the pain rippled through her inner thighs, awakening long dead neural pathways. for healthy flesh forgot itself and slept as enemies stormed the gates. nothing like a midnight raid to raise the alarms, and now every cell of hers stood on edge, leaning in to the fight, sensitive to every fiber of the white cotton blankets, the itchy hospital gowns, the perfunctory touch of each passing night nurse. mrs. wallace never felt so alive as when she was dying. and her sensitivities reflected near everything around her, not just her person. the air in her hospital room was heavier and more frigid, and even after she'd ordered the orderlies to shut her window, she swore she could still see it lingering in the air--wisps of blue smoke, like dry ice, watching her lay there. and despite her private third story room, she felt the old red Bama clay shuffle and gurgle beneath them, churning as the earth did on an empty stomach.

without a doubt, mrs. wallace was surprised to be here. four years ago they'd told her it was over. that they'd caught the malignancy in time and managed to salvage not only her life, but her womb. the last time she laid in this bed, she was staring down the barrel of another three kids, a near-death cancer scare, and rearing up for the '61 election. the last time she laid in this bed, she'd felt invincible. like there was nothing in this world that could touch them. but george had lied to her. he'd never told her about his private conversations with her doctors--all them good ol' boys sitting round in clouds of cigar smoke, drinking rye whiskey, discussing her life. so turns out she'd not been as cured as george had told her.

but elections held in the balance, and such sacrifices were expected of alabama's first lady. besides, who would raise the kids while george was off stumping in georgia, mississippi and louisiana? who'd not answer reporter's questions and stay out of the photographers way? george had needed her to keep on truckin. she used to think it was because he loved her. but she'd been mistaken in that, too. after george had been forced to cede the floor to johnson--and then again, in his way, to goldwater--the governorship had only increased in importance. george's eye was focused solely on '68, and he'd to keep the platform of governor's mansion if he was to make a bid of it. alas, his term would be over come start of '67. and then where would he be? obviously extreme measures were called for.

'lurleen, you've got some visitors.' the nurse leaned in to knock on the door. standing behind her were mary jo and catherine who waved, trying to be upbeat, but failed. mary jo was a home ec teacher from macon county. catherine, a republican from winston. the two of them had become fast friends when each of them came to tuscaloosa to take classes at UA. lurleen was working at Kresge's Five and Dime, still in high school. mary jo and catherine had been magnetic personalities, dark and mysterious when every other girl in Bama wanted nothing more to be pretty and plain. mary jo and catherine harbored secrets, and wrote them in lurleen's open book.

-we've a proposition for you, lurleen. catherine sat down at the foot of the bed, resting her palm gently on mrs. wallace's shinbone.

mary jo bristled. now you can't just come out and say that, catherine. you're gonna scare the woman half to death.

-you think i can be more scared than i am right now?

-they took it out, didn't they? catherine's face was cold and stoic. mrs. wallace was taken aback for a moment. catherine appeared a stranger to her for a moment, and she'd the distinct sense that catherine had asked for reasons other than the obvious. she nonetheless nodded her head.

mary jo sat on the other side of the bed. now lurleen, you know catherine and i have always had...connections. spiritual connections to the great realms beyond.

lurleen said nothing. yes, she'd heard the rumors. local friends of her--friends of george's even--had made gentle inquiries into mary jo and catherine's faith. were they...methodist? baptist? now they each went regularly to sunday service, but did not sing the hymnal songs nor did they stay afterward to socialize with the other families. their husbands showed--most of the time--but arrived white and gaunt in the face as though dragged from some wasteland to make an obligatory appearance. but lurleen's integrity was beyond question, and she made quiet excuses for her two long-time lady friends and simply reiterated how eccentric they both could be and how they drew the quality out in one another. but in reality, lurleen had always had her suspicions. and had always wondered where it was they went when the moon was full.

yes, said mrs. wallace. i know.

well we've someone we wish you to meet, catherine said, lips curled like a thin crescent moon. she reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette. checking to see if the nurse were standing at the door, she offered mrs. wallace one.

i don't think we're supposed to smoke in here, mary jo interjected. but she reached for one, waiting for someone to stop her. the three of them giggled as catherine crossed the room to shut the door. well what's the point of being bama's first lady if you can't break a rule or two.

catherine leaned in and lit mrs. wallace's cigarette, her first since surgery a whole two days ago. it tasted like black coffee shot through with amaretto, all bitter almonds and fire. she leaned her head back and took a moment to feel the satisfaction wrestle her body to the ground. she let it take her over and stuff its dirty fist way down deep inside her. when she sat up, both catherine and mary jo were smiling the way ladies do in drive-by billboards along the highway.

