Time of the Locust (21 page)

And it was then that Manden wondered what Jack Thompson would have thought about his boys now. The man who had brought Bed, Louisiana, to its knees when he was only nineteen, then went to New York to become the man he was to be. At least, that was the stuff of bedtime stories with their mother long ago. What would he think of his sons now? The one who lived beneath the Rocky Mountains. The one who dwelled in tunnels under the city. Jack Thompson's boys had fallen out of separate windows of the moving thing that their lives became. And his grandson, Sephiri, was floating in amniotic fluid, able to hear only his heartbeat and the muffled rumble of the world.

Manden looked into the dark tunnel. The blackness stared back at him. “We're all a long way from home,” he said.

Leaping Spirits

B
ed, Louisiana. Summer of 1940.

The old men said that Jack Thompson had too much blood in his eye. And every time his grandmother Lucy Thompson looked at him, when she was fireside to his obstinate ways and brazen nature, she was proud of him and scared to death. At such moments, she would press her hands into her soft gray tufts, her eyes twinkling from a deep chocolate, almost wrinkleless face. “Look like my Nathan is still here,” she would say, barely able to reach his shoulder to give him a pat. When she looked at Jack, she knew that his grandfather—her husband, Nathan—had returned. She was convinced of it. When Jack was born, she recorded the event on the limbs of the family tree sketched in the back of a heavy Bible, right next to their dead daughter's name, which was Annie Mae.

And when Lucy looked at young Jack Thompson's smile, the one that lit his face when he came back from the river with his sack loaded down with fish, she knew that Nathan,
her
Nathan, hadn't gone anywhere. No, he hadn't left at all after Baker and his boys hung him from that tree. After everyone had their fill of gore and rage, and the children went hoarse from cheering alongside their parents as he swung in the evening breeze, Nathan Thompson hadn't flown back to heaven like everyone thought. Lucy was sure of that now.

That day, her Nathan waited until the mob left. Then he untied himself and dropped to the ground. And Lucy understood now that it hadn't been safe for her Nathan to come by the barn where the women took her after she passed out, after she tried to fight off Simon Baker and his boys as they dragged her Nathan from the front porch and one butted her in the head with a rifle. The other women hid Lucy in the barn after that, out of sight, back there where the sows were suckling.

And when Lucy swept the porch before sunrise, she sometimes thought of the stories the old women used to tell her about the leaping spirits when she was a young girl. Those spirits that refused to move, having so much left to do and having so much they needed to right, they came back. “When a man dies badly, and he angry about movin' on, or if he got important things he want to finish first, his spirit leaps back across the gorge to the living,” they said. And that was when she understood that Nathan had become a ­leaping spirit. Lucy was sure that was what her Nathan did. How else was it that she could turn over under her quilt at night and crack her eyes to see him sitting by her side? There he was, smiling, with the same smile her grandbaby Jack had now. Yes, Lucy was sure that Nathan decided to come back when they tightened the noose around his neck, when the perfume of magnolia blossoms filled the air like perfume. He decided then to return after they were all finished with him.

Lucy had worked it over many times in her mind. Jack's grand­father Nathan untied himself after he was lynched and dropped to the ground. Then he went for a long, long walk. He strolled through the poplar groves, bogs, and wispy mounds of Spanish moss, crossed the Pearl River, and headed back up the dirt road to her porch on the bright morning their daughter Annie Mae was dying as she was giving birth to Jack. He waited until she sighed her last breath. He waited until Jack's crown arrived at the threshold of her womb. He waited for Lucy to let go of their daughter's cold hand and grab hold of Jack by the head, then the shoulders, then the arms. He waited until Lucy held little Jack in her arms, all bloody and furious. And right after she wrapped Jack up tight in the quilt that she spent all summer stitching for him, and he was all warm and new, why, that's when her Nathan made the leap. Leaping spirits. Yes, indeed. So when the strapping Jack Thompson, all of nineteen, grinned at Lucy every time she handed him a glass of sweet tea, when he cocked his head that certain way, she knew it was Nathan.

