James Marlon - John Crow's Devil

The dark blue curtains were pulled back and through the window she saw stars. This was the rear of the house that was away from the road but close to the river. Mr. Garvey could see in the dark. Eyes like his could see through the night, the curtain, the window, and even the walls that enclosed him. From behind the huge, dark armchair she could see the tip of his head, crowned with thinning hair.

“Mr. Garvey? Mr. — Mr. Garvey? Is me, sir. I mean, is Mrs. Greenfield. I don’t know if you remember me or anything. Me is Miss Palmer daughter? You remember Miss Palmer? She dead long time now and — oh Lord Jesus, you must a wonder why this mad woman barging into you house this time o night, but Mr. Garvey, you don’t see what goin on in the place? You don’t see how the Devil taking over Gibbeah? You don’t see how people taking liberty with you land like say them own it? All sort of obeahism and Devilism and this new preacher, you don’t see what him turning people into? Mr. Garvey?”

Mr. Garvey did not answer. He remained still, his back and the back of the chair to her. She felt rejected by the wall of his snobbery. It made her angrier and bolder.

“You know something, Mr. Garvey? Me know that you no care too much bout black people, but is not like say me asking you for nothing. After all, my husband buy fi him house, we don’t rent from you. But at least you should a care bout Mrs. Johnson house that them burn down — nuh your house that? And what happen to the cinema? You just going make all these things happen?” She was right behind him, almost touching the back of his indifference.

“Mr. Garvey, is you me talking to, you know, me know say you no deaf. Or is only brown boy mouth you hear? You think me business if you want your little idiot town to go to hell? You think me care?” She grabbed the back of the armchair.

“Is you me talking to, you stringy-hair little sodomite!” She shook the chair. His head popped off, rolled down his neck, bounced into his lap, fell to the floor, and spun until stopped by the wall below the window. From his neck came bugs, flies, and a horrendous stench. Between bone, flesh still moved, but candlelight revealed the movement to be maggots. She grabbed her mouth and screamed into the palm of her hand, but did not run. As the Widow remembered all the dead people she had seen in her life, she felt a calm that was strange even to her. She remembered Brother Vixton and the trickle of black blood that fled from his nostrils, and felt calmer still. A dead man was unable to hurt or promise.

The way Mr. Garvey cradled the things in his lap she would never have guessed them to be his genitals. But there was more. His eyes were gone and insects fed on his wetter parts. At first she thought his head had broken off from rot, but his neck was cut jagged and sharp in a butcher’s way. She turned away, looked under the desk beside him, and under the desk looked back at her.

He was barely a boy and he stunk as well. His eyes were craters, nothing but hollow circles of darkness, but they saw her. His skin had sunken onto bone and looked wrinkled, even in the silvery light. She ran from the room, feeling a heaviness that she could not understand nor bear. In the room two doors down was another body. He was bent over on the bed, the way she would be bent over by her husband whenever he wanted to see her vagina but not her face. She looked at the body and felt a similar coldness. The busy buzz of insects drew her to his back that was chopped into grooves, and his neck that was missing a head. She ran and tripped, her hand clutching the softness of fabric and flesh tearing away too easily. There were two, the first older, though still a youth, and the other a boy who seemed feminine. Maybe it was his pose, one final defiant act of effeminate grace. Bits of paper had stuck to his cheek. In the dark she could see that they were photographs, but of what she could not make out. The girl-boy had clutched the images as if transferring his spirit to them. In the fortress of these squares he could live forever.

She gathered up the pictures on the floor, tore the remaining ones from the girl-boy’s hand, and shoved them between her breasts. She understood why the smells had not wilted her. The smell of death was distinctive only when compared to the smell of life. Defeat overtook her like a sickness and she grabbed her belly and vomited. When nothing more would come, her chest still heaved. Her belly ached, her head throbbed, and she barely managed to stagger out of the house.

Getting back home would be almost impossible. The pictures scraped across her breast and stuck to her sweat. She saw Lucinda waiting at her gate as soon she stepped out of Mr. Garvey’s house. There she was, hands to her hips, her head cocked to the side to get a better view of the window. The Widow looked around for the rest of the congregation but Lucinda seemed to be alone. She up to something, that cross-eyed bitch.Them come to kill me for sure. For a second she thought to go back to Mr. Garvey’s house, but the Widow had enough of death for one night, theirs or hers. The more she thought of Lucinda and her stupid ambush, the less she cared. If it was God’s will to screw her up again, there was nothing she could do. Except to swing a punch so hard into Lucinda’s face that her right eye would become crossed too.

“What you want at me gate, Lucinda?”

She spun around, startled. The Widow stepped closer.

“Oh Heavenly Father! Thank you, Father!”

“Lucinda, me say what you want?”

Lucinda turned away and fidgeted with her skirt.

“Lucinda!”

“Oh God, oh Lord Jesus! The Apostle! Oh Jesus, the Apostle! Oh Jesus Christ Heavenly Father! Him goin kill me, Mary! Him goin kill everybody!”

Them doin nastiness, you know, nasty, nasty nastiness! If God did ever see such nastiness him would a blind!”

“Me look like me care? Come out o me way.” The Widow looked around for an ambush.

“Lawd a massy! Me say him goin kill me for running away. Lawd a massy!”

“Really? Somebody want to fix you business? Stand right deh so me can shine light on you!”

“Noooo! Oh Lord. Them goin kill me! Do not leave me out a street.”

“Then what me must do, you cross-eye bitch? Help you? No you go bring him here. If chicken come home to roost, don’t come hitch up in my coop.”

“Lawd, Mary, you a go make them kill me? Is evilness them goin on with. Oh Heavenly Father.”

“First you say them doin nastiness, then you say them goin kill you. Is fraid you fraid or is sick you sick? You know what? No bother tell me. Me no business what happen to you.”

“What wrong with you? Is why you so cold? Who you think them coming for next, eeh? Look what him do to me.”

Mary was surprised that she hadn’t seen Lucinda’s face before. Her left eye was swollen and her lips wet from blood. Her white dress was torn out of all modesty and her left breast puffed through the ripped cloth. Her feet were bare.

“If me never kick Clarence in him seed, me would a never get away.”

This disturbed the Widow in several ways. She and Lucinda had few things in common, one of which was distance, broken only once. Yet here was Lucinda who had forgotten that between them was nothing, not even Hello . She had even called her Mary. Seeing Lucinda’s bruises was like seeing Lucinda naked. The Widow remembered the feeling of people witnessing her own nakedness. When her husband first saw her out of clothes; her knocked knees, scarred feet, and too-big breasts, which he always attacked first. Lucinda had come into her space as surely as Mr. Greenfield had come. Mary remembered how much she disliked it. Lucinda began to cry.