-so who was it you wanted me to meet?

and just like that there was a knock at the door. a negro orderly walked in wearing thick black rim glasses. he was young and tall and acknowledged nobody as he crossed the room to check the volume of her saline drip and to read the markings off the EKG machine which blipped and blooped every few seconds. mrs. wallace never took her eyes off him. if she'd allowed herself the thought, she might have considered him handsome. she noted the cleanliness of his fingernails and the way his lips dissembled into an inoffensive smile.

all three women were silent and remained so even after the young man took a seat on mrs. wallace's bed.

-hello, lurleeen. my name is davis walker. how are you today? he extended his hand, but mrs. wallace shuddered and sat herself up with both hands so that she was almost leaning forward.

-i beg your pardon. but what the hell do you think you're doing? she was anxious and bit her lip as she called out for the nurse outside in the hallway.

-don't bother, lurleen, the young mr. walker said. nobody is able to hear you right now.

-and why is that?

-because i won't let them.

an ominous pause spilled out as mrs. wallace watched mary jo and catherine hardly move from their spots. all four sat quietly in mrs. wallace's bed, listening to the machines blooping and bleeping. outside the afternoon sun turned into a reddish-orange tint though mrs. wallace swore it was no earlier than mid-afternoon. outside, the birds that had been singing in the trees went silent. everything went silent. everything but the machines.

davis walker opened his mouth. do you know, mrs. wallace, the difference between white and black magic?

-i am a christian woman, mr. walker. i'm sure i don't.

-white magic, it has been said, derives from the old ways and emerges from shamanistic practices of conjoinment, divining and coming close to the spiritual world by way of solicitation, invocation and consent. in white magic, the spirit world is called upon to be close to us. do you pray for relief from your condition, mrs. wallace?

the question rang out like someone had struck a tuning fork, all vibration and frequency. it shook and rattled the jelly in mrs. wallace's eyes and she gripped the bed spread to balance herself. she choked on the response, overwhelmed for reasons she couldn't articulate. who was this negro who thought to laugh at her laid up like this? who the hell did he think he was? mrs. wallace took hold of her self and her rage, took a long drag of her cigarette and nodded her head. i do, she said.

-well then you are accustomed to the practice of white magic, mrs. wallace. we call upon the angels to watch over our sleeping babes, we petition the virgin to safeguard our thoughts against impurity and we solicit god to advance our...political agendas. white magic, all of it, mrs. wallace. it envisions a united cosmos, governed by the singular maxim of our thrice-greatest Hermes: as above, so below. heaven remakes the world in its image, and all spirits, the living and the dead, come together in compacts of free association.

mary jo and catherine crossed themselves and bit their thumbs. they nodded appreciatively and seemed to mumble something in unison beneath their breath, though mrs. wallace could not determine what it was they were saying.

-now black magic, dear mrs. wallace, is the forced coercion of the spirits to selfish and private ends. it is the entrapment, the binding, even, one might say, the enslavement of the spirit world. and because private ambition ultimately knows no bounds and is in itself never satisfied, black magic endures itself to go on forever. hell is a vision of eternal torment, mrs. wallace, and hell is the world black magic creates. where the spirits are not free, there can be no light.

-mr. davis, if you are here to evangelize your cause to me, i can assure you, i am not interested. at any rate, i am not the person you should be speaking to. my husband-

-your husband, mrs. wallace, is just a man. like any other man. with ambitions and hopes and dreams like any other. i am not here to persuade you of anything. i am merely here to enjoin your interest to mine and, by extension, unite heaven and hell.

