“You listen to me, Jo Howell, I’m not letting Sarah step foot out of my house, till I’m convinced that she’s well enough to, and until I’m convinced that she wants to leave it.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Jo, and her eyes disappeared behind rolls of enraged fat.
“I mean,” said Becca, “that Sarah is very sick, and you were the one that made her sick, and right now, she’s not in no condition to fix you and Dean a plate of white bread. Now, I’m gone go back over next door, to my house, and I’m gone tell Sarah that you said you could get along just fine without her, and that you told her to rest up—”
“I’m not gone tell you any such thing—” protested Jo.
“—or else,” continued Becca, running over Jo’s objection, “I’m gone take her, and put her in the back of the Pontiac, and drive her over to the hospital in Enterprise. That’s what I ought to do anyway, probably . . .”
“You bring Sarah back over here where she belongs. I don’t know how you expect her to get well—if she’s really sick—when she’s not in her own house.”
“She’s sick,” cried Becca, “ ’cause of what you’re doing to her, making her wait on you like you didn’t have two legs and two arms and all your fingers, Jo Howell, that’s why she’s sick, and for no other reason in the world! That poor girl works hard as I do every day at the plant, and that’s damn hard, and she comes back to this house that’s stuffy and dark, and she does and does and does for you and Dean till she cain’t do no more!”
“Sarah is Dean’s wife,” said Jo petulantly, “and Dean cain’t do for himself, so she’s got to do it for him.”
“But she’s not your wife, Jo!” cried Becca. “And she don’t have to do for you like she does.”
“She’s been complaining, hasn’t she?”
“ ’Course not,” said Becca, “Sarah don’t complain,” which wasn’t true, but the situation demanded that Becca stand against Jo Howell on every point. “Sarah’s just tired, and she’s gone tire herself into the grave, you keep running her like you do.”
“She’ll get used to it,” said Jo, “she’s got to. Dean’s gone take a long time to heal.”
“She’d be all right if you’d get off her back, Jo! And she’d be all right if she didn’t worry like she does about this amulet thing . . .”
Jo’s neck twisted strangely, and by mistake she pushed the wet cloth with which she had been mopping Dean’s brow into the black slit of his mouth. “What you talking about? What you mean Sarah’s worried about what amulet?”
“You know what amulet. The amulet you gave Larry Coppage. That necklace that went and killed the Coppages, and the Shirleys, and the Simses, and all the rest of ’em, and now it’s done and gone got two more colored girls right this very afternoon. We saw where it happened. And the sheriff still can’t find the damn thing!”
Jo was livid with rage. She sputtered, “Sheriff? What’s the sheriff looking for it for?”
“We’re all looking for it! Sarah keeps trying to find it, ’cause it just keeps killing people, and that’s what’s making her sick like she is this afternoon. That poor girl is in there lying down on my couch, and she’s got no more will in her to move than Dean has . . .”
Jo spoke slowly. “Sarah told you about the amulet, and then she went and told the sheriff?”
Becca nodded, and then was unable to hold back a sneer of disgust. “Jo Howell, you always was mean, but I never thought that you would go around killing perfectly innocent colored girls with a piece of jewelry. I never heard the like of it in—”
“Get out! You get out, and you go get Sarah, and you send her right back over here!”
“No!” shouted Becca. “I’m not gone do it. You gone sit there, or you gone get up and fix supper for Dean and yourself, or you’re not gone get any—”
“You just shut up, and go get Sarah.”
“You shut up! I’ve had just about enough, Jo Howell. Now you listen”—and Becca’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper—“I’m not kidding when I tell you that you have just about drove Sarah into the ground. I send her back tonight, and maybe she’s gone get you supper, but then she’s gone fall apart. She’s gone fall apart tonight or tomorrow morning, and then she’s not gone get supper for you ever again. She’s not gone be going to work either, and then what’s gone happen to you and Dean? Now, I don’t care. I don’t give a damn what happens to you, Jo Howell, and I had just as soon that you had gone over to the Coppages and burnt up in the house with ’em, but you didn’t. Sarah wouldn’t mind taking care of you and Dean if you was just nice to her for five minutes a day, but you’re not. I’m gone try to get Sarah on her feet, so she can come back over here and take care of you. That’s what she wants—though I sure don’t know why she wants it. But not tonight. She’s not gone come back to this house tonight. She’s gone sleep in my house.”
