The Devil Take the Blues--Chapter 30

Chapter 30

I'll cut your wood, baby oh I'll cut your wood, baby And I'll build your fire, build your fire I'll bring your water, oh bring your water Through that muddy bayou, muddy bayou… But you was evil, oh you was evil Throwed me out of doors, out of doors But That's all right baby, oh That's all right baby It's coming home to you, coming home to you

-Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe

Frank

Tim paced in his cell, screamed in frustration.

“She can’t do this to me. She can’t leave me.”

“She will.”

He stopped. Glared at me. Hellfire in his eyes. “I will kill you when I get you alone.”

I spread my arms. “We are alone, are we not?”

“It’s your fault I’m here. Your fucking fault.” He continued to pace. “I’m on the verge of losing everything. Everything.” He muttered to himself. “I might as well kiss the election goodbye. Half the town must have seen me walk in here, like some common delinquent.”

I yawned.

“She’s the one thing I love, truly love. I can’t let her do this.” He banged on the bars. “Somebody! Johnny! Are you out there? Johnny!”

The faintest stirrings of worry.

What is he up to?

He continued to shout. Finally came the soft shuffle of Johnny coming down the steps.

“Johnny!”

“It’s Deputy Sheriff Johnson if you don’t mind,” drawled Johnny. “What do you want? You’re making enough racket to wake the dead.”

“Let me out,” said Tim. “My wife is leaving me. I can’t let her go.”

Fuck.

“Sheriff, don’t do it,” I said. “This man here has gone crazy.”

“You shut the hell up,” said Tim. He turned back to Johnny. “Please? Look, I promise I’ll come back, I swear, I just have to talk some sense into her.”

My confidence vanished. My human heart pounded. The rush and buzz of adrenaline. I felt these changes, and knew it was because I cared about Agnes now. I was once neutral, but now was not. I had to use all my powers of persuasion; it was a matter of life and death.

Johnny hesitated. He had the strained look of someone who was trying to move his bowels but couldn’t. “I’m not supposed to do that,” he said.

“Johnny, Sheriff, I mean, who gave you that badge? Don’t you forget what the invisible empire, what I have done for you, now. I’ll never ask you another favor except this one. I gave you that star. You’re the Sheriff, because of me.”

“Don’t do it,” I said. “What do you want? I’ll give you my house. I’ll give you enough wealth, so you’ll die a fat old man with a woman’s mouth around your member. But do not let him out.”

Johnny’s eyes bounced between us.

“Wait,” he said. He pointed to me. “Ain’t you Beatrice’s husband?” He smirked. “Fine,” he said to Tim. “You’ve done me a solid. But you’ll come back, like you said, right?”

“I promise,” said Tim. “You have my word.”

“Stop!” Now it was my turn to pound against the bars. If I had my powers, I would blast through the bars; if I had my powers, I could hold Johnny and Tim frozen in time; the Others would yank me off the Earth and throw me into a Black Hole, where time warped, and my punishment would last millennia, but I would do it.

But I couldn’t. I was human, which meant utterly at the whim of fate.

With a sneer toward me, Johnny opened the door. Tim clapped Johnny on the shoulder. “You made the right choice. Proud of you.”

He turned to go, took two steps up the stairwell, but then stopped. Drummed his fingers on the railing. “‘Fore I leave,” said Tim. “You got that bottle of whisky you promised me? I need a little courage to talk to my wife. I can’t let her go.”

Johnny looked guilty as sin. “I do, but I done drank some. Bout half full now.”

“Johnny, stop!” My throat was raw.

“Never mind that, just give it to me. Now.”

“It’s in a drawer in my desk.”

Tim raced away.

“You idiot!” I screamed. “You son of a bitch, what have you done?”

*

Angelo

I finally went to the courthouse. I couldn’t stand the thought of my grandmother missing, even when the men in there were what took her.

We didn’t go to the police. We didn’t go to the police for anything. They were not there to protect and serve us. They were just as likely to kill as they were to help. No one ever went to them because if you needed help, it was you who was to end up a suspect or dead. That was the stakes. Those were always the stakes, and I’ve never been much of a gambling man. Not when they would step on your chest, your neck, cut off your air and kill while you slowly die, calling out for your mama. Not when you could just be walking home from the grocer with nothing but a bottle of Coca-Cola and some candy. Not when you just needed to get to your place of employment. Maybe it would change. Maybe in one hundred years, it would be better, but I doubted it. That wheel of violence has a habit of turning.

But this was my grandmother. The woman who raised me. The only person in the world that could love unconditionally. I stayed mad at her because I knew she would forgive me, and I was finally ashamed enough to admit that I had taken advantage of her kindness.

So yes. I was afraid. I was terrified. But my love was bigger than my fear, at least for that time. For a little while at least.

As I walked up to the jail, I barely avoided colliding with a man who had the devil in his eyes, who dropped an empty bottle on the ground. I instinctively lowered my eyes and moved out of the way; I had been struck by a white man for less. I hated pretending like I was invisible, hated the feeling of being denied existences, unless it was the very worst of ways. Even with money, even with prestige, the white men of this world treated me like I was no more than some field hand, some animal. That’s all I would ever be to the people in this town. In every town.

Before he even got to the entrance, the door swung open, and I encountered a man who looked too young to shave, much less wear a Sheriff’s hat and star, but there he was.

“Whadd’you want, boy?” said the deputy Sheripff.

