Thrown-away Child

Whyn’t you get you two eggs out Metarie way, Vi? One for what I do for Miz El, one to make life more charming for you.”
    Violet looked at the floor. She twisted the toes of her feet, the way she did when she was a teenager. A man. It’d be good to know a man again. God Almighty, I’m lonesome.
    But then Violet thought about Sunday. A charm spell cast on Matthew, even the start of one, well might interfere with what Minister Tilton had promised to do—call out the spirit of her Willis, her African lion.
    Could Zeb Tilton make Violet believe, even for a second, that she was seeing her Willis again? Would Ruby go with her? Neil could come, too. But he was Irish, and probably Catholic. La, what would he think about conjuring up the ghost of Ruby’s daddy?
    Ophelia was waiting for an answer.
    “I bring you one egg today, Ophelia. For Miz LaRue.”
    “Don’t be telling me I never tried helping to charm up your life.“
    “I won’t. I got work to do now, if you don’t mind.“
    “The egg charm it’d work one way for Miz El, the exact opposite way for you, Vi.”
    “Yeah? Tell me what two things you do.”
    “Once you toss that egg up to the roof with Miz El name on it, going to make her husband eyes swell up tight. Make his skin prickle like a million crawly ants all over him.”
    “You do that to old Hippo, I don’t care. But why’d you do a mean thing like that to poor Matthew? He a good man. Little slow and quiet, but good.”
    “Oh, but with your name on a egg and the egg toss up top of where Matthew stay, he going to suddenly have the eye only for you. His skin going to prickle ’til he do something about it. Like slide a big hard piece of it up alongside you, gal. Know what I mean?“
    “I ain’t dense. You tell me that’s step one?”
    “Step two only for Miz El, when I need two cock roosters, which I know where to get right here in town. Step one with the black hen egg, that’ll do you fine, Vi. Make Matthew fall your way like a bird shot off a telephone line. Don’t got to do no more than that for you.”
    “What you going to do with cock roosters?“
    “Going to take the one and bury him up to his neck out by the swimming pool. He be able to see, but he can’t move.”
    “What’s the other one do?”
    “You never spent a whole lot of time in the country, did you, Vi?”
    “Left the country a long time ago for this glamorous big-city life.”
    Ophelia laughed dryly.
    “I let that other cock rooster free,” Ophelia said.
    ‘Right round where I bury the first one. First cock so damn frustrated his comb fill up with angry blood.
    Second cock, he don’t take kindly to that, since it’s like waving a red flag front of a bull.”
    “Second cock rooster, he attack that poor buried fellow?”
    “Peck his damn eyes out.”
    “La!”
    “Cock with no eyes be furious. He got a big old comb of blood now, red as fire engine. That’s what I’m after.”
    “What do you do with the comb?”
    “I cuts it off that cock neck. Stick it inside of a frog-leather bag overnight and then take it out before the sun rise next. That comb be all ready for Miz El on Sunday morning.”
    “What she going to do with it then?”
    “Just mind what you told, Vi.”
     

THIRTY-SIX

     
    I stumbled out the doorway and practically fell against Sergeant Vonny LeMay. Not because of a nauseous odor, which I could not detect thanks to the gas mask, but in anticipation of more crude remarks. I fell, hitting the gravel-packed ground smack against the side of my head. I felt a sting in my ear. The lobe was probably cut.
    Vonny reached down to help right me, holding out his gauzy hands for me to grab. When he spotted the blood and the mess on my own bare hands, though, be quickly retracted the offer. And so I managed on my own.
    “Well, you seen what you wanted?” Vonny asked.
    “I saw. Want, I don’t know.”
    A fugitive line of Theodore Roethke’s poetry crept into the front of my head. In a dark time, the eye begins to see. I firmly believe in Roethke’s idea, as both a cop and a regular person with the sense to maintain a healthy respect for cynicism. I have noticed, for instance, that evil in the world is of possibly more use than good. Naturally we require darkness in order to see.
    “Them little niggers make us a pretty good mess, hey?” Vonny haw-hawed, then put a handkerchief to his nose and motioned for me to leave my mask on top of the crate and follow him away from the power station