Deadroads

by Robin Riopelle

  He had time to do that, and then saw a blur of black on black, moving so fast, and then bony claws were on his chest, smell of gasoline and burnt rubber in his nostrils, and he was picked up again, slammed so hard against the wall he wondered for a second if he’d go through. Sol had time to get a foot up and tried to break one of the thing’s femurs—must be like dry sticks—but the sole of his boot slid uselessly down the length of bone.

  Lutie, he thought, no air left at all.

  The ash covered Sol just as she heard the devil’s laughter fade away to nothing, but Lutie didn’t dare leave Baz, not when she understood it was her role, that it was what Sol wanted her to do. Even though Sol needed help, anyone could see that: Sol wasn’t in the position to put up much of a fight, and if he couldn’t create his deadroad for Lewis, then he was lost. He wouldn’t last more than five minutes one-on-one with a ghost like that.

  She coughed and hacked in the ash storm, and Baz’s head came, up, face the same color as cafeteria coleslaw, and she thought he looked like he was going to be sick. Instead, eyes streaming, he asked, “Where’s Sol?” and Lutie didn’t know how to answer that.

  He’s led the ghost away from us, she wanted to say, but the words caught in her throat. Baz grabbed her hands, held them down, crouched on the freezing prairie, wind so high it made its own sort of music. “Where is he?” Baz demanded, his grip tight, eyes wild.

  Against the wind, Lutie struggled to her feet. The devil had disappeared, but Sol and Lewis had gone into the barn, and the ash was laced with the glow of fire. Could ghosts light fires, she wondered. Would Lewis burn Sol alive in the barn? Would that be the revenge exacted?

  Sol was the threat: the ghost and the devil wanted him out of the way, same way they’d wanted Aurie out of the way. To get to Baz.

  Well, they don’t know about me. Sleeper cell, you assholes.

  She heard a crash from inside the barn, knew there was no room for error, no time for practice. Practice was a luxury for students, for dilettantes. She was going to send this ghost away. That was her only choice, her only avenue. Sol’s only chance. Hand to the prairie. Find the connection, all of it was there for her to reach out and use. All of it, spread before, a wash of color. Not a line, not for her, but broader, vaster.

  Her aim was true, all right. Her heart: Come on, you useless bastard. Her head: I am smarter than you are, and I say it’s time to get the hell away from my brother. Her mouth: Here it comes.

  Blew on it, and instead of a road, it was a net, and it shimmered out, thrown and dripping.

  It did not lead away from her, and why wouldn’t how she did it be different than Sol, didn’t that make sense? Hadn’t she always found her own way?

  The net went out, flashed against the earth like a sheet flung over an unmade bed. It blocked the ash and the fire, washed darkness across the sky. It was huge. What Lutie let loose on the day flashed and faded, and then left them alone between the river and the tracks.

  Far away, a train whistle sounded, and Lutie turned a slow circle, hands held wide. No ghosts. No ash. No sign of the devil. Midday, the year an infant, cold wind caressing winter grasses, buffeting the branches of the cottonwoods.

  She had done something, all right.

  Arms clutching the other, Baz stood beside her, face still an uncomfortable color, wind and glare causing his eyes to squint below drawn brows. “Lutie,” he whispered.

  And then she was running to the barn, because that’s where he’d been, that’s where the crashing had come from, the noise of a fight and now there was no sound whatsoever, only the wind battering barn boards.

  Baz was right behind her, and they entered the barn, roof sagging inwards, open to the sky, letting in more than enough light to see what had happened. What Lutie had made happen.

  The barn was empty.

  No ghost, of course, and Lutie had been certain of that: she knew it was gone. But no Sol either. A small owl flew from a corner as Baz shouted Sol’s name, but his voice was the only sound, the owl the only living thing on the move. It circled over to the trees, disappeared into the tangle of dark branches.

  She hadn’t made a road. She hadn’t sent the ghost to wherever it was supposed to be. She hadn’t taken anything in, either, made Mirielle’s binding. Lutie had done something else. Like dirt swept under a rug, she thought. It’s still there, I just can’t see it.

  It. The ghost. Lewis.

  And Sol, her brother.

  Oh God, she thought. What have I done?

