Till Human Voices Wake Us

By Alan Moorer

In this mystery, romance and adventure novel, Charlie Baugh, a young anthropologist, is not only becoming deeply involved in his new research project on “Voodoo in the American South,” but also in an intense affair with a brilliant graduate student named Cashy (Casheila) Epstein. Though he tries to keep his study from Cashy, mysterious events seem to draw her into that world with him. From the opening scene in rural Mississippi where an black power doctor’s vision reveals Charlie and Cashy to be the dancers needed by his community to restore contact with the Loi (the gods of Voodoo); to the scenes where Charlie defends his study to Cashy, his academic colleagues and friends, and Homer Egypt—his famous and delightfully weird artist friend; to the scene where Charlie and Cashy become possessed by Voodoo spirits, the story brims with spooky, heart-pounding suspense and mystery; laugh-out-loud comedy and one of the best love stories in years. This is not a horror story. This book addresses important ideas, is chock full of wonderful characters and is shamelessly out to reestablish important social, emotional, intellectual, sexual and spiritual connections—connections corroded by the greed, speed, and manipulated need of our times. This book cuts deep. It will provoke and excite you, make you laugh and cry, infuriate and delight you, arouse you--move you. It’s a sleep stealer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Moorer
• Release date: Sep 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465805546

Alan Moorer

Born, Jackson, Mississippi: Forest Hill High School: BS, Mississippi State University (Management, SAE, President’s Scholar, Distinguished Military Graduate): Army Guided Missile School: Guided Missile Logistics Officer, European Logistics HQ, Orleans, France (Theater Logistics Project Officer, Introduction of Sergeant and Pershing missile systems, Retirement of Corporal and Redstone systems, NATO Negotiating Team, hon. dis. Captain): M.A., Ph.D., University of Virginia (English, American and Comparative Literature, DuPont Fellow, Teaching Assistant, Instructor): Assistant Professor-English, Director of Undergraduate Studies, University of Kentucky: Writer/Editor: Waiter:Offshore Oil Rig Roustabout (Penrod 52): Computer Consultant (corporate accounts and enterprise conversions, Tymeshare Corp): Carpenter: Bartender (High on Rose): Lived in and renovated original settlers’ 1790 log house on a thoroughbred horse farm outside Lexington, Kentucky: Writer/Editor: President/Co-Founder, Lexis Communications: Director of Corporate Communications & Public Affairs (Mason & Hanger Corp): Communications Consultant (print, broadcast and on-line content, integrated marketing communications, PR): Visiting Professor of Organizational Communication, Virginia Tech: Visiting Professor, International School of Management, Paris and Barcelona: Fulbright Professor, Macedonia: Lecturer and Director, Professional Communication Program, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.

Book preview

Chapter 1

"Voodoo! Voodoo? What you even know bout the WORD you stringy little town ‘knee gro’" Smith snaps in disgust, sneering with contempt, chin jutted out, red showing around the whites of his eyes, jaws working. He snatches the pipe loaded with a cigar stump out his mouth so he won't chomp clean through the stem.

Despite local legend that Smith is nearly a hundred, he seems strong and smooth-skinned, supple as a cat as he slowly turns and scans the line of young men hunkered down or leaned back against the front wall of the Black Nation Disco & Café just off the square in the black section of Tulla, Mississippi. His eyes stop and lock on the small-boned, black youth with lips pulled back; high, jive-assed voice mocking: Heah d'ole Voodoo man, yall. Heah the big spook nigger round these parts. Ole Doctah Smif. Uh huh. Conjure man. Power doctah. Bettah git when de Hoodoo come around.

Smith catches himself just in time, feeling his rage rise like molten rock in an old volcano, filling him with a strength and power that he relishes for a moment before it moves on and through.

Then it comes. Smith suddenly feels more himself than he has in a year. The rage and anger has jolted back a memory of himself, and he slips back through the meshes and into that space deep behind the eyes, back where the power doctor lives. Back where he can dream himself and the world again.

Oh sweet Jesus have mercy, it's good, Smith thinks. Like waking from a long, cold dream. Power always comes on him suddenly, like last Tuesday when he could hardly remember picking up the hoe there toward the end of his long and near-fatal illness. He awakened an hour or so later to find himself in the field, the hoe blade moving delicately around the new plant shoots, clearing the weeds, loosening the dirt to capture and hold what moisture there is in Mississippi, in early April.

