Witches' Bane (4 page)

By nine-thirty on Wednesday morning, I’d waited on a half-dozen customers. People shop here because it reminds them of the good old days before bar codes and shrink wrap. In my opinion, shrink wrap is designed to keep me from seeing that the strawberries on the bottom are rotten. Bar codes are more insidious. By the time I get to the check-out, I’ve forgotten the price. Something tells me that this is exactly what the Big Thrif-T execs are counting on. That’s why I shop at Cavette’s Grocery, the third-generation family market at the corner of Guadalupe and Green. Old Mr. Cavette uses a set of antique ink stamps to mark each item. Junior, the youngest Mr. Cavette, heaps all the strawberries in a basket and invites you to pick out the ones you want. The ones nobody wants, he feeds to his chickens.

At ten, Ruby opened the Crystal Cave. Her shop is the same size as mine, with a connecting door. It’s stocked with New Age books, tapes, crystals, jewelry, goddess sculptures, star charts, kaleidoscopes—what she calls “tools for expanding consciousness.” The air is filled with the fragrance of my best incense and the soothing sound of meditative music. Ruby doesn’t have any competition in Pecan Springs, and she usually does a brisk business. This morning, she spent the first hour tending to a flock of customers. As I glanced through the connecting door I caught glimpses of Dottie Riddle buying a tarot deck, a couple of pony-tailed college students (male), and a middle-aged lady in an expensive-looking suit, nervously glancing over her shoulder while she asked sotto voce about astrology books.

One of the nice things about having two stores in the same building is that one person can oversee both, which helps to combat the claustrophobia you feel when you’re behind the counter for eight hours at a stretch. Sometimes Ruby takes over for me, sometimes I take over for her. This morning, we both wanted to go to Andrew’s grand opening, so we asked Laurel Wiley, a student in my herb classes, to look after both stores. About eleven, we headed next door to the Craft Emporium.

The three-story Victorian that houses the Emporium used to be the opulent home of the owner of the Covenant Trust Savings and Loan, which floated belly-up along with numerous other Texas thrifts. Constance Letterman bought it in a foreclosure sale six years ago and turned the large, high-ceilinged rooms into shop spaces for ten or so tenants. Gretel and her mother have the candle shop on the first floor, in what used to be the best parlor. On the other side of the hall, in the second-best parlor, Clarissa Owens sells vintage clothing—forties and fifties dresses, plastic jewelry, beaded purses. Behind Clarissa is the old dining room where Andrew Drake was opening his new photography studio, Faces. That’s where Peter Dudley used to have his Depression glassware shop. A few months ago, Peter reduced his inventory and moved upstairs to the nursery.

A new business is a big deal in Pecan Springs, and people were jammed elbow to elbow in the old dining room, which had been elegantly updated with a gray and mauve color scheme, trendy chrome furniture, and Andrew’s artistically spotlighted photographs. I saw Mayor Pauline Perkins talking to Helen Jenson, owner of Jenson’s Travels and president of the Chamber of Commerce. Madeline Martin, the manager of the Book Nook, was discussing the drought with Oscar Perkins, owner of the Packsaddle Motel, and Herschel Schwartz, president of Hill Country Fidelity Bank. Jerri Greene, of Jerri’s Health and Fitness Spa, was talking hair with Roxanne Spivey of Mane Attraction. (Roxanne trims mine once every two months and keeps pestering me to do something to liven up the brown and cover the wide swathe of gray at my left temple.) The other Emporium tenants were there, and Constance too, wearing a strawberry red tent dress with three or four loops of what looked like gilded dog chain around her neck. She was ladling lemonade punch and doling out cookies at the refreshments table. A little sign in front of the cookie tray said “Cookies by Adele’s Sweet Shop.” Whoever made the punch must have wanted to remain anonymous.

“You’d never know this used to be a dining room,” I told Ruby, as Constance poured my punch and handed me two oatmeal cookies. “Lester Kyle did a nice job with those lights.” But Ruby had deserted me. I spotted her standing next to Andrew.

“I’ll say this for Andrew Drake,” Constance remarked, “his taste isn’t all in his mouth. Money doesn’t seem to be an object, either.” She rolled her eyes in the direction of the former kitchen. “You should see the equipment back there— cameras, lights, the whole works. He must have put ten thousand dollars in that old kitchen.” She nodded toward the bank president. “Probably got it at Fidelity, and Herschel came to see what he spent it on.”

