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She heard his Ford comin’ long ‘fore he pulled onto the patch of dirt she called home.
And, as she rang up Joshua and Judith—the youngins from down the road whose Mama sent ‘em by to pick up requested spellwork—she heard that angry engine cut off and knew: the only reason he ain’t come in immediately was ‘cause he was stoppin’ by the grave.
He’d taken so long, Annie had finished ringing up the children and sent them on their way and he still hadn’t come inside. So she went to find him.
And there he was, as expected, bent over Edith’s grave like he’d never left.
“You gone catch a heat. Come from over there,” she said, eying his pressed suit and leather shoes.
“I done caught worse,” he muttered, but he did rise. Even took off his hat. “Annie.”
He looked at her like he was drinking water. Like the sight of her quenched somethin’ in him.
“Smoke.”
He squinted and bit his cheek, like: ‘Oh, that’s how it is? Alright, then.’ She only called him Smoke when he was in trouble. Otherwise, it was Elijah. Even so, he was pleased to be in trouble with her again. The past seven years, he would’ve given anything to have Annie on his case.
He told no lies. He’d caught absolute fuckin’ hell in Chicago. They hated a rich black man north, south, east, and west. Anywhere. Everywhere. But he’d gotten to sleep many a night with his pistol under his pillow and the thought of Annie on his brain. Her musk, thick and sweet, like sap on an evergreen. Her lips, black from chewing tobacco, saying his name. Her fingers, strong and deft, dicing roots, prayin’.
“Can I come in?”
“You ain’t never asked before.” With that, she turned and entered the shack, leaving him in the yard.
Smoke took a deep breath, one last look at their daughter’s grave, and followed.
The shack hadn’t changed at all. Looking around, Smoke said: “I brought somethin’ for ya.”
“And what’s that?”
He reached into his satchel and pulled out the corpse of the rattlesnake he’d killed prior that day, wrapped in newspaper. “You get some use outta this?” he asked, lying the bloody bundle onto her work table and peeling back the paper to reveal its yellow-black diamond skin.
“I get some use outta everythin’,” she answered. “Thank you.”
“You welcome.”
“I’d think you was a ghost if I couldn’t smell you from here.”
He practically preened at that, rubbing a gold-ringed hand down the lapel of his suit jacket. “You like that? That’s ole Charlie Fontaine, right there. Five dollars a bottle.”
Annie turned up her nose. “I like the smell of your sweat just fine and it comes free.”
Smoke stuck his tongue into his cheek and observed her. “Money still no good to you, then?”
“Money’s good for what it’s always good for, Smoke. Buyin’ food. Supplies. Help, if you can get it to stretch. But not the stuff you’re looking to buy.”
“What am I lookin’ to buy, Annie?”
“Stuff that can’t be bought.”
Pride. A sense of self. Safety from all ills, foreign and domestic. Respect. Family.
That all went unsaid between them, but he knew what she meant.
“Money’ll getchu a lot of thangs. You bag herbs for power, isn’t that right?”
“No.”
“No? Annie, look me in the eyes. Say that again.”
“No,” she pressed, rounding the edge of her work table to come within a few feet of him. “I bag herbs ‘cause I understand the balance of things. That nothin’ in this universe has absolute power. That everythang is susceptible to somethin’—even haints, even spirits, even ghosts.”
“Even gods?” asked Smoke, raisin’ an eyebrow.
“Don’t you mess.”
He rolled back his shoulders, challenging. “What? Gods ain’t susceptible to nothin’? They ain’t got no weaknesses?”
“Careful, now. ‘Fore they whoop ya.”
Smoke took up from where he’d been leanin’ against the wall and stepped forward. “And how they gone do that? Tell me. They gone come down here and do it theyself?”
“Nah,” said Annie, takin’ interest—for a moment—on where the scruff of his beard met his sideburn. “They’ll take somebody you love.”
Smoke moved forward again—as smooth and fast as that snake, now dead, might’ve been—and gathered her into his arms. Gripped her up like he was taking the reigns of a wild filly. “Ain’t no gods interested in Stack,” he said, low, for her ears only. “And if it’s you they come for…” He palmed her ass and, with his other hand, rucked up her skirt until he was well-and-truly under it. “Well, I’d like to see them try.” That hand cradled her molten sex and squeezed. “I ain’t never lettin’ you go.”
Annie’s ragged breath was going all over his lips. “Seven years…”
“And not a day longer.”
“… is a long time.”
His thick fingers made easy work of her underclothes and, taking advantage of her arousal, plunged into her. They wriggled and coaxed and pushed her to the brink, painfully quick.
“Your body ain’t forget me.” Amidst her bosom, Smoke took his opportunity to bite and suckle her exposed flesh.
“No, but it’s had plenty of time to learn someone else.”
His fingers stilled. He leaned back up, brows furrowed with hurt. “Who?”
“Why? You gone kill ‘em?”
“Yeah,” he grunted, starting to work his fingers once more. “Now, who? Who you been wit, Annie? Who comes here?”
Her mouth hung open with pleasure.
“Answer me. Who is it? Huh?”
She cried out when he found that spot, gummy and sensitive inside her.
“No,” he said, keeping her upright when her knees went weak. Smoke pulled his fingers from her and, using both hands, turned her around and bent her over the work table. From across the way wafted the scent of fresh rattlesnake blood and venom.
She could hear him unbuckling his belt and adjusting himself, then felt his impatience as he flipped her skirt over her back and positioned himself to enter her.
“I don’t give a got damn who you been wit while I was gone. You hear me?” With that, he sank home, filling her to the brim and sending her juices cascading down the insides of her legs. “You mine, Annie. You mine.”
It was wrong of her to keep up the pretense that she’d laid with another man, but she was angry enough to wait until they’d finished to tell him the truth. The truth that he’d ruined her for anyone else. The truth that, since the age of sixteen, her body had known only his. The truth that, ‘til they put her in the ground, her body would know only his. That her ground, however fertile or fallow, however tried or true, would only yield to his seed.
“Say it,” he demanded, pumping into her with uncharacteristic fierceness. “Say it!”
“I’m yours!”
“Say it again!”
“Yours—I’m yours, Elijah!”
He brought her up until her back was flush with his front and, continuing to rut, massaged her ample breasts in his calloused hands. “Fuck! I missed ya.”
They’d been thick as thieves since they were children. After Elias, Annie knew him best in the world.
A serious boy raised under the cruel hand of his father. A serious girl molded by the strict superstition of a gods-fearing grandmother. What a pair they’d made once upon a time—counting pennies and digging up roots beneath Granny’s sycamore tree, enjoying the shade of its handsome branches, avoiding home, dreaming of power and money and freedom and all those things people hoped for but never got.
He hadn’t known she would become the mother of his child. He hadn’t known that child would die. He hadn’t known he would leave her alone for as long as he did. That was his way—feeling through the dark on his hands and knees. Only she could shake out the future onto a table and read it.
“I ain’t lettin’ you go,” he said into the crook of her neck before laving the patch of skin with his warm tongue. “Neva. Neva, neva.”
Annie tossed her head back and onto his shoulder. “You betta not.”
Then she came apart like an old carborator: one heavy piece at a time, shuddering and groaning. And Elijah came apart with her, muttering: I love you, I love you, I love you.
Annie reached back and palmed the back of his head, utterly spent. “I love you, too.”