Long Black Curl

by Alex Bledsoe

  “You shoulda brought me a camp chair,” Loretta said, as always picking the perfect time to break the spell of beauty and wonder.

  “You shoulda asked for one,” he said without looking at her.

  “I shouldn’t have to ask you for this shit, you should know it,” she shot back.

  He still didn’t look at her. The thought of punching her in that fat, whining face was so vivid that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to control himself. Instead he remained calm, and stoic, and everything that was, in his mind, appropriate to a future leader.

  She pulled on his arm. “Oh, Junior,” she said, her voice weak, “I think I’m having a contraction.…”

  He took as much of her considerable weight as he could on his arm. His aloofness vanished at once in his surge of concern. “Do we need to go get Bliss? Or Granny Rogen?”

  “No,” she sighed, “it’s passing. Just … a false alarm, I think.”

  “You okay, then?”

  “Yeah. I’m gonna go sit in the truck.”

  He held her hand tightly in his and kissed the top of her head. He hated himself for this weakness, but his sense of obligation, to both her and their baby, was something he couldn’t seem to shake. He’d have to work on that to be the ruthless leader he wanted to be.

  * * *

  Bronwyn walked over to the row of vehicles parked along the edge of the mountaintop, went around to the far side where she’d be reasonably out of sight, and leaned heavily against the fender of the nearest truck. The baby was kicking her a lot now, dancing to the music running through their mutual blood. It was almost as if the little bozo was delighted that Rockhouse was gone. And maybe so, Bronwyn thought. She had to admit, it didn’t bother her at all to imagine her daughter growing up in a Rockhouse-free world.

  “You okay?” a voice said.

  She looked up. Loretta Damo, just as pregnant, climbed out of the truck. She also leaned on the fender as they spoke.

  “Hey, Loretta,” Bronwyn said. “Yeah, I’m okay. You know how it is.”

  “I surely do,” she said. “What are you having?”

  “A girl. You?”

  “A boy. Be just as worthless as his father, I reckon.”

  “Maybe not,” Bronwyn said with a groan. She’d known Loretta all her life, and the woman was never happy about anything. Having a child probably wouldn’t change that. “How’s Junior handling it?”

  “Him? He’s always off working or hanging out with his friends or creeping around on one of his secret missions. I swear, you’d think he was damn James Bond, the way he acts sometimes. Did you know he thinks he can take over for Rockhouse?”

  “I’d heard that.”

  “Yeah,” she spat. “Let’s see him take care of his own family first, I say.”

  Bronwyn remembered the way Craig held her hair while she threw up with morning sickness, kneeling right there on the tile with her and stroking her back. She hadn’t wanted him there at first, but then she realized that nothing she could ever do—even vomiting like a woman getting over a three-day bender—would ever make him love her any less. The security of that was something she never expected to experience.

  “When are you due?” Loretta asked.

  “A month. Around the end of February. You?”

  “First week of March.”

  “Well, good luck.” Suddenly all Bronwyn wanted to do was be beside her husband. She pushed herself off the fender and walked—waddled, really—back toward the grave.

  * * *

  Nigel drank in the valley’s spectacular view. Snow gleamed off the bare ground and powdered the vast forest. Ahead rose a big, old house beside a small frozen lake. The house, unlike most of what he’d seen so far in Cloud County, was beautifully restored and tended. The driveway ended at a circle outside the garage.

  “What does this Bliss person do?” he asked.

  “She’s an EMT.”

  “I don’t know that term.”

  “Emergency Medical Technician. Paramedic.”

  “Their union must be quite influential. Or she married very well.”

  “What, this? Nah, she inherited all this. And she’ll never get married as long as she’s looking after Mandalay.”

  She parked and got out so quickly, Nigel had to rush to catch up. She stepped up to the door and pressed the bell. It rang inside the house; after a couple of minutes, she tried again.

  “It appears you were right,” Nigel said, looking around again at the amazing scenery. “No one’s home.”

  “Good,” Bo-Kate said, stepped back, and kicked the door twice until it flew open. “Break on through to the other side,” she said with a wry cackle.

