Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  Blue blushed. She’d just assumed. The woman could have been headed back up the coast, straight on up to Canada, and Blue knew she didn’t want to go there.

  “You gonna hitch your way anywhere, you gotta make sure your ride’s going the right way.”

  Once they’d worked things out, Blue had put her bag and the guitar in the cab and hopped in. Lou, the driver, had talked ever since.

  As they passed over the bridge and left Maine behind, Lou checked a packet of papers attached to her visor. “I’m going straight into Boston. You want that, or should I let you out before then?”

  Blue shrugged, then immediately regretted it. Wrong answer. The right one would have made it seem she had a real destination.

  Lou stayed silent for a minute. “Listen, kid. This is the deal. Sometimes when you’re hitching, you’re gonna meet people who think they know better than you. Some of them do. Some kids don’t have any sense at all. They leave homes where people love them and end up in places where people don’t give a fig for them.

  “Sometimes, though, the people who think they know better don’t. Some kids got real good reasons to leave a place behind, and some self-righteous fool could do them real damage by putting them right back in it.”

  Blue nodded, not knowing what else to do. She didn’t fit either category. Yes, she was leaving Lynne, and Lynne had loved her—or, at least, had given her a good home—but she could always go back. And she was moving toward Cass, so really she was leaving someone who loved her and going to someone who loved her. Total win.

  “Another group of folks won’t care a bit about where you’re going or why. They’ll give you a ride if it works for them, usually ’cause they’re bored and talking makes the miles go by. Some of ’em will be hoping you’ll give them something in exchange, if you get what I’m saying.”

  She waited until Blue nodded again before continuing. “And once in a while, if you’re really unlucky, you meet a monster. They’re out there, kid, and you won’t know it by looking at them. You gotta learn to trust that little alarm system that lives inside you, right? You know about those alarms? They’re what goes off when you’re a little kid and you see a dog that’s not quite right, and something in you tells you to walk away from it and hide behind your mama’s legs. You gotta keep that alarm sharp if you’re taking to the roads. When the monsters come calling, it’s the only thing there to keep you alive.”

  One more nod, this one a whole lot less certain. The thought popped into Blue’s head that Lou was one of the monsters, that maybe she was going to peel away her face and reveal one made of thorns and pus and teeth. The thought vanished just as fast. If Blue had any kind of alarm system at all, it couldn’t be less interested in Lou.

  “There’s one last group, the kind you hope you get. The people who know all about the good and the bad because they’ve been there themselves. They’re the kind who’ll be happy to give a lift to a kid with no voice and a guitar, happy to tell them that if they’re thinking of using their money to stay in a motel somewhere, they’re better off not going into Boston ’cause the prices are gonna be much higher. Got it?”

  Blue gave her a thumbs-up. Lou glanced in the rearview mirror and switched lanes. “Like I was saying, you gotta eat good if you want your body to last you long enough that you can see your grandkids, maybe even great-grandkids . . .”

  Lou taught Blue a few more things, too. For one: some motels that said they wouldn’t take cash would, as long as you offered them a deposit up front. A straightforward lesson, like the ones Mama had taught Blue and Cass once she knew she wouldn’t live.

  Not that Mama’d explained them that way. After she was gone, Blue realized the lessons had been part of a long good-bye that started one Sunday morning, both girls just out of bed—Cass wearing a shorty nightgown, Blue in flannels—and snuggled against Mama on the saggy couch in their latest apartment. Tish hadn’t been around for a few days, and the house felt emptier without her.

  “Here’s the thing, girls,” Mama’d begun. She often started that way, as if they’d been waiting to hear whatever she was about to share. It could be about anything—homework, or bees, or how to choose guitar strings. Those were sometimes the best times, listening, being close, or sometimes the worst. “I think maybe it’s time to stop with the moving for a while. Lynne has space in her house in Maine, and I miss her.”

