Horror Short
The Medallion
It had been under Jacob's bed for twenty-one years; he had forgotten it was there. The medallion was in a trunk with one loosened hinge and held: old brittle papers with crisp curled edges, his mother's bible, several photos, loose change and a few tarnished keys.
Jacob Hayes heard his wife Ophelia coming up the stairs toward him. He'd been lying in bed most of the day, his head under her pillow facing the wall. The wall needed a fresh coat of paint but he was too tired to do anything about it. A soft yellow would be nice, he thought, though he knew Ophelia would not agree. She gravitated toward boldness, opulence, and carried the aroma of indulgence. He focused on the jagged crack that raced from one corner of the room to the other-- a winding road of deterioration.
"I knew you was gonna still be in the bed."
She spoke to him as one would a child who had wet himself after much instruction not to, then produced a weary sigh.
"I just laid down cause we haven't had no customers in a while. I was about to get up and…," he didn't finish what he was going to say to her, she had turned her thick body toward the closet. Ophelia was getting an outfit to wear that night. Her hand went into her hair and she began scratching her scalp, reminding him of the sound of fallen leaves rushing down the middle of the street.
"It don't matter none Jacob. I'm about to go over to momma's anyway." Everything about her was apathetic though she had enough energy to turn around and face him once again, one of her eyebrows rose, daring him to comment.
Both Jacob and the small figure inside the medallion underneath his bed shuddered at the thought of Ophelia's mother.
"Never could understand why your momma don't like me none."
He had an idea. Both women were disappointed Jacob wasn't the meal ticket they'd each longed for. Ophelia’s mother didn’t like Jacob. She was only fourteen years older than Ophelia and when together they acted like disturbed sisters-- loud, frantic people, with no concept of personal boundaries. Initially, he thought this trait sexy in Ophelia; he mixed it up with being free-spirited, now she merely fatigued him.
"She ain't never said that," Ophelia hissed.
"She ain't never had to."
Ophelia remembered she and her mother's late night discussions after Jacob began showing up at their front door. Initially they didn't know which one of them he was interested in, but her mother watched his lackluster eyes follow Ophelia's roundness through their two room house, and after the third visit Ophelia's mother began making demands.
"Girl, this here's our chance, I don't know what you call yourself waitin' on. We got us a fish here and you better reel him in!" Her voice was hungry, and their situation was grave. Her mother could never hold down a job and she didn't encourage Ophelia to, it evoked a feeling of inferiority in Ophelia's mother and she would not have that sensation living in her house.
"I don't love no Jacob Hayes, besides I think somethins wrong with him anyhow."
"Ain't nothin' wrong that money won't fix. You just get what you need to out of him, start actin' out and he'll put you out the house. You come on home, by then we'll be done cleaned him out." And on and on the conversation went until the day Ophelia found herself in front of the justice of the peace saying "I do," when she did not. She never loved him but now that feeling had dislike piggy-backed right along side it.
Ophelia and Jacob stared at each other, Jacob because he still waited for an answer, Ophelia because there was nothing more to say.
"What you got them clothes for?"
He sat up in bed so that he could see her better. "You ain't spendin' the night over there again are you?" Jacob knew the answer.
Even though the argument would send them further away from each other he chose to start it and like clockwork his breath became shallow and his head grew foggy with the anticipation of the new hurt she was about to bring him. The uncertainty made him feel closer to her. She couldn't have this argument with anyone else; it made a bond between them that was theirs alone.
"Don't start with me now Jacob," she touched a spot over her right eye, "I got me a headache and I don't feel like it," she said this while bending over to search for something out of her panty drawer. Ophelia's mother had been right about that one. It was a tried and true remedy for just about anything Jacob confronted her with that her eighth grade education couldn't wiggle out of.
"Last couple of months you done got into the habit of spending the night over there. I don't understand-- you my wife."
She held up her hand to stop him, waving it as if flagging down a phantom motorist.
"You know I don't like walkin' these streets at night. Plus," she added when she saw that he was about to interrupt her, "you know momma gets lonely, half the time I just fall asleep on the couch."
And the other half you pass out.
The collection of words weren't in his head and then they were, like a present dropped off, an afterthought. "You must have sense enough to know," she continued, "that I'm not gonna' stay at this store just sittin’ around all day lookin’ at you".
He could easily sit around all day looking at her.
Big beautiful women were Jacob’s weakness. He was slight- average height, average weight, but loved women taller then he was with big fat breasts and round wide butts. Ophelia fit the description perfectly.
She had E’s when he thought breasts got no larger than D’s, and Jacob could watch her bounce around the store and up and down the steps to their apartment all day. Although she'd gotten into the habit of ignoring him, her body continued bringing him unprecedented joy. Her big soft thighs rubbed together when she walked, the swishing sound music to his ears. Flesh lunged out of the top of most of her clothes, the vertical line between her breasts held small beads of perspiration that called to him.
He sat up completely swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
"I don't understand this 'Phelia. You my wife-we married. This is something we need to talk about."
"We'll talk about it later," she said, but she would be gone later.
The bell over the door downstairs clanged harshly-twice.
"Go on and get it," she said as the smell of chemicals wafted through the open window from the cleaners across the street leaving an undercurrent of tension between them. Jacob sometimes felt guilty about it, "Aw, don't worry 'Phelia, a couple of months, six at the most," Jacob had promised, it had been three years.
Even though he was sitting up Jacob found he had no energy to stand. Ophelia moved around him with purpose. She was like a bee collecting items first from here and then from there, rhythmically, then she stopped. Her favorite dark blue dress with the red flowers hung lifelessly over her right arm.
She had a perfectly shaped face with strong bones, a well-chiseled broad nose, pouty big lips and piercing eyes. Jacob had seen a book once in a library. An over-sized, colorful, travel book and inside was the photo of a head. The sculpture was of Nefertiti, in Egypt. When Ophelia turned to the side, when he glimpsed her profile, she looked like that. He wanted to tell her but something stopped him. Something about the way she made him feel about who he was made him keep that information close.
“You can’t believe ya’ got me hunh? Well that makes the two of us, go on downstairs and get the door,” she laughed and laughed as if it were the funniest joke either one of them had ever heard.
"I heard about all of them wild parties over there ''Phelia".
There were whisperings of men staying over to all hours, of beer bottles in the backyard, and fights in the front-- fights over who really was dating who. Some of the men with flashing teeth and questionable pasts would say, "Man what you doin' over here again? I dun told you Ophelia's with me. You better be over here seeing her momma I know that." Or "'Phelia, you goin' by the store soon? We need stuff---I don't know what all, go on and ask your momma what else."
Jacob came back to himself, she was watching him.
"What's wrong with you? I wish I had known for we got together that you was crazy." She shook her head, sorry for the plight she'd found herself in. He couldn't remember when she'd become so mean to him. He imagined it began when she started dating Mr. Franklin.
Marshall Franklin wasn’t refused anything often. He had several women friends he visited but Ophelia was his favorite. Most of his friends were someone else's woman or used to be someone else's woman which meant they were older, but Ophelia was still young enough, only 26. Marshall Franklin felt that his ways were not his fault, "I like variety," he would say to the envious men around town, those he knew were not his friends, "I like a woman with experience--sho nuff, but sometimes there's nothin' better than lickin' the dew off that young shiny rose from time to time." He'd then smile in a knowing fashion causing some listeners to smile civilly and others to pale. The paled ones would need to hurry home to observe their wives closely for signs of Mr. Franklin having been near.
Mr. Franklin was dating all the women in town who'd let him and most did. A good-looking man with the gift of making a woman feel she was good looking too--no matter what her mirror said. His eyes were promises, assurances of incessant love, endless pools of warmth that left women forgetting to come up for air. The possibility of a love that made them risk everything they'd ever known: family, reputation, respect; things known to be of value until meeting Mr. Franklin. He caused women to look down at themselves making sure their clothes were covering all of the essential parts; hands repeatedly fondled bra straps making certain the thick white reinforced material was properly tucked. They adjusted slip straps so the feminine looking lacy bottom wasn't longer than the hem of the dress.
"While you're down there grab me some stockings Jacob," Ophelia said, an afterthought, the words flung over her shoulder in his general direction. He sunk lower into the mattress.
"That's part of the inventory Ophelia--if you wear 'em I can't sell 'em," his eyes didn't meet hers. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten into the position of apologizing for her wastage. More than once Jacob caught her replacing a pair of hose after wearing them for the night complaining they had been the wrong size. Or removing one tablet of Alka-Seltzer out of the small frosted glass bottle because she only needed one not two tablets as the directions recommended, returning the lone one back to the shelf. He absolutely forbade her to work the cash register after realizing she wasn’t charging friends and family at all.
So Jacob wasn’t able to make the anticipated improvements to spruce up the store after old Mr. Thomas died and his wife sold him the place. The same crack was in the lower right hand corner of the front window, no new paint inside or out, no new tile for the floor, and certainly no roof. He’d learned to live with the metallic patter of rain water dripping into the rusted pails in the backroom.
"Just get me the stockings, damn! We got to fight about every little thing?" She stomped past him returning to the small bathroom. He smelled lilac in the air where she'd been moments earlier.
She's gone.
If she'd ever had respect for him it no longer lived inside of her and would never return.
"Anybody up there?"
A voice floated across the store, through the maroon and mildewing curtains that separated the store from the upstairs apartment, and up the stairs.
"I'll be right there." Jacob's voice returned back down the stairs through the curtains and into the store. He recognized the voice, it was Hazel's. Jacob felt energy again and actually smiled.
So did the figure inside the medallion.
Hazel was a neighborhood girl, young and absent-mindedly sensual.
A girl, not a woman.
Jacob's existence consisted of women. Tall skinny women, low fat women, women so light in complexion they looked like they were white. Women so dark they appeared blue when the sun hit them just so. They walked back and forth from the same places everyday with short straight hair and long curly hair, and long straight hair and short curly hair. Men came and left the neighborhood but the small weathered homes kept the women inside of them.
"I'm nineteen," Hazel had answered when Jacob asked her age. He was 33.
She began to frequent the store and seemed overly nice to him. Overly nice to Jacob was someone talking about something other than the weather, making eye contact and listening to him. She did all of these things. Hazel did this for others too, but she hadn't left him out of her community travels. She was a wheel that journeyed from one area to the next and neighborhood pressure hadn't caused her to fold. Hazel unlike Ophelia never looked at him as if she thought he should be someone else.
