A Cry of Angels (51 page)

Em's shirt was hanging by the seams, white bone showed through the skin of beefy knuckles, his right eye was closing, his hair was corded in sweat and blood, but still he swung from side to side in that curious dance and knocked them away as he had kicked bottles from the circle at Dirsey's.

One by one they crumpled, bleeding, crawling over fallen bodies to get clear of the churning above them, the boots that stomped at the fallen injured.

As the fight wore on, Em showed signs of weakening. His shoulders swung heavily, his breathing grew loud and rasping. He was taking more blows now, sometimes staggering, but each time bouncing off the bar in new roaring rage at those who leaped in to the seeming advantage, still swinging to that instinctive rhythm, without style, without aim, eyes wide and staring, reacting to flickers in peripheral vision. Still he fought and cursed and roared.

As men dropped away the pace of the fighting slowed, until there were only two left, powerful men, experienced alley fighters who loved to fight, and it became a slugging match. They shuffled before him trading punch for punch, trying to wear him down. But Em stood high in his awkward stance, fixed them with his good eye and swapped with them great, shocking blows.

It went on for several minutes. At the edge of his strength and will, Em was sagging slightly now, rocking away from those punishing fists. Still he kept swinging, often missing, but maintaining a staggering balance and swinging. At last the man on his left went to his hands and knees; Jojohn's boot came up under his stomach with a force that lifted him off the floor. But the one on the right, a short, heavy man built like a wrestler with batwing muscles standing high through the torn shirt behind his neck, swayed and grinned in a violent stupor and kept coming back as if he had never known pain. He was a thrusting shadow, grinning and silent, rocking lightly from side to side and uncoiling his ebony arms with terrible, shocking force.

Em grunted and absorbed the flashing hammers. Occasionally he connected, and only then, with the smack of flesh and the awkward lurch of the black man, did the force behind it show. The man kept tearing away at his middle, Em's flesh jumping under the blows, and the Indian took the punishment, holding firm. He would not be worn down.

And then at last there was a subtle change in the black man's drive, the rhythm faltered, there was a tempering of his fury, and when that happened, something in Jojohn renewed itself. It was what he had waited for. The animal look returned to his eye, a flicker of savage joy. He stiffened and began pile-driving blows until he broke the other man down. The Negro stumbled and grabbed Jojohn around the waist. Throwing an arm under his chin, Em straightened and broke his neck.

He released the body and let it slide to the floor. He looked about, at the wreckage, the fallen bodies.

The jukebox lay on its side, making a rhythmic clicking noise.

Em turned for the door and stopped, clutched a post and slid to one knee.

"Em! Watch out, Em!"

It was Tio, struggling behind the stairs. The boy went tumbling across the floor. A shadow moved out from the stairs, lengthening until it lay before the kneeling Indian. Em raised his head, squinting, blinking away blood.

Clyde Fay stood watching him, the smile tight on the slit of his mouth.

Em moaned in the effort to rise. A jack boot cracked across his chin and sprawled him on the floor Again he tried to get up, and Fay seized the post and whipped out a flying kick that sent him backward through the door. He hit the porch on his back and toppled off onto the ground.

Fay was beside him. He kicked again, but this time Em managed to block it with a forearm and kick Fay's other leg out from under him.

From the startled murmuring which arose from the hills, there now came screams and cheering.

Fay rolled away and onto his feet and stood watching as Em pulled himself painfully up the side of the porch. Then he pounced in and away, and a long gash appeared in Jojohn's cheek. Em looked surprised and rubbed it with the back of his hand, and for the first time seemed to see the knife. Fay darted in again and blood oozed from a rip in the Indian's sleeve.

Then Fay went after him, lunging, cutting him off as Em dodged around the yard, trying to avoid the flashing knife. But it was too fast. Fay was an expert. The shaggy giant stumbled and roared as the blade flicked out again and again, each time opening new fissures in the old china skin. Fay circled gracefully, springing in and away, avoiding the Indian's clumsy swipes, the grin tight on his face, enjoying but checking himself, prolonging the kill like a cat.

