All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (24 page)

"Dr. Talmadge died."

"Oh, that is a shame. And so young. What was the cause?"

Hackaliah hesitated, then looked at the ceiling. Slowly he brought a gnarled hand to his throat, encircling it; his head sagged suggestively. His old eyes shone in a contemplative aside to Jackson. It was a bitter pantomime, evoking mystery and a sense of dread not easily put into words.

"Hanged himself! But why?"

Hackaliah dropped his hand. His voice rasped as if he'd squeezed his throat too hard. "Didn't say."

"There wasn't a note, you mean. Was his health poor?"

Hackaliah was thoughtful but uncommunicative. Jackson mused, "There'll be a case history of Nancy Bradwin somewhere. I'd very much like to see what sort of treatment—" Hackaliah had turned and was walking slowly away. "Where are you going?"

"Bath water's cold by now."

"Good, just the way I like it."

"I believe I forgot to lay out your razor."

"Hackaliah, when you were telling me about Nancy Bradwin, you said she slept for 'days at a spell.' Why did you choose that word?"

Hackaliah paused in the doorway. "The way I talks sometimes."

"How much do you know about spells, Hackaliah?"

"Spells?"

"Magic spells; sorcery. I believe it's also called voodoo in this part of the world."

Hackaliah said with a grimace of disgust, "None of that around here; we'uns all washed in the Blood of the Lamb."

"I also had a Christian upbringing—in the midst of an African forest."

Hackaliah looked around at Jackson; the ceaseless shaking of his head seemed to contradict a gleam of interest in his eyes.

"I was raised to be a medical missionary, and in the course of my training I had experience with magic, both white and black. I respect its power. I saw strong and apparently healthy men lapse into comas and die, for no logical reason It was magic that killed them; the power of suggestion. Nancy Bradwin slept like a dead woman. What you mean is that she
seemed
dead."

"Yassuh."

"Did she stay in one position for hours? Was she cold to the touch? Was she visibly breathing?"

"I don't know; I wasn't 'lowed in the room. Only Miss Nhora and Aunt Clary Gene."

"She had no medical attention after Talmadge hanged himself? Why wasn't she taken to Little Rock, or Memphis?"

"Couldn't nobody make her understand she needed help. When Miss Nancy wasn't—sleeping, or doing them other things, she felt just fine."

"What other things?"

Hackaliah closed his eyes for several moments of pained contemplation. "It ain't decent for me to say."

He shuffled on into the bathroom. Jackson, mildly exasperated, followed.

"Who
can
tell me?"

Hackaliah tested the bath water with his fingertips, then used force to shut off the leaky faucet. "'Bout some things, you should talk to Miss Nhora. If you needs to know. But what good it does now? Miss Nancy's gone."

"There are questions about her death—and the last few months of her life—that want answering. Of course it's family business, she was Champ's wife, but he's in no condition to make a proper inquiry."

Thinking of Champ, Jackson felt a twinge of remorse for having slept through the day; Champ might have had a setback without his knowing.

"Hackaliah, where's the major now?"

"In his room. Had hisself a mighty poor day."

"I shouldn't wonder. Who's with him?"

"Aunt Clary Gene."

"And who is Aunt Clary Gene?"

"Nursemaid to all the boys. She's old now, but she had powers in her day. Spiritual powers. She could heal the sick. No need to worry about Champ, long as Aunt Clary Gene is there."

"That's reassuring, but he needs a regular course of penicillin. I'll just be a few minutes. Hackaliah, that razor could use a touch of the strop."

"Yassuh," Hackaliah said, closing the blade in the ebony handle and departing.

Jackson had bathed and washed his hair and was back in his robe when Hackaliah returned with the honed razor.

"Miss Nhora ask if you would come down to the front parlor after you see Champ."

"Delighted. Oh, Hackaliah—"

"Suh."

