“Get your coat now, Ice Man.”
But Gabe wouldn’t let it alone. “Come on, now. What do you see for your old pal Gabriel?”
“Under the bridge… don’t walk under the bridge,” Isaiah said softly. “He’s there.”
“What bridge? Him who? What’s gonna happen to me if I do?”
“You’ll die.”
“Isaiah!” Memphis growled. “He doesn’t mean that, brother. He’s just playing around. Say you’re sorry, Isaiah.”
Eyes big, Isaiah looked from Gabe to Memphis and back again. “Sorry, Gabe,” he said in a small voice.
“You just playing, Isaiah?” Gabe asked.
“That’s right,” Isaiah whispered. He kept his head down.
Gabe’s face relaxed into a grin that was part relief, part annoyance. “Little brothers,” he said, shaking his head. He clapped Memphis on the back. “Don’t forget about that other business, Memphis.”
“I won’t,” he said.
Blind Bill Johnson sat in the corner nursing the cup of soup Reggie had been kind enough to give him. The soup was thin but warm, and he had eaten it slowly while the scene at the counter unfolded. Now, his soup finished, he lifted his guitar onto his back with a grunt and tapped his cane out into the streets of Harlem. The air was scented with coming rain. He didn’t like rain. It reminded him of Louisiana, back when he was a sharecropper’s son with two good eyes, picking cotton all day, and the rain would about drown a man just trying to make his quota. It reminded him of the day the owner, Mr. Smith, hit him with a strap for playing guitar instead of picking cotton, and how later, the man’s half of the crops failed—browned to wisps—and they found Mr. Smith’s bloated body in the river, swelled up like a bag of rice gone bad with rot, and the whispers went around that Bill Johnson wasn’t a man to be trusted, that there was something of the Mabouya about him. That he’d stood at the crossroads at midnight and cursed at Papa Legba. That he’d spit upon the cross. That he’d sold his soul to the Devil.
It was raining the day the men in the dark suits came to the camp. It was the crops that had caught their attention. Word had spread that Bill Johnson might have done it. That he could put an old dog down when it needed mercy or that, when he was angry, he could hold a butterfly in his hand and it would fall dead. The men in dark suits sat, cool and patient as you please, all bland smiles and quiet courtesy, in Mrs. Tate’s parlor, drinking lemonade from sweaty glasses.
Bill was brought to them. He was a strapping man of twenty then, six feet tall, his skin a smooth dark brown and free of the brands his ancestors wore with shame. Bill sat on an old cane chair with his hands on his knees while the men asked questions: Did Bill want to help keep his country safe? Would he like to ride with them and talk?
Bill had wanted out of the fields and out of Louisiana, with its white-hooded men who set the night ablaze with their crosses. He’d gone with the dark-suited men, had ridden in the back of their car with the curtains over the side windows. He’d done the things they’d asked. He’d told them about the toll it was taking on his body, showed them how his spine bowed and his hair grayed. He was only twenty, but he looked fifty. The men had smiled those same bland smiles and said, “Just one more, Bill.”
And when his sight shriveled up to tiny points of blurry light that finally faded to black, they sent him away with nothing but his guitar, a raised scar on his skin, and a handshake of warning to keep quiet. His sight was gone, his body used up and broken. And his gift—if that’s what it could be called—seemed to have deserted him, too. How many times had he railed to the sky and wished he could have the gift back? And then, suddenly, about three months ago, he’d felt the first stirrings of hope. All he needed was the right spark to get it running again.
Now, as the Campbell brothers barreled out of Reggie’s Drugstore, setting the little bell over the door to tolling, Bill could hear them arguing. The younger Campbell brother had the gift—that was perfectly clear—and the older brother wanted to keep it a secret. That was smart. It wasn’t good to let on to anyone about secrets like that. The wrong person might find out. Someone you didn’t even know was dangerous.
The first raindrops splatted against Bill’s dark glasses and he frowned. Damned rain. Without thinking, he rubbed the scar on his left hand and tapped his cane downhill.
A HEAVENLY STAR
Theta was pouting. To anyone else, she probably just looked bored. But Henry knew everything about Theta, and she was most definitely pouting. She was sitting on the edge of the stage in her one-piece shorts outfit and black stockings that showcased her lithe body. She’d tied a green paisley scarf across her forehead in a Bohemian fashion. Her lips were painted red, a bright contrast to her mud-brown eyes and fashionable tan.