When he finished, he rolled over and fell fast asleep. She pushed him aside and crawled out from beneath his leg. She reached into the open drawer by the bed and pulled out her pistol. She stood over the sleeping man and pointed the gun at him.
“How dare you,” she hissed.
She shot him five times, then once more in the face for good measure. Then she slumped down on the floor next to him with the gun still tightly gripped in her hands, the music that once made her so happy now drowning out her cries as blood seeped from beneath the body and inched close to where she was sitting. She didn’t move. She didn’t move even when she heard someone come into the room.
“Lawd, Miss Fannie, what have you done?” Queenie bent down next to Fannie and coaxed the pistol from her hands. “I got word that Muddy had gotten out of the asylum a few days ago. I’m sorry, Miss Fannie. I’m sorry I weren’t here when he came by. He usually no trouble. . . .” She rambled on as she helped Fannie up. “Come have a seat over here on the bed. Let me get you cleaned up. Then I figure out what to do with Muddy.”
Fannie vaguely heard her talking, but she was in a fog. Nothing seemed real. She let Queenie help her onto the bed. She stared up at the ceiling. The music was still playing, but her tears had dried up, as if there were none left to be had.
Queenie came over to the bed with a damp washcloth and began to wipe her face. “Lawd, Miss Fannie, they is blood all over your dress. We got to get you out of it before Mr. Norwood comes home. When he coming back from the river?”
“Tomorrow night,” Fannie answered in a faint voice that didn’t even sound like hers.
“You in shock, Miss Fannie. You just lay there nice and calm while I clean you up.”
Fannie grabbed Queenie’s hand. “He mustn’t know. He must never know! It would kill him.”
Fannie knew her life would be over if Norwood ever found out that a colored man had raped her. He would never forgive her for what had happened. She would be tainted forever in his eyes.
Queenie’s small eyes quivered as she patted Fannie on the shoulder. “Now, don’t you worry, Queenie gone take care of everything. You understand?”
Fannie closed her eyes. She could hear Queenie on the phone in the hall.
“Crow, get on over here,” Queenie said. “Don’t need no lip. I’ll explain when you get here. Just get here as soon as you can. Understand?”
She came back into the room and put her hands on her hips. “You sure as hell done shot him dead.” She closed the windows and turned the music down. “No one will know what happened to him, lessen you say anything. Muddy always did have a habit of wandering away from that nuthouse across the lake. Them folks will just think he wandered off somewhere for good. Understand what I’m saying, Miss Fannie? Crow coming over now. We gone take care of him.”
Queenie scuttled about, trying to clean up the mess. She ran up and down the stairs more times than Fannie could count, bringing up towels to sop up the blood. Crow came into the room just as she was finishing up.
Crow took off his straw hat and scratched his head. “God Almighty.”
“We worry about God later,” Queenie snapped. “We got to get Muddy out of here before somebody sees him.”
“How? He must weigh close to three hundred pounds,” Crow said, scratching his head again.
“We gone roll him up in this here blanket and drag him down the steps. Then we gone put him in the trunk of the car and take him away where no one will find him. Soon as it get dark, we bring him down.”
“See you got it all figured out,” he said.
“Just do what I say,” she fussed.
Crow shook his head and went down the stairs. Fannie could hear a car being backed into the driveway. Queenie rolled the body up in a blanket. When Crow came back into the room, they dragged the body down the stairs, Muddy’s head making a loud thump each time it hit one of the steps. When they got him downstairs, Fannie could hear them arguing about what to do next.
“I don’t think we gone be able to lift him in the car—he too heavy,” Crow said.
“What else we gone do? Can’t leave him here. We got to try. If that don’t work, we come up with something else.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Now come on, go out the back way.”
Fannie heard the back door open and close. Then the house became quiet.
Fannie wasn’t sure how long she lay there, listening to the creaking of the windows and the whoosh of the ceiling fan overhead. After a while, when the light in the room had dimmed and darkness set in, she got up and looked out the back window. Crow and Queenie were trying to lift the bundle into the trunk of the car, but no matter how much they tried, it kept falling back to the ground. They bickered about what to do for a few minutes.