Burial (63 page)

After ten long minutes, she said, Jonas DuPaul, I humbly beg to speak with you. Can you hear me, Jonas DuPaul?'

Nothing happened. My foot felt as if it had grown to five times its normal size, and now my back was beginning to ache, too. I had never taken part in any kind of voodoo ceremony before, and I didn't know what to expect. If voodoo was going to be as tedious as this, I told myself, I was going to stick to tea-leaves.

But then I saw Papago Joe frowning and jerking his eyes sideways.

‘What's the matter?' I mouthed.

He jerked his eyes sideways again, and mouthed something in return. I got the feeling that he wanted me to turn around and look behind me.

I turned around; and I almost had a heart-seizure on the spot. Standing right behind me, literally six inches behind
me, no more, was a tall spindly black man in a dusty-shouldered tailcoat, with a face like a mask. His eyes gleamed and his teeth were yellow as rats' teeth.

‘Jonas DuPaul,' said Mama Jones, in a thin, phlegmy voice. ‘Welcome, Jonas DuPaul.'

The black man seemed to glide around the table without even moving his legs. He stood above the red-glass lamp and it made him look even more ghastly, as if he had been drenched in blood.

When he spoke, his voice came not from his mouth, but from a small wooden cupboard in the corner of the room. I was almost tempted to go across and fling it open, to see if there was a hidden loudspeaker in it. But I was afraid there might be something else — something seriously voodoo, like a skull that could talk, or some kind of shrunken monkey.

‘I'm a busy man these days, mama,' said Doctor Hambone. ‘Why are you calling on me? Don't you know that it's All Shadows' Day? Can't you see that we're bringing down the towers of greed, the towers of slavery, the towers of oppression, hallelujah.'

‘Hallelujah,' echoed Mama Jones.

Doctor Hambone's head turned as if it were set on thickly greased ball-bearings. His grin was horrendous, like that of a cannibal. I had faced many weird spirits and manifestations and supernatural creatures; but Doctor Hambone frightened me more than any manifestation had ever frightened me before. This was a dead man who could walk; a dead man who owned the souls of other dead men. This was a spiritual slaver.

‘What do you want of me?' asked Doctor Hambone. ‘You better speak quick. You better speak good. And you better speak truthful.'

I said, ‘We want you to call back the souls you gave to Misquamacus. We want you to reconsider your position.'

Doctor Hambone stared at me, and I couldn't help
shuddering. He rested his fists on the tablecloth, and as he did so, his knucklebones tore through his skin.

‘You want me to reconsider my position? Is this a white joke? Today we are bringing down your great cities, and you want me to reconsider my position? Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha! Mama Jones, you conjured me here for this white man to ask me this?'

But Papago Joe said, ‘Mr DuPaul … when my friend says he wants you to reconsider your position, he doesn't mean that he wants you to laugh. He means that he
wants
you to reconsider your position, and to call back all of those souls.'

‘Sir …'said Doctor Hambone. ‘I think you've made a serious mistake here. I think you don't understand who I am.'

‘Oh, sure I do,' said Papago Joe. He reached in his pocket and he took out the cockerel pendant, and let it spin and shine in the lurid red candlelight. ‘You're Sawtooth, Jonas DuPaul, the great and magical Doctor Hambone.'

I was literally grinding my teeth with tension and fright, but Papago Joe seemed to be quite unperturbed. He let the pendant spin around and around, and then he said, ‘Toussaint L'Ouverture gave you this amulet, didn't he?'

Doctor Hambone couldn't take his eyes off it. He half-lifted one of his half-mummified hands towards it, but Papago Joe drew it away.

‘The question is, who gave the amulet to Toussaint L'Ouverture, and why? You know, don't you, Doctor Hambone? It was given to him by a voodoo witch-doctor, so that he would always be protected against zombies and demons and loogaroos. The amulet always passes the qualities of one wearer — whatever they were — on to the next. The witchdoctor was immune from zombies, and so were you. But Toussaint L'Ouverture gave it some of his own qualities, didn't he? And when you started wearing this amulet, that was when you turned your back on your Soul Day bargain
with Misquamacus, wasn't it? Because Toussaint L'Ouverture was prepared to fight on the side of progress, and light, and even to accommodate the white men, when it suited him.

