.

‘Because Jesus loves ya! He loves ya and he wants you to do right. An’ what is right? To have Jesus in your heart. That’s all. Because if you got Jesus with ya you ain’t never gonna do bad. Jesus won’t let ya do bad if you let him in. He won’t let you go astray. No he won’t. The Lord is gonna stick by you just as long as you stick by him. He’s gonna be a extra pair of eyes to see wrong...’

‘Amen, brother, show me them eyes,’ the shrimpy man in the baggy pants said from the piano bench.

‘I don’t need to show you, Brother Decker. I don’t need to show ya because the Lord will show you. He will show you out from temptation and you won’t even feel bad because the love of the Lord is greater than money! It’s greater than love of a woman or a man! It’s greater than freedom!’

I could feel the congregation tense up at those last words.

‘Yes, chirren, the love of the Lord is greater than anything you can have or desire. The love of the Lord is greater than anything.’ He stopped and ran his eyes across the congregation. ‘Anything that you can have or desire. Anything. If you see a new dress, sister, and you think that that dress is gonna make you as beautiful as Sheba, as beautiful as Cleopatra...’ He stopped, looking around again, and then smiled a knowing smile... ‘But we all know that beauty passes, don’t we?’

He opened his eyes wide, and a few laughs broke in the audience.

‘You look in the mirror from one day to the next and you’ll see what I mean.’ I glanced back at Reese.

The minister went on, ‘You young ones might not know it today, but don’t worry, the Lord is gonna forgive ya. You give him a chance, a half a chance, just a glimmer, a bare sliver of a chance, and the Lord is gonna forgive ya. He will. I know it because he has saved me.’

We were with him then, every soul in that church. And God was with us.

‘I was a sinner. Oh yes, Lord, I was a big sinner. I lied and cheated and you know the Lord don’t hold with no liar. I hated it but I couldn’t help myself because if the Lord ain’t wichya then you know that the devil is.’

‘If the Lord ain’t wichya, you know the devil is.’

‘And the devil was with me and I did his handiwork. You do it too. Oh yes you do! Don’t sit back there and tell me that the Lord don’t slip away from you sometimes when you see another woman wearin’ that pretty dress an’ you cain’t afford it. Don’t tell me that ‘cause that’s a lie and lyin’ is sin. Men and women is born to sin and the only way out is lettin’ Jesus in your heart. You cain’t help it, no you cain’t. You men see a pretty girl an’ you know what you feelin’ is wrong but you cain’t help it, you cain’t. You not gonna do it by yo’self! You need the Lord to help you do right.’

He paused and took a glass of water from the piano. Somehow he made drinking a part of the sermon. You could tell that his sermon had just come to him as if God had flown down into him as he took the podium. No one was talking, no one was looking around, no one shifted in their chair. God was in the room with us in the shape of a fat minister about the color of coffee with three spoons of cream stirred in.

Perspiration had broken out over the minister’s forehead. He took a fine white handkerchief from his pocket and ran it across his brow, then wiped his hands. By the time he was finished with his hands his head was beaded up again.

‘I’m sorry, brothers and sisters,’ he said with his head bowed. ‘I have another sermon to give and you know I don’t believe in a long sermon but today something got in me. That happens sometimes. When you let the Lord in there’s no tellin’ what might happen. The Lord might pick you up and throw you across the world. You could be a young girl on the farm until the Lord picks you up and makes you a general at the head of a great army. Yes he can... He might, he might.’ Reverend Peters got quiet then and it seemed like he’d lost his place. Sweat was running off his head but he didn’t bother with it.

After a long moment he said, ‘You all know about Job. How he was a rich man and a family man, a man who had the respect of not only his fellow man but the love and the respect of God.’

The words left such a silence in the room that I had to stifle an urge to shout.

‘Yes.’ The minister was calm now. ‘God loved him but he needed Job to prove that he deserved that love. Oh yeah, because you got to prove yourself to the Lord. He’s not gonna open up his great kingdom of heaven if you’re not worthy. And how is he to know if you’re worthy unless he tests you?

‘And the Lord took away Job’s thousands of sheep and took away his thousands of camels. The Lord brought disease, death, and division on Job’s family. And when the Lord was through, Job was a terrible sight to behold. He’d lost his wife, his chirren, his money, his health, Job had even lost his self-respect. He tore at his breast and wished that he was never born! His friends and people betrayed him and God turned a deaf ear.’ When the minister looked out you could see tears rolling with the sweat down his face. ‘And Job doubted. Who wouldn’t? Even if all you had was one dress and a tin pan - if someone took that and left you with nothin’ you’d be tempted to despair. And we know that it’s the devil causes despair. Think of Job; he was a rich man! A respected man! You don’t let that go without some tears and some bitterness. But when he realised that all he had taken for granted could be taken from him, Job was amazed. He wasn’t angry at God. He was angry that he had loved God for the wrong reasons. Because even in poverty, even with nothing, Job realised he had God within him. There was love and grace inside. And Job was saved.