"My momma always be getting' on me 'bout my clothes," Hazel said to Jacob the first morning they met. She made no attempt to explain further. Hazel wore skimpy summer dresses cut low in front; the straps straining, fraying in front of his eyes, breasts barely staying in their assigned homes, all but spilling on top of the counter, onto the gum and daily paper. Her dress stuck hugging against her obscenely; across her curvaceous butt and in between her legs if Jacob was lucky. When that happened he would excuse himself and go into the bathroom for a long time, a Closed sign dangling vigilantly on the door knob.
"Hazel, where is your slip?" her mother would demand to know before boarding the streetcar for work.
"They too hot," was Hazel's answer.
“Those are too many clothes.” “What’s a body to do when you’re sufferin’ like that?” "Sometimes momma’s need to realize that a girl dun grown up and need to make up her own mind about such things,” would be what the men would say when they knew Hazel's mother was no longer in ear shot.
Some said Hazel was slow. Women tended to think she was conniving since her dimwitted nature seemed to kick in precisely when a penis entered the room. Suddenly normal tasks and thoughts themselves were too demanding and the only thing that sufficed was a giggle accompanied by an index finger planted seductively between her lips. The tightness of her skin and the glow in her eyes forgave all for the men who stood near her bragging about nothing in particular.
Jacob Hayes didn’t care, he was glad that she was downstairs. He heard the water turn on in the sink and Ophelia humming softly.
She's getting ready for her date.
Jacob cocked his head over to the right some, he couldn't remember what the voice inside his head sounded like before, but it had a lilt now.
"'Phelia, maybe you could stay on home tonight, we could go to the movies or somethin'." He heard her stop humming and then heard the water flowing louder from the tap.
"Will you go on downstairs and wait on whoever it is Jacob--please?"
Kill her.
The cramped figure inside the medallion sighed and adjusted it's leg.
A fiery rampaging fear tapped Jacob on the shoulder; he was afraid down to the calcium resting snugly in his bones.
Jacob had heard voices inside his head for as long as he could remember and had ignored them for just as long, eventually they seemed to meld into one strident determined speaker but it was not the one who was there now.
When he was small and afraid his mother would say to him, "Don't pay attention to nothin' but what I say to you," but she had been worried.
Jacob heard his mother and her brother talking over the kitchen table one morning when he was twelve years old, his uncle having come through town unexpectedly for coffee and a place to rest. He had a wild spirit that Jacob envied, something that could not be harnessed with promises of a good job and steady love.
"You know--naw you probably don't even remember," his uncle said as he began pouring a little of the Pet Milk out of the can into his coffee and then his sisters. It began swirling like small tornadoes, the brew becoming creamier calmer shades, he tapped the spoon twice on the side of his cup and continued, "Daddy would hear folks talkin' inside his head all the time."
"Well I told Jacob to thank God for Jesus and to go on about his business."
"I almost forgot," he said, reaching down into the bag beside his right foot.
"Don't tell me you dun brought that boy somethin' else. Where'd you go this time?" Jacob's mother smiled, and puffed her self out, proud of the fuss her brother made over her son. Although she would never admit it to anyone no matter the punishment, Jacob made her uncomfortable sometimes.
"Got this here charm, man who sold it to me called it a medallion." He held it by the chain. It was the size of a half dollar and swung slowly side to side, its back to her. It had a hypnotic momentum.
"Let me see the front of it," she said reaching for the chain in his hand.
"Put out your hand."
She turned her hand over from the brown side to the pink side, palm up. He placed it in the center of her hand. The chain circled and gathered around itself like a snake preparing to rest.
"Good God," she said dropping it and crossing herself though she couldn't remember ever doing that before. Usually she would place her hands together upright as if in prayer when life worried her or she felt evil stood too near.
"Ain't it something! Look at the detail. Don't it look like it's a little man inside of it. This gonna' be worth a lot a money one day. Whoever did this piece is probably already famous."
She returned the piece to her brother, pushing it closer to his side of the table, then got up and began washing her hands. Deliberately, slowly, like a surgeon.
"Where'd you get it?" she asked because she knew he wanted to tell her, not because she wanted to know. She already planned to put it somewhere deep and far away, to be fished out whenever her brother darted into town and asked about it.
"I was in West Africa for awhile," he said, straightening his long legs so that they shot out and stayed in the center of her kitchen. "I ran across this merchant who told me he got it from some haunted tribesman."
Jacob listened outside the kitchen door as his uncle recounted a tale about an infamous tribesman who'd been caste out of his village. The haunted tribesman said he'd been a respected man of the high council in his village, people came to him asking for advice on matters they didn't understand; to counsel others was his life. One day, the tribesman went walking along a trail, I've walked it many times, the tribesman said.
He found the charm, chain and all lying on the ground, put it on and it helped him, gave him luck, made him think clearer. The tribesman became even more loved and respected, worshipped like a God - powerful. He harbored the conviction that he was power itself believing it had no beginning or end without his involvement.
Alienation from former friends caused him worry, though it was clear to everyone that he was the one choosing to isolate himself. Over the following weeks, he began the slow process of disposing of those he did not like, as well as those who did not share his vision. Women he wanted he took for his own, others possessions he took for himself. No one dared try stopping him; they could see his influence as well.
Weeks later, the tribesman's eldest son questioned a decision he'd made, not in front of others--which would've been a cardinal sin, but in private as custom demanded. His son had begun hearing grumblings from men, younger, daring men, and not all that was said was unfounded.
I killed my son, the tribesman said, stabbing him in the heart for doubting my wisdom. His wives couldn't believe what he'd done; suddenly everyone was afraid of him, they were keenly alert because there was a madman in their midst. He tried throwing away the medallion but it talked to him. He was afraid to get rid of it and afraid to keep it. It ruled me, said the tribesman.
The medallion told him men were coming to kill him. Plotting to take his life because they feared his wisdom, feared his might, and feared what he would do next. The tribesman knew everything about everyone because of the position he'd held-- that was the most frightening thing of all, so he ran. That was when the merchant found him wandering the desert talking to himself, re-enacting the motion of thrusting the knife into the heart of his eldest son.
The tribesman told the merchant, I'm to give it to you now, and he placed it in the center of the merchant's palm.
"Now, I don't believe none of that," Jacob's uncle said noticing how still his sister's back had become as she continued facing the sink and not him. "I think it's good luck, and who knows, like I said before, it might be worth some money for the boy one day--stranger things have happened."
He chose not to tell his sister how the merchant finished his tale, the villagers found the tribesman dead the next day, the merchant had recounted chewing on the end of an unlit cigar, "found him in the desert on his back, staring directly into the sun. They left him there--a cautionary tale". The tribesman's story was told to squalling, baleful children. Even though blinded and scared, he would find those who'd misbehaved because he'd died alone-- lonely, and wanted bad children with him, for companionship.
"Yaw'll upstairs? Should I come back?" Jacob could hear Hazel's high heels walking back and forth, back and forth, as if taking inventory of each item in the store. She stopped. He imagined by the pickle jar near the counter. He would offer her a pickle every time she came by the store.
The huge wooden pickle container sat in front and to the side of the counter where Jacob spent most of his day. She’d accept his offer, bending over, taking her time so she could choose just the right one. Hazel would giggle as she fished her right hand into the cold pickle juice, capturing the one hoped for.
"Got it," she'd say displaying small white pointed teeth, pleased at nothing in particular at all. She'd place the dripping pickle between her lips, holding the center between her front teeth while Jacob scurried under the counter to find a rag to wipe the glistening juice off her hand. His thoughts were obscene as she ate the pickle, but it was just his thoughts.
Jacob did watch her once with one of the neighborhood boys. He was taking the trash out back to empty; the two were on the other side of the stacked cans that leaned against the wall. The boy had his hand under her dress between her parted legs, only his wrist visible. The boy’s head was turned away from Jacob, toward the street. Her head was turned the opposite direction and saw Jacob as he came out of the door.
There was no flurry to get her clothes back in order, no apologies, no shame—she stared at him, surrendering all of her weight against the brick wall of his store. The screen door had been caught by his hip but came free slamming behind him. It startled her partner who turned around just as Jacob was sitting the trashcan down.
“Come on man, can’t you get out of here?” the boy asked.
“Of course…I’m sorry. But you kids shouldn’t be out here no way.”
Jacob was flustered. He hadn’t taken his eyes away from Hazel’s. He felt for the door and somehow made his way back through it. She waved good-bye to him with just her fingertips as the young man continued what he'd been doing.
The water turned off in the bathroom, Jacob could hear hair spray exploding out of the can. Ophelia's hair would be shiny and reflective as she left out the front door to go meet Mr. Franklin.
"'Phelia?" She would be angry that he was still upstairs while there was a paying customer downstairs.
Kill her! How much more of this will you take?
Jacob was overwhelmed and felt himself weakening, it was as if he was melting, becoming another substance completely. He slid forward off the mattress and onto the floor, turning around so his knees were under the bed, elbows resting on top of the mattress, arms making a triangle. He began to pray. He heard the bell once again, Hazel had left. She would return-- no one had any place to go.
Their entire neighborhood was suspended in some type of secretion excreted by dispassionate Gods, the kind which did not allow for growth or possibilities. Dreams soared for a short while, maybe took a stroll around the park, but soon returned unfulfilled.
"Give me strength now Lord, be my friend here in my darkest hour of need." Jacob did not know what else to say so he stayed where he was, waiting for either the voice to come back or more ideas to add to his prayer. The bathroom door creaked and Ophelia almost stumbled across his back. She had been taking one last look at herself in the mirror as she walked out of the bathroom.
She stared down at him and Jacob gleaned: bafflement, (he hoped pity but he didn't really believe that), despair and then fury radiate from Ophelia.
"I asked you twenty minutes ago for a pair of stockings Jacob where are they?" Her eyes scanned the room as if the broken lamp on her dresser, or the picture of her father hanging crookedly on the wall in front of her held the answer. "I'm about sick of this shit. I'll get 'em myself. I hope you down there prayin' for another wife."
He was about to get off his knees to try and discern what Ophelia meant by that remark but then he heard movement under the bed. Had Jacob not been on the floor he was sure he would not have heard it. Even so he hesitated, initially suspecting a mouse - that was all he needed; a mouse in the bedroom meant a mouse in the store. He sighed. Later, when it no longer mattered, he would decide the sound had been one of struggle.
Jacob peered into the darkness and saw an object in the shape of a thick wide square, an area blacker than the blackness around it- a trunk. Scraping could be heard on the floor before he realized he was bringing it toward him and out into the light.