  “Jesus!” Nigel exclaimed, looking around. The noise echoed back at them. By then Bo-Kate had strode into the house, and he rushed to follow. “Bo-Kate, I must register my disapproval.”

  “The stakes are high, Nigel,” she said as she looked into each darkened room. “People’s lives are at stake.” She paused and looked at him. “You likely want to remember that.”

  He knew that when her Southern accent came out so strongly, she was serious. He said nothing.

  * * *

  Bronwyn’s husband, Reverend Craig Chess of the Triple Springs Methodist Church, stood at the edge of the shallow hole in his best suit and holding his Bible. Craig was young, handsome, and absolutely committed to his calling. He’d been sent to his current assignment, a small dying rural church just across the Cloud County line, with the unspoken goal of drawing the Tufa into it. But he didn’t approach the mission the way so many others sent to his church had done: he didn’t proselytize, berate, or harangue. He simply made the decisions he thought Christ would make, helped those who needed it whatever their beliefs, and as a result, he slowly gained the Tufa’s trust. They still didn’t beat a path to his door on Sunday, but he’d found his wife Bronwyn, one of their respected First Daughters, through his work, and that made every bit of it worthwhile. Whatever he knew of the Tufa—and by this point, it was a lot—he understood that his part in today’s funeral service was as a guest, and not a full officiant. He would let Mandalay orchestrate things.

  When they first arrived, before the log had been closed and strapped shut, Bronwyn had wanted to see the old man a final time. But everyone, from her family all the way up to Mandalay, stepped in to block her.

  “What the hell is this?” she demanded.

  “A pregnant woman should never look at a corpse,” Chloe Hyatt said.

  “Oh, come on. I’ve seen plenty of corpses. I was in the army, remember? I served in the damn Gulf War.”

  “Maybe they’re right,” Craig said magnanimously. “This is a rather unique occasion, and that’s a very … special corpse.”

  She glared at him. “Don’t you start taking their side.”

  “I’m not taking anyone’s side.”

  “Do you believe in superstition, then?” she challenged.

  He smiled. “I believe that it’s important to listen to people who might know more than you do. Like your mama.”

  She tried to stay angry, but her giggle burst out despite her best efforts. “You smug bastard.”

  “All yours,” he said, and kissed her.

  “Yuck,” her brother Aiden said. “Isn’t that how you got knocked up in the first place?”

  Deacon smacked him on the back of the head. “You don’t want to walk home, smart-ass, you better apologize.”

  “Sorry, Brownyn,” the boy muttered, rubbing the back of his head.

  “All right, fine,” Bronwyn said. “I’ll avert my poor virgin eyes. But you all better swear the old bastard’s in there.”

  “He is,” Mandalay said. “I promise you. And he’ll stay in there.”

  Now Mandalay stood beside the coffin, waiting for the community to find its places in the circle around the grave. They divided naturally into the two Tufa groups, and the tension hummed through the air. There was a reason only the Pair-A-Dice roadhouse was neutral ground for all
Tufa to meet: No one trusted anyone if they weren’t either family or tribe, and preferably both.

  Her father and stepmother stood at the front of the crowd. It gave her a special warmth to know that, even though neither of them could ever truly understand her, they loved her enough to be constantly watching out for her. She felt especially tender toward Leshell, who had no blood ties to her at all except those that bound all the Tufa. To love someone so thoroughly, for no reason other than genuine affection, made Mandalay feel lucky beyond belief.

  Earlier, while the crowd gathered, the Oneys, part of Rockhouse’s people, approached the coffin. Their even dozen children, including two sets of twins and one of triplets, stood behind the parents. “We’d like the kids to see him,” patriarch Floyce Oney said.

  “Of course,” Mandalay said.

  Floyce Oney lifted the coffin lid, and his wife, Audra, urged the children toward it. “No, Mama, I don’t want to see no dead man,” one of the girls said.

  “You show some respect,” Floyce said firmly. “You go up and give your uncle Rockhouse a kiss, every one of you.”

