The Tangled Bridge

by Rhodi Hawk

  Esther sat in that car looking like she wasn’t sure what in the hell to do next.

  Finally, she opened the door and stepped out. Traffic zipped by on Jefferson Highway.

  Zenon curled his hand into a ball and spoke through it like it was a loudspeaker. “Call a tow truck!”

  Josh laughed. “Yeah, call a tow truck, Esther!”

  Esther sighed, and said aloud as if she’d heard them, “Ain’t no money for no tow truck.”

  Josh nodded at Zenon. “You see that? We finally got her attention.”

  The more Zenon did this, the more he relished it. It was like he was the invisible man. He could see into other people’s lives all he wanted. Pigeon them from the briar. That in itself was damn near intoxicating. But now he was pulling strings on the river devils, too, instead of the other way around. It made him feel godlike.

  Josh put a hand on Esther’s shoulder. “Aw, don’t take it so hard now, Esther. But you’re right. You pay for a tow truck, you pay for a mechanic, and you just throwin good money after bad. That car’s had it.”

  Esther was shaking her head, and Zenon knew that although she couldn’t hear Josh directly, his thoughts were nesting inside her mind and masquerading as her own.

  Esther had her own river devil, of course. Everyone did. You just had to have your feet real deep in the briar to see other people’s devils. Esther’s was a scraggly, underdeveloped thing called Lin who was stunted from years of lumen exposure. Lin was about the size of a ferret and looked like an old-growth wisteria vine that had gone wooden and bare. But if Lin were to be believed, she’d had her heyday when Esther was younger, before Bo was born. She’d told Josh and Zenon all about it in her papery, whispery, river devil’s voice.

  According to Lin, Esther had been an average kid and got on well with most people until about high school. That’s when she’d gotten into trouble and went to an abortion clinic without her mama knowing. She and her mama had got to fighting a lot. Her daddy had drifted out of her life. Somewhere during those high school days, Lin got her foothold with Esther. Esther developed a nice shape and rotten habits. Lin helped her to learn how to smoke first, and then how to drink, then different kinds of smokes and a whole lot more drinking, and then Lin led her to things Esther put straight into her blood. Esther’s grades fell off and then she fell off school altogether.

  Her mother threatened to kick her out unless she got a job, so Esther got one putting groceries into plastic bags.

  Lin let Esther believe she was in control. Told her she shouldn’t let her mama rule her life, and the worst thing Esther could possibly do was end up just like her mama, working and going to church and never really making her mark on the world.

  Then one day Esther agreed to meet a boy out back behind the Winn-Dixie where she worked. Esther had actually believed he’d just wanted to kiss her, ask her out. He did kiss her. And then he offered her a bag of weed for a blow job. And Lin had told her, This is it. This makes you different from Mama. You can break this taboo. This is what real excitement feels like. And Lin told her that since she liked the boy it wasn’t prostitution.

  Esther did it. Right there behind the cardboard-box crusher. Lin told her that she’d broken from her mother’s grasp. Maybe Esther’s body wouldn’t someday cave in on itself like those cardboard boxes did, like her mother’s did. She was alive and invulnerable. Esther listened to Lin’s river devil whispers and wove them into her own thoughts and beliefs.

  A year went by and Esther’s habits had both intensified and grown harder to pay for. Her mother eventually kicked her out. Lin helped Esther to one-by-one let go of ideas about how a young lady ought to act: selling favors, selling party favors, taking what wasn’t hers, taking beatings. Esther went through spells where she was never not high.

  When Esther found out her mother had died of an aneurism, the first idea Lin breathed into Esther’s mind was that she wouldn’t have to duck her mama’s calls anymore or look upon all that disappointment.

  That little bug-eyed, twist tie of a devil, Lin. She’d had Esther in those days. She’d really had her.

  When Esther became pregnant again, something changed. She didn’t get an abortion this time around, which was fine. A mother with addictions held all kinds of possibilities for a river devil. And sure enough, Esther kept stealing, kept doing tricks, kept doing drugs. Right through the entire pregnancy. It seemed certain that she would give birth to an addicted baby, but she didn’t. Instead she bore a lumen child.