‘You might think that this is a simple story. Something you learn in Sunday school; a Bible story for children to remember if hard times should strike. And that’s what I thought about it too. But you know I was turnin’ soil last Thursday, ‘cause you know I’m just like the rest of ya: son of a sharecropper, salt of the earth. I was watchin’ the soil turn up under the plow like water in the wake of a great boat, and I thought, “This land belongs to God.” It’s for sure it don’t belong to me or any of you here this morning. We all know whose name it is on the deeds to all our places and even on this buildin’ we prayin’ in.’

I remembered Miss Dixon’s fears and I thought that maybe she was right.

‘I remembered the poverty of my daddy’s sharecroppin’ days. And I thought about Job; how the very ground from under him fell away and all he had left was the deaf ear of God. I wondered, “What did Job eat when he had lost everything?” And I knew even then that Job scratched in the ground and hunted in the wild and he lived off fish from the lakes. He created a life from God’s greatest gifts: the mind and the heart and the land too.

‘You might wonder why I tell you this. It’s because I see a day coming when the Lord is gonna test us. He’s gonna pull the land away from us and he’s gonna strike down with his open hand and smash away this village. He’s gonna take it all and the only thing you’ll have left is your wits and the love of Jesus in your hearts. You’ll have to make your way against a terrible storm. Your hearts will be full of tears but remember, it’s God testin’ you. He’s lookin’ to see that you love him as the spirit not just for the fleshly desires he can satisfy. And he needs to know that you will survive to praise his name.’

The minister let his head fall forward. The room had the silence of grace in it. Everybody, from Reese Corn to Sweet William to Miss Alexander, everybody felt a mighty presence. Not necessarily a presence of love or even salvation. But there was truth in the room; it was almost solid it was so real.

‘The land don’t belong to you. No it don’t. Your houses and your clothes and your chirren too. None’a them belong to you.’

A small boy was sitting on the other side of Theresa, his eyes filled with tears.

‘It’s all the love of Jesus, the love of God. If he wants it, then he’ll take it, an’ it’s not fo’ us to question his infinite will. This life is just a test for your love an’ your faith.

‘I feel love for my land and my labours. I feel rage when I am being mistreated and cheated. But all that takes a backseat to the love of God.’ Reverend Peters was crying but his face was full of light. ‘And when the time comes it will be his scriptures I look to for my answers.’

He bowed his head again.

Somehow he must have signalled the pianist because she started playing softly. Brother Decker got in front of the podium and said, ‘Sunday school will begin at half past nine at Miss Trevor’s house. There will be a meeting of the church council directly after this service.’

We were all quiet in the balmy morning outside the chapel. I wondered at the sermon’s meaning. I could see something in what Miss Dixon told me. But there were parts that I just didn’t understand. Why did I have to live so close to disaster? Why would God want that?

It was a mystery but I didn’t have time to think about it because that’s when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

‘Where Raymond?’ daddyReese asked me.

The whites of his eyes had gone yellow, and the smell of his breath was like the stench of a corpse. I told him that I hadn’t seen Mouse in a few days.

He grabbed my wrist and leaned against me; he hissed into my face, ‘You tell him that I don’t care what happens. I see my soul in hell fo’ I let up on a dime, you hear that?’

‘I hear ya, Reese.’

‘Not one fuddn’ dime!’

‘I ain’t seen’im, Reese, an’ I don’t know when I’m gonna.’

Reese pulled on my arm with one hand and went for his pocket with the other. He was weak and sick but I wasn’t too spry myself. I don’t know if I had the strength to hold him from cutting my throat.

‘Hi, Reese,’ Momma Jo said. ‘Been a long time since I seen you at church.’

At the sound of her voice Reese let me go and fell back. ‘Get away from me, witch. Get away from me.’ And he turned, running from her.

‘What he want, Easy?’

‘I dunno, Jo. He want Mouse, not me.’

When we all walked back to the store Jo said to me, ‘I’m havin’ supper wit’ Domaque and Ernestine, Easy, why’ont you come on out?’

‘I’m sick, Jo,’ I said to her feet. ‘I gotta get some rest.’

She put her hand on my throat again.

‘You is hot,’ she said.

Chapter Eleven

When I got to the room a calm had set in on me. I was wondering if the minister was right. Was everything I experienced the whim of God or his test to see if I was worthy? I laid down on the bed and let the strength flow from my arms and legs; and in my weakness I gave up my responsibilities.

I thought about how Mouse was like Job’s devil; how he had called daddyReese the devil. I didn’t even care about the dogs.

When I opened my eyes Mouse was sitting on the crate facing me.

‘How you feel, Ease?’

‘li’l sick I guess, but ‘I’ma leave soon as I can walk down t’the car.’

‘Well, by then everything should be done.’ There was a serious tone in his voice, not the brash way he usually sounded.

‘What you tryin’ t’do, Raymond? What’s all this mess wit’ Clifton an’ Ernestine an’ Reese?’

‘It’s more than that. I got wheels turnin’ all over. Wheels inside’a wheels, like a great big ole clock.’

I didn’t have the strength to even ask him anything but he started talking again.

