Every Mountain Made Low

by Alex White

  “No,” said Loxley. “Homes have deeds and cost money. I know because I’m trying to buy a farm from the Con –”

  “Would you shut the fuck up and let me finish?” barked Tailypo, his voice sharp against her ears.

  Loxley’s fingers itched, and she balled her toes in her shoes. She looked from the fox to the wolves, to the hawks, anywhere but at the big boss. She didn’t want his eyes on her.

  “Jesus,” he grunted. “So let me cut the next part down for you, since you’re so eager to tell me about your real estate ventures: the next two nights, I lure the other two dogs away. Every bite of their sweetmeats revives me that much more. Then, finally, it’s just the farmer, alone in his house, and all I can think about is how good he’s going to taste. I get on top of his roof, and I start stalking around, clacking my claws on the shingles. I can hear him breathing in there, loading his musket. I can smell his sweat – almost like I’m cooking him, boiling him in his own juices. At this point, my human tongue is crude, but I start mumbling, ‘Who’s got my tail?’ I hear him lock back the flint. I dash to one side of the roof and call again. I dash to the other, and he fires up through the boards, screaming at me like a madman. ‘Who’s got my tail?’ I yelled back.”

  Tailypo leapt up from his chair and stalked around his desk toward Loxley. “Then he gets a lucky shot on me, and it goes straight up through my head, spraying out my brains like a fountain.”

  “You’re lying. Your brains are in your head just fine,” she said. “Stop trying to scare me, or I’m just going to leave.”

  “Don’t leave, baby,” he said, getting close and pointing to a patch of lighter skin on the base of his jaw. “See that scar? That’s where the bullet hit.”

  “Then you’d be dead. Someone just shot two of my friends... someone shot my friend Nora in the head and she died. I saw it.” Loxley didn’t want to think he might be telling the truth. She backed away.

  “I thought I was dead, too, and everything kind of twisted to the right. It never did untwist, either. But I stayed standing. I could taste that farmer down below, and when I blinked, I was standing right behind him. ‘Who’s got my tail?’ Oh, God, Loxley he smelled so good, and my mouth hung open, and I felt drool or blood pouring down my chin like a warm waterfall. The farmer turns around, eyes wide, and I whisper into his ear...”

  Tailypo’s body heat winked out in front of her. Loxley knew in that moment that he wasn’t lying. They weren’t in his office; they were in the dark forest, and all of these animals had come to bear witness to her final moments at the hands of this creature. The stuffed animals turned to watch her with their glittering eyes, and the full moon blazed up above. Loxley’s skin raged with millions of electric prickles, and she fell backward before him, screaming.

  “I said, ‘You’ve got it!’” he growled with milk-white eyes.

  The room became a rush of beating wings, teeth, claws and eyes. Wolves howled for meat and rabbits screamed under the whistling trees. Blood and disease whirled in a death spiral above her head.

  The static took her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Another Good Morning

  TAILYPO SAT BEHIND his desk, working in a ledger. He wore glasses low on his nose, his imposing presence somehow disarmed by the dainty appliance. He sighed, licked the tip of his fountain pen and continued writing. The animals did nothing to react to his placid nature.

  Loxley found her arms resting on the arms of a chair and she sat up, her heart pounding. “You’re a ghost!”

  Tailypo didn’t look up. “Quentin came by a few minutes ago, looking to make sure you were all right. I told him you got scared and clammed up. He didn’t want to go when he heard that.” He looked up at her and smiled before returning to his work. “Do you think he’s sweet on you?”

  “I want to leave!”

  “No one is stopping you.”

  “Good.” She jumped to her feet and made for the door.

  “You’ll die, you know. Duke and his boys are going to slaughter you like a lamb,” he called after her.

  She stopped and turned, half-expecting the animals to wake from their slumber again. “Maybe I won’t try to kill him. I could run away.”

  He put down his pen and took off his glasses. “Not far enough. Never far enough. I could help you.”

