Boy's Life (79 page)

     “I wasn’t afraid of her,” Dad corrected Mom. “I was just… a little skittish, that’s all.”

     “And she said she’d help Dick Moultry? Even when she knew he’d had a hand in settin’ that time bomb?”

     “Well… it wasn’t quite that simple,” my father admitted.

     “Oh?” Mom waited. When Dad offered no more information, Mom said, “I’d like to hear it.”

     “She made me promise to come back. She said she could look at me and tell I was bein’ eaten up alive. She said it showed in your face and in Cory’s, too. She said we were all livin’ under the strain of that dead man at the bottom of Saxon’s Lake.” Dad put the newspaper down and watched the fire. “And you know what? She’s right. I promised to go back to see her tomorrow evenin’ at seven o’clock. I was gonna tell you, eventually. Or maybe I wasn’t, I don’t know.”

     “Pride, pride,” Mom scolded him. “You mean to tell me you did for Dick Moultry what you wouldn’t do for
me?
”

     “No. It’s just that I wasn’t ready. Dick needed help. I found it for him. And now I’m ready to find it for myself and both of you, too.”

     Mom got up from her chair. She stood behind my father, and she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned her chin against his head. I watched their shadows merge. He reached up and put his arm around her neck. They stayed that way for a moment, heart-close, as the fire cracked and sizzled.

     It was time to go see the Lady.

     When we arrived at her house at ten minutes before seven o’clock, Mr. Damaronde answered the door. Dad had no qualms about crossing the threshold; his fear of the Lady was gone. The Moon Man came out, clad in his robe and slippers, and offered us some pretzels. Mrs. Damaronde put on a pot of coffee—the New Orleans kind with chicory, she said—and we waited in the front room until the Lady was ready to see us.

     I was keeping my suspicions about Dr. Lezander to myself. I still couldn’t let my heart believe that Dr. Lezander, who had always been so kind and gentle to Rebel, might be a murderer. I had the connection of the two parrots, but there was nothing to connect Dr. Lezander with the dead man except a green feather, and that was just my theory. So he didn’t like milk and he was a night owl; did that make him a killer? Before I told my parents, I would need something more solid to go on.

     We didn’t have to wait very long. Mr. Damaronde asked us to come back with him, and he led us not to the Lady’s bedroom but to another room across the hallway. In it, the Lady was sitting in a high-backed chair behind a folding card table. She wore not a voodoo robe or a wizard’s cap, but just a plain dark gray dress with a lapel pin in the shape of a dancing harlequin. On the floor of what was obviously her consultation room was a rug of woven reeds, and a crooked tree grew from a big clay pot in the corner. The walls were painted beige and unadorned. Mr. Damaronde closed the door and the Lady said, “Sit down, Tom.”

     Dad obeyed. I could tell he was nervous, because I could hear his throat click when he swallowed. He flinched a little when the Lady reached down beside her chair and brought up a doctor’s bag. She placed it on the table and unzipped it.

      “Is this gonna hurt?” Dad asked.

     “It might. Depends.”

     “On what?”

     “How deep we have to cut to get at the truth,” she answered. She reached into the bag and brought out something wrapped up in blue cloth. Then a silver filigreed box came out, followed by a deck of cards. She brought out a sheet of typing paper. In the overhead light I saw the Nifty watermark; it was the same brand of paper I used. Last out of the bag was a pill bottle containing three polished river pebbles: one ebony, one reddish-brown, one white with gray bands. She said, “Open your right hand,” and when Dad did she unscrewed the pill bottle’s cap and shook the river pebbles into his palm. “Work those in your hand awhile,” she directed.

     Dad gave a nervous smile as he did as she asked. “Did these come from Old Moses’s stomach or somethin’?”

     “No. They’re just old pebbles I found. Keep workin’ ’em, they’ll calm you down.”

     “Oh,” Dad said, rolling the worry-pebbles around and around in his palm.

