breakin’, seems ta me.” He nodded. “Yessuh. Sure do hate ta break
somethin’ so pretty.” He chose another, larger hammer. “Gone have
ta do it.” He cracked the hammer down on the red box. Its plastic skin
split from one end to the other. Mr. Moultry’s teeth gripped his tongue. Mr.
Lightfoot removed the two plastic sections and regarded the smaller workings
and wires within. “Jus’ mysteries in mysteries,” he said. He put
his hand down into the toolbox and it came out holding a little wire cutter
that still had its ninety-nine-cent price sticker on it. “Now, listen
good,” he told the bomb, “don’t you burp in my face,
hear?”
“Ohhhhh God, oh Jeeeesus above, oh I’m comin’ to heaven, I’m comin’,” Mr.
Moultry gasped.
“You get there,” Mr. Lightfoot said with a faint smile, “you tell
St. Peter he’s got a fix-it-man on the way.” He
reached the cutter toward two wires—one black, the other white—that
crisscrossed at the heart of the machine.
“Wait,” Mr. Moultry whispered. “Wait…”
Mr. Lightfoot paused.
“Gotta get it off my soul,” Mr. Moultry said, his eyes as bugged as the
minstrel’s. “Gotta get light, so I can fly to heaven. Listen to me…”
“Listenin’,” Mr. Lightfoot told him as the bomb spoke on.
“Gerald and me… we… it was Gerald did the most of it, really… I didn’t
wanna have nothin’ to do with it… but… it’s set to go off at… ten in the
mornin’… day after Christmas. Hear me? Ten in the mornin’. It’s a box… full of
dynamite… and an alarm clock timer. We paid Biggun Blaylock, and he… he got it
for us.” Mr. Moultry swallowed, perhaps feeling hell’s fire under his buns.
“It’s set to blow up that civil rights museum. We… it was all Gerald’s idea,
really… decided to do it when we first heard the Lady was plannin’ on buildin’
it. Listen to me, Lightfoot!”
“Listenin’,” he said slowly and calmly.
“Gerald planted it, somewhere around that museum. Could be in the
recreation center. I don’t know where it is, I swear to God… but it’s over
there right now, and it’s gonna go off at ten in the mornin’, day after
Christmas.”
“That right?” Mr. Lightfoot asked.
“Yes! It’s the truth, and God take me to heaven ’cause I’ve freed my
soul!”
“Uh-huh.” Mr. Lightfoot reached out. He gripped the black wire with the
cutter and snip, the black wire was parted. The bomb, however, would not be
silenced so easily.
“Do you hear me, Lightfoot? That box of dynamite is over there right this
minute!”
Mr. Lightfoot eased the cutter’s blades around the white wire. A muscle
clenched in his jaw, and sweat sparkled on his cheeks like diamond dust. He
said, “No, it ain’t.”
“Ain’t what?”
“Over there. Not no more. Done found it.
Gone cut this wire now.” His hand trembled. “Might blow
if I’ve cut the wrong wire first.”
“God have mercy,” Mr. Moultry whined. “Oh Jesus I swear I’ll be a good
boy every day of my life if you just let me live!”
“I’m cuttin’,” Mr. Lightfoot said.
Mr. Moultry squeezed his eyes shut. The cutter went snip.
KA-BOOOMMMMM!
In that tremendous roar of destruction and fire, Mr. Moultry screamed.
When his screaming wound down, he heard not the harps of the angels nor
the devils singing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” He heard: “Heh heh heh
heh.”
Mr. Moultry’s eyes flew open.
Mr. Lightfoot was grinning. He blew a little flicker of blue flame from
the snipped end of the white wire. The bomb was tamed and mute. Mr. Lightfoot
spoke in a voice made hoarse by the tremendous yell he’d just yelled into Mr.
Moultry’s ear. “Beggin’ your pardon, suh,” he said. “Jus’
couldn’t pass it up.”
Mr. Moultry seemed to deflate, as if he’d been punctured. With a slow
hissing sound, he fainted dead away.
5
Sixteen Drops of Blood
I’M BACK.
The time bomb box full of dynamite—with an extra stick thrown in from the
gracious hand of Biggun Blaylock—had indeed been found, not long after I had
informed the Lady who my dream visitors were. I must’ve remembered that
picture and kept it in the back of my head, and then after the cross-burning
and my witnessing Mr. Hargison and Mr. Moultry buy the box from Biggun
Blaylock, I must’ve known subconsciously what the box was. That’s why I’d
taken to knocking my alarm clock off my bedside table. The only hitch in this
theory is that I’d never seen pictures of the girls who’d died at the 16th
Street Baptist Church until at the museum. I don’t think. Maybe they were in
the Life magazine. Mom had thrown it out, though, so I can’t say for sure.
