The Sound of Building Coffins Read online

She had called it. It was here. It remained.

  She’d never sent it back, didn’t know how. Wasn’t sure if she would want to. It had been so beautiful, this thing that consumed both life and death before retiring to the stagnant waters of the bog. Maybe, she thought, it would eventually leave this world of its own accord. Maybe it would die in the swamp. Or maybe it was sleeping and biding its time.

  Awaiting rebirth.

  She decided that if it did return, she would be ready for it.

  “Goddamn shoes. Always in my way.”

  “Where that little girl go?”

  And so she had waited. Going about her day to day life, but always, in the back of her mind; waiting.

  Now.

  Fifty-three years had passed with no sign of the thing that had gone into the canal. And now Coco Robicheaux, the Cajun bogeyman of children’s’ tales, had seen fit to plague her sleep with dreams; old, sour memories mixed with something new, and something darker still at the creases of her mind. In dreams, Coco Robicheaux is looking for her—without benefit of eyes.

  Frances had known none of it. Had only walked around the house, leaving her damn shoes everywhere and searching for the ghost of her long dead Maria.

  “Damn shoes.”

  In fifty-three years not a word had been spoken between the sisters. Not to each other.

  “Maria?”

  Not directly.

  Chapter twenty-one

  Typhus

  The sky was dark and moonless as the sound of footfalls thudded past. Nowhere near sleep, Typhus Morningstar heard them perfectly and ignored them completely.

  The youngest of the Morningstar clan hadn’t slept much since the death of their father fifteen years ago. With so many unanswered questions having plagued him since then, Typhus’ youthful knack for understanding had long since left him of its own accord. Served him right, he figured, for being so smug in his judgment of grown-ups back then—their avoidance of bothersome truths being the last thing he really did fully understand nowadays.

  In the now and so many years after Noonday’s passing, it was just Typhus, Malaria and Dropsy who kept on at the old house—along with the occasional and welcome addition of young West Bolden. For lack of anywhere else to go, Diphtheria’s nine-year-old spent most of his nights (and a great many of his days) here at the Morningstar place while his mother plied her trade on Basin Street.

  Over the years Dropsy had grown from wispy and thin to thick and sturdy, but his inner transformation to manhood had been less plain. While the other Morningstar children allowed their spirits to harden at least marginally after the loss of their father, Dropsy had maintained a steadfast tenderness, never relinquishing his innocent fascination for everyday things. Some of Typhus’ earliest memories were of his older brother’s eyes examining the journeys of ordinary threads through ordinary fabric (be it shirt, rug, or sock) for long minutes. He imagined Dropsy’s wide brown eyes searching for hints of code, probing imagined or hidden meanings within the woven color of fabric—as if the fabric of an old shirt might also contain answers to the fabric of the universe itself. Dropsy, now twenty-five, never lost this odd penchant for rug pondering—and Typhus often found himself grinning with envy at the sight.

  Conversely, the trauma of their father’s death had affected every inch of Typhus—or lack thereof. Quite literally: he had not grown an inch since that night—now standing no more than four and a half feet tall at age twenty-four.

  With the coming of his own manhood, Typhus’ interests had become decidedly adult in nature, and, having the body-size of a child, such inclinations proved problematic. In his twenty-four years, Typhus had only known one woman in the biblical sense—that being an act of charity, a gift from Diphtheria on his sixteenth birthday. Diphtheria had paid an undisclosed sum to a pretty crib colleague called Hattie to take young Typhus on a night-long tour of her worldly skills. Although the experience had proved educational, there had been neither love nor convincing tenderness involved, and so the encounter served mainly to underline the profound sense of longing in his heart. With this dull, bitter longing came a dull ache, and with the dull ache came a dull anger, and with the dull anger came dull fear—and that fear was of being alone. Typhus began to wonder if a man in the shape of a boy could ever realistically hope to attain the tender touch of woman neither sister, nor whore, nor whore-hired-by-sister.