  The Oney brood exchanged looks. Mandalay expected half of them to turn and flee, but none did. The oldest, a girl, knelt on the ground by the log and peered in at Rockhouse’s immobile face.

  “Good-bye, Uncle Rockhouse,” she said formally, then leaned down and kissed his dry, lifeless forehead.

  One by one the others did the same, until it came time for the youngest boy, six years old, to do it. He stopped about three feet away.

  “I ain’t gonna,” he said, and turned to run.

  Floyce caught his arm and yanked him to the coffin. “You sure as hell are.”

  “I don’t wanna kiss no dead person!” the boy almost shrieked. “That’s gross!”

  Floyce grabbed him by the hair on the back of his head and pushed him down toward Rockhouse.

  “Mr. Oney,” Mandalay said quietly, but in a way that always stopped people dead.

  Floyce looked up. “What?”

  “If the boy doesn’t want to do it, you shouldn’t make him. It won’t matter to Rockhouse, and it will matter to your son.”

  Floyce seemed about to argue the point, but Mandalay’s steady gaze shut him down. He released his son, who turned and ran toward the crowd.

  “I don’t like allowing him to be disrespectful,” Floyce said.

  “You and I have very different ideas of respect, Mr. Oney,” Mandalay said.

  * * *

  There was nothing unusual about Bliss Overbay’s house, at least not to Nigel. It was simple, and warm, and filled with the detail of long habitation. The air smelled of recently cooked food. He stood ready to run, in case a dog like the ones at Bo-Kate’s house appeared.

  “Help me look for the door to the cellar,” she said as she searched. “It’s got to be here somewhere.”

  “Is that where they keep the moonshine?”

  “That’s where they keep the most precious thing they have. And I want it.”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll see. You ever heard of the Fairy Flag of Dunvegan Castle?”

  “I have.”

  “There’s a similar relic here.”

  “Ah. Instead of a fairy flag, perhaps some fairy pantaloons?”

  She ignored his comment and continued to search. But they found no door that led down to a cellar. She tore into all the ground-floor closets, looking for hidden access behind clothes, musical instruments, and canned vegetables. She also grew angrier and angrier.

  Eventually she stood in the kitchen, staring around at the shiny surfaces and immaculate shelves, her face red from exertion and fury. “God damn it,” she said, speaking each syllable distinctly. “Where the fuck is it?”

  “Perhaps there is no cellar?”

  “Oh, it’s here. It’s just hidden. Well, fine, Miss Bliss. You want to play it that way, we will.” She rifled the kitchen drawers.

  “Now what are you looking for?”

  “This!” she said, holding up a box of matches. She sang, “Three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees.”

  He recognized the lyric from a Talking Heads song, and his eyes opened wide. “Burning down the house?”

  “Exactly.” She struck a match and held the flame to the little lace curtain over the sink window. It failed to catch, and the next three did as well. She stared at the curtain, which certainly looked flammable.

  “Perhaps,” Nigel offered, “if this place is so important, it’s protected by magic spells or some such.”

  Bo-Kate looked up sharply, then smiled. “Nigel, sometimes you’re a genius.” She struck a final match, and as she touched it to the lace, she sang:

  Fire on the mountain, run, boy, run,

  Sal, let me chew your rosin, son.…

  It caught at once. Leaving Nigel standing in surprise, she rushed from room to room, lighting everything that looked like it would burn while continuing to sing. Every fire alarm in the place was screaming at them, and air grew opaque with smoke.

  She tossed the matches aside and headed for the door. “Come on, we’re done here.”

  Nigel followed her outside. Somewhere a window shattered from the heat. They climbed into the SUV and spun gravel as they headed back toward the road. In the side-view mirror, Nigel saw smoke billow from an upstairs window.

  “Bo-Kate,” he said, feeling a bit sick. “What have we done?”

  “We didn’t start the fire,” she said happily.

  “Yes, we did!” he yelled in outrage. “We most certainly did!”

  “Nah, it was always burning,” she laughed. “Since the fucking world’s been turning.”