“Do you think Andrew will make it?” I asked. “It’s not exactly an economic boom time.” I thought unhappily about my own bottom line.

“He’d better make it,” Constance said. “His rent’s due the first of ever’ month.” Constance rides herd on her tenants like a cowboy minding a bunch of irresponsible dogies.

The object of our speculation, Andrew Drake, was making small talk with the mayor, while Ruby looked on adoringly. If she was after good looks she’d found the right man. Andrew was six feet plus, with an engaging smile, a perfect nose, and brown hair cut fashionably long and (I’d bet) sprayed to keep its shape. He wore a pale gray turtleneck, a darker gray sport jacket, and elegantly tailored gray slacks. Among Pecan Springs’ males, Andrew’s haute couture definitely made him different.

I was studying Andrew and Ruby and wondering whether they were really soul mates or whether Ruby had been misled by a pretty face when Bob Godwin came up beside me. Bob owns Lillie’s Place, a bar and grill a couple of blocks up Guadalupe. He’s in his late forties, a Vietnam vet with thick reddish hair, eyebrows like two furry red caterpillars, and a tattooed spider on one hefty forearm. He wore Levi’s, scuffed cowboy boots, and a disgruntled look on his rugged, pockmarked face. “It wouldn’t of been so bad,” he said gloomily, “if it wasn’t my
favorite
goat.” He scowled as he looked for an ashtray. “They didn’t need to of kilt him.”

“Killed him?” Bob has a habit of starting conversations in
medias res.
I always feel as if I’ve skipped the first paragraph or two.

“Leroy,” he said. He leaned over and drowned his Camel in the half inch of lemonade in the bottom of my plastic glass. “Slit his throat. Hung him up by his heels and let him drip.”

“Slit his
throat?”

Bob shoved both hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. “Ask me, it was them damn Mes’can witches. Built a altar in the shed, stuck a buncha white candles and white feathers around, left some quarters and a half dollar on a coupla white plates. Guess they picked Leroy because he was black.” He gave a short laugh. “Guess bein’ black is unlucky for goats, too.”

“I guess,” I said. Bob lives about two miles out of town with a golden retriever named Budweiser and twelve goats. Eleven now, I supposed.

“Ol’ Bud, he didn’t even bark. Guess he’s gettin’ kinda hard a hearin’. He’ll be lonesome. Leroy was his favorite goat. Mine too. Alius hung out at the fence to get his ears rubbed.”

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. I stop at Lillie’s Place a couple of times a week, mainly because I like Bob. He’s basically a bigot, but if you can get past that, he’s a nice enough guy, trying to make an honest buck. I wasn’t personally acquainted with Leroy, and his death probably wasn’t any more barbaric than the deaths of animals we kill for food. But living alone the way he does, Bob’s attached to his animals. His sadness made me sad, and angry.

Constance came up. “Is it true what I hear about your goat, Bob?” She whipped out a small notebook, frowning. “Sounds like Santeria.”

“Yeah,” Bob agreed morosely. “Damn Mes’can witches.”

Constance took out a pencil. “Mrs. Peters found a dead pigeon in the alley behind her toolshed yesterday. It was missin’ a head, and there were dimes and quarters scattered around it.”

The news about Leroy was disturbing, especially given all the suspicious gossip about witches, but I wasn’t surprised to hear that there were Santeros in town. The barrio is on the east side of town, squeezed along the Interstate. Quite a few of the families have been here as long as the town and, for better or worse, have been Anglicized. Tex-Mex. But in recent years, increasing numbers of illegal aliens have slipped across the Rio Grande, fleeing the grinding poverty and political oppression south of the border. A lot of the locals look down on the wet-backs, although they’re perfectly willing to exploit them as cheap labor whenever they can get by with it. This is a subject I have strong feelings about. A few years ago, Immigration set up certain conditions under which longtime illegals could apply for resident alien status. Until that amnesty expired, I worked as a volunteer in the program that Sarita Gonzales ran through the Guadalupe Methodist Church, helping longtime undocumenteds qualify for resident status. Santa’s husband Rogelio is the Methodist minister. He ministers to people’s souls. Sarita ministers to their lives. Sarita’s ministry seems to make a bigger difference.