  Doctor Jack’s keen spiritual radar picked up on the boy’s blue condition shortly after its manifestation, and he wasted no time addressing the problem in his own unique way:

  “The love of a face you’ll never know is the purest love of all, Typhus,” he had proclaimed with soft eyes as he handed Typhus a paper present intended as cure. “That’s because the love you feel for an unknowing stranger has no conditions or demands. So, Typhus, give your love to Lily—and know that she will neither return your love nor break your heart. There is safety in a smile like hers.” Doctor Jack’s gaze shifted from Typhus’ eyes before concluding, just under breath, “If safety is a thing that you require.”

  The gift was a picture of Lily—and it just happened that Lily was the prettiest lady Typhus had ever laid eyes on. So pretty, in fact, that Doctor Jack’s final mumbled sentence failed to register its intended warning in Typhus’ dizzy heart.

  The photograph was printed on heavy, smooth paper measuring five by seven inches, with the following words imprinted in loopy French type along the bottom margin:

  “Daliet Aristo Finish, 517 Frenchmen Street, New Orleans.”

  The paper itself was light brown in color, dressed in sundry shades of chocolate ink with light burgundy highlights. A ham-handed studio artist had filled in Lily’s dress with pure white, giving the garment a detached and artificial quality. Its stark paleness provided an illusion of weightlessness, the dress appearing to drift a millimeter or so above the photo’s surface just beyond the two-dimensional logic of Lily’s chocolate-burgundy world. Anomaly of white aside, the dress infused Lily with an oddly virginal quality, complimenting her child’s smile and sparkling eyes; a miracle of irony within her rectangle of existence.

  Lily sat in her chair; knees tight together, right hand in a loose fist on her lap. Her hair was thick and piled high, wisps of it escaping their frilly ties, tickling pretty at the edges of her eyes. Exaggerated and round, her deep black pupils and gently drooping eyelids suggested the effect of opium as they gazed at an odd angle, apparently seeing something of casual interest just left of the man behind the camera. Beside her was a small round table holding two shot glasses (one half-full, the other half-empty), a bottle of Raleigh Rye, a small round clock, a circular metallic pillbox, and a few other small objects (cosmetic items?) which Typhus couldn’t name. On the wall behind her hung several oddly shaped hand-carved frames tenanting images ranging from the vaguely religious to the vaguely obscene.

  Diminishing to a thin edge of lace, the material of Lily’s nightgown encircled her throat elegantly, its hem riding less than an inch above her knees. Her left hand cupped her right breast; a crude gesture filtering itself through an improvised taxonomy of grace, defending its existence in terms of dim-witted innocence. Lily’s face was a tender juncture of perfect lines; slight curves converging and intersecting, swooping and gliding, her full lips barely meeting in an uneven smile, coaxing the slightest dimple from her right cheek, betraying the presence of any African blood that potentially swam beneath fair skin. In Storyville, they called girls with Lily’s complexion “high yella.” High yella also meant high-priced.

  Typhus didn’t know how old the photograph might be; there was no date assigned it by the Daliet Aristo photographic studio. Had no way of knowing anything of Lily’s personal history—or even of the photo itself. He’d never seen her face in the flesh and didn’t realistically ever hope to do so. There were many whores in the district and he’d only occasion to see a handful, all of whom were friends or associates of his sister. No matter, for he had no intention of seeking Lily out in person—conc
rete knowledge or physical contact with her, he believed, could only harm the perfect type of love which Doctor Jack had described to him.

  Could be that Lily was an old woman by now. Maybe dead. Her name probably wasn’t even Lily; just a pretty name for a pretty picture made up by Doctor Jack. Maybe this photo had passed through many hands before it found its way to his own; Typhus only one in a long line of Lily’s smitten admirers. Maybe Doctor Jack had been smitten himself at one time. No matter.