He sat cross-legged, what he and his sister called Indian-styled, looking at his fingerprints left on the surface of the trunk-- perfectly shaped ovals of oil in dust. The creaking sound flooded the room as he lifted the top, the smell of earth; clove and malevolence marred his next breath. Jacob didn't save much, hadn't felt the need to preserve things. No personal photographs (his sister kept things like that) even his letters were official, of a formal nature - records. There corners of each paged arched. Jacob picked up his mother's bible I haven't thought about this in years. The bible had gone every place his mother had until she died, and then it was his. She had insisted he take it, not his sister-him. Jacob found a few more old books, three buttons, a weathered photograph of some woman he didn't know and a tarnished necklace. He assumed it was a piece of jewelry belonging to his mother and was about to close the lid when he thought he saw movement.
"That's funny," he said reaching for it.
"I'm about to go, if you can stop talking to yourself long enough to hear me. I won't be back tonight, stayin' at momma's." Ophelia stood in the doorway prepared for his whimpering which would be punctuated by his sulking. She was armed with a flurry of hateful words and thrashing arms.
"I'll see you later then," he said.
What caused Ophelia to hesitate was the sound of his voice, there was a lilt to his words like they rode on a wave. It sounded like he had an accent.
"You mean you ain't got something smart to say?" Ophelia asked. She had no reason for hesitating, Marshall Franklin was already waiting for her and he hated to wait.
"I will see you later," he said quietly, tersely. She turned and walked out the door but not before she saw Jacob curl his fingers around something, and his face become eerily satisfied.
The medallion was just as old and ugly as the day his Uncle Duke handed it to him. Jacob spun it around on its chain until the charm faced him. It still gave him pause. Every time he looked into the face of the thing, the detail shocked him. Features were remarkably defined considering how small it was--the size of a half dollar.
Jacob had shown an interest in art and the library had a few books of the great ones: Renoir, Monet, Michelangelo, but the piece he held of the small man who almost looked trapped inside the metal was more precise than any work he'd seen by those artists.
It moved.
He laughed, "It did not," he decided, talking to the cracked walls, broken lamp and Ophelia's father's lopsided picture.
It was as if someone had shrunk a real person down. The face was recognizable. He didn't know who it was, but it was so well done it could have been a photograph. The muscles in the legs and arms so strained you could almost see them twitching.
Jacob's back hurt just looking at the miniature bent spine. What did you do to deserve this little man? He didn't remember putting it around his neck but felt its coolness as it bumped against his skin the first time. New sensations assaulted him right away. It made him feel impulsive, like going on the roller coaster and finding out at the last second there were no seatbelts. He imagined listening to the slow painful arthritic creaking while ascending, and then time passed and he was in the sky. Emptiness on either side of him, just that black track directly ahead. Very soon he would past the crest and begin the descent, the wind rushing into his face, before falling out of the car wrecking himself onto the tracks below. He was going to take a few people with him first.
He heard the bell once again and knew Ophelia was gone.
Methodically he began destroying everything Ophelia owned. All of her clothes were cut into long confetti-like strips. Colored fabric lay at his feet like he worked at a turn of the century textile factory. Every piece of jewelry she owned was broken, stomped on. Jacob found her wedding ring in a pool of brown water on the sink. The light captured the gold band and the tiny chip of the stone inside.
"Where's my diamond Jacob?" she'd asked after they finished making love the first time.
"Can't afford one right now, but it'll be soon," he'd said catching his breath, reveling in the knowledge that he was able to perform with a woman like Ophelia.
"A great big one Jake?"
"Yeah, a big one."
"Never had no diamond before, can't wait."
"You ain't got to wait long."
She'd sighed letting him kiss her again, relieved that things were falling together so soon for her.
He smashed the ring under the sole of his right foot.
Living inside of Jacob was an unfed, angry, stranger - he decided to let him come out and play. The stranger wanted blood, and suddenly like everything else in Jacob’s life he couldn’t control him.
On the outside he looked like Jacob Hayes—on the outside, but on the inside the stranger would not allow any further abuse and he was in control. He was the pilot. Jacob reassured himself that at least he was the co-pilot, actually he was the flight attendant on her first day not sure where to put her purse.
The bell clanged again, it was Marshall Franklin. He and Ophelia had just missed one another; they would meet at her mother's house. Marshall wanted a pack of cigarettes.
He likes to smoke after sex.
"Yeah, ain't nothin' better than lightin' up after, makes you feel like a man," he'd been heard saying.
Jacob descended the stairs. He felt the little man in the medallion move against the wall of his chest with each step he took, as if he were suddenly inpatient with his inability to stand.
"Let me have a pack of smokes Jacob--you know what I like," Marshall Franklin said, a flash to his black eyes; the color of wet tires. He was taunting him, medieval in his torment of Jacob who turned away from him reaching for a pack of cigarettes.
"'Phelia around?"
At first Marshall Franklin avoided Jacob's eyes and then thought better of it deciding to challenge him instead. Marshall was getting tired of this dance; he planned on leaving town soon and had no desire to take Ophelia with him. She did not know that nor did he want her to until he was well down the road and settled some place as far away as Illinois. But he intended on using her until then.
Marshall Franklin had nothing but a galloping disdain for the goblin-like man who stood before him, and since he was leaving shortly he felt no need to be careful in expressing his true feelings.
"No, Ophelia is at her mothers. I imagine you'll be meeting her there directly."
Marshall Franklin had his hand on the pack of cigarettes but something made him clutch them too tightly. Something was different. Men, who came in and out of towns, supported by lonely, dissatisfied women in those towns, developed an internal tuning fork and something just struck his. He'd never witnessed a mans demeanor change so completely, as if Jacob was now certain about things he'd pondered for years.
Marshall Franklin went through an internal rolodex of responses. He could deny planning to meet Ophelia but he chose not to, refusing to feed into this new sensation that caused him to doubt himself.
"Yeah, I might stop by there to say hi to everybody."
"I'll see you there," Jacob said handing Marshall Franklin his change. Two things caused the rattling inside of Marshall this time. Jacob never set foot over his mother in-law's house, everybody knew that and secondly, Jacob did not look like himself at all, especially behind the eyes.
It was as if an imposter haphazardly put on a Jacob Hayes suit but didn't check himself in the mirror before going out. Things were incorrect about him. His voice was deeper, his words sounded more determined, less open for debate. He walked with a foreshadowing purpose and he emanated a smell. He smelled like an open grave.
"I said, I'll see you there," Jacob repeated, finally letting the coins fall into Marshall Franklin's hand, causing the high-pitched tinkling sound that only coins can make when colliding into one another.
The bell rang over the door and Hazel stood in the entrance. She was perspiring, waiting. "Yeah, I'll look for you then--see you later," Marshall said. He was going to cancel with Ophelia tonight, he didn't need the trouble, he had plenty of women he could see.
Hazel stood in front of Jacob wearing a hat well into its autumn years, her thick curly hair thoughtlessly tucked underneath. She wore a nice black Sunday dress, dusty brown high-heeled shoes scuffed up the back near the seam, and carried a cheap traveling bag in each hand -- little more than a couple of brown paper sacks. Leaning against the counter she said, "I was in here earlier, I come to tell you I'm headin' for the bus station, my momma put me out again--she won’t let me come back this time. Caught me with Lou and them up the street. Guess I’m goin down South to stay with my grandmother"—she scrunched up her face horribly when she said the word grandmother, “at least ‘til I figure out what I wanna' do.”
She began twirling her index finger around a strand of hair over and over again while looking at Jacob Hayes…considering things. Finally she continued, “I wish I knew about a place, ‘cause I’d stay, but I’m about to get on the bus now. It's funny I never needed a lot of things like other girls.” She said this last bit as a puzzling confession.
Jacob imagined the men on the bus making room on either side of the aisle for Hazel, so they could rub against her as they traveled down the highway toward somewhere else. He wanted her so badly he would’ve made a pact with the devil.
And then he did.
“I guess I can tell you this now Jacob since I’m goin’ anyway, I had a crush on you--always in your nice suit, so polite and all.” She talked as if she’d merely forgotten to mention it before, an afterthought, as if verbalizing a diary entry.
Jacob was at a loss and felt an urging, a pushing from somewhere. He noticed that the muscles in his arms and legs were aching, hurting. Then he rubbed his back like he'd seen pregnant woman do in their last month and surmised that he must have slept funny.
When he returned to himself he was releasing Hazel. He had been kissing her and she laughed at him brightly, he got scared.
“I don’t think you’re crazy Jacob," she said into the warmth of his mouth and then backed away from him, "I hear them talk; I hear what they say ‘bout Ophelia and Mr. Franklin, and stuff, don’t worry 'bout it none hear? You a nice man,” she patted his arm gently. Hazel’s sympathy for his situation tore a final thing loose in Jacob. A slow girl with no place to stay other than with a grandmother who didn’t want her pitied him.
He closed the store.
Jacob didn’t even watch Hazel’s hips saunter down the street toward her future.
Time had passed but Jacob was not sure how much time. He now hovered inside a small area of himself; the man in the medallion was in control. Jacob was walking the half mile to Ophelia's mother's house.
I can already hear them, the loud talk, the laughter, the smacks on the back and the staticy radio that was never turned off. He could see Ophelia and Marshall Franklin in her mother's bedroom in the back of the house, separated only by a sheet hanging between them and the kitchen. They would be dancing closely to the sound of the staticy radio while the fish fried. She liked to dance. They would be moving together in an intimate way that announced they'd been together many times before. He walked faster. And then he saw Ophelia walking toward him. She was in a hurry, upset about something.
Jacob darted behind the tall bushes. All the neighborhood women avoided them after dark, eight tall bushes lined in a row to his right, the sudden change in surroundings reminiscent of a story in a Grimm's fairytale. At one time, the bushes had been well taken care of, now they had grown wildly treacherous.
Ophelia hadn't noticed the tall bushes until a leaf brushed a few strands of her hair back from her ear like a lover's finger would.
At the very moment she’d turned her head like one does when they are about to turn their body as well, the bend of an arm came around her neck, snatching her backward into a world of leaves, moistness, sticks and dark. The aroma of green assaulted her completely. Ophelia's mind stopped, shut itself off. She was no longer able to distinguish what reality was. She had been on her way home to see what was taking Marshall so long. He would meet her at the store if not her mothers, and she'd forgotten to cross the street.
Ophelia felt like she’d been in the center of the bush for a long time. Coming through the back, she felt the humid night air once again in degrees; first her head felt it, then her shoulders and then all of her in a rush--like being born.
