Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Cherie Priest

Page 11

 

  "You know what the kicker is?" Lulu slurred. "You know what really makes me . . . "

  She stalled. I sensed she was hunting for a word, but when she realized what the right word was, she decided not to use it. She began the thought again. "You know what really makes me mad?"

  "What?"

  "She's dead now, and that means me and Shelly's all that's left," she said, meaning her younger sister who now lived in Nashville. It had probably been Michelle who had called with the news.

  I had an idea. I had a question.

  It leaped out of my mouth with a little more glee than it should have.

  "Just you two and old Tatie, eh?"

  Lulu sat up fast, eyes blazing as though she were looking for something to hurl my way. I stepped back and braced myself against the doorframe with both hands, ready to run if I had to. Lulu settled on a bottle of cough syrup on the nightstand and chucked it drunkenly towards my head. It stumbled against the wall by my elbow, then clattered harmlessly to the floor at my feet. I held my ground.

  "I didn't mean anything by it—just to say that I guess there's another whole branch of the family there someplace. It's not just us, not really. " Of course I meant something by it. I meant I wanted to know more, but I wasn't dumb enough to anger her over it if I could help myself.

  She laughed without a trace of mirth and let her body fall back onto the bed. "That's true, I guess. Lord, but wouldn't we be better off if it wasn't so. "

  "It doesn't matter now anyway," I broached, still clinging to the doorframe. " 'Cause they sent Malachi away to Pine Breeze. "

  Lulu snorted, and something told me I'd screwed up. "Who told you that?" she asked.

  "But they did, didn't they? They sent him off to Pine Breeze for the next twenty years and he's gotta stay fifty yards away from me for the rest of forever. "

  "Yeah, well. You're part right. But he's at the state facilities. You heard the judge say that part about the Bend, or did you forget? He's not over there at Pine Breeze. "

  Pine Breeze. It was all I could do to contain my excitement. For all of her promises to fill me in one day, she'd never done so. And if she wasn't willing to volunteer any information, now might be the best time to quiz her. I sighed my next question, desperate to make it come out casually. "How come?"

  "It's been shut down for fifteen, sixteen years. Since you were born, anyway. You do the math. " One long arm reached over the side of the bed, feeling for the rum and fumbling around.

  On the other side of the house, the front door opened and Dave dropped his keys onto the end table by the couch, like he always did. I ran the tip of my tongue over my upper lip and took another deep, measured breath. Lulu found the rum and took another swallow.

  This was as close to vulnerable as I might ever expect to see Lulu. Now or never. I was too curious to pay any attention to the twinge of guilt that warned I was taking advantage of her. I asked my next question anyway.

  "Where is Pine Breeze, anyway?"

  Lulu's eyes squinted low and close together. Uh-oh. "What do you want to know for?"

  "I just do. " I slid one foot back and forth and shifted my weight. She didn't answer me for a few long seconds, so I spoke again to fill the pause. "Just wondering. "

  "I told you, it's been shut down. "

  Dave appeared beside me. "She all right?" he asked quietly, but Lulu heard him.

  "Would she have called you back from Atlanta if she was all right?" she spat, not budging from her prone position except to stuff a pillow up under her head. "And now this little thing thinks she can, she thinks, she wants to know about Pine Breeze, if you can believe that. . . . "

  My uncle pulled me outside the doorway and leaned close. He peeked around the corner back at Lulu, and he lowered his voice. "You got plans with friends or anything? I mean, are you going off someplace tonight?"

  "Not sure. Maybe I will, and maybe I won't. "

  He ignored my attitude and moved to his next query. "How bad do you want to know about Pine Breeze?"

  No sense in lying. I dropped the nonchalance. "Pretty bad. "

  "Okay. Stick around. But give me a minute here. Let me get her to sleep. " He nudged me farther down the hall and stepped into their bedroom, closing the door behind himself.

  I stood there, baffled. It had occurred to me before that I might pump Dave for clues, but he always allied himself with Lulu, pleading ignorance or parental alliance. I wandered into the living room and flipped the television on, wondering if he was actually going to make good or if he'd only been trying to get rid of me.

  Dave was a great guy, but it was a rare, rare day that he'd go against Lulu's wishes.

  After an hour or two I heard the bedroom door open and close softly. Then boxes were shifting across the hall in the studio. Papers were shuffled. Boxes were replaced and the studio door swung shut.

