AMayhar - The Conjure Read online

  Those he set bobbing along the current toward the river, knowing that if they hung up on a bend down the way he could follow along and push them loose. While they made the first leg of their journey, he moved back into the woods and straightened up all sign of his passing.

  The sweetgum log fell apart under his efforts, and there was no sign left that any branches were missing. Not that any agent of the law had bat sense when it came to reading sign in the woods, but Choa never left anything to chance. When he was done, nobody but his Pa or his Grampa, both long dead, could have told anyone what went on there.

  It took only a couple of pushes to get the bodies past the sharp bends and almost to the river. When he had that done, he went back to the hole and fished out the cooler, a big one, water-tight, lashed with metal strapping and sealed with some kind of gunk.

  He put that into his own boat, once he brought it into position, and headed upstream into the swamp. There was an alligator hole there on another of the complex of creek branches that would just suit this cargo.

  The gators were out in the water, keeping cool and watching for snacks of fish or water moccasins. The mud bank on which they rested stunk of them, and the hole of water there was deep. He heaved the heavy box over the side of the boat, knowing that the weight Oscar had put into it to hold it in place in the creek-bank would sink it here.

  Sure enough, it went down, slowly but without hesitation, until it was just another lump in the mud ten feet below him. No bubbles marked its passing, which told him the thing was sealed even better than he thought. Even if Oscar figured out where it was, which he'd never do in a million years, the idea of his trying to retrieve his stash under the eyes of a dozen eight to ten-foot alligators was enough to send Choa home laughing fit to kill.

  No, take it how you might, old Oscar was going to be in hot water when the bodies of his victims came rolling down the river on their logs. And when his big boss, whoever that might be, wanted the money for the drugs the three were supposed to deliver, not to mention whatever else the shipment held, that was going to make life interesting for him, too.

  All in all, Possum Choa was well satisfied with his work. He'd know if anyone came looking through his swamp; he'd take a hand again, if there seemed any need for that. And if Oscar's body turned up someplace strange and hidden—well, that was all right, too.

  CHAPTER III. Witch Stuff

  Two days went by slowly, for it set in to rain again. It had been a mighty wet year, already, and this downpour meant floods. Choa knew nobody would venture up the creek amid all the debris that was washing down the current, carried out of the swamp by the flood waters.

  It rained buckets for days. The goatweeds chirked up, and the frogs were delirious with joy. Only the water moccasins, taking refuge in button willows and his cape jasmine bush, seemed out of sorts, but they were always bad tempered.

  There was so much fresh food in the water that the fish weren't biting, but Choa managed to snare rabbits and raccoons that used his secret paths to avoid the high water. When a pineywoods rooter came snuffling around his porch in the middle of the night, he welcomed the addition of pork to his diet.

  Nobody ever went hungry in the swamp. His Indian ancestors would have starved when their tribe was driven out of the upland woods by Spaniards and Anglos, if they hadn't known how to survive there. As it was, they retreated into the swamps, where no white man came, and managed very well.

  From time to time a black slave had escaped from his or her masters and joined the growing clan amid the great gums and oaks and cypresses and protected by the treacherous sinky-holes, enriching the tribe with new blood and different skills and stories. All had settled in together, forming a tough amalgam of heritages.

  It made Choa a bit lonely, thinking about those lost times when there were many of his kind. His grandfather had told him tales about it, though by the time Choa was a boy the group had dwindled to his immediate family.

  When his brothers decided to go out into the world, it had saddened their parents, who were old by then. Only Choa had remained to care for them until they died.

  He had gone out then, himself, to work on the Coast for a time, but he'd returned with his wife to their home country. It was just too crazy out in the white man's world.

  He felt no sorrow for what was lost. It lived, still, in his memory and his store of his grandfather's stories. His only regret was that Lia, his cousin and wife, had not lived past middle age.

  A fever had taken her, and all his willow bark and bitter clover teas and snakeroot preparations did her no good. She raved and she died, and he buried her on a ridge in the pine forest north of the swamp. He still missed her, but he was used to that, now.

  Sitting on his stoop, barely sheltered from the persistent drizzle by the brush roof, he found himself unusually gloomy. That would never do. When such moods came over him he found something useful to do.

  The wild pig he had shot in the night would spoil if he didn't share the meat. It was impossible to smoke pork in such hot, damp weather, for it always spoiled. He had cleaned it early, and now the bloody chunks hung in his kitchen shed.

  He would go to visit Miz Lena, in her ancient house in the McCarver woods, taking her a shoulder and some ribs. If she happened to mention wanting to do something in return—not otherwise—Choa would ask her to use her Old World skills to detect anyone moving through the swamp who had no business there.

  Lena McCarver was a bit frightening, even to one as old and tough and knowing as Possum Choa, but there was no meanness in her. At least, not toward those who meant her no harm. They'd been friends, of a sort, for his whole life.