She struggled to take a good deep breath. A dull crack came next and the sounds inside her head dampened. Her head as well as the rest of her felt too heavy to hold up. Another arm encircled her, lifting her. In a blur and for a second she saw a ridiculously small man inside a piece of jewelry beginning to straighten himself and stand upright, rocking back and forth in front of her eyes, an angry man on a metal swing. Turning her head away from what she didn't understand, Ophelia saw a cat on a neighbor's porch lifting his front paw to sniff and then carefully examine.
Ophelia thought her assailant was going to drag her under her arms so her feet left two scuff trails behind them, two snakes growing in length as she was taken further away from her world. But she wasn't on the ground anymore; she was thrown over a shoulder. The man's arm encircled her, supporting her, holding her urgently as if trying to draw her inside of him. All she could think while being whisked away into the darkness was, he must be very strong. Periodically she was being touched by a small metal hand.
Ophelia prayed to go completely mad.
Jacob go between the houses.
"I am, you see that I am."
Jacob talked freely to the man who now stood up in the carved medallion, his feet the only things holding him to the metal. He stood inside it like a kid would an old tire hanging from a tree in the backyard.
Jacob cut in between houses, taking her behind homes that where still and foreboding even in the daytime. Ophelia felt bare, sharp brown sticks from surrounding foliage scratching her shins, heard them breaking in two with small inconsequential snaps all around her. Those cuts would be a lot worse if I hadn’t put on my Vaseline.
Preposterous thoughts took the place of rational ones because the rational ones left her wanting. Wanting to have seen the bushes before she’d gotten to them, wanting to have waited for Marshall at her mother's house instead of trying to prove a point about being stood up. The thought of Jacob saving her from whatever was about to happen didn't occur to her once.
You are taking too long, you will be seen.
Ophelia was now being carried at breakneck speed, the man’s feet seeming to merely skim the ground. His grip was loosening and she moved sharply in his arms. She was getting further and further away from the store. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wanted to scream but nothing came out but warm wet air. His grip loosened a bit more and she spun almost entirely around and off his shoulder. Both the human man and the miniature metal one shot their right arms out to catch her.
"Oh God," she said not wanting to be touched by either. The man caught her before she was on the ground but not before she saw his face; it was Jacob.
He hit her again.
Jacob knew instinctively where to take her-- the abandoned school.
Forty minutes later the clanging and ringing behind Ophelia's ears were relentless, a high school cafeteria full of kids on the last day of school. Her lips moved, though if anyone had been close enough to kiss her they would not have heard a word.
I hurt all over; I just want to lie here -- a little while. It was merely a thought spoken aloud; her body began relaxing once again having found a nice resting place in the warmth of what could only be her blood leaking out. Expelling an immense amount of effort, she turned onto her right side, her cheek resting on the cool linoleum. This small movement, the same motion a person does in his sleep without thought, fatigued her. She felt small granules of dirt and glass trapped between her cheek and the floor.
How am I going to get up? She considered this for a while. Ophelia knew she had to get to a hospital-- there was no part of her which did not hurt, ache, pound or throb. She refused to look down at herself; needing to pretend a while longer. Pretend that some of the quick flashes of memory starting to come back were a dream and the warmth and wetness on her and underneath didn’t mean anything that bad. Ophelia knew she had to start walking, and then all at once she did. She felt like an old woman who'd been in her sick bed for a month.
Forward she went on shaky loose legs timidly dragging one foot next to the other one, more of a slide than a walk. She thought about the mummy movie she and Marshall went to see last month and chuckled, certain that was how she looked slowly scraping her feet across the floor. Ophelia peered at her shadow on her right and was saddened to see that her description had been an accurate one. She looked broken. She was broken.
Walking slowly from the dark room of pain, Ophelia made a conscious decision not to look back. She heard sounds, knocking and moving, if Jacob wasn’t through with her there was nothing she could do about it, Ophelia was fairly certain she wouldn’t have enough steam to make it out the door.
If she had turned her head to the left, she would've seen Jacob's body twitching, gyrating. He was having a convulsion, her husband was fighting himself, but he wasn’t going to win.
In shadows and blurred pictures, in between convulsive fits, part of Jacob Hayes remembered what he'd done to Ophelia over the forty-five minutes they'd been together in the abandoned library of Beaumont High School. He'd looked into the face of the woman he was going to hell for. The same face he fell in love with and then married. The face he'd hit over and over again so that Marshall Franklin would have nothing more to love. Jacob Hayes sat on the dirty floor that had been the high school for the white kids that used to live in the community until the black families moved in. Then it became their high school, now it was no ones.
Shadows circled the room as if waltzing. His eyes followed one image around which caught his attention, it resembled a business man. The man seemed to have on a suit and carry a briefcase. He was wearing a hat and was in a hurry, having many places to go. These were all of the things he'd wanted. "I ain't gonna' have none of that now," Jacob said to the empty room.
He'd seen Ophelia making her way to and then out of the door. The stranger inside of him wanted to finish what was started, the little man was almost completely free of the medallion, (only his right foot remained) and he demanded Jacob to finish.
You are no longer her fool…end this.
He was to go after Marshall Franklin next, there was too much he was going to have to pay for. Madness got the upper hand again and off he raced after Ophelia.
Ophelia was dizzier with each step she took. She heard sounds behind her; it could only be Jacob coming to finish her off. She realized in that moment that she possibly deserved this. She'd always known he was unstable yet it had given her joy to demean him. The man she was going to hell for.
Ophelia saw a figure that seconds later became Marshall coming toward her through a bank of trees; then heard the voice behind her that was not her husband's though it came out of his mouth.
"You will die Ophelia. You will die tonight."
"Help me," Ophelia said and the look on Marshall's face told her that something horrible was happening behind her. She saw Marshall's right hand reach into the inside of his coat pocket where she knew his gun rested. She fell then because she could walk no further.
Marshall Franklin shot his gun.
The sound reverberated, explosion-like amidst fragile tree branches. The bullet sliced through the right side of Jacob's neck. Jacob actually felt no pain for a second. In fact, Jacob Hayes wondered if he'd been shot at all, and then he felt the warmth, a great amount of it, saturating the collar of his shirt and his favorite gray suit.
Jacob leapt forward grabbing Marshall by the throat.
"No," Marshall said before dropping his gun. Marshall watched it bounce once and tumble away from him. Jacob was taking great pleasure in feeling the air leaving Marshall's mouth and nose.
Use all of you strength; choke the life out of him. The man in the medallion said, his face having shot up into a grin, making his metal cheeks round and fat. To Jacob, Marshall's throat felt as though chicken bones rested deep inside. The second shot came from Ophelia hitting Jacob in the left side, causing him to hop twice on his right foot; the impact whip lashing him. Jacob released his hold on Marshall’s neck.
Marshall dropped to his knees; clawing at himself as if something slimy and wet had been there instead of a man’s hands. For Jacob Hayes cold reality set in, Ophelia's bullet ripped open his aorta; he was dying...he wanted to explain; and then he was dead.
The little metallic man smiled and stepped off the medallion.
No one working at Homer G. Phillips Hospital that night was sure why Ophelia wasn't dead. From the janitor on his third coffee break, to the nurse coming out of the restroom, to the resident with the morning breath waiting for her in the Emergency Room.
"She didn't have enough circulating blood in her to keep a puppy alive," the resident said later, “but I pulled her through”. The nurses smiled, nodding as they were paid poorly to do.
"You did doctor, that was something."
"One for the record books alright, I didn't think she was gonna' make it."
Later, the nurses said to themselves that God took over that night.
Ophelia slept eleven hours straight before finally waking. The pain so excruciating she couldn't form words; moving was out of the question. She felt each of her shallow inhalations were the only thing holding her organs in place and was certain that if she beared down just once, her insides would be on her outside. Ophelia could hear movement, then smelled Marshall's cologne.
"Come on over here, I don't want to have to move," she said quietly, waiting for him to say what she knew he was going to say. The doctor had already been in earlier explaining what had happened to her. The young white boy in the dingy lab coat with the attentive face and trail of blonde curls said: she’d never have children; sex would always be painful for her, "there's such extensive internal scarring," had been said more than once and her face was asymmetrical. The right side caved in, deflated.
"I used to fake headaches with Jacob…now I have 'em all the time."
"They say you'll be gettin' out a here soon--that's good news."
"Yeah…good news."
Marshall paused then continued, when he realized she wasn't going to say anything else. "But I guess when it rains it pours. My little brother havin' trouble and I better be goin' to see about him. But I'll be back," he said patting the top of her hand causing a faint popping sound—the same sound the nurse made hours earlier to get a vein to put the needle in her arm.
"I heard they already buried Jacob, his sister supposed to be comin' by to get his things," she trailed off and then said, "Maybe I shoulda' known this was coming, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how it was all gonna' end."
Marshall smiled quickly and then they were finished.
"You take care of yourself now Marshall, I'll understand if you can't come back this way."
"Now what I say Ophelia? I'll be back."
He kissed her on her forehead like he was her uncle and walked out the door. Marshall Franklin was found dead near a set of rail road tracks in Illinois six months later, but before that, he never spoke of Jacob Hayes again -- though they were reacquainted every night in his dreams.
Ophelia's story became a ghost tale in their little community off Belt Street. Whenever there was a lull, or people appeared to move on to other news, someone would bring them back to that night. In that same six months the bank took Jacob's store back and Ophelia moved home with her mother. An icy tragic air replaced the party atmosphere that used to rain down on all who walked through their door.
"Ophelia's alright now. She was messed up for awhile, but she straight", her mother would announce to those who used to listen to her staticy radio and eat her cornbread hot from the skillet. But they found somewhere else to smack each other's back, laugh loudly and dance closely. When Ophelia's mother showed up to the party the good times left like air escaping from a poorly patched tire, and then she stopped going.
Early one Tuesday morning Jacob Hayes' sister took his few belongings from Ophelia's outstretched hands.
"I gave everything else away," Ophelia said.
"I understand, I'm sorry," said Jacob's older sister.
His sister dropped something. She picked up the charm.
"I remember this old thing," recalling it as the one her uncle had given Jacob when they were just kids. The medallion Jacob bragged about that entire summer.
"I had never seen him wear it before that night," Ophelia said.
"I'm sorry," his sister said again.
Staring at the twisted charm Jacob's sister gasped. What took her breath away from her was not the miraculous workmanship; it was the understanding of why her Uncle had made such a fuss about the piece. The cramped miniature inside looked exactly like Jacob.
Quite unexpectedly she felt the need to give it to the lonely single guy she worked with, his birthday was fast approaching and she was certain he would simply love it.
