by Rebecca Ore
Maude sat there crying for a few minutes as the machine spun the wash water out, then decided she’d better call Terry and John to tell them Doug had gone out and she didn’t know if he’d be back in time for supper.
“He called earlier,” Terry said. “Follette wanted to talk to him.”
Follette, not nubile mortals yearning to fuck a god’s surrogate. “I wish he’d left me a note.”
“He thought you might have wanted to go driving.”
“I drove a little,” Maude said.
“Well, you’re not married and you’re both adults,” Terry said. “We’ll see you both for supper, then, and go to the funeral home later.”
“I didn’t think visitation was until tomorrow.”
“We’re family,” Terry said. “See you tonight.”
“Wait—” Maude heard the receiver click down. She wondered if Betty and Luke would be there, if the quilt would wrap Partridge’s body.
Maude decided to go for a walk until the washing machine finished, then see if she had set the blood on the sheets.
She remembered when her parents had died, when she was twenty. In a car crash, Partridge had told her, on the outskirts of Atlanta. Maybe they’d died of the sort of accident that happens to the just and the unjust, like rain, like
the true brain-eating schizophrenia. An indifferent universe was a horrible idea, Maude had decided when she was fourteen, allying with her grandmother against her parents. I forgot the map when the hormones hit. Now she wondered if she’d wished them dead, could have protected them more. Her mother should have known how to deal with magic attacks, but her mother and her father both fled Bracken County, her witch kin, his rigid Christian kin, for a universe that wasn’t really personally waiting to get them with a drunk and a pickup.
They got got. Maude finally realized she felt guilty that she hadn’t magically protected them.
While she dithered between a pocket universe and the big impersonal picture, two undiluted witches had dropped Maude into sleep. Now I can’t manage even the little things, Maude thought. She went back inside and pulled out the sheets. Partridge’s blood had set. Maude began to cry again.
Doug and Follette came in. “Are you okay?” Follette asked.
“I don’t know what to do. Partridge’s blood… set on the sheets.”
“You can bleach it out,” Doug said. “I guess you loved her.”
“I’ve been thinking about my parents,” Maude said.
“How did they die?” Follette asked.
“In a traffic accident. Drunk in a pickup.” Maude got up and pulled a paper towel off the roll. She wiped her face with it and said, “They’d moved away from Bracken. Nothing for them here.”
“Senator Follette wants to change that,” Doug said.
Maude looked at Follette for a moment. He’s like me, trying to use magic to fight magic.
“It doesn’t always work,” Follette said, commenting both on bleach and on what she thought. He looked terribly tired.
“The senator would like to come to Partridge’s funeral.”
“Senator, did you tell him?” Maude asked. She knew Follette knew what role Doug was supposed to play.
“I know you have an invitation to supper with your cousins. Perhaps we could invite them to dinner at a restaurant? It would be rude for me to just join you.”
Maude called Terry and asked, “Would you want to meet us for dinner at the Mayo Inn? Senator Follette had some things to discuss with Doug.”
“Bring him here,” Terry said. “We can feed him.”
“Let me check,” Maude said. She looked at Follette, who’d surely gotten the gist of the conversation even if he hadn’t magicked out Terry’s words. Follette looked at the opposite wall for a second, then sighed and nodded. “Okay, we’ll be over at six, then.”
After Maude hung up, Follette said, “I won’t be able to eat much. I’ll take my car, too, in case I have to leave early.”
For an instant Maude wondered if he couldn’t eat enemy food, then she realized he meant the cancer treatment affected his appetite.
The old house glittered with lights when they drove up. Doug parked his car. Senator Follette pulled in beside them and came up to open Maude’s door. “Leave your purse in the car,” Follette said.
Maude nodded and shoved the purse, heavy with the gun, under the seat.
John and Terry came out to greet them. “Senator Follette, what a surprise,” John said.
“Doug’s working for me, now,” Follette said.
John nodded. “I got the job for the new assembly place setting up employee monitoring.”
“I heard that was just a temporary job,” Doug said.
“Well, one never knows. I’ve been thinking about selling guns, too. Oh, shit, I know I’m not supposed to bother you about guns tonight.”
Doug didn’t say anything. The three of them followed John and Terry into the house.
“Drinks?” John asked. “I’ve got some local product, if that wouldn’t offend you, Senator, and some single malts from Scotland.”
“Single malt,” Follette requested.
“Local product,” Doug said.
Terry smiled. “It’s surprisingly smooth.”
“Be careful, Doug,” Follette warned.
Doug laughed. “I’ve heard it burns your throat.”
“Not this,” John said. He opened a cabinet and pulled out a gallon jar with plum slices floating in liquor. Terry handed him a ladle and a glass. John pushed the ladle down and pulled out a few plum slices and a couple tablespoonsful of liquor. He poured all of it into the glass, the plum slices splashing, and handed it to Doug.
Doug sipped and said, “It’s like kirsch or something. Slidoviz?”
“Damson liquor,” Terry said.
“Distilled from damson wine?” Doug asked.
Follette said, “No, they put the damson in later. Sometimes to conceal off flavors, bad making.” Meaning, be extra careful.
“I can’t tell how strong it is, but it would be diluted by the fruit juices,” Doug stated.
“Some,” Follette said. John smiled and found a bottle of Scottish whiskey with a Washington, D.C., excise stamp on it.
Maude knew Glennfiddich, but she hadn’t heard of this brand, couldn’t figure out how to pronounce the tangle of letters, couldn’t remember the name without the sound. John held the bottle out toward Follette. Follette nodded and said, “Just a little.” John poured the single malt into a small brandy snifter.
Doug, Maude saw, had finished his drink. He looked happy. Follette tasted his whiskey and looked at Doug’s glass. John asked, “Maude, what do you want?”
“I’m fine.”
“Oh, don’t be a party pooper.”
“Alcohol’s a depressant. Do you have some tea?”
“We have chamomile,” John said. He smiled. We know where you’ve been, half-witch.
“A plain tea.”
“With stimulants in it?” John mocked her.
“Yes, a teabag tea would be fine.” Maude wondered if she ought to check the tag at the end of the string.
Doug said, “This is so smooth.”
“Want more?” John asked. “Celts always get drunk at wakes.”
“Don’t take any more right away,” Follette said. “Wait until you see how strong it is.”
Doug looked at Follette. Maude saw that his eyes seemed to track slower than his head moved. “Oh, it’s okay.”
John refilled Doug’s glass with liquor, no plum slices, then smiled at Maude and went into the kitchen.
Maude asked, “How much did you tell him?”
“About the funeral games? Doug, are you listening? I don’t speak when the mind isn’t taking me seriously. They’ve set up a word-ward. Doug’s not going to hear anything about being killed tomorrow.”
“He knows about magic.”
“He can’t imagine people would hurt him,” Follette said. He thought at her, Miss Maude, who are you carryi
ng that revolver for?
Don’t know, she thought back. For herself?
“I wouldn’t want to lose Doug,” Follette said.
John came back with the tea. Maude saw a teabag soaking in hot water with a staple, no label, at the end of the string. “Thanks,” she said.
“Sugar, milk? I know you can take bitter teas,” John said.
“Cut the crap, John,” Follette said. He looked at Doug as though he wanted to say more about the liquor, but put his hand to his side. Maude knew his cancer hurt him just then. She sipped the tea. As far as she could tell, it was not a potion.
Doug drank his second glass of the damson liquor and declared, “Maude said victims get lots of sex.” He tried to stand up but wobbled and sank back into his chair. “That’s stronger than it seems. It was so smooth.”
“Doug,” Follette said.
“I’m really drunk.”
“You drank it too fast.” Maude shook her head.
Terry brought in a huge boar’s head on a platter. She told her guests, “It’s rare you can get one of these, but I knew a farmer who was culling his stock.”
Doug finally managed to get up and walk toward the table. He sat down heavily and touched the boar’s jowl and said, “Food, drink, sex.”
John grinned. “Yes. Lots.”
Follette said, “I’m not feeling at all well. I’ll try to see you all at the funeral tomorrow. Doug, Maude.” He didn’t speak the others’ names, but put on his coat and walked out to his car. Nobody spoke until he’d driven so far the motor noise disappeared.
“Old fart,” John said.
Doug asked, “What else are we eating?”
Terry went back into the kitchen and brought out unleavened bread almost like crackers, and a salad of flowers. John began carving the boar’s jowls. After being cut, the meat was less startling, like any other roast pork. Then he cut out the eyes and fed them to Doug on the end of a fork. Doug tried to protest, but he was too drunk. John put a plate of jowl meat in front of Doug and broke bread for him. Maude wondered if she could safely eat this food Follette fled from. John pulled four beakers out of a closed cabinet behind them and filled them from ajar already on the table.
“Mead,” Terry said. “It’s a marvelous future for us. John will be setting up a monitoring system for the high-tech factory. I’m making burial urns for a California crematorium chain.”
Doug, his face greased with pig, lifted the beaker with both hands and held it at his face.
“Doug, aren’t you drunk enough?” Maude asked.
John said, “He’s got a right to blow out every once in a while.”
Was the hangover so bad after these feasts that the victim didn’t fight dying in the morning?
Doug pulled the beaker away from his face and said, “I feel very intense.”
“Very drunk,” Maude corrected.
“Don’t be a spoilsport, Maude,” Terry chided.
“You’re going to…” Maude couldn’t say, you’re going to sacrifice him tomorrow. The word-ward had gotten stronger after Follette left. “He’s got to drive home.”
“You’re sober enough,” John said.
“I’ll let you drive,” Doug said. “I want to go home with my head against your pussy.”
“Doug.”
John filled the mead beaker again. Doug looked at it dubiously, then looked at Maude and drank.
Maude wondered if they could get home tonight. Terry said, “You could stay overnight here.”
“Aren’t we going up to the funeral home?”
Doug said, “You women can go wail. John and I will get drunk like men.”
Maude noticed John wasn’t drinking. He carved more meat from the pig’s head, then sawed open the skull. Terry dipped a spoon down and ate a brain chunk. She went back to the kitchen and brought out a gravy boat.
The brains were good with rice and gravy. Maude remembered eating sheep’s head at a gypsy restaurant in San Francisco, $1.50 a head, affordable on a welfare budget supplemented by plasma sales and gentlemen’s dinners. Never touch the escape money. Perhaps she’d doomed herself by doing precisely that, using the money to come back to Kobold.
Doug looked at her as if he was going to be sick. “You’ve drunk too much,” Maude told him.
“I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go lie down.”
“We’ll play you some music,” Terry said. Maude wondered if she and John would play flute and drum by Doug’s bed or if the music would be electronic.
“Terry and I are going to the funeral home. Let me get your car keys,” Maude said. He stood swaying while she fished in his pants pocket for the keys. Then he shambled to a couch in the living room and collapsed on it.
John said, “I’ll stay with him.”
At the funeral home, a ring of Christians sat around the coffin. Betty and Luke stood outside the circle. Betty said, “They’ve claimed her, Maude, but they never converted her.”
“She wanted to be at peace,” Maude said.
“One of your father’s people is preaching the sermon,” Luke told her.
“Does it matter now?” Maude asked.
“We’ll have our own ceremonies at the grave,” Betty replied.
“I’m going up to see her.” Maude walked up to the coffin. Partridge looked like a realistic wax figure of herself. A tiny edge of the quilt was visible below the corpse hands. Maude bent over the body and kissed the cold forehead. She wished Esther were there.
20
* * *
PREACHING TO DEAD EARS
When Maude woke up, the clock said 7:30. She remembered she’d left Doug at John and Terry’s. He’d been too drunk to fool with.
Maude sat up and felt around for ghosts. No grandmother. No NAACP ghost. She didn’t want to do anything this morning, but the funeral was at ten at the mortuary. Then the hearse would take Partridge’s body across the highway and over to the family plot. Maude went to her closet and found the closest thing she had to a black dress—a dark tweed suit with a black velveteen collar. She’d found it in a thrift store in Sacramento, probably some ex-New Yorker’s office wear too sweaty or too formal for California.
After dressing, Maude looked at herself in a mirror. Except for the long hair, she looked like a businesswoman, not a welfare hippie. A business witch.She brushed out her hair and looked through her grandmother’s things for hair clips, bobby pins, something to keep the hair out of her eyes.
Two real tortoiseshell combs—bingo. Maude slid them through her hair. In the mirror she looked like her mother. She thought about seeing if she could get her hair cut before ten, but decided not to bother.
Nylons, heels, Maude put on things she never fooled with during her other life. She put a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt into an overnight bag she found under the bed in the center bedroom, the one Doug had slept in.
Does Doug have to die? Do I have to sacrifice Doug? Maude wished she could talk to Follette about what was coming this day. Now she needed to find out how Doug was. She called Terry. “It’s Maude. Is Doug awake?”
“He’s still sleeping,” Terry said. “Why don’t you come on over?”
In fifteen minutes, Maude was at John and Terry’s. Doug slept until Terry and John played bamboo flute and tabor at him, just as Maude had imagined them playing the night before. He propped himself up on an elbow and listened. The glamour clashed with his hangover.
“What do you take for hangovers?” Maude asked.
“Hair of the dog,” John said. He left the bedroom. “No,” Maude said. Doug was naked between the sheets. Maude wondered who undressed him.
“It’s country to get drunk at funerals,” Terry said.
John brought in the damson liquor jar and a glass. Doug looked at the liquor and said, “Water and coffee with lots of sugar.”
“It’s going to be an exciting funeral,” John said. “We may have to defend ourselves. Maude looks like a woman in the executive protection business herself.”
F
eeling the gun’s weight in her purse, Maude flinched. “You think being hunted is exciting?”
“Of course. His kin versus my kin. It will be beautifully tragic for them.”
“Could you hand me my pants?” Doug said. “I’ll get my own coffee.”
“It would be better if you drank some of this,” John said. “Clean your mouth out.”
Maude handed Doug his pants and shorts. He pulled the pants under the top sheet and wiggled into them. He said to John, “I had more than enough to drink last night. Maude, why did you leave me here?”
“Last time I looked, you were too drunk to sit up.”
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Follette and I both warned you.”
“I thought you were teasing or something.”
“Witches kept the words from you.”
John grinned. “Damson liquor this morning should make you feel better.”
“Take it away, John,” Maude said.
“We’re going to fly Belle over the graveyard,” Terry informed them.
Maude wondered if Belle would turn into a mankiller hawk, swoop down and tear Doug’s liver out. “I’m going to get Doug coffee, okay?”
“Well, you know where everything is,” Terry said. ‘John and I will check on the gravediggers.” They stood watching, though, not leaving.
Maude thought, go set up gun emplacements, but nodded. Doug pulled the sheet aside and sat up, his bare feet on the floor. He held his head in his hands and looked over at the damson jar. “If I don’t feel better soon, I’ll be tempted.” John said, “It would help.” Then he and Terry went outside. Doug followed Maude to the kitchen and sat at the table while she found a teakettle and filled it with water.
“I made a fool of myself last night,” Doug said.
“You weren’t that bad, just drunk.”
“I ended up in bed with both of them, I think. I was so drunk.”
You stupid son of a bitch, I should shoot you myself “Both of them? Could you get it up, drunk as you were?”
“I vaguely… Maude, don’t look at me like that.”