Bluegrass Symphony

by Lisa L. Hannett

  The machine had not broken her fall, she realized, but it had her neck.

  You hear me, girl? Pa’s voice seemed quieter now, his complaints not so frightening as they had been that morning. You’ll pay!

  The moths are nearly blinded by the light exuding from Cassie’s chest and her wide, round eyes. Night has returned but they can still see her, shining brighter than noon in midsummer. Her glow blazes.

  It beckons.

  Larvae finish gnawing a great hole in her dress; their job done, they roll down her ribs to the floor and sleep with tiny mouths aching. Now Cassie’s pale skin is exposed, beneath which the big cousins can sense her heart failing. They need to capture that radiance, to extract it—but which way is quickest? Through the eyes or the heart? The moths can never agree. Little cousins go for the nostrils, the ears: in their innocence, they believe these tunnels will provide a direct path to the girl’s whimpering core. Big cousins know better, but let the juniors roam as they will. Littlies won’t penetrate anywhere near fast enough: it’s up to the big ones to act.

  Cassie wants to shake her head, to clear her ears, to snort away busy nosefuls. The moths grieve for her even while they invade, even while they stab their sharp beaks into her flesh. Necessity urges them on. Their bites don’t hurt, can’t hurt; even so, they hope she will forgive them after they’ve unstitched her from the inside.

  Darkness doesn’t hinder them. The moths are brave and self-assured in all conditions; their senses as effective at night as in day. Cassie, on the other hand, isn’t faring as well as her guardians. Pa knows she’s afraid of the dark; she’s sure that’s why the shed’s only socket remains bulbless. Fear radiates from her pores, spreads in waves that the moths must negotiate while they work. It’s exhausting, digging through inches of muscle, blood and bone, exhuming the source of Cassie’s shining while fighting against her despair.

  Outside, an engine roars. For a minute, Cassie’s heart soars—it’s Isaac, come with bags packed and a tank full of gas, making true his promise to take her away. The pickup’s headlights glare through the shed’s high windows, throwing Cassie and her handmaidens into stark relief. But soon the lights waver, bob up and down with the weight of Pa’s bulk settling into the truck’s cab; they swerve to the left as he backs out of the drive. The blackness he leaves behind is complete, heavy now with silence and Isaac’s absence. Night is the loneliest time, has been these five years.

  Not so for the moths.

  Thrilled, they’re chewing, stabbing, digging with gusto; single-mindedly fulfilling their duty. Between mouthfuls they whisper Gather your courage, although they know Cassie can’t hear what they’re saying. They spear into her flesh, desperately searching for an edge, afraid she’s burning down too fast.

  Raising their voices, they call to their green-glowing cousins and ask for help. Phosphorescent glimmers float through the hole in the window. The dark room blinks with ephemeral fire, fluctuating like an aurora in winter: black, green, black in irregular pulses. Not squint-making bright but dazzling enough to let Cassie know they’re there.

  Unshed tears well in her eyes. The moths notice the change, and nod their approval. Their girl’s got a bit of the moth in her too, they reckon. Like them, she can’t resist a bit of shine, a bit of light to brighten up shady patches. So they’re doing their damnedest to fan the flame, to get her out before she’s lost to the shadows.

  Cassie sees the lightning bugs but mistakes them for fairies. Just like the ones in stories Ma told her as a girl: in the princess’s darkest hour, sparkling creatures come to magic her away, to tell her it was all a dream, to unite her with her handsome love. Ma always got misty-eyed when she recited those tales; said, in her experience, fairies ignored wild girls like them. Had enough wildness their own selves, she figured. A pure-hearted soul is what fey folk need, to balance out their mischief.

  Fairies dance near the ceiling then slowly descend, as though deliberating whether or not to get involved. Cassie traces their elliptical movements, urges them on. Eventually, they mingle with the beige angels floating above her head. Tiny green ladies and voluptuous red-speckled browns exchange kisses of greeting; then the fairies lower ornate lanterns to afford their cousins more light.

  I ain’t wild—I’m good. Ain’t I, ladies?

  The fairies congregate in the air above her chest. She can barely see them as they dip in and out of her ravaged ribcage, as they wink in and out of darkness.

  Ain’t I, Ma?

