Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

Then again, why should those two mammies go into hysterics when they lamp the same object? And Eddie recalls now that some of the boys have always suspected Staats has colored blood, and tried to tell him so years ago when Staats first came in with them, but he wouldn’t listen to them.

Staats slinks out again as noiselessly as he came in, and Eddie decides he’ll catch up with him and kid him about his chicken-claw on their way home together. (They all roost in the same hotel.) So he takes his music-sheets, some of which are blank, and he leaves. Staats is way down the street — in the wrong direction, away from the hotel! Eddie hesitates for just a minute, and then he starts after Staats on a vague impulse, just to see where he’s going — just to see what he’s up to. Maybe the fright of the scrubwomen and the way Staats pounced on that chicken-claw just now have built up to this, without Eddie’s really knowing it.

And how many times afterward he’s going to pray to his God that he’d never turned down that other way this night — away from his hotel, his Judy, his boys — away from the sunlight and the white man’s world. Such a little thing to decide to do, and afterwards no turning back — ever...

He keeps Staats in sight, and they hit the Vieux Carr6. That’s all right. There are a lot of quaint places here a guy might like to drop in. Or maybe he has some Creole sweetie tucked away, and Eddie thinks: I’m lower than a ditch to spy like this. But then suddenly right before his eyes, halfway up the narrow lane he’s turned into — there isn’t any Staats any more! And no door opened and closed again either. Then when Eddie gets up to where it was, he sees the crevice between the old houses, hidden by an angle in the walls. So that’s where he went! Eddie almost has a peeve on by now at all this hocus-pocus. He slips in himself and feels his way along. He stops every once in awhile and can hear Staats’ quiet footfall somewhere way up in front. Then he goes on again. Once or twice the passage spreads out a little and lets a little green-blue moonlight part way down the walls. Then later, there’s a little flare of orange light from under a window and an elbow jogs him in the appendix. “You’d be happier here. Doan go the rest of the way,” a soft voice breathes. A prophecy if he only knew it!

But hardboiled Eddie just says: “G’wan to bed, y’dirty stay-up!” out of the corner of his mouth, and the light vanishes. Next a tunnel and he bangs the top of his head and his eyes water. But at the other end of it, Staats has finally come to a halt in a patch of clear light and seems to be looking up at a window or something, so Eddie stays where he is, inside the tunnel, and folds the lapels of his black jacket up over his white shirt-front so it won’t show.

Staats just stands there for a spell, with Eddie holding his breath inside the tunnel, and then finally he gives a peculiar, dismal whistle. There’s nothing carefree or casual about it. It’s a hollow swampland sound, not easy to get without practice. Then he just stands there waiting, until without warning, another figure joins him in the gloom. Eddie strains his eyes. A gorilla-like, Negro roustabout. Something passes from Staats’ hand to his — the chicken claw possibly — then they go in, into the house Staats has been facing. Eddie can hear the soft shuffle of feet going up stairs on the inside, and the groaning, squeaking of an old decayed door — and then silence—

— He edges forward to the mouth of the tunnel and peers up. No light shows from any window, the house appears to be untenanted, deserted.

Eddie hangs onto his coat collar with one hand and strokes his chin with the other. He doesn’t know just what to do. The vague impulse that has brought him this far after Staats begins to peter out now. Staats has some funny associates — something funny is going on in this out-of-the-way place at this unearthly hour of the morning — but after all, a man’s private life is his own. He wonders what made him do this, he wouldn’t want anyone to know he did it. He’ll turn around and go back to his hotel now and get some shut-eye; he’s got to think up some novelty for his routine at the Bataclan between now and Monday or he’ll be out on his ear.

Then just as one heel is off the ground to take the turn that will start him back, a vague, muffled wailing starts from somewhere inside that house. It’s toned down to a mere echo. It has to go through thick doors and wide, empty rooms and down a deep, hollow stairwell before it gets to him. Oh, some sort of a revival meeting, is it? So Staats has got religion, has he? But what a place to come and get it in!

A throbbing like a far-away engine in a machine-shop underscores the wailing, and every once in a while a boom like distant thunder across the bayou tops the whole works. It goes: Boom-putta-putta-boom-putta-putta-boom! And the wailing, way up high at the moon: Eeyah-eeyah-eeyah...

Eddie’s professional instincts suddenly come alive. He tries it out, beats time to it with his arm as if he were holding a baton. His fingers snap like a whip. “My God, that’s grand! That’s gorgeous! Just what I need! I gotta get up there!” So a chicken-foot does it, eh?

He turns and runs back, through the tunnel, through the courtyards, all the way back where he came from, stooping here, stooping there, lighting matches recklessly and throwing them away as he goes. Out in the Vieux Carre again, the refuse hasn’t been collected. He spots a can at the corner of two lanes, topples it over. The smell rises to heaven, but he wades into it ankle-deep like any levee-rat, digs into the stuff with both forearms, scattering it right and left. He’s lucky, finds a verminous carcass, tears off a claw, wipes it on some newspaper. Then he starts back. Wait a minute! The red rag, red strip around it! He feels himself all over, all his pockets. Nothing that color. Have to do without it, but maybe it won’t work without it. He turns and hurries back through the slit between the old houses, doesn’t care how much noise he makes. The flash of light from Old Faithful, the jogging elbow. Eddie stoops, he suddenly snatches in at the red kimono sleeve, his hand comes away with a strip of it. Bad language, words that even Eddie doesn’t know. A five-spot stops it on the syllable, and Eddie’s already way down the passage. If only they haven’t quit until he can get back there!

They haven’t. It was vague, smothered when he went away; it’s louder, more persistent, more frenzied now. He doesn’t bother about giving the whistle, probably couldn’t imitate it exactly anyhow. He dives into the black smudge that is the entrance to the house, feels greasy stone steps under him, takes one or two and then suddenly his collar is four sizes too small for him, gripped by a big ham of a hand at the back. A sharp something that might be anything from a pocket-knife blade to the business edge of a razor is creasing his throat just below the apple and drawing a preliminary drop or two of blood.

“Here it is, I’ve got it here!” gasps Eddie. What kind of religion is this, anyway? The sharp thing stays, but the hand lets go his collar and feels for the chicken-claw. Then the sharp thing goes away, too, but probably not very far away. “Why for you didn’t give the signal?” Eddie’s windpipe gives him the answer. “Sick here, couldn’t.”

“Light up, lemme see yo’ face.” Eddie strikes a match and holds it. “Yo’ face has never been here before.”

Eddie gestures upward. “My friend — up there — he’ll tell you!”

“Mr. Johnny you’ friend? He ax you to come?”

Eddie thinks quickly. The chicken-claw might carry more weight than Staats. “That told me to come.”

“Papa Benjamin sen’ you that?”