Chapter Eight

Joseph found himself humming as his feet pounded along the dirt road, his metal lunch pail swinging against his thigh, empty of its contents. He imagined Cora—bent over a pot on the stove, stirring whatever she had cooked up for their supper—leaping as he snuck up behind her and embraced her around the waist. Thoughts of her stirred his loins, and his steps quickened.

“Pawpaw, wait up for us.” David and Daniel yelled simultaneously, panting as they ran up behind him. Joseph smiled, warmed with the pride of fatherhood they always brought. He looked into their similar faces, one reflecting Cora and the other reflecting him, a double blessing sent when they had given up on having their own child.

“You need to get them long legs to moving. You know your mama don’t like to keep supper waiting. She ain’t gon’ be fussing me out!” He laughed, grinning into his sons’ faces before striding ahead of them again.

Approaching the turnoff to the road leading to the back of their property, he became aware of an odd stillness descending, abruptly cutting off their laughter. Joseph’s eyes roamed across the barren ground between him and the house, coming to rest on the overturned wash tub, the deep puddle, and the damp circle around it.

He crossed the short space, his stride reducing the distance in seconds. He gazed down into the puddle of water, seeing the film of soap scum floating on top. Cora would never leave the tub like that or the wash sitting on the muddy ground. Fear iced his bones.

“CORA! CORA!” His voice rose, grating against his ears in the stillness. David and Daniel stood a few feet behind him, his unease telegraphing to them as they began shouting for their mother.

“You boys go look on the side of the house and see if the truck is gone.”

They leaped into action, spreading out, each taking a different direction. They shouted, hands cupped to their mouths, and walking quickly.

Joe lifted his gaze from the tub, staring forward at a barely discernable lump in the tall grass near the back wall of the house. He wanted to turn away—not discover what it really was, not allow it to become a part of his reality. His feet trudged forward, weighted by an unreasonable fear. Cora’s name continued to pour from his mouth, a low mewling litany of sound that would not stop as the bundle resolved itself into limbs, a torso, and a head twisted at an impossible angle.

Joseph dropped to his knees, pulling Cora’s body to his chest, lowering his face to her hair to muffle the scream that escaped with his sobs. Behind him, the sound of the twins’ footsteps thudded toward him, slamming to a stop as they reached their father’s bent figure and the horror that confronted them.

“Momma!” the boys cried out simultaneously, their voices blending with their father’s sobs.

“Is she breathing, Pawpaw? Huh? Is she?” Daniel asked, his words breathless.

David punched his brother in the shoulder hard enough to rock him on his heels. “Don’t say nothing like that. She be breathing, Pawpaw, ain’t she?”

Joseph ignored them, scooping Cora into his arms. He stood carefully, arranging her so that her head lolled against his chest, and stepped lightly to keep it from rolling around on her broken neck.

He did not answer his sons as he walked, keeping his eyes fixed on the house in front of him, focusing only on reaching his living room where he could lay her down. Entering the back door, he passed through the kitchen and into the front room, laying her gently on the couch. Staring down, he counted with each of his own breaths, waiting for the sight of her chest rising with her own corresponding breaths. They had been breathing as one body for so long that his mind snagged, revolting at the thought that this synchronization no longer existed.

Straightening her head to appear more natural, he laid his hand on her still chest, and the pain roared out of him. His body collapsed across hers, oblivious to the keening wail of the boys behind him.

It became impossible to draw in air, a clean breath that would fill his oxygen-starved lungs and remove the spots dancing in the darkness before his eyes. Joseph felt himself sliding, swooning into a puddle on the floor beside the couch where Cora lay unmoving and devoid of breath. Sobs strangled in his throat, and he choked as his body struggled with the contradiction of trying to breathe and cry out.

He wanted to pull himself together for his sons and be strong in the face of his loss. Instead, his body violently trembled as he sat up, pulling his knees to his chest, lowering his head, and covering it with his arms—unmanned.

“Daniel, you best call the sheriff and Mason.” David rubbed at his eyes, his palms pressing into the sockets before calling to his brother. Daniel stood paralyzed across the room, unable to come nearer. David lowered one hand to his father’s shoulder. He felt his shuddering reverberating through his arm, echoing his sorrow as he stared at his mother’s remains.

