The End of the Rainbow (Hudson 4)

"Where?"

"The jug. We must bring back the souls of our loved ones and safeguard them. The chair on which the jug sits belongs to Legba, the god of the crossroads, who controls passing between the living world and the world of the dead."

"Your son is in the jug?" I muttered. She nodded.

"That's not his... not... his skull, is it?" I asked nearly gulping in fear of her response.

She shook her head.

"It be the skull of an ancestor who guards and protects. too."

"How did your son die?"

"His lungs go bad," she said putting her hand over her breast,

"How old was he?"

"Five."

"Five? How terrible. I'm sorry."

She nodded.

"I've got to do the floors upstairs now," she told me and closed the door.

I watched her walk away and looked at the door to the holy room. What was really in that jug? It gave me the shivers to think about it, about everything in that room. I got myself a glass of water and tried the telephone again, hoping to speak to Mommy. It was still dead and the rain had turned into a steady downpour. It beat against the windows and on the roof now, sounding more like hail. How even more dreary and dark the house itself appeared when it rained. I wandered through it, looking at the other rooms, each of which was as drab as the one before, the furniture as worn as that in the living room and the dining room.

The television set was not working either. That line was down. too. In this out-of-the-way place, everything seemed to fall apart so easily, I thought. Still nervous. I searched for ways to distract myself. It would still be hours before Harley returned, unless the weather where they were was just as bad and made it impossible to work. I was hoping for that.

On my way back through the hallway to sit in the living room and wait. I realized there was a door beside the scratched and chipped dark walnut cabinet. The door was so narrow and the paint so faded on both the wall and the door that it was easy to walk right by and not notice it. I imagined it was just a closet. but I opened it anyway and was surprised to see a short stairway down. Perhaps it was a wine cellar. I thought.

Just before I closed the door. I saw the light switch and flipped it. A very low wattage overhead bulb threw dim illumination over the half-dozen steps. I was about to turn the light off and close the door when I noticed a picture on the wall directly opposite the short stairway at the base. It was in a pearl oval frame and the young man in the picture so resembled Harley, I couldn't ignore it.

I paused, listened and heard Suze still upstairs, chanting and working. so I edged myself carefully down the stairway to look more closely at the picture. What a remarkable resemblance. I thought. Was this Harley's father at a young age? He had his hair short, almost military style and wore a shirt and a tie. Yet. as I stu

died the picture longer. I thought the face in it was too handsome for the man I had met. The man in this picture had Harley's mouth as well as his jaw and his ears. In short, there was a much closer

resemblance.

Do people's features change so much as they grow older? I wondered, What difference does it make anyway? I thought. It doesn't change my feelings about his father and this place.

As I turned to go back up. I saw a half-dozen cartons on the floor. They were open, some of their contents overflowing. Most of it was old papers, legal-looking documents, but I saw more pictures on another carton. I knelt down and started to sift through them.

There were many pictures of a young couple enjoying a vacation to what looked like Disney World. In most of the pictures a little boy held onto the hand of a woman I imagined to be his mother. The little boy looked like he could have been Harley. That's how close the resemblance was. Of course. I didn't recognize the woman. but I thought she had a soft beauty. In other pictures, she looked more troubled and in none of them did she look directly at the camera. Her eyes were always shifted in another direction. In some pictures, she seemed to be covering her face deliberately by raising her arm or twisting her shoulder.

There was, however, one good head shot that revealed she had hazel eyes, light brown hair and almost perfectly symmetrical diminutive features. She wasn't smiling in this one either. She looked almost hypnotized, staring without expression.

The house in the background in most of the pictures of the young men, young woman and little boy was different from this one. There were pictures of other people, some alongside the man, woman and child, and then there were pictures of the child at what was obviously his birthday party.

They weren't taking very good care of these photographs. I thought. Some were already torn or bent and many were fading from the dampness. Even the carton itself looked like it was about to collapse. I put it all back, stacking the pictures more carefully than they had been, and then I glanced at the carton on the right. It wasn't as frill and it looked like it contained old newspapers. Were they of some historic value? I wondered and glanced at the issue on the top. The date was only twelve years back. Why save this?

I perused the front page and almost put it back before I noticed a short column on the lower left. The: headline read:

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Local Boy Dies in Police Chase.

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