And just that quickly, while listening to the cocky young man in front of the café, he feels the rage and power coursing through him again: savored and released. How long has he been bottling it up, dumping it out on those who came to help or be helped? Great God A-mighty! He doesn't know. Doesn't want to know. That would be just another mind trick. Part of his illness. He won't try to figure how he lost what is only just now coming back. No siree.

So as the rage and power pass through, he comes again into that calm and ease where his eyes seem to come untangled and sight takes place deep in his belly. In those moments it feels like there’s an empty tube in his center, running from the top of his head to a spot between his asshole and balls.

Smith turns to face the young man. Turns slowly, the way a twig will turn into, rather than against, the flow.

There is a momentary catch, a grip Smith calls it, that stops the easing of his eyes, a hesitation so slight as to be imperceptible to those watching. It occurs when, for an instant, Smith allows something in the flow to snag on the edges of his mind in a slight eddy-swirl of psychic sticks and froth.

What the hell’m I doin? What the hell is all this here, he wonders, remembering that the wild-eyed kid with his hair teased out in a black halo isn't just any sassy-assed young'un caught up in the newfangled turnout. It’s Bobby Oscar Benson, Bobbio being his new, took-up, town name.

"Bobbio she-it, his father, Smith's good friend, Dodge Benson, spat out in disgust the week before. It's one thing runnin round actin like you a damn fool. It's another to go name-changin, answerin to some took-up street name after you old nuff to see over your mama's tit."

Dodge lifted the nine-pound maul and split the hunk of post oak clean as a tooth, then turned to Smith with the maul poised over his head for another blow. "Little muffucker hangin round that dis-kee-o café pickin up some manhood. True fact. Bobbio, for God's sweet sake, Jimmy. What the hell's comin down these days?"

Dodge turned to split the post oak. Hit it a lick, left the maul in the ground where it had sunk, leaned on the handle and turned again to Smith.

Ain’t no luck a-tall in name-changin. You know that s’well as me. Goes straight against will and prophesy. Lord hep that boy if he ain't out to get hisself kilt.

Smith stood there, attentive and relaxed, listening not only to the words but to the deeper concern in his friend's voice.

I wouldn't tell nother soul bout this, Jimmy, but th’other night I come into a holiness—walkin round in the spirit, singin the gospel, my soul flyin like a dove. And you know what that little shitass done? Sashayed up in a shirt made outta that stuff they make women’s slips and panties outta. You know? Flowers and butterflies and such shit all over em. Pants so tight you could make out his pecker on his leg. Come up and ax me how come I didn't quit bein a nigger and try bein a man for a change.

Dodge hit the post oak so hard that a slab sailed off, nearly hitting Smith on the leg.

Smith sees all this clearly in look back and past eye, and having seen it, lets it pass on and through. So much for back tell, he thinks. Ain't needed in the past. I'm needed here, now.

As the memory grip passes and the sassy-assed kid continues to rant, Smith falls back along the banks as he puts it. Back where thoughts and memories are watched as they drift through the mind. Back deep where feelings come hard, but move on through and out and don't grip.

And being back along the banks—being inaccessible, impersonal—Smith becomes the doctor. Being uninvolved personally, not required to defend or perpetuate some image of himself, he comes into his power time and mirrors whatever is projected onto him.

The eyes Bobbio faces are so deep and frightening that he jerks back and breaks contact. His voice is desperately seeking backup as he whips his head around and looks over his shoulder toward the young men gathered in front of the café.

"Well, lookie here now. Ole Voodoo man gonna throw a little mojo on my ass. Reckon? HA."

The laugh at the end is pitifully hollow and trails off quickly into a forced giggle that Bobbio wants to call back. He’s losing ground and has to rise up on his toes and flex his fingers before turning.

Even the young men watching understand Bobbio's mistake in turning back. Understand the danger in this bravado and strut.

Bobbio hears breaths being caught. He knows it’s crazy. But he’s between a rock and a hard place. Damn! His mind is racing out of control. He has to choose quickly. It’s all come down to this.

And here I am, Bobbio thinks. Here the hell I am. Knuckle drills and a little blade work in the alleys. Not to mention all the hours of practice to become the best string razor man in the country. And it's all come down to this.

It’s his hands, everyone says. His hands. Bobbio has the most graceful, beautiful hands you’ll likely find outside a studio or the mirror of a mime. His long, expressive fingers move when he talks as if detached from his body, or belonging to someone else in the same body. They move like a master seducer's up to the thin cotton string dyed black so's not to stand out against the flesh of his neck. A straight-edged razor hangs from the string, back between his shoulder blades where the laws forget to frisk.

