THREE
Cousins, uncles, and aunties were spread out around Jesse’s mama’s house and yard. The older folk, those around Nana Tuesday’s age, sat crammed tight inside the darkened living room, taking their turns at soughing, snoring, and fanning themselves as one reminiscence after another rose up and got passed around, either prompting smiles or birthing discord depending on the memory and how it was either recalled or misremembered. Family members his mama’s age and younger had taken to the out-of-doors, sprawling out on blankets beneath the shade afforded by the tall oaks at the rear edge of the property, praying for a breeze.
Jesse’s aunties by blood hovered around the kitchen, getting under his mama’s feet, arguing over the cooking. Aunties through marriage, the wives of his father’s kin, knew better than to join the fray, choosing instead to watch over the children, both the little sleeping ones like Jilo, and the wild, older ones, who were roughhousing and running around, shrieking with laughter until someone would remind them of the passing they’d come to honor. For a time, the laughter would fall silent, replaced by an unnatural, though blessedly temporary, stillness.
Jesse didn’t like the quiet. When it got quiet he could hear his family’s whispers.
That his mama owned this place outright stood as a matter of pride for the whole family. Not many folk around Savannah, white or colored, owned their own houses, and this one even had enough land for a vegetable garden. Jesse’s daddy had been a cook on one of the Central Railroad’s executive cars. He’d worked for years to squirrel away the money for this house, not wanting to marry until he had a home for his wife. That was why he’d married a woman sixteen years his junior. “I was his queen,” his mama often said of his daddy, “and this place here,” she would add with a tone of solemn pride, “was his castle.”
Just a bit south of the cemetery, the house was bounded by a creek and a thick cluster of live oaks and pines, which, to Jesse’s childhood imagination, seemed to go on forever. He knew this house and its land would come to him one day, after his own mama died. Now, though, he and his family lived in the city’s new projects in Yamacraw, joined hips and shoulders to their neighbors with barely the room to spit between. His mama wanted them here with her, but, much to Jesse’s shame, blood between Betty and his mama was bad.
The silent glares of disapproval his mama cast at Betty were proof enough of her disappointment in Jesse’s choices. She’d sacrificed to get him into the university so that he could become a lawyer or a doctor. Not the dockworker he’d become to support his young wife. Betty refused to live under his mother’s roof, where, to be fair, she had never been made to feel welcome. Instead, she used the dusty and crowded streets of Yamacraw to remind him of his failures without ever having to say a word.
By any right, the front porch should be sagging under the weight of his extended family, but Jesse sat alone on the freshly lacquered white swing, beneath the fading haint-blue overhang. His kin was either avoiding him or giving him breathing space. Maybe it came down to a little bit of both. Jesse didn’t really give a good goddamn which it was. He’d chosen this seat for a reason, and that was to keep an eye on the bend of the road in anticipation of Betty’s return.
The screen door cried out as Aunt Miriam, his Uncle Louis’s widow, came out onto the porch, carrying a plate covered with rice and a shrimp-and-okra gumbo. A thick slice of golden cornbread crowned the feast. “Your mama sent this out to you. She wants you to eat.”
Jesse didn’t want to eat. His pride was hurting. Still, his stomach rumbled at the scent of ginger, garlic, and bay leaf riding beneath the hot sweetness of cinnamon. Biting his lip to keep it from quivering, he shook his head and waved her away.
Shame was riding him like the hag, drawing the very breath out of him. The other men, the ones old enough to be married, had their plates brought out to them by their wives. Even when she was around, Jesse’s wife wasn’t the kind to go fetching him anything. But after strutting out of the graveyard, Betty had taken off in a direction that decidedly wasn’t homeward. No, she hadn’t gone home, and she sure as shooting wasn’t here. Nobody said a word, but a knowing look passed from face to face, a silent telegraph conveying a dirty supposition of where Betty was headed: off to a man who decidedly wasn’t Jesse.
