Chapter Two

Clyde stood, dusting the dirt from his hands. He lifted the shovel from the ground, carefully tamped down the earth, and looked around for loose brush to cover the fresh grave. He felt the darkness receding, and his breathing slowed. He worried for a moment. Had he buried her deep enough? The last thing he needed was some animal digging her up.

It had been six months since the last woman died. He’d wrestled with the darkness, fasting, and praying for six months, conflicted by the revivals his mother insisted on dragging him to. Preachers flew across the hastily raised platforms, saliva flying over the congregants as they shouted accusations of punishment for their sins.

Mama pushed him up front each night, forcing him to stand with the crippled, lame, and sin-filled heathens to seek repentance. Standing beneath the hands of the fiery preachers, he prayed to do what was right in God’s sight. The darkness writhed inside him, drowning out the sounds of their words as they anointed his head with oil, and he felt the sign of the cross scalding his forehead, burning him.

Afterward, he’d stumbled home, crawling into bed where the darkness followed him into his sleep, entering his dreams, coercing him to hunt. Climbing out of bed on silent feet, it led him to the woman, smelling her scent before he reached her. He sought her in the juke joint where she sat, voice thick with cigarette smoke and whiskey, perched on the edge of a bar stool, her legs spread in invitation, the darkness swirling around her ankles. He felt the darkness inside of her drawing him closer.

From the corner where he sat, he turned his attention to the room around him, cradling the beer grown warm in its mug. He’d ordered one when he arrived, nursing it, pretending to take small swallows. His eyes searched until they rested on her, the one the darkness marked, listing sideways as she attempted to get off her bar stool, pushing her would-be companion away. The man whispered something inaudible into her ear, making her bristle.

“I knows my own way home, and I don’t need you sniffing your way to my door,” she slurred, unsuccessfully tugging at the hem of her skirt that had risen on one side.

He waited until the man turned in his seat, his mouth fixed in a smile for the woman sitting on his right. The woman staggered to the door and left. Clyde waited a few minutes, then followed, tracking her on silent feet as she stumbled from the juke. Walking through the darkness, she swayed drunkenly, her heels catching in the dirt and grass. Singing loudly and off-key, she held a rambling conversation with the man she had left behind, having forgotten she was alone. She never heard Clyde until it was too late.

“Who you?!” she slurred as she lurched into Clyde, who stood, legs spread, in the middle of the road. She blinked stupidly, her wet mouth open in surprise. She leaned to the side, the juke’s cheap alcohol blurring her fear. She seemed to look around, searching for her friend. Clyde stepped behind her and wrapped his hand around her mouth, cutting off the scream that belatedly made its way to her throat.

Throwing her to the ground, he straddled her, watching her eyes clear as she lay sprawled beneath him. All traces of drunkenness evaporated, replaced by terror. His nostrils flared as he breathed in the stink of sin that permeated her body, rising into the air around him. His hands tightened on her neck, squeezing, feeling her writhing beneath him, her nails clawing at his forearms. Life leaked slowly from her until her dead eyes lost their last light. He remained on his knees, savoring the darkness he had drawn from her, then stood and dragged her body to the spot he had picked out earlier.

Glancing at the finished grave one last time, he prayed to God to forgive her of her wickedness, then collapsed with his back against the gnarled surface of a large tree of heaven, the one they called a stink tree.

He stared at his large hands, the feel of her slender neck imprinted on his palms. He saw the flow of darkness crawling across the earth. It wasn’t enough. It would not sustain him. He groaned, dropping his head into his hands. He was tired. The darkness and the death left him weary. Time drifted around him. He slept.

Panic overwhelmed Clyde, and his heart beat erratically as he startled awake. He was sure Mama would be looking for him by now, and she would be mad. He had been disobedient again, succumbing to the darkness, showing his weakness. He lumbered slowly to his feet, his muscles aching in protest at the time spent on the unyielding earth. His feet found their way through the familiar woods, away from the grave.

As he walked, he listened to the sounds around him, leery of the small creatures scurrying from his path, sensing the alpha predator among them. He stopped, cocked his head, arrested by an unfamiliar sound. He waited, sorting it, then followed it, the dark pulling him along.

Hiding in the shadow of a large water hickory tree, he studied the source. A girl sat slumped over her raised knees, ragged sobs tearing from her throat. He stared at her, waiting for the darkness to grow, inhaling deeply . . . then hesitated. Her scent was different. He stepped forward, drawn by the sounds of humiliation and pain that painted the early-morning air between them.

