Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) (21 page)

“I know you do, Sadie, don’t doubt it for a minute
.
”
Paul
assumed a
straight face and
went
about his business.

Joshua was in love all right
.
Paul was right about that.
But he wouldn’t be cured by anything as
simple as a good roll in the hay.
He was in love with those wafers and potions Cain dispensed at his special Communions. And the strength of those wafers and potions increased dramatically as
Cain eased his sermons away from brotherhood and love, toward rage
and the
dark
g
ods
he served.

Sometimes
during brief periods of clarity, Joshua felt
waves of terror
. The dark things flitting at the edge of his consciousness—they couldn’t be real.
He hadn’t drunk
the
blood of slaughtered
newborn calves.
He hadn’t really slung any of the young girls at the riverbank to the ground and rutted like a wild animal.
Had he?
No, of course not.
Those things
happened only in the dream world.
Every world h
eld darkness somewhere.

Cain
began to dispense little cloth bags to his faithful, small tidbits to “tide them over” from one service to the next.
And so for Joshua, the periods of lucidity when he realized he wasn’t ever completely lucid for very long anymore began to disappear entirely
. A tidbit here and there throughout the day took care of that.

The tidbits took care of Joshua’s lifelong habit of catlike neatness, too.
Even as a child, he’d been precise, his play toys placed, not merely strewn across his room. Sadie opened the door to his room one morning when he was
running an errand for
Paul.
The bed covers were thrown aside, clothes scattered over its foot and spilling onto the floor.
His books, his proudest possessions, lay helter-skelter in heaps.

Sadie tightened her lips. This was too much.
She didn’t care what Paul said.
She
’d get
this room in order and then she
’d get
get Joshua in order.

“Too big
for his britches,” she muttered, picking
up the scattered clothes.
“Won’t stand for it.
Don’t care what Mist’ Paul say.
Tan his hide for him, I will!
The idea!
The very idea!
Of leaving
di
s room like
dis
!”

She
f
old
ed
and straighten
ed
, sniffing the clothes to
see if they
needed to be laundered.
She shook a pair of pants
.
E
ncrusted mud fell off the legs and onto her clean floor.

No question where these pants were going and she plunged her hands into the pockets to check their contents before consigning them to the laundry hampers.
Her hand closed on a small cloth bag.

What on earth?
She plunged her fingers into the small sack.
Her blood ran cold as she examined the contents.
She broke open the small, hard wafers and sniffed.
S
mall,
dried mushrooms
. Seeds. With a pungent odor. Not too many folks would have a clue what they were.
Sadie
did. Holding the bag tight, s
he walked out of the room and closed the door firmly behind her
, heading to the room she used on the
infrequent occasions when she spent the night at the Orange Street house.
She sat down on the bed and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Oh, Joshua!” she moaned.
“Son, wh
u
t you done got into now?
Wh
u
t?”

* * *

The front door slammed.
Joshua
. Paul had sent
him
down to Sol Hogue’s Drug Store
for quinine.

“Oh, good!”
Paul
met him in the hall.
“
Now we can start rounds. Needed this for
Jimbo James
,
those malaria fevers are coming and going and I know he needs some
more—”

“Do
an
got none
.
”
Joshua walked
past Paul
toward the
kitchen.

“You don’t—you didn’t get any?
Why not?”

“Doc Hogue say he out.”

“
You out of grammar this morning too, it seems.
But Josh, you kn
ew
I
needed this.
Didn’t you go down to Goodwyn’s to see if they had any?”

“You di
d
n’
t
say to.”

“I didn’t say—Josh,
what’s wrong with you, boy?
I shouldn’t have to tell you—”

Josh
w
hirled to face Paul.
Watching from the stair landing,
Sadie almost stepped back
from the
rage
in his
expression
.

“Ain’t yo’
boy
!
An’ I ain’t yo’
slave!
Doan you call me
boy
!”

Paul grabbed
his arm and jerked.
“You hold it!
You hold it right there!
You got no call to talk to me like that!
Sadie calls
me
boy!”

Josh’s expression
changed to
murderous wrath
.
Sadie shot
down the stairs
, intent on getting between them.
Josh moved faster.
He broke Paul’s grip and raced back down the hall towards the front door.

Sadie grabbed Paul’s arm as he started after him.