‘Yo’ daddy run out on you when you was a boy, right, Ease? I know that that prob’ly hurt you. You prob’ly want him back so bad. I know how it feel. I was hopin’ fo’a daddy when I’as a chile. Momma loved me but you know kids ain’t never satisfied so I wanted me a daddy too. I always be pesterin’ her ‘bout my real daddy, an’ I knew I was hurtin’ her. So she married Reese. She wouldn’ta done it if not for my pesterin’.’ Mouse’s dear eyes had the light of honesty in them. ‘An’ he kilt her. Abused her an’ hurt her through me. Reese is a harsh man. A woods man. The kind of man that likes to hurt. She knew what he was but she did it for me.’

Mouse clasped his hands between his knees. ‘So it’s like I killed her by never bein’ satisfied wit’ what we had. ‘Cause you know from the first day in that house me an’ Reese was at it; an’ me an’ Navrochet, that’s Reese’s blood son me an’ Navrochet was at it too. They had my momma workin’ and toilin’ while they was just as mean as they could be. An’ they come down on me too. I was young, Easy, an’ I could take it. But they wore Momma out.’

Sunlight came through the muslin curtains with a small breeze. I was breathing softly and watching the cloth wave; I had forgotten Mouse was there until he went on.

‘I thought I had let it go. Before she died Momma borrowed some money from Sweet William an’ sent me t’Houston when I was still just a kid. That was about the same time you come into town. I had me a new life an’ I never even thought about Momma or Reese or Pariah at all. Cousin Pernell an’ his wife Justine took good care’a me until I could see after myself. Momma axed Sweet William to drop by an’ check in on me now and then.’ Mouse smiled. ‘I grew up like a weed an’ all I cared about was my friends and a good time. But Etta changed that. It’s not like she reminds me’a Momma or nuthin’ like that; you know my momma was a slight girl with a little smile and soft ways. But it’s what we did together kept remindin’ me of the ole days ‘fo’ she married Reese.

‘You know Etta always have breakfast waitin’ fo’me in the mo’nin’. I got a hundred girls suck my dick all night long but who gonna worry ‘bout how I be eatin’ in the mo’nin’? An’ when we talk she know how I feel. An’ when I love her I always be thinkin’ ‘bout babies; I see her sucklin’ my son... An’ then you know what I be thinkin? I think about Reese. I think about how he hurt me an’ how he kilt Momma an’ I know he gotta pay fo’it. That’s why I come out here; ‘cause Momma wanna see me wit’ a fine weddin’. If she was alive she’d get a church and all her friends and they’d cook fo’a week and she wouldn’t let me lift a finger or spend a dime. An’ since she cain’t do it I’ma make sure that Reese do it fo’her.’

I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to warn him about Reese and ask him just to come back home with me. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I was sick but I don’t think I was too sick to talk. I just felt helpless. What was I going to do? Raymond couldn’t help what he was; Raymond couldn’t stop himself. That’s what I thought then; maybe it was true.

‘But now, Easy, I’m scared,’ Mouse said. “Cause I know I got Reese by his nuts wit’ that doll. He from voodoo country an’ a curse gonna tear him up, I know that. But now I’m ascared he gonna die fo’ I get what’s mine. My li’l spies be tellin* me ‘bout how Reese is sick. But I gotta have that man’s money. He cain’t die ‘fore that.’

Then he was still, sitting there wringing his hands. I didn’t have anything to say or maybe it was all a dream. Because I had a terrible fever that night. There was nothing I could do to stop what was going to happen. And as much as I knew I didn’t know everything, I’d like to think that if I knew what Mouse’s plans were I’d’ve tried to stop him right then. But maybe what happened was ordained like that minister said. Maybe it really was out of my hands.

It wasn’t until years later, after the war, that I understood about Mouse; long after I’d learned to read and write I came across the meaning of the word that described him: inspiration. Raymond wasn’t smarter than the next man; he didn’t do anything new in the world. But he created lead from gold. He created his revenge on Reese from his love of EttaMae or maybe he found that revenge in her love of him. He changed the world to fit his twisted feelings.

Raymond was an artist. He always said that a poor man has got to work with flesh and blood. ‘Po’ man ain’t got time t’be worryin’ bout finery, Ease; po’ man cain’t even watch his own ass, ‘cause you know if you so much as flinch down here that’s all she wrote fo’ you.’

I kept fading out and coming awake again to see Mouse sitting there, wringing his hands and thinking. Finally I opened my eyes and he was gone. That’s when the fever set in and I was lost.

We were running out of the slaughterhouse and everybody was yelling. One man grabbed my father but he sent that man to the floor. Another man came up and he went down too. I noticed then that the rest yelled but they kept their distance.

We ran out into the truck yard in front of the building and down an alley. My father had picked me up into his arms and he was running fast. You could see the fear in his face, and that fear is what I remembered most. A scared little colored man with a child in his arms; the world shaking up and down like it was about to break apart and we were panting like dogs on the run.

Only dogs are hunters and we were hunted.

We ran down to the stream, where we had been trawling for crayfish not three days before, and fell into a heap. My father was breathing so hard that his throat sang.

‘You gotta run up home, Ezekiel,’ he said to me. ‘You gotta go up the back way an’ get yo’ momma an’ them an’ go down t’Momma Lindsay’s. You hear me, Ezekiel?’

‘Yes, Daddy.’

‘I love you, boy.’

