The Nebraskan rose, laid the book on his chair, and strode to the dresser and back. Here was a five-thousand-year-old myth that paralleled the soul-sucker in function. Nor was it certain by any means that the similarity was merely coincidental. That the folklore of the Appalachians could have been influenced by the occult beliefs of modern Egypt was wildly improbable, but by no means impossible. After the Civil War the United States Army had imported not only camels but camel drivers from Egypt, the Nebraskan reminded himself; and the escape artist Harry Houdini had once described in lurid detail his imprisonment in the Great Pyramid. His account was undoubtedly highly colored-but had he, perhaps, actually visited Egypt as an extension of some European tour? Thousands of American servicemen must have passed through Egypt during the Second World War, but the soul-sucker tale was clearly older than that, and probably older than Houdini.
There seemed to be a difference in appearance as well; but just how different were the soul-sucker and this Ju’gu, really? An-uat had been depicted as a muscular man with a jackal’s head. The soulsucker had been….
The Nebraskan extracted the tape recorder from his pocket, rewound the tape, and inserted the earpiece.
Had been “like to a man, only crooked-legged an’ wry neck.” Yet it had not been a man, though the feature that separated it from humanity had not been specified. A doglike head seemed a possibility, surely, and An-uat might have changed a good deal in five thousand years.
The Nebraskan returned to his chair and reopened his book, but the sun was already nearly at the horizon. After flipping pages aimlessly for a minute or two, he joined the Thackers in their living room.
Never had the inanities of television seemed less real or less significant. Though his eyes followed the movements of the actors on the screen, he was in fact considerably more attentive to Sarah’s warmth and rather too generously applied perfume, and still more to a scene that had never, perhaps, taken place: to the dead mule lying in the field long ago, and to the marksmen concealed where the woods began. Colonel Lightfoot had no doubt been a historical person, locally famous, who would be familiar to the majority of Mr. Thacker’s hearers. Laban Creech might or might not have been an actual person as well. Mr. Thacker had—mysteriously, now that the Nebraskan came to consider it—given the Nebraskan’s own last name, Cooper, to the third and somewhat inessential marksman.
Three marksmen had been introduced because numbers greater than unity were practically always three in folklore, of course; but the use of his own name seemed odd. No doubt it had been no more than a quirk of the old man’s failing memory. Remembering Cooper, he had attributed the name incorrectly.
By imperceptible degrees, the Nebraskan grew conscious that the Thackers were giving no more attention to the screen than he himself was; they chuckled at no jokes, showed no irritation at even the most insistent commercials, and spoke about the dismal sitcom neither to him nor to one another.
Pretty Sarah sat primly beside him, her knees together, her long legs crossed at their slender ankles, and her dishwater-reddened hands folded on her apron. To his right, the old man rocked, the faint protests of his chair as regular, and as slow, as the ticking of the tall clock in the corner, his hands upon the crook of his cane, his expression a sightless frown.
To Sarah’s left, the younger Mr. Thacker was almost hidden from the Nebraskan’s view. He rose and went into the kitchen, cracking his knuckles as he walked, returned with neither food nor drink, and sat once more for less than half a minute before rising again.
Sarah ventured, “Maybe you’d like some cookies, or some more lemonade?”
The Nebraskan shook his head. “Thank you, Miss Thacker; but if I were to eat anything else, I wouldn’t sleep.”
Oddly, her hands clenched. “I could fetch you a piece of pie.”
“No, thank you.”
Mercifully, the sitcom was over, replaced by a many-colored sunrise on the plains of Africa. There sailed the boat of Ra, the Nebraskan reflected, issuing in splendor from the dark gorge called Tuat to give light to mankind. For a moment he pictured a far smaller and less radiant vessel, black-hulled and crowded with the recalcitrant dead, a vessel steered by a jackal-headed man: a minute fleck against the blazing disk of the African sun. What was that book of von Däniken’s? Ships—no, Chariots of the Gods. Spaceships nonetheless—and that was folklore, too, or at any rate was quickly passing into folklore; the Nebraskan had encountered it twice already.
An animal, a zebra, lay still upon the plain. The camera panned in on it; when it was very near, the head of a huge hyena appeared, its jaws dripping carrion. The old man turned away, his abrupt movement drawing the Nebraskan’s attention.
Fear. That was it, of course. He cursed himself for not having identified the emotion pervading the living room sooner. Sarah was frightened, and so was the old man-horribly afraid. Even Sarah’s father appeared fearful and restless, leaning back in his chair, then forward, shifting his feet, wiping his palms on the thighs of his faded khaki trousers.
The Nebraskan rose and stretched. “You’ll have to excuse me. It’s been a long day.”
When neither of the men spoke, Sarah said, “I’m ’bout to turn in myself, Mr. Cooper. You want to take a bath?”
He hesitated, trying to divine the desired reply. “If it’s not going to be too much trouble. That would be very nice.”
Sarah rose with alacrity. “I’ll fetch you some towels and stuff.”
He returned to his room, stripped, and put on pajamas and a robe. Sarah was waiting for him at the bathroom door with a bar of Zest and half a dozen towels at least. As he took the towels the Nebraskan murmured, “Can you tell me what’s wrong? Perhaps I can help.”
“We could go to town, Mr. Cooper.” Hesitantly she touched his arm. “I’m kind of pretty, don’t you think so? You wouldn’t have to marry me or nothin‘, just go off in the mornin’.”
“You are,” the Nebraskan told her. “In fact, you’re very pretty; but I couldn’t do that to your family.”
“You get dressed again.” Her voice was scarcely audible, her eyes on the top of the stairs. “You say your old trouble’s startin’ up, you got to see the doctor. I’ll slide out the back and ’round . Stop for me at the big elm.”
“I really couldn’t, Miss Thacker,” the Nebraskan said.
In the tub he told himself that he had been a fool. What was it that girl in his last class had called him? A hopeless romantic. He could have enjoyed an attractive young woman that night (and it had been months since he had slept with a woman) and saved her from… what? A beating by her father? There had been no bruises on her bare arms, and he had noticed no missing teeth. That delicate nose had never been broken, surely.
He could have enjoyed the night with a very pretty young woman—for whom he would have felt responsible afterward, for the remainder of his life. He pictured the reference in The Journal of American Folklore: “Collected by Dr. Samuel Cooper, U. Neb., from Hopkin Thacker, 73, whose granddaughter Dr. Cooper seduced and abandoned.”
With a snort of disgust, he stood, jerked the chain of the white rubber plug that had retained his bathwater, and snatched up one of Sarah’s towels, at which a scrap of paper fluttered to the yellow bathroom rug. He picked it up, his fingers dampening lined notebook filler.
Do not tell him anything grandpa told you. A woman’s hand, almost painfully legible.
Sarah had anticipated his refusal, clearly; anticipated it, and coppered her bets. Him meant her father, presumably, unless there was another male in the house or another was expected—her father almost certainly.