South

by Frank Owen

  They reached the Weatherman’s shack just after dawn, damp in a haze around the nut tree glade that clung to the earth and rose waist-high, the kind you saw in olden-day cemeteries. It was like wading through watered-down milk.

  Felix Callahan had been busy. After he had seen Vida off, he had dragged Garrett’s body back inside the shack until he had the energy to decide what to do with him – and Walden too. There was no point in giving the dead boy up to the night dogs. They’d be back the next night and the next if he did, the long, low moans of not-quite-wolves rediscovering their heritage, baying to be fed. Then the snarling and the fighting over the flesh would start as they turned on each other, crazed with greed and bloodlust. A man deserved to sleep in peace and quiet.

  Now the Weatherman stood on the step, ready to meet his maker, his old handgun stuck in the back of his belt. He hadn’t worn it in years. It was good to be in clean clothes – freshly rinsed and almost dry. He waited for the messengers of his fate to materialize out of the carpet of fog. He hadn’t slept much, either. Blood still leaked between the floorboards and he’d had to keep a bucket below, an old copper spittoon, to catch the drips. Ping, ping, ping.

  The bodies above him were unsettling, for sure, but more so was the prospect of what would transpire in the morning. He had lain awake wondering whether Tye was still alive, and whether the rumors of his wind-trained bird were true. Felix felt a stab of envy at the idea. If he was alive, Tye would surely be the man leading the charge to find Garrett – and now Dyce and Vida too. Felix would be standing face to face with a rival he hadn’t spoken to in more than twelve years. The last words – Run, you fucker! – rang in his ears as clear as the day he heard them. Then the crack and whine of the bullet that lodged in the back of his leg; the terrified scream of Marigold as she bolted, her hooves tattooing the fright endlessly into his chest.

  Being a Callahan was a hard life, and not everyone was cut out for it. In the early days the clan had been built on honor, populated with self-appointed saviors and sheriffs: punishing the transgressors, weeding out those gone crazy – and those who were crazy from the start.

  When the diseases didn’t show any sign of slowing, just kept floating in on every wind so that things turned desperate, it got so that the Callahans would ride into town and the guilty would flee. Most of them died out in the open, caught by the wind or the wild creatures. The ones who stayed took a bullet for their sins.

  But the responsibility had never sat well with Felix. That kind of power turned constitutional, like an infection. It rotted a man from the inside out.

  It had ended one late afternoon when Tye sat down with Felix around a campfire, frying up quail eggs in a rusted skillet – never enough for the both of them – and told him he’d had a visit from a man from up north.

  ‘What do you mean “north”? Huntington?’

  ‘Further north.’

  ‘There ain’t nothing north beside the border.’

  They were quiet while Felix did the math.

  ‘North of the border?’

  Tye added a spoon of fat to the fry-up.

  ‘You shot him, right? ’Fore he opened his mouth.’

  ‘Thought to do, but I didn’t. He had some interesting things to say. A proposal.’

  ‘Then you shot him?’

  ‘You want to hear what he said?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘The North needs eyes down South, Felix. They asked us to be their eyes. Way I figure it is that they ask us or they ask someone else. Least if we’re doing it we get a say.’

  ‘A say? Fuck a say. It’s the fucking North! Renard’s soldiers? No damn Callahan is going to be party to that shit. Have you lost your fucking mind?’

  Tye watched as the eggs crisped around their edges, browning, their yolks turning pale.

  ‘Gonna need you to do some considering, Felix.’

  Felix stood up, drew his gun and aimed. Tye let go of the frying pan. It fell into the coals and hissed.

  ‘I’ve gone and done all the considering I’m going to. You’re talking to me like you made a deal already.’

  ‘You going to shoot me? Good old Felix Callahan, thinking with his rusty iron dick.’

  Felix held the barrel against Tye’s head in a show of bravery he did not feel.

  ‘Felix. Cousin. Either we’re part of this or we’re ruled by it. We don’t have no option.’

  ‘Godammit, McKenzie,’ he said, and turned away.

  ‘It’s Hawk-Eye.’