  They bob up and down, searching. Directing the brown angels to go deeper, to net their catch.

  Ain’t I, Isaac?

  The moths are coated in blood by the time they finally catch sight of the seam holding Cassie together. These threads don’t glare up at them, even though their blue and white light is radiant as first prairie snows. No, her stitches aren’t harsh. They’re incandescent.

  Dawn taps at the shed’s windows.

  So close to their goal, the moths are thrown into frenzy. The hum of their wings is deep, tribal; it sings back to the beginning of time. It calls to Cassie’s hidden self, lures her out, implores her to escape.

  She watches the carousel of angels and fairies spinning above her, their rhythmic movements lulling, reassuring. Calliope music plays just for her, sweet songs that remind her of Isaac. At last, she feels calm. Hopeful.

  Then she hears the crunch of tires in the drive, the quiet click of a vehicle’s door opening and closing. The nimble step of someone tiptoeing up to the shed.

  Isaac!

  The fire of her excitement burns brighter than any flame the moths have ever seen. They’re ecstatic, bathed in her joy. Her outline is clear to them now; she’s given them the extra grip they need. Pinching with beaks, legs, wings, the moths burrow one last time into Cassie’s core and pull.

  Tugging with irresistible power, they extract a gossamer copy of the immobile figure lying on the floor. The spectre slides out with a wet, sucking sound, speckling the girl’s body with a fine spray of crimson. Even now, Cassie’s ghostly face looks to the shed door, expectantly beautiful, waiting to see her lover. The moths manoeuvre her flexible silken limbs, twisting and turning her in the air as they vie for position on her back. Linking antennae and legs, they knit themselves together in droves, until Cassie’s new self is complete.

  Until she is lifted in a graceful arc toward the ceiling, wearing a set of living wings.

  Quilted together, the moths spread out behind her, rippling and muscular, until Cassie’s wingtips brush the beams more than a metre above her head. Cyclones of sawdust spin up from the ground when she flexes her back. She giggles as the breeze she creates tickles her arms and legs, as it lifts her hair like wild vines, as it knocks over paint tins and horses. She ascends slowly, luxuriating in the sensation of flight.

  Her gaze never leaves the door.

  She is rapt as the padlock clunks—You came for me—drops away—Isaac, I’m here!—and lands with a dull thump on the ground.

  Her translucent face freezes as morning spills across the shed’s threshold, bringing with it a rumpled, bloodshot-eyed Pa. His tired feet shuffle, his clothes reek from a night’s worth of bourbon. Their expressions are mirrors of horror and disbelief.

  Looking down, both father and daughter see the last thing either of them wanted.

  Down the Hollow

  Reverend told Tommo and Billy to keep digging ’til they shifted enough snow to reach dirt. They’ve been at it nigh on an hour now, but the going could be slower. The paddocks is slick with ice—never mind that the calendar’s just turned June—and the hollow’s filled right up to the brink. Most folk wouldn’t even know there’s a hell-deep gully here, if they didn’t grow up ’round these parts. Dísah used to dare me to climb into it all the time when we was kids. She swore up’n down that the roots poking out of its craggy sides was really fingers and petrified tongues; that the ground at its base
weren’t covered with grass but human bones. Piles and piles of skulls and spines and ribs, and God-knows what else. She said it were haunted, on account of them skeletons, and I can’t say I didn’t believe her. None of us kids kept our shit together long enough to make it past the first ledge, so there weren’t none of us fit to call her a liar.

  Dísah made it to the bottom, though. More times’n I can count. She’d scramble down them rough walls, easy as a possum, ’til she were well out of sight. One time, she were gone so long I knew she must’ve slipped and died; but just as I were set to run back home and fetch our Pa, she wriggled her skinny arse up over the ridge and flashed me a filthy smile. “Buck up, Jesse,” she said. “Ain’t no ghost going to get me.” In her hand, a smooth grey stone, no longer’n her middle finger. What she promised were a bone from someone’s big toe.

  Now Jed’s working the pick-axe, forcing his way to where none of us ain’t never been. His hat’s pushed high on his forehead, face red and dripping, scarf rimmed with a crust of frozen sweat and breath. He and the boys is got a ways to go before they reach bottom; their tools ain’t been used much for this type of work—shouldn’t really be used now. Regular spades ain’t built for this wrong season, regular ploughs won’t do neither, and regular seeds ain’t fit for sowing. Not yet.