  Tailypo sickened her. He was too open, too forward. Being in the same room as him felt like they were rubbing their spirits together. The boards slipped underfoot as though they’d soaked up buckets of blood, but she crept back to her seat.

  “How?” she said, sitting down.

  “You could give yourself to me. I always get back what’s mine.”

  “No. Goodbye.” And once more, she turned to leave.

  “Quentin says you can play the violin pretty well. Is that true?”

  She wiped her hands on her clothes to stop them from flapping. “Don’t have a violin. It’s locked up in Harrison Hoop Station.”

  “We’ll sort that out when it becomes a problem, sugar,” he said, steepling his fingers. “Do you want to play? You can live here while you do, and we’ll feed you.”

  She scowled. “You’re stupid.”

  “So you won’t do it?”

  “I came here to play violin for you. You’re the one that scared me. Why did you do that?”

  “It’s hard to control myself around you, Loxley Fiddleback. I see the way you shrink, and it just makes me grow.”

  “If I stay,” she began, “I don’t want to see you around. I don’t trust you.”

  He capped his pen and tapped it against the table. He beat a steady rhythm, and she couldn’t help imagining the things she might play along to it. “You’re not exactly in any position to dictate terms to me. You’re standing here in stolen clothes, and my guess is that we were the last place on your list to come for help. Now you’re going to come into my club and try to tell me what to do just because of what I am? Let me put this as clearly as I can.” He dropped the pen. “Fuck you. I’ll do whatever I please.”

  “I don’t trust you to control yourself.”

  “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t. Now do you want some clothes, food and a violin or not?”

  She considered his offer. She’d come here to play for Quentin, and playing for Tailypo wouldn’t be all that different. He wasn’t like the other ghosts, and she briefly entertained the notion of learning more about the dead from him. She wouldn’t, though; it would require her to be close to him, and the thought of sharing a building was unsettling enough.

  “Why do ghosts want to hurt me?”

  He chuckled. “I once knew this dog that’d had the ever-living shit beaten out of it as a puppy. It had a clipped ear and a broken tail, and walked with the worst hump in his back you’ve ever seen. He was the sweetest thing on four legs, though, and whenever he came around the kitchen, we’d feed him scraps. The cooks named him Brutus, in spite of the fact that I told them not to get attached. See, I knew something they didn’t – Old Brutus was destined to die.”

  “Because he was beaten?”

  “Not at all. Because of the way he carried himself. Something about that hump in his back or the sad face he was always making compelled the other dogs to try to rip him to shreds. They couldn’t help but pick on him, you see. I could sense that in a way the humans couldn’t. And one day, they found Brutus lying cold in the gutter, guts strewn everywhere. I’d seen it coming, but everyone else was stunned. You’re like Brutus, Loxley.”

  “I don’t have a hump in my back or a clipped ear. Not a dog, either.”

  He stood and walked around his desk. Each step that brought him closer made the bile rise in Loxley’s throat. “No, but you have a way about you that makes us want to tear you to pieces. You have a weakness about you, and we can all sense it. Even now, I look at you and some part of me asks, ‘What could she possibly do to hurt me?’”

  He raised the back of his hand to brush her hair, and she flinched away. He laughed as she did. She didn’t nee
d him getting any ideas. She stood up and scowled at him.

  “The last person who tried to hurt me got his leg opened up with a pruning knife. The last ghost who touched me...” Loxley began, but stopped short. She’d never considered it before. “The last ghost who touched me, my friend Nora, she lives inside of me now. She’s not stalking around, haunting. She’s just a part of me. Do you think that could happen to you if you were stupid?”

  He smiled. “Now I just like you more.”

  She retreated to the other side of the chair, ready to shove it into him if he made any sudden moves. “Then you have to buy me the best violin you can find. I don’t want my old one anymore. I want good clothes, too.”

  “Anything for you. Not keeping your old violin?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  He shrugged. “I figured it had some sentimental value to you.”

  She thought about it. “No... Not really. My mom might have wanted it, but she died.” She crossed her arms. “And I want another knife. I don’t like the one I stole from Don.”