‘Where you be?’

‘I gotta run right now, son. I don’t know where I end up but I tell ya when I get there.’

‘You gonna come get us?’

He said, ‘Take care’a yo’self, boy,’ then he kissed me on the lips and hurried me on my way. And then I was a man running down the path yelling for my mother but never getting there.

There was something tickling my stomach. I looked down and saw a white cloth taped to my belly; it was writhing against me. I reached out to pull it away but a big black hand grabbed my hand and tied it to the bedpost.

My mother and I sat in the parlour of Momma Lindsay’s house. My mother was on a chair and I was sprawled out on the couch. I was thirsty and she had made lemonade. Everything was natural except that a line of black ants ran down from the arm of her chair, they seemed to be coming from her clothes, and I was a full-grown man - I knew that she had been dead for many years.

‘Where’s Daddy, Momma?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know, honey,’ she said. She was smiling at me with so much love...

‘But I wanna know where he gone. He said he gonna come get us.’

She just kept on smiling, nodding slightly. The ants had cut across her forehead and they made a sound like bees buzzing.

Out of the window there were clothes on the line. The wind was blowing hard and they snapped so violently that I was afraid they’d blow off completely.

Then I’d have no clothes to wear.

I was aware of being naked on the couch so I sat up and crossed my legs. I was hoping that Momma would leave so I could go save my clothes before they blew away. But she just kept smiling at me with the ants all over her and the buzzing coming louder and louder.

I was running out into the bright and windy day; all my clothes had blown away. I ran full out in an open grassy field. The blades of grass beat against my bare ankles, pelicans and gulls glided far above.

‘What you callin’ fo’, honey?’ a voice asked.

‘My daddy!’ I yelled, not like a man at all.

‘Where is he, Easy?’

‘He’s gone,’ I said and then the world started to cry. Everything was tears and crying. I was so thirsty that I started sticking my tongue out and praying for rain. But the rain didn’t come.

‘Easy, you cain’t be worried ‘bout every little thing,’ Mouse was saying. We were in my house drinking beer from green quart bottles.

“Cause a po’ man ain’t got that kinda a lux’ry. Shit! If all you got is two po’k chops an’ ten chirren what you gonna do?’

I waited for him to answer the question but he didn’t. He just stood up and walked out of the house. He was laughing to himself. I could feel the sweat pouring down my face.

Chapter 12

‘Res’ now, Easy,’ Jo said.

She was swaying in a homemade rocker at the foot of the bed; a giant mother in a child’s small room. The chair and the floor creaked as she moved forward and back.

There was vapour rising from behind her. The room was hot.

‘Water,’ I croaked. I didn’t even recognise my own voice.

When she rose I was filled with awe at the size and might of her. I remembered the armadillos and that severed head. It was nighttime again and felt like I was back in the bayou, out behind those stunted pears.

She lifted my head to pour water into my mouth from a liquor bottle. She’d tip a spoonful in and wait for me to swallow, then she’d pour another one. When the water hit my empty stomach I got small cramps that quivered down through the intestines. But I didn’t complain - the water tasted too good for any complaints.

‘You been real sick, baby. Ev’rybody been worried. Dom an’ Mouse an’ li’l ole Ernestine. You had us all goin’.’

‘How long?’

‘It’s just been twenty-four hours but it was close. If I had come in the next morning rather than right after Sunday school we’d be plannin’ yo’ funeral right now. It’s been comin’ on ya for a few days. Miss Alexander say you was drinkin’ an’ I was mad that she let you do it.’

When she stroked my face I felt the rasp of my stubble against her hand.

I fell asleep with my head on her lap.

Later I woke up and she was still cradling me. I was so happy then.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

She grinned at me. ‘Baby, you better rest some more. The fever gone but you still weak, it could come back, and it’s always harder gettin’ rid’a it the second time.’

‘What is it?’

‘I seen it before. It’s a kind of poison that gets in ya an’ acks like grippe but it ain’t. You gotta use some old-time medicine to get that. Lucky you got ole Momma Jo t’fix ya.’

I pressed my head against her thigh and she smiled down on me like she had smiled down on Raymond when I first saw her in the woods.

When I woke again it was night. Jo was rocking and embroidering. I thought it was strange that a woman like her would take up needle and thread.

‘Could I have some water please, Jo?’ I said.

‘How you doin’, Easy?’ She brought me the liquor bottle.

‘Fine.’

‘You lookin’ good. I guess we gonna have you a li’l while longer, huh?’

‘I guess.’ I raised myself to be fed the water and then laid back.

There was still vapour rising from behind the rocker. I must’ve been staring at it because Jo said, ‘Just some herbs in water on a oil burner. Keeps it warm inside and keeps yo’ lungs dear so you don’t get pneumonia. You feel like you can have some broth, baby?

I wasn’t hungry but I said yes, I needed some strength. I felt the life coming into me.

Not exactly the same life I’d almost left behind.

When Jo came back Miss Alexander stuck her head in the door and smiled. ‘Hi, Easy,’ she said. ‘Glad to see you feelin’ better.’

Jo had a steaming bowl of beef broth with a big shank bone in it.

She propped me on her knee and fed me spoon by spoon.