  Baz was scanning the perimeter of the barn, walking over collapsed walls, lifting up pieces of board like Sol might be trapped underneath. For a moment, his progress looked methodical, but then he grew more frantic, tossed the boards to the side, and his hands kept going, kept trying to lift things too heavy, and a thin keen noise escaped him.

  “What have I done?” she asked aloud, barely, coming up to Baz’s shoulder, leaning against him, and he whirled around, grabbed her by her shoulders, looked like he wanted to shake her, only stopped himself through mica-thin control.

  His eyes searched her face. Slowly, she shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know where he is.”

  With a jerk of his head, Baz let her go, one hand coming up to cover his mouth, and Lutie’s throat tightened so hard and fast it hurt.

  “Is he—” and he couldn’t finish it. Ash, and the sound of the devil, both these things had been present, before. That and light, and it was beyond anything Lutie knew how to deal with. Baz opened his mouth, looked past her, and his expression was empty as blue-skied prairie.

  Lutie didn’t have the necessary words, didn’t even know what those might be.

  Most of the afternoon crept by, and Baz refused to leave the ruined barn. He knew his reticence worried Lutie, maybe even annoyed her, but he was past caring what might rub his sister the wrong way.

  When it was just Sol acting on his own, things were calm. Sol in the driver’s seat looked like job done, no fuss, no drama. With Dad, it had been theatrics, all the time, and it had been fun, Baz could admit it now, ghostbusters and music and hairy midnight boozecans. But this, Lutie’s dealings with ghosts, this was big and frightening and out of control.

  Baz realized he was being childish. Ghosts were scary, were the definition of goddamn scary, underneath Aurie’s funhouse and Sol’s competent silence. Sol, and Dad, they kept me from it. In their different ways, they kept me out of it. He’d never known, had never been shown, what they did and aside from two times—when the fortuneteller had died, and when Sol had been sent back from New Orleans—neither had ever screwed up so profoundly that Baz had noticed.

  Finally, after Baz had rightly concluded there were no more hiding spots to find, he walked to the doorframe, leaving Lutie in the middle of the barn, in the middle of her debacle. Baz wished he could leave her, wished that she would just go. Wished he could leave this scene, that things could go back to how they’d been, before.

  Finally, he heard a rustle from behind him and then Lutie settled in, sat on the transom, took his hand and dragged him down to a sit. He was brittle as spring ice, as cold.

  “What now?” he asked, even though he knew she had no answers. Yet he still had to ask. I have to get out of this habit, expecting other people to have answers. That felt a lot like telling himself to grow up, and he shook his head like water had lodged in his ears.

  She shrugged, and he studied her profile a moment before staring out at the prairie, looking for similarities in the terrain and finding none. “I really need something to eat. I can’t think.” She said it, terse. She was so mad, so mad at herself. Baz didn’t have it in him to be nice about it. The breakfast seemed a long time ago, watching Lutie and Sol on their hands and knees in the winter-blasted park. He’d eaten, then. They hadn’t.

  The sky was turning orange, sun close to the western horizon, making it hours since Sol had disappeared. Truthfully, he was hungry too. Leaving seemed like an admission of guilt, though, a point of no
return.

  “So, what do we do?” And his voice sounded small, lost, and he hated that.

  “Something to eat first,” Lutie said emphatically, hand stretching out, inviting him. “I don’t think they’ll deliver pizza out here.” Making a joke, trying it out. She waited for him to smile, but he didn’t have that in him either. She sighed. “We’ll take a look at the book, I’ll figure it out.” Talking to herself, not him. Right. She was going to figure it out.

  But a thread of certainty was growing in Baz, a hot dreadful line through the bleak landscape: he knew what he had to do. He’d done it before, had that conversation, which he would describe as bone-rattling. He deserved to have his bones rattled. He deserved worse. Sol would kill him, but he’d have to be here to do it, which suited Baz just fine.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said, ignoring her proffered hand. “You can leave if you want.” He gestured to the Wagoneer, silently waiting by the crossing. “You have a key?” She could walk. For all he cared.

  “He left the keys in the truck.” Her eyes were as empty as her voice, water and white sand, surf, blue and green in equal measure. She took a careful breath, wouldn’t look at him. “Don’t do it.”