     Mom and I stood to one side, to give the Lady plenty of room to do what she was going to do. Whatever that might be. I don’t know what I expected. Maybe one of those torchlit ceremonies with people dancing around in circles and hollering. But it wasn’t like that at all. The Lady began to shuffle the cards, and the way she did it I suspected she might have given lessons to Maverick. “Tell me about your dreams, Tom,” she said as the cards made a rhythmic
whirr
ing noise between her supple fingers.

     Dad glanced uneasily at us. “Do you want them to go?” the Lady asked, but he shook his head. “I dream,” he began, “about watchin’ the car go into Saxon’s Lake. Then I’m in the water with it, and I’m lookin’ through the window at the dead man. His face… all smashed up. The handcuff on his wrist. The piano wire around his throat. And as the car’s goin’ down and the water starts floodin’ in he—” Dad had to pause a minute. The pebbles clicked together in his palm. “He looks at me and he grins. That awful, smashed face grins. And when he speaks it’s like… mud gurglin’.”

     “What does he say?”

     “He says… ‘Come with me, down in the dark.’” Dad’s face was a study in pain, and it hurt me to look at it. “That’s what he says. ‘Come with me, down in the dark.’ And he reaches for me, with his hand that isn’t shackled. He reaches for me, and I pull back because I’m terrified he’s gonna touch me. Then it ends.”

     “You have other recurrin’ dreams?”

     “A few. Not as strong as that one, though. Sometimes I think I hear piano music. Sometimes I think I hear somebody hollerin’, but it sounds like gibberish. Occasionally I see a pair of hands holdin’ that wire, and what looks like a thick wooden baton wrapped up with black tape. There are faces in there that are all blurred up, as if I’m lookin’ at ’em through blood or my eyes can hardly hold a focus. But I don’t have those nearly as much as the one about the man in the car.”

     “Did Rebecca tell you that I’m pickin’ up some of those snippets, too?” She continued to shuffle the cards. It was a hypnotic, soothing sound. “I hear bits of piano music, the hollerin’, and I see the wire and the crackerknocker. I’ve seen the tattoo, but not the rest of him.” She smiled faintly. “You and me are plugged into the same socket, Tom, but you’re gettin’ more juice than I am. Can you beat that?”

     “I thought you were supposed to be the mystic,” Dad said.

     “I am. Supposed to be. But everybody’s got the dream-eyes, Tom. Everybody sees snippets of some quilt or another. You’re real close to this one. Closer than I am. That’s why.”

     Dad worked the river pebbles. The Lady shuffled her cards and waited.

     “At first,” he said, “I was havin’ those dreams right when I went to bed. Then later on… they started comin’ on me when I wasn’t even asleep. Durin’ the day. I just have a flash of that car, and that man’s face, and I hear him callin’. He says the same thing, over and over: ‘Come with me, down in the dark.’ I hear that mud-gurglin’ voice, and I’ve… I’ve come close to goin’ to pieces over it, because I can’t shake it. I can’t get any rest. It’s like I’m up all night, too scared to let myself sleep for fear of…” He trailed off.

     “Yes?” the Lady prodded.

     “For fear of… listenin’ to that dead man, and doin’ what he wants me to do.”

     “And what might that be, Tom?”

     “I think he wants me to kill myself,” Dad said.

     The card shuffling ceased. Mom’s hand found mine and clenched it hard.

     “I think he… wants me to come to that lake and drown myself in it. I think he wants me to come with him, down in the dark.”

     The Lady watched him intently, her emerald eyes gathering light. “Why would he want you to do that, Tom?”

     “I don’t know. Maybe he wants company.” He tried for a smile, but his mouth wouldn’t work.

     “I want you to think very, very carefully. Are those the exact words?”

     “Yeah. ‘Come with me, down in the dark.’ He says it kinda gurgly, because I guess his jaw’s busted or there’s blood or water or mud in his mouth, but… yeah, that’s it.”

     “Nothin’ else? Does he call you by name?”

     “No. That’s all.”

     “You know, that’s funny, don’t you think?” the Lady asked.

     Dad grunted. “I wish I knew what was so funny about it!”

     “This: If the dead man has a chance to speak to you—to give you a message—then why does he waste it on askin’ you to commit suicide? Why doesn’t he tell you who killed him?”

