by Lisa Hannett
Shoved up against the walls, a dozen or more unfinished fiddle shells collect dust in open cardboard boxes. The lot of ’em propped on their lower bouts, one leant against the other, fronts gaping like tiny unlidded coffins.
Oh, Wil, she sighs. Don’t give up.
Sperritt hears the mutter and smack of his sleep-talk before she slinks into their room. The quilt is twisted and bunched, the blankets dream-tossed, pillows crammed under the headboard. And knotted somewhere in the middle of that cotton chaos is Wil.
His hair’s a rats-nest, grown much longer than she remembers. Worry furrows deep lines into his brow. Each outward breath carries a hot gust of whiskey, each toss of his head turns out a sour sweat breeze. Sperritt goes to smooth the frown from his mouth, to cool the flush from his cheeks, but stops mid-reach.
Sperritt?
Mumbled so quiet, it’s hard to tell for sure.
Hush, she says after a minute, hardly making a dent as she perches on the edge of the mattress. Hush, she repeats, trying to think of a song to ease his troubles. A dose of good country spirit to rouse him.
She trills the first bar, then stiffens, thrown off-key when she sees the thing he’s built, the awful overdue thing he’s set up right there in their room, right there on her side of the bed. An accusation hewn out of maple and pine.
Oh, darlin, she whispers, nudging the cradle with her toe. Wincing as it rocks. What a sorry wail them empty woods wreak! Back and forth, the timber moans and cries and squeals like so many babies, like one in particular, a pink song Sperritt hadn’t wanted ’til it was lost.
What a dreadful lullaby, she thinks, kicking the thing again, letting it shriek, listening to that harmony of blame what she herself helped to shape.
I tried, she thinks, rocking, rocking. Didn’t I?
As the cradle whines, she hears her own voice echoed back twofold, threefold, sounding from every timber at a frightened, breathless pitch. As the cradle creaks, so do the bedsprings. Wil tosses and turns, sighs My baby, then buries his face where hers once rested. He reaches into the curtained darkness, he reaches, but don’t grab nothing but air.
Sperritt palms the cradle quiet so’s to hear him better. She waits for him to go on. In silence, she listens.
By Touch and By Glance
-- 1 --
Never were a less bloodthirsty slaughterman than Butcher.
Ever since he were first bearded, Butch has used his daddy’s saws and axes, his granddaddy’s bolt-gun and riverside abattoir--but he ain’t inherited none of their zeal for whetting blades, slicing, carving up joints. Long as she’s known him, Mag ain’t never seen him bash in bovine brains the way Butch Snr used to, ball-peen hammer in fist, splattering cow juice hither and yon. In fact, not once in her sixteen years as Butcher’s neighbour has Mag even seen the roller-doors on his killing-shed winched open, not even in mid-summer when the whole damn place reeks to high heaven and sure could use a good airing. Thing is, Butch ain’t keen on letting death-moans yawp across the valley, nor the sick rhythm of pumping hydraulics, the dirge of so many popping skulls. Everyone knows Butcher’s granddaddy enjoyed all of that, and worse. Much worse. But Butch hisself? Well, he don’t relish killing dumb beasts the way his forebears so obviously done. He simply does the job, quick and painless, keeping the endings quiet and to himself.
So when Butcher’s eyeballing the countless acres of Maberry’s pasture, the way is he is just now, when he’s sizing up the precious cattle grazing there, his expression is ever a grim one. Beyond the roadside fence, dozens of would-be steaks is dragging their hoofs on soft autumn ground, snorting away flies, twitching their tagged ears, and chomping their way closer to where Mag and Butch is both leaning up against the roadside fence. The herd’s at least a hundred head strong, a mixed bag of Black Angus and belted Oreo, one or two Charolais bulls to breed ruggedness into the calves, plus a handful of Hereford bessies forever drawing their rich owner’s praise.
My heifers is docile as they come, Maberry has bragged more’n once. Pretty as they get.
Propping her elbow atop the nearest fencepost, Mag whittles a splinter of ox skull with her jackknife and looks hard at old Maberry’s stock. She gauges the density of the beasts’ big shoulder blades, the length and girth of their thighs, the translucence of knee-balls and vertebrae. She tugs the brim of her hat low against the morning glare, so’s not to confuse it with that telltale glow she’s searching for, the light Gran taught her to see shining inside all them lumbering bodies. Squinting, she judges which of them walking carcasses might be lugging the best and brightest bones.