  Only sure-fire way to fight summer snows is from the inside, so Reverend says. We gots to plant something deep in the earth’s belly; something so pure it’ll shame them white fields into melting. That’s why we’re here, me and my cousins, freezing our balls off when we should be sweltering, praying for cool rains to break the heat, to draw our crops up and keep the dust down. Instead, the three of them is chipping their way through twelve solid feet of last week’s blizzard. And I can’t do nothing more’n watch, standing on the lip of the crater they’re making, heart and knees buckling under the weight of my burden. Clenching my jaw. Struggling to keep the truth from spilling.

  Reverend’s plucking his steel guitar, picking nothing but minor chords. It’s a brittle music, too fragile to keep time with the ins and outs of the boys’ shovels, the heated rhythm of their grunting and cussing. His is hangman’s songs if ever I heard them. Notes twang, dangle in the air for no more’n a second. Then gravity pulls them down, snaps their necks, and drops them dead into the hollow. Ain’t no trees or cliffs for miles ’round for the sound to bounce off of—between each note there’s nothing but hush, smothered under a blanket of falling snow.

  Soon Reverend starts to sing. His voice is thinner than the cotton nightie my sister’s wearing, and bare as her arms. Whatever hymn it is, it ain’t one we sing at church. Half the time his pitch is so low I can’t make out the words, but I can tell by the look on his face that he probably never sang nothing more serious. What I do catch is all about gifts and rebirth and new life, and other stuff I only ever heard of in fireside yarns. Fat white flakes land on his eyelashes as he looks skywards; he blinks away the melt until a steady trickle runs down his cheeks. It almost looks like he’s crying.

  Real tears is burning the back of my throat. I swallow and cough in an effort to keep them in. Readjust the hold I got on Dísah, hoping if I keep my hands busy my mind won’t notice how fast things is happening. I lean back a bit, so as to take more of her weight against my chest, then shimmy my arms into a better position beneath the crook of her knees, and under her shoulders and back. Gently cradle her face against my collarbone. Rest my chin on the crown of her golden head. Try to stretch her flimsy skirt so it’ll cover more’n just her thighs. Shift her again; free one hand so I can brush away the snow that’s collecting on her shins and bare feet.

  “Ain’t going to get no deeper now, Rev,” Billy says. “Ground’s froze solid.”

  It can’t be time. My heart jackrabbits and my legs ache to do likewise. I look to Reverend, pray he’ll tell them to keep going, at least long enough so I can figure a way out of here; but he’s fixed on finishing his song and is ignoring the lot of us. The boys crawl out of the hole they dug, toss their tools down, stretch and flex their cramping hands. Tommo slips a flask of cheap whiskey out from inside his wool vest, takes a long swig then passes it on to Jed and Billy. They each of them warm the mouth of the tin flask with their breaths first, to keep their lips from sticking, then take turns sucking heat from the bottle. I don’t begrudge them the chance to rest before they gots to fill that hole back in again—but while their faces is growing rosy, my Dísah’s cold, cold skin’s turning fish-belly blue.

  I’m shivering so much I can’t tell if she’s moving at all no more. And though I rub her arms and legs as well as I can without dropping her, it don’t seem to help none.

  A freight train howls across the horizon, drowning out the final verse of Reverend’s song. When we was growing up, Dísah teased him for looking like a prairie wolf, on account of his long pointed nose, mongrel hair, and deep yellow eyes. And for a second, with his head tilted back like it is just now, and the wail of the train cutting through the quiet, I reckon she were right. Our Rev’s baying for God’s help. If I could, I’d scream right along with him, bellow ’til I’m as empty and breathless as my sister.

  But I know that won’t achieve nothing. So alls I do is sweep Dísah’s hair away from her eyes, kiss her ’til my tears leak out, and keep my mouth shut like I promised her.

  “I ain’t one to tread on ceremony, Rev,” Tommo says. “But if we gots to do this, can we get it done before you wind up needing to bury five souls in this here hollow instead of just one?”

  My eyes flick between Reverend, the boys, and Dísah. None of them meet my gaze. I back a pace or two away from them all, but soon forget how to move, how to breathe.