  “Don’t what?” He stood then, wondered where his heart was, and knew. “What do you not want me to do now?”

  Her mouth twisted. She ignored his question. “I need your help with the songbook, Baz. Please. Whatever I did, it wasn’t the same as what Sol showed me. I don’t think I sent them away for good. With the right song, maybe we can call back Lewis’s ghost. And maybe Sol.” She nodded once, for emphasis, a period at the end of a declaration.

  “Maybe? Maybe you can do that.” He almost laughed, but his throat closed up. “It’d be a whole lot better if you could just undo it.”

  She had a temper. Baz knew it. He was hoping for it. “You’re not helping, Baz.” Standing, the both of them, now. He was a lot taller than her, which just seemed to make her madder, having to look up at him. “You’re not helping!” and she was shouting, she was crying. A shaky breath, then another. “We have to do this together.” Drop of a register at least, low, afraid, sun slanting sideways. “So, don’t go off alone. Don’t talk to that thing. No deals.”

  And that was what she didn’t want him doing. She had seen his plans on his face, and he cursed himself for being a transparent fool.

  “No more deals, you mean,” he said. Petty, that’s what he’d resorted to, and his own anger cut him, hurt from the inside. He couldn’t hold it, it slipped sideways within him. “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t made for holding grudges, not with anyone. “I’m just…”

  It hung there, what he was now.

  She shook her head, and the dying light caught filaments of copper and bronze in her hair. The temperature was falling as quickly as the sun. Her mouth was a hard line. “If I say I’m sorry, it’s done,” she explained. “And this can’t be over, not yet.”

  Those words ought to have caused him cheer, but they felt flat, unauthorized, pitiful, even. I have to do something, he thought. I have to be able to do something. But he remembered being young, and alone in their bayou house, when everyone had gone: Sol, and their dad, but mostly Maman and Lutie. He hadn’t stopped anything from happening then.

  You’re not going to stop anything now. They got in the Wagoneer, and Lutie drove, had to adjust the seat to reach the pedals and for the first time, Baz felt tears well up in him. He looked out the window and it passed.

  Back in an Ogallala truck stop, Lutie consumed a western omelette with all the dispassion of a remote military campaign while Baz ignored a plate of pale fries. Over cans of soda, they studied the blue book their father had left them, but it revealed no clues. They found three more songs on the internet, including one beside which his father had written très dangereuse. A site dedicated to the Acadian festival circuit of the seventies, words similar enough that Baz could impose the melody to the lyrics in the book. Baz forced himself to listen intently, memorizing. It was slow, and sad. He recognized the tune, deep down, stirred. He’d always been a quick study when it came to music.

  Nothing else came easily, just music and charm. They were probably related.

  Nerves were fried. Lutie went to bed early, but Baz knew she wouldn’t sleep. He knew he wouldn’t sleep. It was all pretend, all of it, except for the bits that were shockingly real.

  The room he shared with Sol felt empty and damp, earlier shower mist still clinging to everything, a slick of cold moisture, the inside of a cave. Baz sat on the edge of the bed, knowing that tomorrow he’d sing for ghosts, would sing for one ghost in particular. His father had told him singing was dangerous, had said it to his face when he was a kid, had written it in a book in case his son forgot the obvious, but Baz had no idea yet what the song would do. It might grow flowers for all he knew, make his nose lengthen. They had nothing else.

  Lutie had nothing else.

  He, however, had one other card to play, and it didn’t matter what Lutie wanted or didn’t want, how much guilt had backed up on her. He, Basile Sarrazin, he had a devil. Or the devil had him. Baz knew which it was, but he didn’t want to think about it.

  He drew on his canvas coat, needed his goofy hat for a night this cold. He didn’t have to drive anywhere, he could walk to the tracks. Besides which, Lutie would hear the Wagoneer, it sounded like a space shuttle launching. He left quietly, pulled the door shut, left the television still blaring because the walls were thin. He’d become expert at leaving quietly, so a woman wouldn’t suspect.

  A staggeringly good set of tricks. Charm, musical blood, the ability to lie to women, to leave at midnight. A couple of other talents that didn’t bear thinking about just now, at night, meeting up with a devil.

