The Sound of Building Coffins Read online

  Weren’t no crib by a mile, that place. Real clean for a whorehouse and good enough money—but it still felt like sharing the woman I loved, which ain’t something I could ever cotton to with any sensa comfort.

  Maria was working that night, and sitting on the steps outside when I passed. Pretty little head down in her hands, my Coffee Maria. Looking mighty blue, she.

  “Evenin’, sweet child,” say me. “Some bad man treating you mean tonight? Want I should smash his head fer ya, lil darlin’?”

  I startled her, but her mind always quick: “You mean someone meaner ’n you, Mr. Marcus Nobody Special?” First time anyone ever called me that.

  “Doan be thataway, darlin’. You know yer my special gal. Always will.” True enough, that.

  The hardness left her eyes: “Mama dead.”

  “Ah, darlin’…”

  “Got sick, died. Skin turned yella and hot. Talkin’ crazy then…I…I…just dunno…she got worse quick, stopped breathin’…oh, Marcus!”

  “Oh, little baby.” I held her in my arms. Holding her close felt special good, made me feel like a regular heel enjoying it under the circumstances. But that little Coffee Maria sure was sweet; her tiny body trembling against my chest like a scared sparrow.

  This was the first dyin’ from the yella fever sickness I heard of that year. But not the last. Wouldn’t stop ner slow by summer’s end. No sir, that killin’ fever’d keep up strong and steady straight through the year eighteen hunnert’n fitty-three, sure ’nuff. Mercy.

  *

  Well, eight months passed since the day Coffee Maria cried in my arms, that day her mama died. I kept wanting to go back to visit that little girl, to pay my respects and offer up some comfort. But I been busy. Bodies pilin’ up. Yella fever bodies.

  Bodies.

  Me and Black Jake handling things pretty good awhile, then it just got too much. Fever spread a lot quicker than usual that year, spread like wildfire; le quatres paroisses. Mayor Crossman lent a hand by loaning some chain gangs to work the semma-trees in the city proper. Nice to have the help, but those convicts sure is ornery. If that fool mayor really wanted to help, he’d let us burn ’em up, do it right. Be better for everyone. Burn ’em up and there ain’t no diggin’. Burn ’em up and they’s only ash. Burn ’em up and you don’t have to worry about the rain so much.

  I hated to think of what’d happen to all those shallow buried bodies if a real good rain come up. Tried not to think about it, but I know the rains a-comin’. Then what?

  I worried real hard on that one.

  Bodies in the potter’s field ain’t so much buried as sunk, sonny. Hard enough to get ’em down, then you gotta worry bout keeping ’em down when the rain come. Sometimes keeping ’em down ain’t too hard—and sometimes ain’t too easy. Folks with money keep their dead above ground. Seal ’em in the fancy ’spensive tombs or shove ’em back in oven slabs. Ovens are best if a fella got some money but ain’t exactly rich. Year and a day’ll burn them bodies to dust nice and clean. You got a good oven slab, you can fit a whole lotta folks in one tomb, save yerself a pile of money over time.

  One of them chain gang fellas a sin-ugly Frenchman called Girton. Short, stocky, mean fella. Real rabougri bajoe, he. Ugly and full of hate. Mm mm. Especially hate niggras—and really hate ol’ Marcus for being the field boss. When it come time to break up the chains to pick up the pace, I watch that Girton real close. Train that rifle on him good. Something about that boy just set my nerves to twitchin’.

  *

  Every morning me and Jake took turns going through the poor parts of town with the funeral cart, pickin’ up dead. Usually get a whole new batch every sun-up. Most folks pass at night, sonny. I guess it just feel more like quitting time with the sun down and gone.

  Certain things I seen while collecting up dead from those country shacks sent me a chill. Seen whole little families holdin’ on tight to one another in a bed; deader’n coal, birds pickin’ at their shoulders. Little chilluns with looks of terror in their eyes, frozen in the heat, like they could see something terrible coming at ’em in their dyin’ moments. Lawdy.

  But the worst of it was something I’ll never get out my eyes. I guess you could call it an omen of sorts, considering how things turned out.

  Went into a little shack where the streets ain’t got names, a shack just like all the rest. One room country shack. Open up that door with a bang, just like always. Yell:

  “Hey ho! Grave man getcha dead!”