With a howl of frustration Em lurched away and clutched at his neck. Fay stamped his heels. A little joy dance. It was death and he was in the thrill of it. Em watched the knife point, flicking slowly, dropping his blood. The thing was eating him and no way to stop it. He drew a tattered sleeve across his face, smearing blood. Fay leaped in and lay a slash across his thigh, just below the crotch. He looked at the place and at Jojohn, his eyes shining with malevolent glee.

Em stood looking back at him. Slowly something began to change in his face. He seemed to be drawing in, concentrating something within him.

Then, raising his head, he fixed the black man with his good eye and began to shuffle cautiously forward. Fay backed down the yard, feinting, bouncing away.

Still the Indian came. He closed in, watching the knife, hands hanging loosely at his sides. Fay checked his bluff. He drew a line of blood across Em's forehead. Jojohn shook it off and continued his advance.

Fay danced lightly backward, watching the giant move toward him, puzzled, staying on his toes. Em kept moving him down the yard and into the shadow of the supper-club porch. When Fay's back touched the porch rail he froze; the smile slipped from his face.

Em strode quickly forward, dropping low, tensing. Fay glanced for an opening, but the Indian was raising his hands to the sides, as though he were cornering a wild animal.

Fay's reaction was instantaneous. He tucked low in a sweeping, coiling motion, and the knife blurred straight for Jojohn's throat.

This time the Indian didn't dodge.

Standing flat, focusing hard with his good eye, he swung his left hand over, flat and straight. The knife went to the hilt through his palm.

Having thus anchored it in his flesh, he closed his left hand on the knife, wrenched it away, and in the same motion stretched himself to his full height, puffed his cheeks, and with a great, contracting movement of his entire body, he windmilled a massive right fist with sledge-hammer force.

Fay buckled, his eyes bulging froglike from under his caved-in forehead, dead before his back hit the ground.

Em hung over the black man's body, spent, shaking, blowing blood and saliva. He turned and sank to his knees, his face lifted, eyes closed, bathed in the purple of his blood.

There was silence. The yelling in the hills had stopped. The Indian knelt in the sunlit yard drawing breath in great, heaving gasps.

There was that and the wash of the river.

I became aware of movement along the porch. The two dog boys who had been guarding the crowd were edging toward the other end, their frightened eyes darting. Suddenly they sprang over the far rail and took off down the road toward the river, knees high, pumping hard, their shoulders jerking as they ran.

Doc Bobo stood in the yard, turning, looking at Fay, at Jojohn, at the figures disappearing down the road.

There was a soft, rustling sound. He turned and looked up, and stood transfixed.

They were pouring slowly down the hillsides, down the banks, filling the paths, brushing through the brittle weeds—hundreds of them, clay-colored people with raw, expressionless faces.

Doc Bobo turned, circled, watching them close from all sides.

"Listen to me!" he shouted. "You better listen to me!"

A chorus of voices began rising along the rocks. Feet shuffled faster. A black-and-tan mongrel got caught on the road before the crowd; he ran in circles before them, barking, vicious, hunger-ribbed, rolling his eyes, then found escape by leaping a gulley and galloped away up the road.

Doc Bobo shouted, commanding them, then suddenly broke and ran for his car.

At that the crowd charged, their cries filling the air. They jumped from the banks to the top of the Continental, pounding it with rocks and sticks, and others rushed in to the sides, kicking, scraping, hammering with their fists. The limousine squatted under their weight as they flung themselves on it, burying it with their bodies, pounding at the doors and windows, climbing over one another like a horde of rabid squirrels, with still more pouring down from the rocks.

The engine started. Wheels spun helplessly on the clay. Then they were rocking it. Louder and louder their wails climbed the Ape Yard walls. Louder and louder grew the pounding.

The Yard was swarming with people. Trying to reach Jojohn, I was jostled and fell. Then someone was beside me, pulling. It was Tio; we fought for footing, lost in the wild motion and suffocating heat of the mob. All I could see was people, pushing, shoving us closer to the action taking place at the car.

Then there was a surging of the crowd and I saw that the green limousine was being lifted and turned, moved out into the deep-rutted road.