With a thumb under the string and one quick movement of his arm up and out, he flips the straight-edge into his hand. His fingers flick so quickly that the razor only touches before popping open like a wing, laying the blade across his knuckles, working edge out.

The downward arc of his arm drives the blade into the neck of someone, cutting clear through to where air gushes out bubbling blood around Bobbio's sensitive fingers.

He practiced that move for months, slashing at a ham that the skippers got at two winters ago when it turned warm in December. His daddy pitched the wormy ham out in the yard for the dogs, but Bobbio kicked em off and hung it in the old shed—the shed out near the suckling pasture, the shed no one enters anymore after Smith, Dodge, R.P., and the others spent two days in there chanting and dancing for Damballah, the serpent Loa, when the Big Black River flooded and drove snakes up into the cotton and beans. There hadn't been a single snakebite in Tulla, though dozens were reported in Floweree, Learned, and Gip. The shed stood abandoned, never entered by anyone except Bobbio.

He’d no sooner begun working with the blade than his father took to looking at him funny. Dodge would stop, face him, and look deeply into Bobbio's eyes as if searching for something lost.

It was about the time that Dodge told him: They's a difference tween a man and a boy. A man makes choices. And when he ain't in touch with his soul, he waits till he is. Then he chooses, or holds still so's a choice can get made through him. That's the difference. A man's tied back to something. A boy ain’t. A man stands for something. A boy floats like a feather on the wind and calls it freedom.

Crazy ole mumbo-jumbo, mojo-navigating, sumbitch, Bobbio thinks.

And it’s all come down to this. All that work and all he'd gone through has come down to a face-off here on the street with some crazy, ole-timey nigger livin in a world of h'aints ‘n spirits ‘n shit. All come down to some crazy ole hoodoo man runnin round bad-mouthin the boys at the club and layin down a buncha heavy shit like some fuckin preacherman.

Bobbio makes his choice. He turns quickly and tough to meet the gaze of Jim Smith, his fingers going so obviously toward his neck and the string that some of the young men jump forward in spite of themselves.

Bobbio's face goes blank. Then mean. Then blank again, the cheeks hanging loose, the lips protruding. Then the horror. His face is no longer his face, more a series of grotesque masks until Bobbio stands frozen in place.

The hand once going for the string now clasps his throat as if he’s strangling himself. Bobbio's arms drop limp to his side. He face goes slack. He makes a noise in his throat, and there are bubbles of slobber on his lips as he falls over backward.

The street light changes, but none of the cars move. A man coming through the Rainbow Bread screen door on the grocery store stops dead in his tracks and the screen snaps shut behind him. Country folks in town to shop, sauntering down the sidewalk, stop so suddenly they almost tip over forward. Two men working on a pickup parked at the curb look out from under the hood and shut up.

Bobbio's best friend, Marcel Talley, breaks free from the group and is first to the body. Marcel lifts Bobbio's head, turns it from side to side, pats Bobbio's cheeks.

Hey. Bobbio. Bobbio baby. Come on now, man. It gon be awright. Get it together, bro. Hey, Bobbio, dude. Check it out. Marcel can't do w’out his main man. Come on now, baby.

It takes a while before Marcel understands that Bobbio is dead, that this is real. He keeps talking to himself, shaking his head hard from side to side, snatching it backward as if to loosen his neck.

Shit, man. This ain't happening! You know? I mean this kinda shit right heah ain't real at all. Know’wha’m’sayin?

Marcel rocks back and forth, rubbing his forehead.

"I mean, wait just a god damned minute. Gimme a god damned break. You know? This kinda shit here ain't real. You know? I mean, I ain't standing over my man Bobbio out here on the fuckin sidewalk and him not alive. Know what I’m sayin? I mean it's like I done come into a fucking dream or something.

Marcel is still rocking backward and forward when he looks up from the body to Jim Smith. There are tears all over his face. Do somethin for him, Doctah Smith. Please. Do something quick.

Can't, Smith says.

What you mean you can't? You can take off whatever it was you laid on, can't you? You can un-do same’s do, can't you?

You was right here, Smith says. You seen it ever bit. I never done nothin. Not a damned thing. Never laid a hand on that boy. Even when he went for the blade.

Marcel throws his arms out toward Smith, pleading, but everything stops as Oley Fender Whitehurst, the town’s Deputy Sheriff, comes puffing up. Whitehurst has run the entire block from the town square and has to stand for a moment, sucking for breath and pulling his gabardine uniform trousers out of the crack of his ass and off his sweaty legs, before he can properly get down to business.