  “All in time, then.” He pointed to a wardrobe, half-hidden behind a lounging jaguar. “I might have something in there for you to wear.”

  She went to the wardrobe and opened it up. Inside, a dozen silk dresses danced in the firelight, their lines teeming with brocade patterns like spun silver. She ran her hand down the side of one, and it gave her the distinct caress of flesh, soft and warm. Her other senses dulled as her arms coursed with prickly hairs. She rolled up her sleeves and put her arms into the closet, feeling the dresses on her bare skin, and hummed with hot breath. An orange glow chased over the fabric like sunlight on rippling water, and the threads tickled her like fingernails running gently over her arms. She reached in deeper, closed her eyes and pushed her face into one of the dresses. Her palms found the rough wood at the back of the cabinet and she startled, the illusion broken.

  She pulled her arms back. She now understood why the rich always wanted silk, in spite of the fact that it was flimsy, expensive fabric. Silk brought memories of Nora’s last night with Jack rushing to the surface. She blinked Jack away and recalled her dream: just her and Nora alone in her house. She tried to imagine the pleasures of silk sheets.

  She turned to find Tailypo leering at her.

  “I take it you’ve found something you like,” he said, his voice smooth. “You could wear those onstage if you want.”

  “Why do you have these?”

  “A lot of women have come and gone over the years, Loxley. I always get back what’s mine.” With that last word, he rubbed his fingers together as though handling cash. “I protected them from the forest outside, and they repaid me by leaving, though one or two died of old age.”

  The heat of the fireplace became unbearable on her cheeks. She walked toward the door. “You said people were coming to watch me play violin.”

  “Folks want a meal and a show, yes.”

  She wouldn’t be able to handle wearing silk in public. It would make her feel too exposed – naked. Two weeks ago, she would have thought nothing of being so adorned in front of an audience of strangers. People were nothing more than animals; some of them she liked, others wandered away without consequence. Officer Crutchfield had tried to dominate her because he saw something he could fuck. Duke’s men had stared at her body when they broke into her apartment.

  The thought of Officer Crutchfield drained all of the heat from her skin. Tailypo wanted her to make a feast of herself. Silk was bad. Dangerous. She wasn’t going to have it.

  “I want a pair of denim work pants and a shirt,” she said. “I like plaid. It has nice lines in it.”

  He snorted. “I run a classy place. You can’t wear jeans and plaid.”

  “And give me good food. I like vegetables, but I don’t like tomatoes because they’re too sour. Turnip greens and bacon. I’ll cook it myself because your cooks aren’t me or my momma.”

  He laughed. “I got the best chefs anywhere, honey.”

  “No. My mom cooked better than them because she knows what I like. They don’t know what I like, so they’re bad cooks.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No dresses. No silk,” she said. He kept smiling at her and she stomped her foot to drive it home and shouted, “No silk!”

  He flinched. She liked that.

  She’d gone as far as the door when he said, “Be careful you don’t walk around acting like the cock of the walk. You ain’t the only special one. Got no idea who else lives down here, honey.”

  Tailypo was a ghost, but he wasn’t. He could control how much of his true self she saw. He didn’t have to hurt her like other ghosts. “Is Quentin also like you?”

  “Only one special thing about Quentin: he belongs to me. He took the deal you chickened out on. Also, don’t you get any weird ideas about him, because remember: I always get back what’s mine.”

  She left, quietly closing the door behind her. The paisley walls had slowed their meanderings, now calm like a puddle after a storm. The gas lamps had grown brighter, and the hallway held no mystery as she walked toward the stairs. Someone called her, and Loxley looked downstairs to see a smiling black woman in a stained chef’s robe waving up at her.

  The lady was plump like perfectly-ripe fruit: not too large, but not without curves. She beckoned, and Loxley descended.

  “You must be Loxley.” She had a musical lilt to her voice, and her short hair had been shaved flat across the top and covered by a hairnet. She’d painted her lips the color of an apple, and bore a bit of green across her eyelids. Loxley had never seen a woman wearing makeup like that so deep in the Hole. “My name is Jayla. I’m a cook. Tee said you were hungry?”