Her head snapped up, her eyes bright and alert as a branch cracked beneath his foot, alerting her to his presence. He cursed his heavy foot and stepped hastily into her sight, one hand raised, his head shaking from side to side. Gasping, she scrambled backward, putting distance between them as he shuffled toward her.

He imagined her heart palpitating in her chest, the feel of her pulse throbbing in her neck as her eyes widened. The darkness awakened in him.

“Wait.” The word leaped from his lips unbidden. “Don’t be scared.”

Clyde continued to move forward, one hand reaching toward her the way he did when he lured in timid animals, the ones who should have sense enough to run but didn’t.

He stretched one finger of his other hand forward, touching her wet cheek. A tear slid onto the tip. Clyde raised the finger and studied it, turning his finger from left to right, then looked back at her, his head turned quizzically to the side.

“What wrong?” he asked, his voice gruff but surprisingly low. The darkness churned in his chest as he grappled against it, pushing it down. He didn’t want her fear.

Now, it was her turn to study him as her emotions overrode her natural impulses. Instinctively, she knew she should run but did not. Oddly, his words were the first kindness she had heard in days. She took in his broad, sloping forehead, the thick brows bridging the protruding eyes glowering at her, his tight jaws, and his long arms dropped at his side, his hands like shovels. Her breath hitched in her throat, tears spilling down her cheeks as he watched her, and her body vacillated between flight and remaining in place.

Clyde hesitated, the dark thrashing inside wanting to break free and be sated. It searched the small girl, finding only dots of darkness, no full threads to pull on. Confused, he looked around, searching the trees, sure his mother would come rushing through, screaming the Lord’s wrath. The girl settled back into her position, sitting in the glen, her face open and inviting, a small smile tugging up her lips, her face still wet.

Her shoulders rose and fell as she shrugged, sat up straight, and reached out her hand toward Clyde, tugging him gently. He saw her swallow her fear, then allowed her to pull him, falling down hard next to her. They sat together and silently apart, the sounds of their breath synchronizing. Tension and fear drained into the soil around them.

Clyde had never been this close to a living female other than his mother. He sought them only when sent, driven by need and purpose. Then the darkness demanded their sin be eradicated quickly and without mercy. He never knew them. But not this one.

This girl he found on his own. The dark had no control of it, no control of her. He could feel the warmth of her skin radiating and tingling against his own. The darkness tried to push its way between them, then abruptly halted, fizzling in his brain as if extinguished. He shook his head, puzzled.

“Why you crying?” he asked again.

Mae drew in a long, unsteady breath and stared at the stranger beside her. “He say I cain’t go back to school no more,” she confessed, her voice a shattered whisper. The finality of her father’s decision solidified into reality as she spoke it into existence.

“Who?”

“My daddy.” Mae sucked in the tears that pushed against her eyes.

School had been her hope, the promise of a future, a way out of her miserable existence. She was now stuck with Verna’s squalling babies and the backbreaking toil of scrubbing urine-stained sheets and shit smears from other people’s underwear. Her despair deepened, and she poured it out to Clyde until she felt empty. She found herself rattling off her pain to him, her apprehension diminishing while he listened. She searched his face while she talked, the way that his head dipped, his eyes avoiding hers. Silence sat comfortably between them until he spoke again.

“I don’t goes to school no more. Don’t need it,” Clyde informed her, his eyes focused ahead of him into the woods. “How much schooling you got?”

“I was gon’ be a teacher when I finished next year,” she said, pride lacing her words.

“You smart.” He turned his head to look at her, pulling his head down into the neck of his shirt. “Ain’t you scared sitting out here with me?” he asked suddenly, his eyes casting back into the woods again. “Most everybody scared of me.”

Mae stopped and considered what he said, shamed by her own initial fear. “Of you?” she asked, her lips forming a coy grin. “Should I be?”

The question hung in the air between them as he contemplated it. He’d felt her stop the darkness in him. Even now, it sat dormant in the corner of his mind, occasionally pressing against him, otherwise trapped.

Mae’s small hand covered his, and he startled, springing away from her. “It don’t seem like it nothing to be scared of,” she said softly, speaking to herself as much as to him.

Clyde settled back beside her, allowing her hand to remain on top of his, looking at it and then at her.

“My name Mae. You ain’t never even tell me who you is, and I been bawling all over you like some big old baby. What your name?” she asked, lowering her head in embarrassment.

“Clyde.”

She smiled again, a luminous glow forming beneath the creamy caramel of her skin, touching her eyes. “You a good listener, Clyde.”

Confusion clouded his thoughts, flooding him with a longing to be near her mixed with self-loathing as the darkness attempted to assert itself and faltered again. He stared at her small hand covering his, then watched a deep dimple appear on both cheeks to accompany her smile.