Dark bruises stood out on her throat, and her eyes were frozen open, permanently staring into the unknown, a grimace of terror locked on her face. He reached out with his other hand, gingerly trying to lower the lids. Cora’s eyes remained stubbornly open, fixed on her last vision.

Daniel remained incapable of movement, his feet rooted on the spot where he stood, until David’s voice forced its way into his mind. It urged him forward, his voice taking on a hard edge and asserting his natural dominance.

“Go on now. Get down to Miss Rachel’s store and use they phone,” David barked.

Daniel moved forward—his long limbs tangling as he got his feet stumbling toward the door—glancing back into the face that mirrored his own. Both reflected the deepness of their shared sorrow. He saw the glimmer of wetness in his brother’s eyes before he turned away, taking a final look over his shoulder before scrambling out the door.

The fabric of David’s world was irrevocably torn. Didn’t matter that he was twelve. Today, he was a man. Born fifteen minutes earlier than Daniel, he was in charge as the eldest.

His mother was dead, and his father, his rock, was a quivering heap on the floor. David sucked in his breath, strengthening his core, and listened to hear his mother’s voice echoing inside his head, guiding him. It did not come.

Looking down at his father, he felt his body deflate, helplessness pulling the form from his bones until he felt himself collapsing beside his father. David encircled him with his arms as he rocked him back and forth.

Time crept, measured in the ticking of the mantle clock over the fireplace. The sun had moved away from the window, and a cooler breeze blew in to raise the curtains as footfalls sounded on the porch, accompanied by heavy voices. The screen door banged open, and Sheriff Jesse entered the room. He was a big man, standing six foot four, his frame molded with muscle, and his bulk seemed to fill every available inch of space in the door frame.

He cleared his throat, uncomfortable as he took in the sight of David and Joseph on the floor and the body of Cora lying beside them on the couch. Men sobbing unnerved him. It wasn’t natural. Behind him, Elder Mason, the town’s undertaker and quasi coroner, tried to peer around him.

Joseph looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy. A momentary flicker of embarrassment and shame passed over his features as he saw the pity in the sheriff’s eyes. Gathering his strength, he pushed away from David and attempted to climb to his feet, turning his head to avoid looking at Cora. Jesse stuck out his hand, and he accepted it, allowing the man to help him up.

“Joe, I’m sorry to hear about Miss Cora. My condolences to you and your family,” he spoke as he walked closer to the body, taking up the space that Joseph had vacated.

David was now on his feet, crossing the room to embrace Daniel, whose body broke anew.

“How long ago this happen?”

“Don’t know.” Joseph shrugged his shoulders. “We found her in the back of the house when we come home for supper and brung her in here. What time it be now?”

“Almost seven. So, you saying it been at least two hours?”

Joseph’s shoulders moved upward again, his head hanging and his limbs drooping toward the floor. He felt the need to sit but couldn’t find anywhere that didn’t scream of Cora’s presence. He tried to focus and hear what Jesse was saying to him, answer his questions, while his mind raced toward an answer.

Jesse lifted Cora’s hand, examining the nails and the blood embedded beneath them. That Cora had fought her assailant was apparent. She’d fought hard, raking and gouging from the look of the ragged and broken nails on her fingers. His eye roved upward from the bruises on her neck to her face, frozen in a contortion of fear, anger, and defiance. She had fought to her last breath, he thought, not giving in even as life fled her body.

“You knows anybody could have done this, Joseph?”

Joseph hesitated, and the image of Clyde filled his mind, his hands stuffed in his overall pockets and his mouth twisted in a grin. He shook the image free from his mind before he answered. “Nah, I don’t. Cora help everybody she could. Who would have done this?”

He hugged his thoughts of Clyde to himself. This was not for the sheriff to deal with. This was something he had to settle for Cora. Resolve renewed him, and he straightened, mentally seeing his shotgun in the corner of their closet.

Elder Mason elbowed his way through the bodies of the men that towered over him, making his way to the deceased. He tried to shove down the feelings of titillation that bubbled to the surface as he prepared to examine the body. Murder was something he didn’t often see in these parts. Some deaths might have seemed suspicious, but this was the first blatant murder he had come across.