  He didn’t have to call it: le p’tit diable was waiting for him in the parking lot. Baz wasn’t expecting it of course, and nearly jumped out of his skin when the death-rattle chortle came from behind an abused Ford Escort, laughing like Baz was a bad joke.

  Baz couldn’t see it and he wondered if that was better or worse. He stopped, hands still in his pockets, head ducked down. It wouldn’t hurt him. Not physically. The wind whirled round, nipped his ears, made his jewelry cold on his skin.

  He swallowed. “You know why I’m here,” he said, cutting right to it.

  Tonight, it sounded like old dried leaves skittering across pavement, almost insubstantial. It’s a trick, don’t let it fool you, like a bird pretending to have a broken wing. Laughter, but tired. “I need you to sing for me,” it responded.

  Baz shook his head, not a ‘no’, precisely, more confusion. Disbelief. “I thought you didn’t care about music.”

  It coughed. “I don’t.”

  “Then why?” Baz asked.

  “I don’t have to tell you. You just need to do it.”

  Baz’s eyes narrowed, trying to follow the sound of it as it circled. “When? Now?” Alone in the parking lot with white light, the noise of it. The attention. Still, Baz nodded. “And you’ll bring him back here, you’ll bring Sol back?”

  The thing made a noise, swore in French, in some other language. After that, English. “I don’t bring anybody back, that’s not my job. You owe me, Basile Sarrazin. Don’t forget. For the address. When I say sing, you sing. Understand?”

  Baz was shaking, body and voice. “But you have to bring him back.”

  Though Baz couldn’t see it, not clearly, he heard the thing patter closer, and he felt it brush against his leg, like moving gorse, the size of a large dog, or a deluxe baby carriage. Baz jumped back, electrified.

  “I don’t have to do nothing, kid. Your sister was the one that got all fancy. Get her to fix it for you. She has options. That’s right. Tell her that she has options. And tell her to give me back my goddamn ghost while you’re at it.”

  And the diable rustled so close that Baz collided against the car, one hand flung out to save himself from falling, from being on the ground with the thing. He grabbed the sideview mirro
r of the Escort and kept upright, but only silence met his frantic gaze, heart going like a rabbit on a road.

  It was silent and once the fear and fright had subsided, Baz realized that he was alone. That he had accomplished nothing. That the devil was gone, and with it, any chance of bringing Sol back.

  BAZ, BEFORE

  After M’man sent the ghosts away, Baz didn’t stick around for the tongue-lashing. He’d suffered that often enough to recite it by heart. Instead, he went upstairs, avoiding his mother as best as he could. Luckily, she seemed more concerned with yelling at Lutie in the kitchen.

  Baz was bored within ten minutes. Before he’d left, Sol had hidden away most of his best stuff and Baz still hadn’t figured out where the cache was. Their bedroom was boring in the extreme: too known, too hot, too much a place of exile. The sun crept across the sky, and Baz eventually understood that lunch was not forthcoming, despite the fact that his mother had been in the middle of baking when she’d come out to the cemetery, flour on her shaking hands. She hated baking in this heat, Baz knew, which was probably why she was so pissed off.

  She was really pissed off, though, judging from the banging downstairs, the rapid footsteps as she rushed up the staircase, searching for something in the room across the hall, then back out again, down the steps, bump-a-bump-a-bump. A door slammed, and then the Pontiac’s trunk, and then she was back in again.

  It was stupidly hot under the roof and the house had nothing remotely like air conditioning, only an old fan Sol had rescued from storm-wreckage and repaired. When turned on, it drowsily stirred the sweating air around the room like soup. The two screened bedroom windows faced out onto the bayou, opposite the highway and the cemetery, and Baz killed some time squinting through Sol’s binoculars, trying to spot the pelican’s nest and tracking the slow pass of alligators.

  He tried to ignore the muffled sounds of his mother’s temper made manifest.

  Once, he heard Lutie’s cry of complaint and then M’man hushing her. Petite misère, she gets away with murder, he thought, carefully re-positioning the binoculars on the desk, aware of where he was putting them because there was no end to the tortures Sol would devise if he found out Baz had touched his things, even those he’d left out in the open.