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

“Certainly,” says Eddie stoutly. Probably their deacon, but it’s a hell of a way to. The match stings his fingers and he whips it out.

Blackness and a moment’s uncertainty that might end either way. But a lot of savoir-faire — a thousand years of civilization are backing Eddie up. “You’ll make me late, Papa Benjamin wouldn’t like that!” He gropes his way on up in the pitch-blackness, thinking any minute he’ll feel his back slashed to ribbons. But it’s better than standing still and having it happen, and to back out now would bring it on twice as quickly. However, it works, nothing happens.

“Fust thing y’know, all N’yorleans be cornin’ by,” growls the African watchdog sulkily, and flounders down on the staircase with a sound like a tired seal. There was some other crack about “darkies lookin’ lak pinks,” and then a long period of scratching.

But Eddie’s already up on the landing above and so close to the boom-putta-boom now it drowns out every other sound. The whole framework of the decrepit house seems to shake with it. The door’s closed but the thread of orange that outlines it shows it up to him. Behind there. He leans against it, shoves a little. It gives. The squealings and the grindings it emits are lost in the torrent of noise that comes rushing out. He sees plenty, and what he sees only makes him want to see all the more. Something tells him the best thing to do is slip in quietly and close it behind him before he’s noticed, rather than stay there peeking in from the outside. Little Snowdrop might always come upstairs in back of him and catch him there. So he widens it just a little more, oozes in, and kicks it shut behind him with his heel — and immediately gets as far away from it as he can. Evidently no one has seen him.

Now, it’s a big shadowy room and it’s choked with people. It’s lit by a single oil-lamp and a hell of a whole lot of candles, which may have shone out brightly against the darkness outside but are pretty dim once you get inside with them. The long flickering shadows thrown on all the walls by those cavorting in the center are almost as much of a protection to Eddie as he crouches back amidst them as the darkness outside would be. He’s been around, and a single look is enough to tell him that whatever else it is, it’s no revival meeting. At first he takes it for just a gin or rent party with the lid off, but it isn’t that either. There’s no gin there, and there’s no pairing off of couples in the dancing — rather it’s a roomful of devils lifted bodily up out of hell. Plenty of them have passed out cold on the floor all around him and the others keep stepping over them as they prance back and forth, only they don’t always step over but sometimes on — on prostrate faces and chests and outstretched arms and hands. Then there are others who have gone off into a sort of still trance, seated on the floor with their backs to the wall, some of them rocking back and forth, some just staring glassy-eyed, foam drooling from their mouths. Eddie quickly slips down among them on his haunches and gets busy. He too starts rocking back and forth and pounding the flooring beside him with his knuckles, but he’s not in any trance, he’s getting a swell new number for his repertoire at the Bataclan. A sheet of blank score-paper is partly hidden under his body, and he keeps dropping one hand down to it every minute jotting down musical notes with the stub of pencil in his fingers. “Key of A,” he guesses. “I can decide that when I instrument it. Mi-re-do, mi-re-do. Then over again. Hope I didn’t miss any of it.”

Boom-putta-putta-boom! Young a id old, black and tawny, fat and thin, naked and clothed, they pass from right to left, from left to right, in two concentric circles, while the candle flames dance crazily and the shadows leap up and down on the walls. The hub of it all, within the innermost circle of dancers, is an old, old man, black skin and bones, only glimpsed now and then in a space between the packed bodies that surround him. An animal-pelt is banded about his middle; he wears a horrible juju mask over his face — a death’s-head. On one side of him, a squatting woman clacks two gourds together endlessly, that’s the “putta” of Eddie’s rhythm; on the other, another beats a drum, that’s the “boom.” In one upraised hand, he holds a squalling fowl, wings beating the air; in the other, a sharp-bladed knife. Something flashes in the air, but the dancers mercifully get between Eddie and the sight of it. Next glimpse he has, the fowl isn’t flapping any more. It’s hanging limply down and veins of blood are trickling down the old man’s shrivelled forearm.

“That part don’t go into my show,” Eddie thinks facetiously. The horrible old man has dropped the knife; he squeezes the life-blood from the dead bird with both hands now, still holding it in mid-air. He sprinkles the drops on those that cavort around him, flexing and unflexing his bony fingers in a nauseating travesty of the ceremony of baptism.

Drops spatter here and there about the room, on the walls. One lands near Eddie and he edges back. Revolting things go on all around him. He sees some of the crazed dancers drop to their hands and knees and bend low over these red polka-dots, licking them up from the floor with their tongues. Then they go about the room on all fours like animals, looking for others.

“Think I’ll go,” Eddie says to himself, tasting last night’s supper all over again. “They ought to have the cops on them.”

He maneuvers the score-sheet, filled now, out from under him and into his side-pocket; then he starts drawing his feet in toward him preparatory to standing up and slipping out of this hell-hole. Meanwhile a second fowl, black this time (the first was white), a squeaking suckling-pig, and a puppy-dog have gone the way of the first fowl. Nor do the carcasses go to waste when the old man has dropped them. Eddie sees things happening on the floor, in between the stomping feet of the dancers, and he guesses enough not to look twice.

Then suddenly, already reared a half-inch above the floor on his way up, he wonders where the wailing went. And the clacking of the gourds and the boom of the drum and the shuffling of the feet. He blinks, and everything has frozen still in the room around him. Not a move, not a sound. Straight out from the old man’s gnarled shoulder stretches a bony arm, the end dipped in red, pointing like an arrow at Eddie. Eddie sinks down again that half-inch. He couldn’t hold that position very long, and something tells him he’s not leaving right away after all. “White man,” says a bated breath, and they all start moving in on him. A gesture of the old man sweeps them into motionlessness again.

A cracked voice comes through the grinning mouth of the juju mask, rimmed with canine teeth. “Whut you do here?”

Eddie taps his pockets mentally. He has about fifty on him. Will that be enough to buy his way out? He has an uneasy feeling however that none of this lot is as interested in money as they should be — at least not right now. Before he has a chance to try it out, another voice speaks up. “I know this man, papaloi. Let me find out.”

Johnny Staats came in here tuxedoed, hair slicked back, a cog in New Orleans’ night life. Now he’s barefooted, coatless, shirtless — a tousled scarecrow. A drop of blood has caught him squarely on the forehead and been traced, by his own finger or someone else’s, into a red line from temple to temple. A chicken-feather or two clings to his upper lip. Eddie saw him dancing with the rest, groveling on the floor. His scalp crawls with repugnance as the man comes over and squats down before him. The rest of them hold back, tense, poised, ready to pounce.

The two men talk in low, hoarse voices. “It’s your only way, Eddie. I can’t save you—”