All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (32 page)

Devoting himself to the chicken tracks of Dr. Talmadge afforded some relief from the unevenness of his emotions. There was nothing in Nancy's brain or bloodstream to account for her malady. Talmadge had tried heavy doses of scopolamine and paraldehyde, but after tentative success, some encouraging periods of brightness and normalcy, Nancy Bradwin had gone back to her cold, deathlike slumbers. In the end Talmadge, admitting in the dry language of the report that he could not help her, returned to his clinic and hanged himself.

Of his final hours only the act was known, not his thoughts. Was he motivated by despair, or had he found an answer that, instead of enlightening him, had driven him mad?

Perhaps it wasn't Nancy after all, Jackson speculated, but the unhealthy atmosphere of this house where Talmadge had spent so much time, neglecting the rest of his practice. . Jackson rubbed his throat, as if in sympathetic response to the pressure of the rope that had killed Henry Talmadge. He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed. Just for a few calm minutes, a period of meditation; it was almost time to go up and look in on Champ again. But he was more tired than he had thought. Almost as soon as Jackson reminded himself not to forget Champ, he fell asleep.

I
n the Negro settlement, a neighborhood of plain board houses and big trees, fenced chickens and dilapidated automobiles sitting on rusted axles, the women attending Old Lamb came and went faithfully. Past midnight the air was still humid in this place, where the Forked Deer River slowed to a heron's roost and seemed dankly finished, directionless, beneath the live oak. From where Early Boy crouched in concealment he could make out a high shine of moisture on the aged man's untroubled brow. A kerosene lantern was hung beneath the porch eaves where the light wouldn't be in his eyes. The porch and steps were heaped with barbarous flowers. Static crackled from the radio, with an occasional clear passage of half-sung blues as some gifted stranger played the bottleneck.

The women changed his nightshirt twice, tenderly stripping him naked without appearing to disturb him very much as he sat in his rocking chair. At least he never complained. They knotted white handkerchiefs soaked in cold water around his head and gave him frequent drinks from a gourd dipper. The water flowed through him and the slats of the chair and dribbled onto the worn boards of the porch. He rocked from time to time, when he was alone. That disturbed the cur dog which slept by the radio, one eye partly open and glowing redly like a doomed tube.

After the last appearance of the women from inside the house, when the moon had begun to set, the lamp burned low and finally flickered out. Not another light showed anywhere in the settlement. Early Boy rose from his couchant position and popped his stiff joints discreetly, then went about his business.

The old cur heard him as he trod the first step to the porch; he tried to spring up, but his back legs wouldn't untangle and he flopped foolishly across Old Lamb's bare feet. He was whining his way up to a growl when Old Lamb put down a hand to silence him.

Old Lamb turned his head in Early Boy's direction. "You come to hymn and Bible me?" he said crossly, gumming his words.

"Not my style."

Old Lamb sniffed the air, as if finding his odor unfamiliar. A change came over him. He spoke in a stronger, educated voice. "Oh, it's you, Beau. Had yourself a bath?"

"Early Boy, if you don't mind."

"Glad to see you, whatever you choose to call yourself."

Actually Old Lamb couldn't see much of anything. Of one eye there were only bluish glints beneath a heavy lowering lid; the other eye was dormant in a bristle-bog, buggery growths all around it. He smiled at the fierce, particular clutch of Early Boy's hand on his shoulder. "Sit," the old man said.

Early Boy glanced at the screen door, listening to snores inside the house, the heavy sounds of one of the women turning over in her sleep. Then he hunkered down near the rocker, his back against a pillar of the porch.

For several minutes neither of them said a word. Early Boy looked as if he were napping with his eyes open, but he had taken inventory of every shadow, and no sound escaped analysis. Old Lamb began to rock. Then he stopped to pee in his wholesome shirt. He rocked again.

"Nephritic kidneys. Renal failure."

"I noticed that. You in pain?"

"No. The breath of starvation is like the odor of fresh bread. Did you know that?" A mild complaining note crept into his voice. "But it takes a long time to die this way."

"How long you gone without food?"

"I don't know, when did you come the first time?"

"Two weeks ago."

