The Backwaters by Christopher J. Ananias

Jenny stood at the dingy laundromat’s bulletin board. She wore a bright red Indiana University shirt and jeans. The crude flyer showed five or six stick figures holding hands in a circle. Two suspiciously looked like they had a penis or almost three legs. She smiled and thought, Maybe that’s what I want to see. They danced in bright green crayon slashes of grass in some pagan ritual around a blue gazing-ball. The smiley-face sun, shining from the top right corner, looked sneaky and somehow hateful. Like it was holding its middle sun-finger up just off the page. Black words cut across the lightly shaded blue sky. FORTUNES READ by Sue at Backwaters Salon $50. No Refunds.  

“No refunds…” Jenny said to herself, thinking about what the psychic told her.

“What?” said old Cobbs. He had a scraggly gray beard and wore blue coveralls. He cleaned the laundromat, aware of the pretty young student who was now putting laundry into a triple loader. She didn’t overload it.

“Nothing, Mr. Cobbs.”

“Oh well, okay.” His slumping frame, looking gaunt in the blue coveralls, pushed a dust mop down the worn floor between the triple-load washers and the wall dryers. Cobbs muttered and flung an empty Tide bottle, clonking into the waste barrel.

“Mr. Cobbs.” 

“Yes? Did five quit again?” He glanced at it, a prominent Adam’s apple sticking out. “I can’t refund ya.”

“No. I’m just wondering about this flyer.” Jenny couldn’t get it off her mind. Thinking about last Friday’s hair appointment, and the heavyset woman smoking and flipping Tarot cards in the salon. Her customer, an old woman with a silver ponytail, was delighted by what the fortune teller urgently said. Jenny calculated her money and expenses as the beautician Kay snipped Jenny’s brunette curls and gabbed about all the goings-on, from politics to the Covered Bridge Festival.    

The wide dust mop stopped. Cobbs adjusted his glasses, looking at the flyer. “I don’t truck with the psychics on the Backwaters. Not anymore… It’s bad juju.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Cobbs?”

“They ain’t all fake and they ain’t all good.” He squinted, looking at the bulletin board. “That’s the one right there… that damn Backwaters Sue!” He charged over to it and ripped it off the bulletin board with such vehemence that Jenny stepped back. “Every time I tear that thing down—the next day it’s back!”

“That’s spooky.” Jenny flushed at the old man’s anger. If she wasn’t so bewildered, she would have laughed. Cobbs went back to work this time with a mop bucket.

Jenny never saw the janitor go off, but heard a lot of his grumblings. He hated the “Sons of bitches,” that spilled their lousy Gain and Downy on the triple loaders. The OUT-OF-ORDER sign was on the bathroom door again, but he let Jenny use it. “The sons of bitches don’t deserve a bathroom, smokin’ meth and shittin’ on the floor!”

Jenny waited for the right moment, staring at the TV on the wall. Watching a nasty deodorant commercial for private parts that blessedly ended. She caught Cobbs on his mop route by the large window, throwing his shadow over the triple loaders in his drudgery.

“Um, Mr. Cobbs.”

“Yes?” His face was working on some grievance. “It’s wet there, Miss.” He pointed toward the shiny patch by the folding table. Jenny inched back from the wet floor.

“About what you said, um, about the Backwaters’ psychics being bad juju. What did you mean?”

“Last summer, ol’ Backwaters Sue at the Lions Club fish-fry lured me in with her big smile and big hair—big everything.” He glanced at Jenny’s perky chest. “Runnin’ her game on the table under a shade tree with her plastic pink flamingos stuck in a circle. Like they were watching me. Weird.” He stopped, and Jenny watched the recollection of it come into his hazel eyes. He smoothed his beard. “Just twenty dollars… Have a seat, old-timer. Sue snapped that twenty right up—Yes sir, and turned her funny cards, layin’ down a full house of Devils and Hangmen. She blew cigarette smoke in my face and said, You’ll lose your wife when the leaves fall. The way she said it… just as sure as the sun comin’ up,” he shook his head and whispered. “Scared the be-Jesus out of me… She smiled, too… The dirty bitch.” 

Cobbs started ringing the mop. Jenny thought about curiosity and dead cats, but plunged in anyway, “Um, did you, Mr. Cobbs? I-I mean… lose your wife?” Jenny felt a giddiness, her lips twitching into a smile. Bracing herself for harsh words—maybe violence. 

