John Crow's Devil (9 page)

“Is not me why him dead, y’know.”

For nearly a minute the Widow stood at her doorway, starched and beaten. Lucinda’s eyes swept the ground as she listened for a sudden flutter. The Widow’s hands trembled. She felt them coming, memories banished years ago of her husband’s crushed face hidden in a closed casket. Memories that came back because of this bitch, her enemy ever since adolescence gave the Widow bigger breasts and beefier buttocks. The Widow came into an even greater hatred of her, something renewed for the day.

“At least him don’t have to hide from
you
no more. Climb any ackee tree since mornin, Lucinda Queenie?”

In obeah-man country there are several teas. People think the secret history of witchcraft is of oils, but that is no secret. Oils are given to those who pay, but tea is for those who believe. There is cerasse to ease the stomach, soursop leaf for nerves, and comfrey for health and strength. But there is another tea with a name lost to those who live in light. A tea that is prepared in hidden places that nobody drinks alone. Lucinda’s mother hid the secret callaloo under her bed and never gave her daughter that warning. Lucinda had mixed the tea as her mother had done, boiling the weeds and gulping the acrid broth down in three, then covering her mouth as it scalded her gut. She filled her mouth with river water and spat into the fire. A huge cloud of steam rose and surrounded her in mist. Lucinda felt cold, very cold. A wet wind stirred and hissed. She was no longer on the ground or in clothes. In a blink she soared so high that Gibbeah became a dot of flickering light. In another blink there was nothing but moon and sky. She screamed and laughed. Lucinda willed herself there and suddenly she was. Nothing would stop her revenge. From up in the ackee tree she saw them. The bride and groom, years from becoming Widow and corpse, consummating their marriage. In the moonlit glimmer of the bedroom she saw the manic movement of sweaty flesh. The whiteness of the Widow’s feet, up in the air and bobbing as her husband fucked her. Each thrust cut through Lucinda’s blackened heart. Mrs. Greenfield came and opened her eyes expecting to see love all wet and real. But instead she saw a shadow falling out of the ackee tree. The shadow’s hair was parted at the middle; the way Lucinda kept it until the day of her death.

Lucinda’s hands were shaking as she stood at the Widow’s door. She turned to leave but the rain was waiting and she feared the beat of wings. Did the Widow hear the flutter? Her face was unchanged.

“Tell him that the Apostle say him can come back.” Lucinda turned away. The rain swallowed her up and she was gone.

The Rum Preacher had heard. Widow Greenfield stood in the doorway looking out, but was aware of the clumsiness of his stealth.

“Look like you church want you back.” As she turned, he looked away.

“You think them goin kill the fattest calf?”

She was in the mood. Lucinda had whet her appetite for more. No damn way she was going to be miserable by herself. The Preacher withered, slipped back into his room, and left her to the dead space. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He prayed in thanksgiving.

Rain fell all night. Some wondered if God had turned back on his promise to never flood the Earth no matter how much man sinned on it. Rain fell on the righteous and unrighteous. Rain fell on Clarence when he left Mr. Johnson’s house after fucking Mr. Johnson’s wife, as he did most nights while the husband slept soundly in the same bed. Thunder judged him and he left her in a flurry. Clarence was a good distance from the house when semen wetted his thighs, reminding him that he had forgotten his briefs. Then lightning struck, exposing him in a flash of light, and he forgot again. Clarence ran home, stumbling twice in the muddy water.

Lightning was the pointed finger of God’s judgment. The people of Gibbeah knew this well. Lightning had killed the Contraptionist. Its blinding light exposed iniquity, its singular force burst through the dark skin of sin. The Contraptionist was a lonely man who lived not in Gibbeah but less than a mile beyond the river. Each day he was seen twice: driving his cows to the field at dawn and back to the pen at dusk. But from his house came the sound of industry. The bustle of hands and machines and hammers and saws and pulleys and ropes and wood at work.

One evening, just before the rains came, a curious odor drifted from his shed, something sickly and sweet. As quick as the wind, the pleasant smell of something cooked gave way to the horrific odor of someone burnt. When they found him, the rain had begun in a rhythmless drizzle, but thunder bellowed and gales came upon the village in swells. He was around the back of the house. The contraption looked like a guillotine: two towering planks of wood on both sides of a narrow platform, which was encircled by a fence. Pulleys at the top of the planks suspended ropes downwards. Each rope had a harness to which he was strapped at the thigh. This was his breakthrough invention; now he could adjust his height to fuck cows of any size. From afar it seemed as if women’s garters were pulling him up. When the lightning struck he had already mounted himself, supported by pulleys and excited by the friction of her buttocks. The sudden blast of white light and heat had burnt him to a crust, singeing the rope and planks of wood and fusing the pulleys stiff. The cow was unharmed. For two days, nobody approached him and he swung in the wind with the burnt rope squeaking as it rubbed against the wood. Even in death, his deeds were exposed. The lightning had struck him when he was most ready, and now, more than his exposed parts would remain stiff forever. The men took him down after Mrs. Fracas’s dog made away with all the toes on his left foot. Lightning was the pointed finger of God’s judgment.

