Ring Shout(7)

“You have it?” she pants, pulling up tinted goggles.

“And good day to you too, Molly,” Chef greets, jumping out.

“Do you have it?” she asks again, round face frowning and all five feet of her drawing up. A gloved hand pushes strands of gray into a bonnet holding her hair. Molly Hogan is something of a scientist. And if she’s anything to go on, they can be a one-minded lot.

“In the back,” I answer. She follows me to where Chef is lifting up the canopy. In the bed, between two bales of cotton, sit big glass canisters full of murky liquid. One holds the head of a Ku Klux, its face smashed up against the inside. Another a hand, long claws and all. A third, much of a foot.

“I was hoping for an intact body,” Molly says, inspecting the canisters like she at a meat shop.

“You ain’t got nothing to fit a whole body,” I remark.

“Are they at least still in their dormant phase?” Dormant. That what she call when a Ku Klux pretending to be human. Molly ain’t got the sight. To her, what’s preserved in that fluid is a man’s severed head, hands, and feet—not a monster. Don’t seem to bother her none. Scientists are strange.

“Didn’t happen that way,” I say. “And you welcome! Almost got killed getting these. We thought they was down but they got back up and sure wasn’t dormant no more. Turned into a real fight!”

She looks up at me as if just noticing the mess I’m in. The edges of her eyes squint into tiny crow’s feet. “Cordy’s bomb didn’t work?”

“My munitions was fine,” Chef huffs.

Molly looks skeptical. “Should have been enough iron and silver in there—”

“Should’ve,” Chef cuts in, “don’t make it so.”

Molly frowns up, then calls to the barn. Four women come running, all dressed like her but younger: one my age, one around Sadie’s, and another just turned eighteen. Under Molly’s instructions, they start gathering the canisters. It takes two to lift each. The oldest, her name Sarah, almost drops her end. Chef catches it quick and she blushes with thanks. Chef flashes a grin and she only blushes more. I elbow her right in the ribs.

“Oww! What?”

“We don’t need that kind of trouble.”

Chef chuckles, watching Sarah walk away. “Them hips ain’t trouble at all.”

We straighten as Molly turns to us. “What’s with the cotton?”

Sadie, sitting on top of a bale, fishes out a bottle, wiggling it playfully.

“Whiskey!” Molly laughs. “How did you come by that?” Her look goes serious again. “Sorry about my earlier rudeness. Just a little out of sorts—got three distilleries going, not to mention my other work.” She nods to the house. “Go on in and get some food. Call you when I’m ready for you.”

She turns back to the barns, and we head to the house. Along the way we pass small trees with deep blue bottles on their branches, the hot summer wind making them whistle faintly. Like the door and porch ceiling, that blue’s meant to ward off haints. Gullah folk say them bottles catch bad spirits. Can’t see what that do to Ku Kluxes, but I ain’t one to question Nana Jean’s ways. From inside comes clapping and singing. The door is ajar and when we push it open, there’s sights enough to catch your breath.

There’s a Shout going on. In the center of the room, five men and women—their hair peppered with white—move in a backward circle to the song. Them’s Shouters. Keeping time is the Stick Man, stooped and beating his cane on the floor. Behind him are three Basers—in overalls frayed by labor, and clapping hands just as worn. They cry out in answer to the Leader, a barrel-chested man named Uncle Will in a straw hat, bellowing out for the world to hear.

“Blow, Gabriel!”

“At the Judgment.”

“Blow that trumpet!”

“At the Judgment bar.”

“My God call you!”

“At the Judgment.”

“Angels shouting!”

“At the Judgment bar.”

The Shout come from slavery times. Though hear Uncle Will tell it, maybe it older than that. Slaves would Shout when they get some rest on Sundays. Or go off to the woods in secret. They’d come together and carry on like this: the Leader, the Stick Man, and the Basers, singing, clapping, and stamping, while the Shouters move to the song. In the Shout, you got to move the way the spirit tell you and can’t stop until it let you go. And don’t call it no dance! Not unless you want Uncle Will to set you down and learn you proper. See, the Shout ain’t really the song, it’s the movement. He say the Shouts like this one got the most power: about surviving slavery times, praying for freedom, and calling on God to end that wickedness.

I can feel my sword appear faint in my hand like a phantom thing—half in this world, half in another. The chanting in my head starts up, and chiefs and kings wail as those they sold flood to the leaf-shaped blade, and old gods stir awake to sway in time to the Shout. Whole room is flooded with light—rising up from the singers, crackling lightning bursting from the Stick Man’s cane, and leaving dazzling tracks where the Shouter’s feet shuffle without ever crossing. That brightness drowns out all else—even a frightened little girl whispering her fears before vanishing into smoke. My blade drinks in that magic, and the chanting in my head grows. But it don’t just come to me. Most of that light flows to a woman in the center of the room in a haint-blue dress.