‘So you gave the amulet to a little white girl, and for the short time that
she
wore it, that little white girl became fearless and magical and wise beyond her years, just like you. But what would happen if I gave it
back
to you?'

Doctor Hambone stared at Papago Joe with his eyes almost bursting out of their sockets. Then he turned to Mama Jones and roared so furiously that the cupboard doors burst open, and swung on their broken hinges.'
You traitor-woman! What did you call me for? You traitor-woman! I am going to fix you for ever in pain! You see
!'

But Papago Joe had already thrown up the amulet. It flew across the room in what seemed like slow-motion, its chain looping like a lassoo. Doctor Hambone lifted his head as it circled toward him, and tried to lift his hand to catch it, but it encircled his head and dropped down around his neck.

Doctor Hambone let out a bellow that made the glass chandelier shake. He dragged aside the tablecloth and cockerel-bones, and statues and glass beads showered everywhere. The lamp rolled over and dropped onto the floor and set light to the fringes along the bottom of the curtains.

‘Harry!' shouted Papago Joe. ‘The curtains!'

I stamped on them furiously, and then dragged them apart, so that I could open the window. The living room was flooded with sunlight.

Doctor Hambone stood rigid, his eyes still bulging, his hands grasping the chain of the amulet, his lips stretched back in a hideous grimace.

In front of my eyes, he began to shrink and collapse
. His tailcoat caved in, and then his legs crumbled beneath him. I saw his eyeballs dry up like two prune-pits, and drop out of their fleshless sockets. I saw his wristbones tear through his papery
skin. His head fell back, and then he dropped onto the floor, with the softest of noises.

From the open cupboard, I thought I heard an echoing, diminishing cry; but then I could have been imagining it.

But there was no question about the cry that we heard next A thick, roaring scream from the kitchen. A cry of agony and hopelessness and terrible despair. The living-room door was flung open and Nann stood in front of us with her eyes wide.

‘It's Nat! Grandmama! It's Nat!'

I followed Papago Joe into the kitchen. Nat lay on the floor, crushed and crumpled, blood foaming from his lips. One leg stuck out from underneath him at an impossible angle, and his whole body trembled and shuddered.

Trixie was kneeling beside him with tears streaking her face.

‘What's happening?' she begged, in a shrill, unbalanced voice. ‘What's happening?'

There was nothing we could do. Nat had been dead already and now that his spirit-master had gone, he was dying for a second time. Crushed by tons of concrete, broken by falling girders.

Nann crossed herself and then pressed her hands together in prayer.

‘Isn't there anything we can do for him?' cried Trixie. ‘He's hurting so much!'

Papago Joe laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘I'm sorry. He wasn't meant to die. But then he wasn't meant to come alive again, either. These things have away of coming full circle.'

Outside in the streets, we could hear shouting and sobbing and people running. Papago Joe glanced at me and we both knew what had happened. The hatless people had collapsed, too. I crossed to the kitchen window and looked out, and saw an elderly couple lying face down on the
sidewalk, while a middle-aged woman knelt beside them in grief. She had buried them once before: now she would have to bury them again.

Hoarsely, Mama Jones cried, ‘What have you done? What have you
done
?

Papago Joe said, ‘Come take a look.' He led us back to the living room and stood over Doctor Hambone's fallen body. ‘Come on, Harry, take a look.'

I went over reluctantly and took a look. To my amazement, Doctor Hambone's dusty tailcoat contained the corpse of a young boy, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old. He was desiccated, his skin was stretched like beige leather over his bones, but I could see that he had once been handsome. I looked up at Papago Joe and said, ‘What? I don't understand.'

‘Very simple,' said Papago Joe. ‘Wanda wore that amulet and gave it her youth. Doctor Hambone became a child again. A child who didn't know voodoo; a child who didn't have the strength to keep a dead spirit alive in a dead man's body.'

He turned to Mama Jones, who was standing ashen-faced and shaking in the doorway.

‘Mama Jones,' he said. ‘There's one more thing you have to do.'

‘
I can't
,' whispered Mama Jones. ‘
I can't
.'

