Tiger Rag by Nicholas Christopher Read Free Book Online

one morning came home to find his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, and was hanged two months later in the prison yard in Amesville
.
    Johnson was sweating. The mist off the water was more like steam. Snakes slid in and out of the mangrove roots, bats swooped through the trees. He could hear his own voice, somewhere outside himself in the darkness. He was cursing that bitch Agnes he lived with, with her big ass and sweet lips, who ran off with his money and had better be hoping he didn’t find her. And that son of a bitch Guideau who would never bother him again. And, most of all, Bolden, with his mighty airs
—King Bolden—
who was no better than him, no matter what anyone said, and one day they would all know it
.
    He took a final swig from the bottle and threw it into the river, then reached into his coat and took out the Edison cylinder and flung it as far as he could, so hard that he lost his balance and slid halfway down the riverbank. He heard a splash in the darkness as he sprawled out in the mud, laughing and cursing, telling himself that the only ones who would hear that music now were dead men. Let them dance to it
.

FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA—DECEMBER 20, 1:30 P.M.
    Driving north on the interstate, as the hail turned to freezing rain and the temperature plummeted, Devon had mixed feelings about leaving Miami. Though she was jobless, behind in rent, shitlisted by the local narcs, it seemed like a bad move to embark on a road trip with her mother. Ruby might have a concrete destination, where professional business awaited her, but it still felt as if she was fuguing. And Devon was along for the ride. After years of estrangement and uneasy truces, of brief obligatory phone calls, Devon was listening to Ruby’s patter for hours on end. And this when, for the first time in memory, her mother frequently made little sense.
    Her own mother’s funeral had been just as Ruby promised: short and unceremonious. She and Devon sat alone in the first of six rows of folding chairs and viewed the body in its rosewood casket. Ruby had ordered three wreaths of white carnations, and their scent was overpowering. She insisted that sheand Devon wear white, not black, and ordered dresses from Neiman Marcus, which a fitter brought to the house.
    For her mother Ruby had picked out a pale blue dress, blue kerchief, and white gloves with pearl buttons. She saw Devon staring at the gloves and whispered, “Arthritis made her hands like claws. She would want them covered.”
    Devon had only met Camille Broussard once, when she was thirteen. Ruby had broken with her long before that. She had come to Miami for a single day and stayed in a motel. She found Ruby’s office address in the phone book and sat in the waiting room until she arrived. It happened that Ruby had just picked up Devon at school, and Devon never forgot the expression on her mother’s face when she saw the sallow, red-haired woman in a gingham dress sitting there pensively: in a matter of seconds, it went from astonishment to anger. She calmly ordered Devon to go into her office. Assuming the old woman was a patient, Devon didn’t understand her reaction. Ten minutes later, Ruby joined her, looking pale and drawn herself, and sat down behind her desk.
    “That was my mother,” she said. “Your grandmother. I explained to you last year, when I thought you were old enough to understand, why I never saw her and never wanted you to see her.”
    “Because she abandoned you,” Devon said meekly.
    “She did worse than that. She all but encouraged me to abandon her. That was the kicker. She couldn’t wait to be rid of me. I promised myself I would never allow her near me or my family. And I won’t.”
    “She’s gone?”
    “She was never here.”
    Those words echoed in Devon’s ears again as she lookeddown on her grandmother’s body. She didn’t recognize her. The mortician had applied plenty of makeup, making her appear younger in death. Her wrinkles