No sign of his brother and father, of course. Baz thought they’d been gone for a couple of days already, maybe more, but it was hard to keep track in this heat when he had better things to do. Papa had given a curt nod to Sol as he was packing the boat, and Sol had hopped in, readyreadyready, sharing their secret traiteur code in the identical grins, signaling adventure, excitement. The work of men, not boys, and Baz had been left on the dock.
Sol had said, in a voice that had changed perceptibly over the summer, a voice that reeked of condescension, that they’d be gone for a week. Back in time for mon anniversaire, maudit bioque, j’ai espoir de something good. Then rubbed knuckles hard on the top of Baz’s head, laughed when Baz had tried to hit back, thin arms too short for Sol’s suddenly huge reach.
Baz wasn’t planning on giving the asshole anything for his damn birthday.
Despite this, Baz wished Sol was here now, that Papa was, even. There had been ghosts in the cemetery, not too difficult to figure that out from the temperature alone. Maman’s reaction had simply iced the cake. No use in pretending that Maman’s freak-out was due to baking in extreme heat, because it hadn’t been. No, the massive meltdown had been in response to what Lutie had been doing, what Lutie wanted—un fantôme, comme toi, M’man. Whatever the hell that meant.
Bump-a-bump-a-bump up the stairs, soft chatter, intense and angry. Maybe Maman had forgotten him. Baz crept by the door, ready to make a noise, but not brave enough to test her temper by opening the door when he’d been told to stay put.
A mutter, a soft sob. Was Maman…crying? Baz’s brow furrowed, and he scratched his side, shirtless now in the oppressive heat of late afternoon. A mosquito had found its way in, came out of the shadows, and Baz silently slapped it away, listening by the door.
“Non. Jamais!” And then, louder, calling to Lutie, “Anweille! Bouge-toi, Luetta! Now!” More scurrying, Maman talking to herself so softly Baz couldn’t hear, all the words running together, didn’t matter what language it was, Baz understood exactly what she was saying, if not the meaning. “I’m not doing it, I can’t.” Silence, like she was on the phone, but the phone was attached to the wall downstairs in the kitchen. “Chtedi,” she said, her French different from Papa’s, nasal, full of drawl, “I tell you, I’m not doing it.” More rustling in the bedroom. “That’s not fair. I can’t. Tabarnac, t’es un p’tit câlisse.” And Baz had never heard his mother swear like this, the language of the church, the sacred made profane.
Who is she talking to?
She was definitely crying and all of it was so wrong—the day, her tears, the fractured crazy one-sided conversation. “Pas lui. Ne le blesse pas.” Baz leaned against the door, knew he couldn’t open it without her losing it completely. He didn’t want to be responsible for that. He’d already done enough, hadn’t he?
I shoulda stopped Lutie.
It had been such a beautiful moment, before the ghosts had come. The day full of bright sky, and so warm, smell of salt and oil and dust and rot. Home. The light. Bathed in light softer than forge-like August ever brought, touch on his skin, one with the day, his voice and the light, the light, the light.
Followed by ghostcold, and Maman. Lutie wanting a pet and that was that. “Women,” Baz said softly, one hand touching the door, listening to the mad chatter of his mother on the other side.
An hour later, Baz opened the door as quietly as he could manage, and it swung into the hallway a foot or so, wide enough that he could see the bare boards, the hall landing. He darted a look, then dared to step out. He stood at the top of the stairs, listening. Downstairs, the sound of Maman’s voice, constant, angrily gathering things, banging doors. Below that, white noise, Lutie grousing about some infraction. He had to pee, so he ducked into the bathroom, bent wire holding a roll of single-ply, a basket of doll parts by an enameled tub dotted with chips and decorated with Lutie’s bath crayon artwork.
He stood to relieve himself, glanced out the window beyond the faded curtain lace.
Maman walked to the car with a large cardboard box in her arms. She balanced it on one hip, opened the huge trunk and Baz realized it was full of boxes. Their father’s green suitcase that he used when gigging up north during festival season rested among them. She slammed the trunk, big as a queen-sized mattress, turned, gestured to something that Baz couldn’t see, and Lutie reluctantly crossed the worn track between house and dirt lot next to the highway. As Baz watched, she got into the car and Maman shut the passenger door.
