The Sound of Building Coffins Page 26

  Her eyes have wandered about ten yards beyond the spot where he stands; there is a man and a boy there, they are playing. The boy is on his knees, stacking innumerable buttons into clever, intricate, and recognizable structures; a chapel, a plantation house, an automobile with wheels that turn—all made from various buttons of stone, metal, cloth, and wood. The man laughs and jumps, shadow-boxing near the perfectly balanced button-structures, pulling his punches just short of toppling them over. The boy looks mildly annoyed but grins as the man skillfully endangers but never destroys.

  A beautiful young coffee-skinned woman watches the two play; her sweet smile dances below troubled eyes. The boxing man is her brother, the young boy her only child – both having been so devastatingly lost to her; and now: so wondrously found. Still, her eyes speak of a deep hole that remains unfilled. Someone important is missing – the love of her life. A vivid memory of her lover’s eyes – boring into her own in her moment of dying, angry and hurt – weighs heavy on her soul. She bears him no ill will for having removed her from the world of the living, for having murdered her – only wants for him to rejoin her and their child, to see that everything will be all right and always has been. It is not yet his time, she understands. He has a certain penance to pay above before he can be received below. Such effortless wisdom and spiritual clarity are newly acquired by Diphtheria in death – they do little to ease her longing – but she allows herself comfort in the knowing. In the Spiritworld there is a different kind of faith; and that is the blind, baseless belief that the living will somehow, and against all odds, find their way to redemption.

  “I know these two,” Malvina says, pointing towards the man and boy. “These faces I know.” Malvina is trying to place them in her mind. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Thank you, dear. They’re my kin. My youngest son and my only grandson. Dropsy and West. And the pretty young lady is my daughter, Diphtheria.”

  “Of course they are,” she says with a smile. “But why here? They all so young—”

  “Miss Malvina, I’d like you to meet my oldest son, Typhus,” he interrupts. “Today is his first day in this place. And I’ve got a special surprise waiting on him—just like the surprise I got for you a bit later on.”

  “We’ve met,” Typhus says with a cautious smile. “In the shop. Miss Malvina comes in regular.”

  “Hello, Typhus,” says Malvina, unable to pull her gaze from the amazing button structures of West Bolden. “Can this be?” Her eyes are full of wonder.

  “Now comes the good part, and I’m glad you could be here to bear witness. It is a moment my family has long waited on.” Noonday has fixed his stare on a swirl of motion from a nearing river cloud, his eyes brightening steadily. “And there she is, the one and only love of my life.”

  “Typhus,” a breathless female voice can be heard. “Typhus, come here to me.”

  Typhus’ eyes go wide. His freshly unencumbered heart is melting fast.

  A woman is walking towards them from the murk, her arms extended.

  “Mama?” It’s the first time the word has ever passed his lips in the presence of the woman it was made for, but it won’t be the last, not by far.

  The woman Typhus has only known as Lily for so many years is smiling at him, her deep brown eyes clouding the water about her drifting hair with trails of lilac tears.

  “As beautiful a sight as I’ve ever seen,” says Malvina, enjoying the spectacle of mother and son united in death. Then, in a whisper; “Noonday, how did Typhus die? I didn’t even know he was sick.”

  “Wasn’t sick a’tall. I killed him myself, just this morning.” Noonday says this with a tone of fatherly pride that Malvina finds both distasteful and inappropriate. He ignores her reprimanding stare and continues: “Now, just look at them. Both dead, both happy.” His voice takes on the rhythm of a sermon: “So long in pain before today. No more, no more; Praise Jesus, no more, and amen!”

  “It’s wrong to kill children, sir,” Malvina scolds. “If that’s really what you done.”

  “Surely it is,” Noonday concedes. “But he was nearly dead already, I just guided him that last little bit. Long story. Tell ya all about it later, sister—if ya don’t mind. Lots of time later, not much now.”

