Death Letter Blues

James meets her eyes, mild and meek, as she lays perfectly still. He takes her hand in his own and brings her fingers to his lips, never breaking her gaze. A delicate kiss or two, his tongue brushes her skin, her nails against his chin, his tooth against her knuckle. He unfurls her finger, lowering his mouth until he can taste the dirt under the tip. His eyes close as he bites, slowly pressing his canines into her. The nail turns yellow between his bared teeth, and he exhales slowly.
    He releases her hand and it falls to her side on the cooling board, the fingertip looking like the telltale of guilty matchsticks held too long. The milky flesh on her finger is bettered only by her eyes for contrast against her black velvet skin. It will remain forever blemished, but she won’t mind. She aint gonna be kickin’ up a fuss. She looks so civil and cool, and for the first time since he can remember her skin is free of shimmering perspiration. Her neck, for so long a practical device, thick for bellowing, seems almost artistically constructed, charming in its functionality. It stems down to meaty shoulders indented by the straps of the sun-bleached calico dress, the latest in a chain of similarly sun-bleached calico dresses. In seventeen years he could count on his fingers the number of times she wore something different. It will always be a part of her.
    He adjusts his cloth cap and takes the note from his pocket. This morning on Lucille’s porch the message boy had watched him chew his lip, reading and rereading it: “Ida Gillum is dead”.
    She sure is. Daughter found her in bed jus’ like sleepin’, the young deputy on morgue duty had told him, more than that he couldn’t say. Aint gonna neither, thinks James. When some sooty ol’ madam goes quietly in her sleep aint none in Greenwood gonna kick up a fuss. He runs his tongue across his teeth and stuffs his hands deep into his pockets, scrunching the letter. He watches his wife, idly fumbling the battered harmonica in his right hand pocket, clacking his thumbnail up and down the spittle-soaked grooves. He waits for three minutes, that seems long enough, before shuffling out and down the hall towards the mortuary’s exit, tipping his cap to the waiting deputy who greets him as he passes.
    “Hey, once again, boy, I’m real sorry”.
    “Yessir, thankin’ you sir”.
    With two coins in his pocket he heads towards the store.


The oak’s boughs are broad and hooked, painting a nest of dark serpents on the earth below. With an empty bottle in his hand James lies with his head resting against the trunk. He opens his eyes to the stagnant summer sun, carved by the silhouettes of a hundred black arms. Bluebirds and warblers go back and forth to perch just as with all the other trees, but there are no nests in the barren limbs. Too wide, too rigid, broods James. Can’t nothing make this ol’ girl alive. Bin deathly since before any could say. Ol’ Medusa, folks call her, no heart, no mercy.
    James takes brings the crumpled death letter from his pocket and stuffs it into the brown bottle. He watches the paper darken, softening and curling in the climbing hooch, until it vanishes in the dregs. He tosses it aside, and as it thuds in the yellow grass his hand goes for his harmonica. The dust is wiped away with his sleeve and he puts it too his lips, his tongue running over the warm steel. He shuts his eyes and blows the same notes he has blown ten thousand times before, rolling lazily up and down the twelve bar progression, and when the cycle comes round he effects a low guttural croon: “…I say lord have mercy… on my wicked sou-”
    “O dear lord, what is this I’m hearing?!”
     Through shut eyes he sees Lucille loping towards him with a toothy grin.
    “Some fool scarin’ off all the birds with unholy racket!”, she laughs, “Please baby, you know I can’t be with no man sings sour as all that.” He hears her sniff as she shifts from one foot to the other, and back again. “What you doin’ way out here anyhow? What, like you ain’t got no duties?” She shoos a fly from her belly.
    “Leave me be woman,” he slurs. “You know I call on you soon enough, don’t you go kickin’ up a fuss.” Pulling his cap forward over his eyes dismissively.
    “Now don’t get yourself all nettlesome, you hear? It don’t become a man such as yourself…” Lucille leans forward and, with their faces inches apart, pulls the cap away and runs her fingers softly over his bony cheek. “Besides, baby, you gone so sudden this mornin’,” she whispers into his ear, “a man’s gotta finish what he starts…”
    He opens his eyes and she giggles. She sniffs again, through force of habit, and recoils at his breath, her face instantly tempering, a look of sleeplessness creeping about her brow. She folds her arms. “Oh Jimmy…”
    He is looking past her; two mockingbirds have caught his attention, gracefully flitting in the air, chasing each other across the placid canvas. They bandy to and fro flying overhead, and James’ eye rests once more on the branch looming over him. Particularly thick and sturdy, it swoops down, notched with phantom scars so vivid to those of an age. His gaze loops around the hanging bough and down onto Lucille, watching as she slinks from side to side, the heavy shadows slipping over her bare black shoulders until she stills. In the summer dust the blue flower print her dress shines, a beacon of colour amongst a sepia haze. Such colour don’t belong to a place like this, it don’t deserve it.
    In her silence he reaches one arm up towards her, she leaving hers folded over her stomach, biting her lip. The two endure under the boughs of the old oak until she extends a hand. Lucille speaks, and he smiles, watching her teeth flash the yellow of the afternoon sun.


Edward Hickey