‘You seen Mouse?’ I asked her.

‘Oh yeah,’ she said reluctantly. ‘He been around. He tole me t’tell you that he’d be ready t’go when you feel better.’

‘Where is he?’

‘No tellin’ wit’ Raymond but he prob’ly wit’ some girl. I think he been hangjn’ ‘round Miss Alexander’s li’l friend - Theresa.’

I felt a flash of jealousy but it went away as soon as it came.

‘So he wanna go home, huh?’ I let out a short laugh and it hurt me on my stomach. ‘I guess he finished up whatever crazy nonsense he had wit’ Reese.’

‘I guess so,’ Jo said as she pushed the spoon into my mouth just a little too hard. ‘So I guess you be headin’ back home when you get to your feet?’

‘Uh-huh, that’s right. You know Houston cain’t get along wit’out me for more’n a few days.’

‘Yeah.’ She smiled with me and I was glad.

It seemed like the only thing I’d ever done was to sit alone with Jo in the night. And I was liking her pretty much then too. I was thinking about what Mouse had said about not turning up your nose at a woman like her.

‘Easy?’

‘Yeah, Jo?’

She let my head down on the pillow and went back to her chair. She sat down with a sigh and said, ‘I been thinkin’ ‘bout what happened out to the house, baby. You know, wit’ us. And I feel kinda bad cause’a what you must be thinkin’, so I just wanna tell ya ‘bout how I feel.’

She took a deep breath that brought me back to the night we were lovers.

‘You could see that I ain’t a normal woman. I got big bones and I’m taller than almost any man I ever seen. An’ I ain’t like big girls neither. Us’ally a big girl sag down an’ be quiet hopin’ that a man won’t notice her size - but I cain’t do that. I’m loud and rough and I’m pretty smart too. It’s not that I’m vain, Easy, I’m just tellin’ it like it is. I’m better than most men at bein’ like a man. Domaque was the on’y man was my match.’ She had a lost look in her eye and I knew how she felt after all I had remembered about my father and losing him. ‘And he was too good to live. On’y reason I stay out to that house is because I’d be more alone wit’ people. ‘Cause if I come in on a situation an’ I know what’s right, then I’ma do what’s right. And if a man, even a white man, stand up an’ be stupid then I just set him straight. I mean women can be wrong too an’ they can be just as dumb as any man. But a woman us’ally come around quicker than a man ‘cause if you hurt a man’s pride you might as well give up on him ever thinkin’ right.

‘Mens don’t like a woman big as I am, not if they manlike too. They wanna feel they power but they don’t want none’a yours. But I could see you wasn’t like that.’ She gave me that shy smile. ‘They is somethin’ diffrent in you, Easy, somethin’ soft. It’s like you looked at me an’ said, “Okay this here is one big woman; now let’s get on wit’ it.” An’ you didn’t worry ‘bout it no more. You didn’t look at me wit’ them big eyes like you was scared or like I’m a animal you gotta train. I liked that.

‘That’s why I done that mess wit’ Ernestine an’ that sour boy she was wit’.’

I thought about Domaque and Clifton then.

‘What’s she gonna do now that Clifton’s gone?

‘She wanna learn some things I know an’...’ She looked down and smiled. ‘She been goin’ out to Dom’s house t’pick flowers wit’ him. I cain’t hope she gonna be no more than friends wit’ him but Dom sure could use the company.’

‘I like you, Jo.’ I held my hand out to her. She came over to hold it.

‘That’s all I wanted, baby. I know I shouldn’ta done what I did. I wanted you t’be my friend. I mean I cain’t ask you to wanna be out here wit’ me...’ she said, but there was hope in her voice.

‘I couldn’t, Jo. I mean, I could love you but it would turn out bad.’ I wanted to say yes, to say that Mouse was right.

‘I gotta stand up fo’myself, Jo, an’ I just couldn’t do that wit’ you, out here.’ I should have just said that she was too much woman for me - that’s what I felt. I lied about everything back then. There just wasn’t any truth to be had.

We talked for a long time, about everything. She told me stories about her and how she kept things going out around Pariah. She delivered babies, made potions, and settled disputes. I told her about wanting to read and about women I’d known. We were fast friends, holding hands and talking the night away.

But whenever I’d mention Mouse she started talking about something else. She told no stories about him when he lived there and if I asked she’d just say, ‘Oh you know Raymond; he ain’t nuthin’ but bad news wit’ a grin.’

Finally I asked, ‘How come you won’t talk about him?’

‘I don’t wanna be thinkin’ ‘bout Raymond now, Easy. I know he yo’ frien’ an’ I ain’t got nuthin’ good t’say.’

‘But he brung that girl down.’

‘I’m thankful fo’ Ernestine but Raymond din’t make her. An’ all his foolin’ ‘round ain’t helpin’ my boy.’

‘What he do?’

‘I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout what Raymond be doin’.’

‘But I bet you could guess.’ I smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.

‘All I know is that I seen Raymond an’ that Clifton headed out Blacksmith Row, out toward Reese Corn’s place. They left when the sun was goin’ down.’

