Totentanz (7 page)

"Good Lord Jesus," Lucius said, lowering his
eyes. This body, this body of his (was it?) began to tremble as it
had on the Sundays when he was a boy in front of the minister—when,
more afraid of the man's wrath than of the scourging promised in
the Bible ("Doesn't the Bible teach goodness, too?" he had once
innocently asked; "Not when you're colored,” the minister had
answered with his voice and with his hand, bringing his knuckles
across Lucius' mouth and then leaning over him with his eyes on
fire as the boy lay in the dust at the back of the church, not
trying to get up because he would just be hit again), he had come
to sit as far in the back of the church as possible, trying to hide
from those eyes.

The defeat in those blazing
eyes was what scared him the most, made him shake and tremble.
Wrath he could take, especially righteous wrath, but the assurance
that life for him, for the preacher, for each one of them—for all
those
colored
faces—might as soon be over now as later for all the
happiness they would find in it: that was what he could not face
and what made him shiver. That and the only other words the
preacher had ever spoken that had frightened him: the promise of
the judgment that awaited them—all of them, the colored and the
white—when the final battle was fought and the dead rose from their
beds of earth to see it. And even, years later, when he had washed
himself of the preacher's defeat, this one stark image had clung to
him like glue. And now he had raised his eyes from a bed of earth
to see the blue sky again and

"Lucius . . ." a voice behind him spoke.

He knew that voice; he knew that voice like
he knew his own. For a moment a flame of joy rose in him—yes, this
must be the judgment day after all, because this voice that he knew
and loved was with him, as all those he knew and loved must be with
him. The wife and son he had sent away and never seen again. And
the others . . . . He scanned the sky again before turning around
and saw something that made him sure the judgment day was at hand.
The blackbird was gone, and in its place a huge silver bird, of
metal, with a long white tail behind it, made its way across the
heavens with a faint roar.

"Lucius," the voice called again. It was not
a joyful voice. Why not? Why shouldn't the joy that he felt at this
moment be in that voice too?

He turned.

"Jeff," he said. He reached out his arms, but
they were stiff and covered with soil and would not raise straight
for him. They dropped back heavily to his sides. Jeff Scott stood
regarding him with a mixed look of sadness and revulsion and,
there, a touch of happiness too. Why not all happiness?

"Jeff, the judgment day," Lucius said.

Jeff Scott shook his head. "Lucius," he said,
and all of a sudden he looked as though he wanted to cry. "What is
it?"

Jeff Scott only shook his head, his face
covered with his hands.

Lucius looked around. Something out beyond
the gates of the churchyard caught his eyes. Montvale was down
there, laid out before him, but it was different. The buildings
were more numerous, the town swollen. The church next to the
graveyard looked newly painted, with a new addition to one side;
though the main street was still where it had always been, the
shops were different colors and there were more of them; the
roadways were paved. There was more spread to the town, too; and it
seemed more sculpted, more green. And there to his right, where the
Scott farm used to be, built around the old Scott carousel, which
looked brand new, a great carnival. The old farm was filled with
bright tents and walkways and rides, great circles and canopies
and poles.

Then his gaze came back into the churchyard,
lingering over the hundreds of upturned graves, the empty, neat,
sharp holes in the ground surrounding him.

"Jeff," he said.

"I'm sorry, Lucius."

Jeff Scott's eyes were dry and clear. His
hands had lowered to his sides, and though there was anguish
written on his features, there was not a tear mark on his cheeks.
He looked the same young man Lucius had known, but he seemed to be
carrying the weight of a hundred years on his shoulders.

"Jeff, the judgment day—"

"No, Lucius."

Lucius looked at his hands, at the chopped,
thrown earth at his feet, the changed sky, the fading trail of the
silver bird that had passed overhead. "But—"

Another voice called his name. His bones
froze. He knew in an instant that what Jeff Scott said was true.
The silver bird was not a herald. The sky was not the aether of
salvation day.

"Oh, God, Jeff."