  That very day, Esther was stained with that lumen light.

  She held that baby in her arms and later fell on her knees and prayed for forgiveness. Asked for the strength to do right by her son. Lin had actually laughed, knowing how easy it was to break those kinds of vows. But no matter what Lin did, no matter what accident she laid in Esther’s path, no matter how nasty the withdrawals of the chemicals leaving Esther’s system, Esther never budged. Never touched any booze or toke or anything stronger than a sweet tea after that.

  And even later, when they’d removed Bo’s eyes from his tiny, cancer-ridden infant body, Lin couldn’t shake Esther. She’d whispered for Esther to indulge a little guilt. Esther ought to blame herself for her son’s eyes, Lin had told her, because the cancer must have come from all the drugs Esther had pumped into her womb when she’d been carrying Bo. And Esther probably even believed that the guilt felt right in some way. But she let it go as quickly as Lin whispered it on her. Esther saw guilt as a conceit before God. She simply accepted what was, and the little baby Bo accepted, and that was that.

  Esther reorganized her life little by little, finding respectable jobs and making a home for herself and Bo. Lin never stopped her whispers, but Esther had most certainly stopped listening.

  Of course, Lin was just one river devil.

  Zenon figured that any given human being might have a fifty-fifty chance against one lousy whisperer. But here were three, kind of. Two and a half: Lin, Josh, and Zenon. Zenon was not a river devil but nowadays he felt more briar than human. A river devil on growth hormone. Hell, he was more effective than a river devil.

  They lingered there in that ditch on Jefferson Highway with Esther, and Zenon was feeling fine. He’d thought he’d never see the sun again, never walk the streets of the city. Look at him now. He had the sun but without the heat or bugs.

  What Zenon saw here was an opportunity. The three of them could work on old Esther, and if they got to her that would not only leave the blind kid alone to fend for himself, it would prove a point: that Zenon could rally his own little organization within the briar.

  Esther balled her fists and cried out, “I know what’s happening!”

  Zenon stopped and watched. Josh and Lin watched, too.

  Esther turned in a slow circle and searched the very air around her. “I know there’s a devil on my shoulder out here. I know it!”

  Zenon and the others laughed. A devil. One devil. Hell, little lady, you always got at least one devil. Lin was a shriveled little thing that rode Esther’s shadow like the hood on her jacket.

  Esther put her fist to her forehead and squeezed her eyes, and she muttered, “My car just broke down, that’s all. It’s just finally pooped out like I knew it would do. This ain’t the end of the world.”

  A car pulled over. A blue Honda. Esther stepped back and regarded it as though it were the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

  The passenger’s side window rolled down and a man with glasses and a thin mustache peered out at Esther. “You got car trouble?”

  Esther looked at her old Buick, which had stopped hissing but kept up the stink. She said nothing.

  The driver said, “I’ll give you a lift if you want.”

  “No thank you,” Esther said.

  “You sure? Or I can call—”

  “I got it,” Esther said.

  He shrugged, put the car in gear, and it started moving again. He rejoined traffic on Jefferson Highway without looking back at Esther or rolling up the pas
senger window. Zenon saw that as Esther watched him go she’d let a tear well over onto her cheek.

  Josh said, “She thinks we’d have pigeoned that guy if he gave her a lift.”

  “Well, she’d be right, we would’ve,” Zenon said.

  He leered at Esther. “Aw, come on. You don’t need that ole car. What do you use it for anyway?”

  And Esther said aloud, “How’m I gonna get to work? How’m I gonna get Bo to the doctor? He has so many appointments.”

  Hearing her engage with him like that! From the material world to the briar! The power of it sent a charge through Zenon’s body. A week ago, he couldn’t have pigeoned Esther to put an extra sugar packet in her tea. And here, now, she was talking to his spirit self as though he was physically walking right alongside her.

  Another tear spilled over her cheek. “How’m I gonna take him to special needs programs and soccer practice? Little boy figured out how to play soccer when he can’t even see the ball. Made the team! How’m I s’posed to tell him he can’t do that because Mama can’t take him to practice?”

