Faith and the Good Thing Read online

  Faith, touching his headstone, felt too empty to cry. Todd was dead; that was that. Dead, slain by the hands of three men, each of whom probably unloaded a large quantity of his tension, his vital juices, in Todd’s execution. Dead. Returned to stone or slime. And nothing could change that.

  Night rose out of the ground and darkened the headstones. Faith returned to the farmhouse, where she began packing her few possessions. On her bed she heaped several dresses Lavidia had knitted for her during the winters when life was slower on the farm. She placed these in her laundry bag, drew the string, and carried it into the front room. On a large, square strip of cardboard she printed TO CHICAGO in red lipstick, and attached strings to its sides so she could wear it around her neck in case she got lost. Pausing, she noticed Lavidia’s shoes—two big boats of leather as brown as shave grass in September—empty in a corner of the front room. They were creased where Lavidia’s heels once had hung over their backs. But now they were eerie, empty as though Lavidia had been snatched from them at that very spot and transported by giggling demons out of the world. Too, the stillness of the front rooms was frightening. All familiarity had fled from the furniture, and every few moments she had to catch herself from dashing into the kitchen, where she heard a scraping noise. Mice, perhaps the wind: nothing more. She moved through the house from room to room, dousing out the wick-lighted oil lamps and closing doors, perhaps forever. She shut the windows and, on impulse, snatched all the photographs scattered about the house and locked them in a closet. After counting her money—seventy-five dollars—and disposing of Lavidia’s rings and a few hairbrushes, which could be used in conjuration and curses against her mother, she left, looking back down the misty, rain-soaked road occasionally, but glad to be again in the night air.

  The trees along the road were monstrous—huge, ungainly, sprouting twisting limbs gnarled in one space, skimpy in another, swollen in a third; they seemed made of clay, half-formed and moist, grooved along their length with deep lines that hinted at the great hand of God, old and haggard, holding His sculptor’s knife uncertainly, hesitating, then madly clawing at the clay of the trees in wrath or frustration or fearful divine woe. Terrible trees, these, washed by the light of an old moon, the star-sprinkled sky closest to its globe stained with a rich orange glow that emitted a stairway of rings and caught Faith’s eye through the frail, claylike fingers of the tree branches above. Such a moon was said to be magical, an omen, or a mysterious occurrence to which one could cast a wish and have it realized. She believed it, and felt the moon was an old friend. Often, she’d stepped outside the farmhouse to watch the moon after Lavidia had gargled, dropped her teeth into a glass of water, and gone to bed. Its cycles triggered the odd changes in her own body: pain, tranquillity, pain again. Which were strange. Lavidia called them an ancient curse, and warned Faith to stay away from men, abstain from grinding corn, milking cows, and sewing with a needle on the first day of bleeding. If the moon could be so cruel, might it not be equally kind and grant her wish?

  She made a wish: “Let me find it—the Good Thing.”

  And she repeated it several times on the train while watching the moon disappear behind the clouds. She relaxed, inviting the incubus, sleep filling up her stomach and mind, and drifted into a dream.

  The Swamp Woman. She, Faith Cross, was the giggling old werewitch of the bogs, stirring with a divining rod a potion in her cauldron, a hellbroth that smelled like sewage and nine-day-dead alewives. Behind her the music of the spheres rang from the lizard-powered machine, each note as unsettling as a centaur’s cry. The bug-eyed squirrels and dirty chickens made gibbering noises like elves from their cages; the elves, chained to her workbenches, screamed like changelings, and the changelings, lying with bloated bellies on her benches, howled like whales (a strange sound, indeed). Into the cauldron she peered, and her lips exploded outward: “Hee hee!” It was done. Her brew looked like cough syrup and now had the scent and consistency of cod-liver oil. She tipped her cauldron over; its contents oozed to the sloping floor and spread like something sentient out the crooked shanty door, filling the swamp, choking spiny catfish and snails. It mixed into the bogs, which were as mysterious as the Swamp Woman herself—heavily misted with the mephitic odor of decay, swarming with insects and fish forgotten by the sleep of death, and thus allowed to spawn in the stagnant waters eternally. Often, at sundown, the water was as red as the blood of a calf—rich, opaque; then, at dawn, almost transparent enough for the bones of ancient beasts to be seen on its bottom. It held birth, and death, and now the Swamp Woman’s brew. Around the shanty, the swamp bubbled, overflowed the borders of the bog, and slid over the forests and hills of Hatten County. The brew ran endlessly from her cauldron, covering her knees as she waved her broken wand in wide arcs through the air and sang:

  “If you find what’s Good,

  You’d better knock on wood;

  You’d better hold it fast,

  ’Cause it might not last—

  You’d better squeeze it tight

  And try to eat it all,

  ’Cause it’ll soon take flight

  Like a—pterodactyl! Hee hee!”

