John Crow's Devil (25 page)

Soon was today. The day she turned the Rum Preacher over to The Five and still had time to make the Apostle a special breakfast. Even through a swollen eye she could see there was promise to the morning. The kitchen was part of the church, separate from the Apostle’s quarters. She began cooking, forgetting dumplings for johnnycakes, calalloo for bacon, ackee for eggs—whatever smart people, good-blooded people, white people, ate. At the bottom of the pot she saw her reflection and winced. Clarence had beaten her with no regret. The Apostle had the idea. He needed to weed out the evil that lived in the Widow’s house and reach the lost at any cost.

“We must save the lost, Lucinda,” the Apostle had said to her an hour before she took her battered self to the Widow. “We must save the lost, but first we must stop the man who lost them. Are you ready to save the lost at any cost, Lucinda?”

“Yes, Apostle.”

“Good. You’re my hound, Lucinda, and he’s a jinnal, just like a fox. When a fox is hiding in his hole there’s only one thing we can do.”

“Flood the hole, Apostle?”

“Flood the? What? No, no, my simple child, when a fox runs to his hole you have to flush the bastard out. You have to flush him out.”

“How we flush him, Apostle?”

“Not we,
you
. He has to believe you, Lucinda. Thank the Lord that He has chosen you for this serious, serious task. You are first among women! Thank the Lord that He has predestined you to go into the enemy’s camp. All we have to do know is make him believe you. That old bastard can read faces, Lucinda, we have to make sure that he reads only one thing.”

Then he set Clarence upon her like a dog. She could see his enjoyment; the glimmer of comeuppance in his eye. This was his revenge for the whipping. But the Son had to suffer before he was glorified. So did Job. And Jacob. And Jeremiah and Paul. This was God’s work and He would reward her with love. The Apostle’s love, which would be a reflection of God. York would be her sun and she would be his moon, reflecting his light and blinding those underneath her. But Clarence wore the Apostle’s clothes now. She dismissed such things with logic. After all,
how would a empty-pocket bad-breed nayga like Clarence afford good clothes, now that him get promoted?
She knew who had the Apostle’s heart. That was why he asked her to make the sacrifice, to go into the Preacher’s camp and lure him out. This was no different from the father asking the son, so that afterward the son would sit at the right hand of the father.

She smiled at having served the Apostle so well. Memory had deceived her before, but this morning Lucinda indulged the past as she broke three eggs in corn oil and sprinkled them with salt and pepper.
Nasty nayga bitch, I can smell you fishy from here,
a voice said.
You think any man would a want you now that you pokie dry up?

Her mother came with the smell of vinegar. Country legend had it that if somebody’s blood was on your hands, their ghost lived with you forever.

“Dry-up pokie never stop
you
from taking man,” Lucinda replied.

You think you good. Only me know say you wicked. Just like you father who don’t stay.

“Is you why him leave.”

You pokie stink. Only evil go in a it and only evil come out of it. The river tell me bout you.

“Yes, yes, me born evil. Me born bad. No your pokie me come out of?”

Bad seed. Bad from the day you born when me try fi kill you. But the birth cord never wrap round you neck tight enough.

“Eehi, and look how cock mouth catch cock. You should a try harder. What you do to me, me come back and do to you. Only me finish the job.”

Lucinda.

“Don’t
Lucinda
me. My man goin stay with me, you watch. Him not goin run way. Him not goin hate me so much that him sleep with goat instead. Now get out of me kitchen. Nasty nayga bitch.”

Lucinda broke into “Old Rugged Cross,” just in case any other spirit decided to attack her thoughts this morning. The Apostle said nothing should stand in the way of her joy. “Old Rugged Cross”! Two johnnycakes and three strips more of bacon and breakfast would be ready.

She flipped a johnnycake and felt sorry for the Widow. Lucinda was surprised at her own tenderness. Perhaps now that she had won, she could feel compassion. The sympathy the victorious felt for the defeated, the slayer felt for the dead, the Roman for the crucified Christ. The Widow now had nothing. Lucinda had promise. Promise was a pink ray in the morning sky and a silent twinkle on unopened flowers. Promise was the sun peeking through louver windows and kissing her on the cheek. Maybe the Widow would find Christ again. Now that the Rum Preacher was driven from her house, perhaps the Widow would find peace. She would reach out in friendship, though they could never be friends, of course. Lucinda remembered how envy made a monster out of herself; how much worse would it do to a woman who cursed God and lost her man twice?