  Typhus, of course, knew what pictures like this were for. They were meant as useful mementos for sailors preparing for long trips on high seas—for inspiration in moments of lonely, self-inflicted passion. No doubt this photo had seen its fair share of such inspiration—Typhus even noted a water stain near the lower left corner with a suspicious yellow quality about it. But he reckoned Lily to be passed around no more. She was his to keep, and he made a promise to always keep her safe:

  “I’ll take care of you, Miss Lily,” he bargained sincerely in the direction of her perfect dimple, “I’ll keep you from harm caused by fire, water, insect or other. And all you have to do in return is be what you are. Nothing else required at your end, Miss Lily. I promise you that and cross my heart so-help-me-Jesus-amen.”

  Which doesn’t mean to say that Typhus never indulged a little self-inflicted passion of his own on her behalf—but he knew his paper Lily would bear him no grudge for such. When he felt good on her account, it was from the love in his heart—the feeling from down below being mere punctuation. Hattie Covington, a lady in the flesh with all attendant sweating and moaning and huffing and touching, had inspired nowhere near this kind of good feeling in Typhus on his sixteenth birthday. With his paper Lily it felt better, it was different.

  Love was the difference.

  *

  Thoughts of Lily evaporated with the sound of sliding naked feet in the kitchen doorway. Typhus looked up to find an expression of sleepy concern animating his brother’s squinting eyes.

  “What’s the matter, Dropsy?” Typhus said with his back to his brother, brushing bits of blackish dirt from the surreal white of Lily’s dress.

  Dropsy paused, wiping sleep from two eyes with one hand. “Heard a sound. Someone outside.”

  “No one’s outside. Get back to bed.” Typhus turned to face Dropsy with Lily held behind him.

  Apparently startled by the sound of the two brothers, the owner of the footfalls outside broke into a run, crackling and thumping through grass towards a general fade.

  Dropsy: “What that, then?”

  “Whattaya think?”

  A pause. “Think it’s Daddy.” A yawn.

  “Mebbe so, Dropsy, mebbe so.”

  Dropsy’s yawn introduced air into Typhus’ nostrils, stale and awful smelling; a reminder of his brother’s taste for chaw. Typhus crinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes.

  “Shouldn’t we go see what he brought this time, Typhus?”

  “It’ll keep till morning. Too dark now. Might go and step on whatever it is when it’s so dark. Plus, might not be Daddy. Might be a bear.”

  Dropsy grinned and raised an eyebrow. Bears were pretty much unheard of around St. John’s.

  “Or maybe Coco Robicheaux,” added Typhus with playful menace, referring to the Cajun bogeyman their father used to tell tales of when they were small. According to the stories, Coco Robicheaux was a beast of a man who bathed in foul swamp water, dressed in dismal rags, and kept a long, braided and filthy beard. Into this horrible beard had been woven many pockets, and in the pockets were little knives and mysterious tools. Their father had grimly informed them that Coco Robicheaux made it his life’s work to pay terrible retribution upon children who stole cookies, talked back, and forgot chores. Although it was never entirely clear what Coco Robicheaux would specifically do with the little knives and tools kept in his beard, one thing was certain; if you ever lied to your mother, Coco Robicheaux would eat you.

  Dropsy’s expression went sour with minor worry as he lowered his head and trudged slowly back towards the bedroom.

  “’Night, Typhus.”

  “’Night, Dropsy.”

  “Typhus?” Dropsy turned in the doorway.

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope it’s meat this time. I been hungry for meat. Ain’t had any in a while.”

  Typhus smiled. “Well, I’ll just bet it is. Now get on to bed and we’ll have us a look-see soon as the sun come up.”

  Dropsy yawned once more before disappearing into the dark of the sleeping quarters. Typhus heard the crunch of straw as his older brother settled in.

  Chapter twenty-two

  Shoes

  The consensus among the Morningstar family was that their mysterious benefactor and dead patriarch were one and the same. Typhus secretly knew otherwise, while sympathizing with his family’s need to believe what could not be so. The phantom’s mystifying persistence had certainly offered more questions than answers—and the idea of a fatherly ghost offered at least some token sense of comfort. Typhus supposed such an explanation was as likely as any other if a person didn’t care to think things through.

