Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  In a voice flat and firm as a hospital bed, she told them that Bart was dead, head bashed in, the police claiming that a dust storm had covered the field all the way down to the river, and then Bart had been found behind the caboose, by the pump house. Inside the caboose, the guy who’d gotten the last cup of coffee provided witness to the whole thing: Bart had been stooped over the broken pump, then suddenly fallen like he’d been hit, probably clipped his head on the housing as he’d gone over. A freak accident.

  After considering the pavement for a long time, Sol met her eyes, glanced over at Baz, accusation there. “Stupid idea, going there when you and this maudit bioque had been seen talking to the dead kid same day. Way to cover your damn tracks.” Amateurs, that’s what he was calling them.

  “He was leaving in a couple of days, heading to grad school in California.” Getting the hell out of town, she was saying, doing something that his ancestors had never done.

  “I know that. You think I don’t know that?” Sol barked back at her. Baz couldn’t say what roughened his brother’s voice, because it was too surprising, too fast. “How hard did they look at you?”

  Lutie was crying again, silently, angrily. Her mouth quirked into a half-smile. “Not very. Buddy in the coffee shop knew I wasn’t there when Bart died.” She glared at Sol. “He was twenty-four. His mother drove up just as I was leaving.” She shook her head and Baz wanted to reach out to her, wanted to put an arm around her, but he didn’t know how to do it without losing a limb. “The cops took in some drifter instead. Some guy that was coming up from the tracks just at the wrong time. Poor guy was screaming from the back of the paddy wagon.”

  Baz watched Sol stiffen with those words.

  “It’s cold. We should get inside,” he mumbled, and Baz slid from the hood, dropped to the pavement.

  “I think Sol’s got a cake waiting for you,” he said, because Lutie was too pale and seeing the body of a boy who’d been flirting with you was no birthday present.

  Sol glanced back over his shoulder. “I don’t have any cake,” he explained unnecessarily. All his attention had gone inside, gone deep, running like a German submarine in Allied waters.

  “Shouldn’t you go to the ER or something?” Lutie asked, closing the door behind them and taking off her coat.

  Sol glanced at her, perplexed. “Nothing’s broken.”

  Lutie gave up on that front. “Shit. I’m going to have to get my room back, aren’t I?”

  Sol moved silently around the room, restless. Lutie took the chair by the desk and Baz sat on the edge of his bed. “Listen,” Sol started, but Lutie had had enough.

  “I’m tired of listening to you,” she retorted. “What did that thing say to you, down by the tracks?”

  Sol didn’t hesitate so much as take his time. Enough time to make Baz wonder if what they’d hear next was the truth. “It told me that this one, this next death, it was because of me,” Sol said, finally coming to a stop, and leaning against the door. “Instead of me.” The truth, all right.

  “This isn’t your fault, Sol,” Baz said. “It’s been killing for a long time, it didn’t start because of you.”

  “Well, I sure as hell didn’t stop it.” He gathered himself. “The devil said that the ghost belonged to it and that I wasn’t going to get rid of it easy.” He sighed, turned to Lutie. “We know from two different sources that Lewis was killed down by the river, near the Megeath grade crossing.” He didn’t wait for her nod. “Ghosts hang around where they die, usually. Lewis worked in North Platte, that’s where he swung that bat. His ghost is on its way home, that’s what it’s doing. All the guys that murdered Lewis are dead; that’s what the drifters told me. By all rights, that ghost ought to be long gone. Only one thing’s keeping it here—that goddamn devil.”

  Baz interrupted. “The ghost, it’s not coming after you unless you go after it, right?” Sol didn’t move, wasn’t gracing that dangled carrot with a response.

  “I’m more worried about le diable.” Short, to the point. He picked up the book again, by Lutie’s elbow, slim blue volume, cloth bound, edges worn to pale beige. He hesitated a moment, took in both of them with his stare. “I was looking at this last night, trying to figure out what Dad was doing with it.”

