***
Odette walked among the tall pines and picked huckleberries for a pie. She wanted to make something special for Clara’s birthday. The Gates’s owned nearly one thousand acres, and she thought it might be possible to get lost in there if a person didn’t pay attention. She heard a voice which at first she did not recognize. It was steady and droned on much like the chants used in her own religion. The words didn’t make sense at first, but they had rhythm and the closer she walked toward the sound, the more familiar the voice became. Then she heard the words, “Father, hear my cry and hasten to me. Touch me and make me wicked. Feed me with your blood. Fill me with your power. Show me the way. Father, hear my cry and hasten to me. Touch me and make me wicked. Feed me with your blood. Fill me with your power. Show me the way.”
It was Mr. Albert. Odette ducked behind a tree, watching the man, but afraid to disturb him. He was in the middle of a clearing in those woods and knelt as if praying. His back was to her, he was shirtless, sweating and covered with red welts. They were bites from those horrible ants. She winced at the site.
Albert’s chant continued. “Father, hear my cry and hasten to me.” Odette shifted her weight, moving the basket of berries from one forearm to the other. In doing so, she stepped on a dry twig and it snapped with a sharp CRACK. Albert stopped speaking and turned his head. Odette ducked back behind the tree, but the basket of berries tipped and spilled, giving her away.
“Come here, girl,” he said. His voice was calm, like a pastor greeting a member of the congregation. His mouth smiled, but his eyes were dark and dead like chunks of coal had been shoved into the sockets. A skeleton’s face, always grinning, but never laughing.
“Mr. Albert, I’m sorry. I wasn’t spying on you…I just heard…”
He interrupted her. “It’s okay, Odette. Come here.” The smile again. It reminded her of a snarling dog or a wolf, bared teeth ready to bite, hackles raised, but the tail wagged to lure you in.
She stepped out from behind the tree, ashamed and cautious. Mr. Gates had never been hurtful toward her, toward any of them, but he was not to be trusted. Not out there in the woods. Not ever. He was not himself. She thought of the poor girl burned by the jealous wife. Of the beatings and the other stories. Terrible stories. Albert Gates, Sr. had never been cruel to her, no, but maybe a line had been crossed. She had caught him in a private moment and what was he saying? Make me wicked? That wasn’t a prayer she had ever heard. No one asked for wickedness.
“I didn’t mean to bother you, sir. I was picking huckleberries for Miss Clara’s...”
“Come here,” he said, ignoring her explanation. Still calm, still kneeling, still with his head turned to the side, watching her from his periphery. Still grinning like a skeleton.
Can he even see me? How did he know it was me?
His hands and face were dirty and his dark hair stuck to his forehead in long, greasy points. She stepped closer to him, slowly, anxious to run back to the small house she shared with Miss Celine, Big Jacques and the boys. Good people. She wanted to be with good people at that moment. She wanted to…
“Come on, girl. Come here. It’s okay,” he said.
His words made her feel like a stray dog. His face was expressionless save for the skeleton smile. “Come on girl,” he said again and righted himself, turning to face her.
Her feet stopped at the edge of the clearing. Something about that clearing—some ten or fifteen paces across and in a perfect circle—made her feel queasy. She couldn’t make her feet move. She smelled his sour sweat, but there was another stink about that place. The animals knew it. They were quiet, not even the chirp of a cricket, not even the squeal of a cicada, but the fire ants crawled everywhere. They crawled across Mr. Albert’s boots, his chest and his face. They bit into his skin.
Even though she knew Mr. Albert had been working that section of the land for weeks, the wire grass and those awful sticky sand spurs still grew up inside the circle. Not a tree had been felled. Its perimeter was marked with a path a foot wide like some person or animal had trod it bare. Albert now stood in the center of it like the long pole in a circus tent, staring at Odette and she still couldn’t make herself step over the path…
Run, Odette.
…and she couldn’t make herself run. If she did, he would catch her. If she made it back to Big Jacques and Celine, Mr. Albert would still catch her, and what could Big Jacques do? No, he wouldn’t argue or fight for her. He was comfortable. He had other children to think about, a wife. He would end up slave to another man in circumstances far worse.
“I said come here,” Albert repeated, his teeth beginning to clench. There was acid in his voice.