"Since way before. then. I'm weaker than I was; sometimes I can barely detect my own pulse. But it's taking so long, Beau."

"Call me Early Boy. You could've give yourself a shot of something, end it quick. Why didn't you?"

"Early Boy, I had a dream." A smile formed. The dog at his feet whistled in his sleep. "I walked with my neighbor Jesus to a door that opened in the earth. And he carried all my bones packed in a little gold keepsake box, small and round as an egg or an eye."

"That's some dream. I wonder what it has to do with my question?"

"Easy. Before I can walk again with Jesus, walk the straight and narrow path, I have to give up all my corruptions. And I've been a corrupt man. So I take in nothing but pure spring water. I piss out all the poisons. I grow weaker, but exalted. In the end I'll step down from this old rocking chair, light as a feather, and Jesus will be waiting in all his shining glory, his hand outstretched for mine."

Early Boy looked both ways along the deserted road in front of Old Lamb's house, thinking of Sunday school long ago, and Bible lessons. His mother had been a soprano in the Baptist church choir. It was about all he remembered of his mother: singing solo in the choir loft, her voice eerily perfect, but without passion.

"Have you thought about what I asked you?"

Old Lamb nodded. "I have."

"Well, then?"

"It's too late. It won't do any good to kill him, he's just the
N'ganga
, a
feticheur
, and not a very good one at that."

"What if I do kill him?"

"It's the
loa
you should be concerned about. She must be the Ai-da Wédo—the most powerful of African goddesses. She has, she is, eternal life."

Early Boy turned his head and spat. "Horse shit."

"Have you seen her?" Old Lamb asked him patiently.

"Told you what I saw. A ritual, and a goddamned bunch of snakes, more snakes than I ever seen in one place before."

"Of course. The Ai-da Wélo is a serpent, goddess of the moon and wife of the sun. In Africa she's called Mawu, in Haiti Erzulie—she's dark, and as beautiful as the queen of Sheba. Those who want to change their fortunes, their station in life, invoke her. But there's a danger in that, as you already know."

"Didn't they wring all that voodoo crap out of you in medical school?"

Old Lamb was amused. "For many years I set aside my faith. I didn't truly believe again, not until I saw her—the Ai-da Wédo. Beautiful as a rainbow, forbidding as the adder." The brightness of his mind seemed to fail abruptly, leaving him a soiled mummy, his voice fading into querulous dialect. He spoke to unseen intruders: "Git yore hands off me now, tol' you I jus wants to be left 'lone. Don't do that, niggers, I ain't et nothin' and I won't, jus' tend to your ownselfs and let me die!"

Early Boy sighed, putting a fist against his wrecked mouth to stifle the sound, wondering if he would have to come back another night, or if there would
be
another night for Old Lamb. He waited, not sure what to do. But Old Lamb spoke again, brisk and sure.

"It's an old religion, you know, older than our own. Moses was a voodoo initiate, a student of Ra-Gu-El-Pethro, the sacred Midianite teacher. Moses, according to the voodoo tradition, married Sephora, daughter of Pethro, and she bore him two mulatto sons. All of the social and religious teachings of the Bible, codified by Moses, had their origins in the Negro theocracy." He chuckled richly. "I do wonder what all the sanctimonious white preachers around here will say when the truth is finally revealed. Thousands of years before Jesus, the beauty of ancient civilizations was the beauty of their blackness. Their wisdom was Negro wisdom. Who knows? If the Ai-da Wédo has chosen Tyrone to be the prophet of the ultimate Truth, the dawning of the new age of the Negro race, it must be that he's a better man than I thought he was."

"Tyrone's nothing but a crazy nigger, and you know it."

"Tyrone always had time to sit and talk. There was little he couldn't absorb quickly: medicine, philosophy, religion—though his Christian faith had become a shell, riddled by contempt for the white man's pompous religiosity, his own refusal to abide meekly outside the Jim Crow door to heaven. I was flattered by Tyrone's attention, renewed by his vigor, seduced by the quality of his mind. In return he seduced my daughters. He must have thought I owed them to him, for the time he spent with me. So Tyrone was never a true friend of mine. But I believed his cause was just. I believed in his right to all the lands of Dasharoons. Why not? You no longer wanted what your father, and his fathers before him, purchased with the blood of slaves. Tyrone's cause was just, but his pursuit of it seemed hopeless enough to turn him into a crazy nigger, like you said. So I took pity and helped him—"

"You taught him voodoo. Like giving a little kid a can of gasoline and matches to play with. So he raised the devil with his voodoo. How did he cripple the lawyer, by sticking pins in a doll?"

