“But …”
A dangerous smile tipped the woman’s face hideously awry. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think I’m good enough to drink with?”
“Please, don’t misunderstand,” said Kay, a tremor in her voice. “It’s just that I don’t like being forced to do something I don’t want to. So look, couldn’t I give this to the gentleman?”
“Him? No sirree: he needs what little sense he’s got. Come on, honey, down the hatch.”
Kay, seeing it was useless, decided to succumb and avoid a possible scene. She sipped and shuddered. It was terrible gin. It burned her throat till her eyes watered. Quickly, when the woman was not watching, she emptied the cup out into the sound hole of the guitar. It happened, however, that the man saw; and Kay, realizing it, recklessly signaled to him with her eyes a plea not to give her away. But she could not tell from his clear-blank expression how much he understood.
“Where you from, kid?” resumed the woman presently.
For a bewildered moment, Kay was unable to provide an answer. The names of several cities came to her all at once. Finally, from this confusion, she extracted: “New Orleans. My home is in New Orleans.”
The woman beamed. “N.O.’s where I wanna go when I kick off. One time, oh, say 1923, I ran me a sweet little fortune-teller parlor there. Let’s see, that was on St. Peter Street.” Pausing, she stooped and set the empty gin bottle on the floor. It rolled into the aisle and rocked back and forth with a drowsy sound. “I was raised in Texas—on a big ranch—my papa was rich. Us kids always had the best; even Paris, France, clothes. I’ll bet you’ve got a big swell house, too. Do you have a garden? Do you grow flowers?”
“Just lilacs.”
A conductor entered the coach, preceded by a cold gust of wind that rattled the trash in the aisle and briefly livened the dull air. He lumbered along, stopping now and then to punch a ticket or talk with a passenger. It was after midnight. Someone was expertly playing a harmonica. Someone else was arguing the merits of a certain politician. A child cried out in his sleep.
“Maybe you wouldn’t be so snotty if you knew who we was,” said the woman, bobbing her tremendous head. “We ain’t nobodies, not by a long shot.”
Embarrassed, Kay nervously opened a pack of cigarettes and lighted one. She wondered if there might not be a seat in a car up ahead. She could not bear the woman, or, for that matter, the man, another minute. But she had never before been in a remotely comparable situation. “If you’ll excuse me now,” she said, “I have to be leaving. It’s been very pleasant, but I promised to meet a friend on the train …”
With almost invisible swiftness the woman grasped the girl’s wrist. “Didn’t your mama ever tell you it was sinful to lie?” she stage-whispered. The lavender hat tumbled off her head but she made no effort to retrieve it. Her tongue flicked out and wetted her lips. And, as Kay stood up, she increased the pressure of her grip. “Sit down, dear … there ain’t any friend … Why, we’re your only friends and we wouldn’t have you leave us for the world.”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t lie.”
“Sit down, dear.”
Kay dropped her cigarette and the man picked it up. He slouched in the corner and became absorbed in blowing a chain of lush smoke rings that mounted upward like hollow eyes and expanded into nothing.
“Why, you wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings by leaving us, now, would you, dear?” crooned the woman softly. “Sit down—down—now, that’s a good girl. My, what a pretty guitar. What a pretty, pretty guitar …” Her voice faded before the sudden whooshing, static noise of a second train. And for an instant the lights in the coach went off; in the darkness the passing train’s golden windows winked black-yellow-black-yellow-black-yellow. The man’s cigarette pulsed like the glow of a firefly, and his smoke rings continued rising tranquilly. Outside, a bell pealed wildly.
When the lights came on again, Kay was massaging her wrist where the woman’s strong fingers had left a painful bracelet mark. She was more puzzled than angry. She determined to ask the conductor if he would find her a different seat. But when he arrived to take her ticket, the request stuttered on her lips incoherently.
“Yes, miss?”
“Nothing,” she said.
And he was gone.
The trio in the alcove regarded one another in mysterious silence till the woman said, “I’ve got something here I wanna show you, honey.” She rummaged once more in the oilcloth satchel. “You won’t be so snotty after you get a gander at this.”