“Paul, please!
Please, right now, jest let him go!
We gots to talk, son!
”

“The hell I will!” exclaimed Paul, impatiently shaking off Sadie’s hand
.
Too late.
Joshua was already out the door
. Paul turned back to Sadie.

“Sadie, what the hell?
You were right and I was wrong and I’m goin’ to find him and bring him back so you can put that pain on his behind you were talking about.
‘Cause if I do it
right now
, I’m goin’
to put some serious
hurt
on him!”

Sadie thrust the bag in front of Paul.

“I found
dis.
In his pants pocket when I
wus
straightening his room.
You looked in his room lately?”

“No.”

‘Come,” said Sadie
.

Paul
looked around in astonishment.
“We got a boarder I don’t know about?
Josh ain’t never—”

Sadie shook the bag again.
“You know what
dis is?”

Paul took the bag and opened it.
He shrugged.

“Some dried mushrooms.
Seeds of some kind.”
He picked up one of the wafers.
“Some sort of hard cookie?
W
hat?”

“It’s poison, Mist’ Paul.
Pure-de
-
poison.
Not too many folks know whut dis is, whu
t
it do. It f
ill yo
’
head wi
th color and sights of wonder,
sapp
s
yo’ will, put you in somebody else’s power.
M
ake you do and think and feel whatever
dat
somebody else tell you to do and think and feel.
An’ sometimes, sometimes,
de
bright colors,
de
pretty dreams,
dey twist and turn into snakes
dat
fill you up and send you screamin’, runnin’ and beggin’ for mercy.”

From nowhere, he heard Chloe’s voice as she told him long ago, on the banks of the Ocmulgee
.
Sadie has power.
Sadie knows mojos.

“How do you know about things like this?”

Sadie sighed.
“Might be we ought to go in your office and sit a spell.”

“
Might be.”

Chapter
Twenty-Two

They settled down on
Paul’s
big leather couch
.

“So,” said Paul.
“Tell me.”

“While I talk, you forget I’m Sadie, Sadie like you knows me.
An’ doan take no insult, ‘cause right now I ain’t speakin’ as yo’ hired help.”

“Sadie
!
I had enough horseshit
out of Josh.
You’re not hired help, you’re family.
You’re my Mama, for God’s sakes!
”

She continued as though he hadn
’
t spoken.
“Or as yo’
d
addy’s woman.
Yo’
d
addy, he tol
’
you
my real name
one time.
You ‘member?”

“Sadama.
Wished you’d used it,
Sadie.
It suits you a lot better.”

“I made a choice a long time ago.
To live in
dis
worl
d
de
way I do.
I had a chance at another worl
d
, an
’
my sister, she do live in
dat
worl
d
.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister, Sadie.”

“Lor
d
, Mist’ Paul.
Got se
bben
of ‘em.”

“Seven?
Your mama must have had her hands full.”

“My Mama, she a great lady.
She work all her life, she work hard, and my Daddy did, too, and
dey
done
dere
best for
all of us, but my Mama, she didn’t
jest live in
dis world
.
She have powe
r, Mist’ Paul.
Now, I knows you
goan
laugh, but she have
de
sight.
She could see things, things
dat
move just beyond
de
veil of this world.
See, what you
doan
know, not too many men, black or white neither knows, is
this world, it be ringed with worlds on worlds.
Dey
shift,
dey
overlap, and some of
dose
worlds be real dark, full of evil and danger, and some of ‘em,
dey
be real bright and beautiful.
”

Sadie paused to look at Paul’s face and gauge the effect of her words.
Satisfied, she continued.

“
An’ some folks can pass back and forth whenever
dey
want to. An’
dey
can use
de
powers of
dose
worlds in
dis
one.
I
doan know jest why or what it is de
y have
dat
let’s ‘e
m do it. But whu
t I do knows is whatever
dat
thing is, it
doan
care whether the body
dat
gots it be
good or bad.
An’ whether the body
dat
gots it
be
good or bad,
dat
whu
t makes
dere
power good or bad.
‘Cause a bad person, be
dat
person black or white or man or woman, dey goan use
dat
power bad, and a good person,
d
e
y
goan
do great wonders
wid
it.
Do you see a’tall whu
t I’m saying?”