  Besides, he was fascinated by her ancient house, the huge brass-bound book that lived on her table, and the two dolls sitting on a shelf in her kitchen. The story she told about those dolls was a strange one, but somehow he believed it. According to her, she'd transferred the spirits of two bank robbers who thought they'd hide out in her house, putting them into those dolls while she had used the men's bodies to cut her winter wood. After that she turned the pair over to the law and got a hefty reward, but those dolls were still spooky.

  There was still a strange tingle left in them that he got when he looked into their black button eyes. Somehow, they seemed to be alive—or at least to remember having been alive.

  Choa packed up the pork in a wet burlap bag and wrapped that in a dry one. Then he set out along the path northward, shotgun in his left hand, bag over his shoulder, snake stick in his right hand.

  The paths ran with water, but this time he was moving gently upward, and there were no sinky holes in this direction. He made good time, despite the mud, and in time he came out of the edge of the swamp onto the damp leaves beneath tall oak and ash and hickory trees.

  The walking was easier, now, and he sped on, coming into the stand of immense pines that rose like columns, their toes rooted in soil so shaded that there was no undergrowth, only matted needles accumulated over decades. This was McCarver land, the timber standing as it had stood since old Lena's great-great-grandfather claimed it.

  The McCarvers didn't sell land or timber. Even now that Lena was the last one left, she had no use for anything offered by the world beyond her woods and pastures. Choa, feeling just the same, was not puzzled by that, but he knew that others were.

  When he came over the last tall ridge, now timbered with fat sweetgums, pines, and oaks, he could see the roof of her old gray house rising, sharp-angled, from the tangle of crepe myrtles, privet, yaupon, and vines that all but swallowed the structure. It was amazing to Choa that the place hadn't fallen down around the old lady's ears long ago, but something—maybe her iron determination—kept most of it upright and fairly dry. Of course, once she got that reward for the bank robbers she had fixed it up a bit, shoring up the floor and the roof in the part she inhabited.

  Maybe ... he shook his head and sighed. Maybe there was more to her claim to be a witch than anyone credited, too. She had, you had to admit, c
aught those two bank robbers. For a little old woman no bigger than a washing of soap to capture two big, mean ex-convicts took more than normal abilities.

  He'd been watching from the ridge, of course, when the sheriff's people came to pick them up. Those two bruisers had been cowed. They'd kept themselves on the far sides of the deputies, trying to stay a maximum distance from Lena, as they were taken up her weedy path to the gate and the waiting cars.

  He moved down the slope toward the hollow where the house waited, whistling to give her warning that company was coming. Like most solitary people in the big woods, she didn't like surprises. She did, however, appreciate company, if it didn't mean any upset to her habits.

  He could see her white head bob into view at the end of the porch, just topping the overgrown nandina bush. She waved something blue—probably her apron—to encourage him to come on down.

  Lena was a tiny old woman, skinny as a stick, with a knob of hair screwed so tight at the back of her head that it made the end of her pointed nose seem likely to punch through the skin. Her bright black eyes were sharp enough to see through walls, which he sometimes thought they might well do. Now they were beaming with pleasure.

  "Possum, how you doing?” she asked in her cracked treble. “Haven't seen you since spring when you brought me that monster catfish. I et on him for a week, and the tomcat finished up the bones and the scraps."

  "Brought you some pork, Miz Lena. Killed a wild pig last night and thought you might like a bit. Course you'll have to eat it pretty fast. It'll spoil mighty soon, this kind of weather.” He offered her the bag, and she clasped it to her bosom.

  "Possum, I got ways,” she said. “I keep most any kind of meat, alive or dead, for as long as it suits me. You come on in the house and I'll cut the peach pie from yesterday and hot up some sassafrass tea."

  They went into the kitchen, the ancient boards of the floor creaking painfully beneath Choa's heavier tread, though they only squeaked like mice under the feather weight of the woman. Those two dolls still sat on a shelf, staring out the tall window with shiny black button eyes.

  Choa shivered. Had she really witched those bank robbers’ spirits into them? There seemed to be something left, some residue that made the rag faces seem alive.

  But Lena paid no attention to the dolls. She poked the coals in the wood stove, adding another layer to the heat of the day, and set her iron kettle on a back burner.

  "It's warm already,” she said. “Now set down and tell me what goes on down in the swampy country."

  Possum Choa sat warily in the splint chair, which made alarming sounds as it took his weight. Setting his chipped teacup on the rickety table beside him, he took a bite of pie and savored it before beginning his tale. Miz Lena's peach pie would make a rabbit whip his grandpa, he'd always sworn.

  When the last crumb was gone, he set the cracked saucer beside the cup and began, “A couple of nights ago I heard somethin’ along the creek. Motor noise, a boat, a yell, an’ I went to see.

  "A man killed two others and put ‘em in a hole with a big old cooler full of what I'm certain sure is dope. I sunk his boat, so he had to hoof it back down to the river, and then I taken the bodies an’ sent ‘em after him, the next morning."