  Nine days after their father’s death, the phantom had made its debut. In that terrible time of grieving, temperatures had plummeted in South Louisiana, stove coal becoming a scarce commodity. Then one chilly Tuesday morning, Malaria opened the front door and let out a yell, “Lord God, thankee Jesus! Amen, amen and a-men some more!” The rest of the Morningstars rushed to bear witness. Shivering, hungry, and with hearts nowhere near mended, they were in a vulnerable frame of mind where potential miracles were concerned. But there it was.

  A bundle of purple and white boskoyo blooms tied with a note, and beside the blooms sat a huge crateful of beautiful black coal. The note was a small square of paper (folded four times smaller) and, upon the unfolding, a single word had been written in pencil:

  simpithees

  The phantom’s gift of coal was enough to see the Morningstars through every cold night for the rest of that year, and several of the next.

  Time soon revealed the coal as mere introduction. In subsequent weeks the Morningstar family found itself in need of basic articles for living, and as need arose, answers appeared on their doorstep. If the quantity was any less than bountiful, the gift usually came with a note of apology,

  sory iffit ayn anuff.

  Blankets, coffee beans, grain, fruit, tools, clothes, animals for eating, and fresh water for drinking—nothing seemed beyond the generosity of the Morningstar family’s phantom benefactor. If a conversation had taken place in the house regarding a particular need, that need would soon be satisfied. It was as if someone was spying on them; listening in, watching, taking notes and making sure. And the giving never stopped. Fifteen years later and the Morningstar family’s benefactor had kept on benefacting.

  Believing the phantom to be a ghostly representation of their own father had felt natural and good to the Morningstars—and the theory seemed approximately proven the first time the phantom passed over muddy ground, leaving clear, unshod footprints. Always first to rise, Malaria discovered the tracks at dawn, and she immediately retrieved a pair of her father’s shoes from the house. Her face beamed as she compared the track’s size to the length and girth of a corresponding shoe:

  “See? A perfect fit!” Malaria announced authoritatively, at a volume intended for all to hear.

  The siblings were suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of guilt for burying their father without shoes on his feet. From that night on, Malaria made sure a pair of her father’s shoes stood prominently by the doorstep with a note tied on, reading, in Malaria’s perfect handwriting:

  Take these, Father, and thank you.

  From Your Loving Children.

  The shoes sat unmolested with Malaria’s note for better than a month. Then, when a particular bad growing season presented itself and the market price of corn went beyond the Morningstars’ means, two bushels of near-ripe corn appeared, and the shoes were gone. A note ha
d been left:

  mitee nis shoos thankee.

  Father Morningstar had owned and kept three pair of shoes in his adult life, so the remaining two pairs were left as offerings on subsequent nights. It was not long before all three pairs were retrieved—replaced with badly spelled “thank you” notes and fresh parcels of needed things.

  From that point on, when the ground was damp and items appeared, tracks left behind were clearly made by the shoes of Noonday Morningstar. This only helped solidify the notion of ghostly intervention—despite the obvious truth of how the phantom had acquired means of such evidence. But the fantasy was made easier to believe—and the Morningstars desperately needed a thing to believe.

  The truth had dawned on Typhus the morning Malaria left that first pair of shoes on the stoop. It struck him how Malaria’s own “thank you” note had been so neat and perfect. This wasn’t only true of Malaria; the whole family possessed first-rate writing skills, and their writing excelled because their father had taught them well. To the contrary, this phantom was clearly no good at spelling, and his handwriting was equally substandard. On the basis of this evidence alone, Typhus deducted the phantom could not be Noonday Morningstar. Typhus kept this observation to himself. The rest seemed so reassured by the idea of having their father back, even in this distant way, Typhus would not rob them of such small and harmless hope.

  Before tonight, Typhus’ sleeping troubles had provided him a single benefit—the right to bear exclusive ear-witness to the footfalls of the phantom. He had never considered sharing these nocturnal dramas with his siblings—to do so might encourage them to investigate or confront, which may be construed as ungrateful in the eyes of their benefactor—whoever it might be. After all, the phantom had given endlessly to the family, and all he seemed to want in return was his continued anonymity.