“Best zip up, son. You’re the man of the house, now.” The sighing voice was so close Baz sprayed piss against the beadboard as he jerked around. His hands grappled with his fly, backed against the window, suddenly without air in his lungs. C’est quoi-là? What the fuck was that?
Towels and linens were kept in the angle between eaves and roof behind a door with squares of canvas for hinges and an old wooden spool for a knob. The cupboard door was open a crack and inside, something moved. Baz’s breath came in thin gasps.
“Comment? Cat got your tongue?” And whatever it was, it thought it was funny and it laughed.
Baz didn’t wait for more.
He thundered down the stairs, missed two, slid, hit the wall at the bottom and kept moving. Shirtless, slick with sweat, so hot, and the mosquitoes were thick in the shade of the cypress as Baz burst through the door, across the planks that joined the house to the land, but the Pontiac was gone, dust still hanging in the air along with the bugs.
Baz didn’t stop, bare feet tough as hobnail boots, across the lot past his father’s truck, onto the cracked highway where he came to a halt, breathing hard. The Pontiac had already taken the bend to the north, was out of sight, the throb of its engine fading into the stir of crickets and bird. The sun hit him sideways, an orange, magic light, still so hot his feet felt that they might fry on the old pavement.
He stood for a moment, hands hanging loosely at his side, breath coming hard, disbelief providing a last armor against the evident truth. Stay in your room until your father gets home, she’d said. And then had packed the car, taken Lutie, and driven away.
Maybe they needed groceries, he thought, a kind of last-ditch attempt at reason. Then he felt a tendril of cool breeze, as though respite. Colder than respite, in fact. This was not a safe place at all. He was standing not twenty feet from the cemetery, almost exactly in the place where Old Robichaux had bought it a few days ago, and Baz’s breath came off-kilter again.
Unnatural cold, in the middle of the highway, no Maman, no Papa. Merde, not even Sol. None of the neighbors were walking distance, and Papa had the boat. Baz thought he might be able to drive the truck if he could find the keys, but to where?
He’d never had a ghost talk to him before, but maybe that wasn’t bad. Stupid tout-emmerdé, it’s bad. We all know I’m the one who don’t see ghosts, so what the hell was that thing in the closet? Maybe I’m making stuff up, maybe it’s the heat. Still, he was standing beside a cemetery and night was falling fast. Making up his mind, he turned, headed back to the house. Maybe they’ll be home soon, he thought, last sandbag against the flood.
Night one alone was spent on the couch, listening to the scratching upstairs, footsteps passing back and forth as though waiting for something, banging and the occasional sigh. Baz didn’t get hardly any sleep. He padded to the kitchen on whispering feet, ate the remainder of a loaf of bread with peanut butter straight from the jar.
Dawn painted the main room pink; Baz didn’t dare go back upstairs, but it was cold outside and he didn’t know if that was ghostcold or just morning cold, so he pissed in the kitchen sink. “M’man, elle explosera if she finds out, her.” He said it out loud, words hanging in the cold air, and didn’t feel anything but fear.
On the table, in the middle of a saucer, rested her wedding ring. Baz stared at it, buttoning his fly, eyes darting around the room, felt a slice of cold. “Bon Dieu,” he whispered. He had no idea what it meant, the ring, what his mother meant by leaving it, that’s what he t
old himself. What had she said? Pas lui, ne le blesse pas.
Not him, don’t hurt him.
The sun rose, and the house grew gradually colder. To keep himself company, he sporadically hummed a tune under his breath, sang a little. By noon, Baz had been touched a dozen times, cold fingers prodding him, one pulled his hair, ran cool contact down his spine. Into the kitchen again, found a bag of salt in the baking cupboard, ignored the wedding ring, knowing somewhere deep inside what his mother had done, what she was saying by leaving it. He retreated to the cupboard under the stairs, sprinkled salt around him, whimpering.
Night two was sheer misery and everlasting.