"Jesus knee-walking Christ!" Whitehurst whispers dramatically. Little sumbitch’s dead.

Several of the young men have to ease over and hold Marcel when they see his hand moving under his shirt tail toward his back pocket.

Somebody's done gone and kilt this trouble-makin, little uppity sumbitch, Whitehurst wheezes, still excited and breathless from the run.

Whitehurst turns Bobby Oscar's face to the side with his spit-shined ankle boot to see where the cut came. Turns it a mite too roughly, and the young men have to hold Marcel sure enough. One even has to put his hand over Marcel's mouth and a couple more grab his legs and arms.

Whitehurst bends over, grunting, and rolls the body to check for wounds and see if the renowned razor is still in place. The body rolls back with one arm bent crooked underneath it.

"Hey you there! Boy! Run in the café and call the de-partment. Tell em it's a killin and send the squad car and am-blance."

No one moves, but Whitehurst doesn't notice. He’s too busy working himself into a fit of officialdom: pacing around the body and bending to pick up the metal-covered tablet he laid on the ground while turning the body over. He flips the tablet so the cover pops open.

Whitehurst loves how business-like it looks when he flips the tablet open. Smart and snappy. Definitely professional. Loves it usually, but this time there’s no pencil in the leather loops on the side. Well, piss-willy Johnson, he says, exasperated. That kid of mine'll swipe my damn pencil ever night. If I tole him oncet, I tole him....

His voice trails off. He is squinting hard at the café window while his right hand goes deep into his left shirt pocket for a pencil stub so short he has to hold the eraser in his chubby fingertips.

OK. Time to git down to b’ness, Whitehurst says, licking the pencil lead and making an authoritative check in the top right-hand corner of the form.

"RANDOLPH SCOTT!" Smith booms.

"Wha? Wha?" Whitehurst responds, whipping his head from side to side as if birds are flying fast in front of his nose.

Randolph. Scott, Smith calls out again.

Yessir.

A tall, long-muscled, black youth steps away from the hold he has on Marcel's pistol arm and stands in front of Smith.

Yessir.

Would you please go call the am-blance. We can't leave our man out here.

Yessir, the young man says, moving off.

Randolph Scott, Smith calls again, gentler, stopping him.

Yessir.

Don't make the call from the café, if you please. Go over to Putnam's. And don't run. Walk over ‘n tell Deacon Putnam that one our peoples is dead. Axe him to call up the funeral parlour, and after the arangements is settled, if he'd kindly drive me over to the fertilizer plant to get Dodge.

Yessir.

And tell Sister Putnam that the word's got to get spread so it don't reach the plant fo me and the deacon do.

Yessir.

And thank em kindly, Randolph Scott.

Yessir. The young man turns and moves off, proud and erect as a prince. Turns just in time to hide the tears now collecting over his high cheekbones.

Well, I'll be goddamned, Whitehurst says, shaking his head slowly.

Reckon you will, Smith responds, never taking his eyes off Bobby Oscar.

Now you wait just a minute here, old ni… You just wait one damned minute.

"On WHAT? Wait on what? Smith barks, snapping his head around and getting right up in Whitehurst's face, eyes flashing. Just what and who'm I posed to be waitin on, mistah? Huh? Huh?"

Whitehurst gives the tablet a flip so the cover snaps smartly back in place. His other hand hangs in the belt loop where his nigger stick used to fit before the librels made him switch to carrying a can of Mace.

Who's in charge here? Just who's in charge here is what the hell I'd like to know. Do you know who I am, old man? Whitehurst demanded.

Damn right I do. You’re Deputy Sheriff Oley Fender Whitehurst. Your daddy was Mistah Richard Whitehurst. And your granddaddy was Mistah Bill Thompson Whitehurst. And, like I said, you Deputy Sheriff Whitehurst. Maybe I know who you is better than you do.

Now you wait just a goddamned minute....

I been knowin your fambly more'n seventy years now. But I don't know a reason in this world why I got to let the death of this boy get turned into somethin like what you’ve seen on TV. Something you’re tryin to lift off TV and set down here in Tulla. This ain't no damn TV show. This here's Dodge Venson's boy, Bobby, who you've knowd all your life. And it’s Brother Thurman who in charge here if you'd give me a chance to get the word out.

Of all the....

You. Bob Jackson, Smith called.

Another young black man emerges from the crowd around Marcel.