  “Stop that!” he practically shrieked. “What if someone was in there? We didn’t go upstairs to see if maybe someone was asleep, or—”

  “You stop it,” she snapped. “You sound like a panicky cheerleader. This is war, Nigel. And that was Fort Sumter.” When Nigel continued to stare, clearly not getting the reference, she added, “The first battle of the Civil War.”

  “Your Civil War, I assume. We’ve had many.”

  “Ours ended with one country under one flag, one leader, one song. And you know what? So will this one.”

  * * *

  At Emania Knob, others came up to say their final good-byes to Rockhouse, or just to make sure the old man was actually dead. Most of them were his people, and very few of them seemed truly sad. At most Tufa funerals, there were at least a couple of people who broke down in wailing sobs, and usually someone jumped in the grave with the deceased. But that didn’t happen here.

  Now all the good-byes had been said, and the coffin was sealed. When everyone was quiet and still around the grave, Mandalay said loudly, “I’ve asked Revered Chess to say the words to send Rockhouse on his way. Reverend Chess?”

  Craig stepped up and smiled. This was by far the biggest crowd he’d ever preached before, and although he had a prepared text, he abruptly second-guessed it. What was needed here was not comfort for the friends and family of the dead; no one, including Craig, would truly miss the old man. But the ceremony was important nonetheless, as a way for the whole community to put Rockhouse behind them once and for all.

  He opened his Bible to 1 Timothy, where his notes were tucked. Silently he prayed, Lord, don’t let me make a fool of myself in front of my wife and in-laws, and help me say the right thing for the right reasons. Then he began.

  “Almighty God,” Craig said, “into your hands we commend Rockhouse Hicks.” Usually this was followed by, “in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,” but in the case of a Tufa, especially one as despised and feared as this one, he didn’t know enough about what they really believed to include that. Some preachers might consider omitting mention of Jesus as a betrayal of his own faith, but for Craig, his ministry was about building bridges, not burning them.

  “This body we commit to the ground,” he continued. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. For we
brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out … except a song.”

  He saw Bronwyn look up sharply at this. It was an impulsive addition to his text, but he could tell by her expression that it was exactly the right thing to say.

  He closed his Bible and looked at Mandalay. “Would you care to lead us in a song?”

  Mandalay gazed across the clearing. In front of the crowd stood three women only she could see, all dressed in ways very different from anyone around them. There was Radella, and Scathac Scaith, and Layla Mae Hemlock: all now part of her, yet still existing as themselves in a contradiction every bit as deep and puzzling as the Christian trinity. Other women in the chain of her past milled about as well, all unseen by most, all waiting to see Rockhouse Hicks in the ground.

  “Mandalay?” Craig said again.

  Mandalay nodded and gave him a little smile of approval. She raised her chin and began:

  Of all the money that ever I had, I spent it in good company.

  And of all the harm that ever I’ve done, alas, was done to none but me.

  And all I’ve done for want of wit, to memory now I cannot recall.

  So fill me to the parting glass. Good night and joy be with you all.

  At first she was the only one singing, but by the end of the first verse, almost everyone joined in, including the specters of her former selves. The song was a traditional Irish good-bye, usually interpreted as the dead saying farewell to his friends. But on Emania Knob this day, it was a community saying a relieved good-bye to the one who’d brought them, formed them, and kept them together, while simultaneously making them miserable, frightened, and afraid.

  * * *

  When the ceremony ended, people couldn’t disperse fast enough. They tore the black coverings from their vehicle’s mirrors and spun dirt and gravel away from Emania Knob. In short order there were only a handful of people left: Mandalay, Bliss, Marshall Goins, and Snowy Rainfield. Marshall and Snowy held shovels, waiting to fill in the grave.

  Stoney Hicks, once Rockhouse’s favorite nephew, was also present. He had been the local John Mayer, seducing any girl at will and leaving them brokenhearted and often suicidal, until one girl finally struck back by stabbing him repeatedly in the groin. Whatever physical damage had been done was nothing compared to the psychological trauma of having his legendary dick hacked. It left him a shadow of his former self: now fat, his hair thinning, and needing one of those carts to get around the Walmart in Unicorn.