As bad as the thought of running was, the idea of stepping inside the circle was worse. Her flesh crawled and her stomach knotted. The smell coming from that place was rotten.
He’s poisoned by that smell. That’s why he isn’t acting right.
“Mr. Albert, I just can’t.”
He charged toward her, but stopped an arm’s reach away. She flinched, but was glued to the ground with fear. His face and chest were covered with scratches and the inflamed, liquid filled blisters of those ant bites. The tiny creatures still crawled along his skin. One was under his left eye, its fangs dug in…its entire body contracted as it injected its poison. There was no sign of pain on Albert’s face as his eyes shifted from side to side, looking for something. An onlooker or perhaps another of the slaves. A good person. He was looking for a good person who might stop him, but there weren’t any. There was only Odette and Albert Sr., the man who was never cruel. A man she knew not to trust but wanted to trust so much, a man who was living up to her fears and expectations. And the worst part was she didn’t let her guard down, not for an instant, but he was still going to hurt her. He was still going to be like the master before him.
“Mr. Albert, please!” she said.
Albert’s lip and nose quivered into a momentary snarl. She thought she might have even heard him growl. Then, he looked at her with his dead eyes and skeleton grin again.
“Come here.”
I can make it. I know these woods. I can make it if I just go now. I am young and I am strong and I can…
“No,” Odette said and finally managing the strength, she turned to run.
He grabbed her wrists. “You’ll do as I say, and you’ll do it when I say.”
She cried out. His grip was painful, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was yet to come. She knew that. She knew whatever was going to happen was going to be worse than anything she had ever known because it was going to happen in that place. “I just can’t, sir. I can’t go in there. Anywhere but there.”
He sneered at her, then looked back over his shoulder. A moment of clarity, she thought. When he turned back, his eyes were alive again. His face showed understanding to some degree before he began to laugh. A sickening sound.
“You feel it, too, don’t you? The power—can you feel it?” Albert’s eyes went dead again.
“It ain’t power, Sir. I don’t know exactly what it is,” she said, still crying. “It ain’t no good.”
Albert’s grip grew stronger and to her horror, he had begun to pull her into the clearing. Odette’s legs felt weak and her stomach churned. He spun her around and slid his hands underneath her armpits. His grasp on her tightened. She kicked with her feet, trying to dig them into the ground to hang on in some way, to not go into that place. She stared up through streaming tears. The pine trees loomed over her, leaning and closing in, reaching down for her like long, spiked fingers that wanted to shove her into the empty, dead ground. To shove her under the sand, all the way to whatever hell sat stinking in the earth. Her queasy feeling doubled.
“There is something here, Odette. It makes me strong. It makes me...It makes me want.”
His words were buzzing insects as she felt the world drip away, the trees spun into a whirl like a kaleidoscope she once played with as a young child, co
lors twisting into fractal patterns. She had looked on those colors with amazement and laughed along with her father before he was taken to Georgia and she was taken to North Carolina to live with Big Jacques and Miss Celine. She fought to keep the happy memory, but the twisting colors grew dark and threatened it, blocked it out, and then filled it back in with new memories, new fears and new loss.
“It makes me want,” Albert said again.
His rough hands were on her young body, groping, squeezing, searching. He tasted her neck, pulled the buttons of her blouse loose and kissed her breasts. The ants had begun to crawl on her then. She felt them bite. She felt all of that, but could not fight back. Odette was paralyzed, but not with fear, with whatever force occupied that space. He would have her body and she would let him. There was nothing she could do about it, not even scream. In her now clouded mind, she saw it happen. She saw blood and she saw his evil skeleton grin as he groped. There was no fear of rape or even of death which equaled the terror of being in that wicked place. Anything, anywhere but there.
She begged. “Please, sir. Please, Mister Albert. Please take me away from here. You can do what you like to me, just not here. Please not here.” The words were only in her head. She felt his violating hands, his fingers, felt her skirt come up in a bunch on her narrow hips. Odette felt him enter her and smelled his sweat and his foul, metallic breath.
The power of that place pulled at her sanity and showed her the things it valued: hatred, pain, fear, despair and sin. She heard Albert moaning and shrieking like an animal, grunting with each new gyration. There was nothing but him and that awful place. There was no more Odette. She saw the black take over and the ants continued to bite.