  Felix snorted. He went over to Marigold, real casual, hitched a boot in a stirrup, and hauled himself into the saddle. He knew that if he hurried or showed his nerves, Tye would be scrambling for his gun. Felix jabbed his horse in the ribs and she was away. Then the shot, purposely aimed to cripple him, not end his life. He didn’t limp just because he was old. There was history, there. Payback, a long time coming.

  Now Felix felt the weight of that same handgun stuffed down the back of his pants, loaded up with his last two bullets. He didn’t move as the Callahans gathered in an arc around the doorway of his shack. And Tye. Come to finish the job.

  Tye stepped forward, the rumored bird on his shoulder.

  ‘Felix. Still alive?’

  ‘Long time, Cousin. How’s the traitor’s life treating you?’

  Tye pretended to hold back a laugh. ‘We bumped into Gus last night.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Said he came by here last evening. Had a bit of an, an, altercation.’

  ‘Yeah. He tell you Walden got himself killed? Along with Bethie’s boyfriend, that Garrett.’

  ‘We’re after some loose ends, then. Any idea where they may be?’

  Felix pointed out past the almonds.

  ‘Saw them head out that way, but it was dark by then. Hard to tell for sure.’

  Tye motioned to Paul.

  ‘Go check inside.’

  Paul Callahan did as he was told, stepping past the unresisting Felix. As he went he knocked the Weatherman hard against the shoulder, just to show he could.

  ‘Be my guest,’ Felix said softly.

  He knew Paul would find Walden and Garrett lying side by side on the floorboards, dead as rusty doornails. He wasn’t going to move them none. They listened as Paul searched downstairs and found no one else. He reappeared, wiping his face.

  ‘Like he says.’

  ‘Then we’re wasting our time here.’ Tye’s voice was rough, all pretense at social engagement dropped. ‘Find their tracks and let’s get moving.’

  He looked hard at Felix, down all the long years of consanguinity. Felix ran a hand around his belt and grabbed hold of the handle of his gun, just in case. For a minute the two old men considered each other, two sides of the same familial coin.

  Tye turned and walked away but stopped and turned back, slow and determined.

  ‘You heard of this place, The Mouth?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  The Weatherman watched him walk off toward the trees, his raggedy men following. He did not let go of the gun until he was out of sight.

  20

  Whoever had followed them in the dark of the forest was gone by dawn, ectoplasm evaporated in the daylight air. The tracks simply stopped, vanished from the loamy skin of the mountain. Under Dyce’s damp arm Vida shivered to think about the strange man – and it was always a man, wasn’t it? – ambling beside them, listening to her grunts of effort, never once making a sound himself. Was it Stringbeard, drawn like a housefly to the odor of her exertion? Was he the shape she’d swung at? What had he been waiting for this time?

  Nope. It wasn’t the Lazarus daddy. He’d been lithe, but his movements weren’t calibrated properly, and that made him loud. He was jerky as a puppet, and the strings were pulled from the inside instead of out. He could not move undetected the way their shadow had slunk beside them.

  This was something else altogether. Vida didn’t know if there was some relief in that.

  She stopp
ed again and waited for Dyce to finish his retching and come back. They had acquired some queasy dance steps of their own. She would shuffle first and he would stagger in time. Yee-haw! Swing yo pardners by the hand!

  ‘Sorry.’ He was trying to wipe his mouth. She held up his shirttail to help.

  ‘Stop. “Sorry” gave up about two days ago. Let’s just agree you’re sorry and let the whole thing go. When you stop being sorry, you can say so.’

  Dyce tried to smile at her, and Vida caught a whiff of the acid reversal of his insides. Didn’t smell bad-sick, though. It was weird the way that some people did. They always had, to Vida. The woman at the till would open her mouth to say good morning and it was beyond halitosis, some ketonic upheaval that happened when the body began digesting itself – and that before the real diseases were written plain on the faces and bodies of everyone she met. She wondered if Dyce had ulcers yet.