His aunt Miriam’s face fell, making him feel all the worse. Jesse realized she’d been using the opportunity to look after him to fill the gap her husband’s death had left in her heart. “I’m sorry,” he began to say, but she’d already turned away, the scream of the screen door drowning out his mumbled regrets.
His gaze drifted back to the gray sandy path that passed for a drive. Empty. Dry and dusty. He found himself praying for rain. A good solid downpour that would drive his nattering family with their sly smiles clean off his mama’s land. A new flood that would wash down the whole world, rinsing away its sins. And Jesse, the new Noah, could ride out the storm with those he loved, on a tiny floating island built by his own hand. No other men to catch Betty’s eye, no other man to fill the spot in her heart or her womanhood, the two parts of her he’d once thought she held sacred for him.
He felt eyes on him. “I cooked this to your nana’s tastes.” His mama stood before him, grasping the plate he’d refused. Jesse was surprised he hadn’t heard her approach. He wondered how many other things happened right under his nose without him noticing. “You’d be showing disrespect not to eat. To your nana and me both.” His mama held the plate out to him and waited. “Baby,” she said after a moment, her tone comforting. “It’s yo’ girl everyone talkin’ about, not your wife.”
Defeated, he took the plate, but lowered his eyes. “And what they’re saying is that Jilo isn’t my girl.” He felt a pang in his heart. “But she is. Even if she isn’t, she is.”
“Of course she is,” she said, “and you send anyone who says otherwise to me. I’ll clear things up for them right quick.” His lowered gaze came to rest on her hands. She was rubbing the knuckles of her left hand with the fingers of her right. Jesse could tell her arthritis was bothering her; her joints were swollen, and holding the plate had seemed like work for her. Arthritis had flared up in her early, way too early. His nana could have used her magic to ease his mama’s suffering, but he knew she had never offered, and his mama had never asked.
“No,” Mama continued, “what they saying is ‘Old Tuesday’ left a bit of her soul with Jilo. They saying Jilo gonna have the power now.” She sat down at his side, the old swing complaining about the added burden. “Eat,” she said, tilting her chin down and looking at him with one eye opened a tad wider than the other. He knew this look. He’d grown up seeing it creep onto his mama’s face right before she lost patience with him.
He took a bite. Then another. It was delicious, but his heart remained heavy. He let the fork rest on the plate. “You think they’re right?”
His mama shook her head. “No, that was just Mama kissing the little one good-bye. She was telling us she was proud we were honoring her in the old way, but she took whatever magic she had with her.” She reached out and lifted his chin, turning his face toward her. “You and I both know she didn’t want her magic to live on past her. That’s why she never showed me any of it. That’s why she never let us rely on it. She didn’t want none of that for us.”
“Some folk are saying she sold her soul to have it. That she’s down with the devil now,” he said, regretting his words the second he uttered them. Not only did he not want to bring his mama further pain, he knew she’d know “those folk” were none other than his own wife.
“Then I feel mighty sorry for Old Mr. Scratch,” she said, surprising him with a laugh, “ ’cause if she is, he’s dancing to her tune now.” She ran her hand down the back of his head, like she used to do to comfort him when he was still just a boy. Her smile flattened. “The good Lord,” she said, her voice dropping lower, growing softer. “He sees into our hearts. I don’t know. Maybe Mama did sell her soul for her magic, but if she did, she did it for good reason. I got every faith He’s gonna redeem my mama in the end.”
She reached over to his plate to retrieve the fork, which she handed to him. “Eat. I ain’t leaving till that plate is clean, and I’m going to blame you for any foolishness your aunties get up to in there while I’m gone.” She winked at him, a smile spreading across her face, and he took the fork from her calloused fingers and dug in.
“Good boy.”
The front door banged open. “May,” Miriam called out over the plaintive cry of the screen door’s hinges, “we calling all the children in out of the trees.” She was trembling as she came to a stop in front of them.