Mae was tenderhearted, a light child. That’s what her mother’s family had called it when she was growing up. She felt a swell of compassion ebbing and flowing from her toward Clyde, and she leaned toward him, her head resting on his shoulder.

“It show enough is good having somebody be nice,” she declared, looking at their clasped hands.

“I figured you was just deep down hurt is all.” He turned his hand over to cup hers and shook his head. “I knows about hurt,” he finished, his expression shuttering as he closed his emotions against her.

The dark inside him shuddered and was silent. Clyde scrambled away from Mae, his heels digging into the earth in his effort to gain his feet. Panic filled him as he frantically searched for it, feeling lost.

Clyde turned away, walking as rapidly as his legs would allow, leaving Mae sitting alone.

“I sorry. I didn’t meant no harm.” Mae called after him, watching him walk away, her spirit wounded.

Clyde crept around the main room of the shack he and Fannie shared, hoping not to draw her attention to him. He walked to the basin resting on the sink, picked up the thick bar of homemade soap, and began lathering his hands and arms to the elbow. His fear that Fannie would detect Mae’s scent lingering on him forced him to scrub harder, leaving his skin raw.

“Where you been, baby boy?”

Clyde kept his body still, his breathing even, his head down, studying the film coating the water in the basin.

“In the woods.”

Fannie stared at him for a long moment, stewing in a storm of emotions. He was different. He was hiding something from her. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but a wrongness resonated from him, a discordant chord between them. She snorted loudly, filling the air with her doubts.

Clyde let the words sit. They weren’t a lie. He had been in the woods but not alone. He kept the knowledge that he was with a woman named Mae deep in his mind lest she ferret it out.

Fannie continued to stare at him, suspicion itching her soul. She walked to the room’s only table and chair, pulling the big family Bible into her lap. After a moment, Clyde crossed the room to sit at her feet, his head bowed. He felt his mother’s fingers combing through his hair and heard her say, “Do us need to pray, baby boy?”

“Yes, ma’m.” He swallowed hard. “I sorry, Mama. I couldn’t stops myself.”

Fannie stilled her hand. She’d sensed it like she always did. “Tell me what kind of woman she be? Was she one like the Lord be showing you. One like might try to spoil you?”

He nodded at the look of smug satisfaction on Fannie’s face as he spun his tale for her, concealing his new truth. He felt the warm tingle of Mae’s presence gliding through him, holding the darkness at bay. He kept his head down where his mother would not see the slight smile curving his lips.

Clyde stomped toward the glen where he and Mae had met, cursing himself for a fool. He had returned to the woods every day, only to find it empty of everything except the remnants of her presence, flitting through the breeze like fireflies. He’d gone every day, filled with an uncommon hope, followed by the devastating descent into disappointment when she wasn’t there. On those days, the darkness mocked him for believing she had any interest in him. It thirsted to be released, manifesting itself in a hunger that left scores of dead animals scattered in the woods and a restless desire to visit the juke. The darkness told him she was a Jezebel like the rest.

Until today. Today, he’d found her sitting, a look of melancholy on her face replaced by a look of pleasant surprise as he stepped into her line of vision.

“Why, Clyde Henry, what you doing back here?” she asked, flashing her dimples.

“Walking.” He glanced down at his knuckles, searching for traces of blood. Finding none, he shifted uncertainly from foot to foot while she stared up at him. She patted the ground next to her and smiled, her face radiant in the smattering of sunlight coming through the leaves overhead.

“I ain’t been able to get back here for these past few days, but I was hoping you might come back. I was thinking I might have said something wrong the last time.”

He dropped down next to her, aware of the heavy sound of his body hitting the ground, watching her from the corner of his eye. She looked tired, her eyes drooping despite her smile, her skin sagging on her frame.

“Why you look so tired?” he barked.

Mae rubbed at her face, suddenly self-conscious, folding her legs beneath her dress. “Verna, them babies, and washing all them clothes done wore me out, I guess,” she exhaled noisily. “I swear it seem like she done got lazier since Papa make me quit school.”

Clyde felt the darkness surge, the palms of his hands itching for Verna’s throat. He looked away as Mae laughed lightly, a sound that imitated humor where there wasn’t any.

“She ought not be doing you like that,” he demanded, his hands curling in his lap. Mae’s slender fingertips stroked the tops of his hands, soothing him. “It all right,” she whispered.

“It ain’t neither,” he protested, feeling the darkness retreat at her touch, just as it had done before. Inside his mind, the dark slithered around in turmoil, fighting to loose itself from the tether that suddenly bound it. He pushed it back easily, controlling it.

