Days of Little Texas (19 page)

The black is so dark, I can see flashes of my eyeballs when I blink.

“Lucy!
” I hiss into the dark.

“Come on
.”

I touch the brick wall with my free hand, keeping my head low, and move as quick as I can toward her voice. I’m near about to panic when she takes my hand.

“Can you see?” I say.

“Shhh
.”

She gives my arm a tug, and I stumble after her, using the wall as a guide, heart kicking in my chest. We get to the
corner and move out of the tunnel that led to the locked door.
We can’t be far away now, can we?

A sound comes from in front of us.
In front of us!

Lucy yanks me back against the wall and claps a hot hand over my mouth. She squeezes my face hard. There’s a kind of scratchy noise up ahead, like somebody running a screwdriver over the bricks.

Closer. Closer. Finally just past us, trailing away in some other part of the cellar.

I can’t help it—I wrench away from her and start to move quick toward the hall where I think the stairs are, feeling any minute whatever is making the noise could be right at our backs.

“Come on,” I
hiss.

A cracking noise sounds just behind us, like stones crunching together. I’m half running now, fingers raking on the raspy bricks. I bark my shin on something and tumble down. Lucy hauls me to my feet. We’re at the bottom of the stairs.

It’s still behind us. I let go of Lucy’s hand and scramble up the stairs on all fours as fast as I can, knocking my knees on the splintery wood till I slam into the door at the top. I nearly drop the book as I claw for the latch. I crank it hard, then tumble through into the kitchen. I roll onto my back and kick the cellar door shut and lay there gasping.

Alone.

“Lucy!
”

I wait there breathing hard in the dimness—watching the door. Expecting the black knob to turn, something to come out, anything.

Where is she?

Nothing
.

I jump to my feet and rush to the cellar door. It’s jammed again. I put my weight against the frame, tugging and pulling, but it’s like it’s nailed shut this time. I beat on the door.

What has it done with her? If it’s done anything to her, so help me
God
, I’ll…

I drop to my knees and pray before the door, half silent, half in desperate whispers, for what seems forever, fighting my own terror. I get up, try the door, and it opens easily this time. I pull the light cord and call down the stairs, faint with fear for her.

I have to trust that she got away. I have to.

Please, God
.

The composition book is still where I dropped it when I fell through the doorway. I pick it up and clutch it to my stomach like something might try to wrestle it loose from me, then hurry upstairs. My room is empty. I shut the door, wishing I could lock it.

What’s to stop it from coming back for me? But somehow the night doesn’t have that feeling anymore. It’s like whatever was chasing us has left the house. Left because it got Lucy?

Please let her be all right. Please, God, please
.

I bring the book over to the lamp. Its outside is spotted and gray, covered with faded little leaf shapes. It stinks of mold and looks to be held together by pure mildew. I turn to the first page….

A single name: Thaddeus Palmer. Probably the person who owned the book.
But why not Vanderloo?

In a fever I turn through the pages—what can it tell us about what Lucy and I are supposed to do?

I begin to read. The first page has two columns under the heading “1854,” marked “Births at Vanderloo” and “Deaths at
Vanderloo.” There are lists of names below each one, some marked with checks. The names sound old-timey: Silvey, Miss Parsey, Peg, Liddy.

I flip through a bunch more pages—more numbers and dates and names for other years. It reminds me of the green ledger book Miss Wanda Joy uses to tote up the love offerings after each service. Like somebody keeping records for a business.

A business?

I drop the book like my hands have been scalded.

Slaves. These are the names of
slaves.

Next morning I look out at an overcast sky, the water dark and broiling around Devil Hill. More rain is coming. I wonder about Lucy.

I head downstairs and stash the composition book behind a cushion in the den before going in to breakfast. They are all talking about the service, trying to figure out what tasks can be done on a rainy day. I wait for a chance to show the book to Certain Certain in private.

“How’d it go last night, Lightning?” he says, grinning a little. “Didn’t hear a peep out of you.”

“It was fine,” I say.

There is a reason they showed us this
, I tell myself.
Focus on the composition book
.

I pull Certain Certain off into the den after we eat and hand him the notebook.

“I wanted you to take a look at this.”

Certain Certain turns the notebook over and takes a long look at the pages. “Well, I’ll be God—where’d you get this, boy?”

I’ve never been very good at lying. “Found it down in the basement.”

“What you doing prowling around down there?”

“Just… exploring.”

He touches his torn lip, considering. “It’s a property ledger from the Vanderloo Plantation, 1854 to 1866. Valuable historic artifact. Plantation owners used ’em to keep records of their property.”

“Their slaves.”

“Same thing.
Chattels
—same as a cow or a wagon or a bale of cotton. Sometimes owners, they kept their books their-selves. Other times an overseer did it for them. Look here….” He touches a place in the book where it says “Letty’s child” under the birth column. “Girl child born March eighteenth. Then look on down here.” He points under the column marked “Deaths.” “Letty’s child” appears again next to “June 11.”

“So her baby died,” I say.

Certain Certain nods. “Total loss to the owner. That’s the
way they looked at it. Poor little thing. Measles, chicken pox, whooping cough, things like that killed folks off all the time. Pretty near every family had two or three children who never made it to their tenth birthday. Now, with slaves, well… it was even worse.”

“Didn’t anybody ever treat ’em decently?”

“Some did. Some did, yes. But when you’re being treated like a horse, does it really make all that much difference? Barlows know you got this?”

“No, sir.”

“Something like this ought to be in a museum. You want me to give it to them, keep you out of trouble?”