The End
It had been under Jacob's bed for twenty-one years; he had forgotten it was there. The medallion was in a trunk with one loosened hinge and held: old brittle papers with crisp curled edges, his mother's bible, several photos, loose change and a few tarnished keys.
Jacob Hayes heard his wife Ophelia coming up the stairs toward him. He'd been lying in bed most of the day, his head under her pillow facing the wall. The wall needed a fresh coat of paint but he was too tired to do anything about it. A soft yellow would be nice, he thought, though he knew Ophelia would not agree. She gravitated toward boldness, opulence, and carried the aroma of indulgence. He focused on the jagged crack that raced from one corner of the room to the other-- a winding road of deterioration.
"I knew you was gonna still be in the bed."
She spoke to him as one would a child who had wet himself after much instruction not to, then produced a weary sigh.
"I just laid down cause we haven't had no customers in a while. I was about to get up and…," he didn't finish what he was going to say to her, she had turned her thick body toward the closet. Ophelia was getting an outfit to wear that night. Her hand went into her hair and she began scratching her scalp, reminding him of the sound of fallen leaves rushing down the middle of the street.
"It don't matter none Jacob. I'm about to go over to momma's anyway." Everything about her was apathetic though she had enough energy to turn around and face him once again, one of her eyebrows rose, daring him to comment.
Both Jacob and the small figure inside the medallion underneath his bed shuddered at the thought of Ophelia's mother.
"Never could understand why your momma don't like me none."
He had an idea. Both women were disappointed Jacob wasn't the meal ticket they'd each longed for. Ophelia’s mother didn’t like Jacob. She was only fourteen years older than Ophelia and when together they acted like disturbed sisters-- loud, frantic people, with no concept of personal boundaries. Initially, he thought this trait sexy in Ophelia; he mixed it up with being free-spirited, now she merely fatigued him.
"She ain't never said that," Ophelia hissed.
"She ain't never had to."
Ophelia remembered she and her mother's late night discussions after Jacob began showing up at their front door. Initially they didn't know which one of them he was interested in, but her mother watched his lackluster eyes follow Ophelia's roundness through their two room house, and after the third visit Ophelia's mother began making demands.
"Girl, this here's our chance, I don't know what you call yourself waitin' on. We got us a fish here and you better reel him in!" Her voice was hungry, and their situation was grave. Her mother could never hold down a job and she didn't encourage Ophelia to, it evoked a feeling of inferiority in Ophelia's mother and she would not have that sensation living in her house.
"I don't love no Jacob Hayes, besides I think somethins wrong with him anyhow."
"Ain't nothin' wrong that money won't fix. You just get what you need to out of him, start actin' out and he'll put you out the house. You come on home, by then we'll be done cleaned him out." And on and on the conversation went until the day Ophelia found herself in front of the justice of the peace saying "I do," when she did not. She never loved him but now that feeling had dislike piggy-backed right along side it.
Ophelia and Jacob stared at each other, Jacob because he still waited for an answer, Ophelia because there was nothing more to say.
"What you got them clothes for?"
He sat up in bed so that he could see her better. "You ain't spendin' the night over there again are you?" Jacob knew the answer.
Even though the argument would send them further away from each other he chose to start it and like clockwork his breath became shallow and his head grew foggy with the anticipation of the new hurt she was about to bring him. The uncertainty made him feel closer to her. She couldn't have this argument with anyone else; it made a bond between them that was theirs alone.
"Don't start with me now Jacob," she touched a spot over her right eye, "I got me a headache and I don't feel like it," she said this while bending over to search for something out of her panty drawer. Ophelia's mother had been right about that one. It was a tried and true remedy for just about anything Jacob confronted her with that her eighth grade education couldn't wiggle out of.
"Last couple of months you done got into the habit of spending the night over there. I don't understand-- you my wife."
She held up her hand to stop him, waving it as if flagging down a phantom motorist.
"You know I don't like walkin' these streets at night. Plus," she added when she saw that he was about to interrupt her, "you know momma gets lonely, half the time I just fall asleep on the couch."
And the other half you pass out.
The collection of words weren't in his head and then they were, like a present dropped off, an afterthought. "You must have sense enough to know," she continued, "that I'm not gonna' stay at this store just sittin’ around all day lookin’ at you".
He could easily sit around all day looking at her.
Big beautiful women were Jacob’s weakness. He was slight- average height, average weight, but loved women taller then he was with big fat breasts and round wide butts. Ophelia fit the description perfectly.
She had E’s when he thought breasts got no larger than D’s, and Jacob could watch her bounce around the store and up and down the steps to their apartment all day. Although she'd gotten into the habit of ignoring him, her body continued bringing him unprecedented joy. Her big soft thighs rubbed together when she walked, the swishing sound music to his ears. Flesh lunged out of the top of most of her clothes, the vertical line between her breasts held small beads of perspiration that called to him.
He sat up completely swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
"I don't understand this 'Phelia. You my wife-we married. This is something we need to talk about."
"We'll talk about it later," she said, but she would be gone later.
The bell over the door downstairs clanged harshly-twice.
"Go on and get it," she said as the smell of chemicals wafted through the open window from the cleaners across the street leaving an undercurrent of tension between them. Jacob sometimes felt guilty about it, "Aw, don't worry 'Phelia, a couple of months, six at the most," Jacob had promised, it had been three years.
Even though he was sitting up Jacob found he had no energy to stand. Ophelia moved around him with purpose. She was like a bee collecting items first from here and then from there, rhythmically, then she stopped. Her favorite dark blue dress with the red flowers hung lifelessly over her right arm.
She had a perfectly shaped face with strong bones, a well-chiseled broad nose, pouty big lips and piercing eyes. Jacob had seen a book once in a library. An over-sized, colorful, travel book and inside was the photo of a head. The sculpture was of Nefertiti, in Egypt. When Ophelia turned to the side, when he glimpsed her profile, she looked like that. He wanted to tell her but something stopped him. Something about the way she made him feel about who he was made him keep that information close.
“You can’t believe ya’ got me hunh? Well that makes the two of us, go on downstairs and get the door,” she laughed and laughed as if it were the funniest joke either one of them had ever heard.
"I heard about all of them wild parties over there ''Phelia".
There were whisperings of men staying over to all hours, of beer bottles in the backyard, and fights in the front-- fights over who really was dating who. Some of the men with flashing teeth and questionable pasts would say, "Man what you doin' over here again? I dun told you Ophelia's with me. You better be over here seeing her momma I know that." Or "'Phelia, you goin' by the store soon? We need stuff---I don't know what all, go on and ask your momma what else."
Jacob came back to himself, she was watching him.
"What's wrong with you? I wish I had known for we got together that you was crazy." She shook her head, sorry for the plight she'd found herself in. He couldn't remember when she'd become so mean to him. He imagined it began when she started dating Mr. Franklin.
Marshall Franklin wasn’t refused anything often. He had several women friends he visited but Ophelia was his favorite. Most of his friends were someone else's woman or used to be someone else's woman which meant they were older, but Ophelia was still young enough, only 26. Marshall Franklin felt that his ways were not his fault, "I like variety," he would say to the envious men around town, those he knew were not his friends, "I like a woman with experience--sho nuff, but sometimes there's nothin' better than lickin' the dew off that young shiny rose from time to time." He'd then smile in a knowing fashion causing some listeners to smile civilly and others to pale. The paled ones would need to hurry home to observe their wives closely for signs of Mr. Franklin having been near.
Mr. Franklin was dating all the women in town who'd let him and most did. A good-looking man with the gift of making a woman feel she was good looking too--no matter what her mirror said. His eyes were promises, assurances of incessant love, endless pools of warmth that left women forgetting to come up for air. The possibility of a love that made them risk everything they'd ever known: family, reputation, respect; things known to be of value until meeting Mr. Franklin. He caused women to look down at themselves making sure their clothes were covering all of the essential parts; hands repeatedly fondled bra straps making certain the thick white reinforced material was properly tucked. They adjusted slip straps so the feminine looking lacy bottom wasn't longer than the hem of the dress.
"While you're down there grab me some stockings Jacob," Ophelia said, an afterthought, the words flung over her shoulder in his general direction. He sunk lower into the mattress.
"That's part of the inventory Ophelia--if you wear 'em I can't sell 'em," his eyes didn't meet hers. He wasn't sure how he'd gotten into the position of apologizing for her wastage. More than once Jacob caught her replacing a pair of hose after wearing them for the night complaining they had been the wrong size. Or removing one tablet of Alka-Seltzer out of the small frosted glass bottle because she only needed one not two tablets as the directions recommended, returning the lone one back to the shelf. He absolutely forbade her to work the cash register after realizing she wasn’t charging friends and family at all.
So Jacob wasn’t able to make the anticipated improvements to spruce up the store after old Mr. Thomas died and his wife sold him the place. The same crack was in the lower right hand corner of the front window, no new paint inside or out, no new tile for the floor, and certainly no roof. He’d learned to live with the metallic patter of rain water dripping into the rusted pails in the backroom.
"Just get me the stockings, damn! We got to fight about every little thing?" She stomped past him returning to the small bathroom. He smelled lilac in the air where she'd been moments earlier.
She's gone.
If she'd ever had respect for him it no longer lived inside of her and would never return.
"Anybody up there?"
A voice floated across the store, through the maroon and mildewing curtains that separated the store from the upstairs apartment, and up the stairs.
"I'll be right there." Jacob's voice returned back down the stairs through the curtains and into the store. He recognized the voice, it was Hazel's. Jacob felt energy again and actually smiled.
So did the figure inside the medallion.
Hazel was a neighborhood girl, young and absent-mindedly sensual.
A girl, not a woman.
Jacob's existence consisted of women. Tall skinny women, low fat women, women so light in complexion they looked like they were white. Women so dark they appeared blue when the sun hit them just so. They walked back and forth from the same places everyday with short straight hair and long curly hair, and long straight hair and short curly hair. Men came and left the neighborhood but the small weathered homes kept the women inside of them.
"I'm nineteen," Hazel had answered when Jacob asked her age. He was 33.
She began to frequent the store and seemed overly nice to him. Overly nice to Jacob was someone talking about something other than the weather, making eye contact and listening to him. She did all of these things. Hazel did this for others too, but she hadn't left him out of her community travels. She was a wheel that journeyed from one area to the next and neighborhood pressure hadn't caused her to fold. Hazel unlike Ophelia never looked at him as if she thought he should be someone else.