-he's coming. mary jo's eyes flashed open and stretched wide, as though someone were walking straight up to her. mr. walker stood and began the work of replacing mrs. wallace's IV bag. mrs. wallace did not break his gaze though and continued to smoke her cigarette even as her husband entered the room.

george was a thunderclap of a man who entered every room mid-sentence, often to whoever he'd just left, regardless of whether they were still there are not. when he entered the room, neither mary jo nor catherine looked him in the eye. george did not formally acknowledge them either, though he flinched when he saw them and his lip curled in that bulldog way of his, though he were some junkyard dog guarding a piece of scrap metal. he'd dark rings under his eyes and his teeth were stained from coffee. he'd not slept much this past week, not because of his wife, who he had otherwise entrusted to 'the best doctors money can buy,' but because he was in the midst of launching a new gubernatorial campaign. and he had come to check on his primary asset.

-doctor's say you'll be on your feet in a week. a promise or a command? and i've got big plans for you, lurleen. big plans. big jim thinks he's gonna out-negro me, but goddamit, i'll give that fucker a run for his money. skuse my language, ladies. george loved to work his way under the skin of anybody in the room. it didn't matter who. he loved to take a person sitting in their chair and make them think he was gonna set it on fire. sitting, they're a bible group. he'd say. standing, they're a revival. but marching (and here he'd lick his fat lips) they're a goddamn army.

he took his wife's cigarette from out her hand and started puffin on it like a flue chimney, pacing back and forth at the foot of her bed. mary jo and catherine never moved from their spots, their eyes glazed over, waiting impatiently for the storm to pass. now that you've had your rest and we can put this whole 'female surgery' behind us we can get down to brass tax of hand shakin and baby kissin. big jim's gonna be the man to beat. sissy flowers thinks he gonna win by getting damn negros to the poll, so he's all but taken himself out of the runnin. this ain't new york city, after all. this here bama. no tuesday we've got a train to catch. we're gonna take up district five counties in just under a week: shelby, talledaga, calhoun, then cleburne, and tallapoosa.

all at once the air popped, as though the cap on a pickle jar had been unlatched. a swelter of cool air filled the room, and mrs. wallace felt herself lifted up on wave. she swung her head back and laughed at the sensation, running first down her back then up through every vertebral break and slight impression in her spine. her mind wrapped itself around a feeling of joy and pressed down upon it, a predatory amoebae languishing over some hapless bacteria. she brayed and gasped, baring her sterling white teeth and the cool, unthinking blue of her eyes. george's head had been replaced by that of a pencil eraser--a soft pink squdge of rubber sitting atop two broad man-shoulders. she was the writing on the wall. and sure he might one day erase her, but not before he wore himself to the nub.

what's the damn matter with her? george asked.

the morphine drip, said mary jo. it makes her hysterical. ***giggle***

well when she gonna snap out of it? we got business to attend to.

now george. catherine stood up in one fell motion, as though gliding on rails, swinging her arms in a wide circle, distracting george's attention with a twist of hip and a cool chassé. mrs. wallace knew that move. catherine had learned it at ms. n'dyae's, shared among the young american schoolgirls as the first in what would be a long line of necessary defenses. mrs. wallace loved her friend just then, and was overwhelmed with the feeling of warm honey trickling down her forearm. why don't you go bellow at lurleen's new press secretary? you know, the new UA grad with the sweater so tight her nose bleeds. i'm sure she'd love to hear your big agenda. but let lurleen rest now, you hear? she's in good hands here.

i guess i'll stop back tomorrow afternoon.

hell, bring dinner. she'll be absolutely ravenous. catherine placed her palm flat on the rear of george's back and carried him out by a finger. but when she opened the room, mrs. wallace did not see the nurse's station or the sign for the ladie's restroom. she saw not a soul shuffle by or a wheelchair sitting empty. outside the room there was nothing. a large, black void. all encompassing and at once alive, wet and slippery and pulsing. and as catherine led him out the door, it reached out to george, kissing him once on the cheek before devouring him whole. catherine shut the door.

what did you give me? she turned to mr. walker who had all been invisible to george. this isn't right.