"There was a young man riding with her last night, a Negro. His skin is light with a kind of smoky cast to it, and his eyes are as pale as dry champagne. Do you know who he is?"

"That be Tyrone. My youngest."

"Oh."

"Takes after his mama," Hackaliah said, a moment before the silence might have become mean and uncomfortable. His head shook and shook. "She was quadroon, a pretty smoke color, yassuh. And the eyes: honeybees, just full of that sting. She wasn't no good for a settled-down mans. I was fifty-some. Well, Lord, I ought to have leave it alone, but I still had some kick back then, and you could see the heat come off her skin like a tar road in August." The old man grinned unexpectedly, a hearty, evil grin that hardened into an expression of self-mockery.

"What happened to her, Hackaliah?"

"Soon after the baby come, she up and left. Didn't hear nothin' more about her." His tone indicated no regret. "If you needs me for somethin' else—"

"Not at the moment, Hackaliah. Where will I find Champ?"

Hackaliah told him. Jackson shaved, dressed quickly and went upstairs to his patient.

The three-story house had been built with wide center halls and Palladian windows at each end. There was a bright green runner the length of the upstairs hall; the oak floorboards creaked comfortably underfoot. Renovation was under way. Woodwork varnished to a dull chocolate shade over the years had been stripped, painted white. The hall windows were open; there was a mild, not very cool draft. Screening kept out the bugs. In the shaft of the center stairs the wrought-iron framework of a small lift was also getting a paint job. Above the stairs there was a skylight well, the glass shrouded with moonlit moths. Voices rose from the ground floor. The bedrooms and baths on the third floor were square, modest in size, interconnected if suites should be needed. All but one of the doors stood open, all the lamps had been lit.

A maid carrying a tray backed out of Champ's room as Jackson approached. She wasn't immediately aware of him and nearly dropped the tray in fright when she turned around. A glance at his medical bag reassured her.

"Has he eaten anything?" Jackson asked.

"Some soup; he didn't hardly touch the breast of chicken"

Jackson went in. An old Negro woman dressed in rusty black looked up from the tea she was fixing, a pinch of this and a pinch of that from dingy jars and small sacks. Her stockings drooped and she wore thick glasses. She was about five feet tall and looked as frail as a paper box kite. But there was an attitude of beatific endurance about her, the round little face, wreathed in kettle vapors, expressing the homely serenity of a backwater saint as she ministered to the sick man.

Champ was reclining on a padded deck chair still faintly stenciled with the name of the ship from which it had come:
Lusitania
. The room was a boys' playroom, with an emphasis on things military: campaign maps and a mailed glove mounted on one wall, lances, Civil War swords, model aircraft suspended on wires from the ceiling, lead soldiers in disarray on a tabled battlefield. Champ's head was turned toward the open doors of the balcony, beyond which he could see departing vehicles in the torchlight: a 1933 chauffeur-driven Packard touring car, a smoky pickup truck with standing children in Sunday clothes bunched together like tenpins. He didn't look around when Jackson spoke.

"Aunt Clary Gene? I'm Dr. Holley."

"How do you do, doctor."

Jackson put his medical bag down and smiled as Aunt Clary Gene took the kettle from the hotplate and poured boiling water over the tea maker in a china cup.

"What have we here?"

"Coltsfoot leaves; fever weed; witch grass. Some peppermint to give it savor."

"Any tansy, mother?"

She looked, around patiently at him. "Not 'less I likes to kill him."

"Know your plants, do you, mother?"

"Knowed them all my life. Never made nobody worse. Made lots of folks better."

Jackson got out his stethoscope and a thermometer.

"Champ? How do you feel?"

Champ moved his head. His eyes were bleary from grief, or shock.

"All in."

"Do you remember the trip home last night?"

Champ licked his lips. "No." He turned his head toward the balcony. "Nancy's dead," he said quietly. "I didn't make it, did I? Just didn't make it in time."

"You tried."

"Get hold of Murph; let Murph straighten it out."

"Murph?"

