by Rhodi Hawk
“And how do we manage that?” Gil said. He had a pinch to his lip, and he looked like he was about to collapse from pure nerves.
“We walk!”
“Which? Our bodies or our minds? Remember last night? All those people trying to get at us? It’ll be like that, only worse, because we’re here in the briar and our stupid bodies are off on some dang daisy walk!”
Trigger took off his hat and rubbed his head. Patrice let loose her breath. Because Gil had a point—the physical world was holding solid for them only in glimpses. They couldn’t traverse the distance because the briar held their ghosts, and their bodies would be walking blind and mad. Who knew what sorts of criminals might be lurking along that road? The children couldn’t go after Rosie, and they couldn’t travel to Ferrar. They were trapped.
The briar mist had curled away any sense of direct sunlight. Time was so difficult to track that there was no telling whether minutes had passed since Patrice and Rosie had been singing in the street—and it really only felt like ten minutes—or it might have been hours. Nighttime or day? There was only briar light now. River devils and other creatures milled about. The city had receded so far behind the thorns and the black pines and cypress and the mist, and that relentless river’s flow—it seemed like the once-vibrant New Orleans boulevard had become like a long-abandoned antebellum home down a wooded lane.
Gil said, “I got it.”
“What?”
“We’ll be missionaries again.”
Trigger lifted his head.
“I don’t understand,” Patrice said.
Gil flung his arm toward the street. “We’ll just do like in the rail yard. Hold the Bible and sing Christian songs the entire way to the bridge. They’re all afraid of church people round here.”
“You make it sound like superstition!” Patrice said.
Trig and Gil said nothing.
Patrice said, “Using those songs to fool people into thinking we’re doing the Lord’s work, it’s akin to using His name in vain.”
“Aw, come on, Treese. It is the Lord’s work. Think of it like sayin a prayer, over and over. Put your heart into it and God won’t pay mind to a little lagniappe.”
Trigger said, “We might as well try. People see our bodies walkin the road, they’ll leave us alone.”
“But our bodies will just get lost.” Patrice said.
Gil shook his head. “We only have to concentrate on both worlds enough to keep our bodies following along the road. Don’t strain too hard beyond that. We can move along a road, at least.”
How could she argue? With Rosie snatched from them and Ferrar the only one who could help, she would do anything to get to that bridge.
* * *
PATRICE RECALLED A LEGEND told about a family friend, Jacob Chapman, who’d been mauled by an alligator long ago at Terrefleurs, and as a result his hand had had to be amputated. The country doctor hadn’t been carrying any anesthetic in his bag. And so, legend had it that Jacob Chapman and Papa liquored themselves up and sang through the entire procedure.
This supposedly happened before Patrice was born, and Patrice wasn’t sure she believed it. How could you keep singing during a thing like that?
But there was something to it. There was the off-handed kind of singing like when Patrice was trying to make chores seem less odious. And then there was the kind of singing where she was careful with every note, the quality of tone, exaggerating the formation of her lips, and taking deliberate shape of a sustained intonation that ended in vibrato. It didn’t matter whether she was a good singer or not—it was the consciousness of the act. This was what transformed singing into a peaceful, powerful experience.
Maybe not enough to distract a man from having his gangrenous hand sawn off.
But to sing in the right way was to engage in the kind of place that Ferrar had once shown her. A pure, still lake. It dissipated chaos. Patrice was able to see beyond worry—a river devil’s enterprise—and beyond her thoughts and the infinite distractions.
The three children walked for miles, singing hymns and holding Francois’ Bible, which was now their only possession aside from the clothes they wore.
forty-one
NEW ORLEANS, 1927
IT WAS PROBABLY NIGHT. Patrice guessed this because when she forced her concentration on the physical world she could smell campfire smoke. To concentrate in this way was like trying to swim while very, very tired. A few moments and then you had to stop and take a breath.
At the bridge site, near where the ferry ran, Patrice smoothed her hand over a post that held fresh carvings. They looked similar to those that she’d often seen in the briar.
Papa?
“It’s how they find their way out on the road,” Trigger said.
Patrice looked again at the symbol. An open rectangle. She wondered what it meant, but then realized that Trig had said “they,” and she looked toward the clearing where the smoke originated. A smattering of camps with men cooking hoecake and soup.
“Ferrar,” she said.
Because he was probably out there among them. This thought was confirmed by the way the river devils looked: the tension, the predatory crouch. Patrice felt a coupled sense of thrill and dread.
It occurred to her how shocking she must look. She stepped out of her shoes and turned toward the ferry dock, splashing into the river.
“Treesey, hold up!” Gil said.
But he and Trig were already stepping out of their own shoes and following after her. The water brought her physical senses to life—the smell of mud and reeds, the feel of the Mississippi River crushing against her skin. She washed her face as best she could with bare hands, and then she rubbed herself from her neck down her arms, at her underarms, around her breasts and down her belly, between her legs, down her legs, finishing with her feet. She tilted her face toward the sky and scrubbed her hair in backward sweeps that both cleaned and smoothed. And she bobbed above and below the surface, in and out of the briar, in and out of the physical world. Until she saw Ferrar.