“No, I will,” I say. “But can I look at it just a little while longer?”

“I reckon it’s okay, long as you don’t damage it. Go easy on that binding, Lightning.”

Heavy drops start spitting against the big windows, so I spend time up in my room studying the ledger book for clues and thinking about Lucy.

A gullywasher kicks up later in the evening with scads of lightning. After supper me and Sugar Tom head up to his room, and he digs out his old chessboard and gives me a game while we listen to the thunder spanking the sky. Tonight I’m so distracted, he kills my rook with one of his pawns.

“What’s bothering you, Ronald Earl?” Sugar Tom says. He moves his bishop from clear across the board, hemming my king in. “Checkmate.”

I cough, waiting to say something, then figure I should just get to it. “What do you think about everything that’s been going on? Do you think anything’s liable to happen at the service?”

“Ronald Earl,” he says, “when you’ve been in the ministry as long as I have, there is
nothing
—nothing, I’m telling you— on God’s green earth that surprises me anymore. You have to remember, we are
targets—we
don’t hide our light under a bushel basket, we let it shine. And Christians aren’t the only ones who see our light, believe you me. The others are drawn to it, too.”

“What others?”

“The fallen ones. Warriors of darkness. They see the light, and they can’t keep away. Did I ever tell you about the time I sat up with Miss Gayola Thompson? In Birmingham Memorial Hospital? When she was having her female troubles?”

“No, sir.”

“I had fallen asleep in my chair, and she woke me up, terrified something was in the room with us. Kept screaming it was in a corner up by the ceiling. I was barely awake, and the lighting was quite dim, but I thought I saw something there, too. Makes me go cold all over just thinking about it.
Eyes
, Ronald Earl. Several sets of
eyes
up in that corner of the ceiling.
Watching
her. I reckon that’s what they do. Beset a person in a time of great weakness, hoping to wear down their faith. Turn them against the Lord in their despair.”

“You think it was demons?”

“Devils. Demons. Whatever you want to call them. Something was there. You could
feel
it in the room. Only saw those eyes for a brief little moment, but I snatched up my Bible and read the book of Leviticus straight through out loud.”

“Why Leviticus?”

Sugar Tom pulls at his big, hairy ear.

“Lot of strength in that book, Ronald Earl. I’ve found over the years there are occasions where it’s not the message so much as the words themselves. Do you see the difference? There is a great power in words we can
see
. Concrete, solid words.
Tabernacle. Altar. Turtledove. Meat. Bullock. Blood
. Leviticus is full of them. It yanks you away from the bad things and pulls you right back down to the goodness of the earth.”

He raises his arms up, fingers spread, eyes rolling back in his head. His voice gets so big, it fills the whole room.

“‘And he brought the ram for the burnt offering: and Aaron and his sons laid their hands upon the head of the ram. And he killed it; and Moses sprinkled the blood upon the altar round about. And he cut the ram into pieces; and Moses burnt the head, and the pieces, and the fat.’”

“I see what you mean,” I say.

“Power of the
Word
,” Sugar Tom says. “It’s the bedrock the church is built on. Ran those devils right out of that hospital room. Miss Gayola slept good and sound for the first time in days. Woke up ready to bounce her grandchildren on her lap. The Word is our
shield
, Ronald Earl. No matter
what
is waiting for us on that island, the Word is stronger.”

I try to think of the best way to ask my next question, somehow smooth it out.

“Um. Then why do you think … when Pastor Hallmark got drug away … why couldn’t he—”

“Why couldn’t he stand up to the devil? I won’t speak to the size of a man’s faith. Only the Lord can answer that. But I know you’ll be fine. I’ve seen it in you—that power. When it’s flaming full bore, nothing can stand against it.”

I say good night and head out feeling a little better. Miss Wanda Joy catches me coming out of the bathroom. She’s wearing her purple bathrobe.

“I’ve been meaning to speak with you all day,” she says. A lock of hair big around as a coffee cup is hanging loose on her forehead. I wonder what she does with all that hair, how she ever gets it dry. “I hope you’re as excited as I am.”

“Yes’m.”

“Certain Certain has everything well in hand. We may have five hundred attendees at the service. I’ve tried my best to secure TV coverage, but they all tell me they have a policy against filming church services, unless I want to buy time on Sunday. But a fellow out of Atlanta—
Atlanta!
—is writing a story for the
Journal Constitution
. This is going to be the cornerstone in the next phase of our ministry, putting Little Texas and the Church of the Hand on a sound footing for years to come.”

“Yes’m. I mean, that’s good news.”

“Is anything wrong? You seemed quiet at supper.”

“Just tired, I guess.”

“I don’t see how. You’ve had your days free to rest. Aren’t you sleeping well?”

“Mostly. At least after that first night.”

“No more demons hanging around?” She smiles in a way that pulls down her eyebrows above her nose, making her look like somebody planning something wicked.

“No,” I say, and I think that’s the truth, strictly speaking.

“Well, good night and sleep well.”

She goes on past me, then stops and turns around. “Have you selected a text for your sermon?”

The question catches me off guard. “Um—no, but I was thinking maybe something out of Leviticus.”

“Leviticus?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well. That’s an odd choice. All those verses about sacrifices. Quite a while since you cracked open the Old Testament, isn’t it?”

“I guess so.”

“But perhaps that’s best. Considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Oh, nothing.”

She smiles and steps into the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind her. I can hear the lock turn and the shower water start up.

She wants something to happen
, I think.
Bet she’s even praying for it
.