But it was the blood in his eyes that worried her. They were just like Nathan's. The way those eyes stared down at someone, even if he was taller. And here again, it seemed like those eyes glared down from a watchtower Jack built somewhere in the sky. Her grandbaby became an inert substance when people tried to make him bend. No matter the request, his response was always the same if he thought it ate at his manhood. “I ain't pickin' no cotton, and I ain't 'bout to bale no hay,” he would say.

And by Jack's nineteenth summer, the people of Bed, Louisiana, had more than enough of him. They complained of Jack's sassy mouth, which they insisted would get him killed. “He won't do right,” they said. “Why can't the boy just do what he's told?” they asked. To top all of this, when he was thirteen (and before Lucy knew or could do anything about it), Jack became Bad Man Hank's adopted son. He was his protégé in both dog fighting and gun running. No one was bold enough to say anything to Bad Man Hank, so they emptied their grievances out on Lucy's front porch over iced tea and spoon biscuits. “The boy's
too
sure,” the old men warned from rocking chairs. He was too insistent, too questioning. “It's a shame, the things he learnin' from Hank. And plus your boy got that brass-runnin' mouth. Can't no good come of it,” they said.

And even if the black people of Bed couldn't purchase anything without first drawing up an account of debt, even if the water in the creeks on their farms was diverted away from their crops, even if the Bourbon family elite ruled the land like the hand of God, what business was it of this hard-headed boy? People said that Jack was “smelling himself,” which was what some young bucks did when the scent got too strong even for their own good and they took to stirring things up. And since Jack's father was never around, and his mother and grandfather were in the ground, they shook their heads and looked to his grandmother Lucy for an answer to the problem.

But when Jack announced that he was going to marry Delia, a slip of a girl whose family had been making furniture since the first slave quarters, the town of Bed sighed with relief. The area had long ago been christened Bed for the sturdy sleeping frames the girl's great-great-grandfather made, popular with many plantation families far and wide. Lucy rejoiced in the anticipation of a family simmering her grandson's temper down and clearing his eyes. She set about embroidering handkerchiefs and canning peaches for the harvest wedding. She smiled and told herself that her Nathan decided to sit on the porch with her this time around after all. She exulted in the thought that he had finally decided to leave the impossible task of altering evil alone.

And all of this might have been true if one of Simon Baker's sons hadn't touched Delia. When they came looking for Jack at the Pearl River and told him what happened to Delia, how Judd Baker waited for her as she crossed Boudreaux Field and unleashed himself, the blood in Jack's eyes deepened, and even the Pearl River flowed in currents of ruby before him.

Upon hearing about the rape, Lucy looked everywhere for her grandson. She arrived back at the house, praying he would be there but knowing that the laws of cause and effect had already been set in motion. She saw that the shotgun was missing from its brace above the front doorway frame, where it had been since the day of Nathan Thompson's hanging. Finally, some people came to tell her that Jack shot Judd Baker, that the sheriff had organized a manhunt for him, that she had better prepare herself for a funeral, because there would be nowhere he would be safe. “There's a history,” one of the men said as he stood on Lucy's porch, barely able to look her in the eye. “He too much like his grandfather.”

A deathly silence settled over them all as they stood on the rotting planks, as they thought of what happened to Lucy's husband, Nathan.

Another man began again. “Before your boy run off, I heard Simon Baker sayin' it's time for a repeatin' and none too soon.” He gave Lucy a hard look then. “Jack's got too much of what they like to kill in him, Lucy. Can't you see that? It's him standin' up what make 'em cut him down. We all seen it before. I just hope we can get to him 'fore we got to put him in the ground.” The women pleaded to Lucy with their eyes after this, unsure if they could handle one more. One more husband. One more lover. One more nephew. One more son. One more lynching in their lifetimes, in their memories, in their dreams.

After the people left, Lucy stared into the sky for a long time. Then she stood up and went to the kitchen to get a bucket. She was going to do what she saw her Gullah grandmother do, an ebony-toned matron from the Georgia Sea Islands. Lucy went out into the yard to the pump and filled the bucket with water. Then she took the bucket to the front porch and sat down in her chair next to it. She stared into the water and began to pray. She prayed that her Nathan would help Jack get away. The wind blew across her cheeks.

