The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara Read Free Book Online Page B

could hear the crackling wheeze of red silk ablaze.
    “Sistuh mine, it’s a hard row to hoe, but ain’t nothing to go out about,” Ruby was saying, flinging the water out back, the flap of the tent lifted and moonlight spilling in, the arc of water frozen for an instant, just long enough for her to believe she’d been washed clean of it all.
    “How ya feel? Velma?”
    And she wanted to answer Ruby, wanted to say something intelligible and calm and hip and funny so the work could take precedence again. But the words got caught in the grind of her back teeth as she shred silk and canvas and paper and hair. The rip and shriek of silk prying her teeth apart. And it all came out a growling.
    “Velma!” He was out of the booth again, leaning over the table toward her, his jacket hem in her coffee cup. “Aw, baby, don’t get angry about things over and done with. Come on. Let’s go home.”
    “Growl all you want, sweetheart. I haven’t heard a growl like that since Venus moved between the sun and the earth, mmm, not since the coming of the Lord of the Flames. Yes, sweetheart, I haven’t heard a good ole deep kneebend from-the-source growl such as that in some nineteen million years. Growl on. You gonna be all right … after while. It’s all a matter of time. The law of time. And soon, sweetheart, this will all be yours. You just hold that thought, ya hear?”

two
    “Quit wrasslin, sweetheart, or you may go under. I’m throwing you the life line. Don’t be too proud to live.”
    “Speakin of wrasslin with pride, Min—”
    “What you say?” Minnie Ransom hadn’t been aware of her spirit guide’s presence, or of her own drift elsewhere.
    “Say she can’t hear you, Min. Don’t even see you. Henry gal off somewhere tracking herself.”
    “Mmm. Hanging on to her’s like trying to maneuver a basket of snakes on a pole. Spasms in every nerve center. And me, I feel like I’ve been in the middle of a hornet’s nest for days. No time to recharge and replenish myself. But talking to Doc’s like talking to sidewalk. He will have his little shows. What’s ailing the Henry gal so, Old Wife? Not that I’m sure I can match her frequency anyway. She’s draining me.”
    “Maybe you’ve met your match, Min.”
    “What you say?”
    “Say she sure is fidgetin like she got the betsy bugs.”
    “She one of Oshun’s witches, I suspect. What’s Oshun’s two cents worth on the matter? Maybe she’d like to handle this Henry gal herself.”
    “I don’t know about the two cents cause I strictly do not mess with haints, Min. I’ve always been a good Christian.”
    “When you gonna stop calling the loa out of their names? They are the laws alive. Seems to me you need to slough off a lot more of the nonsense from this plane if you’re going to be any help to me. Some spirit guide.”
    “Leastways I know that Oshun ain’t studyin this problem, Min, cause I hear Oshun and Oye prettyin up to hop a bus to New Orleans. Carnival in this town ain’t fancy enough for them. Town gettin too small for some other proud spirits I could name too.”
    “Bus? What are you talking about—the loa on some bus?”
    “I’m talkin about them haints that’re always up to some trickified business. They ride buses just the same’s they ride brooms, peoples, carnival floats, whatever. All the same to them. What they care about scarin people with they ghostly selves?”
    “Then you tell me, Old Wife, teller of tales nobody much wants to hear anymore except this humble servant of a swamphag, where’s the Henry gal gone off to? I don’t feel much turbulence in her now.”
    “Swamphag?” leaning over to flounce Minnie’s dress and jangle her gold bangles, chuckling. “She’s off dancing, Min.”
    “In the mud?””
    “Mud seems to belong to her ways, Min.”
    “Dancing in mud with cowries. Mmm. Twisting and grunting for the reward-applause of a bloody head on a tray. Lord, have mercy. What is wrong with the women? If they