  Cass had hissed a little through her teeth. There was something about moving that Cass loved. She was drawn toward instability the way magma’s drawn through cracks in the earth. Even at eleven, she had a quality that sucked people in, made the kids at every new school flock around her as if she were an emissary from the Land of Glamour. Her thoughts on settling down, in Maine or anywhere, were written clearly on her face.

  “Maine is boring.”

  “Maine is America’s Vacationland,” Mama said, grinning. “People save up all year just for the chance to go and stay for a week in the summer.”

  “On the ocean. Lynne lives in the woods. Nowhere.”

  Mama wrapped an arm around Blue then. “What about you, Miss Bluebird?”

  Blue wasn’t like Cass. Every new place came at her like a hurdle over a bar that kept rising. She didn’t want to try again. She wanted everything steady and still—places, people, things—and not to have to figure out how to fit in all over again.

  But she didn’t want Mama to feel no one was on her side, either. “Sure, I guess. Where will Tish stay?”

  A frown—thunder and doom—for just a moment. “Tish’s going her own way. This adventure’s ours. We’ll start by skipping school tomorrow to pack. Packing’s a skill as important as fractions, don’t you think?”

  She hadn’t told them then. Not a word about it until they were with Lynne, until there was nothing but forest to run to, and more arms to fence them in. The words came then, the ones no one could take back, about stages and options and the fact that lives could be cut down into a measure of months.

  Eight years ago, and she could still feel that day burn up the back of her throat as she lay on the bed in the room Lou had helped her find. “Listen, your money ain’t gonna go far if you keep staying in motels,” Lou’d said. “Shelters, you’re best staying out of them if you can. Each place you come to, you figure out the best option there. Hostels aren’t bad if you’re only staying a night or two. Don’t flash your money around, don’t ever leave it alone. Stay clear of any man that comes up to you all friendly in a bus station, train stop, that kind of stuff. When they come on all sweet, you know they’re trouble.”

  She’d paused, looked over the room one last time. “You take care of yourself, kid. If you run into trouble, just trust your gut.”

  She was halfway out the door when she turned back. “And remember, unshelled sunflower seeds. They keep you eating nice and slow.”

  The next morning, Blue started out walking along the road. A line from one of Mama’s songs kept running through her mind: November skies, they got me down, / Ain’t enough love left to keep me in this town.

  Only it wasn’t really one of Mama’s songs. Tish had written it, and while Mama sang it beautifully, Tish sang it true. Tish, with her spiky hair, her kohl-dark eyes, and her voice rougher than the rasp of a saw into dry wood. She’d played the fiddle, one half of Dry Gully. Her partnership with Mama had extended beyond the music. Things between them weren’t always easy, but they always were.

  Then she’d left with no explanation when they moved to Maine. Blue had thought it was just another fight and Tish would turn up after a week, a month. She didn’t. No cards. No calls, even after Mama had died.

  “It’s simple,” Cass had insisted when Blue asked why. “She was selfish. She found out Mama was sick, and she bailed. You just don’t remember her as well as I do.”

  “I do remember her. You’re just being mean,” she’d said. She remembered Tish laughing a lot with Mama. She remembered her drinking a lot, too. Maybe “selfish” was the right way to describe her.

&
nbsp; Ahead of her, a little white station wagon slowed to a stop, its blinker clicking double time. A man leaned out the driver’s side window. “Dude, need a ride?”

  Blue froze for a moment. The guy had a soft fuzz of beard around his mouth, and a few brown curls escaped from the Rasta cap he wore. A smile lit his face. He’d said “dude.” He thought she was a boy. With the barn coat and her hair tucked up in her watch cap, she supposed she did look like one. She took out her notebook and walked forward.

  I guess so.

  “Can’t talk?”

  She flipped back a page, circled laryngitis.

  “Bummer. I’m headed to Albany. Where you going?”

  The answer was in the way her boots had felt as she’d walked.

  West.

  “Hop in. You can fit the guitar in back. Just push stuff around.”