The Lady put it together as soon as I’d told her. She organized everyone
at the reception to start looking for a wooden box either in the recreation
center, the civil rights museum, or in the vicinity outside. Nobody could find
it, and we tore that place up searching. Then the Lady recalled that Mr.
Hargison was a postman. Right outside the center, on the corner of Buckhart
Street, was a mailbox. Charles Damaronde held Gavin by his heels as he slid
into the mailbox, and we heard his muffled voice say, “Here it is!” He
couldn’t bring it up, though, because it was too heavy. Sheriff Marchette was
called, and he came with Zephyr’s postmaster, Mr. Conrad Oatman, who brought
the mailbox key. In that box was enough dynamite to blow up the recreation
center, the civil rights museum, and two or three houses across the street.
Evidently, four hundred dollars was enough to buy a mighty big bang.
Mr. Hargison, knowing what times the mail was picked up and that the
mailbox would not be opened again until sometime on the afternoon of December
26th, had set the alarm clock timer for ten on the dot. Sheriff Marchette said
the bomb had been constructed by a professional, because you could adjust the
timer to either twelve, twenty-four, or forty-eight hours. He told the Lady
that he didn’t want Mr. Hargison or Mr. Moultry to know the bomb had been
found yet, not until the innards were dusted for fingerprints. Mom and I had
told Dad when we’d gotten home from the recreation center, and I have to say
that both he and Sheriff Marchette did a good job of not spilling the beans
when they were at Dick Moultry’s house and Mr. Hargison walked in. Mr.
Moultry’s confession turned out to be the icing on the cake, since the time
bomb yielded five prints that perfectly matched Mr. Hargison’s. So those two
were taken off pretty soon to visit the Federal Bureau of Investigation office
in Birmingham, and needless to say their names were ticked off the roster of
the residents of my hometown.
The civil rights museum had its grand opening. I had no more dreams of
the four black girls. But if I ever wanted to see them again, I knew where to
go.
The falling of the bomb from a jet plane and the finding of a Ku Klux
Klan bomb in a mailbox outside the civil rights museum kept Zephyr buzzing in
the days following Christmas. Ben, Johnny, and I debated whether Mr. Lightfoot
had ever been really afraid of the bomb or not. Ben said he had been, while
Johnny and I took the position that Mr. Lightfoot was like Nemo Curliss;
instead of baseball, though, Mr. Lightfoot’s natural affinity was to anything
mechanical, even a bomb, so when he stared those wires down he knew exactly
what he was doing every second. Ben, incidentally, had had an interesting
experience in Birmingham. He and his mom and dad had stayed with Ben’s uncle
Miles, who worked at a downtown bank. Miles had given Ben a tour of the vault,
and all Ben could talk about was the smell of money, how green it was and how
pretty. He said Miles had actually let him hold a pack of fifty
one-hundred-dollar bills, and Ben’s fingers were still tingling. Ben announced
that he didn’t know what he was going to do in this life, but as far as
possible it was going to involve lots and lots of money. Johnny and I just
laughed at him. We missed Davy Ray, because we knew what his comment would’ve
been.
Johnny had asked for and received two Christmas presents. One was a
policeman’s kit, complete with honorary badge, fingerprint powder, handcuffs,
burglar dust that got on the shoes of burglars and only showed up under
ultraviolet light, and a policeman’s handbook. The other was a wooden display
case with little shelves in it, to show his arrowhead collection. He filled it
up except for one shelf, which was reserved for a certain smooth black
arrowhead if Chief Five Thunders ever decided to give it up again.
A question remained about Mr. Lightfoot and the bomb. Mom voiced it two
nights after Christmas, as a cold rain fell on Zephyr.
“Tom?” she said. We were all sitting in the front room, with the
fireplace blazing. You couldn’t have pried The Golden Apples of the Sun out of
my hands with a crowbar. “What made Mr. Lightfoot go to Dick Moultry’s house,
anyway? I wouldn’t have thought that was somethin’ he might’ve volunteered to
do.”
Dad didn’t answer.
Just as parents have sixth senses about their children, so, too, do
children about their parents. I lowered my book. Dad continued to read the
newspaper.