Tio and I were carried along with them, across the branch and out of the reed hollows to the main road up the Ape Yard, lost in the midst of the shouting, heaving mob, marching to the pulse of mindless rage.

The procession moved higher into the streets of the little tilted shacks, leaving Fletcher Bottom and surging up through the steep cut banks, the car limping on twisted wheels as they shoved it over the ruts.

Over the crowd came another noise. The honk and thump of bands moving out from the fairgrounds. In the distance I saw the glint of sun on horns, the flash of white boots and batons of plumed, high stepping majorettes, tractors pulling floats.

Now the mood of the crowd was changing. They began marching to the band music; some of them started to sing. They pushed along with joyful abandon, laughing, shouting, Speck Turner and Carlos dancing on the jouncing roof.

At Cabbage Alley the procession turned and moved off the road and up the long, sloping granite apron to the wire fence that surrounded the Poncini quarry. Here the pace quickened, moving easily up the graveled slope. The flimsy wire was stomped down.

As we drew near the edge, noses twitched, women turned their faces away. The stench was sharp and acrid in our nostrils. We had smelled the stinkhole all our lives, but it had never seemed so foul. It was as though it were coming alive and waiting, its diseased fumes boiling in anticipation.

I could see the dark bottom, where the sun had not yet descended.

There were scurryings below at the approaching din, splashing things and flittings.

There was a groan from the crowd and the green Continental nosed out over the ledge. Doc Bobo's face was at the window in a sweat-glistening foxfire of terror, contorted, silent-screaming behind the thick, tinted glass. The front wheels dropped off and the car bellied on the rock, throwing off sparks. The window was opening; Doc Bobo scrambled to crawl out. The car tilted, wavered, then came a final shove and it went toppling into the dark, fetid night of the quarry.

After a moment came the heavy splash, the sound of it washing up the walls to mingle with the lung-rending, deafening cries of the crowd assembled at the ledges.

Then Skeeter was waving frantically for quiet, staring down. A hush fell.

Far below in the reflected granite light a dark form could be seen, thrashing, screaming. Miraculously, somehow Doc Bobo had not died in the fall, and he now pulled his broken body through the floating filth, struggling furiously to save himself.

As the crowd watched in horror, he splashed along the granite walls, scratching at the sheer stone face, his terrified screams rising to high-pitched, futile squeals.

It went on for several minutes, until at last, his strength exhausted, he slipped beneath the scum-choked surface.

Someone touched my shoulder. It was Tio, pointing.

It took a moment for me to make the Indian out, he looked so small in the distance. Then I saw him, a dark thing clinging to the side of the slope at the far lower end of the hollow. Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself upward, scratching for footing in the shadowy crevices, reaching out for a clump of roots. We watched in silence as he inched higher and higher, until he made the rim and drew himself over into the weeds, then struggled to his feet and, like any wild, wounded creature, lumbered toward the waiting woods.

It was just after sunrise.

Jayell, Phaedra and I stood before the nearly finished house the boarders would occupy and waited for them to finish their inspection. Mr. Burroughs, dressed in his best Sunday suit, lunged up and down the yard looking at his watch. Mr. Rampey dozed at the wheel of the loaded school bus.

After a week, the Ape Yard was pretty much back to normal. The celebration that had gone on for three days, with crowds milling and carousing in the hollow under the watchful eyes of state troopers and national guardsmen, was over. The town itself was still jittery, but the riot the centennial celebrants had heard was erupting that day never spilled out of the hollow. The centennial festivities were ruined, to be sure, and the mysterious upheaval was widely reported by the visiting press, but was unanimously interpreted as a juke-joint fracas that got out of hand. The dignitaries were hustled out of town and the city fathers went about shushing rumors and urging a return to calm. Inquiries into Doc Bobo's disappearance met empty faces, shrugging shoulders. Sheriff Middleton and FBI agents were still poking through the hills trying to piece together the story, but were getting nothing but vague replies and contradictions. The people were interested only in getting back to their jobs at the quarries, at the mill, in climbing to Cooper Corner in hopes of a day's labor to put something on the table that night.