ALBERT NORRIS SANG a few bars of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Natchez Burnin’” to cover the sounds of the couple making love in the back of his shop. The front door was locked. It was after seven, the streets deserted]. But today had been a bad day. Albert had tried to cancel the rendezvous by switching on the light in the side room where he taught piano during the week—he’d even sent a boy to warn the man to stay away from the shop—but the two lovers had ignored his warnings and come anyway. He’d set up their rendezvous a week ago, by sending out a coded message during his gospel radio show, which was his usual method. But lovers who saw each other only twice a month—if they were lucky—weren’t going to be deterred by a warning light in a window, not even if their lives were at risk.
The white woman had arrived first, rapping lightly at the alley door. Albert had tried to run her off—whites were supposed to use the front—but she’d refused to budge. Terrified that a passerby might see her, Albert had let her in. Mary Shivers was a skinny white schoolteacher with more hormones than sense. Even before he could chastise her, he heard his side door open. Moments later, six-foot-three-inch Willie Hooks barged into the store. The big carpenter stuffed five dollars into Albert’s hand, ran to the woman, seized her up in one arm, and carried her to the back of the shop. Albert had followed, desperately trying to explain about the visit he’d gotten from the furious white men that afternoon, but Hooks and the schoolteacher were deaf to all appeals. Three seconds after the door slammed in his face, Albert heard the sounds of people shedding clothes. A moment later, the woman yelped, and then the springs in the old sofa in the back room went to singing.
“Five minutes!” Albert had shouted through the door. “I’m kicking open this door in five minutes. I ain’t dying for you two!”
The couple took no notice.
Albert cursed and walked toward his display window. Third Street looked blessedly empty, but within five seconds Deputy John DeLillo’s cruiser rolled into view, moving at walking speed. Acid flooded Albert’s stomach. He wondered where the schoolteacher had parked her car. Deputy DeLillo was even bigger than Willie Hooks, and he had a fearsome temper. He’d killed at least four black men Albert knew about, and he’d beaten countless others with rods, phone books, and a leather strap spiked with roofing tacks.
Big John’s cruiser stopped in the middle of the street. His big head leaned out of the car to gaze into Albert’s shop window. Albert couldn’t see the deputy’s eyes, thanks to the mirrored sunglasses he wore, but he knew what DeLillo was looking for. Pooky Wilson was the most wanted man in Concordia Parish tonight. Just eighteen, Pooky had gained that dubious distinction by bedding the eighteen-year-old daughter of one of the richest men in the parish. Since he’d worked at Albert’s store for nearly a year, Pooky had naturally run to Albert when he learned that the Klan and the police—often one and the same—were combing the parish for him. Knowing that local “justice” for Pooky would mean a tall tree and a short rope, Albert had hidden the boy in the safe box he’d constructed for illegal whiskey, which he sold on a seasonal basis. For the past two hours, Pooky had been sitting cramped in the shell of a Hammond spinet organ in Albert’s workshop. Positioned against a wall, the A-105 looked like it weighed five hundred pounds, but the hollow housing could hold a full load of moonshine, and even a man in a pinch. There was a trapdoor beneath it for dumping contraband during emergencies (and a hidey-hole dug in the earth below), but since the music store sat up on blocks, Pooky couldn’t use that for escape until after dark.
Albert raised his hand and gave Deputy DeLillo an exaggerated shake of his head, indicating that he’d seen neither hide nor hair of his employee. For a few paralyzed seconds, Albert worried that DeLillo would come inside to question him again, which would lead to the big deputy kicking open the door that separated him from the loudly copulating couple, and then to death for either DeLillo or Willie Hooks. The violent repercussions of Willie killing the deputy were almost unthinkable. Thankfully, after a few awful seconds, Big John waved his mitt and drove on. An invisible band around Albert’s chest loosened, and he remembered to breathe.
He wondered how Pooky was doing. The fool of a boy had been hiding in the Hammond when his girlfriend’s father and a Klansman named Frank Knox had burst into the store, cursing Albert for “fomenting miscegenation” and threatening to kill him if he didn’t produce Pooky Wilson. Albert had summoned all his courage and lied with the sincerity of Lucifer himself; if he hadn’t, both he and Pooky would already be dead.
As the bedsprings sang in the back of the store, Albert prayed as he never had before. He prayed that the Klan hadn’t stationed anybody outside to watch his store. He prayed that Willie and the schoolteacher would finish soon, would get away clean, and that darkness would fall. Anything less meant the end for all of them, except maybe the white woman.
The sofa springs groaned at about E above middle C, so Albert tuned his voice to their accompaniment. “There was two hundred folks a-dancin’,” he belted as he negotiated his way through the pianos in the display room, “laughin’, singin’ to beat the band.” He’d already run out of verses, so he’d taken to making up his own, describing the tragic fire that would likely have killed him, had he not been away in the navy. “Yeah, there was two hundred souls a-dancin’, lawd—laughin’, singin’ to beat the band.” Entering his workshop, he sat beside the Hammond organ, picked up a tonewheel, and pretended to work on it. “Two hundred souls on fire, locked indoors by the devil’s hand.”
After a quick look back at the display window, he tapped on the Hammond and said, “How you doin’ in there, Pook?”
“Not good. I’m ’bout to pee in my pants, Mr. Albert.”
“You got to hold it, boy. And don’t even think about lifting that trapdoor. Somebody outside might see your water hit the ground.”
“I can’t breathe, neither. I don’t like small spaces. Can’t you let me out for a minute? It feels like a coffin in here.”
“There’s plenty of air in there. That small space is the only thing that’s gonna keep you out of a coffin tonight.”
Albert heard a ripping sound. Then part of the grille cover beneath the organ’s keyboard was pulled back, and an eye appeared in the hole. It looked like the eye of a catfish gasping in the bottom of a boat.