"My momma always be getting' on me 'bout my clothes," Hazel said to Jacob the first morning they met. She made no attempt to explain further. Hazel wore skimpy summer dresses cut low in front; the straps straining, fraying in front of his eyes, breasts barely staying in their assigned homes, all but spilling on top of the counter, onto the gum and daily paper. Her dress stuck hugging against her obscenely; across her curvaceous butt and in between her legs if Jacob was lucky. When that happened he would excuse himself and go into the bathroom for a long time, a Closed sign dangling vigilantly on the door knob.
"Hazel, where is your slip?" her mother would demand to know before boarding the streetcar for work.
"They too hot," was Hazel's answer.
“Those are too many clothes.” “What’s a body to do when you’re sufferin’ like that?” "Sometimes momma’s need to realize that a girl dun grown up and need to make up her own mind about such things,” would be what the men would say when they knew Hazel's mother was no longer in ear shot.
Some said Hazel was slow. Women tended to think she was conniving since her dimwitted nature seemed to kick in precisely when a penis entered the room. Suddenly normal tasks and thoughts themselves were too demanding and the only thing that sufficed was a giggle accompanied by an index finger planted seductively between her lips. The tightness of her skin and the glow in her eyes forgave all for the men who stood near her bragging about nothing in particular.
Jacob Hayes didn’t care, he was glad that she was downstairs. He heard the water turn on in the sink and Ophelia humming softly.
She's getting ready for her date.
Jacob cocked his head over to the right some, he couldn't remember what the voice inside his head sounded like before, but it had a lilt now.
"'Phelia, maybe you could stay on home tonight, we could go to the movies or somethin'." He heard her stop humming and then heard the water flowing louder from the tap.
"Will you go on downstairs and wait on whoever it is Jacob--please?"
Kill her.
The cramped figure inside the medallion sighed and adjusted it's leg.
A fiery rampaging fear tapped Jacob on the shoulder; he was afraid down to the calcium resting snugly in his bones.
Jacob had heard voices inside his head for as long as he could remember and had ignored them for just as long, eventually they seemed to meld into one strident determined speaker but it was not the one who was there now.
When he was small and afraid his mother would say to him, "Don't pay attention to nothin' but what I say to you," but she had been worried.
Jacob heard his mother and her brother talking over the kitchen table one morning when he was twelve years old, his uncle having come through town unexpectedly for coffee and a place to rest. He had a wild spirit that Jacob envied, something that could not be harnessed with promises of a good job and steady love.
"You know--naw you probably don't even remember," his uncle said as he began pouring a little of the Pet Milk out of the can into his coffee and then his sisters. It began swirling like small tornadoes, the brew becoming creamier calmer shades, he tapped the spoon twice on the side of his cup and continued, "Daddy would hear folks talkin' inside his head all the time."
"Well I told Jacob to thank God for Jesus and to go on about his business."
"I almost forgot," he said, reaching down into the bag beside his right foot.
"Don't tell me you dun brought that boy somethin' else. Where'd you go this time?" Jacob's mother smiled, and puffed her self out, proud of the fuss her brother made over her son. Although she would never admit it to anyone no matter the punishment, Jacob made her uncomfortable sometimes.
"Got this here charm, man who sold it to me called it a medallion." He held it by the chain. It was the size of a half dollar and swung slowly side to side, its back to her. It had a hypnotic momentum.
"Let me see the front of it," she said reaching for the chain in his hand.
"Put out your hand."
She turned her hand over from the brown side to the pink side, palm up. He placed it in the center of her hand. The chain circled and gathered around itself like a snake preparing to rest.
"Good God," she said dropping it and crossing herself though she couldn't remember ever doing that before. Usually she would place her hands together upright as if in prayer when life worried her or she felt evil stood too near.
"Ain't it something! Look at the detail. Don't it look like it's a little man inside of it. This gonna' be worth a lot a money one day. Whoever did this piece is probably already famous."
She returned the piece to her brother, pushing it closer to his side of the table, then got up and began washing her hands. Deliberately, slowly, like a surgeon.
"Where'd you get it?" she asked because she knew he wanted to tell her, not because she wanted to know. She already planned to put it somewhere deep and far away, to be fished out whenever her brother darted into town and asked about it.
"I was in West Africa for awhile," he said, straightening his long legs so that they shot out and stayed in the center of her kitchen. "I ran across this merchant who told me he got it from some haunted tribesman."
Jacob listened outside the kitchen door as his uncle recounted a tale about an infamous tribesman who'd been caste out of his village. The haunted tribesman said he'd been a respected man of the high council in his village, people came to him asking for advice on matters they didn't understand; to counsel others was his life. One day, the tribesman went walking along a trail, I've walked it many times, the tribesman said.
He found the charm, chain and all lying on the ground, put it on and it helped him, gave him luck, made him think clearer. The tribesman became even more loved and respected, worshipped like a God - powerful. He harbored the conviction that he was power itself believing it had no beginning or end without his involvement.
Alienation from former friends caused him worry, though it was clear to everyone that he was the one choosing to isolate himself. Over the following weeks, he began the slow process of disposing of those he did not like, as well as those who did not share his vision. Women he wanted he took for his own, others possessions he took for himself. No one dared try stopping him; they could see his influence as well.
Weeks later, the tribesman's eldest son questioned a decision he'd made, not in front of others--which would've been a cardinal sin, but in private as custom demanded. His son had begun hearing grumblings from men, younger, daring men, and not all that was said was unfounded.
I killed my son, the tribesman said, stabbing him in the heart for doubting my wisdom. His wives couldn't believe what he'd done; suddenly everyone was afraid of him, they were keenly alert because there was a madman in their midst. He tried throwing away the medallion but it talked to him. He was afraid to get rid of it and afraid to keep it. It ruled me, said the tribesman.
The medallion told him men were coming to kill him. Plotting to take his life because they feared his wisdom, feared his might, and feared what he would do next. The tribesman knew everything about everyone because of the position he'd held-- that was the most frightening thing of all, so he ran. That was when the merchant found him wandering the desert talking to himself, re-enacting the motion of thrusting the knife into the heart of his eldest son.
The tribesman told the merchant, I'm to give it to you now, and he placed it in the center of the merchant's palm.
"Now, I don't believe none of that," Jacob's uncle said noticing how still his sister's back had become as she continued facing the sink and not him. "I think it's good luck, and who knows, like I said before, it might be worth some money for the boy one day--stranger things have happened."
He chose not to tell his sister how the merchant finished his tale, the villagers found the tribesman dead the next day, the merchant had recounted chewing on the end of an unlit cigar, "found him in the desert on his back, staring directly into the sun. They left him there--a cautionary tale". The tribesman's story was told to squalling, baleful children. Even though blinded and scared, he would find those who'd misbehaved because he'd died alone-- lonely, and wanted bad children with him, for companionship.
"Yaw'll upstairs? Should I come back?" Jacob could hear Hazel's high heels walking back and forth, back and forth, as if taking inventory of each item in the store. She stopped. He imagined by the pickle jar near the counter. He would offer her a pickle every time she came by the store.
The huge wooden pickle container sat in front and to the side of the counter where Jacob spent most of his day. She’d accept his offer, bending over, taking her time so she could choose just the right one. Hazel would giggle as she fished her right hand into the cold pickle juice, capturing the one hoped for.
"Got it," she'd say displaying small white pointed teeth, pleased at nothing in particular at all. She'd place the dripping pickle between her lips, holding the center between her front teeth while Jacob scurried under the counter to find a rag to wipe the glistening juice off her hand. His thoughts were obscene as she ate the pickle, but it was just his thoughts.
Jacob did watch her once with one of the neighborhood boys. He was taking the trash out back to empty; the two were on the other side of the stacked cans that leaned against the wall. The boy had his hand under her dress between her parted legs, only his wrist visible. The boy’s head was turned away from Jacob, toward the street. Her head was turned the opposite direction and saw Jacob as he came out of the door.
There was no flurry to get her clothes back in order, no apologies, no shame—she stared at him, surrendering all of her weight against the brick wall of his store. The screen door had been caught by his hip but came free slamming behind him. It startled her partner who turned around just as Jacob was sitting the trashcan down.
“Come on man, can’t you get out of here?” the boy asked.
“Of course…I’m sorry. But you kids shouldn’t be out here no way.”
Jacob was flustered. He hadn’t taken his eyes away from Hazel’s. He felt for the door and somehow made his way back through it. She waved good-bye to him with just her fingertips as the young man continued what he'd been doing.
The water turned off in the bathroom, Jacob could hear hair spray exploding out of the can. Ophelia's hair would be shiny and reflective as she left out the front door to go meet Mr. Franklin.
"'Phelia?" She would be angry that he was still upstairs while there was a paying customer downstairs.
Kill her! How much more of this will you take?
Jacob was overwhelmed and felt himself weakening, it was as if he was melting, becoming another substance completely. He slid forward off the mattress and onto the floor, turning around so his knees were under the bed, elbows resting on top of the mattress, arms making a triangle. He began to pray. He heard the bell once again, Hazel had left. She would return-- no one had any place to go.
Their entire neighborhood was suspended in some type of secretion excreted by dispassionate Gods, the kind which did not allow for growth or possibilities. Dreams soared for a short while, maybe took a stroll around the park, but soon returned unfulfilled.
"Give me strength now Lord, be my friend here in my darkest hour of need." Jacob did not know what else to say so he stayed where he was, waiting for either the voice to come back or more ideas to add to his prayer. The bathroom door creaked and Ophelia almost stumbled across his back. She had been taking one last look at herself in the mirror as she walked out of the bathroom.
She stared down at him and Jacob gleaned: bafflement, (he hoped pity but he didn't really believe that), despair and then fury radiate from Ophelia.
"I asked you twenty minutes ago for a pair of stockings Jacob where are they?" Her eyes scanned the room as if the broken lamp on her dresser, or the picture of her father hanging crookedly on the wall in front of her held the answer. "I'm about sick of this shit. I'll get 'em myself. I hope you down there prayin' for another wife."
He was about to get off his knees to try and discern what Ophelia meant by that remark but then he heard movement under the bed. Had Jacob not been on the floor he was sure he would not have heard it. Even so he hesitated, initially suspecting a mouse - that was all he needed; a mouse in the bedroom meant a mouse in the store. He sighed. Later, when it no longer mattered, he would decide the sound had been one of struggle.
Jacob peered into the darkness and saw an object in the shape of a thick wide square, an area blacker than the blackness around it- a trunk. Scraping could be heard on the floor before he realized he was bringing it toward him and out into the light.