Jo said nothing. Becca’s tone had convinced her that it might indeed be necessary for Sarah to have that single night’s rest.
“You understand what I’m saying?” said Becca.
“All right,” said Jo grudgingly after a moment. “But let me tell you something, Becca Blair. You look around this room, and you look good, because when you walk out that door in ten seconds, you never gone see the inside of this house again, you understand me?”
“Jo,” said Becca, “if an escaped con from the Florida pen came up to me, and put a shotgun to the back of my head, he couldn’t get me to come within twenty feet of you. If I never see you again after this very minute, I will count this the luckiest day of my life. I would buy a new set of tires for the piggyback diesel that ran you down in the middle of the road.” And with that she walked out of the room, and returned to her friend next door.
Chapter 66
Sarah was indeed ill. The deaths of the two young women on the other side of Burnt Corn Creek had smashed through the careful support in her mind that had kept her going all this while, from Dean’s coming home, through her early suspicions about the amulet, to her absolute certainty that this piece of jewelry had been responsible for the deaths of sixteen men, women, and children in Pine Cone. Sarah relaxed a little after she found herself supported by Becca and Sheriff Garrett, and she had not been prepared for the stink of freshly spilled blood in Ruby’s House of Beauty.
She knew that Becca was lying when she said that Jo had made no objections to her staying over the night, but Sarah did not contradict her friend. She slept the rest of Saturday afternoon, and sat up to eat the supper that Becca set out on a TV tray for her. Sarah even smiled a little through Becca’s nervous volubility that entire evening: “. . . almost glad it happened, ’cause it gives you the chance to get out of that house for just a little while, let Jo take care of Dean for a bit, ’cause she is perfectly capable of mashing up them strawberries we brought back for him, and if I thought she couldn’t take care of Dean, why I’d be over there myself . . .”
Sarah nodded, and said in a low hoarse voice, “Jo can take care of Dean . . .”
Becca nodded vigorously, glad that Sarah seemed to be coming out of it. Her immobility had frightened Becca, and she still wondered if Sarah would be able to go to work on Monday morning.
Becca telephoned the head of the Pine Cone telephone office, and broke the date she had made with him the previous day.
“When he asked me, I told him yes, even though I didn’t want to go—don’t like him—but I thought if I went out on a date, I would prove that the wee-gee board was wrong, when it said I wouldn’t have a date till next Saturday.”
Sarah didn’t laugh. “Looks like the wee-gee board’s gone turn out to be right. Just like when it said that Dean and Jo were responsible for all them deaths . . .”
“Shhhh . . . !” cautioned Becca, “let’s don’t talk about it no more tonight.”
“It also said that—” Sarah began, broke off, and spoke no more of the Ouija board, the amulet, or the eighteen dead citizens of Pine Cone.
The two women watched television, though Sarah fell asleep shortly after ten o’clock. She was well enough the following morning to sit up at the breakfast table.
Becca feared that Sarah would now start making motions to return to Jo and Dean next door, weak as she still was; and she began thinking of ways to talk her out of it. But Sarah said nothing about going back, and seemed content to sit and read through the Sunday papers, while Becca and Margaret got ready to go off to Andalusia for late morning mass, a trip Becca enjoyed despite not being a Catholic.
“You gone be here when we get back, aren’t you?” she said, a little doubtfully.
Sarah nodded and smiled. “I’ll go back over there in time to fix Dean’s supper. Not before then.”