He was up on the dock. She recognized him in an instant though he was just a wavering shadow that might be a dream. But he came closer and in doing so grew larger, went down on his knee, reached straight toward her.
She reached up. They clasped their hands together and held, neither of them saying a word.
In the briar light, that lumen quality of his made him look like an angel, even with that scarred eye. It felt like he had one eye looking at her and another that was made of stars. His expression showed surprise and delight. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated.
She took a breath to speak but then stopped. Because anything she said would break this spell. It felt like something had opened up all around her. As though a light had poured through the lens of her body to the lens of her mind and converged to illuminate the spirit. Neither briar nor physical world. Just a vast, eternal something that she couldn’t define.
“Hello there, old socks!” Trigger called.
It brought Patrice back to her surroundings. Or at least closer to them. She smiled at Ferrar and he grinned back.
Gil said, “We came a long way to find you!”
But Ferrar never took his gaze from Patrice, and never loosened his grip. He pulled her up from the Mississippi’s waters and onto the ferry dock.
* * *
HE FED THEM SOMETHING he called “bullets” but were actually just beans. Patrice kept stealing glances at him: black skin like hers, blood-shined eye, the crisscross over the throat. His appearance had frightened her when she’d first met him. Now it made him seem invincible. Everything about him was fascinating. She even loved the way he spoke: a French accent—not so thick as their mother’s—laced with a soft, familiar, River Road twang.
The children ate every last bite and Patrice was mortified when Ferrar solicited some of the men from other campfires for more food. Despite the fact that they were camping by the river, no one along these banks seemed desperate. They were simply here
to work where wages were competitive. Every day, farmers and foremen from three separate parishes crossed on the ferry or came up from the road to seek labor.
There were river devils everywhere. Everywhere.
Patrice tried to ignore them but they were agitated by Ferrar’s presence. It took all of Patrice’s concentration just to stay in conversation with Ferrar. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sustain for long. And so she poured out their story, told him all about Maman’s return and Rosie’s disappearance. She told him about the stranger Trig had killed.
“What did he look like?” Ferrar asked.
Patrice told him. She remembered the blood on the man’s lips and the gurgling he’d made when Trig crushed his windpipe with a stool. But mostly she remembered that hair. Not as she saw him in the fruit cellar. She remembered the patch that showed from beneath the horse blanket when Gil had opened the barn door. The brown hair tinged with red and gold in a single ray of sunlight.
Ferrar said, “I know him. Had to run hooch with him a few times. He’s the one who did the collecting when folks owed your mother money.”
The children looked at one another. They’d already suspected that the stranger had worked for Maman.
Ferrar said, “Name’s Bruce Dempsey. I never liked to turn my back to him. They called him The Brute.”
“But why would he have come for us?” Gil asked.
“To bring you to your mother, I imagine. Alls I can say beyond that is if he was the one comin for you it wasn’t gonna be for kindness.”
They were quiet for a moment. It sounded like the Mississippi was rushing past the banks but it had to be the wind in the trees making that shushing noise. The Mississippi usually went easy. Easy.
Easy, Patrice thought, because the river devils were whispering at their hosts. The devils were much more vivid than the humans, who were just shadows. Why was it so difficult to keep the briar away? She was concentrating so hard that surely her physical body was in a sweat.
Trigger cocked his head and squinted upriver.
Patrice said, “We came looking for you because we didn’t know where else to go. But, our being here makes it dangerous for you.”
“I’ll do whatever I can to help y’all.”
“We’ve got to get Rosie back.”
Gil and Trig were already slipping, the way their gazes kept darting from one point to the next. Patrice tried her best to listen and look past the briar to Ferrar in the physical world.
And she was aware that his knee was touching hers. Such a small thing. A circle of skin no larger than a Mercury dime. She was still wearing that idiotic dress of Rosie’s. She looked at Ferrar, and he smiled and lowered his gaze to the fire, going shy.
She said, “We’ve got to hide. At least until we get our wits back. Then we can find her and go get her. I never wanted my brothers to improve their pigeon games but I’ve got to work with them if we’re ever going to find Rosie.”
“Why didn’t you? Why wouldn’t you want them to improve their pigeon games?”
Patrice frowned, and the briar surged around her. She resisted the urge to fight it and instead focused on Ferrar’s face and the firelight, letting the briar come forth and then recede again of its own. There, she saw him again in clear focus.
She hadn’t answered his question, but he said, “How do you know these things aren’t from God?”
She was surprised to hear it. “You of all people should know. The day we met you we nearly killed you. Because Maman was trying to make a point.”
“But you didn’t kill me. You used the skill instead to drive your mother out.”
“Treesey,” Gil said, but his voice was so soft it barely registered.
Ferrar said, “What can I do now, tonight, to help you?”
“We need to find someplace safe to wait out this time in the briar. And then we must go get my sister back.”
Ferrar was thoughtful. Patrice knew she couldn’t keep this up much longer. She put her hand to her throat, regretting the amount of time it had taken her to get her story out.
She looked at Ferrar. Just tell me someplace where we can go!
