The Sound of Building Coffins (26 page)

Flit, flit, with the hurrying hours,

In shadow and mist and dew

Will-o’-the-Wisp, O Will-o’-the-Wisp,

I could I would follow you,

With your elfin light for a lantern bright

The bogs and the marshes through

Will-o’-the-Wisp, O Will-o’-the-Wisp,

I could I would follow you

Now there was a whistle of breeze where there was no breeze, the voice of the night whisperer. A dry whistling coming up from the orange water, solidifying and stretching from tin to brass. Music of some kind, vaguely familiar.

“
Just the morphine is all,” he said aloud. “It’ll pass soon enough.”

“
Mister Beauregard, can you hear me?” A voice not his own brushed past his ear. Like the music:
familiar
.

“
Just the morphine,” answered Beauregard, unable to believe anything save for the terrible weight in his chest.

“
Step down, old friend. Into the water.” Antonio’s voice was clear now, no longer a whisper. “Step down. It’ll be all right. I have something to show you.”

Beauregard placed a foot in the water. Something at the back of his mind warned of quicksand, told him not to go too far and be damn careful if he did—the wispy roots of alligator weed would not keep him from being sucked down and in if he faltered. He took three steps and stopped, lowering himself to his hands and knees to distribute his weight, to avoid sinking. Quiet. Nothing. Then:

“
Don’t be afraid,” said Antonio.

The left hand of Antonio Carolla shot up and out of the water with a splash, hooking firmly behind Beauregard’s neck, pulling him down, under. Beauregard struggled; slapped at the hand, pulled at it, writhed in the water—uselessly.

“
Open them,” Antonio whispered into Beauregard’s ear. Beauregard’s thrashes lessened as he pondered the instruction—wondering what might be closed that could be opened. Snatching the thought from Beauregard’s mind, Antonio amended:

“
Your eyes. Open your eyes.”

Chapter thirty-two

Two Seconds Past Now

With the opening of eyes, there is change. The change is not in raw perception; optic, tactile, or other. It is dark with eyes closed, but darker still when truly opened.

There is no hand hooked behind Beauregard’s neck. No sound of splashing, no feeling of panic in his heart, no water, no need to hold breath, nothing left to struggle against. He is kneeling on a hard surface, a stone floor. There’s a terrible odor in his nostrils, a smell rushing forward from his personal history, a familiar smell. He pulls himself to his feet, takes a single step forward, hands groping before him in the dark. On the third step his left shin knocks painfully into something hard, angular.

“
God
damn
,” he complains aloud, reaching down to rub his leg. The pain is a small miracle, taking his mind off larger concerns in the now. But
now
exits too quickly, strange new reality rushing forward two seconds past now.

“’
Tonio!” he bellows loudly, irritated. “What the hell, man? What’s going on?” No response, not even an echo. He draws down a hand to investigate the hard object that knocked his shin. Hard edges, soft on top. He places both hands on it. Leans on it. Its voice is a creak. The sound of rusty springs.

Cot.

The meaning of the smell reveals itself:

Bucket
.

His hands trace the walls around him, measuring their distance from one to the other. Eight feet from here to there. Four feet from there to here. He reaches upwards, touches finger to ceiling. Seven feet from floor to ceiling, give or take.

Standard.

“’
Tonio!” he shouts once more. Then: “AN-TOE-KNEE-OH!” for good measure. No response.

“
Think,” he insists of himself. A sob creeps slowly up his throat. “This is the morphine,” is the only answer he can imagine. “Just the morphine. Took too much is all. I just have to sleep it off. When I wake up, I’ll be back in my swamp. With a big, fat headache maybe, but back in my swamp. My bayou, my beautiful, beautiful bayou.” He sits on the cot and rubs roughly at the wetness of his eyes.

Upon lifting hands from eyes, Beauregard Church sees the familiar starburst patterns that every human being sees after rubbing his or her eyes in the dark. Pinpricks of light poking tiny holes through internal darkness, exposing little bits of artificial white, dancing grains of electric salt. But the pinpricks are not all white; there are grays and colors among them. The white is not artificial: there is purpose, there is revelation, they are stripping away blackness a crumb at a time. They fade, disappear—too soon, too soon. He rubs his eyes once more, pinpricks resurrected. This time they don’t fade. This time they widen and multiply rapidly, eating away at darkness like a cancer, tearing away blackness, stripping its skin. There is meaning in the grays and the colors. They are combining to form the figure of a man.

The cell is now illuminated with bright, sourceless light. Beauregard examines his naked feet. He’d never imagined how godawful the inside of these cells might be in bright light. He decides utter darkness had been a mercy for the prisoners after all. He looks up.

The figure revealed is Antonio Carolla. Antonio stands by the bucket, leaning against the far wall of the small cell. His eyes meet Beauregard’s.

“
You can see me?” Antonio asks calmly.

“
Yeah. Yeah, Antonio. I can see you just fine.”

“
Sorry about the trouble, old friend,” the ghost of Antonio Carolla says with soulful eyes. “Being born can be as painful for the child as for the mother. Well, not
born
so much as reborn. Or
rebirthed
, as the Mulatto kid says.” Antonio is smiling. “Kid thinks he’s an orphan.” Antonio is laughing. The Sicilian’s words mean nothing, but his smile puts Beauregard at ease.

“
Guess so,” says Beauregard, without the slightest idea of what Antonio is talking about, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Antonio, I think I need to sleep.”

“
You are asleep, old man.” Antonio steps forwards, sits next to him on the cot. Puts his arm around him, the arm minus a hand. “Listen, Mister Beauregard.” Beauregard prefers it when Antonio calls him Bo-Bo, “Mr. Beauregard” being what the prisoners used to call him. “I know this is hard for you to take in. It was hard for me too at first. But listen to the song; it’s a familiar tune, a good tune.”

