“But you follah RL an’ you be dead in a year. Somebody shoot you or stick you with a pick.”
“We all gonna die,” Soupspoon said.
And the images of a lifetime flashed into his mind. Kirkem Bowers pushed to the ground by stupid Willy T. and stabbed until his head nearly came off. Mother Babbet thrown from the window by JoJo, her boyfriend at the time. Her neck was broken and a scream frozen on her face; it looked like she was holding her head back in a laugh that needed more room than a live person had. After the flood of ’26 they gathered the bodies and stacked them in the Curry plantation barn. White on one side and colored on the other; forty-seven dead souls stretched out and piled high. Soupspoon thought that that barn was more God’s house than any church. He imagined again in his dream barefoot God walking among the dead and judging their sins.
Lisa Harding poisoned by her own sister over a man who wouldn’t marry either one. Sly Fox Nathan Mull shot in the head for cheating at cards. He ran six blocks to Ruby and Inez’s house. They laid him out on the porch and sat with him as he had one hand on his hard cock and the other over his heart. “Boy!” he shouted at Soupspoon more than once. “Never gamble with a nigger. Nigger can’t take the joke.”
As a boy Soupspoon had followed the men; Rayford Benoit, Toy Bennet, and Alfred Fixx. It was after a gang of white men had robbed and murdered JT Ott. Rayford heard from his mother that June Bell had seen Grig Plothdell coming from where they found JT. The men drank at Soupspoon’s house until they were drunk and then they went out past the old bridge near Grig’s farm. They waited and Soupspoon waited behind them. Old man Grig never came, but Justin did. Justin was Grig’s nephew, a pale boy who had a girl somewhere nearby. When he got to the bridge the men surrounded him. He cried out loud but was slapped down by Toy’s cudgel. The men kept around Justin and every time he tried to run out of the circle one or the other would hit him with a stick. Poor Justin begged to be free and then he’d make a break and get struck back to the center. The men never said a word. Justin went down on his knee and there came a flash of silver. Soupspoon heard a scream that ended in a gurgle, then something like a spray. When he opened his eyes again Justin was just a lonesome heap on the rill’s edge. He was just a pile of bones.
Then he heard a knocking. He imagined the sound of a hammer banging on a slender pine coffin, then he saw that Darnell had taken out his pipe and was knocking out the ashes by banging it against the timbers that held up Judge Whitestone’s porch.
Soupspoon was suddenly afraid that the judge would hear, that he’d come running down underneath his house and arrest them. He wanted to tell Darnell to stop but he couldn’t catch his breath to say it. Darnell just kept on banging. It was loud enough to wake the dead.
While Soupspoon was counting dead bodies in his sleep, Kiki called out, “No, daddy.”
Her dream was southern too.
She went down in the basement with her father, Keith, to his new photo lab. He’d started a photo development darkroom in the old house and did people’s photographs right in town instead of them having to send off and wait weeks for their pictures. When that went well he went into other little towns around Mississippi and Arkansas. He liked to go into a town where there was already a developer and put him out of business. That way he knew that he already had people who needed the service and he could lord it over anyone else who tried to stand up to him.
He was a smallish man with blue-black hair, not a trace of gray, and small hands. He was clean-shaven and his round face looked like it was waxed. He never washed much and he sweated a lot, so any room he was in reeked of him.
Down in the basement Keith Waters separated and saved the silver from the film developing process and made it into one-ounce coins that were imprinted with the rough-rendered profile of his tight face. Every once in a while he’d tell Kiki to come on downstairs and look at his treasure.
If she said no he’d slap her and then ask her again — sweet as corn syrup.
When she got there he’d ask her to get something from the high shelf. She’d get up the ladder and he’d come to steady her, talking about his silver and the men he’d destroyed for her future. First he’d put his hand on her behind and then he’d slip his hard little fingers between her thighs. She couldn’t fight him off because he’d get mean. All she could do was stay still and bring him what he needed as fast as she could. Sometimes her just being scared was good enough for him.
But not then, not in that dream.
“Daddy, stop it.”
“What’s that you said?”
“I said stop it. You got your wife right upstairs.”
He was even stronger in the dream. He held her over his head and threw her down on the chemical table, breaking glass and throwing everything everywhere. When she looked up he was taking off his belt. She turned to run but only managed to fall off the table. She fell on her knee. It hurt but the pain was nothing.
“Come here, Kiki Waters.”
“No, daddy. Let me be.”
“Come here, girl. You cain’t talk to me like that and not get it.”
“Daddy, no!” she yelled. Somebody somewhere had to hear that.
Keith sat down on his old wooden chair. Kiki remembered that chair from when she was a little girl. She hated that chair. It had always been there, it had even followed them to the new big house.
“Please, daddy.”
He didn’t say anything else, just waited there with the strap in his hand. Kiki had to go lie across his lap and pull up her dress. She knew not to pull down the panties, that was for him to do.
The strap lashed against her backside twelve times. She screamed and he smelled stronger with each blow. The pain was real in Kiki’s dreams.
She felt his fingers and hand. He was hoarse from heavy breathing and made her say everything he wanted to hear. If he rasped, “Does it hurt?” she had to answer, “Yes, daddy,” making sure to hold back any tears or rage.
When it was over she went up the basement stairs while he washed off his hand in the sink. Her mother stood at the door holding a tight ball of handkerchief. Kiki tried to let her skirts hang down to cover the red welts on her legs. She could hear her father’s heavy footfalls across the cellar floor.
Kiki couldn’t hold in the shout. “YOU WHORE!!!” So loud that her mother was buffeted backwards against the plasterboard.
“YOU GODDAMNED, GODDAMNED WHORE!!!” Kiki ran her hand up the crack of her ass and came out with fingers covered in blood and shit.
Then there was the sound of her father’s feet coming from somewhere. She knew the feet were headed for the gun case. She wanted to get there first but she’d forgotten where it was. The steps moved faster and louder. Kiki was afraid. She wanted to wash her hands. Her father’s footfalls sounded like gunshots.
Fifteen
Somebody was hammering down below. Kiki jumped out of bed and Soupspoon lurched up from his couch. Kiki was breathing hard. Soupspoon had lost his breath. They stared at each other with no words on their lips or in their heads. After a while, quaking in her bed, Kiki got up and came over to her friend. She put her arms around him and buried her face in the crook of his neck.
Her tears felt thick on his skin, oily. He looked at his skinny arms wrapped over hers. Then they both shivered like cold dogs huddling up to get warm.
“No,” Kiki whispered.
Soupspoon didn’t answer, he just held on tighter and closed his eyes. His slow breath coming only once for three of her gasps.
The hammering continued.