Reckon that one’ll do, Mag thinks, studying the closest black ’n’ white cow. Measuring the thing’s potential. Its peepers is a bit yellow, a bit small, not sweet and brown and fringed with cute lashes. Kinda rheumy, really, from the looks. Lowing, she turns. Her udders is empty, she’s knock-kneed, and winged critters pester the raw sores on her rump. This bessie sure ain’t nothing special, Mag thinks with a sly grin. She ain’t beautiful, nor shapely, nor tall. She ain’t quite awful, not yet. For now, she’s still perfectly bland.
Mag wonders how many pins this bland bessie’s bones will yield. Will they fix the hex-pattern she’s been quietly working these past few weeks? Will they finally finish it off?
Maybe, she thinks.
Hopefully.
“What about her?” she asks Butcher, casual-like. “Looks fit for the chopping block, that one does.”
Beside her, Butch grunts. Follows where the tip of her blade’s pointing. None of this livestock belongs to Butch, not a single steer. Most everything round here’s tied to the Maberrys, one way or another: the cattle what gits trucked off to market after Butch is done his bit; the bessie-bone pins Mag bespells to keep lasses like Penny-Jane, old Maberry’s precious daughter, glammed throughout pageant season. This here’s a field rich in portable wealth--and that’s the very best kind of owning, she reckons. A fortune that ain’t rooted in one place, but moves on many feet.
Money ain’t worth shit if it’s tied up in farms or mills or land. All them crops and houses and waterwheels, going nowheres, is easy pickings left out for any folk to thieve. Any banker to foreclose. Any stupid kid to burn down to nothing.
“Well,” she says. “Whatcha reckon?”
As always, when it comes to killing Mag waits on Butch’s decision. It’s only right. After all, it’s his trade what keeps food in their bellies. If it weren’t for Butcher’s inflated cent-per-pound rate for slaughtering and selling the flesh old Maberry bank-rolled--well, Mag don’t like to think on where she’d be without him. Ever since Gran passed, hardly a day goes by that she don’t answer the call of Butch’s lunch bell next door, ringing her over for some grub.
“Well?” Mag says again, lifting her chin at the two-toned Beltie. It’s Butcher’s choice, she knows, but that don’t mean she can’t help steer it. “Think she’s near ready?”
He takes another gander at the creature, then horks into the dust between his boots. “Give it time,” he says. “Bit lean yet.”
Mag smirks. She closes the jackknife, slips it into the back pocket of her coveralls. Swats a fly what’s been gitting in her ears ever since they crossed the cornfield an hour ago. As ever, Butch were the proverbial tortoise when it come to chopping cows for the plate. Never putting that bolt between their eyes a minute too soon, nor taking a head more’n what folk truly needed.
“Slow and steady,” Mag jokes, stopping short of calling him soft.
Watching him jog across the road toward home, she knows Butcher’s about as soft as a weathered ox. Strong-shouldered, bull-bellied, brown head streaked with gold and beard silver-curled, he leaps down into the grassy ditch on the highway’s far side and clambers easy over the field’s wooden fence. Huffing a bit, he lands, light on both feet, and glances back to make sure Mag’s set to follow.
Always looking out for her, is Butch.
Looking out for not at her, ain’t no question about that. No matter what them vic
ious biddies in town whispers. Butch is fond of her, sure enough, just as he were Granny Brawm once upon a time. Fond, but not fond. Ever grateful for the favours old Gerta done him, but never confusing that gratitude with loving. He had more’n enough wife waiting at home, more’n enough to keep him from wandering. So his friendliness with the Brawm women weren’t ever hot, but it sure as hell weren’t ever cold. Far as Mag knows theirs were a happy, practical arrangement.
A mutually beneficial situation, old Maberry with his fancy words might call it, before spouting some shit about securities and bonds.
One way or another, all folk agree, it won’t do no harm to stay on a conjure-woman’s good side.