Get word to Brother Thurman. Tell him that arrangements are commenced. Tell him that Sister Putnam's been told and'll want to go with him out to Venson's to sit with Sister Willamine.

Yessir.

And Bob Jackson.

Yessir.

Do it proper. This here's Bobby Oscar. You understand?

Yessir.

Well? Well? Whitehurst seethes. You through now? Can I get down to biness?

Ain't through by a damn sight, Smith says. But the needful's at least took care of for the time bein. One thing more though. We got to cover this boy. Ain't no good having folks look on a dead man's face. Specially with flies on it. Is there a blanket in that po-lice car you called up?

"STOP IT!" Whitehurst hollers, hands on hips, face bent forward and chin poked out at Smith.

No one touches the body or covers it but me, and only after my official investigation and questioning of eye witnesses on the spot. And here you've done gone and run off two of my eye witnesses to do your errands, and me standing here like a lump on a log while you spoil more evi-dence. No sir. This shit here’s gone just about far enough. There's facts to gather, ole man. A professional inquiry to conduct.

Whitehurst flips the writing pad open again.

TV, Smith thinks. Plain as the nose on your face.

Smith isn't hearing a word Whitehurst says anymore. He’s just standing there, blank-eyed, while his mind skips like a rock over a pond back to the beginnings of his illness. Hadn't it been when his took-to-raise daughter, Micenda, moved back after her husband run off and left her in Chicago? And didn't she just show up one day and commence putting her stuff in the back room? In Lucy's room, Smith thinks, and he has to get off thinking about Lucy right quick.

Just looked up one day and here come Micenda. With four trunks of clothes. Four trunks! More clothes than he and Coreen together have owned in their sixty-five years of marriage. And not only trunks but hat boxes and shoe boxes and file boxes full of papers... and that goddamn color TV.

Like a devil moved in the house, Smith thinks. Didn't take fifteen minutes fo Coreen’d moved her good chair right up in front of the son bitch, and there she and Micendie sat.

Were you present at the time of death? Whitehurst asks for the fourth time, angry and close to poking Smith in the chest with his finger before thinking better of it.

"What? WHAT? Smith yells. WHAT?"

Were you present at the time of death?

Why, hell no, Smith hollers. Ain't nobody present after you bring one ‘a them evil fuckers in the house. Only thing real then is what flicks ‘cross the glass on that devil box.

Whitehurst looks sick on his stomach. He puts his hand over his mouth and belches; then opens his mouth wide like he’s trying to pop his ears clear.

Great God A-mighty, Whitehurst sighs. Here I stand with the meanest nigger in the county dead at my feet, not a mark on him, and some ole man up and runs off two of my eye witnesses, then goes crazy as a switch engine when it comes time to catch ever whoever done it.

Whitehurst's voice pleads in a whisper. Hell now. Come on, Smith. You gotta help me. We can’t stand here blabbering while ever whoever done it gets clean away?

"YOU CAN’T GET AWAY FROM IT, Smith hollers, hand on forehead. There's the trouble. Ain't no peace. Not a minute. Just try goin in the prayer room with the house full of women screamin cause somebody done won a set of dishes for playin some silly-assed guessin game. Just try liftin up your heart and soul to the Lord when the house is full to the top with greed and evilness piped in through a wire and eatin up the brain and soul of your woman. Greed and evilness and blasphemy and lust and dopin and killin and theivin, and I done let it go on just about as long as I'm a-gonna. And that's all there is to it."

Are you finished? Whitehurst asks, mad.

"AIN’T EVEN BY GOD STARTED GOOD," Smith booms back in Whitehurst’s face, looking like he’s fixing to turn and leave on crusade.

Oh no you don't, Whitehurst says, reaching out for Smith's shoulder.

He never touches Smith though. Something, some old injunction against it, deep in memory, holds him back.

Nobody leaves. Nobody else, that is, till I find out who killed this boy.

Smith looks at Whitehurst, puzzled and curious. What you talkin bout, Oley? Ain't nobody killed nobody.

What you mean, nobody's killed nobody? Goddamn, man. Sumbitch's dead as a snake right here under our noses.

Naw, Smith says after a while, grown pensive. Naw. Wasn't Snake. Snake never had a thing to do with it. Crow maybe.

Oh, sweet merciful God in heaven, Whitehurst whines, snapping the tablet shut and returning it to his hip. Talk some sense, Jim. For once. Look. I know I might’ve come on right strong and all, but now it's a matter of duty, Jim. I've got to have something to say about the death of this man. You know? Overdose, heart attack, something.

All of em, Smith said.