The other voice, the one that made him ice
when it spoke his name in a whisper, whispered again. "Lucius,
remember," it hissed, and he fell to his knees and closed his heavy
lids. He threw his fingers over them, pressing them down and trying
to squeeze them shut forever. A wail escaped his throat, but he did
not hear it because of the other voices, voices he had last heard a
century ago.

"Come on out, nigger boy."

He was underground again, but he was not
buried. He was back in the hidey-hole in Jeff Scott's barn, quiet
as a mouse. He heard the men enter. He heard them sniffing like
dogs. They were laughing, and he could almost smell the alcohol on
their breaths—and with a nearly stopping heart, he realized that
they were slowly making their way to the back of the barn, to the
corner where he lay. He could feel them coming his way, almost as
though they were toying with him.

"Come out, come out, nigger boy," one of them
sang, and then there was a pause while a bottle sloshed, after
which there was a satisfied grunt of "A-h-h." Lucius guessed there
were two of them. Their voices sounded familiar, but they were
muffled by the camouflaged board over his head.

He had started for Potterville like Jeff
Scott had said, and only a chance meeting on the way with the same
preacher who had taken in his wife and son had saved his life.
There were men from Montvale waiting for him in Potterville. The
sheriff had informed them that he was wanted for the death of Jacob
Scott, Jeff's father, and if he showed up there, they would
certainly hang him, or at least return him to Montvale for hanging.
The preacher had told him to go back to the farm and hide until the
next day, when he would come to sneak Lucius to safety.

The preacher gave me
away,
he thought in horror.

"Hey, nigger," one of the voices shouted, "we
gonna get you!" The other one laughed, and then they both took a
drink. Then, horribly and slowly, the trap door above Lucius was
raised.

A shotgun barrel came down close to him
before the door was raised all the way and two faces looked down on
him. "Well, damn if I wasn't right," one of them said. The other
just smiled. They were the Major boys, John and Henry, who had been
friends of Tom Scott's when Tom was a boy. They had played at the
farm more than once. Lucius remembered that their father had paid
three hundred dollars each to keep them out of the army in the
war.

"Why are you boys doing this?" Lucius asked,
half-raising himself out of the hole and trying to keep his voice
as steady as possible.

"Back down, pickaninny," John Major ordered,
pushing him with the snout of the shotgun. He took aim playfully
along its barrel, the twin holes lined up with Lucius' eyes.
"Bang," he said.

"I've got no quarrel with you," Lucius told
him.

"They hanged ole Jeff this morning," Henry
Major said. He was wiping his sleeve across his mouth, and he took
another swill from the bottle before handing it to his brother. He
smiled down at Lucius. "Good thing I remembered this hidey-hole we
used to play in. Thought of it while I saw old Jeff kicking at the
breeze. "

"Oh, God," Lucius moaned, but even while he
was saying it and feeling so bad for Jeff Scott, he also felt bad
for thinking of how that preacher had turned him in.

"Well, Henry," John Major said, "think we
ought to shoot him here or take him to town to swing like Jeff
Scott? Reward's the same either way."

Henry stretched, putting a hand out for the
bottle that his brother didn't seem inclined to give back. "How
about let's shoot him here?"

"Now, boys," Lucius began, but suddenly the
end of the shotgun, which had dipped a bit as John Major drank,
spurted white flame out of one barrel and he was pushed back
against the bottom of the hole until the world went away.

He felt the moist movement of things in the
earth around him. He looked up to see other faces with averted
eyes, figures shoveling dirt over his unmovable body. He tried to
cry out but could not. He knew he was not dead, although his chest
was on fire and he felt dead below his middle. He felt the thud of
clods of earth as they hit his body, his powerless legs, his face;
a sprinkling of dirt fell across his eyes and trickled away, giving
him a last glimpse of light.