  She opened the hatch to find amps, a guitar case, wires and plugs. Her guitar just fit. Up front, the car smelled of pot and boy sweat. The black vinyl of the passenger seat was cut in a few places and burned in one or two more. A patchwork of silver duct tape crossed its surface. She didn’t recognize the music playing, but it was the sort of college jam band Teena would have loved.

  “Headed to a gig?”

  She held out the notebook and tapped it.

  “Right. I guess the talking’s up to me.” He didn’t look more than twenty-one or so. Around his left wrist he wore a braided bracelet, purple and gold.

  “I’m Jed. I’m headed to Albany. My band’s got a gig tonight. Mr. Chicken.”

  She gave him a look.

  “That’s the name of the band: Mr. Chicken. My girlfriend, Bet, she had a rooster as a kid and she called it Mr. Chicken. You know how it goes.”

  Not really. Teena’s family had had a revolving cast of roosters, and every single one ended up as dinner. If they were called anything, it was usually Evil Bastard, or Good-for-Nothing. Blue hadn’t understood the names until the day she saw Teena’s little brother come in from collecting eggs with blood running down his leg.

  Jed reached his hand into the crack between his seat and hers, pulled out a piece of green paper, and handed it to her. “Check it out. This is going to be our year. We’re really getting some traction, you know?”

  This she did know about. She knew all about traction and friction, and about what happened when one person thought they were gaining ground and one didn’t. She could remember the shouting: Tish getting loud, Mama getting low.

  The flyer boasted a black-and-white sketch of a rooster front and center, his long tail trailing around his feet like the train of a wedding dress. Whoever had drawn him had a good eye.

  She gave Jed a thumbs-up.

  “What kind of music do you play?” He clapped his hand over his mouth. “Shit, I’m no good at this. Tell you what, you just give me a signal when I guess right.”

  She nodded.

  “Okay, let’s see. I’m gonna guess . . . folk. Total folkie, right?”

  Blue shook her head. Pretending, that’s all she was doing. The guitar wasn’t hers, after all. Neither was the music. Mama and Cass, they were the ones who loved to play for people, who sounded polished and perfect. The only time she sounded good was when she sang with Cass, their voices finding harmonies as weird and wild and wonderful as a hermit thrush’s song.

  The guitar was Mama’s. The music was hers, too.

  “Not folk? Okay, well, you’re carrying acoustic. Some kind of old-timey country?”

  She shook her hand side to side.

  “Sort of like that? More country? Like bluegrass?”

  Again, her hand, only this time she drew her fingers in a little. Pulling, coaxing.

  “Something like bluegrass. How old are you again?” He shot her a look, did a double take. “Holy crap, you’re a girl!”

  She nodded, less interested in that than in the game.

  “If you’re a girl, you’re older than I thought. You can’t be the singer, not unless you’re heading away from a gig. Or you’re saving your voice.”

  Blue shook her head, trying to force something through her lips. Only the sound of air escaped.

  “Okay, not the singer. Not the backup to someone doing folk. Something like bluegrass, only not. Is it some weird mash-up kind of thing?”

  She clapped.

  He groaned. “So there’s no way in hell I’m going to get it?”

  She shook her head, smiled. Alt country, that was the category Dry Gully had been placed in back in their heyday, but it never really fit. The way Mama looked with her shaggy brown hair and silver bangles and peasant blouses made people want her to fit in “folk.” But Dry Gully was Tish, too; and Tish played her fiddle as if it were the line between herself and Armageddon. She wore black tees and black jeans and a silver skull on her middle finger. When she and Mama sang together, it wasn’t angelic, it was unholy.

  There wasn’t a lot available of Dry Gully online. A song here, a set there, mostly taped at summer festivals. Blue had watched them all over and over, always ending in the same place. Mama, front and center, Tish playing gentle, the melody of birdsong rising and falling.

  I’ve got a bluebird, sings by my door,

  I’ve got a bluebird, rides out every storm,

  Just a little bird, feathers, hope, and wings,

  Reminding me of how small the space

  Between life and loss can be.

  The color of the morning sky,

  The color of my baby’s eyes,

  Pauses in the lilac bush,

  While I drink my tea.