Dark like the inside of a baseball mitt, and so airless and hot Baz thought he might pass out. He wrapped his bare arms around his bent knees, bathed in sweat, stinging his eyes, feverish. Over his head, where the treads of the stairs made an uneven ceiling to his hideout—his prison—he heard the scratching again, long and thin, fingernails torn perhaps. Talons, maybe, like an osprey. There was no way he would know, could know.
He wondered what time it was, could only see gray seeping from around the door’s thin outline. Dawn. Dusk. A dense cloudy day, maybe, though he couldn’t hear rain. He tried not to hear much of anything; he’d heard plenty already. The scratching. The moans, the screams. Mostly, the pacing, slow and stately, ominous as a clock ticking down, weighted, shifting footfalls against the floorboards where he sat. Something substantial was out there, circling him.
The cupboard stank. He stank. He’d lost track of time. Once or twice he’d tried to get some food, get out into the kitchen, use the toilet, but it had been so cold once outside the cupboard that he’d been able to see his breath. Inside, here, it was warm. It’s warm because it’s fucking August. Ghostcold outside, though. Warm meant safe.
Without Maman, without Papa, he wasn’t going out. I’ll starve, he thought, huddling closer, dropping his forehead to his knees. He was so thirsty. Past the point of hunger where your stomach growled. I’ll have to leave soon. She’s not coming back, she’s gone.
He knew that now. His teachers hadn’t come right out and called him slow, but it was hard, following Sol in school. Oh, you’re Sol’s brother, because Sol was good at everything, and all Baz could do was sing and where did that get you with teachers? But he wasn’t stupid, not really, despite the report cards. And he’d had a lot of time to think about it, trapped below the stairs in the cupboard where Maman stored toys and games and a much-abused pink Barbie penthouse.
His sister had called up ghosts and somehow he’d helped her. She’d wanted one for a pet, though Baz couldn’t fathom why anyone would want that. Why Maman would want that. His mother had told the ghosts to leave and they had, as long as she was there.
Elle partait. Elle n’est pas ici. Like the song, one that Papa had sung not so long ago, as he’d burned some scraps in an oil drum, black smoke rising in the night. She’s gone, she’s not here.
Le soir des noces après souper
Trois hommes noirs sont arrivés
Trois hommes noirs sont arrivés
En demandant la mariée.
Elle n’est pas ici.
Baz could almost remember the tune, only heard once. Almost.
A chuckle, close-by, on the stairs above his head. No point in crying. They don’t care about tears.
And then, finally, the sound of an outboard motor, the faint burr of his father’s voice on the dock, and it was going to be over. Baz could almost believe that it would be over.
SEVENTEEN
HOPE IS A PRONOUN
Nothing was open, not this early on a Sunday morning, not even the gas station. Technically, it was still night, the sky hung with stars, soon fading, soon gone. Birthday plus two, but Lutie didn’t think Baz would be making any jokes about it today. Her hands were frozen, even deep in the pockets of her Canadian winter-certified parka, tuque secure on her head, pulled down over her ears, colder than cold at this time of dawn, this time of year, this part of the prairies.
Nothing was familiar and everything was the same. She kept walking.
Whatever anyone wanted to say about it, this whole mess rode on her. It wasn’t fair, she hadn’t asked for any of this, had been dragged into the middle of it. But none of that factored, if she was honest. It was still all on her. Sol was gone, and Baz would probably try to cut a deal with the diable, had maybe already tried last night. A small comfort, then: Lutie knew he’d be rejected because the devil had no incentive to change anything. This was what the goddamn thing had wanted, wasn’t it? For Sol to go away. Evil already had a marker on Baz, hardly needed anything else from him. That was sort of on her as well, because it had been her address he’d bargained for.
This isn’t useful, she told herself. Blame isn’t going to fix anything. Blame means that it’s beyond repair, and it’s not. It can’t be.
She hadn’t stuck around just so she could screw things up, she wasn’t in the habit of screwing things up. Walking purposefully, she crossed the park, still unoccupied by the ghosts of old people. He’d made it look easy, Sol, so damn easy, and it hadn’t been. It wasn’t. Nevertheless, she’d gotten rid of the one ghost, all right. She’d done it almost first try.