Leaves scritch and shiver as the big man pushes through the corn, silk tassels waving as he passes by. This late in the year, the field is gold as the harvest-goddess’s braids, fair begging to be reaped. Overlooking the crop, a ragged crew of latter-day Saviours is nailed high on sturdy crosses. Part effigy, part offering, part guard, them scarecrows stand vigil until the combine finally chaws up the cornrows, swallowing ripe ears, spitting husks. Their faded Stetsons carry a whiff of cumin and salt--a preserving mix Butcher parboils their cow-skulls in before staking ’em up, hoping to extend their afterlife. Strips of rawhide and beef jerky dangle from scarecrow collars, offal and other tidbits is bagged round their middles to keep attacking black-beaks preoccupied, well-fed. Moving from one hay-man to the next, Butcher gives their posts a good shake. Straw spills from hessian sleeves, but he grunts approval as ropes, stakes, and wires hold fast.
Before the slaughterman gits too far infield, Mag trots across the road after him. Ain’t just her magicks what keeps her under the big man’s watch. Fact is, she thinks, ducking between splintered fence rails, Butch is hell-bent to keep all his gals safe and out of the public eye--not that Mag were his, not by blood, not like Daisy--and that were just fine by her. Finer’n fine.
Weren’t nothing she wanted more’n to be overlooked awhiles.
You’re special, Magnolia, Gran use to lie while twisting and pinning Mag’s awful red curls atop her head, fixing ’em like a wreath or a crown. Ain’t no-one else like you. No-one at all.
Talk about soft.
At least, that’s the image Gran conjured. Gerta were just a regular spinster surviving by her craft. Pins. Bones. Small trinkets and tisanes. Just a pudding of an old woman, gone wobbly after the blaze what destroyed her only daughter, her son-in-law, their home. Taking Mag in when she weren’t but three--What a burden for a widow like her, folk had said, never calling Gerta witch nor hag, never aloud anyway, though Gran somehow heard it, What a sacrifice!--ever fussing over her little darlin, saying how lucky Mag were to be here, how blessed. Only for Mag did Gran blunt the barbs on her tongue, freeing it of double meanings. Unlike them snarks in town who took special joy in observing how bright a spark Mag were, what fiery plaits she wore--that, and any other such puns about fire they could bleat--Gran talked direct to her sweet Magnolia, her poor orphan gal.
Lies slipped through the gaps in Gerta’s greying teeth, Mag reckons, easy as commonplace spells.
But that were the trick of staying family, weren’t it? Smiling around falsehoods. Repeating heartfelt untruths. Spreading ’em thick as lard if needs must, thinner’n rancid butter if not. Either way, expecting ’em to git swallowed whole. And as for them who’s doing the swallowing? Well. Amazing what folk can git use to. Much like Mag hardly notices the gusts of Butcher’s blood-yard wafting through the trees between their properties. A quick wrinkle of the nose, a short whiff, and poof--the stench dissipates and gits absorbed. Blending in with all them other, everyday rots.
-- 2 --
Ain’t much makeup left, but Daisy’s crafty. She knows how to stretch what she gots. Add a drop of canola oil to the foundation bottle, screw the lid back on, wrist-flick. Don’t use swabs to git at what’s swished up--waste of good paint, that is. Use the smoothest pad of the weakest finger, Mama use to say, standing at the tarnished mirror, back when she still had breath to fog its glass. Toby Tall or Ruby Ring. The others is too tough, no matter that they’s smaller, on account of ’em being stuck on the outsides. Believe you me, they’ll pull yer tendermost skin to ratshit. Middle finger it is, then. Cotton only soaks up what’s better smeared on Daisy’s cheeks, and down over the tight pink scars on her neck. When the tube of concealer’s run low, she snips the pinched end off, dips her pinkie in--amazing how much more can be got at that way. Buys her another week’s worth of coverage, maybe two if the weather’s cool, before Daisy gots to git inventive. Talc mixed with a bit of water makes for a half-decent substitute, but the colour ain’t quite right. Too white for her ruddy skin. Too clumpy. And sometimes the fake lavender scent makes her eyes water, even if she don’t pancake it on the way Mama use to before going on stage.
Sitting at a little TV table in front of the full-length mirror Pa hung for Mama’s primping, Daisy digs through a quilted bag full of plastic pots and heavy glass bottles, smiling at the clatter under her rummaging hands, the familiar music of beauty. Picking up a wonky pin--a reject Miss Maggie let her keep, one of many she said weren’t sufficient perfect for selling--she scrapes into a round compact, loosing a few precious chunks of finishing powder. Crushing the pale grit onto her jaw, she rubs downwards to dull the shine of old wounds. Tilting her head this way and that, she takes a gander at her handiwork. In the low kerosene light, her skin looks almost peaches ’n’ cream. Almost smooth.