He sat cross-legged, what he and his sister called Indian-styled, looking at his fingerprints left on the surface of the trunk-- perfectly shaped ovals of oil in dust. The creaking sound flooded the room as he lifted the top, the smell of earth; clove and malevolence marred his next breath. Jacob didn't save much, hadn't felt the need to preserve things. No personal photographs (his sister kept things like that) even his letters were official, of a formal nature - records. There corners of each paged arched. Jacob picked up his mother's bible I haven't thought about this in years. The bible had gone every place his mother had until she died, and then it was his. She had insisted he take it, not his sister-him. Jacob found a few more old books, three buttons, a weathered photograph of some woman he didn't know and a tarnished necklace. He assumed it was a piece of jewelry belonging to his mother and was about to close the lid when he thought he saw movement.
"That's funny," he said reaching for it.
"I'm about to go, if you can stop talking to yourself long enough to hear me. I won't be back tonight, stayin' at momma's." Ophelia stood in the doorway prepared for his whimpering which would be punctuated by his sulking. She was armed with a flurry of hateful words and thrashing arms.
"I'll see you later then," he said.
What caused Ophelia to hesitate was the sound of his voice, there was a lilt to his words like they rode on a wave. It sounded like he had an accent.
"You mean you ain't got something smart to say?" Ophelia asked. She had no reason for hesitating, Marshall Franklin was already waiting for her and he hated to wait.
"I will see you later," he said quietly, tersely. She turned and walked out the door but not before she saw Jacob curl his fingers around something, and his face become eerily satisfied.
The medallion was just as old and ugly as the day his Uncle Duke handed it to him. Jacob spun it around on its chain until the charm faced him. It still gave him pause. Every time he looked into the face of the thing, the detail shocked him. Features were remarkably defined considering how small it was--the size of a half dollar.
Jacob had shown an interest in art and the library had a few books of the great ones: Renoir, Monet, Michelangelo, but the piece he held of the small man who almost looked trapped inside the metal was more precise than any work he'd seen by those artists.
It moved.
He laughed, "It did not," he decided, talking to the cracked walls, broken lamp and Ophelia's father's lopsided picture.
It was as if someone had shrunk a real person down. The face was recognizable. He didn't know who it was, but it was so well done it could have been a photograph. The muscles in the legs and arms so strained you could almost see them twitching.
Jacob's back hurt just looking at the miniature bent spine. What did you do to deserve this little man? He didn't remember putting it around his neck but felt its coolness as it bumped against his skin the first time. New sensations assaulted him right away. It made him feel impulsive, like going on the roller coaster and finding out at the last second there were no seatbelts. He imagined listening to the slow painful arthritic creaking while ascending, and then time passed and he was in the sky. Emptiness on either side of him, just that black track directly ahead. Very soon he would past the crest and begin the descent, the wind rushing into his face, before falling out of the car wrecking himself onto the tracks below. He was going to take a few people with him first.
He heard the bell once again and knew Ophelia was gone.
Methodically he began destroying everything Ophelia owned. All of her clothes were cut into long confetti-like strips. Colored fabric lay at his feet like he worked at a turn of the century textile factory. Every piece of jewelry she owned was broken, stomped on. Jacob found her wedding ring in a pool of brown water on the sink. The light captured the gold band and the tiny chip of the stone inside.
"Where's my diamond Jacob?" she'd asked after they finished making love the first time.
"Can't afford one right now, but it'll be soon," he'd said catching his breath, reveling in the knowledge that he was able to perform with a woman like Ophelia.
"A great big one Jake?"
"Yeah, a big one."
"Never had no diamond before, can't wait."
"You ain't got to wait long."
She'd sighed letting him kiss her again, relieved that things were falling together so soon for her.
He smashed the ring under the sole of his right foot.
Living inside of Jacob was an unfed, angry, stranger - he decided to let him come out and play. The stranger wanted blood, and suddenly like everything else in Jacob’s life he couldn’t control him.
On the outside he looked like Jacob Hayes—on the outside, but on the inside the stranger would not allow any further abuse and he was in control. He was the pilot. Jacob reassured himself that at least he was the co-pilot, actually he was the flight attendant on her first day not sure where to put her purse.
The bell clanged again, it was Marshall Franklin. He and Ophelia had just missed one another; they would meet at her mother's house. Marshall wanted a pack of cigarettes.
He likes to smoke after sex.
"Yeah, ain't nothin' better than lightin' up after, makes you feel like a man," he'd been heard saying.
Jacob descended the stairs. He felt the little man in the medallion move against the wall of his chest with each step he took, as if he were suddenly inpatient with his inability to stand.
"Let me have a pack of smokes Jacob--you know what I like," Marshall Franklin said, a flash to his black eyes; the color of wet tires. He was taunting him, medieval in his torment of Jacob who turned away from him reaching for a pack of cigarettes.
"'Phelia around?"
At first Marshall Franklin avoided Jacob's eyes and then thought better of it deciding to challenge him instead. Marshall was getting tired of this dance; he planned on leaving town soon and had no desire to take Ophelia with him. She did not know that nor did he want her to until he was well down the road and settled some place as far away as Illinois. But he intended on using her until then.
Marshall Franklin had nothing but a galloping disdain for the goblin-like man who stood before him, and since he was leaving shortly he felt no need to be careful in expressing his true feelings.
"No, Ophelia is at her mothers. I imagine you'll be meeting her there directly."
Marshall Franklin had his hand on the pack of cigarettes but something made him clutch them too tightly. Something was different. Men, who came in and out of towns, supported by lonely, dissatisfied women in those towns, developed an internal tuning fork and something just struck his. He'd never witnessed a mans demeanor change so completely, as if Jacob was now certain about things he'd pondered for years.
Marshall Franklin went through an internal rolodex of responses. He could deny planning to meet Ophelia but he chose not to, refusing to feed into this new sensation that caused him to doubt himself.
"Yeah, I might stop by there to say hi to everybody."
"I'll see you there," Jacob said handing Marshall Franklin his change. Two things caused the rattling inside of Marshall this time. Jacob never set foot over his mother in-law's house, everybody knew that and secondly, Jacob did not look like himself at all, especially behind the eyes.
It was as if an imposter haphazardly put on a Jacob Hayes suit but didn't check himself in the mirror before going out. Things were incorrect about him. His voice was deeper, his words sounded more determined, less open for debate. He walked with a foreshadowing purpose and he emanated a smell. He smelled like an open grave.
"I said, I'll see you there," Jacob repeated, finally letting the coins fall into Marshall Franklin's hand, causing the high-pitched tinkling sound that only coins can make when colliding into one another.
The bell rang over the door and Hazel stood in the entrance. She was perspiring, waiting. "Yeah, I'll look for you then--see you later," Marshall said. He was going to cancel with Ophelia tonight, he didn't need the trouble, he had plenty of women he could see.
Hazel stood in front of Jacob wearing a hat well into its autumn years, her thick curly hair thoughtlessly tucked underneath. She wore a nice black Sunday dress, dusty brown high-heeled shoes scuffed up the back near the seam, and carried a cheap traveling bag in each hand -- little more than a couple of brown paper sacks. Leaning against the counter she said, "I was in here earlier, I come to tell you I'm headin' for the bus station, my momma put me out again--she won’t let me come back this time. Caught me with Lou and them up the street. Guess I’m goin down South to stay with my grandmother"—she scrunched up her face horribly when she said the word grandmother, “at least ‘til I figure out what I wanna' do.”
She began twirling her index finger around a strand of hair over and over again while looking at Jacob Hayes…considering things. Finally she continued, “I wish I knew about a place, ‘cause I’d stay, but I’m about to get on the bus now. It's funny I never needed a lot of things like other girls.” She said this last bit as a puzzling confession.
Jacob imagined the men on the bus making room on either side of the aisle for Hazel, so they could rub against her as they traveled down the highway toward somewhere else. He wanted her so badly he would’ve made a pact with the devil.
And then he did.
“I guess I can tell you this now Jacob since I’m goin’ anyway, I had a crush on you--always in your nice suit, so polite and all.” She talked as if she’d merely forgotten to mention it before, an afterthought, as if verbalizing a diary entry.
Jacob was at a loss and felt an urging, a pushing from somewhere. He noticed that the muscles in his arms and legs were aching, hurting. Then he rubbed his back like he'd seen pregnant woman do in their last month and surmised that he must have slept funny.
When he returned to himself he was releasing Hazel. He had been kissing her and she laughed at him brightly, he got scared.
“I don’t think you’re crazy Jacob," she said into the warmth of his mouth and then backed away from him, "I hear them talk; I hear what they say ‘bout Ophelia and Mr. Franklin, and stuff, don’t worry 'bout it none hear? You a nice man,” she patted his arm gently. Hazel’s sympathy for his situation tore a final thing loose in Jacob. A slow girl with no place to stay other than with a grandmother who didn’t want her pitied him.
He closed the store.
Jacob didn’t even watch Hazel’s hips saunter down the street toward her future.
Time had passed but Jacob was not sure how much time. He now hovered inside a small area of himself; the man in the medallion was in control. Jacob was walking the half mile to Ophelia's mother's house.
I can already hear them, the loud talk, the laughter, the smacks on the back and the staticy radio that was never turned off. He could see Ophelia and Marshall Franklin in her mother's bedroom in the back of the house, separated only by a sheet hanging between them and the kitchen. They would be dancing closely to the sound of the staticy radio while the fish fried. She liked to dance. They would be moving together in an intimate way that announced they'd been together many times before. He walked faster. And then he saw Ophelia walking toward him. She was in a hurry, upset about something.
Jacob darted behind the tall bushes. All the neighborhood women avoided them after dark, eight tall bushes lined in a row to his right, the sudden change in surroundings reminiscent of a story in a Grimm's fairytale. At one time, the bushes had been well taken care of, now they had grown wildly treacherous.
Ophelia hadn't noticed the tall bushes until a leaf brushed a few strands of her hair back from her ear like a lover's finger would.
At the very moment she’d turned her head like one does when they are about to turn their body as well, the bend of an arm came around her neck, snatching her backward into a world of leaves, moistness, sticks and dark. The aroma of green assaulted her completely. Ophelia's mind stopped, shut itself off. She was no longer able to distinguish what reality was. She had been on her way home to see what was taking Marshall so long. He would meet her at the store if not her mothers, and she'd forgotten to cross the street.
Ophelia felt like she’d been in the center of the bush for a long time. Coming through the back, she felt the humid night air once again in degrees; first her head felt it, then her shoulders and then all of her in a rush--like being born.