  It covered the countryside, deluged the cities: it covered the world. Billions were covered with the brew. And when they managed to smear it all off, they looked like her: the Swamp Woman. Their limbs had become gnarled oak sprouting yellow boils, their flesh was as black as the ink of a squid. And all around the world people looked at each other, winked their clear yellow eyes evilly, and squealed in harmony:

  “Hee hee!”

  The dream dissolved, and Faith Cross slept the sleep of the dead.

  4

  Heretofore sweet Faith slumbered; then, past midnight, after two days’ tiring journey from Georgia to Chicago and a restless sleep in her train seat, Faith awoke to the wrenching of gears and a shrill whistle. Her car lurched backward, then was still, surrounded by the hissing of steam from engine valves. She rubbed her palms against her eyes, licked at a sour taste in her mouth, and smeared away moisture clouding her window. Outside, passengers with suitcases hurried through a semicircular terminal to a crowded exit. Brown men in dull black suits pushed carts piled higher than their heads with heavy luggage. The air rolled with steam. Faith pulled her bag from a gunmetal-gray rack overhead and hurried through the narrow aisle to the door. She stepped from the car, shivering in the midst of a fast-moving crowd that passed her on both sides, jostled her and, before she was in the clear, had brushed off her sign. She followed the other passengers down the broad strip to a bright waiting room. Men and women met, embraced, and left arm in arm. Others raced off alone, if no one met them, toward stairs at the rear of the room. Where was she to begin? Who in this room looked friendly enough to answer her questions? Their steps seemed to have a definite direction, their heels rang against the tiled floor with efficiency, with system and method. Faith stepped timidly in the shadow of a couple in matching trench coats and tams, following them at a safe distance up a slow escalator, down several narrow corridors plastered with political posters peeling with age, and into a hallway with parquet floors ending on the street level.

  She felt panic when she reached the outside. The couple had already climbed into their car at the curb and driven off. Where, she had intended to ask, can I find a room? A meal? But they were gone. The street was silent save for the thudding of car tires on cobblestones and, from around the corner, the blast of horns. Standing still, her bag swinging at her side, she felt she’d entered a place desolate, despised by man, a canyon of jagged walls. The air was cold and heavy in her lungs. Her breath hovered before her face as blue wisps of steam. The sidewalk, too, was cold beneath her feet, its icy surface tearing at her soles as she hurried down the street to keep warm. A sign on the corner said Sixty-fourth. Which told her nothing. The storefronts were all covered with lengths of metal latticework. At the far end of the block she saw a man wearing sunglasses and a green army jacket leave a telephone booth at the bus stop. Faith app
roached him.

  “Que es esto?” the man said, almost shouting. He backed away from her as if she held a summons. Cried, “Vayaaa!”

  “I’m just trying to find a room,” she said, stepping closer. “I just now got off the train—”

  He raised his glasses to his brow, squinted his black eyes at her, said, “No comprendo,” tersely, and backed away. He saw his bus turn the corner, and bolted into the street to meet it. From the rear window he frowned at her.

  In the shiny glass of a Japanese curio shop she saw her reflection. You would have thought a witch had ridden her all night. (They do that, witches. The hags turn you over on your stomach when you’re sleeping, shove a bit into your mouth, and ride you on all fours for hours. All night long. And in the morning you feel real blue and ache from head to toe.) Her dress, though skimpy and a riot of wrinkles, was still somewhat, though only barely, intact. Her hair was drawn up and matted in dark clumps; her skin had turned ashy and gray from the cold. Her mouth and nose—dry. Her stomach grumbled. It pinched with a hunger bordering on nausea. Looking away, she saw the city lights grow brighter, more numerous on the far side of the bridge that began just across the street. Faith started across, but stopped midway when a particularly vicious cramp knotted in her right side. She was used to gales, to soothing sirocco summers. The cold began to slow her movements, to seep beneath her skin. To burn. Faith’s feet went numb, like weights cemented to her ankles. Her fingers stiffened. A small fire engine shot from around the corner, its bells ringing as it rumbled over the bridge and down a boulevard lined with bare leafless elms, and farther on, sirens blaring, to red flames twisting into the sky from a burning water tower. It was here, on this chilly South Side bridge, that Faith grew afraid, quailed and pined for home. She was alone, and in a strange city. Hadn’t the Swamp Woman said she was a Number One and, therefore, needed direction to avoid disaster? Neither Todd nor Lavidia had prepared her to be alone. She wasn’t equal to the occasion. But she couldn’t say Todd didn’t prepare her for fear.