  Malvina tightens her face, never having cared for backtalk (much less shushing) from a person so much younger than herself. Noonday just smiles, takes her again by the hand, leading her past Typhus and the beautiful woman whose name is Gloria and not Lily, into a thick of gathering light. Malvina’s mind fills with uneasy questions as they walk past the night’s first reunion, recalling recent feelings of premonition. “Something bad gonna happen, Noonday. I just don’t know what.”

  He squeezes her hand once more. “Now, whatever may come will do so on its own steam, and that don’t necessarily reflect on you or me or things we mighta done in our past and above water. Plenty of blame to pass around. Ain’t no one innocent here.” His smile fades. “Don’t be afraid ner concerned, but I want you to come with me.”

  “Where to?”

  “Some folks been waitin’ on ya. Be glad to see you, too. See if we can’t straighten out all this fear and bad feelin’.” A pause. “See if we can’t make things right once and for all.”

  “What folks?”

  “Will o’ the Wisps.” Noonday Morningstar looks down, slips his naked feet into the two shoes that had caused Malvina to fall. He places an arm around her trembling, transparent shoulders. “Just come along. You’ll see.”

  The two walk forward into murky brown, towards a blue ball of light, a will o’ the wisp. As they get closer the light takes on the shape of a woman. Long dead, the woman is not a ghost in this place.

  Chapter forty-nine

  Spiritworld

  “Maria?”

  “Hello, Auntie,” replies the slender young mulatto woman. She is cradling a small, white blanket in her hands—it is empty and unsoiled. Malvina has seen this blanket before.

  “Child, child, I can hardly believe my own eyes.” Malvina is seeing and speaking with her long dead niece, her sister Frances’ lost child. Her heart is booming.

  “Why so hard to believe? For you this is a dream.”

  “But it isn’t,” Malvina says.

  “I have to go.” Maria averts her eyes as she speaks.

  “Don’t go, Maria. Stay and talk with me awhile. There’s so much I want to, that I need to—”

  “I lost my baby, Auntie Malvina. Michael’s his name.”

  “I know his name, Maria—”

  “Have to find him. Have to go now.” Maria backs away, then turns—walks off into the thick brown of river.

  “Let me help you,” Malvina pleads, moving to follow—but Noonday puts a firm hand on her shoulder, holds her steady.

  “Let her go. She’ll be all right. This is something she needs to do. A pain she needs to feel.”

  “But it’s my fault…” Malvina says weakly, just loud enough for Maria to hear.

  Maria stops in her tracks, turns to face Malvina before going further. “No,” she says with conviction. “No, it isn’t your fault.”

  “But Maria, please,” Malvina says. “What do I do? What do I say to your mama? What should I tell her?”

  Maria’s expression is a mixture of exhaustion and resolve. “Tell her to come home. Tell her she needs to come home.”

  Maria steps away quickly, her hands clutching the blanket tightly, disappearing completely in the murk. Malvina’s knees go rubbery with grief.

  “So many things,” Noonday explains, “will not make sense to you in the Spiritworld. Not while you’re just visiting. But when you belong, your questions will be fewer, much fewer.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t want to understand.”

  “Shh. Come. There’s someone else you need to see. Someone to make things right in your heart.”

  He takes her hand and leads her towards a blue ball of light in the distance. Blue with a halo of red.

  Ch
apter fifty

  Rhythm Found

  Malvina tries to wish herself awake, “wake up, wake up, wake up,” she chants aloud. Noonday strokes her shoulder, but offers no comforting words, says only:

  “Stop that. Look at him. What do you see?”

  Forcing herself to calm, she looks, sees, then speaks;

  “He’s transparent. Like me.” Her heart fills with irrational relief.

  “Yes, but not for long.”

  “He’s dying.”

  “In your world, he’s dying. Here, he is being born.”

  The dying man falls to his knees. His eyes widen and blink. His hair is long and wild, his clothes are tatters. This is the Coco Robicheaux of Malvina’s dreams—but in the dream he has no eyes. This creature’s eyes are kind and soft.

  When his eyes meet her own, everything changes.

  These eyes she once knew, long ago and not in dreams. These eyes she had once loved.

  Malvina remembers.

