Ring Shout(11)

Molly shakes her head. “We haven’t been able to gauge that. Once infected, morphological transformation seems dependent on the individual.”

That’s science talk for how Klan folk turn Ku Klux. Molly says it’s like an infection, or a parasite. And it feed on hate. She says chemicals in the body change up when you hate strong. When the infection meets that hate, it starts growing until it’s powerful enough to turn the person Ku Klux. Ask me, it’s plain evil them Klans let in, eating them up until they hollow inside. Leave behind bone-white demons who don’t remember they was men.

“Not to mention,” Molly continues, “they’re rereleasing that movie.”

We all go sour at that. Seven years since The Birth of a Nation first come out—raising up hate enough to make these Ku Kluxes. Now that wicked D. W. Griffith set to release it again. Suddenly, I remember the poster.

“They’re showing it Sunday, at Stone Mountain.”

Everybody looks at me and I explain.

“Stone Mountain,” Emma murmurs. “Where Simmons did his conjuring.”

“That movie, what you call a spell, I believe, works to induce hate on a mass scale,” Molly says. “Like how a lynching riles individuals into a mob.”

Sadie scoffs. “Then why come it only riles white folk?”

“Whatever the case,” Molly continues, “these Ku Kluxes are born from that hate. If the rerelease of Griffith’s film has the same effect as before, we could be looking at an epidemic. Possibly worse than 1919.”

Chef whispers a curse before I can get one out; 1919 was a hard year for all of us.

“You think them Klans dress up to look like Ku Kluxes?” Sadie asks. She’s bent down now, eyeballing the head stuffed into glass. “It white like they hoods, and got a pointy end. Anyway, I say we just blow up some theater houses where the movie’s showing. Like Trotter did in Boston back in ’15.”

“Mr. Trotter did not blow up a movie house,” Emma corrects. “He only set off a smoke bomb to clear the theater. The riot started after.”

“Well, let’s blow one up for real,” Sadie insists. “For white folks’ own good, and ours, since they can’t see what’s right under they noses. Monsters all up between them and not a one got the sight!”

“I can see,” Emma reminds.

Sadie stands up, frowning. “Jews is white folk?”

Emma fumbles for words, but Nana Jean cuts in. “Buckrah dem done been waak ’longside de debbil long nuf fuh know’um. Dey jes ain wahn fuh see.”

Molly clears her throat. “Why some can see the creatures and others can’t is a question for science. More important, we should consider my other theory.”

“Your notion there is an intelligence guiding these d?monen?” Emma asks.

Molly nods. “The Ku Kluxes behave like worker ants—spreading the colony. So who’s directing them? There must be some hierarchy we don’t yet understand.”

“We only ever seen Ku Kluxes,” Chef says. “And they ain’t got much sense.”

“Sense enough to spread all over,” Sadie mutters.

My eyes are pulled back to the map. I ain’t put much into Molly’s talk of some brain controlling Ku Kluxes. But all that red reminds me of a chessboard, and the other pieces closing in.

“If as we believe East St. Louis in 1917 was a prelude to 1919,” Molly presses, “then what do we make of Tulsa? A massive coordinated attack. Our defenses overrun in days—”

“We remember,” Chef interrupts. The whole barn feel colder at the mention. We ain’t the only ones fighting this war. There’s pockets of resistance all over—Eatonsville, Charleston, Houston. But losing Tulsa last year was a hard blow. I can still see Ku Kluxes marching, clawing through all the fire and smoke.

“What are you saying?” Emma asks, brown eyes full of worry.

Molly draws a breath. “The growth of Klan chapters, the creatures’ adaptations, the organized attacks, now the rerelease of that film. If there’s an intelligence behind this—and I believe there is—we’re on the verge of something big. Be ready.”

I glance to Nana Jean, who standing with her arms folded, face hard as stone as she stares at the Ku Klux arm on the table. In my head, seems I can hear the hot July wind whistling through those bottle trees outside, singing her words.

Bad wedduh, bad wedduh, bad wedduh, gwine come …





Notation 32:

There’s a Shout we call Rock Daniel. Now Daniel was a slave always stealing from massa’s storehouse. Nobody tell. They like getting that meat too. And Daniel’s stealing not no real sin—not when the first set of stealing was they who stole us from Africy. One time, he stealing just as massa coming to the storehouse. The slaves start singing loud to warn him! When we do that Shout, we tell Daniel to “move” and “rock”—to slip past massa’s whip [laughter]! Even in the wickedest times, you got to find some enjoyment. Or you not gon’ survive.

—Interview with Jupiter “Sticker” Woodberry, age seventy, transliterated from the Gullah by EK





THREE

The music at Frenchy’s so loud I feel it on my insides. The piano man up out his seat, one leg hanging off the grainy wood and pounding the keys hard enough to break them. He sweating so I’m wondering how that shiny conk holding up. Whole while he wailing on about some big-boned woman he left in New Orleans, just about jumping out his maroon suit to croon, “And when she roll that jelly!” The crowd roars, men whooping and women fanning hands like to cool him off.