John Crow's Devil by Marlon James Read Free Book Online Page A

sober people were so aware, how come they only spoke truth when drunk? Give him the romance of a drunkard over the indignation of a teetotaler any day. At the door of the bar, the clink of glasses, the haze of smoke, and cheerful talk of sin welcomed him.
    “The mistress is here?” Bligh asked.
    “No baba.”
    “She sick?”
    “Why you want to know, you goin heal her?”
    He looked at her, this little girl trying on a woman’s tongue for size. There was a fate for girls like her. It started with a smile and ended with several ugly children and a husband who would beat her for her rudeness.
    “You said she sick?”
    “Me never say nothing to you.”
    He did not even know the girl. She aged before him into a woman older than what Widow Greenfield was trying to be.
    “She staying home. Say she reading her Bible,” the girl finally said.
    “Bible?”
    “You turn echo now that you done be preacher? Yes sah, she on fire for Jesus ever since Apostle York kick—I mean, come take you spot. She into the Bible reading hard. She all a talking bout selling the bar. Poor people soon out o work.” She looked at him as if he was responsible. The Pastor said nothing. She had wanted him to say something. She was ready. The girl had an unbroken stream of expletive prepared that would have withered him where he stood. But he fed her nothing and she stood there with the stillborn response stuck in her throat, too nasty to swallow.
    “What you want?”
    “Scotch and soda water. The mistress, she always forget where she keep the soda.”
    “But it right underneath the counter.”
    “No. What I meant was … she always forget where she keep the soda.”
    “You ears hard? Me say it under—”
    “Is a game between me and she, just pass the soda!”
    “You mean Scotch?”
    “Yes, Scotch! Scotch! Scotch!”
    “Hey, don’t jump after me cause bigger-balls man go make you look like bitch.”
    “Leave the bottle.”
    Let the Rum Preacher testify to this. He was far more comfortable at the bar than at the altar. As the head of the church he could never escape the collective weight of judgment. But that cup had passed, and sliding toward him was another, wet, golden, and tinkling with ice. What lay beyond shame, freedom? He was seven sips away from not giving a damn, fifteen from not remembering who he was, and twenty from pissing on himself. Take it easy, Preacher, the bartender would have said by now, but she was off enjoying company more divine than his. With her absent, there was no one to talk to but himself. He was drunk. This was usually a state of perfect peace, but something had gone wrong. Usually, whiskey could erase a sentence midway before it was even finished. Like chalk on a blackboard, the memory was never gone, only smudged, indecipherable and irrelevant. But this time memory came in waves, history he had forgotten for years. Suddenly, afflictions not his own were thrust upon him. His left eye went black. A pain ran along the course of his spine and he fell off the barstool. He tried, in a desperate fit of wheezing, to catch his breath. A force unseen hit him in the scrotum, a battering ram, a rolling calf. The Pastor doubled over, lost his balance, and fell on the floor. Whiskey and bile erupted from his stomach. His teeth chattered violently, chomping on his tongue and causing his throat to fill with blood. He threw himself into the fit, as if a spirit was trying to flee his body. Bligh’s eyes rolled back into his skull and his head hammered onto the floor.
    “Jeezus Christ! Him have fits! Him have fits!” said a man beside Bligh as he fell.
    “Rahtid,” said another.
    “Unu fling this spoon in him mouth quick!” shouted the young bartender. “Bout him want bottle! You know say is a whole o Johnny Walker him one go fi drink?”
    “Him still a fits?”
    “Is the Devil in him. Me read that in the Bible,” said the man nearest to Bligh, holding onto the spoon that he had shoved in the Pastor’s