“Why, what’s wrong?” Jesse’s mama asked, pushing up from the swing.
“The older ones,” Miriam said. “They wandered too far out back, all the way to the clearing.”
“They shouldn’t be going back there.” Mama shook her head, reaching down and bracing her lower back. “My land ends just beyond the tree line. I done told you all a thousand and one times not to wander too far back. That’s buckra land beyond the trees. Those young ones are gonna get themselves shot for trespassing.”
“We done called them in,” said Jesse’s cousin Charles, joining the conversation as he came around the side of the house, steering his two boys along with him, one hand on the shoulder of each. He maneuvered them toward the porch steps, but stopped short. The younger boy seemed scared half to death, his eyes wide and moist, his wiry frame shaking. “This one,” Charles said, giving Toby, the taller of the two, a shake, “he’s the one who found him, then the dummy called his little brother over to see him, too.”
“Found who?” Jesse asked, standing and resting his plate on the swing.
“The dead boy,” Charles said, seeming surprised that word hadn’t yet reached the front porch. A swarm of relatives started to circle around the house. Those with cars began to pile their children inside; those without toted their baskets and dragged their little ones along with them, only pausing to give a quick wave of farewell.
“You found a dead boy?” Mama asked the boys.
“Yeah,” Charles answered for his sons. “I done seen the body, too. Lying there buck naked.” His forehead wrinkled. “Them who did it slit him clean open from his throat all the way down to his privates.” Charles’s lips puckered, then he turned and spat.
“It’s Rosie’s boy,” Toby said, tugging against his daddy’s grasp. Rosie was a white woman who lived out on the edge of the colored area. She made her living selling corn liquor and the spot between her legs.
Boys and girls had been disappearing around this part of town for as long as Jesse could remember. People didn’t talk about it. Not out in the open, at least. Most were deemed runaways by the law, but twice before within the span of his memory, boys had turned up butchered in the exact manner Charles was describing. Both of them colored. Rosie’s boy was white. The killings of the colored boys never got much official attention. The murder of a white child would, even if the dead boy’s mama was the town whore.
Although several years had passed between the murders and disappearances, Jesse didn’t doubt that the killer was the same man. Nana Tuesday, she may or may not have known who it was, but she sure knew the reason for the killings, and she had taken precautions to make sure Jesse would never end up like Rosie’s boy.
“Boy never was quite right,” Aunt Miriam muttered. It was true. Some folk blamed syphilis, others Rosie’s heavy drinking, but it was undeniable the boy had been left dull witted and deformed.
“Yeah, but he was still white,” Charles said, giving voice to what they were all likely thinking. Either the killer had grown more brazen or more desperate. “He wasn’t killed there. Not enough blood for that. Just dumped there.”
Jesse’s mama took a few steps toward the porch stairs. “Tell me,” her voice was low, “did they leave any kind of marks on him?”
Charles nodded. “Lines and squiggles.” The school board had just approved yet another school for the white children, but Savannah only had a couple of schools for the colored. These buildings were dilapidated—one of them had even been condemned—and they lacked light and sufficient seats. Even though both schools offered two shifts of classes per day, half of the black children in town never got the chance to attend, and out of those who did, most never got to go further than the second or third grade. Charles had enrolled his boys, but Jesse wasn’t sure Charles himself had received the same opportunity. He wasn’t even sure this cousin from his father’s side of the family could read.
His mama must have had a similar thought because she turned to Toby. “You saw the boy twice. What did they look like?”
“Nothing really, just scribbles,” Toby said. “Not like words or anything. Just circles and lines and stars, like this . . .” He squatted down and began to draw the shapes he remembered.
“Don’t you do that,” Jesse’s mama snapped before the youngster could get two lines linked together. “Don’t you ever draw those markings out. You forget ’em now.” The terror in her voice caused Jesse’s skin to prickle. Her eyes were round and full of fear, even though Jesse felt sure she had no clearer idea of what the aborted symbol might signify than he did. She was afraid of magic—Nana Tuesday had seen to it that she would be.