  Baz inched forward to the edge of the bed, and Lutie slowly got up from the chair. Finally, Sol wandered to the bed between them, and lowered himself to it, wincing. He flipped the book open, turned a couple of pages. “You know Dad was a musician,” he said to Lutie, who sat gingerly beside him. She didn’t say anything. “He played the fiddle. He gigged with Cajun bands that came north needing a bow. But these,” and his finger wandered the book’s margins, “these songs are from Acadie, where Mireille was from. Not his kind of music.”

  “But,” she stopped, uncertain. “But he must have used them. Those are his notes, Baz said.”

  Sol nodded. “Yeah, he was using them, but not for entertainment, I don’t think.” Sol looked at Baz. “You think it makes a difference what you sing, when the ghosts come?”

  What had he been singing? “Amazing Grace”, old Hank Williams, “You Are My Sunshine”. “It’s better when I’m singing stuff that’s…hopeful? The sad stuff, that’s when it got weird.”

  “Place matters, too, maybe,” Lutie added. “When you sang in the church, it was okay. The ghosts there, they were happy to hear you. But down at the tracks? They were different ghosts, those ones. Angry. Upset.”

  Sol was paying attention, but was trying to find something in the book as well. “Okay.” He stopped at a page. “This one, ‘Les trois hommes noirs’.” The book was passed to Lutie, whose brow furrowed, trying to read the once-familiar language. “The three men in black. Dad’s written ‘never again’ beside it. It’s like he tried it and it worked so badly that he’s warning himself not to do it again.”

  “Worked so badly with what?” Baz asked. “Dad…he couldn’t call up ghosts by singing, could he?”

  Sol actually laughed. “With his voice? God, I don’t think so. He never said anything about it to me. Never said much. Never said enough.”

  Said too much, Baz thought, but he kept it to himself.

  “What’s the song about?” Lutie asked, book still in hand.

  Sol licked his lips, concentrating. “I can’t work it all out, but I think it’s about this couple. They get married, and on their wedding night, three devils come to the party. They steal away the bride. The husband talks to Lucifer, who takes him to his wife in Hell. As long as she wears his wedding ring, she’ll be able to come back.”

  “She takes it off,” Baz said, so low he didn’t know he’d spoken out loud.

  Beside him, Sol nodded. “Lucifer threatens her husband.” He shrugged, and his hand came up to his injured shoulder. “So, yeah. She takes off the ring.”

  Baz shuddered involuntarily, but said nothing.

  Lutie closed the book, small and slender in her hands. “What are you thinking?”

  Sol wiped his swollen mouth with one hand, and then sighed. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. But this devil was after Dad, said it knew him, had known him a long time. Said that it didn’t know what our mother had seen in him. And, Basile,” Sol raised his eyes, stared long and hard at Baz, who felt chilled all over. “Baz, it wants something from you. I can’t—” He stopped, voice catching, and he wasn’t going to show them that. Baz watched him fight for it. “That ghost’s bound to the rails somehow. I don’t know if this devil can move far from the tracks, I don’t know—” as though he should know, didn’t want to talk about it until he did, like it was some kind of sin, not knowing everything. “But I don’t want you near it. I don’t want you caught up in this shit.”

  Lutie snorted. “Too late. What? You’re just going to take care of it? Alone?”

  Sol nodded. “If I have to.” He rubbed his knee with one hand. Maybe that hurt too. “Or maybe we just walk away from this one.”

  They weren’t words Baz had ever heard from Sol before.


  “Just leave this ghost to murder people up and down the track?” Lutie asked incredulously. “So the thing that killed Aurie can tell you that it’s all your fault? You’ve got some martyr complex, Beausoleil.”

  Sol stood up, resumed his slow painful pacing. “If you got a better idea, Lutie, I’m all ears.”

  “And the white light? What about that? In the church. By the tracks with just me and Baz. Down there, the devil only came after the light faded, after Baz stopped singing. But not this time. I didn’t see it this time.”

  Sol blinked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Lutie took a breath. “The white light, when Baz sings.”

  It was like she’d hit him. “A light? Like, from above?” And Lutie nodded.

  Baz cleared his throat. “All around,” and his hand lifted, almost of its own accord, trying to describe it. “Like full-on summer, man. It was—” The word that came was stupid, was inadequate. It was all he had. “Nice.”