He leaned down, sniffing the corpse as he prodded and examined it. Like old meat sprinkled with cheap perfume, the smell of rot with an underlying sweetness rose immediately. He pulled out the stethoscope he carried with him to verify the lack of heartbeat and used a penlight to check if the pupils reacted. As was expected, he found nothing and observed that the muscles had begun to stiffen in early rigor mortis. Rocking back on his heels, he prepared to turn and inform the sheriff that he could move the body to the morgue, where he could provide him with more information. However, a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention.

He could have sworn Cora’s mouth had twitched, the dry lips rubbing together. He looked again, wondering what muscular contraction could have caused it. Then her eyes squeezed shut . . . and opened, rapidly blinking as she bolted upright on the couch. Her arms extended outward, fingers on her hands splayed defensively, bulging eyes searching her surroundings.

“Sweet Jesus, have mercy!” Elder shrieked, his voice an octave lower than high soprano, and stumbled backward, crashing into Jesse and Joseph in his haste to remove himself from the reanimated corpse.

Daniel and David hurled themselves toward the couch and their mother, reaching for her as Joseph leaped forward. He tried to wrap his arms around her, simultaneously shaking and pulling her close. Cora’s eyes looked out wildly at him, her mouth working to form words before she collapsed against him.

“What in the name of hell and damnation is happening here?” Jesse yelled, the macabre scene pushing reason from his mind.

Joseph felt her chest rising and falling against his own, her heart beating against his, the rhythm finding his, and tears rolling down his cheeks. He held her that way for a long moment, afraid that if he moved her, he would find this was a dream, his desperate brain trying to bring her back to him.

“It ain’t possible. It just ain’t possible,” Elder babbled, his words rapid and tumbling over one another in their haste to get out. “What kind of juju is this, Joe? She was dead!” He kept repeating it. “I know dead, and Cora was dead.” Elder shook his head in dismay, keeping his distance across the room. “Her neck was broke. She wasn’t breathing, and you could smell the death on her. Ain’t no way she could have just raised back up and be sucking air. It just ain’t.”

Joseph eased her body back down to the couch, watching the rise and fall of her chest. He rubbed her arm, feeling the heat return to her skin. David leaned in and rubbed her other arm.

Elder recovered enough to force his way through Joseph and his sons to examine Cora again. He repeated his previous procedure, listening to the steady beat of her heart and feeling her pulse. Lifting her eyelid, he checked the pupils and saw them retract at the intrusion of the light. Unlike before, he had to raise the eyelid, as she was no longer staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

Behind them, Jesse towered over them and looked down at Cora. “I’ll just be damned. Ain’t nobody going to believe this. Cora done come back from the dead.”

I ain’t never seen no dark like this here. I cain’t see nothing. Cain’t feel me neither. I just knows that I am. I don’t know how long I been here. There ain’t no day or night, no up or down. The only thing I have is my feelings. I be mad and sad at the same time. Mad because I know I been taken from someplace, someplace I cain’t remembers too good; sad because I done lost something. I keeps hearing my name, least I still got that. I know I called Cora because I be at a crossroads like Corinth in the Bible. I can remembers that too. Somehow I knows who be calling me, and I want to answer them.

“Miss Cora, that you?”

“Robert?”

He sound lost, scared. Ain’t nothing to reach for, no hand to hold, no shoulder to squeeze. It just be what I hear. So, I calls out to him, and he call back. I start asking him even when the Knowing already there. I wants to hear it.

“Where we at?”

“We dead, Miss Cora. We both us dead.”

I feels weighed down. I is sinking in the blackness. If I keeps going, I knows there won’t be no more me ever. Robert be fading, and it hard to hear him, but he calling me back. He keep on telling me: don’t be scared. I keeps listening, makes myself wants to hear him.

“Don’t you do that, Miss Cora. You gon’ fade and not come back. Way we is now, least sometimes I can gets people to see me. Well, I could before, but now you dead, and won’t nobody see me but him.”

I knows right off who “him” is. I say, “Him what put me here? Him what I was told about? Him I was supposed to stop? Clyde?”

Robert’s voice change. He sound like me now. Mad and sad, but most mad.