The tone in her voice spoke of violence. All the drowsy recuperation in my brain burned off like morning mist. Sweat formed on my forehead and hands. I gulped once because of the nausea that accompanied the decision I made.

My stomach rumbled.

‘You hungry, huh, Easy?’Jo asked.

‘Yeah, yeah. Hey, Jo, could you go’n get me sumpin’ t’eat?’

‘I got some bread an’ fruit right here in my basket.’

‘Naw,’ I said. The sick frown on my face came naturally from the sour pitch in my gut. ‘Couldn’t you go’n get me some hot soup or sumpin’?’

‘It’s late, Easy,’ she whispered, to show me that she was afraid of waking people up.

I stared at her while thinking about my own dangerous purposes.

Maybe it was the fear showing through my eyes that moved Jo.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll go see what I can find.’

She kissed me. It was the natural brush of lips against skin. I imagined prehistoric wolves making the same gesture with their snouts before they howled as men, women, and children sat shivering in their caves.

Chapter 13

I counted to ten and pushed myself up out of the bed. I fell to the floor before I could manage even one step. It felt like I should have been able to walk but my legs just wouldn’t listen.

There, on my knees on the floor, I noticed the broad cloth bandage held to my stomach by a thick gray goo slathered around the edges. I leaned back against the bed and pulled the cloth away.

The skin underneath was puckered and discolored. Under the cloth was a stack of leaves and twigs; in the middle of that nest was a dead toad.

The toad was plump and looked almost as if it were still alive. When it fell away I saw that there was an open cut in the shape of a cross, two inches either way, above my navel. The toad’s belly had an identical cut.

I came around the side of Miss Alexander’s place and turned left. When I got to the end of the street I turned right and walked until I came to a pecan tree. Two houses past that was a small cabin, a hut really.

My knock was answered almost immediately in spite of the late hour.

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Easy Rawlins, Theresa,’ I said through the rough-hewn plank door.

When she pushed the door open I was forced to take a step backwards. She was wearing a burlap sack with holes cut for her head and arms. The candle she held showed me that the holes for her arms were a little too big, I could see her left breast sticking out of the side.

‘What you want, Easy?’

‘Raymond here?’

No words came to her.

‘I asked you is Raymond here, Theresa.’

She shook her head and it was my turn to keep quiet.

‘He gone out to Reese,’ she said at last.

I was staring at her breast and thinking that Raymond would have called me a fool for worrying about things that were none of my business. Then Theresa pointed out the way to me when I told her that Raymond would be mad if she didn’t.

I made it out the slim passage through the woods thinking about all the steps I’d taken to bring me to that path. It came to me that it all started when my father ran away from that butcher and out of my life. He never called for us. One day I came home from school and our neighbour was waiting there for me. When she told me that my mother had some kind of stroke I wasn’t even surprised. I had expected her to leave too.

I’ve been counting my steps from that day to this one. From Louisiana to Texas; from childhood to being a man.

I wasn’t quite yet a man as I walked down that country path. But I was headed for maturity. I had driven Mouse out there and anything he did was a reflection on me.

It was the noble thought of a fool.

Dawn was filling the woods with a cold glow when I heard the voices. One of them was Mouse, his hard-edged voice loud and threatening. I couldn’t understand his words but at least I knew they were words, spoken to be understood.

The reply was a single note of rage.

I followed the murderous sound even though I knew I should have gone the way of my father.

I came to a stand of cherry trees on a small hill above Reese Corn’s place. Clifton and Mouse were standing near a large woven bamboo basket. Mouse was holding his big .41 over his head while cocking his head to make sense out of the scream, which was coming from the basket.

Clifton was armed with a shotgun, he was holding it by the twin barrels.

‘What’s that you say, Reese?’ Mouse shouted at the basket.

I could see the lid stuttering against the latches it had been secured with. I was dose enough to hear the pounding blows. Reese must have done that with his head and shoulders and back.

It was a large basket but Reese would have had to squat down, hugging his knees and bowing his head, for them to have closed the lid.

‘Let’im go, man!’ Clifton shouted. ‘Let’im go!’

The next thing Clifton, or I, knew, Mouse had his pistol pointed at the boy’s nose. Raymond said something but I couldn’t make it out.

I took a step from the stand of trees. Clifton bowed his head. Reese Corn bellowed. The sun, which wasn’t the least bit concerned with that drama, peeked down through the mist.

I took another step and stopped.

Mouse turned to the basket and shouted, mimicking Reese’s hoarse rage. The basket shook from the internal blows.

I had taken three steps when Mouse started kicking the basket. I felt that if I walked slowly and calmly into that situation I could stop all the hostile activities. I honestly believed that I could calm Mouse down and bring Reese around to reason.

Maybe I could have done all that.

‘Let’im alone!’ Clifton shouted.

The boy thrust out his free hand and grabbed Raymond just when he was in the middle of a kick. The kick went wide, slamming against one of the bamboo latches that secured the lid.

Mouse hit the ground squeezing off a shot that hit the ground not two feet to my left.

The lid to the basket popped off and daddyReese Corn came out like a leaping jack-in-the-box. Blacker than Momma Jo and naked, Reese went at the first target he saw — Clifton.

Clifton.