Baz had been so angry with her in the barn, and she deserved it. Sure, she didn’t know what she was doing, sure she hadn’t had any training, other than what Sol had shown her. But Sol was gone, she’d done that, and Sol was all Baz had. She’d sweet-talked Baz into finding her ghosts, into singing when he knew it was dangerous, and this was what grew from that seed. She wouldn’t be surprised if Baz didn’t want anything to do with her.
A story unfolded every time Baz opened his mouth, and she couldn’t imagine not knowing what those stories were going to be. Angels, devils, ghosts, brothers. Estranged from her for all these years, returned in a way that made their absence suddenly impossible, intolerable.
Her thoughts wandered back to Sol, the dark brother, unknowable, a distance in him that invited nothing. Had he always been like this? A dim childhood presence, a shadow against the light that had been Baz. But there, always there. She remembered him scolding her, lodging calm complaint to their parents against her. Catching her eye at the table when she was doing something in defiance of her parents, marking her. In many ways, he had seen her in a way no one else had, had seen the truth of her.
She stared at the low-rise buildings, wanting open prairie, wanting big sky and endless nothing.
I have to do something. But there was nothing that she knew to do, no knowledge that would help. Only what her mother had shown her over two mad years of constant motion. Two years that Lutie had tried to erase from her past, lock away. M’man was nuts, she had nothing to teach me.
The diable would have no interest and perhaps no ability to bring Sol back—whatifhesdead?—and Lutie bit hard on her lip, keeping back tears. What if she had killed him, sent him off to wherever ghosts went, swept up in the wash that Lutie had un-dammed, not a road, but a flood. No. He’s alive. Whatever I did, it wasn’t the same as what Sol did. If Baz can get Lewis back, maybe Sol comes with him. She didn’t want to think about what might be happening to Sol, wherever he was, because all her hope rested on him being with Lewis, and that hadn’t been going very well in the barn.
She covered a kilometer, then two. North of town, out to the hospital, and she saw one ghost, fleeting, in the distance, but it didn’t hang around and was gone by the time she got close. The sort of brief sighting that would, when articulated to the parental units, prompt an upping of her meds. Am I crazy? Traffic was starting to move along the roads, interstate truckers rousing from their slumber before the rest of the world.
I am not crazy. Think, Lutie. She’d always been smart, could figure out puzzles and knots, and this was no different. Find Lewis’s ghost, find Sol. They’d deal with the consequences once Sol was back. It would, however, mean that Baz would have to sing again, because calling back Lewis’s ghost wouldn’t be a matter of getting lucky,
it was a matter of talent. And once Lewis was in the ring, it would be a matter of power.
Somewhere between talent and power, Lutie was hoping for a bit of grace, that someone, something, would smile upon them. That was different than luck, she told herself.
No ghosts now, just prairie, and she stopped, looked eastward, dawn streaking the sky, another day. Another chance maybe. Not just for Baz, or Sol, but for herself. Sol was the only one who really saw her, who could cast eyes on her and understand what was underneath. Scary as that attention was, Lutie realized it was rare and she wasn’t ready to let that go, not yet.
The Megeath grade crossing was eight miles west of Brule, marked only by a broken barn, across the feeble highway from a fairground that had last seen a fair sometime during the Carter administration. They knew exactly where the crossing was now, when it was much too late. Lutie drove fast, which was fine by Baz. Let’s get this over with. Baz clutched his father’s blue book, and that was all the ammunition they had: an old musical recipe book, Lutie’s unproven ability, and a thirty-year-old crime scene.
And his voice. That, always.
He wasn’t stupid, he knew what he could do was dangerous and strange, even for his family. Apparently, his father had some talent or knowledge in this regard and it hadn’t made any difference in the end. And I can’t even see what I call up. Wielding this trick was like being an idiot savant, able to calculate distances and dates with no ability to apply it to the real world, a freak with talent but no purpose.
For his part, Aurie had at least indicated what songs worked well, but not with what; Baz thought that happy songs tended to result in happier ghosts and the occasional angel. An angel, however, attracted devils and how much did anyone want them around?
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