“Tom? Do you know what made Mr. Lightfoot do it?”
He cleared his throat. “Kind of,” he said quietly.
“Well, what was it?”
“I guess… I had somethin’ to do with it.”
“You did? How?”
He lowered the paper, realizing there was no way out but the truth. “I…
asked the Lady for help.”
Mom sat in stunned silence. Rain struck the windows and the fireplace log
popped, and still she didn’t budge.
“I figured she was the only chance Dick had. After what she did with
Biggun Blaylock’s ammo bag… I thought she could help him. And I was right, it
appears. She called Marcus Lightfoot while I was there at her house.”
“Her house? I can’t believe this! You went to the Lady’s house?”
“Not just to it. Inside it. I sat down in her chair. I drank a cup of her
coffee.” He shrugged. “I suppose I was expectin’ shrunken heads on the walls
and black widow spiders in every corner. I didn’t know she was religious.”
“To the Lady’s house,” Mom said. “I just can’t believe it! And after all
this time when you were so afraid of her!”
“I wasn’t afraid of her,” Dad corrected Mom. “I was just… a little
skittish, that’s all.”
“And she said she’d help Dick Moultry? Even when she knew he’d had a hand
in settin’ that time bomb?”
“Well… it wasn’t quite that simple,” my father admitted.
“Oh?” Mom waited. When Dad offered no more information, Mom said, “I’d
like to hear it.”
“She made me promise to come back. She said she could look at me and tell
I was bein’ eaten up alive. She said it showed in your face and in Cory’s,
too. She said we were all livin’ under the strain of that dead man at the
bottom of Saxon’s Lake.” Dad put the newspaper down and watched the fire. “And
you know what? She’s right. I promised to go back to see her tomorrow evenin’
at seven o’clock. I was gonna tell you, eventually. Or maybe I wasn’t, I don’t
know.”
“Pride, pride,” Mom scolded him. “You mean to tell me you did for Dick
Moultry what you wouldn’t do for me?”
“No. It’s just that I wasn’t ready. Dick needed help. I found it for him.
And now I’m ready to find it for myself and both of you, too.”
Mom got up from her chair. She stood behind my father, and she put her
hands on his shoulders and leaned her chin against his head. I watched their
shadows merge. He reached up and put his arm around her neck. They stayed that
way for a moment, heart-close, as the fire cracked and sizzled.
It was time to go see the Lady.
When we arrived at her house at ten minutes before seven o’clock, Mr.
Damaronde answered the door. Dad had no qualms about crossing the threshold;
his fear of the Lady was gone. The Moon Man came out, clad in his robe and
slippers, and offered us some pretzels. Mrs. Damaronde put on a pot of
coffee—the New Orleans kind with chicory, she said—and we waited in the front
room until the Lady was ready to see us.
I was keeping my suspicions about Dr. Lezander to myself. I still
couldn’t let my heart believe that Dr. Lezander, who had always been so kind
and gentle to Rebel, might be a murderer. I had the connection of the two
parrots, but there was nothing to connect Dr. Lezander with the dead man
except a green feather, and that was just my theory. So he didn’t like milk
and he was a night owl; did that make him a killer? Before I told my parents,
I would need something more solid to go on.
We didn’t have to wait very long. Mr. Damaronde asked us to come back
with him, and he led us not to the Lady’s bedroom but to another room across
the hallway. In it, the Lady was sitting in a high-backed chair behind a
folding card table. She wore not a voodoo robe or a wizard’s cap, but just a
plain dark gray dress with a lapel pin in the shape of a dancing harlequin. On
the floor of what was obviously her consultation room was a rug of woven
reeds, and a crooked tree grew from a big clay pot in the corner. The walls
were painted beige and unadorned. Mr. Damaronde closed the door and the Lady
said, “Sit down, Tom.”
Dad obeyed. I could tell he was nervous, because I could hear his throat
click when he swallowed. He flinched a little when the Lady reached down
beside her chair and brought up a doctor’s bag. She placed it on the table and
unzipped it.
“Is this gonna hurt?” Dad asked.
“It might. Depends.”
“On what?”
“How deep we have to cut to get at the truth,” she answered. She reached
into the bag and brought out something wrapped up in blue cloth. Then a silver
filigreed box came out, followed by a deck of cards. She brought out a sheet
of typing paper. In the overhead light I saw the Nifty watermark; it was the
same brand of paper I used. Last out of the bag was a pill bottle containing
three polished river pebbles: one ebony, one reddish-brown, one white with
