The Devil Take the Blues--Chapter 28

Chapter 28

Beatrice

When I saw him standing outside my house, my hands shook. My knees followed the sentiments of my hands. I wanted to hide and run to him at the same time. How long had it been since I had seen him last? A few months? A lifetime.

But there he was, standing in the golden afternoon sunlight, looking so handsome in his suit and white leather shoes, shoes far too fancy for these dirt track roads. Angelo went and done made himself a musician of the highest order. I had been keeping clippings of his name in the papers, following his rise to fame. Now, here he was; he could have been anywhere: Paris, London. But no, he was here, real and living and breathing, three things that I was not sure Frank kept in his repertoire.

Why did I feel like flying on the inside, even if I still reeled with embarrassment and worn-out anger from our last encounter? Even if I did feel as awkward as the pea in the fable, no force in heaven or earth could move me from the spot I was in now, except to move toward him.

Quit being so damn foolish. This man shouldn’t matter to me at all.

The differences between us piled up by the second, not the least the particular pigmentation of our skins. He wanted to roam, a traveling musician, and I was content to dig my roots in deeper. He wanted to create, where I seemed only to destroy; my relationship with my sister was becoming frayed by the day, my marriage was a sham, and I had sacrificed a loving soul.

So then, what did it matter if I took one more step toward him? What did it matter if I had let myself be foolish? If I truly did not care about him, then I should not care enough to get angry, right?

What drew me was not pity, not regret, even though his shouts still echoed in my mind from where they had tried to drag him away, even though I still could not get his bloodstains out of my dress. I had kept that dress to always remind me what happened when I tried to break the rules. I would never forget again. 

And yet, here I was, forgetting again. Willful forgetting. How often do we sow the seeds of our own destruction? Something warm built inside me. I felt as though I had known Angelo forever, which was as inane as it sounds. I knew nothing of this man. Nothing.

But I wanted to know more. Enough for an entire lifetime.

In an instant, I was intensely aware of the sheer awkwardness buzzing between us. Neither of us broke the silence. The slight tilt of his chin, the ever so slightly raised eyebrow defeated his proud posturing. He had been hurt, and I had been the one to do it. He would not admit defeat now, but I wondered if his stomach felt the same flip as mine did. Well, some have called me stubborn and others have called me difficult and bullish, but it was those qualities that allowed me to plunge ahead and simply start talking. Not that I said anything intelligent.

“Hello,” I began.

“Hello,” he replied, and his voice was just as warm and fragile and musical as I had remembered.

Silence reigned again.

“Listen, I just want to say—I just want to say—” I took a steadying breath. Why were words so hard? What made the act of drawing breath, vibrating one’s vocal cords, and forming speech patterns so damn difficult? Why did my stomach clench so, my heart race?

“That I’m sorry for what I said. I didn’t mean it. Any of it. I just—”

How could I explain that I had wanted him to get angry? I wanted him to leave, leave so I could never see his face again, so I would be free of the temptation to do exactly what he had suggested. Something was making my heart pound, just by looking into his eyes, just by drinking in the sight of him. I wanted him out of this town, away from the ghouls and dogs that could chase him. If he was gone, then he would live. And I would not be the death of him.

“It’s fine. It was for the best,” he said, breaking my heart, when I thought I didn’t have anything left to break.

“What—” and something caught in my throat. “What are you doing here?”

I walked toward him, my feet stepping on the carpet of leaves. I expected him to hate me for what happened. It was largely my fault, and I could barely look him in the eye. But my daddy didn’t raise a coward.

His gaze remained serious as he said, “My grandmother is missing. I was hoping you knew something since your husband was the one who told me.”

“How do you know she’s missing?”

“Other than she’s not at her house, and Frank told me she was?”

Dammit. I couldn’t go running around chasing after Shirley to find her. Not when Agnes was still vulnerable. I was just about to go over to her house when Angelo had shown up on my doorstep, but Frank knowing something that he hadn’t told me was suspicious. Even more so when he had a harmonica with both their names on it.

“I found this. Seems to be yours.”

The metal was cold in my hands, despite the heat from my palms. I passed it over to Angelo, and he took it without a word, but his mouth hung slightly open. His eyes became glassy, and I waited for him to speak. He pressed the harmonica to his lips, and I envied the harmonica. He breathed a few notes, then let them die away.