Old Lamb began to shake his head. "No, no, you don't understand—I taught him voodoo, not to fulfill his fantasies but to take his mind off them. I hoped he would become absorbed in its complexities and possessed by the right spirit, one who would serve as his mentor. Voodoo is not primitive witchcraft, as so many white men want to believe. Its rituals and symbolism are as complex and meaningful as anything in Christianity. The pantheon of voodoo gods rivals those of the Greeks and Romans, with whom they have many deities in common."

"Where did you learn about voodoo?"

"My mother was a mambo in Haiti. Unlike so many of the priests in an overcrowded profession, she seemed to have an authentic calling, which must include reverence for the
lois
—the laws of creation."

"But Tyrone didn't have the call."

Old Lamb sighed, and Early Boy caught a whiff of his yeasty breath.

"Tyrone was mounted too soon, before he was prepared for the responsibility. One must have power over the
mystères
—the spirits—in order to drive out the unruly ones before they can do harm. But the Ai-da Wédo.—that's different. She has no earthly master."

Old Lamb began to cough and rock and clutch at his chest. Early Boy couldn't tell if he was in pain or laughing. His sentient eye blazed with ardor. When the cough subsided, his mouth chewed soundlessly for a time. There was a nugget of phlegm on his lower lip. As he resumed speaking, he reverted to guttural dialect.

"You know de Ai-da Wédo, she can fly twice round de worl' in smoke an' fire, tail like a comet, 'fore you whispers her name. She got power like de earthquake, but she can strut, too, jus' like some fancy whore. Tyrone, he think 'cause she play de flirty womans wif 'im, he got control ober her. But you don't luck wif de Ai-da Wédo and live to tell no stories, no, sah! De big boss man, you knows who I mean, be alive today iffen his boy didn't fuck wif de Ai-da Wédo." Old Lamb broke down in a sweaty wheeze of laughter. "Jezebel! She try to fuck wif me too 'cause she's afraid, jus' a little bit you know, of my dead mama's magic! Strong
baka
! But I don't let Ai-da Wédo mount me, and not jus' 'cause I's old. No, sah, never gets
dat
old. But I's plenty careful 'bout what I dips my wick into."

He slumped sideways in the chair, still laughing, until tears ran from his burdened eyes. Early Boy looked at the screen door, ready to melt away from the porch if anyone stirred inside and came sleepily to investigate a dying man's mirth. But Old Lamb had to stop laughing in order to breathe. After a while he became very still, his gray head sagged down onto one shoulder.

Early Boy reached out and touched a meatless black wrist. "Hey, Old Lamb."

Old Lamb made a snoring sound. Then his voice came bleakly. "Who's that?"

"Beau," he said, with the greatest reluctance. "It's Beau Bradwin. I need help."

"I know you. I always liked you. Beau, you shouldn't have run away."

"Smartest thing I ever did. Now tell me what happened' to Clipper. Did the Ai-da Wédo get him?"

"She seized his mind and body."

"How?"

"Through sexual intercourse."

"Here's the sixty-four-dollar question. What can I do about her?"

"I'm cold, Beau. Shut out the light, please. It's a cold light."

Early Boy arose and blew out the feeble flame of the lantern suspended overhead. He went back to his position. Old Lamb spoke as if he hadn't moved.

"The light, Beau."

"It's out."

"Then what is that I see? Can't be an angel of mercy, coming after me. It's too small, too far away. Like an eye, staring. No lid to the eye. Yellow. It burns me. I'm dry and cold and still corrupt. Too late, Beau.
Uncle Guardian, neighbor Jesus, give me your baka!"
As if suddenly afraid of the indifference of his Christian god, he broke into a moaning Creole chant. "
Yahwé, Yahwé, Bossou mrin! Empéchez lan-mo prend-m'
"