The Diviners (30 page)

Back in Harlem, Memphis walked along Lenox Avenue feeling
out of step with the people out for a good time. He wandered until he found himself standing across the street from Miss A’Lelia Walker’s grand town house on 136th Street. Several nice cars were parked outside, and a butler stood at the door. The lights were ablaze, and inside, Memphis knew, she was probably hosting one of her famous salons visited by the likes of Harlem’s greatest talents—musicians, artists, writers, scholars. Memphis imagined himself at one of her parties, reading his poetry to an elegant audience. But the path from the sidewalk where he stood to the lighted salon seemed an impossible distance, and Memphis turned away. He thought about going to the Hotsy Totsy or the Tomb of the Fallen Angels to see what was going on. There was almost always a party somewhere. But instead, he headed toward home, the memory of his mother fresh in his mind. Blind Bill Johnson was sitting on the stoop of a brownstone playing his guitar softly, even though there was no one to hear it. Memphis tried to sneak past.

“Who’s there? Who’s walking past old Blind Bill without saying nothing?”

“It’s Memphis Campbell, sir.”

Bill’s mouth relaxed into a toothy smile. “Good evening, Mr. Campbell. I’m mighty relieved it’s you and not some lou-lou come for me.”

“What’s a lou-lou?”

“Old Cajun word. What you call it? A bogeyman.”

“No, sir. No bogeyman. Just me.”

Blind Bill pursed his lips like he’d taken a shot of bathtub gin mixed with spit. “Not a good night to be roaming. Can’t you feel that on the back of your neck? The
fifolet
? Like the swamp gas rising up, the evil spirits following you.”

Between the business up at the house and Blind Bill’s Cajun superstitions, Memphis was feeling spooked. He didn’t want to
talk about ghosts and hobgoblins. “My aunt says I’m thick as a brick. I’d be the last person to feel spirits moving.”

Blind Bill turned his face toward Memphis, almost as if he could see him standing there. “Heard me something real interesting over at Floyd’s shop today. Heard you used to be a healer.”

“Once upon a time.”

“You still got the healing spirit in you? Could you put dem hands on old Blind Bill and gimme back my sight?”

“I don’t have that gift anymore.” Memphis was suddenly very tired, too tired to keep his words inside. They tumbled out to the old man. “It left me when my mother… She was real sick. And I laid hands on her, and…” Memphis’s throat ached. He swallowed against the tightness. “She died. She died right there under my hands. And whatever healing I had died with her.”

“That’s a real sad story, Mr. Campbell,” Blind Bill said after a pause.

Memphis’s nose ran with his tears and he was glad the old man couldn’t see him crying. He didn’t say anything else.

Blind Bill nodded as if in some private conversation. “But you didn’t do nothin’ to your mama ’cepting try to ease her pain. You hear me? Sometimes, it’s a mercy,” he said quietly, and Memphis was grateful for the old man’s kindness. “I’ma give you something.”

Bill rummaged in his pocket and came up with a butterscotch candy. He felt for Memphis’s hand and pressed it into his palm with his dry, scratchy fingers. “Here. You keep that. ’Case you ever need to ask Papa Legba’s protection.”

“Papa who?”

“Papa Legba. He’s the gatekeeper of the Vilokan—the spirit realm. He stands at the crossroads. If you’re lost, he can help you find your way. Just leave him a little something sweet.”

Aunt Octavia would have a fit if she heard Bill talking that
way. Once, she’d made them cross the street to avoid a nearly hidden matchbox of a store whose plate-glass windows were draped in red and black, with candles and figurines of saints with African faces. A small sign advertised
CURSES LIFTED AND OBSTACLES TO HAPPINESS REMOVED
. “Don’t you go anywhere near that voodoo,” she’d said when Isaiah demanded to know why they were going a block out of their way. Under her breath, she’d recited the Lord’s Prayer.

Memphis held the candy uncertainly. It felt strangely heavy in his palm. “My aunt says you should pray only to Jesus.”

Blind Bill grunted and spat. “You think the white folks’ god is gonna help you? You think he’s on our side?”

“I don’t think anybody’s god is on our side.”