     Dad blinked. Now the clickings of the pebbles stopped. “I… never thought about that.”

     “Think about it, then. The dead man has a voice, however torn up it is. Why doesn’t he tell you the name of his killer?”

     “I can’t say. Seems he would if he could.”

     “He could.” The Lady nodded. “If he was speakin’ to you, that is.”

     “I’m not followin’ you.”

     “Maybe,” she said, “there are three plugs in that socket.”

     Realization crawled over Dad’s face. Over mine and Mom’s, too.

     “The dead man isn’t speakin’ to you, Tom,” the Lady said. “He’s speakin’ to his killer.”

     “You… mean I’m…”

     “Pickin’ up the killer’s dreams, like I’m pickin’ up yours. Oh, mercy! You’ve got some
strong
dream-eyes, Tom!”

     “He doesn’t… want me to…
kill
myself because I couldn’t get him out?”

     “No,” the Lady said. “Of that I’m sure.”

     Dad pressed his free hand to his mouth. Tears blurred his eyes, and I heard Mom sob beside me at the sight. He leaned his head forward. A single tear dropped to the table.

     “Cuttin’ deep,” the Lady said, and she put a hand on his forearm. “It’s a good hurt, though, isn’t it? Like cuttin’ away a cancer.”

     “Yes.” His voice cracked. “Yes.”

     “You want to go outside and walk around a bit, you go right ahead.”

     Dad’s shoulders trembled. But the burden was leaving him, ton by ton. He drew a deep, gasping breath, like the breath of someone whose head has just broken the surface of dark water. “I’m all right,” he said, but he didn’t lift his face up just yet. “Give me a minute.”

     “All the minutes you need, take ’em.”

     At last he looked up. He was still the man he’d been a moment before; his face was still lined, his chin a little saggy. But in his eyes he was a boy again, and he was free.

     “You interested in tryin’ to find out who that killer might be?” the Lady asked.

     Dad nodded.

     “I’ve got my own host of friends across the river. You get to be my age, you’ve got more of ’em on that side than this. They see things, and sometimes they tell me. But they like to play games with me. They like to throw me a riddle or two. So they never come right out and answer any question directly; it’s always a sly answer, but it’s always the truth. You want to involve them in this matter?” It sounded like a question she was used to asking.

     “I guess I do.”

     “Either do or not, no damn guessin’ about it.”

     After the least bit of hesitation, my father said, “I do.”

      The Lady opened the silver filigreed box and shook six small bones out on the table. “Put down the pebbles,” she said. “Pick up those in your right hand.”

     Dad looked distastefully at what lay before him. “Do I have to?”

     The Lady paused. Then she sighed and said, “Naw. It’s a mood-setter, is all.” She used the edge of her hand to sweep the bones back into the silver box. She closed it and set it aside. Then she reached into the doctor’s bag again. This time her hand came out with a small bottle of clear liquid and a plastic bag full of cotton swabs. She set these between them and opened the bottle. “You’ll have to put the pebbles down, though. Hold out your index finger.”

     “Why?”

     “Because I said so.”

     He did it. The Lady opened the bottle and upturned it over one of the cotton swabs. Then she dabbed the tip of Dad’s index finger. “Alcohol,” she explained. “Get it from Dr. Parrish.” She spread the Nifty typing paper down on the table. Then she unwrapped the object in the blue cloth. It was a stick with two needles driven through one end. “Keep your finger still,” she told him as she picked up the needled stick.

     “What’re you gonna do? You’re not gonna jab me with those, are—”

     The needles came down fast and rather roughly into the tip of Dad’s finger. “Ouch!” he said. I, too, had winced, my index finger stinging with phantom pain. Instantly blood began to well up from the needle holes. “Keep your blood off that paper,” the Lady told him. Working quickly, she dabbed alcohol on the index finger of her own right hand and with her left she whacked the needles down. Here blood was drawn, too. She said, “Ask your question. Not aloud, but in your mind. Ask it clearly. Ask it like you expect an answer. Go ahead.”