Lucy looked into the bucket. The water rippled.

She could hear Jack swimming swiftly across the Pearl River, his strong, young arms cutting through the current like blades.
Go!
She could hear his legs thrashing through the water lily and rattlesnake master and bounding across the pecan groves.
Run!
He was striding on past the state line. He was running on the wind. Away from the noose. Away from her.

Lucy looked into the bucket. The water rippled.

She could see Jack running up the black silhouettes of hills and through greenish blue pastures. She could hear him bounding and panting, his footfalls pounding the earth. And when the hot, swampy air around her dissipated to a cool northern breeze, she knew her grandbaby was safe at last.

Lucy looked into the bucket. The water was still.

But now Lucy knew something else. The ending of everything was now laid out before her in a neat row: her buried children, her murdered husband, her missing grandson. The wind blew across her cheeks. “No more leapin',” she whispered, since it was clear that everyone she loved had decided not to come back again. And she was too tired to consider what the rest of the days on the porch might be like alone. Lucy sat in her chair until the long shadows of late afternoon vanished into the night, until the moon rose and fell, until the flies came to cool themselves on her cold body, a refuge from the blazing sun of the new day.

Scratch Line

J
ack Thompson ran. He did not know where he might end up. He didn't have the time to think about what he did when he was running for his life through the flesh-cutting high grass, the path that his grandmother Lucy made for him in the water of the spirits. His reasons for running were clear. How it would change the course of his life was not. But he never, even for a second, thought about letting Judd Baker live (had he done it just for Delia or for his grandfather Nathan too?). And he knew—even as he stole food and hid under bridges at the Virginia border, even when he skirted the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument in the dark and joined the other cargo and stowaways on the ferry from New Jersey, he knew he would make the scratch. He would make the line, no matter what he met when he made it. He arrived in New York City in the fall of 1940. Busted but sure of himself nonetheless.

Scratch, as old Bad Man Hank used to call it, was when it came time to determine if a pit bull dog was brave enough, if he was willing to fight in spite of everything, if he could rise from the blood and the dust and the shouts like the champion he was born to be. “If he don't make the scratch, he's a damned cur,” Hank would say. “Don't ever be a cur in nothing, boy,” he would tell Jack. And it was from Hank that young Jack Thompson learned that there were worlds beneath the one in which they were forced to live. There were rules of governance that they themselves could decide. “A man's will can't go but one way,” Hank would tell him. “Let it be of your own choosin'.”

Back in 1934, young Jack was the only one allowed to stand next to Bad Man Hank. The “Bad” stood for the gun-running and moonshine businesses he conducted. Like the other men whom people discussed in hushed voices, Hank insisted on being his own man in his own way. Infamous Hank, dark as coffee, with his opulent three-button suits and hats bought with money from mysterious sources. “I'ma train you up,” Hank told Jack. “Cuz you got that red fire in your eyes. I likes that. Don't ever lose it, boy. It'll help you see some thangs that you didn't know was there.”

The pit bull dog was Hank's love. During important events like dog fights, Jack stood next to Hank, to the envy of men twice his age. Rich in several things, Hank owned many dogs, but his favorite was a dog named Toby, a buckskin-colored canine with a shiny, stout nose. He came to matches with much pageantry to watch his dog do battle. Many men placed their bets on Toby. One hot summer evening, when Jack was thirteen, when the insects in the air were louder than the humans, he stood with Hank and the other gentlemen dog fighters in the dirt round. There were old white men descended from old money. There were refined black bootleggers and gun-runners. They were all businessmen, and this was business. But they were also curators, protectors, and preservers of lines of canine aristocracy brought over from the gray cliffs and kelly-green pastures of Ireland. They were the keepers of the Colby, Heinzel, and Corvino blood lines that coursed through the veins of these dogs of the New World.