  “Who is Tee?”

  “The big guy upstairs.”

  Loxley didn’t step any closer. “You’re not a cook. I saw all the cooks when I came through the kitchens before. I would have remembered your eyelids because your face looks like an apple tree.”

  “I see.” Jayla smirked. “And when was that?”

  “This evening.”

  “It’s morning. Let’s get you some breakfast.”

  It couldn’t have been morning, though, because that would mean she’d been in Tailypo’s office all night. Then again, Nora’s ghost had kept her out for a few hours.

  Jayla took her hand without warning, and Loxley shouted in surprise. The whole episode with Tailypo had left her twitchy, and she jerked her hand back, rubbing the fingers as through they’d been burned. Jayla’s palms were rough – coarser than Nora’s – and Loxley didn’t appreciate the suddenness of the cook’s actions.

  She hadn’t meant to scream, and she wasn’t angry, but now she felt scared to say anything else. Jayla looked her up and down with the sort of surprise that usually ended with a statement like, “Suit yourself.” In a second, the cook would probably walk off and not want to talk to her anymore.

  “You’ve got problems,” Jayla chuckled.

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “Didn’t say you were. You’ve just got some nerves, and we can sort those out with hot biscuits and a little sweet coffee. You want me to make you some?”

  She didn’t want a stranger handling her food, and she knew Jayla would mess it up. “I don’t like coffee. I’ll cook for myself. You’re not as good at cooking as my mom.”

  Jayla sighed. “That’s the problem with being a cook. You wouldn’t believe how many of the boys around here say that. They always come to my way of thinking in the end, though.”

  “And what is your way of thinking?”

  “That I make the best goddamned biscuits around here, now let’s get a move on, girl. Other hungry folks here, too.”

  Jayla took a rag from her waistband and circled Loxley, swatting her hip lightly. Loxley whimpered a bit, but allowed herself to be corralled to the kitchen. When she turned the corner, she’d expected the cacophony of the night before, but found a peaceful arrangement of cooks eating breakfast around one of the large steel tab
les. Some of the serving staff also joined them, all of them bleary, and Loxley wondered if they worked through the night.

  The scent of frying bacon hit her nose and wormed down into her stomach. Loxley became painfully-aware of how hungry she felt, and her gut refused to stop rumbling. She clasped her hands to her abdomen and squeezed, not wanting to draw any attention.

  Jayla pulled out a stool for Loxley and she sat down. The table wasn’t as cold as she expected, warmed by the arms and plates of a dozen hungry men and women. Loxley tilted her head, watching the silver feathering of the brushed metal finish undulate with the light. She imagined that there had been many silver ducks, and their feathers had been plucked and lacquered together into this metal table. The butcher would have to wear gloves to pluck them, because they would be so sharp and dangerous. He’d probably wear goggles, too – the kind that made people look like raccoons. What if the butcher was a raccoon? Then, when he took off his goggles, everyone would be surprised, but they’d know that’s how raccoons were supposed to look. That would be pretty funny, and so Loxley laughed.

  She craned her neck this way and that, counting several hundred different formations on her end of the table. When she looked up, the rest of the staff were staring at her. She made eye contact with each of them in turn, then went back to watching her patterns.

  “Do you want gravy on your biscuits, Loxley?” called Jayla.

  “No,” she replied.

  “She wants gravy,” said an enormous cook with a lazy eye. He had a voice like a snore. “She just don’t know it.”

  Loxley ran a finger down one of the brushings. “How can I want it? I’ve never had it.”

  There was a mass clatter at the table as silverware struck en masse. Then came a flood of questions. You never had brown gravy? What about sawmill? Are you from around here? Do you eat meat? Why don’t you put gravy on it? Do you know how to make it? Did your momma love you?

  Loxley clasped her hands to her ears, turning the dozen voices into a noisy rush like running water through a pipe. She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to see their faces, and they stopped talking altogether. She felt sure they were staring again. Someone called out to Jayla, so Loxley let her hands down.