“Alright, smarty-pants,” Sarah said, “maybe it is the Devil. Why don’t you go out and see?”
I MET DORA after school that day, the storytelling day, and walked her home. I pointed out the diurnal moon, which was more than half full, hiding like a shy spirit behind the branches of a maple tree. I got a kiss for this, a peck at first, but more after she checked to see that no kids were lingering nearby.
Then we walked on.
“Funny how they think the Devil would actually be interested in queer little Whitbrow,” she said. Her hand slid up to feel the muscle in my arm. “But I’m glad you’re here all the same. You won’t let the Devil get me, will you, Frankie?”
“I’ll spit in his eye and tie a knot in his tail.”
“That’s just capital. And when he wipes the spit out of his eye and shakes the knot out of his tail?”
“We run like hell, of course.”
“Quite sane,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder.
Our lovemaking was sweet and slow that night. It seemed she kissed my whole body as if it were a newly minted gift she could not keep long. And afterwards, when she thought I was sleeping, I caught her talking to the moon through the lace curtains. I couldn’t hear her words, as low as they were, but I wasn’t half bad at reading her lips.
“I don’t need rescuing,” she said. “I don’t.”
THE DAY MARTIN Cranmer got himself arrested, Dora and I were having a soda at Harvey’s. I told her that Saul’s story about the death-dog reminded me of Black Shuck.
“What’s a ‘Black Shuck’?” she asked.
I took another drink of soda. We had come to the drugstore to get out of the heat even though both of us knew the town was stunned and the mood was unpleasant in the wake of Paul Miller’s death, and in the absence of a Social, which would have taken place that Sunday if anyone had the good will and energy to organize it. The town seemed lost without its heathen ritual. And without its affable grocer.
“Black Shuck was a sort of big, black hound that lurked in the barrows and fens in England. When I was in London, not long before I came home, I met some fellows in a pub. They had been soldiers, too, like everybody, part of that ghastly tank business in Amiens. They were from the East. Norwich or Norfolk, I can’t recall. When the barman called ‘Time, gentlemen,’ one of them said, ‘Let’s go through Hyde Park and look for Black Shuck.’ ”
Dora smiled at my put-on accent.
“ ‘He’s a great fukkin black dog, big as a calf. Just watch out for his one red eye right in the middle of his forehead; if he looks at you, you’re shyte. You’re dead.’ ”
My profanity caused Harvey to look up from his barely audible radio and from his endless wiping of clean things, though his expression was so flat I wasn’t sure at first if it was interest or reproach.
Then he turned up his radio and went back to wiping. Huey Long was getting buried in Baton Rouge and some reverend was speaking, calling him an unfinished symphony. Harvey was rapt.
“Anyway, we rolled out of the pub and went looking down dark alleys and under bridges and ended up passing out in Hyde Park. No Shuck. I always remembered that name. It sounds like a death-dog, doesn’t it? It sounds like little Gordeau has a piece of that same story. Funny how legends travel.”
“Nothing about this business sounds funny to me. The moon should be full tonight. Like it was that night you came home from the woods and had your dreams. What did you see out there, Frankie?”
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Just the bogeyman.”
“Now you’re a smart aleck. You always get wise when something’s bothering you. Can we just stay in tonight?”
“Sure. A night in with my best girl.”
“Wife.”
“Not soon enough,” I said, brushing her bangs from her forehead.
I noticed that Harvey had left off wiping again because he was staring out the window into the town square where the merciless midday light illuminated a lone, squatting figure.
“Well, that man is a plum idiot if ever I saw one. What in hell does he think he’s doing?”
“WHAT ARE YOU doing, Martin?” the big man said.
I had walked out so I could eavesdrop. I might have felt ashamed if I had been the only one.
The taxidermist looked up at Sheriff Blake, who had come out of the hardware store still buckling on the belt of his office, and who was now standing over him with the sun behind him. The big man looked more fatigued than angry, and he asked Martin again, “Now, just what are you doing?”
Martin placed upon his own head the garland of tea roses he had just crafted. He went from a squat to a sitting position, sitting Indian-style with a cigarette in his mouth.
“What I am doing,” Martin said, “is fashioning myself a moon crown, since I am high on moonshine. I am tired of looking at these goddamned flowers and they are tired of being looked at, so I am putting them out of everyone’s misery. If you like my headdress, I would be happy to make you one of your own. I am sure there are enough flowers even for your head, which is not small.”
Estel hunkered down, removing his shadow from Martin Cranmer, and he said, “Now, how are we going to fix this?”
Martin said nothing.
“I’ll tell you how. I’m going to trust you to take yourself home and tuck yourself in like a good boy to sleep off your drunk.”
“That’s not what’s going to happen,” Martin said slowly and jovially.
“And when you wake up, you’re going to come back here and plant new flowers at your own expense.”
Martin shook his head, grinning broadly so his yellowish teeth stood out against his beard. He stood up on legs that looked ready to buckle. The sheriff stood up, too.
“I have destroyed public property,” Martin said.
“Yes,” Estel said, “yes, you have. And if you don’t make it right, maybe I’ll come around to your house and destroy me some private property. Like some illegal property that turns mash into shine.”
Martin, still smiling, noted that people, myself included, were standing under the awnings of the shops around the square now, and I believe it was mostly for our benefit that he undid his trousers and urinated on the remains of the rosebushes.
The sheriff waited for him to finish and button up. When he had, Estel said, “Now would you please wipe your damn hands on your shirt?”
Martin obliged, swaying gently.
“Thank you,” the sheriff said, taking Martin’s wrists and cuffing them behind his back.
“I really did not want to drive to Morgan today, you damn fool, I really did not. But you are under arrest for public drunkenness and indecency and maybe vandalism, too. We’ll sort that out when you dry out. You get a couple days in the hole. Probably a fine I know you cain’t pay. This is really a sorry business.”
“You have no idea,” Martin said, looking oddly sober for just that moment. “May I keep my garland?”
“Oh sure. You gonna pay for it, might as well enjoy it. Let’s take a ride.”
Some of those watching broke into applause when the sheriff led Cranmer away, but I did not join them. That’s when Martin noticed me in the crowd.
He winked.
I’m nearly sure he winked.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WHEN NIGHT CAME down on Whitbrow it came down hard. It came down like an army that had been waiting for the chance to sack and plunder the roost of its ancient foe. Sherman had found Atlanta. Troy had fallen. Rome was upon Carthage and the moon was its general. Forgive me for invoking these images retroactively, knowing as I do what would happen that night on the eastern edge of town; but I have the impression that even then I knew.