  The black eyes squinted at him over the rim of her cup. “And what did you do with that cooler? And what might I do to help out?"

  Choa grinned. “Sunk it deep in an alligator hole. Figure they'll be lookin’ for it, come a break in the weather. That's why I come to see you, Miz Lena. Think you can keep your feelers out for me? I know you got ways..."

  The old woman sipped her tea daintily and set her cup aside. “There be ways,” she said. “I'll keep my ear cocked, you be certain of that. And if I find something, I'll shoot off Grampa's ten gauge and hoist the flag on the big tree."

  Choa nodded. That old cannon could be heard for five miles in all directions, even through the intervening forest. And her yellow banner could be seen all the way down to King Deport's place near the river.

  Knowing that Lena was watching comforted him, for though he understood the swamp country better than anyone living, she understood other things from the Old World. Though his own kind had myths and traditions of magic, hers seemed to include powers he hardly could believe to exist.

  They visited for a bit, exchanging weather signs and conjectures about what winter might bring. Talk about the weather, in the big woods country, was not idle chatter but a matter of major concern to the few human beings living there. All of them were at the mercy of floods or tornadoes or forest fires in a way townsfolk were seldom aware of.

  A big flood could send everyone fleeing to high ground, a drought could deplete the supply of fish and game that kept most of them eating, or a drastic freeze in winter might well pinch the life out of some of the oldsters there. Big Thicket houses were not built for warmth but for coolness. A wood fire in a rock fireplace or an iron stove was sometimes just not enough to keep the blood circulating.

  "I see a bad winter,” Lena said, as they rose to put away their cups, preparatory to saying goodbye. “It's been a harsh summer, and it's still hot as hell's outhouse, but the birds are beginning to go already, even before fall starts. The orchard orioles took off three days ago.

  "The moss is thick on the trees, and I can feel big storms just pullin’ themselves together in the north, ready to blast down on us.” She drew her shoulders inward as if warding off the chill to come.

  Choa shivered, thinking about it. His people had lived with searing heat for generations, but unusual cold struck clean to the bone, seemed as if. When the swamp froze, his tall-stilted cabin, whose walls were one pine pole thick with finger-wide gaps between the logs, could work fine as an ice-box.

  He was getting too old to sit practically on his stone hearth, with his knees in the fire and his backside freezing off. He said as much, too.

  Lena cackled, bending double. “Think I don't feel just the same?” she wheezed. “My old bones ache fit to break in two, and my hands get so stiff I can hardly build my fire or cook on it when I get it going.

  "No, Choa, bad winters ain't for old folks, but we have to survive ‘em or go under. One of these days you'll come over that rise and find me, stiff and stark in my rocker, dead as a pine knot."

  The half-breed grinned. “If I don't go first, Miz Lena. It's got so I hate to see the leaves begin to turn or wake to hear the geese goin’ over, headed south. But you gets what you gets, my Daddy used to say, and I suppose we'll make do till our times come."

  She nodded and handed him a bag with interesting lumps and angles making its sides bulge. “Here's some sweet stuff. Got a notion to bake, when the weather cooled off with the rain. Got so many cookies and tarts and cakes I'm sick of the whole idea. Figured you might make room for my extra."

  He took the bag and nodded. This ritual was dear to both, for the exchange of gifts took place every time Choa came to visit. That only occurred perhaps twice in a year, but somehow Lena always knew and had a sack of goodies ready for him. Baked sweets delighted him, for he couldn't manage them on his fireplace, and he was no hand to bake, anyway.

  As he trudged away, he felt those sharp black eyes stuck like thumbtacks on his back until he topped the rise and started down toward the swamp. He liked Lena McCarver, valued her as a friend and a practitioner of useful arts, but she scared the shit out of him, nevertheless.

  CHAPTER IV. King Investigates

  The rain had slacked off in the night, and by the time King Deport got himself out of his creaky bed and onto his even more creaky legs the water was going down fast. His house was on tall stilts, the floor well clear of even the highest water, so when he stumped onto his plank porch he could already look down into mud squirming with minnows, small perch, and a couple of moccasins that looked fat and happy.

  A flood always made interesting things come to light along the creeks and around the swamp. King decided he'd take a turn through his domain to see what had been washed out of the
sloughs and off the timber-grown ridges. He was getting too old for such things, he knew all too well, but as long as he could put one foot before the other he intended to keep a sharp watch on the land that his ancestor had been given by the King of Spain.

  He boiled water and measured out coffee. Getting low, he thought. He'd have to get his nearest neighbor, the artist lady, to bring him some more, when she went to town.

  Because her family acreage backed up to one of the big creeks feeding into the river, he could make it to and from her house without taking to the public ways. King avoided those (and the people who used them) with great thoroughness.

  Irene didn't go to town often, though she owned a good car and had money for gasoline. She spent most of her time painting little tiny pictures with watercolors or wandering through her woods or along the river, but she never minded bringing him things he needed.