  Didn’t hear no one. Figgered probbly everyone dead in this place. Figgered wrong.

  Dead man on the bed, lying face up, staring at the roof. Mulatto, like me.

  There in the corner of the floor a pretty little mother sat cross-legged, baby at her teat. The woman’s skin done turned orangey, one of her eyes closed, the other half-open and froze, looking at the little baby in her lap. Her lips stretched in a thin line across her face, smiling at one side, dead flat at the other. This was not a terribly unusual scene during plague times—exceptin’ for one little thing.

  The baby at her breast was not yet dead.

  Bony and lean, the tiny thing clung on for dear life, trine to suck something out its mama’s yella teat, the lower half of his little body soaked in chamber lye and tatlin’. I put a hand on his little shoulder, but that child a strong ’un; just tighten his grip on that dead mother of his’n. So I yank him back hard, pick him into my arms. Little fella lets out a yell. High pitched yell. Scared and sad sounding. Lost sounding. I can see the blood on his lips, blood oozing from his dead mama’s breast, dark red with streaks of black. That sweet little man crying so hard, the smell of his mama’s death come out strong from his soft little toothless mouth. Something about his eyes tuggin’ at my heart. Strange eyes. Des yeaux goueres—pale and sad. I looked around and notice a tiny white blanket wrapped around the dead man’s feet. A little perfect blanket, soft and clean—looking strange in this filthy place of death and dyin’. That blanket looked just like a miracle.

  I pull it from the Mulatto’s feet and wrap that baby up tight, cover him all up, and make a straight line for the Charity Hospital on foot. Run faster’n I ever run. When I get there a white nurse lady, looking dead tired and dressed in yella, motion me over so’s she can take a peek at that little’un. The lady look down, unwrap the child’s face from the blanket, say; “This one’s dead, boy.”

  I say; “But ma’am, he was hot to the touch not ten minny ago.” She look at me warm, but her words is cold:

  “Baby ain’t dead from fever. You smothered him with that blanket. Dumb nigger.” Walked away.

  Like I said, you may consider this an omen of sorts.

  I walked that little baby on back to his mama so’s they could get buried together. Looking at the dead Mulatto on the bed, I felt a kind of anger. Why he on the bed but not the mother and child? Why that blanket around his feet and not around that baby? I piled that Mulatto on the cart first. Then went around the neighborhood, piling other bodies over top him. Load it up good. Finally, I come back around to the dead mother and child.

  So’s they could ride on top.

  Felt a twitch of guilt separating the Mulatto from his kin in such a way, but at the time it felt like justice. Funny how justice can make the just feel guilt. Lotsa irony like that in this world, sonny.

  *

  The sky’d been merciful dry for a week or two. Back at the potter’s field, the boys were making good progress on the biggest dern hole I seen there yet. Nice deep hole, wide too. Ol’ Jake holding that rifle, making sure them ornery chain gang boys workin’ hard. That nasty Girton stop just to give me a mean lookin’ smile—like he know a dirty secret. Start my skin to crawling, that smile.

  Jake offer me the rifle expecting I’ll wanna take over supervising and put him to work down in the hole with them other fellas. I just wave the gun away and let him keep her, though. I can’t bear to watch that little baby being buried like that. That baby I kilt with the perfect white blanket. Nope, ol
’ Marcus Nobody Special was feelin’ extra blue that morning, and when I feel that way I go see Mama.

  Mama’s grave the cleanest in the potter’s field. I put her down right next to my little shack, put a nice layer of brick and mortar right o’er top. Every brick is lined up just right, pretty and perfect. Those perfect bricks’ll make sure she stay down no matter how hard it rain. So I put my knees right down on the bricks closest mama’s heart, hang my head down and make a little tear for that poor dead baby. The one I kilt.

  After a spell, I look up at mama’s stone, wiping my eye. Right off I see something different about that stone. There’s writing on it. In pencil. Says this:

  Marcus—come to 601 Dauphine. Hurry please. Maria

  My little Coffee Maria. Needin’ me.

  So now I’m wondering how long that bit of writing been on Mama’s stone. Wondering what kinda trouble my baby in. If it too late. I’m wondering all that as I’m running. Running to see my pretty gal. Hoping she all right. Knowing she ain’t.

  Soon as I make it to the front door of Auntie Jin’s I get a powerful bad feeling. Something telling me to turn tail. But I can’t. I can’t just leave without knowing. Gotta see what the matter is with my baby.