The only thought in my mind was to save that sour boy’s life. I ran full out with my eyes wide and focused on the men.

Clifton took a step backwards and raised the shotgun by the barrel, like a dub. And then Reese was on him.

The gun seemed to leap into Reese’s hand of its own accord. It twisted like a snake and Reese’s hand was at the trigger.

I yelled.

Clifton did too. Then the blast hit him.

Mouse had made it to his feet but Reese was faster that day.

Reese turned toward his stepson before Clifton hit the ground. Mouse fired but Reese ducked low and rammed Raymond with his shoulder.

Mouse’s second shot went somewhere in the trees.

There was no savouring the moment for daddyReese. Mouse was rolling away on the ground, toward his dropped pistol. Reese was drawing his bead.

Neither one of them heard me coming on.

I had no plan, or dexterity to execute a plan if I had one. I didn’t grab Reese. I didn’t even tackle him. I simply ran into him like a fool running into a brick wall.

I felt the recoil before hearing the shotgun blast.

The air went out of my lungs and the ground came up to meet my face.

‘Easy,’ he said softly. ‘Easy, wake up.’

Mouse was squatting down next to me. Beyond him I could make out a black arm sprawled on the ground.

Mouse pulled me up by my shirt. When I was standing I looked down on Reese. A large part of his left temple was gone. The shotgun lay at his side.

Clifton hadn’t died all at once. He’d been gut-shot. He’d ripped off his shirt and pulled down his pants to try and do something about the wound. He died with both hands trying to push the intestines back into his body.

Mouse’s pistol lay near Clifton’s shoulder.

‘Come on, Easy. We got to get outta here.’ I was light-headed, staggering behind Raymond. Many times I stopped because there was something I had to remember and I couldn’t walk and remember at the same time. Whatever it was I needed to recall was like a reflection in water and every step I took sent ripples across the image. So I’d stop. But before the image came dear Mouse would shake me and say, ‘Come on, Easy, we ain’t got time t’play.’ I remember walking behind him, seeing that he still had that tan rucksack hanging from his shoulder. It looked like it was stuffed with clothes. No more Johnnie Walker.

Mouse brought me in the back way of his aunt’s store. I went to my little room and stretched out on the thin mattress. I dreamed that I was a stone in a field lodged among different kinds of grasses. The growth of the grass made the scrunching sound that a finger makes when it’s pressed across the tight skin of a drum. By midsummer the grass had grown over me and I was in the dark shade of towering blades of green.

Chapter Fourteen

‘Reese Corn was a solitary man in his last years. He didn’t come much to Ethiopia Baptist Church. And those of you who don’t have faith,’ and Reverend Peters looked out over the congregation, ‘might say that he had lost the way of the Lord. But brother Reese didn’t lose his way. He knew death was comin’ an’ on his last Sunday in the world Reese came back to the Lord.’

‘Amen,’ Mouse said. He was standing next to the open coffin, his gloved hands folded before him. He wore a spotless black suit with a black tie and an ivory-white shirt. I never did know where he found that outfit.

‘Yes, he came to the Lord at the last moment, but you know that’s enough for Jesus.’ He surveyed us again. ‘All Jesus needs is for you to look his way an’ he’s gonna save your soul. That’s why we’re here; to be saved. All’a you here today are alive but you’re gonna have to face it too. Yes you are. Every one of you in this room is going to have his moment of reckoning and her moment of reckoning and in that moment you will have to take Jesus to your heart, or you will perish.’

I thought of Reese’s dogs and went cold somewhere; that one spot in my heart has never kindled again.

‘I believe that in his final moments Reese Corn opened his heart and he was saved.

‘You all knew Reese. Miss Alexander was his sister-in-law. Nine years ago we laid her loving sister to rest.’

Miss Alexander sat next to me. Her eyes were dry and there was a slight smile on her face.

‘You know when Reese’s wife died,...’ Reverend Peters leaned his elbows upon the podium. ‘He was broken. You could see that he lost faith because he let his house fall into disrepair. He didn’t have any kind words to say because he felt that the Lord had abandoned him. He stopped saying good morning and left the church. He lived a lonely mean life out there on his farm, and who knows? Maybe that loneliness called out to the poor boy who followed him there. Maybe it was the Lord in his infinite wisdom calling Reese Corn home.’

Ernestine started crying, and Jo folded the girl under her arm.

‘That boy was a messenger of the Lord, calling out. And once Reese came back to the Lord’s house that messenger was sent to Reese. Because everything we do is governed by God. If you wake up in the morning and hear the whippoorwill or if you meet a young girl and fall in love, that’s God workin’ on ya. If you find yourself full of strength choppin’ cotton on a beautiful Tuesday morning and you breathe in the sweet smell of earth, well you know the Lord is with you then.’ The minister held up his opened hands and stared into his palms, then he put them back down. ‘But when your babies get grippe and the life burns out of them before your eyes; when you tear at your clothes and beg God to take you instead; when you’re left in the room with a dead child innocent as can be — the Lord is with you then too.’

‘Yes Lord!’ the old woman, in the same raspberry dress, shouted.