Reassured, Becca soon left with Margaret. Not an entire minute later, the telephone rang. Sarah was sure that it was Jo, who probably had been waiting for the purple Pontiac to pull out, and she did not answer it. She sat at the kitchen table, with a second cup of coffee, and a little plate of toast that Margaret had fixed for her just before they left.
In another few minutes, she heard Jo’s voice calling out from the kitchen window just across the way. “Sarah! Sarah! You come back over here! Dean needs you, Sarah!”
Sarah did not get up from the table, did not even lift her eyes from the comics.
Late that afternoon, when Sarah was just about to return to Jo and Dean, Becca said, “You’re all right now, aren’t you?” Sarah had rapidly improved during the time that Becca and Margaret were in Andalusia, regaining her spirit entirely, and by five o’clock had apparently recovered her strength as well.
Sarah nodded in response to the question. “I’m fine, Becca, just fine.”
Becca looked askance and reluctantly said, “What you think was wrong with you, Sarah?”
“I was a little tired, that’s all. Probably I don’t need anything more than a little nap every afternoon, that’s all.” She said this with a smile, but Becca didn’t believe her.
“You not still thinking about that amulet, are you?”
Sarah smiled again, and Becca thought this very strange, for her friend had never spoken of the amulet but with the greatest seriousness. “No,” said Sarah, “I cain’t do anything about it. I’m just gone leave it all up to the sheriff . . .”
Becca didn’t believe this either.
Chapter 67
Margaret Blair, on this particular Monday, was very happy, for at noon she was to become a senior in high school, a position which conferred many social and psychological benefits to a young girl. She in fact was going to celebrate, with a few of her friends, with a picnic on a special sandbar in Burnt Corn Creek, a favored location that was known and frequented by a certain set of boys—soon also to be seniors themselves. They were charitably taking along all their younger brothers and sisters, so there promised to be quite a little crowd on the strip of pebbly sand and coarse grass.
Margaret stood over the stove in the early morning, fishing apples out of a great pot of boiling sugar syrup. She was preparing two dozen of these, and that was to be her contribution. She and her friends would be going down to the creek just as soon as they could get out of school, and those minutes just before noon were perhaps the most precious of all the year to them.
Margaret’s mother entered the room then, dressed for work, her handbag over her arm, and sat at the breakfast table.
“That gone be enough, Margaret?” asked Becca.
Margaret nodded absently, and then said, “Mama, you better get ready, ’cause I see Sarah out in her back yard putting up clothes on the line, and she don’t have many. She’s gone be through in twenty seconds, and she’s gone be ready to go.”
“I’m ready,” said Becca, “soon’s I do my lips.”
Becca rummaged in her purse for her lipstick. But pulling her hand out, she came up with the lipstick and with the amulet as well. Becca looked at it and shuddered. “M-Margaret . . .” she faltered.
Margaret let an apple slide off the spoon back into the pot. It disappeared beneath the surging sugar-water. “What, Mama?” She turned down the burner just a little, for the syrup had raised itself to the ideal temperature, according to the candy thermometer attached to the side of the pot.
“Margaret,” Becca said, “did you put this thing in my purse?” She held up the amulet by its chain.
“What is it, Mama? What is that?”
“It’s a necklace, with a thing on the end of it, just like the one that Sarah’s always talking about. What I’m asking is, d’you put it in here?”
“Mama,” replied Margaret, “I never saw that thing before in my life.”
Becca stared a moment at the amulet, and then looked up again at her daughter. “Margaret,” she said, “you call Sarah and you tell her to come on over here right now.”
Margaret called out the window, “Sarah, can you come here half a second?”
Becca could hear her friend’s voice from outside, calling in reply, “Soon as I get these sheets up!”
Margaret moved over to her mother’s side. “Mama, I’ve never seen that thing before, but it’s real pretty. If you don’t like it, why don’t you let me—”
Margaret reached out for the amulet, and Becca, fearful that her daughter might take it and put it on, suddenly pulled back, clapping the amulet to her breast. The sudden movement knocked her chair against the wall, and Becca grabbed the edges of the chair as she scurried to keep from falling over.