“I thought I’d lost this,” he said. “I did lose it. In a card game. To your husband actually. My gran gave me this, before I took off. She scraped together everything she had to get it engraved.”

Now I could see the resemblance. The high cheekbones. The wide eyes. The soft curve of their cheeks.

“That was kind of her.”

Angelo laughed, the bitter notes fragrant in the air. “Not exactly. She cussed me up and down, saying that I was playing the devil’s music, that I’d go to hell, or worse, make a fool of myself, trying to be a musician and fail. When I told her that I wanted to join the chitlin’ circuit, try to make a name for myself, you would have thought I’d betrayed her, pushed her off a cliff.” Angelo hummed a few more notes. “She said she couldn’t bear to watch me throw my life away. She only gave me this in case I ever hit rock bottom, I could sell it. She said she traded her Devil whiskey for a harmonica when money dried up. Said an old drunk needed something more than music. I always just thought she meant that the harmonica was special. I swore then and there that I would prove myself, be the best damn musician I could, so that one day I could stand here and say, ‘I made it. I did it.’” He gripped the harmonica. “And now she’s gone.”

All of this sank into me like a stone in water.

I reached out, hesitated to touch Angelo, then finally put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll find her. This is probably just one of Frank’s twisted jokes.”

“I even wrote her a few weeks back,” Angelo moaned. “—telling her that I would be returning for a short while, and I wanted to see her. She sent back a three-line note telling me not to bother. Well, I was still pretty sore about it, and I told myself I didn’t care.” He gripped the harmonica. “I did. I do.”

“Angelo, think: she could have visited her friend, Remy. She could be in town, anywhere. We could go to the police.”

Angelo shot me a look of such disdain that I shriveled beneath it. “White folks go to the police.”

“We could just ask—”

“They’re the ones who probably killed her!” Angelo’s voice rose to a shriek.

“No one killed her.” I hoped. I prayed. “Frank probably knows where she is.”

He just shook his head. “He doesn’t. I asked. Please, help me look for her.”

I hesitated. “Angelo, I…when I was with Remy, I heard a voice in the darkness that said Agnes will die by a man in a mask.” I told him about how the Klan had busted up Frank’s joint.

He ran a hand over his face. “Beatrice…why the hell would the Klan go after a white lady?” He asked as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “All I know is what I heard. Someone is after her. I need to protect her.”

“Bea, please,” he begged. “Of the people liable to be murdered by the Klan, who do you they’re gonna go after? Some white woman or an old—”

Of course. Stupid. But then again, would anyone who murders innocent people hesitate to kill?

“Fine! Fine. I’ll help you look. I’ll ask Frank again. He’s…well, different, to say the least.”  I stared at him. “We’ll find her. I promise.”

It was a promise that would lead to my, and Agnes,’ utter ruin.

*

My clock was ticking. Time was closing in like water over my head and any moment I was not with Agnes risked losing her. 

No. Agnes’ clock was ticking. I felt like I was going around in circles, and perhaps that is what the good poet Dante meant about the circles of hell. Doing the same things over and over. Making the same mistakes, being a slave to the past, chained to time. I meant to smash that clock in its relentless, smug face.

Frank was sweeping the floor of the trashed joint when he heard me walk in.

“Where is she?” I said.

“Good evening, my beautiful wife. You’ll have to be more specific,” he replied. He set the broom down beside him.

“Shirley. She’s missing. What happened to her?”

“Why must you insist on accusing me of actions I did not commit?”

“Because I know you know something about Shirley.” I rubbed my forehead, slick with sweat.

“I swear I did not harm her. What makes you think I had anything to do with it?”

“Because eighty-year-old women don’t just up and disappear. Because the people you interact with have a way of disappearing, dying, or having something horrible befall them.”

Slowly, he lifted his hand and set it down on mine.

“I promise on what I hold most dear that I did not harm her.”

My face softened. He spoke softly, gently, his voice the touch of butterfly feet against a flower petal. “And what is it that you hold most dear?”

“Look into a mirror and you’ll see.”

