“I saw something I wanted to tell you about.”
“So tell.”
“Now I’m not so sure I saw it.”
“That’s probably better.”
“What?”
“Some things it’s better not to be sure about. Would you agree with that?”
“Perhaps,” I said. “In general.”
“Suppose I were to tell you that something which is outside of your realm of understanding goes on in those woods across the river. Suppose I get specific. You then have no choice but to think that I have boiled my brain. Now suppose I tell you that nothing unusual at all is going on in those woods. You will then remember the way I acted the other night and you will have no choice but to suppose that I have boiled my brain.”
“If you dodged checkmates like you dodged questions, you’d be a match for Capablanca.”
“I tell you in all seriousness that I have nothing to say that will satisfy you. If you saw something bad past the river, don’t cross the river.”
“Do you cross the river, Martin?”
“And if you don’t like the way I acted on the night of the full moon, stay away from me then. And stay home. Think of those woods as a beautiful woman. Fine to play around with most of the month. But on certain days, go if you want, but don’t wear your best shirt. That’s all I have to say on the subject.”
“Alright. Thank you for the game, but I should get back.”
“That’s fine, too.”
I stood up and smoothed my clothes out, looking for my hat. I found it.
“Don’t forget your camera,” Martin said, smiling impenetrably.
I picked that up, too.
My angry exit wasn’t working out at all.
On my way out the door, I paused for a moment when another piece of Martin’s handiwork caught my eye. It was a carved wooden diorama featuring a scale model of Miller’s General Store, complete with tiny checkerboard and a shot glass for a pickle jar. All the regulars were stuffed mice. An overstuffed mouse in an apron was clearly Paul Miller. A strong-looking mouse in overalls represented a fellow named Buster Simms, whom I would get to know soon. There was a one-armed mouse, too.
“Don’t bother looking,” he said. “You’re not in it. Not yet.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN THE WEEK that followed, things went along just fine.
I was writing. I had introduced the character of Lucien Savoyard and then discussed his grandfather Michel, a Frenchman who had been a hussar in Napoleon’s Grande Armée, survived the frozen march in Russia and one in Waterloo. Then I spent half a chapter on Lucien’s father, Arnaud, a New Orleans tycoon who made a fortune investing in whaling ships, silk and slaves. These men didn’t seem to have childhoods; the fathers had a tradition of shutting the boys up in faraway church schools until they were old enough to show up and inherit. The fathers drowned, or shot themselves in middle age.
The next thing was to introduce Lucien and discuss his decision to move the family’s wealth and future to Georgia to take advantage of the cotton boom. That would include a physical description of the house he would christen La Boudeuse—the Pouting House—and her Louisiana-style architecture.
Of course, what I needed to do quite soon was get into the woods and find the plantation. But not today.
Today I just had to get out of the cellar.
I had moved the dining room table and typewriter down the cellar stairs to get away from the punishing heat in the study, but now the smell of mildew had given me a headache. The greyish, overcast light coming through the cracked ground-level window compounded this. Also, now that I had lost momentum, I kept getting distracted looking at all the boxes of my aunt Dottie’s old clothes and goods I had meant to free from their tangle of spiderwebs and investigate. The spiders down here were legion.
I needed a break.
IT OCCURRED TO me to take a walk to Miller’s General Store and see about having a glass of sweet tea on the porch. I wasn’t the only one that had occurred to; Saturday was a big day there. Several farmers had left their fields for these hours between noon and four to sit in the cool of the porch and play checkers, including a fortyish man named Miles Falmouth whose back had been grieving him “biblical,” or “positively Ole Tessament.” He was leaning sideways on his bench near the checkerboard, holding forth on the state of his health while waiting for Old Man Gordeau to move.
Gordeau was winning that game. He didn’t lose many. Aside from being mayor of the town, he grew black-eyed peas and tomatoes, and kept horses, goats and pigs. His pride lay in his dogs, however. Part bloodhound, Gordeau’s dogs had become a recognizable local breed, and he never failed to sell his litters to hunters even several towns away.
I stood behind one-armed Mike, whose attention fluttered between the drama on the checkerboard and the gospel music coming in warm and tinny from Paul’s radio inside.
The other seat was filled by Buster Simms, whose wife, I later found out, was called “Mrs. Bust-her-seams” in less Christian circles; but never in front of Buster, whose hands looked big and strong enough to twist a horseshoe straight. Their children, while not attractive in the traditional sense, were a source of pride for the Simms family in that they outweighed any children born in Whitbrow since the Great War. Everything was round in Buster’s life. In the summer he sold melons. Pumpkins in the fall.
Buster was the second-best checker player after the old man.
He leaned forward in a way that made his chair look delicate, eager to see what the old man’s next move would be. Miles was opening his mouth to ask Paul to change the radio to try to catch a weather report or some feed prices, knowing beforehand that one-armed Mike would protest and lobby for another twenty minutes of gospel.
This was the tableau the large, bald black man froze when he walked past us on the porch and entered the general store, letting the screen door bang behind him so that its little bell rang. Paul Miller would later remember that flies came in with him.
Everyone looked inside to see what his business was.
Aside from the Chicago moving-men, I had not seen a colored in or near Whitbrow.
Jesus, he was big and strong-looking.
That was my first thought. My second was what a good subject for photography he would make; the structure of his face was handsome and symmetrical, and his broad shoulders and thin waist suggested an impressive athleticism. He would have to stand with new clothes, though; the ones he wore were none too clean.
He did not enter the store the way black men often entered white establishments. He did not look down, nor did he state his business by way of asking permission to approach: “Sir, I’s comin to ask if you got any cornmeal and how much it coss.“ In fact, he did not speak at all at first. He just glided in with the light bouncing off the carefully shaved dome of his head, and he went to the goods he wanted as if he had stocked the shelves himself.
He bought salt, coffee and sugar. And a pickle.
“Anything else?” Paul asked, trying to sound neither hostile nor overly friendly.
I expected the man to shake his head, but he spoke. Everyone was looking at him, but he seemed to notice only Paul.
“No, sir. These shall be sufficient. If I think of anything else, I shall return for it.”
What was that accent? Caribbean? West Indies?
And then he paid.
As he made his way out, he did something queer; he stopped, holding the door open, and sniffed the air on the porch. And then he looked at me. Not long enough to draw anyone’s attention but mine.
He left then, letting the door bang good and hard as he went.
If the flies had in fact arrived with him, they decided to stay.