  Sol steadied himself with one hand on the desk. He looked at Lutie, mute, hollow; some recognition passed between them that Baz couldn’t name.

  Lutie drew unsteady breath to say, “You don’t want angels to notice you.” But it was soft, something remembered from a long time ago.

  Sol shook his head. “No, you don’t.” He looked at Baz. “Congratulations.”

  Better that they don’t watch over you, Baz remembered their father saying. “Angels?” His voice was tiny, faint.

  “Not like you see on Christmas cards,” Sol clarified.

  He’ll know what to do, Baz thought, glad he was sitting down. “Like what, then?”

  Sol kept his hand on the desk, perhaps needing to. “I don’t know.” He lifted his head, and Baz had never seen him look so unsure. “Aucune idée, gars.”

  “It was white light, it wasn’t a…an…angel.” Lutie interrupted, drawing herself up, willing a reasonable answer.

  “If you say so, T-Lu,” Sol said quietly. “But don’t go depending on them for anything. They aren’t there to look after you, they don’t care about us. If it came when you sang—” His voice dropped and he caught Baz’s eye. “What did that mauvaise chose say to you again?”

  Baz thought about it, what the devil had said. “It said it liked the company I brought.”

  Sol closed his eyes and swore in French. “You two get the hell out of here. Just—” and Baz thought maybe he should sit down, he was so pale. “I don’t know about the devil, I don’t know how those guys work, but I can get rid of this ghost. You’re right, I have to get rid of it. Maybe I can figure out the devil if I get rid of its ghost. Maybe if those two are gone, maybe the angels will leave us alone.” He grimaced. “Leave you alone.”

  “How long?” Lutie asked, timetable fast. “How long will this take?”

  Sol’s face clouded. “It takes me as long as it takes. But you? For you, it only takes thirty seconds, exact same as the walk to your car.” He stopped. “I’m not taking responsibility for you getting mixed up in this. I already explained that.”

  Lutie stood as well, vibrating with anger, shivering with it. “I’m already mixed up in this, in case you haven’t noticed. I’m not going back to the Thorazine. I’m not nuts. For once in my life, I’m perfectly fine.”

  Sol shook his head. “You’re not. No way do I phone your nice church family in Canada and tell them you were killed by some kind of devil. You get back in your car, you go to Toronto. You get back on your meds and forget about this.”

  “’Cause you’re so good at doing that.”

  She didn’t know, she had no way of knowing, how little effect arguing with Sol had. Anger colored their words, sure, but also fear, and under that Baz recognized something deeper and it hurt. He spoke up, trying to cut through, distract them. “So, is there just one devil? Three devils? Trois hommes noirs? Has this got something to do with Maman, and her ring and Dad? What are you trying to say, Sol?”

  Sol looked like he might answer that, and then a phone rang, Baz’s Cajun tune, and Baz reluctantly scooped the phone from his coat pocket, looked at the number, back up at Sol. “Where is your phone?”

  Sol shrugged: I don’t know, I don’t care.

  “Well, it’s Robbie calling me. She asked me last week if you were stepping out on her. You know, you say you’re protecting people, Sol, you say you’re doing good and it’s a calling and whatever, but you’re not.” He held out the still-ringing phone, and after a moment’s hesitation, Sol took it.

  The conversation wasn’t a short one. Sol went outside for some privacy, but the door was so thin they heard everything anyway, every false start Sol made, voice low and pained, and the long silences as he listened to Robbie, or where they both endured an interminable impasse, impossible to tell. Through the window, Baz watched his brother lean against the wall, smoke trailing against the glass like words floating away from him.

  Baz looked up at Lutie, who had resumed Sol’s pacing. Following in his footsteps, literally. “If only Sol had told me where you were, that you were safe,” Baz said, thinking of his first encounter with the devil. That wasn’t fair, he knew it wasn’t, but still. “None of this would have happened.”

  Lutie sat on the bed beside him. “It’s not his fault,” she admitted. “It’s no one’s fault.”

