Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  Blue followed Jill’s gaze through the window, to where Bet sat next to Meena. Jed was talking, and as Bet watched him, something close to despair flashed across her face, to be replaced with a smile as soon as he turned toward her.

  Did Jed not see the hurt, or did he not care? Had he even stopped to ask Bet how she felt about it?

  Cass had done the same thing. I’m not making the same mistake Mama made. I’ve got talent, and I’ll do whatever I need to make people see it, her note had said. Including, apparently, leaving Blue behind, giving her nothing but four phone calls to hold on to.

  “Come on.” Jill took Blue’s hand and led her through the garden. Her boots kept her feet dry and warm as they passed through the remnants of the flower beds, but her feet ached with something akin to hunger. “You’ll like this.”

  At the far end of the garden was what she had assumed was a shed. Up close, she realized it was much too fancy to store tools in. The front door had doves painted on it, and it opened into a room lit with the soft glow of paper lanterns. Jill made her way to the back wall, where she tugged a chain and lit a silver floor lamp. It shone on a red velvet couch with carved wooden legs. The walls and floor were dark-paneled. In one corner stood a stereo system; one whole wall was filled with shelves of old records.

  “Bet’s aunt used to review music. She’s got a ton of great stuff, stuff I’d never heard of until we started coming here. Lie on the couch and close your eyes. I’ll pick something out.”

  Blue sat down, unlaced her boots, and slipped them off. Exposed, her feet felt normal, same old skin and toes. She wiggled them as she lay back, hands behind her head, and closed her eyes.

  A hiss filled the room, the soft sizzle of a record in the seconds before the music started. It was followed by the first few bars from a guitar she knew far too well. The fiddle trailed behind, melancholy, her mother’s voice matching its mournful timbre.

  This road I know far too well,

  The one between your door and mine,

  More holes than tar, more lost than found,

  Avenue A through my private hell.

  Tish’s words, her mother’s music. She remembered the smell of Tish now—cigarettes and leather and peppermint and whiskey. A tattoo of vines and thorns circling her wrist. Another of a blue eye at the base of her neck. Her raspy voice in response to Mama: “For fuck’s sake, Clary, you gotta want more than this.”

  “What do you think?” Jill’s long hair tickled Blue’s nose as she leaned over her. She smelled sweet, like hay and fruit. “Good stuff, huh?”

  Blue opened her eyes. Patterns of dark and light shimmered, the night gentle against the windows as the world started its slow shift toward morning. She took out her notebook, thought for a moment. It’s my mom, she should say. She and Tish made that record, and I thought it would change everything, but it didn’t. They never got their big break. Mama died, and people forgot that Dry Gully ever existed, and I forget little bits of her every day. She told me that the important part was making music, that all the songs, even the forgotten ones, swirl in the air, become part of what’s to come. That musicians play in the midst of ghosts every day. I think she would have told you not to do what you’re doing, because maybe you’re giving away more than you know for less than you think.

  She should have said it all, but maybe she was wrong, just a messed-up kid running away from home. Instead, she wrote just three words.

  Yeah, good stuff.

  Rosy fingertips of light stroked the sky by the time they slipped back into the house. The drummer was sprawled on the downstairs couch, a line of drool slick at the corner of his mouth, a baby’s softness to his face. Beer bottles lay along the edges of the rug, clinking softly as Blue tiptoed past them. She followed Jill up to the bedrooms, Jill keeping one finger to her own lips, giggling as the floor creaked beneath their feet.

  “Beauty sleep,” she whispered. “Gonna be superstars, you know.”

  Blue caught her hand as she turned to enter her bedroom. Jill paused, and Blue hunted for her pencil. A pink flush had colored Jill’s face, optimistic as the rising sun. Happy, she looked happy. Maybe everything else was a dream. Good things happened. Bands got gigs just because they played well, got contracts and became famous without losing everything. Who was she to say otherwise?

  She had to try.

  “What?” Jill, waiting, smiling, tired.