  Dave tiptoed past the bedroom door and joined me on the couch. He was holding an album I'd never seen before. He opened it across his left knee and my right one. Despite the expanse of the living room, the length of the hallway, and a shut door separating us from Lulu, my uncle's voice barely crested a conspiring whisper.

  "Pine Breeze," he began, "has been closed since you were about six weeks old. That's why you've never heard anything about it. Your mother was sent there before anyone knew she was pregnant with you. The facilities weren't any good—it was a home for messed-up teenagers, it wasn't a hospital—and she bled to death before they had time to spank you into breathing on your own. That's why they're closed. They were supported by private donations and government funding, but when your mother's story got out it all got pulled. No one wanted to be talked about.

  "Lulu and I got thinking about it once and I decided to go poking around. It's out towards Red Bank, on the north side of the river, and I swear they just abandoned it. I don't think they packed up a single thing except maybe some of the furniture. They just left it. "

  Dave flipped the first page of the album, to a photograph of an enormous brick building covered with ivy. The windows were cracked and dirty, and random bricks had fallen out of the masonry down to the untrimmed shrubbery. At the bottom left corner of the photo Lulu was staring into a window with her nose pressed flat against it, her hands against the pane to shield away the glare.

  I ran my fingers lightly across the picture's edges. "Is this it, then? Is this Pine Breeze?"

  "Part of it. The complex was scattered all over that whole hill. There's about eight or nine buildings altogether, I guess. We thought this one was the main administrative office. "

  "They needed eight or nine buildings to house crazy teenagers?"

  "It wasn't always an adolescent ward. The first parts were built around the turn of the century, for a health spa or something. I'm not sure what. But after that closed, it was bought out by someone else, who turned it into something else and added a new section or two . . . and so forth. By the time your mother was there they only used a couple of the buildings anymore. The rest of them were shut up, I guess, but I've always been under the impression that there weren't more than fifteen or twenty kids left there when it closed. "

  He turned the page to reveal another Georgian brick building—two or three stories with wood-slat shutters and a tiny square porch, all overgrown with weeds and vines. A skinny tree sprouted around a rain gutter and worked its roots through the mortar between the dirty red walls. "It's a beautiful place, even now. I mean, even the last time I saw it, a while back. It's completely desolate; unless you go inside the buildings it looks like no one's touched it since 1978. "

  "Why? What's inside the buildings?"

  "Graffiti. Homeless people and teenagers have trashed it, but I never saw another soul while I was out there. At least not until the cops showed up and kicked me out. My jeep was parked down at the foot of the hill, that's what gave me away. There's nowhere to park if you want to get out a
nd walk around. The cop was pretty cool, though. He just told me that there was no trespassing allowed and that I needed to get on my way instead of being an asshole about it. "

  "Is it still there? Could I go running around up there?"

  Dave flipped through the remaining few pages before he answered, and then he talked slowly. "I'm not sure. I heard the city was going to tear it down, but whether they have or not, I couldn't tell you. " Ah. Being careful about what he said. I couldn't blame him.

  His voice picked up to its usual pace once more as he finished, "And I am officially forbidding you to go there, even if it is still standing. Didn't you hear the part about homeless people and vandals? Besides, it's falling apart. The place isn't safe. "

  He may as well have quit when he implied it hadn't fallen down yet. I hadn't heard anything past the part about the city only maybe tearing it down. "Where is it? Red Bank, you said?"

  "No dice, kid. I just said, it isn't safe. If you want, I'll run you out to the library tomorrow afternoon. They've probably got some stuff on it under local history if you feel like looking. You can explore the place via your friendly neighborhood librarian, but you are not going to check the place out in person. Not with my permission, and not on my watch, missy. "

  "Okay, the library, then. We could do that. "

  Dave clapped the book together and stood. "Of course, this is all under the strictest condition that you don't say a word to the goddess. "

  "Fear not, dear uncle. " I smiled.

  "Don't call me that. It makes me sound old. "

  "You are old," I said.

  He smacked me gently on the head and went to go hide the album back in the studio closet before our goddess arose.

  Dave was as good as his word. We went to the library and he left me to roam while he crossed the street and soaked himself with coffee at a hole-in-the-wall establishment. He promised me an hour at least before he came after me, and I set my watch to make sure he didn't cheat.