  “Know what I mean?”

  Jed’s voice took her by surprise. She brushed at her face and felt the dampness there.

  “I just think marketing is deadly to music. Bet’ll talk your ear off about it, if you come tonight. Real art just flows over everything. It doesn’t live in boxes.”

  Another thumbs-up. It sounded like Bet would have gotten along well with Tish.

  “Listen, I need something to eat. There’s a good co-op here. Come in and find something, too?”

  She nodded. Off the highway they went, along a wide main street edged with local stores and social services. Jed parked in a municipal lot on a side street and fed a quarter into the meter.

  He double-checked the locks on the doors. “Okay. Now that I have my eyes free, tell me your name.”

  She considered making something up in case the police came looking for her. It wasn’t likely—they hadn’t gone after Cass, after all.

  Blue Riley. Sapphire Blue 4 real. Weird mom.

  “Well, Sapphire Blue, let’s get something to eat.” He grinned at her and pointed toward the door.

  The co-op smelled like every other one she’d ever been in, like cumin and curry and chamomile. The bulk food bins by the door reminded Blue of Saturday afternoon grocery shopping with Mama and Tish, Tish complaining that Mama bought food for birds, not humans. This co-op was bigger than most, with a loft full of people eating lunch—dreadlocked mothers with nursing babies, bearded men in meandering conversations.

  It was all so familiar. She’d arrived in Maine knowing all about couscous and falafel and marinated tempeh. The first time she’d seen a dead deer hanging from a maple in a front yard, though, she’d been horrified. Teena had laughed when she said something about it.

  “Yeah, it’s not quite in season; but Jimmy Ballston usually looks the other way when it comes to Meggy’s pop. They need it, you know?”

  She hadn’t known. It had come as a total shock to discover that there were people who counted on those deer, along with everything else their families shot, grew, or scavenged from the land, to feed them through the year. She’d thought she knew what poor looked like, but she learned pretty quickly that there was more to it than what she’d seen in the cities and college towns Mama had set them down in.

  She wasn’t going to find venison on the co-op lunch board—just locally raised pork, free-range chicken, and winter greens from “extended season” farms. She settled f
or a cup of mushroom-barley soup and a roll studded with wheat berries.

  She was fumbling in her pocket when her turn came at the register. A faint scent—something sweet and bad and familiar—teased her nose. She looked up, into the pale blue eyes of the cashier. The woman’s long brown hair was separated into three braids and held away from her face with a red bandanna. A silver stud pierced her nose, silver rings garnished her fingers, and silver chains draped around her neck. She raised one eyebrow.

  The bills drifted from Blue’s hand to the floor as shock loosened her muscles. Her soup steamed on her tray, the plastic making a slight chattering sound as it shivered under her touch. She reached for her notebook.

  “No need.” The woman’s voice carried smoke in it. Tails and curls spun out along the air. “Remember this, Bluebird Riley: you have just three days with any person who knows your name. Three weeks if you keep your true self hidden. If you stay with anyone longer than that, you’ll invite suffering upon them.”

  Blue looked around her. No one seemed alarmed. Either they couldn’t hear the woman, or evil cashiers were part of the scene here. Blue wrote quickly.

  That’s not the deal. You didn’t say anything about that!!!

  The woman drew her finger over the words. The paper darkened, the edges curling up as she passed over it. Again Blue looked, and again she saw no reaction from the people around her. “Terms and restrictions, the fine print. Never accept a deal without knowing everything. Once you give away your voice, Bluebird, you give away your rights.” Her eyes flicked back, toward where Jed balanced an apple on a paper-wrapped sandwich. “Besides, a resourceful girl like you shouldn’t need others to do her work for her.”

  The noise of another tray against the metal counter behind her. “That’ll be $6.15, please.”

  Blue bent down and grabbed her money off the floor. She pulled out a ten and waited for her change. The woman smiled, dimples dotting her round cheeks. “Thanks so much, and you have a nice day.”