His mama had been unfazed by the heat of the day, let alone the even greater heat of the kitchen, but now heavy beads of sweat formed and trickled down her face. She braced herself against a post and looked up at Jesse and Charles. “You make sure everybody knows to shut up about this. Ain’t nobody found nothing. Nobody ever went back to that clearing.” Her voice rose. “You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Charles responded. “Ain’t nobody gonna say anything. You know that.” Jesse reckoned his cousin was right. A murdered white child meant somebody was gonna be facing the noose, and there were plenty of black men in the area, himself included, handy enough for the law to lay the blame on.
“You tell them all anyway,” she said, the tone of her voice a stern warning.
“Yes ma’am,” Charles repeated. Just then, Charles’s wife, basket in hand, came around the side of the house and caught up to him. He nodded to her and began pushing his boys across the yard and down the drive.
“Ain’t just the law we gotta worry about,” his mama said, her gaze shifting between Miriam and Jesse. “Someone’s sacrificing to the Red King. There’s still a collector in these parts.”
The Red King. Jesse had grown up sitting at his nana’s feet, hearing stories about the four demon kings, Red and his brothers. She had never spoken of such things outside the family, but the story had grown legs and run around the community as member after member shared it, despite having promised Nana they never would. Maybe that had been her plan all along. If she’d asked them to spread a warning, folk would’ve laughed the story off as the rantings of an eccentric old woman. But forbid it to be told, and it gets whispered far and wide.
According to Nana, the three elder kings had been around pretty much forever. This very world had spun into being around them, but the youngest had only come to exist after man rose on this earth. All four took their nourishment from whatever spirit essence was left in a person’s body after death, but each brother could only feed from a certain type of death.
The Red King gorged himself on the leftover energy of those who died by mishap or were struck down by others, whether the killing was personal or an act of war. The Yellow King took those who fell from disease or famine. The Black King, also called the “Kind King,” only took from those who had seen the fullness of life. Seeing as how he fed on folk who were mostly used up, the Black King’s pickings were always the slimmest, earning him a third name—the “Beggar King.” He was a wispy shade that lingered among the shadows, coming most often while a body slept. The youngest brother, the White King, was also known as the “Mirror King.” He always appeared as a warped reflection of those he targeted: faults, mistakes, and problems magnified to such a degree they’d destroy even the most stubborn sliver of hope. The White King held dominion over those who died by their own hand. He was the only one of his brethren who feasted solely on the human spirit.
Three of the demons were greedy, keeping all the spoils to themselves, but when a servant of the Red King honored him through killing, Red would share with the collector, converting a bit of the victim’s forfeited life force into black magic for the collector’s own use.
Nana Tuesday used to swear that while the brothers had never existed in the normal sense of the word, they were real all the same. This made little sense to Jesse, but Nana had seemed so sure.
His mama swallowed hard, and her eyes flashed, like a burst of lucidity had just helped her make a connection. “Your nana said she was gonna put an end to this, or die trying.”
“Looks like she might’ve done just that,” Miriam said. She held both hands up. “Dear sweet Jesus, I don’t want to hear no more of this.” With that, she turned and fled into the house.
A chill ran down Jesse’s spine. He knew now his nana hadn’t died from causes that came anywhere near natural. Jesse realized his daughters were nowhere in sight. He knew Jilo would be safe inside, but given the exodus that had just occurred, he wasn’t sure anyone would be out back looking after the other two. “I need to find Opal and Poppy,” Jesse said, and his mama nodded.
Jesse took the first three steps leading from the porch to the yard, then turned back to face his mama. “You don’t believe any of this, do you? About the kings?”
The corners of her mouth pulled down as she considered his question. “I reckon it don’t matter whether I believe it or not. Looks like someone does.”