Ring Shout(23)

Underneath is Sadie.

She sits propped against a wall. And she’s … I swallow. Lord, she tore up bad.

Her overalls shredded, and the checkered shirt soaked in blood. The arm holding Winnie is a ruin of open flesh and she got her other hand pressed to her middle. When I grip her shoulder, calling her name, big brown eyes open to fix on me. Her lips gone pale, and she works to mumble. “Maryse. Why you yelling and making all that noise?”

Hadn’t noticed I was yelling.

“You see all them Ku Kluxes me and Winnie got?”

“I see them. Can you stand? We gotta get out!”

She chokes on a laugh. “Stand? Don’t know if I still got legs. They gone numb. Can’t feel my hands much neither. And it’s shivering cold.”

“I’ll carry you! Can’t weigh more than some change.”

The corner of her mouth rises at my joke, but then she lets out a haggard breath. “Don’t think I’m leaving Frenchy’s tonight.” She lifts the hand from her middle and I choke on a gasp. Her belly been ripped clean open, pouring blood. I press my cap against the wound, trying to make it stop. Please, God, make it stop!

Sadie pushes feebly at my hand. “You need to go, Maryse. No sense we both burn up in here. You just make sure they give me a nice funeral.”

“No!” I shout, coughing on smoke. “Plan your own damn funeral!”

But she keep talking like she don’t hear me. “Up in a church. I know I ain’t go much, but I want one anyhow. With a big choir too. And lots of singing. Make sure Lester up front, bawling his eyes out. Tell him I don’t want him to move on just yet. He should pine over me so that it mess up anything he try to have with the next two or three women who come along. And you and Chef do something special for me. Something you know I’d like.”

“Sadie…,” I whimper.

Her eyes turn to me. “My grandpappy say when we die, we get our wings back, the ones white folk cut off when we come here. Maybe I’ll fly and meet my mama. Or all the way back to Africy. Lester tell me one of those queens of Meroe fought them Romans. She was a mean lady too, with an eyepatch. Cut the head off one their statues and buried it under her palace! Ain’t that something? I woulda made a damn good queen! Can you picture me with an eyepatch, Maryse?”

I don’t get to answer. Because Sadie dies right there in my arms.

Laying her still body back against the wall, I smooth her hair, letting her braid fall in the front the way she like. Then I put her arms around Winnie, before kissing her forehead and saying goodbye.

When I leave, it ain’t through the back. I head down what’s left of the main stairs, the smoke and flames no longer bothering me. There’s a heat building in me far worse. When I hit the floor I start up into a run. Think part of my clothes is on fire but don’t much care. I aim for the front door, launching out into the night,

The first Klan who looks up stares wild-eyed behind his hood as I fly through the air, screaming like a banshee. I’m set to bury my humming blade right through his skull, but he not a Ku Klux—just a man. And I gave my word to Nana Jean. So I cut off his hand instead. He stares dumb as it flies away with the whip and I kick him in the chest to send him sprawling. Another Klan I hamstring, listening to his screams as he drops. A third I smack in the face with the flat of my wide blade once, twice, till I hear the satisfied crunch of breaking teeth as blood stains his white hood. But they not who I want. The rage in me needs to kill something. Something that ain’t people.

Several Ku Kluxes finally appear. I scream at them to change. I want to murder them as monsters. But they fall back. The Klans too. Finally one steps up, big and broad. Butcher Clyde.

“Maryse,” he calls. “Told you we’d see each other again soon.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I tell him plain.

“Why, Maryse, we don’t think we’ve seen you so mad.” The eyes behind that hood read me. “Mmm, there’s loss there. Something unfortunate happen to one of your friends. The tall one? No? Ohhh! The one like spitfire! With the rifle! Sweet little Sadie?”

I’m on him soon as her name drops out his foul mouth. In my head the spirits of vengeful slaves cry out, and I feel their anger in my swing, eager to take his head off. But he pulls back, faster than I’d expected, and my sword meets metal with a sharp clang that reverberates up my arm. A cleaver. I come at him again, only to be met by another cleaver. He uses both as I hammer at him, blocking me at every turn.

Frustrated, I pull back, catching my breath. He chuckles.

“Told you already, we’re no dog to be put down. You a might better with that little trinket, give you that. Better than that night outside Memphis.”

His words send me stiff. And under that hood, I imagine he grins. “Really think we didn’t know where you was hiding? Beneath the floorboards, in the dark, shivering and shaking. Of course we did. But we needed you to become who you are now. Needed to fill you up with horror. Anger. Why we left you that little present in the barn.”

Something in me breaks. I snarl like I ain’t human no more, white-hot fury behind my swings that strike sparks off his cleavers. I don’t want to just kill him, I want to end him utterly so that nothing’s left. The song in my ears is blaring, pounding with my blood. For a moment I’m sure I have him, until he starts to sing.