Cobbs dropped the mop, splashing soapy water, and reared up, looking tall. Jenny felt a bolt of fear, losing her smile, but he said conversationally, like discussing the Farmers’ Almanac. “Soon as the leaves changed. Carrie went into intensive care. That horse’s ass, Dr. Tack, couldn’t figure it out. Like all a sudden—she’s allergic to everything—to life. Terrible bed-shaken seizures. Tubes in her. She swelled, her blood went black…” He frowned, looking out the window. “When the leaves fell. Just like Sue said. I was at the Backwaters Funeral Home. Carrie’s family is from down there.” His face twisted, caught in some private agony. Jenny felt a wave of shame for prying, but curiosity made a person do things—to investigate. Then he blurted, “Guess who was smokin’ and flippin’ Devil cards in the funeral home’s coatroom.”

“Sue?”

“Hell yes, Sue.” A sardonic chuckle escaped his wrinkled mouth. “Ole Backwaters’ Sue chain smokin’ and layin’ them down for the undertaker’s wife. You shoulda seen the horror on that woman’s face. Dressed up in her fancy gray mortician’s suit. I heard Sue’s fat voice say, “By next Easter, when Jesus is a risin,’ your youngest son’s gonna be a dyin.”

“Did he die?” Jenny locked on his eyes. He was an excellent storyteller.

Cobbs smoothed his beard. “Well, girl. From what I heard after Easter dinner. I think his name was Earl—Earl left and went to a party. Young folks gettin’ it on…you know. Someone slipped Earl something bad, probably fentanyl. Anyway, they slung Earl’s corpse out in the mud at the funeral home, and burned tracks!” Cobbs paused, enjoying how Jenny was giving him attention. He smiled and sang, “By next Easter, when Jesus is a risin,’ your youngest son’s gonna be a dyin!” Cobbs started laughing, low at first, then he smacked the table, roaring!

Jenny stepped back, half wishing she hadn’t gotten him started, but it was juicy stuff. Cobbs picked up the mop, swaddling up the suds. Jenny said under her breath. “Good God.”

He whipped around, “No, not Him, the other one… Why ya so curious?”

“Oh, no reason.” She looked away, suddenly interested in her clothes spinning out in the washer’s window like a screaming face.

A crafty gleam of recognition sparkled in Cobbs’ hazel eyes. “You been truckin’ with her, ain’t ya?”

Jenny smiled like that ol’ sun comin’ up. He knew Sue flipped Jenny something a helluva lot better than Devils and Hangmen. 

When Jenny got home carrying her warm laundry into her studio apartment, she went right to the stove, lifted the teakettle, finding it half full, and turned on the gas burner. It ticked like a time bomb, click-click-click… whoosh!

Jenny thought about what Backwater’s Sue said last week… They sat at a corner table in the beauty shop, under a Breck Shampoo model’s successful gaze. Cigarette smoke curled in the aluminum ashtray. Tarot cards waiting for Sue to read them. Then there was a commotion.

A young woman started yelling at the beautician, Kay. Her hands flew up to her hair in the mirror. “Look at my hair, God dammit! It’s too short!” The skinny woman refused to pay and stormed out.

Kay screamed, “Come back here, you thief!” But the skinny woman squalled out of the parking lot in her green Volkswagen.

Sue laced her puffy fingers together on the table and said, “Kay, bring me some of her hair.”

Kay smiled, like when the wind shifts and something good is underfoot, or maybe not so good. She reached down and grabbed a fistful of red clippings and stuffed them into a sandwich baggie. Then, with a strange, almost ceremonious bow, she said, “To him,” and laid it on the table. 

Sue said, “To him,” with no ceremony, and dropped the red clippings into the open maw of a black purse. Like an old sawbones might carry. What Jenny glimpsed inside the purse made her want to scream, but she simply swallowed and turned white. She whiffed something too—hot—like burnt matches. Like the thing inside that purse struck a book of them. The entire room wanted to unmoor itself and tilt.

“Are you okay, dear?”

Jenny looked into Sue’s black eyes and found nothing in there that resembled a human. Her mouth clicked open. “Yeah.”

“Did you see something that upset you, dear?”

“No.” She felt like fleeing. She thought, fleeing that’s what criminals do. Was that a severed hand? The Right Hand of Glory? “What are you going to do with her hair?”

Sue dropped ‌the purse on the floor with a smack. “Just a little trailer trash to throw away.” Sue assured Jenny. “Are you still with us, dear?”

