Page 116 of Mazywood

Still, she decided, she would tell him all about it tomorrow, when the guests were gone. He already knew about Scout—or he suspected, anyway, always giving her those strange glances when she went to her freezer in the carport. Maybe he’d never seen Scout, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t sense him. Mazelle would bet her own life that Scout would never hurt Grady because Grady loved her nearly as much as Scout did, which made them brothers of a sort. Scout wouldn’t hurt the children either, although she worked harder to hold her temper when she brought her family here. She remembered the way Scout used to growl at Doris, and she didn’t want Scout to ever misunderstand a mother’s frustration for a reason to attack. Especially now, after what Scout had done to Meek.

“I know you thought this would make me happy, but it causes too many problems,” Mazelle said, since she couldn’t lie about giving a spit about Meek. She was sorry if he was a father or husband, or if his parents had outlived him, but he’d been a sonofabitch—and the warm satisfaction and safety she felt staring at his fallen frame was no secret to Scout. Aunt Ruby’s death haunted her, yes, but today she also remembered the part of herself that knew Aunt Ruby got exactly what she deserved.

“Take this away,” Mazelle said. “Every shred of it—hear me? Eat it or move it, and do it fast. And the clothes need to go somewhere far away from this house, where no one can see.”

Beneath the snow, Scout chittered. He understood.

“Well, go on, then,” she said. “Hurry up. Before someone else sees.”

Scout had hesitated for her sake, she realized, so she could turn away and leave him to his bloody work. But she didn’t, at least not at first.

She needed to know what Scout was. She needed to see.

Scout lunged at the foot, hiking boot and all, those daggerlike teeth poised.

While Mazelle watched, a muffled bone crunched between Scout’s powerful jaws.

Scout might not know how to cover all the blood, so Mazelle decided she would come out later with a shovel. As she passed the living room window, she heard the Duke Ellington Orchestra playing on her phonograph. “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” was still one of her favorite songs, no matter the bad taste in her mouth from Richard. No man would ever ruin a good piece of music to her ears.

She had to empty the cabin, Mazelle realized in mild panic as she walked past the frozen duck pond in the courtyard to the other side of her property, toward the cabins. Only the middle cabin closest to the rear kitchen door was occupied, the dim light shining through a small gap in the curtains. But no one could linger outside of the main house after what Scout had done.

As Mazelle approached the cabin, she saw the glowing orange tip of a cigarette flare through the curtains. This man must smoke four packs a day. What a filthy habit.

She knocked on the door and heard the chair scrape against the wood-paneled floor. He shot to his feet as if he expected to hear a gunshot.

“Sam?” she said. “Come on in for dinner.” Mazelle’s throat was squeezed like a fist after what she had just seen. How would she eat?

“I miss room service!” he called through the door.

“Too bad,” she said. “You’re coming to the dining room. My chef is French.” Haitian, but her name sounded French, anyway. Marguerite had trained in Paris under Julia Child at École des Trois Gourmandes.

“Ooh la la,” Sam teased. “That’s still not room service, babe.”

Sammy Davis Jr. opened the door as he was sliding his narrow shoulders into the sleeves of his stylish brown chinchilla coat as if they were about to go out to a nightclub instead of only a walk to the kitchen twenty steps away. She saw him slip a shiny religious medal into his pocket, an old gift from Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh: a St. Christopher medal on one side and a Star of David on the other. He’d told her that he gripped the charm so tightly in the hospital after he lost his eye in his car accident in 1954 that the Star of David left a mark on his palm.

Sam’s cigarette bounced between his lips. “Darling, no offense, but I counted six different kinds of bugs in this cabin. And at least four of them, I’d never seen before.”

“Stop teasing me,” Mazelle said. “There’s no bugs in winter.”

“There are six kinds of bugs lying dead on that windowsill. I may not know squat about the woods, but I remember what bugs look like.”

In her embarrassment, Mazelle forgot her rush to get Sam into the house. Good word-of-mouth from Sam would keep her booked year-round, so she’d been trying to coax him to come to Mazywood for years. Until now, he had always begged off because he said it would be too “rustic.” She’d had the cleaners meticulously prepare the upstairs suite for him—including silk sheets—but she hadn’t expected him to venture to the cabins to pray in solitude.

“I’m sorry, that wasn’t cool,” he said, reading her disappointment. “I don’t know why the hell you wanted to build this place in the middle of nowhere, but lemme tell ya… I’m glad you did. I feel safe here, Mazelle. Thank you.”

He clutched her shoulders tenderly, almost as if for balance, a confession on his tongue. His good eye was so glassy and red-rimmed that he might have been weeping. (By contrast, his mismatched prosthetic eye didn’t have a care in the world.) The scandal about his affair with superstar Kim Novak was plastered throughout the press, white and Negro, and Mazelle, like Hattie, knew what it felt like to be vilified in the press. But this seemed like something worse. Sam looked afraid for his life.

“Sam, what’s going on?” Mazelle said. “I’m worried about you, kid.” She was three inches taller and six years older than Sam, and he’d brought out a protective instinct in her since the first night she met him at a cocktail party hosted by Lena Horne.

Sam’s face twitched. He wanted to say something, but his lips stayed pursed.

The main house phone rang shrilly from inside the kitchen. Maybe it was the butcher shop chasing after their latest bill, since Mazelle was spending a small fortune on meat for Scout. She liked to spoil him when she came home, especially at Christmastime. The ringing phone made her remember the mess on the other side of the house (Could the deputies be calling already?), and she turned to lead Sam away.

But his hands tightened on her shoulders. Bracing. “Wait. Could they have found me here…?” he muttered. Apparently, they were both hiding.

The phone stopped ringing as someone inside answered. Probably Marguerite.

“Could who have found you?” Mazelle asked. “What’s gotten into you?”