Oh, come on, Smith, Whitehurst throws the tablet down hard at his feet. Come ON, damnit. You know me.

Ever one of em, Smith confirms. Duty, overdose, heart attack. They what got him, sure enough

OK, Whitehurst says, pulling in close so he can whisper in Smith’s ear. OK. Duty, overdose, and heart attack. Say I don't move on the death of a black man. OK? Let's just say I do nothing about it, and ever newspaper reporter from here to Birmingham’ll be talkin bout how Mississippi law lets the murder of a black man go without no investigation. OK? OK. I've let the press and the librels swarm up my butt plenty times before. Them with their signs and slogans and marches and nasty-assed editorials. I can most likely take ever whatever this here brings, ole son. I can take it. Any of the heat. But just tween me and you, Smith, what was it got him? I mean, this boy's ventilated half the trouble-making assholes in the county since this disco place here opened up. He dropped Willis Lagrette nose down in two seconds flat, and Willis never even got his heat outta that little pocket inside his coat. Same with Chiller Daniels and Mar-roon Halbert. And you know Tullis over to Yazoo? One who keeps that butcher knife up his sleeve and can just flick his arm and whoever's botherin him ain't botherin him no more? Well Tullis never even know’d what was on him. Seems. Cause the blade was right there in his sleeve and his hand round his throat tryin to hold his head on by the time I got there. I'm talkin bout a kid with a move, Smith. A move like lightning.

Uh-huh, Smith says, uninterested.

Well, Smith. Who was it finally got him?

Lightning, Smith says, not even smiling.

That's what drives you so damned crazy, Whitehurst thinks. Smith says things like that seriously. Says em like they're meant to be took seriously. Cept it don't make sense. Don't make a lick ‘a sense. But when Smith does that crazy-serious talk, lookin you straight in the eye, damned if it don't make goosebumpers hop from your asshole to hairline and your eardrums pop like a nigger chewing gum. Ain't no way to figure it.

Smith sees Whitehurst looking like a whipped puppy and turns to him, talking in a low, personal voice that Whitehurst hasn't heard in years.

The boy got snotched out the window, Oley.

Though he’s smiling, Smith's eyes have grown deep and terrifying. Kid got hooked on power. Like some others I been hearin about. Got hooked on power, and power done blow’d his ass clean away. Snotched his ass right out the window.

Smith turns slowly toward the group of young men leaning on the café wall. Feller got to chose well where he at, and which-a-way he lookin. Cause that window’s still standin open.

The young men are all hauling ass around the side of the café toward the alley, running into each other: shoving, grunting and hollering. All except Fred Jinney, the undertaker's boy, who covers his eyes, crying: No mo’. Please Doctah Smith. No mo’.

Smith turns back to Whitehurst. Duty, overdose, and heart attack. We all seen it. Now I got to get to Dodge fo some meddlin’ sister mishandles it and pokes the grief too deep to touch. Goodbye, Whitehurst.

Well I'll be dipped and dried, Whitehurst mutters as the squad car pulls up and two town cops hop out, pistols at the ready.

Whitehurst bends over, retrieves the metal tablet, and snaps it shut.

Put up the artillery, boys. I done got this ‘un sewed up tight.

It takes Duke Ferris, the young, strange cop come home two years ago and just on the force for four months, to notice that Whitehurst has goosebumpers on his arm so thick it looks like an affliction.

Everthing awright, Chief? Ferris asks, touching Whitehurst's arm.

Whitehurst looks down slowly and stares at Ferris' fingers till Ferris pulls away.

I reckon everthing's proly pretty much the way it ought be, Whitehurst says. Now get that blanket outta the trunk of the squad car, Ferris, and cover that man up. This ain't no damn TV show. And run them rubberneckers off. Tell em to get the hell out of here, or I'll have their ass for obstructing justice.

Whitehurst leaves Boo Eady in charge, takes the squad car for himself and blasts off toward home, blue lights flashing, but no sireen.

He skids to a stop in the gravel drive, and by the time he makes the back steps in five strenuous hops, his wife is already chattering at him like a monkey over a nut.

She keeps right on chattering as he slams through the screen door and scoops her up in his arms to the bedroom where he tears off her panties and loves her till her toes curl and his eyes roll back in his head.

Afterwards, he kisses her as tenderly as in their courting days. While getting dressed again for work, he looks in the mirror and pats his paunch, the paunch he seems to be seeing for the first time, the paunch that has been growing steadily these last few years. He smiles to himself as he hitches up his Sam Browne belt with the pistol, handcuffs, mace, ammo, and a patent leather case for his one-way shades.