"General Murphy T. Givens, War Department. He'll take care of it."

"Take care of what?"

"I'm AWOL. Not that it really matters a damn."

"There shouldn't be any problems, once they know the circumstances. We do have more important things to worry about."

Champ abruptly tried to sit up, to force his way past Jackson. He nearly fainted from the effort.

"Major, you can't—"

"Take me to her!" Champ pleaded. "Oh, for Christ's sake, Nancy, Nancy,
why
?"

Jackson held him until the momentary charge of panic and shock failed. Then Champ lay back, weak and palpitating, perspiration breaking out all over him.

"I haven't found out yet," Jackson said. "But I will. Please cooperate with me now."

The lungs seemed clear, but Jackson wanted X-rays. The recent presence of a physician in Chisca Ridge argued for some type of clinic, perhaps a well-equipped surgery. He gave Champ a shot of penicillin, doubling the usual dosage. That left only a two-day supply. Just enough, he hoped, unless Champ took an unpredictable turn.

"What is that you just give to him?" Aunt Clary Gene inquired, skeptical of the chalky liquid in the bottle.

"It's called penicillin, mother. A recent discovery. They obtain it from the mold of bread."

"All kinds of molds is good for healing. Why, I always knowed about that."

"Keep giving him your tea, mother. All he'll drink. He needs the liquid. Champ, I intend to have a look at the local medical facility, if there is one. I'll be back in a couple of hours. Do you need assistance getting to the bathroom?"

"I'd rather you be in a bed, you can't be too comfortable in this old deck chair."

"I'm comfortable," Champ said, frowning. He drew a light blanket closer to his chin, as if he'd sensed the swift approach of one of the German torpedoes that had sent the liner to the bottom of the North Atlantic. He stared at a wavering bi-wing model airplane overhead: One wing was broken, hanging down. "I love this room," he said, voice just above a whisper. "Our rainy-day room. Used to dream about being here—you know, playing toy soldiers again, making up war games—all the time I was trying to get off that bloody Jap island, going round and round the island, tracers in the sky all night long, and men blowing up,
shit
, just never getting off. Not till this happened." His fingertips explored the slash across his throat; his lips parted, bloodless simulacrum of the wound. "I fixed that Wing twice after Clipper broke it. Clipper broke a lot of my things. Have to fix it again, damn it. God knows I'm tired."

"Try to rest."

"How do I do that?" he asked. Two tears rolled down his cheeks, but his voice was still bare, dry and unemotional. "I don't sleep. I just go straight back to that island Mac wanted so bad and
do it all over again
. There's no getting off. The only way off is dead."

"Champ, I'll be back soon."

"Oh, are you going? Tell Nancy—"

He flinched and rolled his head aside and gestured with one hand, like a sorcerer trying to pacify an unexpected demon. "They keep telling me. She—but then I forget." He seemed exasperated, then frozen with dismay.

"Oh, Champ, Miss Nancy's asleep in the bosom of the Lamb. By and by she'll wake to glory. Trust in Jesus to lift this curse from our house. Abide. Abide."

Jackson looked around at Aunt Clary Gene, obscure in the shadowland of her great age. He felt a chilly apprehension: In this house he kept waking from dreams, his own lonely dreams or Champ's version of the circles of hell, to confront stern dark faces. Frail as she was, Aunt Clary Gene had a moralistic force as compelling as gravity. Jackson was drawn to her. He touched her arm, but she felt no need to look at him.

"Poor boys," she murmured. "Poor boys."

"What curse, mother?" Jackson asked.

Champ answered him. "There's no curse. We've had our share of bad luck, that's all. What family hasn't?" He had propped himself up and was staring at Jackson, for the moment both demanding and rational, yet he seemed to be slipping in and out of dense cloudy moods, some charged with lightning. "Bad luck with Clipper. Couldn't hold himself together. I know all about that now. Almost gave way myself. Maybe it'll still happen."