I remained silent. Frank could twist his words, make them dance and do his bidding, but something told me that he was telling the truth. Far be it that I could have any control over him; that was what scared me most of all. I constantly worried that he would take advantage of some vague sentence and snatch Agnes early. He kept drawing me back to him, for that. But she only had two days left. Two days to for the hex to work or both of us would be sent to perdition.

Still, if he did not take Shirley, then my search would have to continue.

*

Frank

It’s lonely, living between two worlds. Neither in one place nor the other. That’s the real crossroads. I’m neither flesh nor spirit, having both, feeling at home everywhere and nowhere. The earth is my playground. The universe is all I have. All my existence, I have traveled, and I’ve seen wonders that can only be described with music. Perhaps that’s why the piano player, Angelo, meant so much to me. Music like that can only come from a soul who’s known pain, known suffering. It takes more than just a splash of music theory and a lifetime of playing the harmonica to make that kind of musical poetry. Does it justify the suffering?

Of course not. But a broken heart was turned into art. Beauty for ashes. For the first time in my existence, I felt a little less lonely. Not altogether un-lonely. Just a little less. I wanted to run from it. I’ve run from this feeling, putting as much distance between myself and it for thousands of years. There’s no one else in the world like me. No one else who straddles the line between the sacred and the profane, the earthly and the ethereal, the otherworldly.

She was music to me. She was peace. With her, I felt an ease somewhere in whatever passes for consciousness. Do I have a soul? Can I say that I felt peace there around her? More than a peace. A feeling of coming home. Is that all love is? A feeling of profound stillness, waters so deep and clear that you don’t look down for fear that you might see a monster rising up? But you know that there are no monsters in this water, and you think, how can that be, how can there be something so perfect and heartbreaking as this feeling where there is stillness inside a tornado? The space between heartbeats. The utter contentment to simply let things be. Not scrounge for scraps, denying the emptiness, but simply letting it exist for a while. That’s how she made me feel. That’s how the music made me feel.

*

Angelo

Beatrice was wrong about a lot of things. What true evil is. What she should have done about her sister. The way she went about it all. But the one thing she did figure right in all this was that my gran and Remy Dupont were friends, so that’s exactly where I went. He lived north of Azoma, past a copse of sycamores, down an unmarked path, and even past where the old bridge used to be. I ain’t afraid to admit, but that swamp done gave me the willies. Something about that swaying Spanish Moss and the howls of the gators and the cries of the loons—well, it was enough to make a grown man shake in the hot sun. I shouldn’t have gone. Maybe if I hadn’t, what happened wouldn’t have come to pass.

But go I did. All I wanted to tell my grandmother was that I was sorry. Sorry for letting my pride lead me around like a mule in a harness. Sorry that I had never truly thanked her for all that she had done for me. What good was talent and money if you couldn’t share it with your loved ones?  What good was music if it cut you off from those you loved the most?

Truth be told, I was a stubborn fool. Everyone had been right. I was wrong to trust Charbonneau. Frank. He had given me the opportunity, but in the end, he had been the same as any other white producer—too keen to do things his way, not letting musicians play their own music. He fed me to the wolves who demanded that I write music, then they took that music and made it “popular,” which really meant that it was hokey as shit. Stripped it clean of any soul like a buzzard strips flesh off bone.

But had I listened? Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t be out here now, up to my ankles in gray water, wondering if a snake was going to bit e me, or chiggers, or worse. I’d seen men laid low by the fevers that ticks brung. Ain’t the loudest or biggest creatures that cause the most misery. Still, this was my penance. If I caught fever, then I’d deserve it. But I couldn’t give up on my gran. That was what pushed me forward, made me lift up my feet from the squelching, sticky mud. I had to find her.

I swatted a cloud of flies away from my face, but they followed me like the tax man wanting his money. I finally saw a shack that must have been Dupont’s. Before I could even walk up to the door, he came around the side. He hobbled, his leg twisted up underneath him, and he leaned heavily on a cane. Cane wasn’t nothing but a carved branch.

“I came out here to escape, not have people knocking on my door every five minutes,” he said. “State your business or be off. Preferably the latter.”

“Remy Dupont?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Angelo Davis.”