i can assure you, mrs. wallace, i gave you nothing. you're twinning right now. you are opening yourself to reception. it is common among the naturally gifted, but yes, when first it manifests, it can be quite disorienting. but know that there is nothing to fear. the great forces of the world are playing you as you might otherwise play the viola. they are tuning your vibrations and tightening your strings, running their first and third fingers down the bow of your spine. you, mrs. wallace. you, me, your friends and yes, even your husband, we each of us play music, should we find ourselves in the right hands.

what do you want from me?

nothing we are not willing to give in return. you by now understand what your husband and your doctor's hid from you. and while it may be easy to think it might not have mattered, that the results might have anyways been much the same, i can assure you that is not true. and i can also assure you, mrs. wallace, and here you must listen closely, because all hangs right here in the balance: i can assure you that it will kill you. that you will die. and much sooner than you'd care to know. but death in you, mrs. wallace, can be life yet. 

now mary jo had always been eccentric. she taught home ec to the public school children down in mobile and was known in the spring time to wander up to the top of the school and sunbath out on the roof. she was herself a single flowing scarf which fluttered in the wind and danced when dropped to the ground. she met her husband clive outside a piggley wiggley in valdosta and married him so that she'd have a place to park her red doge convertible whose interior she'd replaced twice already, having driven it top down through as many hurricanes, hoping to get airborne. so oddly little felt out of place to mrs. wallace as she watched her friend pulled a dead badger from her purse by the tail. mary jo slapped the animal onto the nightstand as though tenderizing the meat, laughing as a spurt of badger blood criss crossed her white sunday blouse.

mrs. wallace smiled and thought back to when she and george had first moved to clayton, right after he'd won election to the state circuit. they'd moved into a small three bedroom home with emerald green finishing. next door was mr. randolph, but a couple years older than george and also a member of the twentieth. he and george would stand on either side of the fence and gossip like two ol country hens. mr. randolph's wife, elizabeth, was a sickly woman and watched the men regard one another from behind thick, partially drawn curtains. one night while george was out, mr. randolph sulked over to their home. she remembered the way he leaned against the doorway, soaked from the evening's spring t-storm, beads of rain water running down his handsome brow, the rot of whiskey on his breath. she might have forgiven him had he not been indecent in front of her children. but lord knows, once she'd got him gone, that george would kill the man if he ever knew. so mary jo came over from georgia, parking her saddle "two-tone" convertible in their driveway. mrs. wallace watched as mary jo tightened the knot in her head scarf and stepped out the car, checking her blood red lipstick in the side mirror and tossing a hat box over her shoulder. 

that night--after the children had been put to bed--they started a bonfire in their backyard. but all was otherwise hazy after that in mrs. wallace's memory. had they drank that evening? unlikely. lurleen did not allow spirits to be kept in the home. but she'd the sense of the fire at one blazing in their back yard but then elided somehow into the nearby woods where the trunks of the white oak trees were thick and broad-backed and let out some kind of humming sound. and there was mary jo naked, her hair let down to her shoulders, trailing green and black ribbons from her fingers, singing songs and twirling in the evening. and her voice wrangled itself up in mrs. wallace's head who watched from some vantage point beyond the flames as mr. randolph arrived, cussing himself a storm and helping himself to the bottle, wiping the elixir from smiling lips. mrs. wallace watched as mary jo disappeared into the woods and watched as mr. randolph followed her, though mary jo's voice never left her side. never let her go. never laid her down upon the cool grasses of the forest. and when the spectral image of mary jo returned--sans mr. randolph--she was full, her stomach protruding and round, like the wanning gibbous moon above. the next thing she knew, mrs. wallace was sitting up right in her bed, her alarm clock striking the hour of six a.m. mrs. wallace never saw mr. randolph again, though she would sometimes catch a glimpse of him, peeking out alongside his wife from behind the thick yellow drapes of their living room.

-your husband wishes you to run for governor in his stead, is that correct? mr. walker took the badger carcas from mary jo and coddled it in his arms like a baby. in order that he may circumvent the state's constitutional restriction on gubernatorial term limits.

-george says i would be a wonderful governor.

-as you would. though not for long. mrs wallace, do you love your husband?

-what kind of question is that? who the hell do you think you are, boy?