  I’m really going to lose her.

  “Right then, Jesse.” Reverend’s lost his coyote look. His head’s bowed as he walks towards me, taking one slow step after another as if he were coming down the aisle of his church. He’s slung his guitar over his back and is pulling a pair of thick mittens on as he approaches. Still not meeting my eyes.

  “I know you don’t want to be here, son. But Dísah picked you as her shepherd, and you got to live up to that. This is a proud moment for you and your kin, Jess; and you can rest assured every soul in town will know how you’ve carried yourself today. So come on now.” He pauses for a minute to give me time to control my blubbering. The seconds tick by, but I can’t stop. I’m choking on my tears, snorting them in, coughing them out. And they just keep coming. Harder and thicker until I think my body’s going to burst. Only thing keeping me together is holding Dísah close. Squeezing her so tight I’m surprised she don’t snap in two.

  Maybe if she does, they won’t think she were so perfect no more. They’ll see how I broke her, see the truth. Maybe then I can keep her.

  “Come on now, boy. Get ahold of yourself. We all know Dísah’s special—hell, that’s why she’s here! You don’t think I wouldn’t have brought fat Chelsea or that stupid cow Jeanette if I couldn’t have? Or one of Abe Pedlar’s cross-eyed daughters, or even that retarded little girl living near Miller’s Point? What’s her name? Jayla?” He shakes his head.

  “But that’s just it, son; I couldn’t choose any of them. Those girls get used more than the shitter at Pete’s Roadhouse. And, unless I’m wrong, I’ve just listed every young chickadee in town what’s got her bloods, apart from Dísah here. Now am I wrong?”

  All three of my traitor cousins shake their heads, lower their eyes. As if, between them, they ain’t left more than one load in each of them so-called shitters.

  “Everyone’s counting on us to do our part, Jess—oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t give me that look!” Reverend’s jaw snaps shut. Fog blows out his nostrils in bursts; he waits for it to clear before continuing. When he does, his words is strained.

  “She knows what she’s got herself into, you hear? This ain’t no sacrifice. This here is a gift—she came of her own fucking volition. And, far as I can tell, so did yo
u. You could’ve said no when she picked you, but you didn’t. You could’ve stayed back at the barn with your Pa, but you didn’t. So unless you’re keen to lose your cock to frostbite out here, I’d suggest we finish this. Now.”

  Only reason I came, I want to shout at him, is to change her goddamn mind.

  I turn away. Use my body as a shield between Reverend and Dísah, as if that’ll make him forget she’s here. Lift her up ’til my beard bristles against her temple, her body no heavier than our secret. Press my mouth to the frozen shell of her ear.

  “Let me tell them,” I whisper. “Please, babe. You shouldn’t be here.”

  The only answer she can muster is a rush of air, a wheezing out of her chest, then a rattling inhalation. Dísah never could cope with winter, owing to the rotten lungs her Ma birthed her with. I ain’t never seen her fight for breath as she is now, and I know if I don’t get her inside quick she won’t find no relief this side of life. She’s making such a racket I’m worried she hasn’t heard me, so again I say, “Please, Dísah. Please—“

  “Shhhhhhhhhh,” she whispers. “Buck up, babe.”

  She might’ve just winked at me, but it’s hard to tell. Her eyes is glazed and her movements all sluggish, in part from the cold, in part from the pills we swiped this morning for her comfort. Our Pa’s been hanging onto them ever since my Ma died two years back; said we’d never know when we might need them sort of drugs again. I ain’t so sure he had this particular use in mind.

  “I’ll say I forced you.” Dísah starts wriggling in my grasp. I hold her tighter, compel her to listen. “Just tell them you didn’t want to do it, that I made you. They can’t blame you for that, can they?”

  “Do you need me to take her, son? You’re looking a mite unsteady.” Reverend rests his hand on my shoulder and I flinch like it were a punch. In my distraction I let Dísah slide half to the ground; she’s pressed between my forearms, her tits and shoulder blades only things stopping her from fully slipping from my embrace. Her nightie snags on my coat sleeve and hikes up ’round her ribcage. I feel blood rushing hot to my face at the sight of her nakedness, and it just makes me cry harder.