Bernice rolls over toward the edge of the bed close to him. You know, Oley. I been thinkin for longest now how it would be if one of us just did something—anything--without thinking it through first. Thinkin it through, then bickering and worrying and arranging and asking the other what they thought about it.

She puts her head back and giggles, rubbing her legs together and flexing her back luxuriously. Lord, I love it when you make me all wet, Oley.

Whitehurst snaps to attention, clicks his heels smartly, and blows her a big, juicy kiss. He follows with a smart salute, does an about-face, and marches off back to the squad car.

Smith has made his way across the street and into the alleyway between Putnam's Dry Goods Store and the package liquor store. He’s headed for Putnam's car in the gravel parking lot behind the storefronts, intending to wait there for Putnam instead of waiting out front to be picked up. Besides, he has something to sort out. About TV.

Not that he has any figuring to do. Hell no. Won't take figurin a-tall, he thinks. All he has to do is let himself loose on the subject and allow whatever’s caught up inside him to pour out. Better if no one’s around till he gets through the worst of it.

He see Putnam's old green, turtleback Plymouth back in the lot and is headed for it when the three men see him. They've come into town for a pint handed out the back window to blacks who are still old-fashioned enough not to walk right in the front door, or those who like the old ways better.

After all, as Seth Minger, one of the two, is always saying, it's all a part of it. On his layoff days, Seth will corner you and get right up in your face with a load of whiskey-breathed wisdom. If you're sneaked into town to drink while the weeds take over the corn and the plow ain't touched cotton in days, then gittin a bottle out the back window and drinkin it in the lot, pitchin gravel at cats, is all a part of it, Seth opines.

You take a man who's forgot how to get laid back and shiftless once in a while, and you got somebody who's done forgot who he is. Man got weeds in his head needs tending same's them in the field. Got the belly catches that bring on bad dreams, kill vision, and keep you from getting’ all the feel off good pussy when you come onto a speck. No sir. Man's got to have a nip now and then to clear thangs up.

Smith has always listened to Seth, never chided. So though the men have never actually drunk with Smith, they feel him somehow on their side, or at least not against them. They come over in high spirits.

Jim, my man, Seth sings. "They's something in this bottle gonna loosen yo ass up. Yessuh, my ole time good buddy. This here poison gonna cure you up."

"FILTH, Smith hollers, stomping his foot. FILTH, FILTH, FILTH! Want me to tell you ‘bout filth, by God.

The men are so shocked and surprised that they lose their footing in the loose gravel.

I hear they pump it right out in the air. They say it just wanders around till somebody puts up a rod, catches a bunch, and pipes it into the house so it can spread all over the fambly and the home. That damn devil box can pull out the brain and soul faster’n a mule can suck raisins out of a muffin.

Uh-huh, Seth Minger says. Do it ever time, Doctah Smith. The men withdraw over toward the lot corner to sit in the shade and drink off what Smith has laid on.

Smith is sitting on the front seat of the old Plymouth. Cold and stern, eyeballs caged, he is circling closer every minute to the black heart of television. He has it on the run this time, by God. He knows it, and it knows it too.

Oh, sweet precious Lord Jesus in heaven, how'd he ever let such a devil box in his home in the first place? Huh? How? Hadn't he told Micenda straight off that if she wanted to watch that devil box, he'd run a cord down to the chicken house or tool shed? He damn sure didn't want it in the barn near the cow. Hell, he wouldn't be able to drink milk off a cow pestered with television. No telling what it'd taste like, if, in fact, the poor thing could give a drop after ten minutes of such foolishness.

He refused to imagine what it would do to his mules, pigs, horse, and chickens, knowing them, chickens mostly excluded, to be smart critters. No siree. The tool room, and even there he wouldn't be happy about it.

And who was it took a stand against him? Why Coreen, that’s who. Coreen! Sixty-five years thinking her possessed of more sense than you'd find in a field full of womenfolk and her getting right up in his face insisting on watching the evil bastard. Coreen even talked nowdays about black rights and the equality movement like those Movement people who spend their life seeking equality insteada just, by God, being equal. At least equal, and pity the poor sumbitch who tried to treat them any different.

Movements, Smith says out loud, breaking the heat whine of the crickets and gallinippers. Movements! Hell, the fuckers couldn't move their bowels without a thousand people behind em to make it seem like the righteous thing to do.