On the way to Apostle’s house, she almost skipped, but stopped when the orange juice glasses shook. She giggled at the smell of eggs, bacon, and toast, her white man’s breakfast. She would wake the Apostle and call him by his first name. She paused. Lucinda had no idea what his first name was. No matter, this would be a morning of new discoveries. She would wake him up and serve breakfast in bed, and who knows, climb in under sheets that smelt of his sweat and feed him. She knew from cleaning once a week that the doors were always unlocked.

“What you was doing, laying the damn eggs yourself?”

Clarence pulled his pants up and flicked his penis through the fly. Lucinda froze as her own mind attacked her, molested her with information she did not want and could not process. She was a simple woman who concluded simply.
Clarence naked. Clarence pulling up him pants.
Clarence cocky dangling like a sausage outside him pants. Clarence pulling up him pants but don’t have no brief underneath. Clarence in the Apostle bedroom naked. Clarence pulling up him pants. Clarence cocky dangling like sausage outside him pants. Clarence in the Apostle room and him … him … him picking up him shirt off the floor.

“Well, what you waiting for, blessed assurance? Put down the tray and get out.”

She was a simple woman who concluded simply. She placed the tray on the bed and stood up straight and stiff. Lucinda could not look at him, nor could she bear the sound of the toilet flushing, the inevitable emergence of
him,
the proof of nothing. Inside her was nothing. She heard her mother chuckle.

“Bitch, at least close the door when you leaving.”

Lucinda ran back to the church. She ran past the kitchen and the mess of egg shells, raw bacon, spilt flour, and squeezed oranges on the counter. She ran all the way upstairs to her room and shut the door. They were waiting for her. In the mirror she saw them: her mother and Night Lucinda, at times two, at times one, all the time laughing like the crackle of lightning.

GOLGOTHA, OR THE INCIDENT

A
bba babba a maka desh.

We pray to the living God who is the Father and the Son through the Vicar of God who sits pon the left hand of the Father. The Vicar is the creation of the Son who is one with the Son but also the Father.

Rekelo baba lacosa.

We have come to bring praise to he who is most high. We enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. We present ourselves as the living sacrifice entreating the Father to receive the Son of the Son in his most Holy place.

Sikosa rabokok mieshande ribobaba.

The enemy we defeat. Is so prophecy go. The walker in darkness get bring into the light. We thank the Mighty One for victory over the kingdom of spirits. We thank the Father and send the servant of darkness back into darkness.

Oh bababa lajakmeh sikethacoco.

Amen.

The Widow woke up to a threat. One more minute and the pictures would have cut through skin. She reached for them between dress and breast. The Widow placed them on the table like cards and studied them carefully. They were all faded to sepia and they all provoked the same response. Boys, some small and featureless, some with more than a few facial and pubic hairs, all in undress. Some had their legs crossed, some were spread wide like cherubs caught in knowledge of their sex. They were no longer boys but dolls, warped and reshaped into somebody’s reflection. Like the girls on those playing cards that Mr. Greenfield kept in his secret place. In all her years of suspecting Mr. Garvey of sodomy and seeing his several nephews, she never married the two. Her mind traveled to places she had not thought thinkable. Such sickness and perversion tormented her, reduced her to a child’s fear of darkness. She looked at pictures of boys, spread like women, some in makeup and hats, and she imagined demons raping tiny holes of innocence and inexperience. There were others that needed no imagining, their buttocks free but their mouths stuffed with what went beyond her ability to believe. The only way to pull herself out was to imagine them unreal, or French, as her husband would have said to explain anything obscene. That was the only way she knew to make them unremarkable, to take her heart out. She would have succeeded were it not for the third photograph, which she had passed over twice. The picture had blurred into the others before, but now a face slid into focus.

From a mop of wild black hair, the signs came. Eyes sparkled from brown skin that was light but darker than the others. The same brown skin, the same eyes, and the same wet, unruly hair that blew over his shoulders even in the stillness of the picture.

“Hector! Hector! Hector! Come quick! Hect—” A silence came upon her, overwhelmed her completely. The quiet punished her for perception. The Widow remained standing, accepting his absence from the house. Her blue dress seemed a stupid thing. She no longer wished to wear it. She wanted to peel the memory of him, the musk of him, away from her skin. The stench of dead John Crows drifted through the house. She went into his room and sat amid a confluence of words and symbols. She remained there until nightfall.

Abba babba a maka desh.

We declare the Kingdom of 1000 years. To the light of the Father and soon-coming King. We His other sheep bow down before Him. We invoke His presence in the name of the Most High.

Friday morning broke through the gray sky. The Rude Boys were already up. They had a big job and big tools to match. The noise they made had the rhythm of industry, the clang, crunch, and smash of purpose. Hammers and pickax clubbed away, setting off shards that ricocheted off the bridge. The Apostle gave them until 1:30.