  During the riotous days of his wanderlust, Todd Cross had been a gambler and could take your money in a game of five-card stud faster than any man alive. This he did, and the others involved in that Saturday night game in the back room of the Bucket-o-Blood saloon reached for their pistols. Todd snatched the satchel of money off the wine-stained table, threw himself through the window, fell two flights, and landed on the sheriff’s horse. Unfortunately, the sheriff was on it; that is, until Todd came hurtling down. The sheriff called a posse, the posse called the vigilantes, and they called the National Guard. Todd rode like the wind. But his horse petered out near the mountains, whinnied, “To hell with this,” and Todd had to make it on foot, armed with but a single-shot derringer, his satchel, and a whole lot of heart. The hounds were at his heels the whole night long, vigilante bullets swarmed around his head like bees gone crazy. Todd kept stepping. He hid in a mountain cave. But they found him, children. His back pressed to the moist wall of the cave, he could hear the dogs outside, fighting one another to see who’d be first to chew the marrow from his bones. “Give up!” the vigilantes hooted. In a corner, just inches from his feet, Todd saw two gleaming eyes; he heard a grizzly growling. Above him was the bodacious beating of bat wings. Vampires. Todd fell to his knees, ankle-deep in a small stream that rippled through the cave. He prayed—he had to shout it, children, because those dogs and vigilantes and bats were loud! Todd fell on his side; he screamed when the bloodhounds came barreling in. Water touched his lips. He thrust out his tongue:

  “Ahhh . . .”

  But Faith felt in no way reassured. This wasn’t home, this wasn’t the South. Lost, directionless, any step she took would probably be wrong. Fatal. Faith leaned back against the bridge, trembling. . . . She felt something soft along her shoulders. Before she could turn a gloved hand with its cloth fingers worn away clamped over her mouth. Something snatched at her right arm, twisted it behind her back.

  “Just be quiet,” an excited voice said into her ear. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just don’t scream.”

  She should have bitten the salty-tasting fingers pressed against her teeth; she should have kicked back her heels toward his groin and screamed with all her strength. But the touch of his hand was electrifying—hard and rough. She was helpless, her eyes saw white, her knees dissolved.

  “Just be silent,” the voice stammered. “I’m a poor man—a desperate man, or I wouldn’t be doing anything like this.” There was silence and horribly heavy breathing. The air carried the rush of traffic faraway. Then a rasping intake of air. “I was a professor at Princeton. Once—I was a scholar, you see? I’ve published, lectured, created courses unheard of before my coming. But my ideas cost me my job. No, you wouldn’t understand, of course, but what I wanted to teach was the truth not, not—” His voice trailed off in a whisper, then came back booming in her ear. “Pray that the poets were right—that someday, someday the rich will find themselves governed in a hell ruled by philosopher-kings. But until then, child . . . give me your bag!”

  Herewith, the hands released her. Faith pivoted, nearly falling, and glimpsed a squat, red-eyed, wolfish man in a mauve-colored coat. He wrenched the bag from her hand, shoved her aside, and sprinted across the bridge, shouting, “Forgive me! The victim and victor are One!”

  As he ran, rifling Faith’s laundry bag, the thief collided at the end of the bridge with a silhouetted figure. He recoiled and shouted, “Mercy!” She saw him fling the bag aside and, through a series of jerky feints, elude the figure. Who picked up her bag. He hurried up the bridge, its lights bringing into clarity his dark waistcoat, then a hat pulled over his eyes. He was sweating profusely. From his face there drifted steam.

  “Your bag’s empty,” he said breathlessly. “There wasn’t money in it, was there?”

  Faith collapsed against the bridge. She held her head. “Just a few dollars—call someone—” She looked up, startled by his silence. He was shaking his head. What struck her immediately was his glasses—silver wire-rims hooked over winglike ears and holding lenses so thick his eyes seemed to float behind them like dark blowfish. Between those lenses was a thin bridge dropping to a bulbous nose and wide nostrils. And below that—tight lips surrounded by a scraggly goatee. All over he had the hue of coffee colored with skim milk: a hesitant brown. His feet were tiny and delicate, poorly supporting his wide girth and watery, womanly hips. This was he who saved her. Also he who said, “I hate to sound like a pessimist, but there’s no point in calling the police. Your money’s gone. I can take you home if you like.” Again, he licked his thin lips. Faith found him frightening, not because he was intimidating or because he seemed aggressive, but because he appeared ready to fly apart—nervous, put together with phlegm, gristle, and paste. She looked away, shuddering, her teeth rattling as the wind stole like a lecher up her legs.