  *

  The beautiful boy who Malvina Latour had loved when she was a young girl was a free man of color. The boy had returned her love in kind, had brought her the greatest joy of her life. But when she’d found herself heavy with child, the boy had disappeared, as tender loving, beautiful young boys often do. She carried the child to term, had seen him through the agony of birth—but shortly after the child’s arrival she found herself unable to provide for him. She had brought her child, a son, to the steps of a Christian church—with a note pinned to his perfect, white blanket:

  “Please help my boy. I cannot care for him.”

  She had lingered on those steps, his little hand encasing her thumb, pressing firmly, his dark brown eyes looking into her own. So trusting, so assured by her presence. Those eyes, those little brown eyes. She sang to him softly,

  Mo pap li couri la riviere,

  Mo maman li couri peche crab

  She’d hoped he would fall asleep before the time came for her to leave him, so that their parting might not be too painful. But her song had been too loud, had triggered footfalls from inside the church. With an acute agony of the soul, Malvina roughly pulled the boy’s hand from her thumb and ran to the safety of shadows. The sound of his cries pierced the night, pierced her heart. She sat and listened as a stern female voice called out to her:

  “Come out and be seen! I know you’re there! I can hear you!”

  Malvina didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. The wails of her son became muffled as the woman took him inside, away from her forever.

  *

  Now.

  Here are those same eyes. Bigger, sadder, wizened, older.

  “Thomas?” she asks, using the name she’d given him on the day of his birth.

  The man remains on bended knee, no longer transparent, still staring. “They call me Beauregard now,” he says at last.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” she says, then adding softly, “Beauregard.”

  Beauregard stands, walks to her as quickly as he is able, takes her in his arms. “I love you, Mama,” he says simply. “It’s all right now. Everything is all right. Everything is as it should, and always has been.”

  Malvina whispers in the ear of her child, her son, her divine burden, “I have to leave you once more, my Beauregard, my love. But I will be back very soon. There’s something I have to do above water. Something I need to finish.”

  “I know.” Beauregard is smiling.

  “Someone I need to say goodbye to,” she amends.

  “Perhaps,” interrupts Noonday Morningstar, “‘goodbye’ is not the correct word at all. Perhaps the word you’ve been searching for all this time has been hello.” The holy man’s grin is a wild thing. “Just a thought. Hurry back, now.”

  Chapter fifty-one

  Malvina’s Cure

  Malvina’s first thought upon waking was that she’d forgotten to wind her clock. If the time it told was true, then she had slept in several hours past daybreak—a nearly unheard of luxury she’d not experienced in half a century.

  Frances never allowed her such luxuries; always rising early with loud complaints, slamming doors and kitchen cabinets for maximum effect, doing everything she could to disturb Malvina’s rest. Out of spite—or so it seemed, or so apparent, or so was.

  But this morning the curtains remained drawn, allowing only a single crack of light to pierce the warm dark of Malvina’s small bedroom. Pulling her old bones into a sitting position, Malvina flopped her feet to the floor with twin thumps. Instinctively, she kicked both feet forward before attempting to stand, then hissed as she’d hissed every morning for the last fifty-three years:

  “Damn shoes.”

  But her feet only kicked warm air, no shoes in her way on this morning. She squinted at the shadows, then squinted hard into the useless crack of light. Got to her feet, then yanked open the curtain to let the sun pour in.

  No shoes. None. The floor was clear. This was very odd.

  Fifty-three years of tripping over her sister’s shoes, placed maliciously, or so it seemed (or so apparent, or so was), underfoot in such a haphazard way—but suddenly today: Nothing.

  Well, good Lord, thought Malvina, what on earth has gotten into that old woman to make her come around pickin’ up those damn shoes now, right out of the blue and without warning?

  There was something downright eerie about it. She almost called out her sister’s name—but that would be giving in. After fifty-three years of noisy silence she would be damned before calling uncle over a little thing like this. It was likely just a sign of Frances’ own mental deterioration; forgetting to remember to forget. In any case, Malvina was sure the problem would begin afresh on the morrow, shoes every-damn-where as usual. This unexpected bout of neatness was probably just a tease to punctuate what she’d be missing for the rest of her days. Days of tripping and cursing over those damn shoes. A dangerous thing at her age. Attempted murder, almost.