  Josh said to her, “Listen. That kid is what’s kept you in that no-end night auditor job at the Hilton. Messing with all the appointments and the soccer practice by day so you have to work at night. It’s why you’ve spent years without sleep.”

  And Lin added, “It’s over. You can’t take care of him. You always knew it was too much.”

  Esther said, “I need a new car. If I could just get enough together to get a new car I could tell Mare to move along and it’d be Bo and me again.”

  “That’s right,” Lin said. “It’s impossible without a new car. That’s the only thing that’ll get you out of this.”

  Josh said, “Go on ahead and leave that old Buick on the side of the road and let the city of New Orleans have it.”

  Esther looked long at the Buick, then turned and gazed down the ragged shoulder.

  Lin said, “Go on, you can walk it.”

  Esther paused. She went to the trunk of the Buick and opened it. An umbrella, some tools. Bo’s scooter in there. And his books, too.

  Lin said, “Braille isn’t easy to come by. Maybe you should carry it with you.”

  Esther gathered up the books and the scooter and left behind the rest to die with the car. Now, loaded down, she began to walk.

  “I guess we walkin all the way to work like this,” Zenon said.

  Josh said, “It’s gotta be three or four miles, at least.”

  And Lin said, “In this heat.”

  Esther’s brow wrinkled. Oh, she was listening alright. Hadn’t listened to Lin in years, but look at her now. Zenon could see it on Esther’s face. How she recognized the feel of listening to a devil. She’d probably been so sure she’d become a different person.

  “I know you out here,” she said aloud. “You can just go on and get.”

  And then Esther paused as if waiting for the devils to obey.

  Lin slinked up good and close. This was her Esther. She knew this woman better than anyone else.

  Lin leaned over to Esther’s ear and whispered, “You remember what hurt the most? Remember? That Mama hadn’t lived to meet Bo.”

  Esther said not a word but her eyes filled afresh.

  They would have liked each other, her expression seemed to say.

  Lin said, “If only Mama had lived a little longer. When she died her daughter was a nothing but a junkie and a whore.”

  Zenon marveled at how random the thoughts seemed. Lin was just pushing all the familiar buttons at once. From this perspective, here in the briar, it sounded ridiculous and completely unrelated to the car breaking down. But look at Esther. Just look at her! She was listening alright. She wasn’t just listening, she was letting it stick.

  Esther said, “Just keep my son safe, dear God, that’s all I ask.”

  Zenon studied her. Speaking those words was a clear indication that Esther knew she was being whispered. And yet saying them also sounded a whole lot like giving up.

  They walked.

  * * *

  TWICE MORE, PEOPLE OFFERED Esther a ride. Twice more she refused. She ignored the buses, too. Kept marching with the devils. Sure, Zenon could make pigeons of anyone on a bus or any driver that picked her up, or hell, anyone on the road could swerve and hit her. Little lady had to know walking didn’t make that much difference. The effect was purely psychological. Made her feel like she was in control. Downright endearing, it was. She kept it up the whole way, carrying heavy blind kid books and that scooter in the boiling heat. Wasn’t gonna lay aside her load for nothing. And that was fine, just fine. She didn’t realize she was helping them along.

  When Esther finally showed up for work an hour later, she got in trouble for being late. And she showed up plumb wore out and blistered. And she hadn’t slept since the night of the levee.

  Better yet, Zenon noted, she’d talked herself into all stripes of worries. It took that slippery element right out of her, that residual glow from her son.

  No, they didn’t need to round up pigeons and sic them on Esther. By that point she was ready to turn on herself.

  twenty-three

  NEW ORLEANS, NOW

  “A LITTLE WALK, YES?” Severin said.

  “Alright,” Madeleine answered in her mind.

  And her room was no longer her room. She kept with her physical body for a moment, lingering in the warmth of Ethan’s caress. He’d already fallen asleep. She loved ending her day with him, that moment when they changed into bedclothes and slipped into the clean white sheets; they would talk or read or make love. And then they’d hold tight to one another while he drifted into sleep and she drifted into the bramble.

