“What about an eye with a lightning bolt underneath?” Memphis asked.
Mrs. Jordan paused, the hot comb still in her customer’s hair. “I don’t rightly know. But somebody else might could tell you. Why you ask, honey?”
Memphis realized he was frowning. He relaxed again into that charming smile people had come to expect from him. “Oh, just something I saw in a dream is all.”
The customer in the chair bristled. “Ow! Fifi, you about to burn my scalp off with that hot comb!”
“I am not! You’re just too tender-headed is your trouble.”
“Good day to you, ladies. I hope your number comes in,” Memphis said and beat a hasty retreat.
Above Harlem, the morning’s gray clouds frayed into thin wisps, revealing a perfect blue sky as Memphis passed the Lenox Drugstore, where he and his little brother, Isaiah, liked to stop in for hamburgers and talk with the owner, Mr. Reggie. He crossed the street to avoid the Merrick Funeral Home, but he could not sweep away the memory. It crept up from deep inside, still with the power to squeeze the breath out of him:
His mother lying up front in the open casket covered with lily of the valley, her hands crossed over her chest. Isaiah asking, “When Mama’s gonna wake up, Memphis? She’s missing the party, and all these people here to see her, too.” His father sitting on the cane-back chair, staring down into his big, trumpet-playing hands while mourners cried and hollered and somebody sang, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” The feel of the dirt in Memphis’s fingers as he dropped clods of it onto the grave. The soft thud as it hit the top of the coffin, the finality of the sound. He remembered his father packing up their apartment off 145th Street and sending Memphis and Isaiah to share the cramped back room of Aunt Octavia’s place a few blocks farther uptown while he went off to Chicago to look for work. He’d promised to send for them when he was settled. That had been two years, ten months, and fifteen days ago, and they were still sharing the back room at Octavia’s.
Memphis swiped a milk bottle from a stoop and took a big swig, as if he could chase away the past. His skin itched with restlessness, a feeling that the world was about to be ripped wide open. And he was sure it had to do with the dream.
For two weeks running, it had been the same: The crossroads. The crow flying to him from the field. The darkening sky, and the dust clouds rising on the road just ahead of whatever was coming. And the symbol—always the symbol. It was getting to where he was afraid to sleep.
A phrase came to him quickly. Memphis knew that if he didn’t write it down, it would be gone later, when he was ready to write. So he stopped and jotted this new bit of poetry in his head onto two blank numbers slips, then shoved them into a different pocket. Later, when he could head up to the graveyard, where he liked to write, he’d copy them into the brown leather notebook that held his poems and stories.
Memphis turned the corner. Blind Bill Johnson sat on a stoop with his guitar. His upturned hat lay at his feet, a collection of small change scattered across the hat’s worn lining. “Met a man on a dark road, he had a mark upon his hand,” the bluesman sang in his gravelly whisper of a voice. “Met a man on a dark road, he had a mark upon his hand. Said the storm’s a-comin’, rain down hard upon the land.” As Memphis passed, Blind Bill called, “Mr. Campbell! Mr. Campbell! ’Zat you?”
“Yes, sir. How’d you know?”
The old man wrinkled up his nose. “Floyd’s good with the scissors, but that oil he use could wake a dead man.” He broke into a hard, raspy laugh. His fingers sought the collection of change in the hat, touching each coin until he had two dimes. “Put twenty cents on my number, Mr. Campbell. One, seven, nine. Go on now, and put that in. Put it in for old Blind Bill,” he said with urgency.
Memphis wanted to tell him he should save his money for other things. Everybody knew Bill lived over in the Salvation Army mission, and sometimes on the streets, when the weather was decent. But it wasn’t his place to say anything, so he pocketed the coins and wrote out a slip. “Yes, sir. I’ll put it in.”
“I just need a change of luck is all.”
“Don’t we all,” Memphis said and moved on.
Behind him, the bluesman took up his guitar again, singing about shadowy men on dark roads and bargains struck under moonless skies, and though they were in the heart of the city with its rumbling trains and bustling sidewalks, Memphis felt a strange twisting in his gut.
“Memphis!” another runner called from down the street. “You better get to it! It’s almost ten o’clock!”
Memphis forgot about his bad dreams. He tossed the empty milk bottle into a rubbish bin, shouldered his knapsack, and ran down the street toward the Hotsy Totsy to wait for the day’s number to come in.
On a street lamp, a crow cawed. Blind Bill stopped his song and tensed, listening. The bird cawed once more. Then it flapped its shiny wings and shadowed Memphis Campbell’s steps.
THE MUSEUM OF THE CREEPY CRAWLIES
Evie disembarked from the train with a wave to the porters and conductors with whom she had played poker from Pittsburgh to Pennsylvania Station. She was now in possession of twenty dollars, three new addresses in her brown leather journal, and a porter’s hat, which she wore upon her golden head at a rakish angle.
“So long, fellas! It’s been swell.”
The conductor, a young man of twenty-two, leaned out from the train’s stairwell. “You’ll be sure to write me, won’t ya, sweetheart?”
“And how. Just as soon as I practice my penmanship,” Evie lied. “My aunt will be waiting. She’s legally blind, so I’d better fly to her side. Poor dear Aunt Martha.”
“I thought her name was Gertrude.”
“Gertrude and Martha. They’re twins, and both blind, the poor, poor dears. Farewell!” Her heart thumping, Evie rushed up the stairs from the platform. New York City—at last!
Uncle Will’s telegram had been quite specific: She was to hail a taxi outside Pennsylvania Station on Eighth Avenue and tell the driver to take her to the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult on Sixty-eighth Street, off Central Park West. She had been sure it would be no trouble at all. Now, in the hubbub of Pennsylvania Station, she felt more than a little lost. She went the wrong way twice and finally found herself in the enormous main room, with its floor-to-ceiling arched windows and the giant, center-placed clock whose filigreed arms reminded passengers that time was fleeting—as were trains.
Nearby, a very glamorous woman wearing a full-length Russian sable despite the heat was drawing an ever-thickening crowd of followers and shutterbugs. “Who is that?” Evie whispered urgently to one of the admirers.
He shrugged. “Don’t know. But her press agent paid me a dollar to stand around and gape like she was Gloria Swanson. Easiest buck I ever made.”
Evie scurried to keep up with the hustle and bustle of the crowd and nearly wiped out a newsboy hawking the Daily News. “Valentino poisoned? Read all about it! Anarchists’ bomb plot goes bust! Teacher goes ape for evolution! All the news right here, right here! Only two cents! Paper, Miss?”
“No, thank you.”
“Nice topper.” He winked and Evie remembered the porter’s hat.
A mirror hung in the window of a druggist’s shop, and Evie stopped to fix her hair and replace the porter’s hat with her own brimless gray cloche, turning her head left and right to make sure she was at her best. She took the twenty-dollar bill she’d won playing poker and, after a moment of deliberation, stuffed it into the pocket of her red, summer-weight traveling coat.
“I can’t say I blame you for taking in the view. I’ve been looking for a while.”
The voice was male, and a little gravelly. Evie caught his reflection in the mirror. Thick, dark hair with a longer piece in front that refused to stay swept back. Amber eyes and dark brows. His smile could only be described as wolfish.