Ring Shout(38)

Me, I got my hands full. Ku Kluxes coming from every side. My sword sings as I swing wide, taking off reaching claws and slashing through flanks. Anything to keep them off me, with Chef and Michael George still unconscious at my feet. These monsters too stupid to coordinate without direction. I drive one or two into each other, and they get to scrapping. All about me bullets fly. Men and women scream. And Ku Kluxes go down.

But they not the only ones.

People fall too. The burly veteran gets dragged down by Ku Kluxes even as he stabs with a bayonet. One of Emma’s comrades wounded bad, screaming as she pulls him to her while reloading the shotgun. Sethe and Sarah back to back now, Ku Kluxes circling like hounds.

Not going too good over by me neither. I’m breathing hard, two days of weariness taking their toll as I try not to slip on rain-slick stone. Every swing turning my arms to jelly, and the monsters keep coming: a pale-white tide of senseless hate. A damn shame, after everything, to have it end like this. A cut on my brow sends blood trickling into my eyes and I blink, opening them again to find the world now quiet.

The Ku Kluxes about me gone still as statues. Not just them, the whole mountaintop. People and monsters in the night, unmoving yet grappling in the heat of battle, making for a mad painting splashed across a black canvas. I look up to find tiny jewels in the air I realize are raindrops, and wonder if I could reach out and pluck one.

“You ever think on what Ku Kluxes do when they ain’t, well, Ku Kluxing?”

The voice sends me stiff. Because it shouldn’t be possible. But when I turn, the impossible standing right there. Sadie, thumbs tucked into her overalls as she studies a pouncing Ku Klux.

“Do they still go to work? Do their husbandly duties with their wives and—”

“Sadie.” I practically breathe her name. “Sweet mercy! How … Am I dead?”

She rolls them big brown eyes. “Don’t be a goose, Maryse, I’m the one dead.”

And now I notice her yella skin, carrying a soft warm glow. Still, I doubt my eyes.

“Is this real?”

“Me standing here the strangest thing you seen tonight?”

She got a point. A deep sadness fills me up at seeing her face again.

“Oh, Sadie, it’s my fault.”

“How you figure?”

I swallow down my guilt. “I hadn’t gone and provoked Butcher Clyde, maybe you wouldn’t—”

“Maryse Boudreaux! Don’t you go ruining my grand death with your moping! I made my own choices! You leave me that!”

I nod slow. “Just wish you wasn’t. Dead, I mean.”

She sighs. “Yeah, wish I wasn’t too. Anyway, heard that Gullah woman calling. Just like when she gather us up. Seem that voice can reach farther than we ever know. Had to be here, though. Molly right, ’bout this place being a doorway. Only, we couldn’t cross over—not till you made the right choice. Told the others you wouldn’t take no offer from that old evil haint!”

I try to make sense of all she’s saying. “Others?”

I follow her gaze to find men and women gathering, all carrying that same warm glow. They step right out the night amid the stillness of the mountaintop, between droplets of rain. I know right off who these people are, because my sword starts humming. These the spirits of folk murdered by Ku Kluxes and the hate they stir up. People who been—

I clutch my chest as one walks toward me. He my height, got dark eyes like mine, and those same rounded lips. His white shirt tucked into plain brown trousers held by suspenders, as he moves with a carefree stroll, face split in a crooked grin.

My voice comes choked. “Martin?”

“How you doing, Bruh Rabbit?” my brother answers, and my legs give way.

I sit staring, before reaching with trembling fingers that slip right through him.

“Tee-hee! Watch it now, that tickles!” His familiar chuckle sends me sobbing and laughing at once, and I turn, searching the ghost people. “Mama? Daddy?”

He shakes his head. “Not everybody crosses over. But they send their love.”

So many words on my lips but what comes out is, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

He squats down close, eyes shimmering. “What happen to us, only the ones who done it to blame. We proud of you. So proud! You got nothing to be sorry for, you hear?”

I nod slow, then reach fumbling into a back pocket, pulling out a wet, beat-up thing and feeling silly as I offer it forward. “Still got your book. Put new stories in it too.”

He laughs again and I treasure the sound of it. “Bet you do!”

“I miss you so much,” I whisper.

His face softens. “I’m never far. Ain’t you heard me talking, Bruh Rabbit?”

My eyes go wide and he winks.

“You so wrapped up in your grief, no other way you would listen, except through them stories. Time to lay your burdens down. Live your life.”

I nod tearfully, and he stands to look out across the mountaintop at several figures approaching. At first I think they more spirits. Because one in front glowing bright. But then I catch sight of that haint-blue dress, and bushy, crinkly white hair.

“Nana Jean?” That old Gullah woman strolling easy through unmoving Ku Kluxes and people, like she walking to church on Sunday. Uncle Will and the Shouters follow behind. How they even make it up that slippery mountain?