She struggled to take a good deep breath. A dull crack came next and the sounds inside her head dampened. Her head as well as the rest of her felt too heavy to hold up. Another arm encircled her, lifting her. In a blur and for a second she saw a ridiculously small man inside a piece of jewelry beginning to straighten himself and stand upright, rocking back and forth in front of her eyes, an angry man on a metal swing. Turning her head away from what she didn't understand, Ophelia saw a cat on a neighbor's porch lifting his front paw to sniff and then carefully examine.
Ophelia thought her assailant was going to drag her under her arms so her feet left two scuff trails behind them, two snakes growing in length as she was taken further away from her world. But she wasn't on the ground anymore; she was thrown over a shoulder. The man's arm encircled her, supporting her, holding her urgently as if trying to draw her inside of him. All she could think while being whisked away into the darkness was, he must be very strong. Periodically she was being touched by a small metal hand.
Ophelia prayed to go completely mad.
Jacob go between the houses.
"I am, you see that I am."
Jacob talked freely to the man who now stood up in the carved medallion, his feet the only things holding him to the metal. He stood inside it like a kid would an old tire hanging from a tree in the backyard.
Jacob cut in between houses, taking her behind homes that where still and foreboding even in the daytime. Ophelia felt bare, sharp brown sticks from surrounding foliage scratching her shins, heard them breaking in two with small inconsequential snaps all around her. Those cuts would be a lot worse if I hadn’t put on my Vaseline.
Preposterous thoughts took the place of rational ones because the rational ones left her wanting. Wanting to have seen the bushes before she’d gotten to them, wanting to have waited for Marshall at her mother's house instead of trying to prove a point about being stood up. The thought of Jacob saving her from whatever was about to happen didn't occur to her once.
You are taking too long, you will be seen.
Ophelia was now being carried at breakneck speed, the man’s feet seeming to merely skim the ground. His grip was loosening and she moved sharply in his arms. She was getting further and further away from the store. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She wanted to scream but nothing came out but warm wet air. His grip loosened a bit more and she spun almost entirely around and off his shoulder. Both the human man and the miniature metal one shot their right arms out to catch her.
"Oh God," she said not wanting to be touched by either. The man caught her before she was on the ground but not before she saw his face; it was Jacob.
He hit her again.
Jacob knew instinctively where to take her-- the abandoned school.
Forty minutes later the clanging and ringing behind Ophelia's ears were relentless, a high school cafeteria full of kids on the last day of school. Her lips moved, though if anyone had been close enough to kiss her they would not have heard a word.
I hurt all over; I just want to lie here -- a little while. It was merely a thought spoken aloud; her body began relaxing once again having found a nice resting place in the warmth of what could only be her blood leaking out. Expelling an immense amount of effort, she turned onto her right side, her cheek resting on the cool linoleum. This small movement, the same motion a person does in his sleep without thought, fatigued her. She felt small granules of dirt and glass trapped between her cheek and the floor.
How am I going to get up? She considered this for a while. Ophelia knew she had to get to a hospital-- there was no part of her which did not hurt, ache, pound or throb. She refused to look down at herself; needing to pretend a while longer. Pretend that some of the quick flashes of memory starting to come back were a dream and the warmth and wetness on her and underneath didn’t mean anything that bad. Ophelia knew she had to start walking, and then all at once she did. She felt like an old woman who'd been in her sick bed for a month.
Forward she went on shaky loose legs timidly dragging one foot next to the other one, more of a slide than a walk. She thought about the mummy movie she and Marshall went to see last month and chuckled, certain that was how she looked slowly scraping her feet across the floor. Ophelia peered at her shadow on her right and was saddened to see that her description had been an accurate one. She looked broken. She was broken.
Walking slowly from the dark room of pain, Ophelia made a conscious decision not to look back. She heard sounds, knocking and moving, if Jacob wasn’t through with her there was nothing she could do about it, Ophelia was fairly certain she wouldn’t have enough steam to make it out the door.
If she had turned her head to the left, she would've seen Jacob's body twitching, gyrating. He was having a convulsion, her husband was fighting himself, but he wasn’t going to win.
In shadows and blurred pictures, in between convulsive fits, part of Jacob Hayes remembered what he'd done to Ophelia over the forty-five minutes they'd been together in the abandoned library of Beaumont High School. He'd looked into the face of the woman he was going to hell for. The same face he fell in love with and then married. The face he'd hit over and over again so that Marshall Franklin would have nothing more to love. Jacob Hayes sat on the dirty floor that had been the high school for the white kids that used to live in the community until the black families moved in. Then it became their high school, now it was no ones.
Shadows circled the room as if waltzing. His eyes followed one image around which caught his attention, it resembled a business man. The man seemed to have on a suit and carry a briefcase. He was wearing a hat and was in a hurry, having many places to go. These were all of the things he'd wanted. "I ain't gonna' have none of that now," Jacob said to the empty room.
He'd seen Ophelia making her way to and then out of the door. The stranger inside of him wanted to finish what was started, the little man was almost completely free of the medallion, (only his right foot remained) and he demanded Jacob to finish.
You are no longer her fool…end this.
He was to go after Marshall Franklin next, there was too much he was going to have to pay for. Madness got the upper hand again and off he raced after Ophelia.
Ophelia was dizzier with each step she took. She heard sounds behind her; it could only be Jacob coming to finish her off. She realized in that moment that she possibly deserved this. She'd always known he was unstable yet it had given her joy to demean him. The man she was going to hell for.
Ophelia saw a figure that seconds later became Marshall coming toward her through a bank of trees; then heard the voice behind her that was not her husband's though it came out of his mouth.
"You will die Ophelia. You will die tonight."
"Help me," Ophelia said and the look on Marshall's face told her that something horrible was happening behind her. She saw Marshall's right hand reach into the inside of his coat pocket where she knew his gun rested. She fell then because she could walk no further.
Marshall Franklin shot his gun.
The sound reverberated, explosion-like amidst fragile tree branches. The bullet sliced through the right side of Jacob's neck. Jacob actually felt no pain for a second. In fact, Jacob Hayes wondered if he'd been shot at all, and then he felt the warmth, a great amount of it, saturating the collar of his shirt and his favorite gray suit.
Jacob leapt forward grabbing Marshall by the throat.
"No," Marshall said before dropping his gun. Marshall watched it bounce once and tumble away from him. Jacob was taking great pleasure in feeling the air leaving Marshall's mouth and nose.
Use all of you strength; choke the life out of him. The man in the medallion said, his face having shot up into a grin, making his metal cheeks round and fat. To Jacob, Marshall's throat felt as though chicken bones rested deep inside. The second shot came from Ophelia hitting Jacob in the left side, causing him to hop twice on his right foot; the impact whip lashing him. Jacob released his hold on Marshall’s neck.
Marshall dropped to his knees; clawing at himself as if something slimy and wet had been there instead of a man’s hands. For Jacob Hayes cold reality set in, Ophelia's bullet ripped open his aorta; he was dying...he wanted to explain; and then he was dead.
The little metallic man smiled and stepped off the medallion.
No one working at Homer G. Phillips Hospital that night was sure why Ophelia wasn't dead. From the janitor on his third coffee break, to the nurse coming out of the restroom, to the resident with the morning breath waiting for her in the Emergency Room.
"She didn't have enough circulating blood in her to keep a puppy alive," the resident said later, “but I pulled her through”. The nurses smiled, nodding as they were paid poorly to do.
"You did doctor, that was something."
"One for the record books alright, I didn't think she was gonna' make it."
Later, the nurses said to themselves that God took over that night.
Ophelia slept eleven hours straight before finally waking. The pain so excruciating she couldn't form words; moving was out of the question. She felt each of her shallow inhalations were the only thing holding her organs in place and was certain that if she beared down just once, her insides would be on her outside. Ophelia could hear movement, then smelled Marshall's cologne.
"Come on over here, I don't want to have to move," she said quietly, waiting for him to say what she knew he was going to say. The doctor had already been in earlier explaining what had happened to her. The young white boy in the dingy lab coat with the attentive face and trail of blonde curls said: she’d never have children; sex would always be painful for her, "there's such extensive internal scarring," had been said more than once and her face was asymmetrical. The right side caved in, deflated.
"I used to fake headaches with Jacob…now I have 'em all the time."
"They say you'll be gettin' out a here soon--that's good news."
"Yeah…good news."
Marshall paused then continued, when he realized she wasn't going to say anything else. "But I guess when it rains it pours. My little brother havin' trouble and I better be goin' to see about him. But I'll be back," he said patting the top of her hand causing a faint popping sound—the same sound the nurse made hours earlier to get a vein to put the needle in her arm.
"I heard they already buried Jacob, his sister supposed to be comin' by to get his things," she trailed off and then said, "Maybe I shoulda' known this was coming, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how it was all gonna' end."
Marshall smiled quickly and then they were finished.
"You take care of yourself now Marshall, I'll understand if you can't come back this way."
"Now what I say Ophelia? I'll be back."
He kissed her on her forehead like he was her uncle and walked out the door. Marshall Franklin was found dead near a set of rail road tracks in Illinois six months later, but before that, he never spoke of Jacob Hayes again -- though they were reacquainted every night in his dreams.
Ophelia's story became a ghost tale in their little community off Belt Street. Whenever there was a lull, or people appeared to move on to other news, someone would bring them back to that night. In that same six months the bank took Jacob's store back and Ophelia moved home with her mother. An icy tragic air replaced the party atmosphere that used to rain down on all who walked through their door.
"Ophelia's alright now. She was messed up for awhile, but she straight", her mother would announce to those who used to listen to her staticy radio and eat her cornbread hot from the skillet. But they found somewhere else to smack each other's back, laugh loudly and dance closely. When Ophelia's mother showed up to the party the good times left like air escaping from a poorly patched tire, and then she stopped going.
Early one Tuesday morning Jacob Hayes' sister took his few belongings from Ophelia's outstretched hands.
"I gave everything else away," Ophelia said.
"I understand, I'm sorry," said Jacob's older sister.
His sister dropped something. She picked up the charm.
"I remember this old thing," recalling it as the one her uncle had given Jacob when they were just kids. The medallion Jacob bragged about that entire summer.
"I had never seen him wear it before that night," Ophelia said.
"I'm sorry," his sister said again.
Staring at the twisted charm Jacob's sister gasped. What took her breath away from her was not the miraculous workmanship; it was the understanding of why her Uncle had made such a fuss about the piece. The cramped miniature inside looked exactly like Jacob.
Quite unexpectedly she felt the need to give it to the lonely single guy she worked with, his birthday was fast approaching and she was certain he would simply love it.
The End
posted by Bridget | 10:39 AM
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