  They realigned and went on, passing by the Weatherman’s last lonesome windsock. At the end of their slow ascent they rested on the rocky spine of the crest. Vida glanced back to check on the Callahans’ progress. She blinked. They were gone from beside the shack. She scanned the surrounding area and then gradually widened her search. Fuck! They were almost at the river. She recalled her night of dragging. It seemed like at least an hour before she’d reached the bank. These men had covered that ground in minutes!

  And worse. How had she not realized it? Vida looked with dismay at the shape in the foreground, the red and blue canvas a bold human sign in the grass: her pack. She had dropped it in her panic.

  She squinted down the slope. The pack looked to be lying upside down, its contents spilled in the dirt like a fat kid’s stocking at Christmas time: her shirt, the tin of herbs, her canteen – and, oh Lord, Ma’s remedy book.

  Fuck.

  Was there any way she could get back there for it? Lay Dyce on the wet grass and just scurry?

  She couldn’t. There wasn’t time. Every step forward she took with Dyce on her shoulder, the Callahans ran ten. Every step back would be twenty. As she calculated their chances, the last of the pursuers crossed the river and disappeared out of view into the forest below.

  ‘FUCK.’

  ‘What?’ Dyce’s voice was weak, but at least he was with her and showing an interest. He had not stopped shivering, his bare legs goosebumped.

  ‘Left my pack. I left my fucking pack.’

  ‘Well, shoot. How am I gonna do my lipstick now?’

  Vida shook her head. The book wasn’t just Ma’s – it was Ma. Her life in pages, her heritage brought over from Africa in the envelope of seeds. Right here, right now, at the top of this mountain, Vida had to make a choice.

  ‘You’re lucky you’re not your brother.’

  I’d leave Garrett in a heartbeat.

  ‘Shut up,’ she told herself.

  ‘Huh?’

  They turned, leaving the pack like a fallen soldier, a sadness deep in Vida, not just for the book but what it meant – everything she’d collected in her lonely life. She and that pack had been through hard times together: blood, sweat and tears – lots of those – soaked into its fibers like it was a living thing. Could only ever have taken it so far, she thought in consolation, imagining her soul pulling helplessly on the straps with invisible fingers, her withered body dead beside it. Can’t take it with you.

  Vida looked down over the crest into a valley, shallow and scrubby with bushes and rimmed with stands of birch.

  ‘Where’s the line?’

  ‘The line?’

  Vida had been expecting some physical delineation in the earth, like the places that are either side of a meridian – a couple of crosses, or branches laid end to end, at least. A fence. A sign, she thought. I just really need a sign. I’m so tired of doing everything on my own. Ancestor guys? Now would be a good time to show yourselves.

  Okay. That was a joke.

  Okay, it wasn’t. It was a prayer.

  Her hopes seemed silly now. Why would a ghost colony go to the effort of marking its borders? They had better things to do than town planning. They sure as fuck didn’t care where they started and where they stopped. Only outsiders did.

  She helped Dyce up again and they hung on one another. At least I know how it feels to be old even if I don’t get there, Vida thought. She arranged her feet side-on and tried to slide them on the fallen leaves, side to side, skiers slaloming between the scarred trunks of the white birches. The cripples shuffled by the bones of a deer, disconnected and pale, stuck in clumps of hair that looked human. She caught a flash of her own bones in that pile, bleached by sun, picked clean by larvae and the little black under-rock beetles and microscopic creatures, all hungry, all merciless.

  They straightened up as the ground leveled out. Dyce was walking better now, was more aware of where he was. He kept lifting his face up to the sun, as if he was charging some internal battery.

  ‘Where’s Garrett?’

  ‘He’s coming. Don’t you worry. Got to keep moving if you want to see him. Keep walking. So you help me out here, Allerdyce. There was only so much energy in that bag of locusts.’

  He made a face. Baby, Vida thought. This is nothing. If you only knew what you might still have to do!

