Ring Shout(21)

—Interview with Ms. Henrietta Davis, age seventy-two, transliterated from the Gullah by EK





FIVE

The old Packard races down Macon’s country roads, engine rattling noisily in the night. Beside me Sadie chewing on tobacco so hard I can hear her teeth snapping. For once I hold back telling her to stop smacking in my ear. She worried I know. We all is.

Was all confusion when we get the news. Attack shoulda been on us, not Frenchy’s. For a while there was just a mess of arguing and shouting. Sadie the one who finally grabbed her rifle and headed for the door, saying she don’t got time to sit around fussing. Me and Chef joined her, leaving Molly’s people and Emma to guard Nana Jean’s. All our fears get made real when we catch sight of what’s in the distance.

Frenchy’s on fire, orange flames bright against the night. People run past us on the road, still in their fine clothes. Saturday night the juke joint would be packed. Worst time for this to happen. I search their faces, belly in knots as I look for Michael George. I know better, though. He wouldn’t leave the place he built and set down roots.

Chef finally has to stop the Packard, unable to drive through the fleeing people. We jump out, pushing through them. Klans, they saying—came in tearing up the place, whipping people. One man show his shirt torn to shreds, his back bloody. Another one wild-eyed, raving about monsters. Ku Kluxes. The sight can come on you like that. When we finally reach Frenchy’s, we can see the mayhem ourselves.

The juke joint hardly look the same. The whole porch blackened, and flames licking the second floor. People running through the front, stumbling and falling to get out. And right there waiting is a whole mess of Klans. All in white robes, with hoods over their heads so you can only make out eyes. But I can still tell which is Ku Kluxes. And there’s no mistaking the big one at their head, holding up a Bible and shouting.

Butcher Clyde.

“Brethren, we must do our best to stamp out the vices in our midst! Fornication! Drinking! Heathen music! It’s left to us to correct the waywardness of these simple minds, as a father must govern over his children and home—delivering stripes onto the wicked so that they might be persuaded to follow a straight path!”

People fleeing the fire forced to run through the mob, and Klans with whips strike whoever they can. The sound of the lash biting flesh sets my blood boiling. I start forward, but Chef grabs hold of me, pointing at the burning juke joint.

“There’s people still in there!”

I look to a window to see the shadows of men and women trapped in the blaze. They run out of sight, and a set of bigger shadows lumber after them. Ku Kluxes!

Sadie growls, taking off running to the back of the house. Don’t have much choice but to follow. We reach a door to find it braced with a bar—to make folk run through the front. Or burn up inside. Soon as we pull it away, people come flying out, coughing and doubling over. We let them pass, then run in.

Flames and smoke greet us, but through the haze I spot the first Ku Klux—a full turned demon amid hellfire. It got an arm ready to slash at some people cornered against a wall. I don’t wait to figure out more.

The sword comes at my call, with the visions. A woman in Saint-Domingue shouting a war song at shaken French troops as she set herself on fire; a man in Cuba applying a balm to another’s cut-open back, singing to soothe his lover’s cries; a mother fleeing through thick Mississippi pines to a contraband camp, humming to quiet her babies. The girl in the dark there too, and I shrug off her fear before it can sink in teeth.

The sword grows solid in my grip, black smoke becoming metal as I run the blade through the Ku Klux’s back, right where one of its hearts is. Thank goodness for Molly’s dissections. It staggers, falling onto its side, and I drive my sword into its throat. The people I saved stand there bug-eyed. If they ain’t got the sight, they just seen me put several inches of iron through a man’s neck.

“We try to fight him,” one stutters. “But he strong like … ain’t natural!”

“Y’all move! Get on out—”

I don’t finish before something crashes into me. I land on my back and the air rushes out my lungs. When I suck some back in, the smoke sets me to choking. Between tears, I can see a Ku Klux on top of me. Where the blazes this one come from? Its jaws are clamped down and there’s a hot trickle on me. This thing biting my arm off? No, my sword. And the wetness is its saliva. Disgusting.

With all the strength I can muster, I call on the sword’s power. Those old man-stealing kings and chiefs wail the names of sleeping gods, and the black leaf-blade turns white hot in the Ku Klux’s mouth. It shrieks, scrambling off me and clawing its face, most of which is charred meat now. I move to finish it off, but a bullet takes it in the flank. The cornered people ain’t moved, and now they’re screaming. They scream harder when a second bullet pierces the Ku Klux’s eyes, dropping it dead.

I look to find Sadie, aiming Winnie right at me. “What—?”

“Drop down!”

I got sense enough to go back flat. A bullet zips overhead and there’s another shriek. I whip my head around to see two Ku Kluxes wrapped in fire, charging on all fours from another room. Sadie works that lever and shoots so fast, I barely have time to count before it’s over—one bullet, three, five. Now there’s two more dead Ku Kluxes.

The cornered people stop screaming. At least two fainted. Maybe the rest gone hoarse. But they ain’t moving neither, just hugging the wall and shaking. Chef appears, coaxing them away. “Help me get these outside!” she shouts between coughs, lifting a limp man. “This whole place going to burn down!”