If a dog turned away, hesitated, or sat during a pit fight, a scratch was called by the referee. It was the great moment of truth. Each spectator held his breath. For this was the final test. This was the instant when the dog who showed any weakness had to make his choice. He had to answer a question. This was the moment the dog who tore into his challenger, splitting skin, crushing bone with his teeth, and blinking in the blood spatter, got to see if his opponent had the courage to continue the challenge.

And at such dog events, silence rolled in like a fog, and all were tense, eyeing the two dogs in the ring and their dog handlers down in the pit, one for each warrior. And the men knew that for the dogs, the scratch line in the center of the pit was the equator of the earth. Each dog was brought to the opposite side by its handler, panting and drooling, preparing for the moment from its point on the axis. Each looked at the other from the miles across the scratch line drawn down the middle. Each looked into the other's eyes as if to ask the only question that mattered: “Will you quit?”

Hank and young Jack watched Toby with apprehension that day. Toby had been the most injured in the pit fight, and Hank and Jack struggled to control their trepidation, to brace themselves against the bite holes in Toby's neck and the piece of his ear flapping in the breeze. They had seen this sort of carnage before but never grew immune to its gravity. The other dog, his fur white all over, with splotches of black here and there, bit into Toby's leg early in the match.

Jack heard the
crack crack crack
over the banter around him. He heard the sound of Toby's femur breaking. Toby shifted his weight under the stronger dog, trying to free himself from his vise grip. But Toby's opponent seemed to understand his strategy right away and pressed Toby to the ground, dislocating his shoulder. But Toby quickly shifted beneath him, and the other dog lost his bite hold. Toby struggled to his feet, staggering. But suddenly, Toby turned away, unexpected and so impossible. Hank's jaw dropped, and young Jack gasped, and the men around the pit chattered nervously.

“Scratch!” shouted the referee.

All of the men were motionless and thunderstruck. From the opposite side of the ring, the other dog stood still, as if daring Toby to challenge his throne again. Then, trembling with excitement, Toby lunged forward. In the hush of the pit round, it seemed that only wind and heartbeats could be heard. He pushed forward again and again, shaking his head as if to clear his vision. Toby hauled himself to the very edge of the scratch line, the dust trampled down by blood and spit and foam and urine under his body. The two inches across might have been like two miles, and the other dog was waiting for Toby still, daring him. Toby towed himself like a boat through a swamp, his broken limbs dragging behind him until he neared his destination, the towering, powerful leg of his opponent. And with the last bit of strength in all his body, Toby bit into the other dog's leg before collapsing in front of them all.

It took a few seconds for the men to emerge from their trances. Hank was the first. “That's enough,” he said, climbing into the pit.

The owner of the winning dog, a tall red-headed man, looked on respectfully, reverently, at this ritual. And after a long silence, he said, “By God, what a warrior, Hank. He'll always be game. That's for sure.” He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief as the other men nodded somberly in agreement, and there was talk around the ring:

“Never seen one go down like this.”

“Gotta have some pups off this one.”

“Hard as nails and dying harder.”

But Bad Man Hank couldn't hear them, and he quietly held Toby, for he was not sure if the dog would survive this time. And no one knew the love Hank felt for him and the kindred sense he had; for like himself, the dog had many times looked death and destruction in the eye, as he himself had done in many business meetings, when the guns sat on one side of the table and the money on the other, and the men standing behind each pile dared the other to make a move. “The great pit bull got the heart of a lion,” Hank said at last. Then, turning to young Jack, his eyes burning, he said, “Keep that fire you got, Jack, like my Toby.” Neither of them knew that soon after that day, Hank would die in a gun shootout, and the blood in Jack's eyes would seal his fate.