His thick brows drew together with his thoughts. “How you do that?”

“Do what?” Mae asked, still stroking his hand, perplexed by his expression.

Clyde lifted her hand to his face, holding it there, trembling with pleasure. Mae stroked his cheek, moved by his response to her distress.

“I thanks you for caring, Clyde. But it do be all right. Don’t none of us gets what we want. We just gets what is,” she said, gently extricating her hand from his.

Reaching around her other side, she pulled a small basket onto her lap. Lifting the cloth that covered it, she rambled through the contents. “If I had knowed you was gon’ be here, I would have brought more to eat. You looks like you can put away food real good.”

Clyde stared at her outstretched hand and the ham sandwich it held. His mouth salivated as the smell of the thick bread and meat wafted on the wind. He took it, tore it in half, and handed the other portion back to her, happy when she smiled, dimpling both cheeks again.

“Don’t mind if I do,” Mae said, opening her mouth wide and taking a huge bite, chewing with obvious pleasure. He watched, biting into his own half.

“You eat good too,” he observed.

Mae fell back, laughing loudly, her hand waving through the air in front of her, her heels drumming the ground. “Yeah, I do. My muhdeah say she don’t know where I puts it all.”

They sat in companionable silence, finishing every morsel of food in the basket. Mae leaned against him, rubbing her stomach contentedly, then sighed.

“I guess I best be getting on back home. My work be piling up while I’m sitting out here.” She got to her knees, first gathering her basket, then standing. “Maybe us can meet here again tomorrow, and this time, I brings enough for both us.”

He wanted desperately to hold her to him, keep her from leaving. The darkness rallied; it could keep her.

Mae smiled at him, light radiating around her, an aura framing her against the sun. She touched his cheek one last time, then turned. He shook his head violently, dispelling the darkness. Standing, he walked home, his dark thoughts trailing him.

Reaching home, Clyde pumped the sink handle vigorously, metal grinding against metal, the water pulled up from the well beneath it, filling the basin. He scrubbed his hands and rinsed away the remaining soap before wiping them on the clean rag hanging from the peg on the wall, wary as before that Mae’s smell clung to his hands. Fannie would sniff it on him like a hound. He could feel her suspicions crawling up his back and doubted his ability to deceive her again.

“Your supper be just about cold,” she scolded, slamming his plate on the tabletop.

“I ain’t hungry noway,” Clyde mumbled, trying to move past her.

“What you mean you ain’t hungry? You ain’t ate since this morning.” Fannie’s questions pulled him into a trap, stripping the joy from the afternoon.

“I done ate a bunch of apples I finds,” he responded quickly, latching onto the first plausible memory he could pull from their past. He fixed his features, willing them to reflect discomfort, rubbed his stomach, and bent forward, prepared to risk Fannie’s wrath if his deception failed.

“Boy, what I done told you?” she cried. Her skepticism vanished, replaced instantly by worry. “Now you done gone and made yourself sick.” Rushing closer, she placed the back of her hand against his forehead, fretting out loud. “Gets me the castor oil.”

Clyde groaned, already feeling the oil coating his tongue and mouth, knowing he would be belching the foul taste for the remainder of the day. He moved to the small shelf holding a few brown bottles and chose the one she requested. Returning to where Fannie sat holding a large tablespoon, he leaned down and let her dose him.

“You go on and lie down. Let that oil works you. You be better by tomorrow.”

Clyde nodded and went over to lie in their double bed. After a while, he felt the other side of the bed sink and Fannie’s back pressed against his.

He remembered how it felt when Mae had leaned against him and pulled his body away from his mother, suddenly uncomfortable, clinging to the edge of the mattress. Listening to the sound of her snoring, he followed the threads of his thoughts as they led him away from her. The dark snarled and fought in his head, waiting to invade his dreams.

The glen was familiar. If he breathed in deeply, he smelled Mae again . . . lavender, vanilla, and a light musky scent unique to her. He lifted his head from his knees, eyes searching, hungering for her presence. He was sure he could push back the encroaching darkness if she were there.

Fear invaded him, robbing him of his newfound strength. The dark wanted to hurt her, pull the light from her, and ravage her body. He heard himself whimper out loud. He had to keep her safe. She made him stronger. Better. He felt the darkness tremble as he thought of her and smiled.

He felt a nimbus of light around him, growing as he recalled her gentle touch and how she listened to him. There was no fear in his remembrance, no loathing. He lowered his head back to his knees. The darkness could not reach him here. He and Mae were safe.