  Vida had caught the grasshoppers about a month back. A swarm came through the way they did, a casual plague. Each passing season the swarm seemed a little smaller, come looking for the fields of corn that used to be out these parts. As a child she’d seen them in all their glory, a thunderstorm of ravenous insects flying light. They moved as one, with a numbing hum and the whine of rubbing chitin. The main force of the storm hit out near the horizon, so that only the stragglers came past the house – sitting on the screen doors or getting caught up in the washing. The mohair fibers of her stepdad’s blue sweater caught on their serrations like Velcro. Her mother spent days pulling them off in their constituent parts, like a biology lesson: head, thorax, abdomen. And then their tiny feet, stuck like burrs.

  When Vida saw the lonely cloud of locusts coming this time, she had grabbed a pillow from the sofa and run, pulling the stuffing out as she went, dropping it like snow and hoping the critters would choose to settle nearby. They had, on the other side of the hill behind the house. It was slim pickings compared to the bounty that she recalled, but she still managed to half-fill the bag – plucking them from the grass stalks until the sack was kicking.

  And this was treasure!

  I don’t care, she thought. I don’t. I’ll do whatever I have to. Don’t got time for niceties or shame. She shook her head and then looked back at the ridge they’d crossed over, waiting for the silhouettes of two dozen hats to appear against the morning sun – two dozen hats shielding two dozen heads filled up with hot Callahan hate. There was a big bird in the sky, wheeling overhead as if Dyce and Vida were already dead and turned to carrion.

  And there they came, jostling for the lead, jogging over the rocks, swarming like locusts. Didn’t they ever get tired? Maybe vengeance moved you faster. She could see now that they had pulled their masks up over their faces. It must be hot inside there, with the panting and the fear of contagion from the colony; their own hot breath bringing the risk of death with it. Suicide.

  Vida made out an arm, pointing. They’d seen her.

  ‘Come on, Dyce.’

  They limped together, as fast as they could. When she dared to look back again, most of them were hidden in the birch trees like some hideous party game. But up on the ridge four Callahans stood with their hands on their hips, watching her and not trying to hide it. The hidden halves of their faces made them seem only half-human, like the Klansmen her mama had told her about.

  Vida pushed on. She could hear the Callahans now, the thud of their boots, the crack of sticks underfoot – and Tye’s bullying and threats to the cowards who’d given up the chase. Five more men stopped at the edge of the trees, puffing. The rest continued, unrelenting.

  And then, thank God, Vida’s boot struck a rock in the d
irt before her, and she quit. There was a whole row of rocks, a line after all.

  Vida crossed over, careful not to disturb the arrangement, more precious than a funeral cairn.

  How much further do I need to go to be safe?

  The Callahans were close now, but thinning. They knew that they had lost this round. Who knew what might be circling in the aura of the place, what might be in the air? One old man had made it to the line of rocks and there he stopped, debating with himself. Was that the carrion bird on his arm? Vida watched as he drew his gun with his free hand.

  A shot rang out, so loud it made her wince.

  She pulled Dyce behind a low rock and lay flat on her back, panting and staring up at the sky, too late to see the blur of the passing bullet.

  ‘Jesus! Fuck!’

  ‘It was a warning shot, that’s all,’ she said. ‘He just wants to scare us.’

  ‘Well, it worked.’

  Vida reached for Dyce’s hand and held it.

  There were footsteps.

  He wouldn’t.

  Would he?

  Vida peered around the rock, keeping her face low, hidden in the grass. Tye Callahan was coming, bird on his arm, rifle raised. Walking straight for their rock.

  ‘I’ve come a long way for this.’ From behind the mask his voice was loud but dull, an old blade worn down with brutal use. Tye Callahan didn’t yell.

  Vida squeezed her eyes shut.

  But the voice had stopped.

  In the silence Vida heard the bird’s wings as it struggled into the air, and then the rifle thudding to the hard-packed boundary ground. Why didn’t he pick it up?

  She opened her eyes.

  Massed behind her was an army of raggedy soldiers, half-dead on their feet. They held guns and sticks and knives. Some could barely stand; others shivered despite the sun. They all had weeping skin, raw with blisters and rashes and warts. Vida let her eyes travel down to the missing fingers and the hands cramped into claws.

  ‘You going to leave the way you came, mister?’ said a dark man without hair. ‘Or you coming upstairs with us?’