And all of these things burned deeper into Jack Thompson's mind when he arrived in New York and walked the streets, stumbling in his worn shoes, his legs rubbery with fatigue. There was Lenox Avenue and Mount Olivet Baptist Church. There were little boys chasing each other around, loud and dirty. There were twin little girls, their chocolate faces like dolls cradled by their frilly yellow bonnets. They smiled at him, and he smiled back. He walked through mazes of drugstores, chop suey places, barbershops, and endless rows of tenement buildings with laundry hanging out of the windows, a great net that webbed the city. He passed a theater, and there was a poster of Daisy Richardson's legendary brown legs. Cab Calloway boo-wah boo-wah-ed in his ears. There were children, their eyes clogged with mucus, the toes poking out of their shoes, begging for money. There were women with ruined eyes and painted faces like those he saw in Louisiana juke joints and feeble men with the empty eyes of the fallen. So much was different and so much the same. And it was then that the seed of his desire to seek out something else of his own choosing, to change something around him, took root in his mind and grew.

Jack walked on. There were vendors and street hawkers, all of them bold and brash and smiling. As he walked by, one of them shouted, “Buy Eternity Tonic and live forever!” And he thought of his own mortality and what taking the life of someone else might mean, what his own death would have meant in the ring of time. And he had the thought (which came to him from a realm beyond understanding) that if he'd been killed, had Judd Baker's father or brothers caught him and hanged him as they planned, he could always come back. He could be killed and then return. Lives were like that. Spirits were like that. He knew this with great certainty when he saw his grandfather Nathan in the doorway once when he was sneaking home from Hank's place at dawn. The lamp on the table in the window illuminated his grandfather's face, so much like his own and yet so different in the way it shimmered like water. Nathan Thompson stood in the doorway holding his gun, as he had when the Klan tried to come for him, as he had on all the nights he protected his wife, Lucy, after his death. In the slow seconds, Jack opened his mouth to speak to the apparition, but in the moment he blinked and tried to ready his tongue, to ask his grandfather what it was like in the dimension in which he dwelled, he was gone.

All of that coursed through Jack Thompson's mind as he made his exodus from Bed, Louisiana, as he crossed the scratch line of 125th Street in New York City in 1940. The early part of what was being called World War II consumed the city's attention. But in the back alleys and bars and velvet-curtained rooms, people wondered and whispered, asking, “What world? Whose world?” Jack heard this back in Louisiana, too, when worn brown men talked about another war on the stoop of the town store, folding their newspapers and shaking their heads. “What world? Whose world?” they asked. One old man, who in 1919 played trumpets from the deck of the U.S.S.
Philippines
in the 803rd Pioneer Infantry Band in Brest, France, during the first World War, answered, “Don't nobody know, but it sho wasn't ours. Still ain't.”

And standing near the door of a club on a trash-littered street, Jack again listened to the old black men wonder what all the fuss was about as the jazz poured out like a hot liquid over everything. He walked on, all the way to the edges of the city, where the Hudson River rippled in dark majesty, ebbing and flowing in brackish currents. There he cried for Delia (what would become of her now that he could never return, now that what happened to her had made her someone else?) and for his grandmother Lucy, who he felt in his blood was gone, for he could no longer hear her whisper in his ears or feel her hand pat his shoulder. And that was when he put it all away in a box in his mind: the memory of his grandfather Nathan's face, the look in Judd Baker's eyes when he shot him, the love of his grandmother Lucy, what once was his sweet Delia, and the father Bad Man Hank had been. Staring into the Hudson, he closed the box and dropped it into the river for eternal safekeeping.

Then Jack Thompson turned to face the city and breathe its ferociousness. He let the smoke-charged air fill him with the promise of another life, one he would craft out of concrete and steel. He listened to the city sing. The blues swirled with the sapphire sky, and Ethel Waters's voice floated through the air. He listened to the city cry, the creak and clank of empty ice boxes and plates, and the bitter grumblings of tired women. He looked at the waiting buildings. They loomed high above, shoving against one another in the crowded skyline, daring Jack Thompson to enter their company. He turned back to the Hudson River, in awe as he looked out beyond the currents reflected in the last rays of the vermillion sun and ­beyond that to the horizon.

Years later, as he died on the concrete of a basketball court in Harlem watching the clouds move across the sky, he would have that same feeling of wonder, possibility, and love for his wife, Maria, for his boys, Manden and Horus, for all that was and all that might have been. He would come to know the secret of all things dormant, of all things risen.