“You be careful, Mama!” cried Margaret, “if you don’t—” She stopped abruptly. “How’d that happen?” she asked, surprised.
“What?” said Becca.
“That chain’s ’round your neck. You had it in your hand not two seconds ago, and now it’s hooked ’round your neck.”
“No, it’s not,” said Becca.
“Yes, it is, Mama!” exclaimed Margaret, who couldn’t understand why her mother was contradicting a self-evident fact. She laughed in her perplexity and returned to the apples. Becca tugged at the amulet, and with an expression of intense disgust, followed her daughter’s movements at the stove. Margaret peered out the window, and said, “Mama, Sarah’ll be right here.”
Margaret carefully brought another apple up to the surface of the pot. She heard her mother rise from the breakfast table behind her. “Mama,” she said, “you think I ought to make eggs too? I mean, they’s gone be nearly fifteen of us, and that’s not counting little Mary Shirley, and you know what that little girl told me? She told me that now that her mama and daddy is dead, she’s not ever gone eat a egg again when the sun is up! She said to me that eggs was for the nighttime!”
Suddenly Margaret felt herself grabbed from behind. Her mother had her hand on her daughter’s throat, tight and stifling. Margaret was so surprised that she did not even think to struggle; but in a moment, when that hand began to push her face down toward the violently boiling syrup in the pot, Margaret tried to squirm out of her mother’s grasp. She opened her mouth to scream, but the liquid flooded up into her throat, and searing pain that seemed to melt her consciousness was all that was left to the unfortunate girl.
Sugar syrup boiled out all over the stove and the counter and floor. Steam hissed up from the contact with the electrical coils beneath the pot. The apples rolled off the counter and smashed solidly against the linoleum. Margaret’s body went limp under Becca’s hands, and fell to the floor under its own weight. The pot of seething sugar toppled as well and poured out all over the girl’s corpse, cooking her flesh until it was the color and consistency of deep-fried chicken skin. Becca had had to spring well out of the way so that she would not be burned also.
Margaret’s face was a featureless, bubbling lump of pink candy. With a broom handle Becca overturned the corpse, so that it lay face down, and then she gingerly reached over to turn off the stove. She heard Sarah’s voice, calling softly from just underneath the kitchen window. Becca stepped to the sink and looked out at her friend.
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“What’d Margaret want, Becca?”
“She just wanted to know if you’re ready to go to the plant,” Becca replied with a smile.
“I’m ready,” said Sarah, “don’t even have to go back inside.”
Becca nodded, and backed away from the window, at the same time carefully slipping the amulet beneath her blouse. She retrieved her purse from the breakfast table, and went out the back door without even glancing at her daughter’s corpse on the kitchen floor, lying in a pool of still-bubbling sugar syrup, with the brilliantly red candied apples scattered all round her.
Becca pulled out of the driveway a few moments later, and the two women drove down the street in front of Sarah’s house. Instinctively, Sarah stared out the car window at the front of her house. Suddenly, the curtains in the living room were jerked open. Sarah could see Dean, bandaged and motionless, propped up in a chair in the little alcove there. Jo was in the chair beside him, staring directly out at Sarah. She jumped, and averted her eyes: who had pulled the curtains open?
Chapter 68
“Well,” said Becca, “did you two have it out? What’d Jo say when you came in yesterday?” These were Becca’s first questions to Sarah, even before they had got into the car.
Sarah looked well, and appeared stronger than before the attack had occurred on Saturday.
“No,” said Sarah, “we didn’t have it out. I went in yesterday afternoon and I fixed supper and I took it to them. And Jo didn’t say a word about my being gone.”
“I cain’t hardly believe it,” said Becca, but asked no more questions on the drive to work.
But Sarah was thinking, and thinking hard: herself wondering why Jo had said nothing to her. She had been prepared for an onslaught of abuse and recrimination, but none had been forthcoming. Jo had been sullen and even more watchful than usual, but there was no blatant hostility.