‘I got some bread an’ fruit right here in my basket.’
‘Naw,’ I said. The sick frown on my face came naturally from the sour pitch in my gut. ‘Couldn’t you go’n get me some hot soup or sumpin’?’
‘It’s late, Easy,’ she whispered, to show me that she was afraid of waking people up.
I stared at her while thinking about my own dangerous purposes.
Maybe it was the fear showing through my eyes that moved Jo.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll go see what I can find.’
She kissed me. It was the natural brush of lips against skin. I imagined prehistoric wolves making the same gesture with their snouts before they howled as men, women, and children sat shivering in their caves.
Chapter 13
I counted to ten and pushed myself up out of the bed. I fell to the floor before I could manage even one step. It felt like I should have been able to walk but my legs just wouldn’t listen.
There, on my knees on the floor, I noticed the broad cloth bandage held to my stomach by a thick gray goo slathered around the edges. I leaned back against the bed and pulled the cloth away.
The skin underneath was puckered and discolored. Under the cloth was a stack of leaves and twigs; in the middle of that nest was a dead toad.
The toad was plump and looked almost as if it were still alive. When it fell away I saw that there was an open cut in the shape of a cross, two inches either way, above my navel. The toad’s belly had an identical cut.
I came around the side of Miss Alexander’s place and turned left. When I got to the end of the street I turned right and walked until I came to a pecan tree. Two houses past that was a small cabin, a hut really.
My knock was answered almost immediately in spite of the late hour.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Easy Rawlins, Theresa,’ I said through the rough-hewn plank door.
When she pushed the door open I was forced to take a step backwards. She was wearing a burlap sack with holes cut for her head and arms. The candle she held showed me that the holes for her arms were a little too big, I could see her left breast sticking out of the side.
‘What you want, Easy?’
‘Raymond here?’
No words came to her.
‘I asked you is Raymond here, Theresa.’
She shook her head and it was my turn to keep quiet.
‘He gone out to Reese,’ she said at last.
I was staring at her breast and thinking that Raymond would have called me a fool for worrying about things that were none of my business. Then Theresa pointed out the way to me when I told her that Raymond would be mad if she didn’t.
I made it out the slim passage through the woods thinking about all the steps I’d taken to bring me to that path. It came to me that it all started when my father ran away from that butcher and out of my life. He never called for us. One day I came home from school and our neighbour was waiting there for me. When she told me that my mother had some kind of stroke I wasn’t even surprised. I had expected her to leave too.
I’ve been counting my steps from that day to this one. From Louisiana to Texas; from childhood to being a man.
I wasn’t quite yet a man as I walked down that country path. But I was headed for maturity. I had driven Mouse out there and anything he did was a reflection on me.
It was the noble thought of a fool.
Dawn was filling the woods with a cold glow when I heard the voices. One of them was Mouse, his hard-edged voice loud and threatening. I couldn’t understand his words but at least I knew they were words, spoken to be understood.
The reply was a single note of rage.
I followed the murderous sound even though I knew I should have gone the way of my father.
I came to a stand of cherry trees on a small hill above Reese Corn’s place. Clifton and Mouse were standing near a large woven bamboo basket. Mouse was holding his big .41 over his head while cocking his head to make sense out of the scream, which was coming from the basket.
Clifton was armed with a shotgun, he was holding it by the twin barrels.
‘What’s that you say, Reese?’ Mouse shouted at the basket.
I could see the lid stuttering against the latches it had been secured with. I was dose enough to hear the pounding blows. Reese must have done that with his head and shoulders and back.
It was a large basket but Reese would have had to squat down, hugging his knees and bowing his head, for them to have closed the lid.
‘Let’im go, man!’ Clifton shouted. ‘Let’im go!’
The next thing Clifton, or I, knew, Mouse had his pistol pointed at the boy’s nose. Raymond said something but I couldn’t make it out.