“
I don’t understand,” he replies, but he does hear music. It’s not so much a sound as a feeling.

“
You don’t need to. Not yet. You just need to understand that you’ve lived for a reason, and now you’re moving on for a reason. You need to fix some hearts, make things right.”

“
I’m dead?”

“
Bo-Bo, I’m worried about my boy. He grew up bad, but through no fault of his own.” Antonio pauses then says in a low voice, “My wife, she tries, but she is weak and he is strong-willed. She can’t control him.”

“
I don’t know nothin’ of your boy, Antonio. I been in the swamp since that demon got pulled out of him. Since I killed that man. Since I made those kids orphans.”

“
He grew up bad,” repeats the Sicilian, ignoring Beauregard’s confession. “His heart struggles with demons. My own hand struggles within his heart. It burns. And Typhus is no orphan. Didn’t you know that?”

Beauregard’s head is swimming, unable to understand, and so he cuts to the chase: “What do you want me to do, Antonio? What
can
I do?”

“
There’s a woman who brought a destructive thing into the world, and into my little Dominick. She’s not a bad person, this woman. She did this thing through misguided love, would like to send it back but doesn’t know how. She sees you in her dreams, but doesn’t understand why. She thinks you are Coco Robicheaux. She fears you because she doesn’t realize your destiny is to bring her peace. You must bring her this peace, though she may resist.”

“
You want me to kill this person?”

“
I want you to bring her peace. She has ghosts.”

Chapter thirty-three

Deliverance

The short legs of the mulatto man peddled the rickety bicycle northwesterly down the cobbled edge of the Storyville District. An empty burlap bag (most recently having held the body of a child; rebirthed, matured, and found again—then, finally, returned to its mother in the form of a meal) did not bounce at the center of the homemade chicken-wire basket tied between the bike’s handlebars.

Two miles upwards of the district, the bicycle slowed of its own accord as the rocky surface of Saint Louis Street gave way to the pliant codgrass and mud that led to the bayou’s tip. It had recently rained hard; the ground so soft and wet that Typhus had to get off and walk it the last half mile.

Typhus imagined that from the heavens this tip of bayou might look like a finger pointing away from Lake Pontchartrain and towards the river. His father once told him the five fingers of the Bayou St. John had long ago stretched all the way to the river, draining the high tides of Lake Pontchartrain straight through what had since become the City of New Orleans. Since then, and through the course of centuries, the bayou’s fingers had grown stumpy and fat; a series of deadened waterways doomed to swell without relief when the rains came, causing the lake to puff at the base of its great hand. But Typhus knew the Bayou St. John still made that connection in its way, still managed to join lake with river. The two bodies of water were cut of the same cloth; limbs severed but still sharing the same blood, still able to draw together in spirit. Still one, always one. The bayou made it so. In its way.

Mosquitoes nipped Typhus’ ankles as he walked the last stretch of muddy ground to the house. Dead tired, he found himself without energy to bend and swat them away from or against his skin. Rebirthing always knocked the wind from his soul, but returning the children to their mothers could be much more draining. There was a certain pain involved in the act of rebirthing; the assignment of lost children into a cold, vast river could be a troubling and thankless task, near tragic at times. He had no way of knowing whether they might survive long enough to fatten and mature at all—and the belief that they would eventually find their own way back to Typhus’ fishing line was an enormous leap of faith. But if they did make it back, then they could be returned; and there is nothing happier than the reunion of a mother and child—even if the mother doesn’t fully understand the nature of the reunion. What she fails to recognize by sight, she knows in her heart.

So when Typhus served Miss Hattie her lost child this night, there was joy in the act. He had seen the transformation of her eyes as she swallowed, the pain melting away, acceptance taking hold. The idea of eating children may seem an ugly thing, but not this. This was a beautiful thing, a proof of God’s tender mercies. Miss Hattie would no longer have thoughts of pinkening bathwater. She would go on living, have more children, and do it right next time. Typhus had learned from Doctor Jack that sometimes nourishment is the only thing a child has left to offer—to itself, its mother, or anyone else. Things consumed are not wasted things, they’re merely things sacrificed so that life might go on in another form. This cycle of life was good, and whether or not Doctor Jack himself believed in things holy, Typhus believed he was doing God’s work.

The house was dark and quiet. Tiptoeing into the sleeping room, Typhus dropped to his knees quietly and began filling his coffee bag with soft straw. Laying the pillow against a cold spot between Malaria and Dropsy, Typhus Morningstar was half asleep before he was fully horizontal.

Not ten minutes into sleep, Typhus was visited by a dream he’d not encountered since a child. Not since the night his father was killed.

A dream almost forgotten.

Chapter thirty-four

Reckoning

“
Gotcher buttons.”

Give ’em back.

“
OK, but first I gotta show ya sumpin.”

I’ll tell Dropsy ya took my buttons. He’ll whoop ya good.

“
Tell him in person ’cause that’s where we’re going. Ta see Dropsy. He’s your uncle, but he’s my best friend. Ya think I’d do anything to harm my best friend’s best and only nephew? He loves you more than life, West. It’s why I’m bringin’ ya.”

Show me what?

“
Sumpin by the river.”

Mama be mad if I’m gone ’fore she get up.

“
I done told Miss Bernice who’s s’posed ta be watchin’ ya I’m takin’ you to see Dropsy. I bet yer mama’d be glad to sleep in a little late. I know she’d be.”

Where’s Miss Bernice at?

“
Home to get some rest. She been up all night watchin’ you and them other kids. I told her I was takin’ you home, she thanked me and went on.”

Them other kids left already.

“
I know. Their mamas up early. But yer mama worked extra hard and slept extra late. Onna counta she love you so much. More than those other mamas love them other kids.”