‘Yes the Lord is a hard master! Because you know you cain’t raise a child right if you don’t raise your hand.’ He paused. ‘And we are the Lord’s chirrren. Reese and that boy Clifton were the Lord’s chirren. He’s called them home. And in callin’ them home he’s taught us a lesson; a hard lesson. In despair comes ruin, in despair comes ruin. Reese tore down his house. Yes he did. He knocked the what-do-you-call-em?’ He looked around as if there were someone there to answer. ‘Yeah, he knocked down the beams, the main beam of his house, and the walls fell in. The walls fell in on Reese and he turned his back on the Lord. There’s a lesson in that. I don’t know what happened to that boy Clifton. I hear that he was violent man, a man who lived by violence. It’s said, I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s said that he killed someone in Houston.’

The minister looked up at the ceiling and shook his head as if he were arguing with the next words the Lord was putting in his mouth. Finally he returned his gaze to earth. ‘What is our lesson? That’s what you wanna know. What is God trying to say to me here today? Well... no one can truly understand the mind of God because the mind of God is what we call infinite. That means he’s everywhere. As far as you can go God is there. He’s at the bottom of the ocean and he’s way out past the moon and stars. He’s in this room right now, sittin’ next to ya. Reese is with him now, and if Reese could pierce the veil I think he’d say the lesson is the infinite forgiveness of the Lord...’

The minister kept going in that vein but I was distracted by an amazing sight: There were tears streaming down Mouse’s face. He was crying outright. You’d think that real love was pouring out of his heart onto the floor at his dead stepfather’s feet. ‘What could it be?’ I thought, but no answer came.

Miss Alexander leaned to my ear and whispered, ‘I want you t’com’on wit’ me when it’s over, Easy. I wanna make sure that bastard who kilt my sister is dead.’

Those were the only words that crossed her lips about Reese. And it came to me that they were all happy to see him dead. The minister had remarked that it was ‘the Lord’s infinite mind that called his stepson back,’ to be there when Reese died.

Reese was a hard man and an angry man. He had turned the whole world against him and no one cared to look beyond what seemed to be the story.

It was told that Reese was out at his house when a fugitive from Houston came upon him to steal his money. The fugitive, Clifton, had heard that Reese was rich from Raymond Alexander who was coming to tell Reese about his coming marriage. Reese shot Clifton but Clifton managed to get his gun and shoot Reese before he died. Mouse came upon them when he’d come to tell Reese that he was returning to Houston.

There was no money found.

Big Jim, the colored deputy, was at the funeral, and I think he suspected that there was more to the story. But you don’t go doing police work for a colored killing when you got an answer lying cold at the back of the barber’s shop.

Jim warned Mouse that Navrochet wouldn’t take it so easy. He said that Mouse’s stepbrother would wonder at how Clifton got to Pariah. But Mouse just smiled and shook his head.

‘...The Lord is with you, brothers and sisters... keep him in your hearts. Because no matter how hard you hurt, he will comfort you as he did brother Reese in his last moments. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ we all said.

‘Time t’go, Ease,’ Mouse said. We were standing in Miss Alexander’s general store. Everyone was there. There was homemade wine and cornbread and people from all over the county. Theresa was standing next to Mouse; she and Ernestine were the only ones who truly looked sad; they both lost men that day.

‘Yeah, I’m ready,’ I said. I couldn’t even look him in the eye.

‘Easy.’ Her voice came from behind me.

‘Yeah, Jo.’

‘I guess you ain’t comin’ back out here soon.’

‘I don’t know, Jo. You never can tell what might happen.’

‘Well I think me an’ Dom an’ Ernestine might be comin’ to the weddin’.’

‘You know I’ll be there.’ I looked up into her flat, dark eyes. She put her hand to my throat again.

‘Bye, Easy!’ Domaque yelled. He and Ernestine were standing dose together behind Jo.

‘Bye, Dom. I’ma start my readin’ soon as I get home.’

Dom gave me a strong handshake and a crooked smile. He said, ‘Remember to make it in yo’ own words, Easy. That’s how ya do it.’

The car had been moved to the edge of town by one of Mouse’s friends. He’d gotten the key from my pocket when I was sick. Raymond hefted the stuffed rucksack on his shoulder.

‘Weddin’ gifts,’ he said.

I wondered if Theresa was coming to the wedding.

Just before we left for the car Miss Alexander took me by the arm to an empty spot on the wooden sidewalk.

‘Easy, I’m” glad you’re feelin’ better...’

‘I been meanin’ t’thank you...’

She waved her hand for me to keep quiet. ‘I feel bad that you ain’t seen us in a good light, Ezekiel. You know we was all glad to meet you and have you with us. It’s always nice to meet one’a Raymond’s boyfriends, he got a real knack at gettin’ friends.’

We shook hands and then she kissed me on the cheek.

Sweet William and Mouse were standing next to the car when I got there. They were the same height and looked so much alike that you would have had to be blind not to see the relationship.

I don’t think Mouse ever suspected that William was his father. Some men are just lucky.

‘Well, Easy, I guess you gonna get back to the city to rest from the country, huh?’ William smiled.

‘Yeah, you country people is too wild for me.’

He shook my hand. The rest of them came up and waved to us; Theresa ran to the window and kissed Mouse on the lips.