  Through the door, they heard Sol say I’m sorry, over and over and he meant it, anyone could tell he meant it. Baz closed his eyes. “What do they want? What do they want with us?”

  Lutie put a hand on Baz’s shoulder and he leaned against her. “I don’t know that they are the sorts of things that have wants like us. The angel likes your singing. Everyone does. It’s a gift.”

  “Well,” Baz said, rubbing his head with one hand, the other arm around her. “It’s not. I wish…I wish…” And she hushed him. Outside, Sol was quiet, and Baz took a shaky breath after a minute. “The devils don’t just want chaos, I think. Those assholes, they make it, they dream it up.”

  “Well, if it’s chaos they want, they’ve got it.” Lutie got up. “I should go get my room back. I’m not going to drive you anywhere today.” She peered at him, eyes narrowing, chin coming up slightly. “Are you okay?”

  Baz nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay.” Anything else wasn’t possible. He had to be okay, if just for her. So she could be okay.

  Her eyes cut to Sol’s silhouette, shoulders and back pressed against the window, head bent, his hand holding the phone to his ear. “How about him? Is he going to be okay?” They couldn’t make out what Sol was saying now, low murmur of soft talk, stop and start, stop and start.

  Baz smiled, wan. “Who knows?” He stopped, stared at Lutie. “You should ask him, tell him to show you how he does it. I don’t think the meds do you any good. All this is crazy, but it’s real, and you should know how it works.” He paused. “It’s what I would do.”

  She didn’t say anything else, and Baz wondered that he’d had such a stellar life to be offering her advice. Lutie agreed to have dinner at the diner across the street again. Baz even suggested that maybe they’d find a bar in town, that surely there had to be music. It was her birthday after all.

  She left to see about the room, and passed Sol, who walked in through the open door. She pointed to the room next door, and he nodded agreement, pale and distracted. The cold slashed through the room and he watched her go, but Baz had the feeling he wasn’t seeing anything. He shut the door gently, tossing the phone back to Baz, and went slowly to the window, leaned against the desk, sunlight bright behind him. Baz waited.

  “Listen,” Sol said, finally. “There’s something I have to do.” It was not coming naturally, having to explain himself. “I’m going back to Brule.”

  Baz made a noise: of all the things in the world his brother wanted to do.

  Sol turned, face composed, held a hand up to Baz’s protest. “I’ve been doing this awhile, Baz. Give me some credit, okay?” He waited for Baz’s nod. “I’m going to the crime scene, see if there’
s anything they missed. Then the station house, find out if I can talk to the drifter the cops locked up.”

  “What?” Baz exploded, voice raised, hands raised and Sol looked genuinely surprised, obviously wasn’t used to Baz questioning his every move. “You can’t,” Baz said. “Look at you.”

  Sol blinked, brows crooked. “I have my EMS badge with me, they’ll tell me what I want to know. The drifter’s name is DJ. He’s half-crazy and he warned me about Lewis’s ghost already, so he sure as hell knows what’s up. He’s a bright guy, might have seen something this time, maybe the devil, or something like it. Besides—” He paused, but not so Baz would have to ask for it. Baz realized that now, that Sol wasn’t trying to be difficult on purpose.

  Finishing his thought was the only way Baz could help him, otherwise the words got stuck. “You want to see if you can get him out. You know he had nothing to do with that kid getting killed.”

  Sol nodded, now flushed, embarrassed. Another new expression. “Ouais, gars. C’est ça. He’s a drifter. He don’t belong in a cage.”

  “You’re up for this?” Baz asked, gesturing to Sol’s bruises. “I can come with you.” Sol stared at him. “I’ll be fine, and you said it yourself—the ghost wants you dead, not me. Angels love me, devils think I’m okay too. I’d be worrying about yourself, cher.”

  It made Sol laugh, as intended. “You look after Lutie. She’s trouble.”

  “She’s not trouble. She’s in trouble.” Point blank, and Baz didn’t mean to ambush Sol, but sometimes his mouth just ran out ahead of him. “You should teach her how to handle ghosts, man. She don’t know and it’s gonna get her messed up if you don’t. Telling her to take her meds,” disparagingly, “like that worked for you.”