‘Uh-uh, I don’t think so. We plan t’go out t’Loozdana t’my folks,’ Clifton said.
‘You done kilt a boy an’ you gonna hang that on yo’ folks neck?’
‘That’s across state line, they cain’t do nuthin’ down there.’
‘An’ you don’t think the white man gonna be down there? You don’t think that if he know you at your momma’s that he cain’t go get you?’
‘How anybody gonna know where I am ‘less you tell’em?’
‘Boy, you better get that chip offa yo’ shoulder an’ listen t’me.’ Mouse sat back and frowned. ‘Now the first thing is that the cops know your name. I know that ‘cause Ernestine was there an’ she love t’yell “Clifton.” Second thing is they know you headed fo’ the state line ‘cause that’s where a man scared’a the law always be headed. An’ last thing is they know you gonna go whey it’s safe, an’ seein that you already wit’ yo’ girlfriend they know you gonna go see Momma.. . The man ain’t no fool, Clifton.’
Mouse actually scared me. I was amazed and proud of him. He revealed to us the police mind in a way that I never even considered. I could see hi the mirror that Clifton felt the same way.
‘Com’on, Clifton,’ Ernestine pleaded. ‘Let’s do it. He right ‘bout these country cops.’
Clifton didn’t say anything. The only change hi him at all was that his jaw set a little tighter.
Mouse tapped my shoulder and said, ‘When you see a ole beat-up sign that say Rag Bayou, follah it.’
The turnoff to Rag Bayou was rough and unpaved. We bounced along. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was lost in their thoughts. I kept thinking about that horse in the backyard and how it got there. I was five when I first saw it, and then, fourteen years later, it came to me, from nowhere it seemed, that my daddy had stolen that horse and sold it for meat.
Chapter Three
A mist of gnats and mosquitoes swarmed along the road. Mouse was shouting over the whining cicadas, ‘Turn down there, Easy! . . . That’s it! ... Take a left! ...’ The path was so rutted that I worried about breaking an axle - and I knew Otum loved that car more than his whole Cajun family.
‘You can stop it right here, man!’ Mouse yelled at last.
‘We in the middle’a the road, fool! I gotta park.’
‘Okay.’ He shrugged. ‘But Otum ain’t gonna like his Ford knee deep in swamp.’
‘But we cain’t leave it in the road. What they gonna do when they come drivin’ down here?’
Mouse laughed. ‘Man who gonna drive down here but a fool?’
I wished I had an answer to that. I pulled the car as far over to the side of the road as I could, and hoped that there was enough space in case some other fool decided to drive by.
‘Com’on, Clifton, you safe fo’the first time since you laid that boy down,’ Mouse said.
‘Hey, man.’ Clifton put up his hands. ‘Keep it quiet.’
Mouse smiled and followed Ernestine out of the car door. Clifton went too.
But I stayed in the car putting on my heavy shirt and pulling my cotton cap down to my ears.
Mouse leaned in the window and said, ‘What you doin’, Easy?’
‘It’s them bugs,’ I said. ‘Just one mosquito in a room will bite me twenty times and every bite swells up into a hump on my skin, and every hump itches me until I scratch it hard enough to draw blood. I hate bugs.’
‘You just too sweet an’ sensitive,’ Mouse said. ‘All I gotta do is wave my hand in front’a my face once or twice and the bugs leave me be. An’ if anything bite me he ain’t never gonna bite nuthin’ else.’
I came out finally. Mouse slapped my shoulder and said, ‘Right this way, honey boy.’
We walked into a wall of vines and baby bamboo. It was reedy and mulchy and thick with gnats. It was hot too. Ernestine squealed every time a frog jumped or one of those bright red swamp birds got startled and croaked its hoarse swampsong. I was sweating heavy in all those clothes and still getting bites on my face and hands.
‘How far is it?’ I yelled over the cicadas.
‘It’s up here, Ease.’
‘How far?’
‘Dont rightly know, man.’ He smiled and let go of a bamboo stalk.
‘What you mean you don’t know?’ I had to duck down to keep the bamboo from hitting me in the face.
‘Ole Momma Jo’s a witch, an’ witch houses on out here is like boats.’ He made his voice sound ghostly. ‘Floatin’ on the bayou.’
He didn’t believe in that voodoo stuff, but Clifton and Ernestine got quiet and looked around as if they expected to see Baron Samedi looking out from under his skull mask.
‘You can tell you gettin’ close t’Momma’s when the cicadas stop singin’ an’ the mosquitoes die down,’ Mouse said.
I thought he was still trying to scare us, but after a while there came a sweet wood-burnt scent. Soon after that the whining of the cicadas receded and the ground became firmer.
We came to a clearing and Mouse said, ‘Here we is,’ but all I saw was a stand of stunted pear trees with a big avocado rising up behind them.
‘She live in the open?’ Clifton asked.
A cloud shifted and the sun shone between two pear trunks. A light glinted from the trees. Mouse whistled a shrill warbled note and in a while the door came open.
It was a house hidden by trees way out there.
The house was a shock, but it was the woman standing there that scared me.
She was tall, way over six feet, wearing a short, light blue dress that was old and faded. Over her dress was a wide white apron; her jet-black skin shone against those pale colors so brightly that I winced when I first saw her. She was strongly built with wide shoulders and big strong legs.
When she strode toward us I noticed the cudgel in her broad fist. For the first time in my life I felt the roots of my hair tingle. She came to within three strides of us and pushed her handsome face forward like something wild sniffing at strangers. There was no sympathy in her face. Ernestine jumped behind Clifton and I took a step back.
Then she smiled. Big pure yellow teeth that were all there and healthy.
‘Raymond!’ The swamp behind us got even quieter. ‘Raymond, boy it’s good, good to see you.’ She lifted Mouse by his shoulders and hugged him to her big bosom. ‘Mmmmmmmmmmmm-mm, it’s good.’ She put him down and beamed on him like a smiling black sun. ‘Raymond,’ she said. ‘It’s been too long, honey.’
Raymond is Mouse’s real name, but nobody except EttaMae called him that.
‘Jo, I brung you some store-bought.’ He held out the sack that still had two fifths of Johnnie Walker. ‘An’ some guests.’ He waved his hand at us.
Momma Jo’s teeth went away but she was still smiling when she asked, ‘These friends?’
‘Oh yeah, Momma. This here is Easy Rawlins. He’s my best friend. An’ these chirren is the victims of a po-lice hunt. They in love too.’
She took the sack and said, ‘Com’on then, let’s get in.’ We followed her in between the trees into the house, passing from day into night. The room was dark like nighttime because the sun couldn’t make it through the leaves to her windows. It was a big room lit by oil lanterns. The floor was cool soil that was swept and dry. The whole place was cool as if the trees soaked up all the swamp heat. In a corner two small armadillos were snuffling over corncobs and above them was a pure white cat, its hair standing on end as it hissed at us.
The cat was on a ledge over a fireplace. Also on the ledge were thirteen skulls. Twelve of them were longsnout opossums, six on either side of a human skull that had been dried with the skin still on it. The skull leaned back with its teeth pushed forward, dried black lips for gums. The teeth were brown but here and there white bone poked through cracked human leather. The eyelids were shut and sunken but there was no repose in the broad features of that face. It was as if the agony of life had followed that poor soul into the after world.
‘Domaque,’ Momma Jo said, and I turned to see her looking at me.