Ferrar said, “Bayou Bouillon.”
She closed her eyes and relaxed a hitch.
He said, “You remember.”
“Mm, you told me about Bayou Bouillon once before. Good place to hide.”
“The best, but…”
“Can you get us there?”
Ferrar’s face had taken on a strange expression. “You sure you haven’t been there? It’s so full of ghosts.”
“Patrice!” Gil said.
He and Trigger both were on their feet now, staring toward another camp.
Patrice said, “Please, how do we get there? We’re running out of time.”
“It’s far. The only way to get there is by boat. I have only shoes.” He pointed at the thick leather soles.
But Patrice rose to her feet with her fists balled. The briar was pulling her down to it. Gil was calling her. Trig.
She said, “Ferrar, just show me where this Bayou Bouillon is.”
He frowned and rose to join her. “About fifty miles that way. But you can’t get to it by—”
“Think of this place. As though you’re there!”
He looked confused, but he listened. She knew because she saw Bayou Bouillon now inside him.
Oh, this briar! Easier now to search inside a man’s heart than to say hello.
A very secluded village where people existed outside of any law. Bayou Bouillon. Full of ghosts. This was a place where the water boiled cold. She saw the gentlest, finest bubbles, the swirling eddies. A boardwalk and floating one-room shanties with roofs made of accordion tin.
Was she holding Ferrar’s hands? She wished he could pull her through to him the way he’d pulled her up from the water beneath the ferry dock. She strove for that one last glimpse of him and of the physical world. She just couldn’t force her way through again. Her focus collapsed.
Too soon. Far too soon. Because the river devils, each and every one of them, had been occupying themselves with the men of the camps. Whispering. All this time, whispering to all those men.
Gil looked at Patrice and was shaking his head. “We shouldn’t have come. We’re going to get him killed.”
The devils hated Ferrar. They saw to it that their hosts hated him, too. Wished him dead. Patrice remembered how Rosie’s river devil had hated him. Ferrar was a lumen. He opposed chaos just by existing.
“Patrice, you hear it?” Gil said.
Yes. Patrice turned her ear toward the river. Francois.
Every night.
He sang out one line and went quiet.
She listened for him. Listened so carefully she could hear the heartbeat pounding in her own body.
When the sun goes in.
There, Francois sang out again. Just the one line.
Patrice looked toward the Mississippi, gone now, and in its place only the shadow river that coursed through the briar. She saw the raft. It drifted toward them.
Trigger sprang toward the riverbanks.
“It’s no use!” Patrice called after him.
A hand on her physical body. Someone was clutching her wrist.
She said, “Ferrar, is that you? If you can hear me, look around you. They hate you. They want you dead. I’m so sorry.”
The river devils were hesitating. Patrice had seen them react to Ferrar before. She knew how his lumen quality could replicate itself inside of her and the others, and dispel whatever whispers or sickness the river devils tried to spread. She opened her heart and waited for that sense of peace to come.
Every night.
Trigger was now splashing into the river. “Francois! Ho there, Francois! Hear me?”
Patrice dared a look at the raft where she knew she’d see that awful vulture. She wanted the thing to look at her. She just wished he’d stop looking at Francois.
When the sun goes in.
The dead stranger—Bru
ce Dempsey, as Ferrar had called him—still lay in a heap of blankets now torn to rags by the vulture.
The river devils erupted into fury all around them. Those who were wanderers were in the trees. Those with human hosts were shoving, goading. And she knew what they wanted. They would keep at their hosts until someone attacked Ferrar.
I hang down my head.
The vulture leaned over Francois. He finally stopped singing and simply wept. He did not lift a hand against the thing. He probably couldn’t. Trigger was swimming toward the raft.
Something else. The creature that looked like it was covered in tar. She sensed it before she saw it. She turned. It was folding its horrible, filthy arms around Gil.
“No!”
Gil bucked and tried to wrench away from the thing. But it had him. Was dragging him down into the slick of oil or tar or whatever muck it had come from. It had the feel of Maman in it somehow. Like she was spying. This was her crude, brute magic, but her beast had taken Rosie and now it had Gil.
“Gil!”
But he was gone already.
Just like that.
Gone.
Patrice dug her nails into her scalp and screamed.
Thornflies were swarming her. They came up from the river, that dark, coursing bramble flow. Trigger had reached the raft and was looking back. He probably didn’t even know his twin had been taken. Patrice had no idea what was happening to Ferrar somewhere in the physical world. With all those river devils focusing their fury on him he could very well be dead.
The vulture raised its head from Francois and turned its gaze to Patrice.
Let the river swallow you! she called to it from within her mind.
She stepped toward it. Someone was pulling her physical body backward. Ferrar? Or some other fool who’d been listening to river devil whispers?
Or the creature made of tar.
The river formed a wake that rolled down its center instead of outward toward the shore.
Yes. Let the river swallow us all.
The river’s wake rolled on itself and then folded again, turning in a circle. The raft turned. The water coursed afresh with a higher flow. She felt her physical body kicking, but whoever had her was not letting go. Not the tar creature. Someone in the physical world. The tar creature was long gone now, and so was Gil.