“My name’s Jenny.”

Jenny didn’t like how Sue smiled, and thought about her own clips of hair that were still on the floor. “Now let’s see what we have.” Sue studied the cards. There was only one death card. The others were nice, like a little family of forest creatures. Jenny had never seen Tarot cards like these. Her religious Nana told Jenny to never touch things of the occult. To Nana, it was all black magic, which included not only Tarot cards but horror movies—even Halloween. So there was no trick or treating for Jenny after Jenny’s mother dumped her at Nana’s little scrub farm when Jenny was ten. Mom went AWOL, never to be heard from again.

Smoke came thinly from Sue’s nose, then from her full lips, “By the second summer moon the one you call, Nana. She’s gonna break her neck on the root cellar steps.” Then Sue laughed, but didn’t get what she wanted. Jenny sat there, smiling. Then they were both laughing—hard. The kind of laughter that bonds people.

Two nights later, a fire broke out at the Backwaters Trailer Court. A wet body bag shimmered in the red flashing lights. A grainy picture flashed on the TV. It was her—-the hairdo thief. This shocked and terrified Jenny, but an icy excitement coursed through her. Then Mr. Cobbs and his stories convinced her even further…

The summer days went by, and when the first moon shone bright and nothing happened, Jenny got anxious. Nana had been good to Jenny, taking her in on that little scrub farm. Maybe she should come clean. Tell Nana what Backwater’s Sue said, and about all the other events that came true, but her religious Nana would say Jenny had consorted with the Devil.

#

The SECOND SUMMER MOON was three-quarters full, so bright Jenny could see the shadow of her plant on the windowsill, stretching across the countertop like an alien. Jenny stared at the black leaves hanging over the green dumpster outside her apartment building. She started feeling resentful toward Sue. Was she a con woman? The type her Nana warned her about. Trying to scare Jenny.

On the last night of the second summer moon, blazing so bright and clear, Jenny could see great dark canyons and pockmarks from meteors with her naked eye. A mantra played in Jenny’s head. “Nana’s gonna break her neck on the root cellar steps.” She paced the tree-shadowed sidewalks like a convict. It was about 9:30, and she saw the dingy laundromat’s fuzzy yellow light and walked in. Greeted by the spinning dryers and hit with the clean scent of detergent. She hadn’t felt clean in a while.

No matter how much Cobbs cleaned it. The white linoleum floor looked dirty. Cobbs watched Jenny studying the bulletin board, looking at the latest flyers of missing dogs, rummage sales, and drug addiction programs. She leafed through them, but saw no Backwaters’ Psychics with their slashes of green crayon and blue gazing balls. He caught her eye, smiled, and nodded. Jenny just stared at him, then looked down. Maybe she wasn’t that nice after all. 

Jenny dialed her grandmother, “Hi Nana. Do you have any of that homemade spaghetti sauce?”

“I do indeed. My Early Girl tomatoes came in a week ago, so you know me. I’ve been a-workin.”

“Could I borrow a jar?”

“You know you can. I’ll go right down into the root cellar and get you one, honey.” Jenny knew she would.

Cobbs forgot about Jenny and was castigating an earlier patron in the most foul light. An ancient woman, wearing sunflower-printed pantaloons, filled the triple loader with dog bed covers. The dog covers were so full of dog hair, they looked gray, but came out bright red. He pulled globs of stinky wet dog fur out, slopping it into a bucket. “You god-damn bitch.”

Jenny tried to kill ‌time watching an old preacher berating his congregation about the wages of SIN on the laundromat’s TV. The only thing Jenny heard was Nana’s gonna break her neck on the root cellar steps. Then, after a full thirty minutes, she dialed Nana. She didn’t answer. Nana always answered her landline phone.

Jenny slipped up behind Cobbs, bursting with happiness. “Hello, Mr. Cobbs!”

He jumped, standing over his mop bucket, splashing water on the floor. He frowned, looking at her bright smile. Like she just hit the Powerball. “I’m busy, miss.”

“Sure, whatever.”

The glass door swung open. Jenny looked up at the second summer moon. She had never considered a second summer moon. The dirty feeling came again, but so did the excitement. The double indemnity clause she added to Nana’s insurance policy might be the coup de grâce to Jenny’s soul, but in case of an accident it paid double.

Christopher J. Ananias

a display of tarot cards from pixabay.com. Colourful cards with magical pictures of women and angels and what not.