Memphis readied himself for some rebuke. Instead, the old man nodded knowingly, the corners of his mouth twisting into a smile of bitter agreement. “That might be the most honest thing you ever said, Mr. Campbell. Damn sight better than that charm and hair oil you usually putting on.” He laughed then—a big, wheezing cough of a laugh—and slapped his leg, and the whole thing—the conversation, the candy, the earlier adventure at the house—struck Memphis as so completely ridiculous that he couldn’t stop himself from joining in. The two of them were doubled over like fools.

“Oh, law, law, law,” Blind Bill said, patting his chest. “Ain’t that the way of the world, now? Good luck turns bad. Bad luck turns good. Just a big rolling craps game played between this world and the next, and we the dice getting tossed around. You go on home now, Mr. Campbell. Get you some rest. Live to fight another day. Plenty of time for regrettin’. Go out and have you some good times while you still young.”

“I’ll do that, sir.” He’d changed his mind about going home.
Blind Bill was right—Memphis was young, and so was the night. And so he charted his course for the Hotsy Totsy.

Bill listened to Memphis Campbell’s footsteps fading away. He wanted to tell Memphis how lucky he was that the gift had left him when it did. What a mercy that was. How grateful he should be that the wrong people hadn’t found out about it. Bill felt in his pocket for some money for a bite to eat. He rubbed the dime and nickel between his fingers. Not much. If only he could stop gambling. But that was his curse; he couldn’t stay away from risk and chance, whether it was cards, the numbers game, craps, cockfighting, or horse racing. But he kept seeing that house in his dreams with the clouds and crossroads. He hadn’t worked out the gig for any of it yet, but he would. There was a number on the side of the house’s mailbox. If only he could see it, he felt sure, that number would be the key to winning big. And once he had his money, he could set about getting revenge.

The house sat on the windswept hill like a sentinel. Ivy sprawled across the exterior, spreading like a stain. The windows were shuttered and nailed closed. The engraved cherrywood doors were a dull brown. If anyone could have seen inside, they’d have noted that cobwebs draped from doorways and spiders secreted their web-wrapped prey into crevices. Warped floorboards bowed dangerously in spots.

In its day, the house had been magnificent. There had been celebrations and dances. On Sundays, carriages had passed by to admire the house’s commanding presence, a symbol of everything that was right and good and hopeful about the country. The house was a dream realized. The man who had built the house, Jacob Knowles, had made his fortune in steel, the very steel used to build the city. He and his wife had only one surviving child, a daughter named Ida, who was their greatest joy. Ida was small and prone to colds, and for this reason, her anxious parents indulged the girl’s every whim. There were piano lessons and pony rides and a small spaniel named Chester. When Ida played tea party on the lawn,
servants waited nearby to pour tea for her dolls. Many were the days she pretended to be an Arabian princess surveying her kingdom. She would climb the stairs to the very top room of the house, an attic room with a small terrace. In 1863 she watched the smoke from the Draft Riot fires from there, daydreaming that she looked upon the lairs of distant dragons and not the simmering frustrations of a class and race war erupting into brutal mob violence. While the Civil War raged on, Ida grew into a young woman. She dreamed of marrying some handsome officer so that they might become the next master and mistress of the grand house. Months after the Civil War ended, Union soldiers joined General Grant himself for a party at the house that spilled out onto the lawn for fireworks as the strains of a waltz echoed along the rafters. But Ida had a cold and was confined to her bed with a mustard plaster on her chest, sobbing at her misfortune though her mother patted her cheek and told her not to worry, that there would be another ball and a young man waiting for her, and besides, they were not ready to have their only daughter, their dear Ida, leave them just yet.

But it was Ida’s mother who was to leave. A year after that ball, Mrs. Knowles fell sick with dysentery and was buried within a week. One year later, Jacob Knowles died of a sudden brain hemorrhage. It fell to twenty-year-old Ida to maintain Knowles’ End. Running a household was a far cry from playing princess, and though a distant cousin admonished Ida to be prudent with her spending, she did not heed his advice. Grief-stricken at the loss of her parents, Ida turned to the new Spiritualism for comfort. She opened Knowles’ End to Theosophists, card readers, and spirit mediums. The most gifted of these mediums was a wealthy widow named Mary White, who had an uncanny ability to put Ida in communication with her relatives on the other side. There was no rapping of the table, nor cheap levitation tricks, as so many attempted. No,
Mary White had a genuine gift and a warm demeanor, and Mary and Ida became quite close, with Ida calling her “sister.” Once again, the house was filled with activity, and Knowles’ End became a place for spiritual meetings, card readings, séances, and all sorts of esoteric and occult gatherings. Ida felt certain it was only a matter of time before Knowles’ End was restored to its former glory. Mary had all but told her that the spirits assured it.

