The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(32)

“I’m not saying it was your imagination,” he said when she’d finished. “But you’re always keyed up after your meetings. Those are morbid books y’all read.”

“I want an alarm system,” she told him.

“How would that have helped?” he asked. “Listen, I promise for the next little while I’ll make sure I’m home before dark.”

“I want an alarm system,” she repeated.

“Before we go to all that trouble and expense, let’s see how you feel after the next few weeks.”

She stood up from the end of the bed.

“I’m going to check on Miss Mary,” she told him, and left the room.

She checked the deadbolts on the front, back, and sun porch doors, leaving the lights on behind her, then went to Miss Mary’s room. The room was lit by the orange glow of Miss Mary’s night-light. She moved softly in case Miss Mary was asleep, then saw the night-light reflecting off her open eyes.

“Miss Mary?” Patricia asked. Miss Mary’s eyes cut sideways at her. “Are you awake?”

The sheet moved and Miss Mary’s claw struggled out, then ran out of energy and flopped down on her chest without getting where it was going.

“I’m.” Miss Mary wetted her lips. “I’m.”

Patricia stepped to the bed railing. She knew what Miss Mary meant.

“It’s all right,” she said.

The two women stayed like that for a long quiet moment, listening to the hot wind press on the windows behind the drawn curtains.

“Who’s Hoyt Pickens?” Patricia asked, not expecting a reply.

“He killed my daddy,” Miss Mary said.

That took the air out of Patricia’s lungs. She’d never heard that name before. Besides which, Miss Mary usually forgot about the people who floated to the surface of her mind seconds after she’d spoken their names. Patricia had never heard her link the person and their importance together.

“Why do you say that?” she asked softly.

“I have a picture of Hoyt Pickens,” Miss Mary rasped. “In his ice cream suit.”

Her ragged voice made Patricia’s scarred ear itch. The wind tried to open the hidden windows, rattled the glass, looked for a way in. Miss Mary’s hand found some more energy and slithered across the blankets toward Patricia, who reached down and took the smooth, cold hand in her own.

“How did he know your father?” she asked.

“Before supper, the men and my daddy used to sit on the back porch passing a jar,” Miss Mary said. “Us children had our supper early and played in the front yard, then we saw a man in a suit the color of vanilla ice cream come up the road. He turned into our yard and the men hid their jar because drinking was against the law. This man walked up to my daddy and said his name was Hoyt Pickens and he asked if my daddy knew where he could get himself some rabbit spit. That’s what they called my daddy’s corn whiskey, because it could make a rabbit spit in a bulldog’s eye. He said he’d been on the Cincinnati train and his throat was dusty and it’d be worth two bits to him to wet it. Mr. Lukens brought out the jar and Hoyt Pickens tasted it. He said he’d been from Chicago to Miami and that was the best corn liquor he ever had.”

Patricia didn’t breathe. It had been years since Miss Mary had put this many sentences together.

“That night Mama and Daddy argued. Hoyt Pickens wanted to buy some of Daddy’s rabbit spit and sell it in Columbia, but Mama said no. It was tencent cotton and forty-cent meat back then. Reverend Buck told us the boll weevil had come because there were too many public swimming pools. The government taxed everything from cigarettes to bow legs, but Daddy’s rabbit spit made sure we always had molasses on our cornbread.

“Mama told him the snake that stuck out its head usually got it chopped off, but Daddy was tired of scratching a living so he ignored Mama and sold twelve jars of rabbit spit to Hoyt Pickens and Hoyt went to Columbia and sold those right quick and came back for twelve more. He sold those, too, and soon Daddy had a second still and was gone from the house from sundown to sunup and sleeping all day.

“Hoyt Pickens sat regular at our table every Sunday and some Wednesdays and Fridays, too. He told Daddy all the things he should want. He told Daddy he could get more money if he laid up his rabbit spit in barrels until it turned brown. That meant Daddy had to lay out considerable and he wouldn’t see his money back for six months until Hoyt took it to Columbia and got paid. But the first time Hoyt laid that thick stack of bills on the table we all got excited.”

Something sharp tickled Patricia’s palm. Miss Mary was scratching her nails against Patricia’s skin, back and forth, back and forth, like insects creeping across the inside of her hand.

“Soon everything became about the rabbit spit. Once the sheriff saw what Daddy was doing he touched him for a taste of that money. Daddy needed other men to work the stills and he paid them in scrip while they waited for the rabbit spit to turn brown. Banks closed faster than you could remember their names so everyone held on to their money, but Daddy bought a set of encyclopedias, and a mangle for the wash, and the men all smoked store-bought cigars when they sat out back.”

Patricia remembered Kershaw. They’d driven the hundred and fifty miles upstate many times to visit Carter’s cousins, and Miss Mary when she lived alone. They hadn’t been in a long while, but Patricia remembered a dry land populated by dry people, covered in dust, with filling stations at every crossroads selling evaporated milk and generic cigarettes. She remembered fallow fields and abandoned farms. She understood the appeal of something fresh, and clean, and green to people who lived in a small, hot place like that.