“It him. He put them frogs in my pantses, then smash my head with that rock. Monkey boy did it. You the onliest one I could tell.”

His last words begin to fade again, and I reach with my mind, trying to hold onto him. Then I starts hearing other voices, and I sees a little teeny piece of light, a pinpoint in the black darkness around me. I moves toward it. It pulling me so fast, too fast.

Pure white light around me, and I can see again. My heart slam in my chest, and I feel my body buck with the force. My mouth twitch with the need to holler out. I feels my eyes blink and stretch wide with all the remembering coming back. Then it black again.

Joseph stopped, staring at the weather-beaten boards of Fannie’s shack. The sun blazed against the one small window that looked out into the yard. His shotgun hung at his side, the barrel pointed toward the earth, the muscles of his right arm tense in preparation for firing it. Fannie or Clyde would tell him the truth today, one way or another.

He should have come sooner, left as soon as he knew that Cora was breathing again, back on the other side of the veil where he could feel her and hold her. But he had been too afraid; afraid to let her out of his sight; afraid that if he got too far away, she would lose the rhythm of his heartbeat and be gone again, this time not coming back.

Raising his left forearm, he swiped it across his forehead, feeling the coating of sweat on his skin. His eyes squinted, searching for movement or any signs of life. No smoke rose from the chimney. The window was shut tight, the door closed, and he felt his body heating up at the thought of the sweltering furnace that had to be building up inside.

Striding forward, he used the butt of the gun to beat against the door, then stepped back as the last blow splintered it from the force. The rusted-out lock hung useless as the door flew open, banging against the inside wall.

He had to be sure. He had to silence the persistent voice that told him Clyde had been the one who attacked Cora. He had waited, hoping she could tell him herself, but she remained silent as death lying on their bed.

“Fannie? Fannie, you here?” he shouted, poking his head inside and scanning the room.

Inside, an odor formed a solid wall, roiling outward to engulf him, seeming to seep into his pores, choke down his throat, and cause his eyes to water. He turned—trying to spit out the smell that coated his tongue, dragging in the air from outside—before crossing the threshold, the rifle’s muzzle leading the way.

The room was almost barren, except for a table canted to the right, one of its legs shorter than the other; a three-legged stool stood in the corner, an iron stove and a sink taking up the wall beneath the back window. He took shallow breaths of the tainted air and moved forward.

Lowering the gun, he allowed it to drag behind him as he crossed the cramped space, pushing aside the curtain that separated the front room from the bedroom. As he stared at the single bed and the bare mattress, he remembered his last conversation with James Henry, his tongue loosened by liberal shots of whiskey and a six-pack of beer while they sat in the back of his garage.

I unlocks the door. And there they was, laying together curled up on the floor, him with her tit in his mouth, sucking at it in his sleep. He must have heard me, because his eyes slide open, and he stare at me.

Recalling his words, the wrongness of the room and the people who inhabited it rang in Joseph’s soul. He shook his head to free it of the images cast clearly in his mind’s eye, continuing to scan his surroundings.

The pegs on the wall were empty on this side of the curtain. Against it, a dilapidated dresser leaned precariously, its open drawers like broken teeth hanging from its frame. Lifting the shotgun to his shoulder and sighting down the barrel, Joseph fired, watching it explode into pieces, his cry of frustration ringing in the still air. They were gone, just as he had feared.

He sniffed the foul air like a bloodhound, desperate for any trace of Clyde or Fannie. He stopped, standing still in the center of the room, his head lifting, then turning to the right and the left. The rank smell he had been wading through since he arrived seemed familiar to him. He shuffled through his memories, certain he had smelled it recently.

The shotgun clattered to the floor, falling from his nerveless fingers as the sensory memory of the rancid smell clicked into place in his brain . . . why something so repulsive was so familiar. It had clung to Cora when he found her, been in her hair when he breathed her in, in her clothes as he lay her down on the couch. He’d thought it was the stench of death before.

The smell affirmed it. Now he knew. It was Clyde’s smell. The stench hung in the air of the house, pressed into the cracks of the walls and the dirt on the floor. He would not forget it again. When he found it, he would finish Cora’s work for her. He would kill Clyde.