  You sure Major Chord is worth it? Pretending to be Jed’s gf? Esp w/ Bet . . .

  Jill shook her head slightly, her long hair falling in a wave over her shoulder. “Worth it? If it gets someone to see me as lead, then pretending for a little while is totally worth it. I’ve just got to play along until I’ve found my way in. That’s all. Bet’ll understand.”

  Did you meet him? The one with the contract?

  “Rathburn? For a minute. Why?”

  There was no way to ask that didn’t sound funny.

  He smell weird to you?

  Jill giggled again. “Yeah, like money, goofball.” She touched the heel of her hand to Blue’s forehead, pressed it there for a moment. “Good night, Blue Riley. See you in the morning, um, afternoon. Maybe we can talk about you coming with us.” She closed her door behind her.

  Sleep felt like another country, one that came with a lock and key and a three-headed dog as gatekeeper. Blue gave up quickly and crept back down the stairs, spacing her steps to skip the creaks. It didn’t seem to matter. The drummer was just as out of it when she passed as he had been earlier.

  Kitchens all sounded the same, she decided as she searched the cupboards for something to eat. The clang of a radiator heating up, the whir of the refrigerator fan, the tick of a plain white clock hanging over the sink. They didn’t all smell the same, though, and behind the scent of dish soap and last night’s pizza lurked something more. Something she couldn’t quite label, sharp and worrying. She sniffed her way through the cupboards without locating it, then stopped and stood in the middle of the room.

  The odor came in short wafts. She paced back and forth until it intensified by a wooden door. She’d assumed the door led to a closet, but when she opened it, she found a set of stairs leading down. Of course, the basement. Down the steps, cautiously. The smell was much stronger now, joined by a sporadic click and crackle.

  The answer came in a spray of white-hot sparks. A girl her own age sat on an old chest freezer. In her hands she held the two ends of a frayed wire, and she swung them back and forth as if she were playing jump rope, just as casual. The wires sparked and smoked, the light falling between her knees and onto a pile of rags on the floor.

  “Stop!” Blue shrieked, or tried to. Nothing came out.

  “Remember the deal?” The girl held one end of the wire to her lips, sucked on it like a lollipop, her cheeks glowing red.

  Blue wrote feverishly, the shaking of her hands turning her words to scrawl.

  The deal?! You said—

  What had she said? Three days. She couldn’t stay more than three days if they knew her name, and it had been . . .

  “Two days. Turn of the calendar, Bluebird, not twenty-four hours.”

  2 days? Not 3? You said I had 3 days!

  The girl hopped off the freezer. She stood a few inches shorter than Blue, her silvery hair in a neat braid down her back, her tartan skirt and white shirt crisply ironed. She moved the wires to one hand, the ends completely covered by her grip. The sound of their sizzle, the smell of their heat, filled the room. The girl paid it no mind.

  “I’m being nice. I’m reminding you that bad things happen if you overstay your welcome. That’s all. Just a reminder. I’d hate to have you wake up at 12:01 tomorrow morning and find yourself surrounded by death. That would suck, don’t you think?” She twirled the end of her braid in her free hand.

  OK, I’ll go. After I get my things.

  Blue turned away; turned back almost immediately.

  But why them? Is it just because of me?

  “Why them what?” The gi
rl watched her with expressionless eyes.

  Why are you doing it? Making that deal?

  Nothing. Blankness. Then a flash, like the slip of a fish underwater. “You and I’ve got our own thing. They’ve got theirs.”

  The girl clenched her fist tightly. It glowed red-hot for an instant. When she opened it, the wire lay there, smooth and whole. “Go on. Fly away, Bluebird. Things will be over before you know it.”

  She walked away, into the corner of the basement, and vanished into the brick wall, only a faint phosphorescence left behind. Blue ran back up the steps.

  She hiked the length of the dirt road, day pack on her back, guitar in hand. By the time she reached pavement, she could hear church bells ringing in the distance. Back in Eliotville, Lynne would be waking up for the second morning with her gone. Was Lynne sad? