Tumble & Blue

by Cassie Beasley

  But 340.

  The number had been 339 when he and his dad drove past it. Blue knew it. And he couldn’t quite convince himself that someone had shown up to change it in the middle of the night.

  He stared at the sign with its choking vines. He felt very sure that he should do something about the wrong number. But what did you do about . . . any of this?

  Sixteen minutes when his dad used to run the distance in twelve. Being left in a town that wasn’t even on maps. A broken arm that was heavy and boiling now inside its cast. Losing in a dozen different ways.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just fix this one thing.

  He stood on his tiptoes to scratch at the number on the sign. The paint was old and dry beneath his fingers, but even though it was flaking all over, the 340 refused to peel.

  He heard the whoosh of a car in the distance, and he ignored it. He dug his nails in deeper until his fingertips stung. He clawed at the number until his legs started to shake from holding him up.

  Finally, Blue dropped back on his heels. “You’ve got it wrong. I’m just visiting. I’m not part of the population.”

  The sign didn’t say anything.

  “I promise,” said Blue. “I’ll be out of here in no time. So could you change back?”

  340.

  “Please?” Blue stared at the number until his eyes started to water. Finally, he had to blink.

  339.

  Blue jumped. That really just happened, he thought. It did.

  He glanced down at the weeds and then back at the sign. The 339 looked so sharp and permanent in the moonlight. Cautiously, Blue reached up with one finger.

  “I don’t know who you are, but you’d better believe I will find out and tell your parents!”

  Blue stumbled and almost fell.

  He hadn’t heard the car stop behind him, but when he whirled around, he saw that the woman shouting at him was leaning out the window of an old black Thunderbird. He opened his mouth to tell her that his mother hadn’t been around since he was a baby and his dad wouldn’t care anyway, so good luck tattling to them. But before he could say anything, she was talking again.

  “Do you have any idea how late it is? Do you want to die in a ditch like a darn fool? Get over here! I’m taking you home.”

  He blinked in the red wash of the taillights and squinted. He took in the woman’s curly gray hair and her round face. “Granny Eve?”

  “What? You’re not one of my—” Blue’s grandmother threw open the car door and stepped out.

  “Blue Montgomery!” she said. Her stout arms went as limp as her flowery housedress for a second. “Blue! How . . . ? Where did you come from?”

  Then she was moving, reaching for him.

  “Never mind, never mind! Give me a hug and hop in the car. We’ve got a situation to deal with.”

  ■ ■ ■

  Blue held a Tupperware cake plate in his lap while the Thunderbird soared through Murky Branch.

  “It’s not that your daddy didn’t mention it at all,” Granny Eve was saying. “But that was right after you got into a scrape with that boy at school. Dixon somebody.”

  “Devon,” said Blue.

  “That’s the name. He called that day, while you were having your arm set, and he said, ‘Maybe I’ll bring Blue by to visit sometime. It’s been too long.’ And I said, ‘That’ll be nice, Alan. Maybe you could stay awhile, too.’ And he said, ‘I’ll think about it.’”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m perfectly happy to have you!” Granny Eve said hastily. “Delighted. Excited. I just wasn’t expecting you tonight.”

  “I’m excited to be here, too.” Blue didn’t know what he was feeling, but it wasn’t excitement. It was something squirming and heavy. His dad hadn’t even called to warn his grandmother.

  He’d dumped Blue.

  “You can toss that plate into the back,” said Granny Eve. “I’ve been meaning to return it to Goat Flat. He baked me an Italian cream cake two weeks ago.”

  Blue dropped the Tupperware behind his seat, but when he turned back around, he wished he’d kept it. His hands suddenly didn’t know what to do. He blinked down at his cast.

  Granny Eve cleared her throat before an awkward silence could creep into the car. “You’re awfully sweaty,” she said. “Turn on the air. I don’t know what you were thinking, running around at midnight like some vampire hoodlum. Why didn’t your daddy bring you into the house like a normal person? That’s what I want to know.”

  “It wasn’t my fault.” Blue reached for the air conditioner.

  “Of course it wasn’t! Alan’s a grown man, and I raised him to behave better than that.”

  “No,” said Blue. “I mean . . . the fight at school. It wasn’t my fault. Did Dad say that it was?”

  The idea bothered him almost as much as the fact that he’d been left.

  “Well, he’s not very talkative. Not with me. I think he just said, ‘Blue got into a scuffle,’ or something along those lines.”

  “It wasn’t a scuffle. Dad told me I should stand up for myself,” said Blue. “He said it was the only way to get Devon to stop messing with me all the time. He said I had to stop being a . . . a doormat.”

  Doormat, doormat, doormat, thought Blue. It was something you scraped mud off on. Something everyone stomped all over.

  “I swear,” said Granny Eve, “sometimes Alan doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose. Did he forget that you couldn’t win a fight?”

  “I was only trying to do what he wanted,” said Blue. “Devon was going to take my field trip money.”

  Blue had hated it so much. The bullying. Devon had chosen to pick on him for no reason he could fathom, and then, when he started demanding that Blue pay him off to be left alone . . . Blue hadn’t known how to make it stop, but he had been willing to try anything.

  “Well, someone obviously needed to give him a talking to, but you were not that someone. No fighting while you’re living with me.”

  “I’m not stupid,” said Blue.

  “I’m not worried about your brains, honey, I’m worried about your health. We don’t go asking for more trouble in this family.”

  She steered the car down an azalea-lined driveway.

  “Well,” she muttered as they approached the large brick house at the end of the drive, “at least some of us don’t.”

  They parked on the edge of the front lawn, and Blue frowned at the scene before them. Someone was standing behind an azalea bush, pointing the beam of a flashlight up at a dark figure on the roof of the house. Something like confetti was drifting through the air as the figure spun in circles and waved its arms.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s the Okra Lane Home for Seniors.”

  “Somebody’s twirling around on the roof.”

  “Yes.” Granny Eve sighed. “That’s your great-grandmother.”

  THREE

  MA MYRTLE

  Murky Branch had two churches, a gas station with three pumps, and a tiny hardware store that also sold bait and tackle. The largest and most successful business in the area was a restaurant called Flat’s, which was known for its “Universally Adored Swamp Cakes.” These were pancakes, but green. The universal adoration was somewhat in doubt.

  You could see the whole town from the rooftop of the Okra Lane Home for Seniors. And if the wind was right, you could catch a whiff of cooking grease from Flat’s.

  Not that many people were in the habit of standing on Okra Lane’s roof.

  It was meant to be a quiet place, tucked away from the street behind a tangle of overgrown azalea beds. Most of the residents had seen their eightieth birthdays come and go, and they were less than interested in shimmying up the shingles.

  This suited Myrtle Montgomery just fine.

  Ma Myrtle—that was wh
at most folks called her regardless of whether or not she was their Ma—had an affection for doing what others thought she shouldn’t. On the night Blue arrived in Murky Branch, the Okra Lane staff thought she shouldn’t be out on the roof. And no doubt the other Montgomerys, if she had asked them, would have thought she shouldn’t be tearing pages out of a certain, very important, family history book that had been locked away for decades.

  But that was what she was doing.

  Ma Myrtle stood on the roof in her nightdress, slippers slipping against the eaves, and she ripped out one page after another. She shredded them with her bony fingers and tossed the pieces into the air.

  All the details about Walcott Montgomery’s trip into the swamp drifted away like dandelion seeds.

  By the time Eve and Blue arrived on the scene, the book was half as thick as it had been. Ma Myrtle lifted it over her head in both hands and spun in a circle.

  “How do you like that?” she said to the moon. “Who’s in control of the story now, you old rock? Who’s going to have the last laugh this time round?”

  The moon wasn’t in the habit of answering Ma Myrtle, but she laughed all the same.

  ■ ■ ■

  Eve Montgomery took stock of the situation on the roof and sent Blue to help the owner of Okra Lane fetch a ladder.

  After he’d left, she called up to her mother. “Ma Myrtle, what do you think you’re doing up on that roof? You’re scaring the daylights out of poor Mrs. Lane.”

  Ma Myrtle squinted down at her. “Eve! My little Evie. Hello, young thing. Isn’t it a wondrous night?”

  Eve’s hands went to her hips. “It was wondrous until they called me out here, Mama. Sit down and we’ll send someone up to get you.”

  “Nonsense, Evie. You know how I hate to be fetched.”

  “What’s that in your hand? They said you were tossing down pieces of paper.”

  Ma Myrtle stretched herself taller. “They’ll be coming here,” she said. “Every one of them thinking the new fate belongs to them.”

  “The other Montgomerys?” said Eve. “Of course they will, but that’s got nothing to do with us.”

  “It does now!” Ma Myrtle announced. “I’m taking matters in hand. Our family missed the last red moon, you know. One hundred years ago they were too busy fighting among themselves. They wasted their chance, and nobody ever made it to the alligator. Not. This. Time.”

  She punctuated each word by swinging the book like a judge’s gavel.

  Eve groaned. “Mama, that’s not . . . that had better not be the family history.”

  “It’s my book,” Ma Myrtle retorted. “Because I’m the oldest. I decide who reads the story, and I’ve decided that nobody reads it but me.”

  “Did you at least memorize the pages before you ripped them out?”

  “I’m not crazy!” said Ma Myrtle. “Now step aside. I’m coming down.”

  “Mrs. Lane and Blue went to get a ladder.”

  “Blue?”

  “Alan’s left him here.”

  “Aha! It’s already started. He’s after the great fate!”

  “No, he’s just here.”

  “Is he?” said Ma Myrtle. “Maybe so, with his curse. At any rate, he won’t be much good for what I’ve got planned.”

  “Lord help us.”

  “Nobody’s going to muddle it up this time, you hear? It’s going to be a worthy Montgomery who heads into that swamp. I’m going to choose the person myself.”

  “We’ll talk about it.”

  “I’ve already talked about it with the moon. Step aside.”

  Eve looked over her shoulder. “Here they come with the ladder.”

  “Ladders are for people who don’t know what I know,” said Ma Myrtle. She shook her head so that her wispy white hair flew.

  “And what do you think you know?”

  “I know,” said Ma Myrtle, throwing her shoulders back, “when I’m going to die.”

  Eve froze. “You mean . . .”

  “My talent!” said Ma Myrtle proudly. “I’ve finally managed to see my own end.”

  “Mama.”

  “And it’s not tonight!”

  So saying, Myrtle Montgomery stepped cat-light across the roof and right over the edge.

  ■ ■ ■

  Blue shouted and dropped the ladder he’d been dragging.

  Eve shouted and launched herself toward the house.

  Mrs. Lane didn’t make a sound, but she collapsed like her bones had been jellied. She and Ma Myrtle hit the ground at the same time.

  By all rights, Ma Myrtle should have been flattened like a swamp cake. But she was a Montgomery, and one of the lucky ones besides. Her talent was predicting the end of things. She never had to check the oven timer to know when supper was going to be done. And, grim as it was, she never had to check with a doctor to know when people were going to be done. She’d been making a nuisance of herself at Okra Lane by forecasting the expiration dates of her fellow residents, who hardly ever appreciated it.

  And now she was armed and armored with the time of her own death. That was what had prompted her to scale the roof in the first place, and perhaps it was what made her land just so in Okra Lane’s fluffiest azalea bush. She rolled out of the shrub to face Eve, who still had her hands stretched out as though to catch something.

  “Gracious,” Ma Myrtle said, picking twigs out of her hair, “that was the most exhilarating thing I’ve done in twenty years!”

  “Mama,” Eve said. “You’re going to . . . are you sure you . . . ?”

  Ma Myrtle beamed and spread her arms wide. “I’m going to die in exactly thirty-seven days! And let me tell you, I am not going to waste an instant between now and then!”

  Ididn’t much approve of Walcott’s little book.

  It was a map, of sorts, disguised as a story, and it was never meant to last.

  The Montgomerys who would soon be flocking to Murky Branch were hungry for details. They wanted to know when and how and where. They wanted an instruction manual.

  But Ma Myrtle, clever reptile, had wrapped her jaws around it first.

  Without the book, they would have only what they were meant to have. The legend.

  A red crescent moon, the sharp bite of fate.

  And me.

  FOUR

  WELCOME TO THE ATTIC

  Blue spent most of his first day in Murky Branch trying to figure out how he fit into his own family. Three of his cousins lived with his grandmother.

  The twins, Jenna and Ida, were sixteen. They were willowy and pale, and they would have been identical down to the last eyelash if Ida hadn’t chopped her blond hair short and dyed it with rainbow stripes.

  Jenna had the ability to charm any animal she met, which was a useful talent when it came to protecting her twin. Animals hated Ida. The chicken coop in front of the house was empty, they told Blue, because Ida had almost lost an eye to an enraged Rhode Island Red.

  Then there was Howard who, at fourteen, was two years older than Blue, and gifted with the weirdest skill Blue had ever heard of. “I’m good at eating,” he explained that morning while Blue waited for his chance to dip from a pan of scrambled eggs on the stove.

  As he spoke, Howard was shoveling a quivering pile of eggs onto his plate beside a leaning tower of tomato slices. He didn’t look anything like the twins. Or like Blue for that matter. All of Eve Montgomery’s grand-children had different grandfathers, and it showed. Howard had dark hair and black eyes, and he was so muscular that Blue was sure he’d never had to deal with being picked on at a school.

  “How is eating a talent?” he asked.

  Howard scooped a forkful of egg into his mouth and gulped.

  “I can eat as much as I want,” he said, gesturing to the plate, “without making myself sick or needing to burn off the calor
ies.”

  He pulled up the sleeves of his ratty black T-shirt and struck a cartoonish pose in front of the stove, flexing his biceps so that the veins in his arms stood out. “See? I could totally arm wrestle you to the ground.”

  Blue snorted and started scraping the last bits of egg out of the pan. “Everyone can arm wrestle me to the ground. Even when one of my arms isn’t broken.”

  “True,” said Howard cheerfully. “But you didn’t steal everyone’s nasty old shoes off the porch. Did you forget to pack your own or something?”

  They sat down at the table with the twins, who were drinking huge mugs of coffee. Blue was about to start quizzing Howard on how, exactly, his gift worked—could he survive on candy bars and chips? Did he ever get full? But Ma Myrtle shuffled into the kitchen and everything went downhill fast.

  She spied Howard’s mountain of eggs, and in a moment the two of them were embroiled in what Blue guessed was an ongoing argument. Ma Myrtle wanted Howard to challenge someone named Bagget Flat to an eatathon.

  “I’ve told you,” Howard said irritably, “I don’t want to do eating contests. Not even against the Flats. It’s not fair.”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “Unfair is Bagget Flat giving me food poisoning last Easter. He knew those deviled eggs had gone bad!”

  Ida tucked a strand of pink hair behind her ear. “Ma Myrtle, that was an accident and you know it.”

  “We Montgomerys have a duty not to squander our talents! We must maintain the family dignity. We—”

  “Weren’t you up on a roof last night?” Howard retorted. “How dignified is that?”

  Jenna sighed and gestured to her sister. Ida nodded. She leaned over to whisper in Blue’s ear. “They’re just revving up,” she said. “This will go on forever. You might as well come upstairs with us if you want a quiet breakfast.”

  Blue, feeling a little pleased to have been invited, followed the two of them out of the kitchen.

  ■ ■ ■

  The twins and Howard seemed happy enough to tolerate Blue’s presence in the house. Ida was especially friendly, and there was plenty of room to go around. But all too soon, there were other newcomers to the household.