  Malvina looked at the door to her sister’s room. Closed. There was a large basket near the door, a basket that had stood empty so long she’d forgotten its original assigned purpose. But the basket was informative today, different today, serving its assigned purpose today. The basket was full.

  Shoes. Damn shoes.

  Curiously, the sight of it made Malvina want to cry. Sometimes the simplest changes can bring about strange emotional reactions in dotty old women with deteriorating brains, she assured herself. Changes. Little changes. No such thing as little changes at this age.

  Malvina cursed herself upon realization of her trembling knees, then got up to make her way carefully to the rocker by the window. Was looking to be a right sunny day, she guessed; a hot one, too. She bent down to pick up the needles and yarn kept atop the knitting bag near the rocker and resumed work on a blue patch she’d started last night; a square that was to be one of many, ninety-nine all told by the time she was finished. Squares that would join together to form a blanket in a week’s time, a blanket she didn’t need and had no one to give as present. Doing the work calmed her nerves. That was its purpose. Took her mind off the shoes. And now: The odd lack of shoes.

  Malvina didn’t hear her sister’s door creak open, but shoes did appear in the corner of her eye. Shoes with feet in them. Malvina looked up.

  The eyes of the two sisters met then—the first time they’d done so in a very long time. Frances’ face was smoother than it ought to be for a woman so old, but more weathered than Malvina ever remembered it being. Her eyes looked tired to Malvina—not just tired, but troubled. Maybe angry. Or maybe neither, but something else with a smidgen of multiple others whirling about.

  Malvina wanted to speak but didn’t. Neither did she look away.

  “Put down that knittin’, old woman,” said Frances Latour. Malvina was so taken aback by the simple directness of the statement that she complied without thinking. It was Frances who’d cried uncle by speaking first, and Malvina felt sudden remorse that she had not done so herself.

  Frances lifted a hand, then the
other. There was something different about the hands, different but familiar. Something Malvina had seen or heard in a dream, now forgotten—but not forgotten….

  a contrast of hands

  The hands reached up to Malvina’s throat.

  If her sister meant to kill her, Malvina would not stop her—she was ready. There had been a dream, one of Coco Robicheaux—but not like the ones before. Fragments of dream-memory struggled at the edge of her mind, fragments meant to remind her of something good awaiting her in death. She wasn’t sure what, couldn’t recall what had been seen or shown in the dream, but she knew her sense of it was true. More importantly, she believed it was true. It was her first experience with real, unquestioning faith. Not such a leap, she thought, to have faith when you’re so old as to have nothing left to lose.

  She doubted Frances even had the strength to strangle her or break her neck or do whatever it was she intended to do with those hands. Find out soon enough, she thought to herself. Soon enough, soon enough.

  But the hands of Frances Latour slipped past Malvina’s throat. Past and around, fingers interlacing behind Malvina’s neck. Frances lifted a leg onto her sister’s lap, then pulled herself the rest of the way up, resting her head against Malvina’s bony shoulder with a sigh. Malvina placed her own arms around her sister’s thin waist, holding her tightly as her own eyes filled with water.

  Malvina rocked Frances gently, effortlessly. Frances’ weight was insubstantial and caused Malvina no discomfort.

  This was peace.

  And with peace comes answers; and such answers are of sweet dreams, but not of dreams. The answers are only lost memories, recalled at last.

  In this moment she sees clearly the sum of her life and of things that come after, the good and the bad of it all. A light shines on consequence both past and yet suffered, some near at hand and some farther along. Manman Brigitte has seen her through this journey in her roundabout and mysterious way, though the cost has been dear and the penance hard. There are trials still to come above ground, larger ones in which waters of green and brown must rear up to reclaim and cleanse through destruction for sake of new birth, to set things right by hammering down wrong, to reinvigorate the living through cruelty of death. She knows that a greater peace will come to those who survive the coming of deathly tide and for those who follow after, but first, but first…