Mary had a companion in these endeavors, a most charismatic man with transfixing eyes, a Mr. Hobbes. He was, she promised, a prophet. A holy man. Certainly, he spent many hours alone in the library reading, and sometimes, during their séances, he fell into strange trances and spoke in words Ida did not comprehend—proof, Mary told her, of his connection to the spirit realm.

But Ida’s expenses were many—spirit mediums were costly—and the Knowles fortune dwindled quickly. Ida would be socially humiliated if her debts were to become known. It was Mary who offered to buy Knowles’ End and take Ida on as a boarder in order to spare her reputation. Mary agreed to let Ida have her favorite room, the attic room with the view of the city, and told her not to worry, that she would pay the back taxes and Mr. Hobbes would take on the hard work needed to make Knowles’ End, which had fallen into disrepair, beautiful again.

That he did. Such a clamor! A crew would work for a week, then be curtly dismissed, only to be replaced by a new crew who would last perhaps five or six days before Mr. Hobbes sent them packing as well. Finally, he himself set about working in the old cellar, building a storeroom for canned goods and supplies—or so he said, for Ida was not allowed below. “Too dangerous,” he’d told her with a smile that did not reach his eyes. (His eyes, those cold and mesmerizing eyes.) “Wouldn’t want you to catch your death down there.” There were other peculiar changes in the house.
Doors that went nowhere. Decorative rosettes that framed holes in the walls which produced a strange smoke that Mr. Hobbes insisted was good for the lungs and necessary for higher spiritual work. A long laundry chute that Mrs. White assured her would help the poor laundress. They were down to only three servants—a laundress, a housemaid, and a groomsman who doubled as a driver. It was disgraceful, and Ida hoped no one knew how bad things were. But then Mary would smile and tell her she’d been visited by the spectral form of Ida’s father, and he was holding rosemary, for remembrance, a sure sign that he was watching over them all, and Ida would feel grateful for this small comfort. For Ida’s nervous state, Mary offered her sweet wine, which sometimes gave Ida the strangest dreams of fire and destruction and the ghostly visages of sober-faced men and women.

Things began to turn sour. Strange meetings were held late into the night. Once or twice a month, Ida heard music and chanting from downstairs. People came and went.

“What do you do at these meetings?” Ida asked anxiously one evening when they dined. She only picked at her food; the roast beef was far too bloody for her taste.

“Why don’t you join us, my dear?” Mrs. White suggested.

“Babylon, that great city, is fallen. It is time for a cleansing. A rebirth. Wouldn’t you say, Miss Knowles?” Mr. Hobbes asked, smiling. His eyes were so very blue that Ida felt quite undone. For a moment, staring at him, she wondered what it would be like to dance with Mr. Hobbes. To feel his kiss. His caress. And as soon as she thought it, she was overcome with revulsion.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” she said. Her hands trembled. The blood from the roast beef formed a small, sickening pool on her plate. “I… I’m not well. If you’ll excuse me, I shall go to bed.”

That night, she heard strange sounds coming from inside the house, the most terrible bestial noises and whispers. She was too afraid to leave her bedroom. She lay awake shivering under her covers till morning.

In a cabinet in the formal parlor, Mr. Hobbes kept a large leather-bound book, rather like a Bible. But when Ida tried to get at it, she discovered that the cabinet was locked. Her own cabinet in her own house, locked against her! Shaking with anger, she confronted Mrs. White (for she no longer regarded her with the sisterly affection of “Mary.”) “I won’t have it, Mrs. White. I won’t,” Ida sniped.

“It isn’t your house any longer, my dear,” Mrs. White answered, and her smile was cruel.