Sarita told me about Santeria, which in Spanish means “worship of the saints.” It’s a mixture of Catholic and native ritual involving occult practices that smack of witchcraft. One of these practices is animal sacrifice, so it was probably Santeros who slaughtered Leroy. A few years back, they had done something much worse than that. A pretty blond tourist in a Mexican border town was abducted and ritually murdered by the members of a cult called Palo Mayombe, the dark side of Santeria. They were narcotics smugglers who believed that their sacrifice would keep them from getting caught. It didn’t. But by that time, the pretty young blonde was horribly dead, and the rituals surrounding her murder had made one or two true-crime writers horribly rich.

“I dunno why you wanna put this shit in the paper,” Bob told Constance. “People read it, they figger it’d be a kick to copy it. I don’t aim to lose me another goat.”

“But people
have
to be informed,” Constance said. “It’s your civic duty, Bob, especially right now, when everybody’s in such an all-fired panic about Leota and the Ellis boy.” She leaned forward, her pencil poised. “What color was your goat?”

I was heading for a clean glass and more lemonade when I was intercepted by Pauline Perkins, who recently announced that she planned to run for an unprecedented fourth term as mayor. I usually see Pauline pounding the treadmill at Jerri’s Health and Fitness Spa, where we’re both trying to lose weight. Pauline’s more determined than I am. For years, job stress and never having time to eat kept my weight down. Now, I’m less stressed, happier, and ten pounds heavier. I’d say it’s a fair trade.

Pauline came forward eagerly, swathed in smiles. She had good news, and I was going to hear it whether I wanted to or not.

“We’ve done it, China, we’ve actually
done
it!” She clamped a hand on my arm so I couldn’t get away and turned to Helen Jenson, a step behind her. “Haven’t we, Helen?”

“Absolutely.” Helen agreed, splendid in her royal blue Chamber of Commerce blazer, the gilt president’s patch on her breast pocket gleaming like an heraldic emblem.

“That’s great,” I said. “What have we done?”

“Pecan Springs has just been named as a finalist in the City Square Program!” Pauline said. “The site visit team will be in town next week.”

The City Square Program is one of those state-funded operations that, under the guise of a competition, doles out large sums of money for such significant downtown renovations as erecting a gazebo and building a public potty on the square. Pecan Springs had been turned down twice, much to the personal chagrin of the mayor and City Council. It was my theory that all they had to do was put Pecan Springs on the waiting list and hang out until the powers that be eventually got down to it. Since this was go-around number three, I figured that the town’s number was probably due to come up this year, and all the mayor had to do was hold out her hat for the money. But both Pauline and Helen appeared to be taking the competition seriously.

Helen fastened gray eyes on me. “We’d like your help, China. Could you host a Dutch-treat lunch for the team a week from Friday?”

“Sure,” I agreed. I wanted to help. With all its quirks and oddities, and setting aside what had happened to Bob’s favorite goat (which could have happened anywhere), Pecan Springs is a fine little town.

‘Thanks,” Helen said, turning to leave “My assistant will call you to confirm.”

Pauline clamped my arm more tightly so I couldn’t follow Helen. The woman has incredible strength in her fingers, probably from squeezing voters’ hands. “I do hope you realize, China, how terribly important this competition is to Pecan Springs’ economic prosperity. The Council and the Chamber have put in simply
untold
hours to make sure that our bid isn’t overlooked again. Another defeat would deal an absolutely fatal blow to the town’s hopes.”

I wanted to tell her that she was dealing an absolutely fatal blow to the circulation in my forearm, but I didn’t. I turned up the corners of my mouth and assured her that I would do my utmost to see that Pecan Springs got the attention it deserved from the site visit committee. I stopped short of promising to vote for her, but she let go anyway.

“Thank you, China,” Pauline said. There were white marks on my arm from her fingers. “I knew we could count on you. Oh, RuthAnn,” she shrilled, turning from me to her next victim, “have you heard the news?”

Showing better reflexes, RuthAnn Landsdowne stepped back out of Pauline’s reach. “I’ve already agreed to help,” she said. “You asked the garden club to furnish the team’s motel rooms with fresh flowers. Remember?” RuthAnn is president of the garden club.

“Yes, of course,” Pauline said. “Just don’t let Sybil Rand help,” she added, smiling to signal that she was making a joke. “She might stick something fatal in among the roses. Oh, Howie!” she called, and hurried away to twist somebody else’s arm.

“It’s Sybil I want to talk to you about, China,” RuthAnn said. She glanced around to make sure we weren’t overheard.