“Ang—noooo. You was a mite the last I saw you. You have no business bein’ grown. Why’re you out here?”

“My gran is missing.”  

“Miss—” he sucked in air.

“Yes. And I’m afraid…” I couldn’t even say it. “I just thought she might be here.”

Dupont shook his head in the morning light. “Haven’t seen her since…well, since some fool woman wanted to cut some corners with magic. Have you looked—”

My throat hurt to speak. “Yes. Everywhere. I can’t find her.”

“We can look for her around here, but I doubt we’ll find her. Come on then.” He led me to a pirogue, and we climbed inside. I dug a pole into the water, and we started off.

The swamp was a living thing. Life pushed and fought and clawed its way just to exist. Sinkholes pulled you under. Fog clouded the ground and your bearings. Black widows sang their death letter blues. Cottonmouths and diamondbacks sipped the air. Herons stretched their blue-gray wings. The sticky swamp with its heat and its vapors was a cradle of life.

We looked for hours. I didn’t know whether to be hopeful or not. Dread and hope twined themselves around my stomach, tying it up into sailor’s knots.

Remy scanned every inch of the place with his knowing eye. He lifted up his arm and pointed. “Over there.”

It was just a small lump, and it seemed a miracle that he could even see it. We pushed the pirogue over. Sure enough, it was an elbow sticking up out of the water.

Or what used to be an elbow.

Dupont handed me a pole with a hook at the end.

“Go on, then,” he said.

I swallowed the shriek that clawed in my throat. I’d seen dead bodies before, but I couldn’t help but gag as I lifted the mess out of the stinking, fetid water. The stench nearly knocked me out of the boat. What used to be a white, pointed hood covered its face, and for once, I was glad for it; I didn’t want to see what horror had happened to the man’s face. The glint of gold was unmistakable, though, covered in mud as it was.

“That’s a Sheriff’s badge,” I said.

Remy nodded as if he found dead Sheriff’s all the time in the swamp. “We should go to the police.”

I nearly dropped the pole in the water. “Are you crazy? We go to the police saying we found a body and they will hang us faster than they can throw the rope over a tree.”

Remy tugged at his lower lip. “Normally, yes. They would. Now, here’s what I’m thinkin.’ I’m thinkin that this ain’t the first body I done found in the swamp. Found one a coupla months back. I let that go. Now, fellow by the name of Charbonneau told me that if I didn’t report the body I found, then he’d fix up my leg. Pay off all my debts. Now, I kept my end of the bargain. He said to not report a body, but he never said which one.”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not. There is no way in hell I am going to the police over this. If you made a deal with Frank, then you know who he is. What he is.”

“Exactly. Now, I’m thinking that if he told me not to do something, then I should probably do it. So when you go back into town, you tell them—”

“Wait just a goddamn second. First it was we, now it’s me—”

“—you found a deer carcass. That it’ll attract the swamp bears or some such. Too close to town. Make it up however you want.” He leaned on his pole. “I don’t know what Frank has up his sleeve, but it can’t be good.”

I gestured to the mangled mass beside us. “And you want to get messed up in all that? For all we know, he could have gone against Frank and this is what he got for doing so.”

“And maybe this is our chance to catch Frank. If this is what he didn’t want, then we’ve got to tell somebody.”

I stared at the old man good and hard. “You have done lost your mind.”

But deep down, way down in the darkest parts of me, I knew he was right. I had searched for my gran. Hadn’t found her. Sooner or later, I would have to report her missing.

Missing.

Sorrow stabbed me. I took a deep breath.

“And so, it seems, have I.”

We started making our way back to his house, when the pirogue became preposterously snarled in muck and weeds. I offered to fix it myself, but Remy said something about how it happened all the time and he knew how to fix it. I can’t remember exactly what he said. The memory of what happened next has warped my exact recollection of what came before.

One thing is certain, though. Some gator, lured no doubt by the blood and flesh of the decaying corpse, struck Remy with all the ferocity and rapidity of a lightning strike. Remy let out an unearthly shriek before clutching onto one of the cypress trees. I shoved the guiding stick between the gator’s jaws and down its throat so far that it had to let go.

Before I took Remy to the hospital, I bandaged just under his knee, where his leg used to be.