Almost half so nice as Magnolia Brawm’s.
Needs a bit more colour, Daisy reckons. Brighter patches to draw attention up and away from the scorch-marks mottling her neck. Eye shadow, definitely. Liner and mascara’s also a must. But first--
As if reading her thoughts, Mama’s ghost plucks the fattest, softest brush from the bag. Ruffles its long ermine bristles with her blue nails. Daisy snatches the thing before it’s ruined, just like that pretty blush she’d been hoarding. She still ain’t sure what stirred the ghost so, why Mama were driven to grab the rose-tinted case right out from under Daisy’s applicator, why she fumbled it, why she let it smash on the pinewood floor.
Jealous, most like. There ain’t no amount of rose silk shimmer can bring life back to Mama’s dead-suet skin.
“Don’t y’all want me to do this?” Daisy whispers now. “Ain’t this what you want?”
Mama’s ghost rolls her eyes. Drifts a few paces back ’til her calves bump against the bed she use to sleep in. Sits on the patchwork quilt she won at her first pageant, the blue and white mariner’s compass skewing under her weight. Folding one long leg over the other, Mama smooths creases out of the ruffled nightgown she died in. Lifts two fingers to her lips. Draws on a cigarette only she can see, slits her gaze, and blows invisible smoke at her daughter.
“What,” Daisy asks, hesitating before crushing blush-chunks onto the apples of her cheeks. “Why you giving me that look?”
Shrug.
“Either tell me how to fix it, or keep them glares to yerself.” Daisy duck-faces, admires the effect on her features. Adds a touch of glimmer to accentuate the slight jut of her cheekbones. “Them head-shakes ain’t helping neither. Don’t you want me to git better at this?”
No response.
“Fake it ’til you make it,” Daisy continues, parroting Mama’s living voice. “If God don’t want us improving on His design, He wouldn’t of invented cosmetics. Ain’t that right?”
Mama’s ghost grinds out the cancer-stick what killed her, searches the pockets in her housecoat for another one. All the while avoiding Daisy’s eye.
“Ain’t no other way I’m gointa win myself the hell out of here, Mama,” Daisy says, fishing out her favourite blue palette. She tries closing one eyelid without squinting the other. “And you know it.”
Holding up a finger--wait, girl--Mama’s ghost reaches under the bed, pulls out a shoebox. Inside, there’s a satin sash or two she wore in her time. A tiara what’s lost its sparkle. Dried carnations and Queen Anne’s la
ce knotted in a tatter of ribbons. These she dumps on the bed, along with a pair of dangly earrings Daisy instantly covets. A gold-plated charm bracelet. Two rings grown too big once the sickness drained all the plump from her small hands.
Scraping her chair closer, Daisy cranes to see what other delights the box holds. What trinkets Mama’s ghost might share, what extra dazzle might help clinch a title. Miss Butchers Holler. And from there, Miss Athabaska County. After that, she’ll go All State.
Bet she’s gitting me a choker, Daisy thinks. Strings of pearls to cover the flaws--
Mama’s ghost smiles and pulls out a speckled brown feather. A falcon’s, maybe. A roadside hawk’s. Too big for a songbird, too small and drab for an eagle. The quill sharper’n any of Miss Maggie’s pins.
“What you saying, Mama? I’m bird-brained?” Daisy turns back to the mirror. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
If she could, Mama’s ghost would be sighing disappointment from them perfect nostrils of hers. Instead, she lets her shoulders rise and slump, sketching frustration. Nest, her reflection seems to say, tucking the feather under the blanket, patting it in place. Or was that rest? Her mouth moves too quick for Daisy to decipher the words. Give it a rest? Give it yer best?
“Slow down,” she says.
Purpled lips press shut. A grey hand flutters as if to say, Git on outta here. As if to say fly.
“I’m trying,” Daisy mutters, plunging into the bag for mascara. She unscrews the lid, withdraws the coiled wand. After spitting into the tube, she jams the brush back in, out, in, out, ’til the bristles is wet. “You of all people should git that.”
Quickest way out of Butchers Holler is on the pageant circuit. Bird-brained or otherwise, most gals learn that fact early and fast. Most gals is keen to take advantage. Most gals, Daisy thinks, slicking layer upon layer of black onto her white-blonde lashes. But not Miss Maggie.