-i am no boy, mrs. wallace. i am in fact a most ancient spirit, a scion and emblem of my people, carried across scarred backs and rotting flesh, from the bights of benin and biafra, from one generation to the next, set ablaze in the bayous, shot in the everglades and left swinging in the red clay hills of bama. i am an urge and an urging. i am the spirit of a wandering nation. and i do not much care for cracker racists like you and yours, mrs. wallace. i do not come here to show you the way or lift your spirit, and i cannot for the life of me vouchsafe that you will not spend the life hereafter bound to the flames of perdition for what you have done and failed to do for me and mine. what i bring to you instead is not absolution or redemption. but transaction.

-what do you want?

-do you love your husband, mrs. wallace? you are a wombless woman by way of his neglect, are you not? the sole man tasked to care for you has betrayed you. gambled your life away for the sake of his ambitions. had you known of your illness, what might YOU have done differently? would you even be here right now?

-no. no, what george did-

-was kill you. every bit as much if had set you atop the funeral pyre himself. and now he needs your help, doesn't he? to secure his platform for the upcoming 1968 presidential elections.

-he doesn't even want to win.

-yes, he does. he just knows he won't. your husband plans to disrupt the election just enough to kick it to the house of representatives wherein he will be a sizable power broker, his endorsement enough to make or break the candidacy of either the two major party candidates. and thereafter, he hopes, secure the south's right to disenfranchise millions. for what will presumably be generations. but first you have to win the governorship for him. he can't launch a third party candidacy without a platform. and you are to provide that platform, mrs. wallace. but your opponent will be popular, mrs. wallace, even if he is a republican. the winds, you see, they are a changin. even here in the heart of dixie. let me ask you a different question: do YOU wish to be governor, mrs. wallace?

the question slashed at an artery. she reached instinctively for her throat, as though to catch the geiser of dark red blood, only to find herself intact. but it was too late. something had secreted its way out of her and now lay spilt and runny on the floor. were there time enough, i'd be president, she confessed, leading mary jo to clap her hands and catherine to laugh out loud.

-good, said mr. walker. that ambition will be essential in the game to follow. what if i told you i could guarantee your ascendency to the post? not by fraud or deceit or trickery. but by the assurance of their love. i can make that happen for you, mrs. wallace. i can make the heart of dixie beat for you. and that might feel, you wonder, to slip out from beneath the shadows, if only for a moment. an admittedly short moment, mrs. wallace, as are most of life's truest pleasures. but just as no triumph is forever, so does death mark the end of all suffering. we've thus to take and shatter what we can out the door. it won't matter once it comes, and once it has, it won't have ever mattered.

-and what's it gonna cost me?

-cost you? why nothing, mrs. wallace.

-so what is required of me then?

-only this. mr. walker placed his hand on where her womb once was.

-then i'm afraid you're a little late. the doctor's took it already. besides i don't think you'd want that one. it was rotten to its core, you see.

-no, mrs. wallace. i don't cast seed to stone. but i will to the void. we think too often that life is empty and must be filled. well life is empty, but no, it needn't be filled. its meaning is the empty. we should embrace it as the true reflection of what we are.

he inserted himself inside of her. she gripped the back of him, as though she were dangling fifty thousand feet over the edge of a mountain. she could feel the world fall away from her. could feel the ground give way until there was nothing supporting her, but the grip she wrangled through the muscles of mr. walker's back, suddenly exposed to the sun and the air and the elements, and off they were to a slick stone out in the middle of a raging sea, her back pressed firmly against the sharp ridges, a storm brewing in the distance. even as he thrusted and lambasted her body, she watched as the lightning tore a hole through the sky and disemboweled downpours fell to the waters below. mrs. wallace prayed for their swift deliver. for their coolness. their reprieve. mr. walker's pacing picked up, his enthusiasms deepened. he smelt like singed balsa wood and chalk dust, and she even forgot herself toward the end, leaning in to whisper something in his ear as the rains came pouring down. and then just like that, mr. walker tore back, his spine straightened, and his head rose to face the sky even as he kept his eyes gripped tight in convulsion. into the void, he released himself. and she marveled at the ease with which he let go.