Smith went to a meeting once, his only, ever, where he rose at the end to ask why, since the Movement started, you couldn't find a handful of young men capable of doing a damn thing cept sidlin up to the dole and gettin the payoff they collected ever month for havin their balls cut off. Why the women were slippin around all darty-eyed and crazy since the men'd gone soft and bad. And why bein free meant not knowing how to do anything, not a dad damn thing, including care, for anything, cept gettin another doke cigarette.

Smith was especially hateful of marijuana, knowing it to be foreign and evil. The local marijuana plant called gully weed or goofer was another thing entirely. Gully weed, goofer, jimpson, cowpie shrooms, morning-glory seeds, and wild mustard pollen were sacred, local, and filled with powers a man might deal with and be blessed by if he could learn to handle em right. But marijuana? Smith would say. Hell, you can tell by the name it's foreign and no count.

"Doke cigarettes. GODDAMNED DOKE CIGARETTES!" Smith had shouted at the man on the podium, with whom, it seemed, he shared only color.

There's a hard grain of truth in what you say, my man, the high-dressed Movement official agreed. We're studying the issue this very minute and hope to come up with programs that address what we can all agree are unfortunate spin-offs of our community’s quest for equality. We can only continue our research and pledge our best efforts. We can only assure you that we share your concerns.

Who these 'we' who doin a study and has my ‘shared concerns’? Smith demanded. "And just who the hell you callin 'my man?’ I ain't nearbout yo man, nigger." But the audience sided with the suit and the government talk, and laughed Smith to his chair.

The man avoided Smith so cleverly after the meeting broke up that it took all Smith's cunning to get the few, not-even-kinky hairs off the padded shoulder of the man's suit coat. And it was only two weeks later when Micenda burst in on Jim's prayer room, crying and blubbering over the news flash that the Reverend Thomas Runard had been hospitalized and was close to death. She was telling how Runard had gotten a bite of food caught in his windpipe and nearly suffocated in a famous Washington restaurant when she became aware that Smith was sitting before a small clay doll, four hairs embedded in its head and a willow leaf stuffed in its mouth hole.

Micenda passed out across the old card table covered with bottles, vials, and bowls. Broke one of the table legs and spilled root oils everywhere.

Shit sticks, Smith cursed, exasperated. That woman'll ever make a mess.

Still grumbling, Smith made a mix of chicory root, sledge, molebane, mustard dust, and a touch of jimpson. That'll do it, he said. She'll wander ‘round happy as a pig in shit for a week or so.

After Micenda moseyed around out of it for six days, Smith brought her down with some Low St. John the Conqueror root mixed with the pollen of mustache vine. Once down, she couldn't quite decide whether the incident was real or not. But she did decide right off not to go into Jim's prayer room again. There'd been something in his eyes. Something that reminded her of the Mambo, Nancy Hill.

But she still had Coreen on her side, and the two of them kept the TV in the house.

Micenda didn't know, but Smith did. It came down to something beside TV. Came down to Coreen having a grudge hold that hardened her heart against him, a grudge she’d been holding back for years and just waiting for a time to spring it. And so she went and sprung it over the damn TV, Smith thought. Then, of course, it wasn't three months after the TV came in the house before he began to slip, lose touch and wander powerless and pitiful where he once strode a man among men.

First things first, Smith decides. First deal with the devil in the box. Then get around to that other devil that's old and wise and strong enough to turn me crosswise with my soul.

First things first.

Television. Damn it to hell! He hated it so intensely that he'd never taken time to slip around on its weakness. Like everything else, TV has a weakness you can touch just once, but finally, and render the damned thing silly. Such is always the way with evil, Smith knows. Brand it in the open and you got a life-and-death fight on your hands. Fight it head-on and you'll find, ever time, that you're fighting your own self, somewhere, somehow, in the bargain. Nope. Better to see through it, find its vulnerable spot, and then move on the sumbitch and strip away its power. Same with everthing, Smith chuckles, wondering why he hadn't realized this before. But he knows, and chuckles at himself.

It's just light dancing on glass, Smith thinks. Cept folks gets pulled into it. They take that flat pitcher for real that's been arranged and fixed up. That's the hell of it. It's got all the unwanted and unexpected pulled out of it. And it's the unwanted and the unexpected that makes the real. It's dealing with the unwanted and unexpected that gives strength and power; that puts fire in the eye and gravel in the gut.

Two weeks in front of a TV and you ain't got strength to cut the fucker off. Get so weak that TV's the only world you have faith in yourself to deal with. Like doke cigarettes.

"SON OF A