“Angelo!”

I recognized Frank’s voice.

“Help!”

I looked past the Sheriff’s shoulder and saw him clutching the bars of a cell. We locked eyes.

“I said, what do you want?” repeated the deputy Sheriff, hostility and venom in his voice.

I took off his hat. Forced himself to look at his shoes, which were scuffed and dirty. Not the shoes of a Sheriff at all. “Please, sir, I’m—I’m here to find my grandmother. She’s gone missing.”

He brushed past me, hitting my shoulder. “Can’t help you.” He kept walking outside, into the bright sun.

“Angelo, get his keys,” Frank hissed. “Get me out of here. Someone will die if you don’t.”

“I might as well knot my own rope if I try to take the keys from the Sheriff,” I whispered to him. “I just need to know where my grandmother is.”

I turned and followed the man, his footprints creating tracks in the dusty road. “Please, I think someone might have done something to harm her—”

But the deputy Sheriff kept walking into the blinding white sun. The yellow dust swirled around his boots as he kept walking.

“Please! She’s very old, and—”

The deputy Sheriff turned around abruptly. His hair was long and greasy. “Old woman? She ain’t that colored woman who lives in that cabin in the forest, is she?”

Angelo mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Yes, sir, she’s very old, and she can’t really take care of herself, and I think someone might have…”

Then he started laughing. He walked right up to me, until I could smell the sour on his breath and see the brown of his teeth. “You’re damn right someone wanted to do her harm. I thought I’d scare her plenty, putting that cross in her yard. Me and the boys had a good ol’ time with that one. We came back for her, but she had already disappeared.” He frowned, as if he were severely disappointed that he was not the responsible one. “Now get out of my face.” He turned around and walked away.

That was when I saw the coiled snake. Fear made him take a good, long look at it, made me fix on the star on its back. Just a burst of white on a yellow-gray body. I nearly kept my mouth shut. I was boiling with anger and the temptation was never stronger. I should let that white man die, let him get bit by the damn thing.

But in a split second, I yelled, “Stop! There’s a snake!” I lifted a finger and pointed.

The deputy Sheriff was five feet away from the coiled, hissing creature. He cast a withering glance toward me, then pulled out his gun.

My heart froze. I was going to die. I would be shot down like a dog, right in the middle of the street, I would—

Blam!

The shot echoed across the empty street. The bloody remains of the snake were splattered across the road. Its head was completely severed from its body.

The deputy Sheriff holstered his gun. “What? You afraid of a little snake?”

I took a step back. “No.”

But he laughed, an ugly, mocking sound. “You spooked, boy? You afraid?” He walked toward the snake. “I think you is.”

He bent down, and I realized what he meant to do. He wanted to taunt me, shove the dead carcass in my face. He reached out his hand to grasp the top part of the carcass.

“No, don’t!”

The dead snake clamped down on his hand. The man screamed, a horrible, ugly sound, unable to pry the snake’s head from his hand, even as venom was pumped into his bloodstream.

The deputy Sheriff turned whiter than the sheet he donned at night to terrorize those who could not protect themselves. He shrieked and convulsed. Then seized.

*

Frank

For several, horrible seconds, Angelo didn’t move. He could not be caught with an injured white man.

“Angelo!” I screamed. “The keys! Get the keys and get me out! I know where Shirley is.”

He walked over to Johnny’s prone body, his muscles going rigid. Grabbed the set of keys off him, hating to touch him. Ran back to the cellblock to release me.

As he opened the door, I said, “I know where your grandmother is. I kept her safe in the cabin outside my house. She should be there. Go.” I yanked my car keys from my pocket. “Bring her to the house at the end of the lane on Ash River Road. She will have a part to play in this before it is over. I hope not. But I have to find Agnes first.” I shoved him. “Go!”

Angelo took off his jacket and tore off. I turned to run to the street, but before I could, men in pristine suits with shiny badges pulled up to the Sheriff’s office.

What now?

They got out of their cars. They ambled up, until they saw the prone figure of Johnny.

“Holy shit, that boy’s in trouble.” One ran to his side and inspected his body. Jerked his head to me.

“What happened?”

“I didn’t see,” I replied. My heart thumped beneath my chest. “And I have business to attend to.”

Runrunrunrunrabbitrunrunrun

“Johnson, get him to a hospital. Where’s the nearest one?” This last aimed at me like a pistol.

Five miles east, after the windmill, turn left, go down five hundred feet, after you cross the railway, take a right.

“About ten miles to the west. Take the main road all the way out of town. You’ll see a sign for a Piggly Wiggly. Turn right. Can’t miss it.”

“Johnson, go.” They hauled Johnny’s body away. The man then turned back to me. “Do you know a Tim Stevenson? We’ve got a warrant for his arrest. He’s wanted in connection with embezzlement. He’s been squirreling money away for about a year now, and we finally caught him.”

Agnes, hold on, I’m coming, I’m sorry

“No, can’t say as I have ever heard of the man.”

Beatrice, all I ever wanted was for you to love me

The man leveled a look at me as if he wanted to throw dirt in my face. “You look pretty busted up for business,” he said smoothly.

get out of my fucking face this second

“Bar fight. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

I walked as slowly as I could, each step excruciating, my road to Golgotha. Perdition. Damnation.

Too late too late toolatetoolatetoolateangesbeatricesorrypleaseforgivemetoolatetoolatetoo

late.