What she passed to Kay was a handbill, published on such yellowed, antique paper it looked as if it must be centuries old. In fragile, overly fancy lettering, it read:
LAZARUS
THE MAN WHO IS BURIED ALIVE
A MIRACLE
SEE FOR YOURSELF
ADULTS, 25C—CHILDREN, 10C
“I always sing a hymn and read a sermon,” said the woman. “It’s awful sad: some folks cry, especially the old ones. And I’ve got me a perfectly elegant costume: a black veil and a black dress, oh, very becoming. He wears a gorgeous made-to-order bridegroom suit and a turban and lotsa talcum on his face. See, we try to make it as much like a bonafide funeral as we can. But shoot, nowadays you’re likely to get just a buncha smart alecks come for laughs—so sometimes I’m real glad he’s afflicted like he is on accounta otherwise his feelings would be hurt, maybe.”
Kay said, “You mean you’re with a circus or a side-show or something like that?”
“Nope, us alone,” said the woman as she reclaimed the fallen hat. “We’ve been doing it for years and years—played every tank town in the South: Singasong, Mississippi—Spunky, Louisiana—Eureka, Alabama …” these and other names rolled off her tongue musically, running together like rain. “After the hymn, after the sermon, we bury him.”
“In a coffin?”
“Sort of. It’s gorgeous, it’s got silver stars painted all over the lid.”
“I should think he would suffocate,” said Kay, amazed. “How long does he stay buried?”
“All told it takes maybe an hour—course that’s not counting the lure.”
“The lure?”
“Uh huh. It’s what we do the night before the show. See, we hunt up a store, any ol’ store with a big glass window’ll do, and get the owner to let him sit inside this window, and, well, hypnotize himself. Stays there all night stiff as a poker and people come and look: scares the livin’ hell out of ’em.…” While she talked she jiggled a finger in her ear, withdrawing it occasionally to examine her find. “And one time this ol’ bindlestiff Mississippi sheriff tried to …”
The tale that followed was baffling and pointless: Kay did not bother to listen. Nevertheless, what she had heard already inspired a reverie, a vague recapitulation of her uncle’s funeral; an event which, to tell the truth, had not much affected her since she had scarcely known him.
And so, while gazing abstractedly at the man, an image of her uncle’s face, white next to the pale silk casket pillow, appeared in her mind’s eye. Observing their faces simultaneously, both the man’s and uncle’s, as it were, she thought she recognized an odd parallel: there was about the man’s face the same kind of shocking, embalmed, secret stillness, as though, in a sense, he were truly an exhibit in a glass cage, complacent to be seen, uninterested in seeing.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“I said: I sure wish they’d lend us the use of a regular cemetery. Like it is now we have to put on the show wherever we can … mostly in empty lots that are nine times outa ten smack up against some smelly fillin’ station, which ain’t exactly a big help. But like I say, we got us a swell act, the best. You oughta come see it if you get a chance.”
“Oh, I should love to,” Kay, said, absently.
“Oh, I should love to,” mimicked the woman. “Well, who asked you? Anybody ask you?” She hoisted up her skirt and enthusiastically blew her nose on the ragged hem of a petticoat. “Bu-leeve me, it’s a hard way to turn a dollar. Know what our take was last month? Fifty-three bucks! Honey, you try living on that sometime.” She sniffed and rearranged her skirt with considerable primness. “Well, one of these days my sweet boy’s sure enough going to die down there; and even then somebody’ll say it was a gyp.”
At this point the man took from his pocket what seemed to be a finely shellacked peach seed and balanced it on the palm of his hand. He looked across at Kay and, certain of her attention, opened his eyelids wide and began to squeeze and caress the seed in an undefinably obscene manner.
Kay frowned. “What does he want?”
“He wants you to buy it.”
“But what is it?”
“A charm,” said the woman. “A love charm.”
Whoever was playing the harmonica stopped. Other sounds, less unique, became at once prominent: someone snoring, the gin bottle seesaw rolling, voices in sleepy argument, the train wheels’ distant hum.
“Where could you get love cheaper, honey?”
“It’s nice. I mean it’s cute.…” Kay said, stalling for time. The man rubbed and polished the seed on his trouser leg. His head was lowered at a supplicating, mournful angle, and presently he stuck the seed between his teeth and bit it, as if it were a suspicious piece