  He’d changed the belt for Esther’s car, but had since been unable to get her on the phone and no one was home this evening when he’d stopped by again. Madeleine watched his face as the division between moonlight and shadow grew deeper, the darkness blacker. In the briar, the light levels were always that of a full moon evening but without the moon itself.

  She lifted her gaze and saw that Jasmine was already disappearing behind curls of thorns. The walls were going. Above, the ceiling fan remained suspended in place but the ceiling itself was receding. Those kinds of surface planes, they didn’t exist in the bramble. Not walls, ground, ceilings, or even the illusion of sky stretched overhead. Planes belonged to the physical world. In the briar, there was no sky. No day or night. Only black, black trees, tall and thin and draped in thorns where the branches should be. The trees had no tops. They stretched forever. And the lightness between their ascent wasn’t sky, only silver fog, and it rolled endlessly like ocean waves.

  As she watched the ceiling plane go and the trees stretch to infinite heights, it occurred to her that this was her favorite part of going into the briar.

  And, strange that she should have a favorite part. The river devil’s world was a world of dread. Had been.

  The ceiling fan, now attached to nothing at all, spun round, round, round.

  It seemed the more time she spent in the briar, the more it came into focus. There were creatures in those woods—river devils of course, but other beasts, too. Brilliant winged and hooded reptiles the size of garden snakes that looked like Chinese dragons. They darted between the trees just beyond reach.

  And the gravity that held her tight to Ethan, it abandoned her. She was lifting away. Her physical self still lay with him, yes, but the other parts of her were rising, stepping, turning, following off with that rolling mist. The pull of it all was just too strong.

  She called for Zenon.

  * * *

  ZENON TESTED HER ON pigeon games. Madeleine was good at it but Zenon was masterful. Their ghosts walked the streets of New Orleans while their bodies lay in their respective beds. Madeleine manipulated rats and mice and sleeping pigeons. Zenon showed her how to manage two at a time. Together they made pigeons play leapfrog, rats hang by their clawed feet.

  This is my half brother, Madeleine thought. He’s
just like me.

  As much as she would ordinarily loathe any interaction with Zenon, in the briar she lost that sense of revulsion. All was intrigue. Fascination. Disconnection. It was probably why Zenon both wanted her company but would think nothing of killing her. Intrigue, fascination, disconnection.

  And beneath it all she hoped that if Zenon was working with her—training her, as he liked to call it—he was leaving Bo alone.

  It seemed strange. Both he and Chloe seemed so anxious to school Madeleine in the ways of the briar.

  When she returned to her body she almost felt a sense of loss. One problem with the briar was that it wasn’t always terrible. It had been, in the early days of Severin, but lately the river devil’s world was just a time span of wanderings or fascinations, often downright pleasant. Oh, it still held perils—devils, Zenon, ghastly reflections of the physical world—but not all the time. Also, the river devil’s world was plush, rich, and it sometimes invoked a kind of ecstasy. Coming back to reality was almost like giving up a whole spectrum of colors. There came a temptation to linger. Madeleine had to remind herself not to let down her guard.

  Her mind and spirit having returned to her body, she lay with Ethan, a tangle of limbs colored to softness in the moonlight. His skin was so light against hers. On the other side of the room, Jasmine lay curled in her daisy bed. Madeleine watched Ethan’s ribs rise and fall, rise and fall; Jasmine’s rose and fell, too, twice for every one of Ethan’s breaths.

  Madeleine knew she should sleep. But the funny thing about sleep, it refused to be forced.

  How to draw Zenon toward her, away from Bo? The very thought led her to imagine dozens of dangerous outcomes, each one ending in pain or getting herself or Bo killed, or both. No new ideas, only dread and fear. It was a perverse ecstasy, wallowing in the worries. The needless, needling worries.

  She remembered the creatures who’d descended upon her when Zenon had dragged her underwater—those dragonfly-like things that had stung her and heightened the panic.