Papago Joe took hold of her hand. ‘Yes, you can. You can bless this body here, in accordance with the voodoo ritual. You can do it now. This body owned hundreds and thousands of discontented souls, and you've got to give those souls peace, and contentment. Help them to cross back over Jordan, where they should rightly be.'

Mama Jones crossed herself. ‘All right,' she agreed. ‘It's gone so far, it had better be finished. I'll do that thing.'

Papago Joe triumphantly squeezed my shoulder. ‘That's it — that's taken away all of those black spirits that Misquamacus
has been counting on. You mark my words, Harry, once Mama Jones has done her stuff, and those spirits have been laid to rest, Aktunowihio won't have the strength to pull down an outhouse, let alone a skyscraper.'

‘You're a bright guy, Joe,' I told him. ‘I never would have thought of that amulet stunt, not in a hundred years.'

He looked away, and gave my shoulder one last squeeze. ‘You want to know the truth? I didn't think for one split-second that it would actually work.'

‘You're kidding me. I thought you had it all planned out. What were you going to do if it
didn't
work?'

He shrugged. ‘I don't know. Kick him in the nuts?'

E.C. Dude arrived at Midway Airport at seven o'clock that evening, wearing jeans with elaborately ripped knees and cowboy-boots and a Grateful Dead T-shirt and carrying a large canvas shoulder-bag studded with Mr Smiley faces and Nixon for President buttons. He looked tired and unshaven and his face was waxy. More like Jim Morrison than ever.

We greeted him and relieved him of his bag and took him out to our waiting taxi.

‘How're things in Phoenix?' I asked him.

‘Oh, quietened down now. The wind's died down, anyway, and the houses have stopped sliding. But the place is a mess. You wouldn't even recognize it. Shit.'

‘Chicago's not much better. Most of the downtown area has been wasted.'

E.C. Dude leaned forward in his seat and said to Papago Joe, ‘You practically scared the shit out of me, you know that?'

‘What do you mean?' asked Papago Joe.

‘Well, sending those guys to collect me. I couldn't believe it when this big black limo turned up outside the trailer. These two Apache guys got out, with headbands and sunglasses and Armani suits, right, they're built like adobe shithouses, right? They told me they were taking me off for a ride. I thought I was dead, man, I mean it. I thought they were going to take me out to the desert and put a bullet through my ear.'

‘Sorry,' said Papago Joe. ‘But the phones were out, and the best I could do was to call Jim Grey Wolf in his car. How was your flight?'

‘Little bumpy. But those Learjets, they're something, aren't they? I wish I had one.'

‘Jim Grey Wolf has two,' Papago Joe explained to me.

‘Useful friend at a time like this,' I remarked.

Papago Joe systematically cracked his knuckles. ‘He owes me sort of a favour.'

I looked at E.G. Dude but E.C. Dude pulled a face that meant, ‘Don't ask me, man.' I was beginning to think that there was more to Papago Joe than met the eye. But then, isn't there always more to everybody than meets the eye?

We had booked a room at the Four Lakes Lodge a mile west of Downer's Grove. ‘What a downer, man,' E.C. Dude remarked. But it was quiet and it was anonymous, just one of those tedious Chicago suburbs; with nothing to distinguish it but a shopping mall and acres of concrete parking-lots and orange sodium lights that stained the sky the colour of Fanta. At least the Indians, out on the Plains, had seen the stars.

We ate dinner in our room, steaks and fries. E.C. Dude ordered a salad because he had decided (yesterday) to become spiritual, and at one with nature, which meant that his digestive system had to commune with lettuce-leaves and
Belgian endive and nothing else. I told him that the President was a Belgian endive enthusiast but that still didn't deter him. ‘Vegetables aren't political, right? Did you ever see a fascist carrot?'

Papago Joe explained to E.C. Dude what we intended to do. E.C. Dude munched lettuce and green peppers and alfalfa and nodded. ‘Okay, that's extra. That's cool. I'll do anything, man, believe me.'

All the time we kept the television switched on, in case there was any more news of what was happening in New York. From the time that we had visited Mama Jones' apartment, no more major buildings had gone down, although the city was still jammed with smashed-up automobiles and mountains of loose debris, and the toll of dead and missing was running into tens of thousands.