  A pile of yella fever dead on the roadside near the door. I poke through a-looking—but Maria ain’t one of ’em. Glad of that—but still, something terrible wrong. I feel it in my bones.

  I walk in the door.

  Ain’t no Coffee Maria in that place. But there’s that mean lookin’ woman Malvina Latour—sitting in a rocking chair, creaking back and forth. She just look me up and down, smiling and looking mad. Rocking and a-creaking. Holding something in her arms. That little something wrapped in a perfect white blanket. That blanket look just like a miracle to me.

  I should run. But I walk right in. Door slams closed behind me. My arms get grabbed by strong hands, holding firm and twisting hard. Hounsi—two big fellas from Malvina’s houmfour, her hoodoo temple—holding me tight. Malvina stand up, take a step toward me. Unwrap that little something in the blanket. Blanket falls to the floor, in a mess of dust and grime. Malvina hold a little baby up—skin yella and orange, nekkid as a jaybird in the whistlin’ time. Little manchild. Eyes open. Dead, dead, dead.

  At first, I’m thinking this the same baby I kilt—though I know that ain’t rightly possible. The eyes look the same—but the child is different. Pretty little child, deader’n dirt. Malvina got a tear in her eye, but still smiling. She say:

  “Meet your son, gravedigger.” And looking in those tiny, pale eyes, I know.

  I know my little Maria kept this from me. Being Maria’s a whore, I guess I could have let myself believe the child warn’t mine. But I’m lookin’ into those sweet, dead eyes and I know. That little fella my son. My boy. The fruit of my Coffee Maria. My eyes turn to water and my head dizzy. I want to die right then and there. But there’s something I gotta know. I look at that evil Malvina square in the eye, shakin’ like a goat’s ass, trine to find words:

  “Where my Maria?”

  Her words bite my ears like a cottonmouth sprung from its coil:

  “As if I would tell you where she is. How she is. Whether she alive or dead. I won’t tell you nothin’, gravedigger. I ain’t here to ease your mind. I’m here to put right what you wronged.” She pause. Smile gone. That snake in her throat comin’ up slow and even this time:

  “Put things right, gravedigger. Kiss this child. Be a good father.”

  She hold that little fella tight around the ribs, bring him up level with my face. My knees go wobbly—it a good thing those hounsi got me by the arms or’ I’da took a tumble over backwards. That little boy’s face an inch from mine now, his little death-smell sweet and soft. Snake’s a-comin’ out Malvina’s mouth at a dead crawl:

  “A kiss. Just a kiss.”

  My lips part to speak—

  Alla sudden, Malvina push her hands together hard on that baby’s ribs. I hear those ribs cracklin’—a sickly noise, that. A puff of white dust come out that baby’s mouth and into mine. Into my mouth, my eyes, my nose. Hoodoo dust. Poison. I know this’ll be bad right off.

  Feel the effect straight away, me. This a punishment I heard of—I’m to be dead, but not dead. My muscles go rigid and hard. My breath slowing. Stopping. My heartbeat gone terrible slow. My skin feelin’ cold. I ain’t never been this scared. I just wanna cry.

  “You’ll die slow, gravedigger. Piled into a hole with the rest. You’ll hear and see and feel it all. And you’ll wonder about Maria. And you’ll never know. You’ll die wondering.. Take your questions with you, gravedigger. Roll them around in your mind as the dirt of the dead is sprinkling on yer sorry face.” Then she say to the hounsi: “Bring him to the street. So his cronies can pick him up fer burying. Lay the little baby on mister gravedigger’s face; eye to eye. Make sure gravedigger’s eyes stay open. Wide open.”

  *

  I reckon I lay on that heap o’ dead outside Auntie Jin’s for a good three hours ’fore that funeral cart finally come around—my dead son staring me in the eye the whole time. And guess who’s driving that cart but ol’ Frenchie Girton. Lawd, lawd. I can understand Black Jake picking one of the convicts to go out with the cart since I never made it back, but fer the life of me can’t figger why he’d pick that rat-bastard Girton. Mayhap ol’ Frenchie volunteered. Mayhap-also-too Frenchie in cahoots with that evil Malvina. Mebbe Jake in on it, too.

  I’m thinking:

  Poor me. Poor, poor me. Trouble comin’.