The Rum Preacher had been praying without stop from before dawn. He heard the rain break. The Widow was right. But didn’t the scriptures say that only by blaspheming the Holy Spirit would the Lord leave you? He was an abomination. The most wretched sinner there was. Before, he knelt, but now he fell to the ground grieving for himself.

“Thirty years. Him blood flowing for thirty years. Oh Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! Holy Spirit! Precious Lord! Forgive me! Holy Spirit! Holy Spirit! Take pity on You wicked son!”

His brother fell over the balcony again. Blood spread across the floor unevenly, looking like a map. Hector had coveted, lied, and stolen from his brother. Then he destroyed him. Back in the dark bedroom, Bligh rolled on the ground and sobbed. His cries grew louder, waking the Widow, who crept up to the door. What she saw took her back to a place when she was a woman. She looked at the man and saw a child, maybe a lamb. Her hardened heart broke and she left him.

“Father, give me the cup. Father, not my will but Thine be done! Please, Jesus. I ask for the pain. I ask for the death. I asking for the crucifixion. I want to rise, Jesus, I want to rise. I want to rise!”

Not once in those years since the seminary had he asked for forgiveness. Not once had he felt worthy. Even now he begrudged his brother’s life. His brother’s joy. Fearlessness. Silliness. He hated his brother’s life of choice, where his was one of duty. Bligh could still see himself mounted atop the sister-in-law, his penis the hardened point of his envy. In mere hours he corrupted her, made her lose faith in love and give herself to him, a man becoming a priest. Or so he lied. Honesty rose to the surface as before. She had called him to bed. She had no faith in love to gain or lose. Like Adam, he was led by his serpent and her apple; to break his virginity only to fall into the horrible knowledge of good and evil. After his brother died she disappeared.

But with the Apostle came Hector’s turn to feel the loss of everything. God’s justice. He loved the Lord but hated Him too. These were the things that must happen, a girl said to him in a dream. But other things stirred in him, things that would never have risen had he not been brought down so low. He never thought much of his life when he had it, but things were different now that he had lost everything. This must be new. Having been driven from the church now made him want the church back. Those whom God loved, God punished, and God had never punished him until now. For thirty years he thought himself no more than a blind spot on God’s backside, dreading yet needing His mighty hand. This was what drove him to drink. How wrong he’d been.

Hector Bligh, as it is in Heaven so it is on Earth, how long must this be about thee?

How long must you be your own God? In happiness and in sadness you are still the Lord of your world. It was never whether you were forgiven. The Moon spins around the Earth, the Earth spins around the Sun, the Sun spins around the center of the Universe. And yet none has more significance than a speck, a dot, an ism, no more, no less. How much less are you to the Universe? And yet look at the image in which you were made. What a piece of work are you! Forgiveness happened on the cross, so what right have you to feel the anguish of the major prophets? You ask for life but my gift to you will be blindness.

Images came with no order or purpose. Children. Darkness. Wings. Black walls that screamed their witness. Crosses swinging from sweaty chests. A withdrawal. The warm spurt of semen. Screams, howls, a wave of purple and white. A face; a brother, a lover, a mirror that falls and shatters. A Judas on the ground, a Jesus swinging from a noose. A little boy bent over. With hair so alive and serpentine locks. Boys blended into girls. Seraphim, cherubim, infant. He knew them. Not their faces, but their sizes, the blackness of their hair and the lightness of their skin. From the dark came a man whose black robes blended with nightfall. He had the height of a man and the face of a child. His robes stirred even though there was no wind. As Bligh rose from the floor, he knew who the man was and why he came.

Apostle York.

Pastor Bligh dressed himself in the suit that the Widow had found down by the river and brought back to white. He opened the door to the scent of eggs and frying bacon.

“Is where you going?”

“To the church. That man who calls himself Apostle.”

“You no think that foolish?”

“God used foolish to confound wise.”

“Don’t preach to me. The egg getting cold.”

“I don’t have time to lose. God goin do a wor—”

“Either way, you have to eat, so God goin just have to damn well wait.”

“But I—”

“Look. Don’t make me get stink with you. Egg and bacon not cheap, so you either eat it or me goin throw hot oil straight on you white suit. Think say people get up early to cook breakfast and …” The rest she said with her back to him, but the Pastor was already struck. It was better to say nothing.

“Eat up. Something tell me say today you goin need to be strong. Real strong.”

Lucinda was early to work. She knew what she wanted to see, yet told herself that she had no such desire. The memory of whipping made her back burn anew, yet the suffering was imaginary and failed to deny or suppress. She looked through the keyhole and saw black. Surely he was already at work. Lucinda chastised herself. What was she there to see anyway, crouched like a nasty child at the door of her Apostle’s office? She looked through the keyhole again and saw black. But then the black moved and her heart jumped. Black became shadow. Shadow became curve, curve became buttock. The buttock went right and disappeared from view. She shifted right and struck her temple on the doorknob. Ignoring the throb of pain, Lucinda stood by the keyhole for several minutes until she resigned herself to disappointment. She rose and walked straight into his chest.