It was cloudy and gray above; fast clouds
with gray-white bottoms scuttled under a darker sky above. It would
rain soon. And suddenly it was raining, and the men over him were
cursing and hurrying their work. Dirt filled in around his neck,
sending a curious dull pain through him, and then the pain was in
his ears, muffling the packed sound of dirt still falling.
"Couldn't they at least have sprung for a coffin for this poor
nigger bastard?" he heard a faraway voice say, and then the rest of
the words disappeared as earth fell over him and drowned out the
noises of the men above.

He tried again to call out, to raise his
arms, but could not. The earth became heavier, weighing him down. A
deep slumber was pulling him into its bosom, and then there was
another voice in his ear that said, "Sleep." Someone very close to
him was speaking these words, right at his ear, but he could not
turn his head to see who it was. "Sleep with me," the voice said,
and then the face—he could feel the face, so bright and cold, feel
the breath on his neck and then, like winter ice, on his lips—moved
closer, and the voice said in a gentle, cold whisper, "Kiss me." It
sounded so soothing, so right, but he also felt behind the soothing
tone bright anticipation and lust. There were lips touching his
lips in the darkness. With a last surge of panicked life, he opened
his dirt-filled mouth and screamed. He felt one of his hands, his
right hand, shoot up above him, and then there was a hole in the
dirt, and the gray sky, looking bright blue beside the dark of the
earth, was above him and the two men were staring down at him,
their faces frozen. One of them shouted, "Jesus, he's alive!" and
he felt hands on his arm, pulling him up, but he knew that his
shout had been his last breath and though they were pulling him up,
he was sinking back underground, the fire in his chest blazing and
then dying, and those lips were there, crooning to him, sucking the
silent screams from him.

"Lucius," that other voice hissed again,
dragging his name out in long, affected syllables and then
laughing. Jeff Scott was staring past him, but Lucius would not
turn around to meet the voice. He knew its owner. "I'm sorry," Jeff
Scott repeated in a small voice, and then that other voice called
his name again and stepped around into view next to Jeff Scott. It
wore black stiff clothes, but Lucius knew its form, would know it
anywhere.

"I thought you might like to help your old
friend," it said, its face smiling a sharp red line. "Isn't that
right, Mr. Scott?"

Jeff Scott had his eyes to the ground.

Lucius turned to the left and right,
surveying the empty, upturned holes that surrounded him, row on row
to the back fence of the churchyard, and then he looked to heaven
once more. There was no bird there for him now, neither black nor
silver. The sky was an empty slate-blue. He cried out and fell to
the ploughed earth before him, and, crying and crying, he tried to
dig his way back into the ground.

The gate was locked.

"
Goddam
jerk Poundridge," Barney
Bates cursed. He was wondering why he had voted for the mayor; he
damn well wouldn't vote for him again. The only thing the man was
interested in was making sure his own tie was tied—and the hell
with the rest of the town. Well, if Poundridge wouldn't do anything
now—"Take it easy, Barney. Let me go through channels." Channels?
Ha!—then Barney would take care of things himself. He'd be
damned
if he was going
to let some loud, rowdy carnival show put its stakes down in his
backyard for God knew how long. He would face the owner of this tin
show himself and make the man produce his papers, or
else.

He edged away from the double-locked
gate—good strong iron fence, too—and moved a little way down from
it. The wrought iron here was just as high but wasn't topped with
curled-in spikes. How in hell did they get all this up in one
night? But no matter. Going into a low crouch, he jumped with an
ooof! and grabbed the top bar of the fence, pulling himself up.

Jesus, but it was quiet in there. He
hesitated for a few moments, half over the top, feeling for the
first time the eeriness of the place. The phrase "Disneyland for
the Dead" floated through his mind and he wanted to laugh, and at
the same time he wanted to climb down on the town side of the
wrought iron and think about it some more. But then he seemed to
tilt the other way, and before he knew it, he was down—again
Ooof!—and on the other side.

Jesus, even the grass was fresh-cut. It
looked greener than the summer-bleached stuff around his place. A
sod lawn and everything, and all in one night.

He began to walk, and he became aware of how
loud his boots were. Too loud. The grass gave way to macadam, as
smooth and black as a new parking lot and with a hint of real
gravel showing here and there.