  Girton pick that dead child up off my face, toss ’im in the cart like a rag. Then he look down at Marcus-me with a smile. “Whadda we have here?” he say, grinnin’ like a devil. “My Mulatto friend, Mr. Marcus. You hear me, boy?” Then I know he in cahoots with Malvina ’cause he know I ain’t dead. It a sad day for Marcus, no lie. That evil Girton keep talking, low and steady:

  “Yeah, you hear me, boy. I see it in your eyes, yes? That a little tear in your eye, Mulatto? I believe so.” Grin stretch wider. “You can feel, too, eh? Feel this, Mulatto.” He look around to see if anyone watchin’. Then he bend down like to kiss, lips parted. I feel his dry teeth slicin’ in slow. His breath smell bad; smell like death, rotten onions and old swamp.

  That stinkin’ French garbage bit my nose clean off.

  Yes indeed, sonny—clean off. Lawdy, yes—a terrible pain, that. Spit my own nose back in my face. Laughin’. “Feel that, Mulatto?” Girton laughin’ hard. My heart beating so slow I don’t even bleed. Not bleeding scares me even more—not sure why. Then a miracle happen.

  Outta nowhere I find the strength to scream. Scream loud and hard, me. Scream way up high like a little girl. Girton snarl and bring a boot down on my face. “Stay dead, you! Stay dead!” My strength gone, my mind blank now. I don’t remember another thing till we back at the potter’s field.

  *

  When my senses come back around I’m layin’ face up on a lotta lumps. Figgered the lumps was bodies, and figgered right. Ol’ Jake looking down at me with big, wet eyes.

  “Poor ol’ Mista Marcus. Itta sad day. Sho, sho.” Sniffin’. “I din’t wanna do it, ol’ fren’. But dat hoodoo lady, she sho scare ol’ Jake. Yessuh! Sedja kilt a lil baby and hadda pay. Say if I don’t help, I pay too.” Sniffin’ some more. “You bin good ta me a long time, Mista Marcus. An’ ol’ Jake sho is sorry. Lawd, yes.”

  I tried screaming like I done before, but that hoodoo poison sunk in too hard. All I could do is look dead and stare as he pick me up in his big arms.

  “I make you a promise, Marcus. I won’t let yer body float up. If she do, I’ll put you down first. ’Afore tha others. Thatta solemn oath, too.”

  So, now I am screaming. But not so no one can hear. Screamin’ inside. In my head. Good and loud.

  Jake lay me down in that big hole. Lay me in first—face up, flat on my back on the muddy ground. I guess this a courtesy of sorts; him figgerin’ the further down the hole, the lesser chance of floating back up with the rain. />
  So I’m just lying there waiting awhile, feeling the wet mud at my back as Jake say a few words to Jesus on my behalf. Waiting and a-thinking, me. Then Jake walk away from that hole—and I know what’s coming next.

  Bodies.

  One by one. Smacking me hard. In the face, the neck, the chest, the gut and the leg. Bodies. Covering ol’ Marcus up. One by one. I know my little son is one, but I can’t see where. I’m trying to see, looking fer my boy. Don’t know why exactly, but I’m looking. The light breaks into narrow gaps and cracks between the corpses. Those cracks of light fill up with dark, one by one. The weight on my chest and head is something terrible. Then the last crack of light done swallowed up. The weight get heavier and heavier still. A little while pass before the first bit of dusty soil crinkle down though the bodies. I feel it on my hand first. Just a tickle. Then one eye, then the other. Feel it on my tongue. Didn’t know my mouth was open till that.

  Quiet.

  Awful quiet.

  Long, long, awful quiet. Don’t know how long.

  Malvina was right, sure nuff. I be thinkin’ about my Maria.

  Wondering if the fever got her. Feeling sorry about that little dead baby of mine, and that other’n from the country shack. Feeling bad. Real bad. Thinkin’ mebbe I really am dead. Mebbe this my own special hell. What I had coming. What I had coming and what I got. Justice from God on high. I can’t feel my own heart beat. Can’t tell if my chest trine to rise fer air. Can’t tell if my eyes is still open. Dark. Heavy, heavy dark. All I feel is the weight of the dead piled on my chest and legs. Packed down tight with bodies and dirt. Feeling the pressure on every inch of me. A cannonball of fear jumping ’round my skull.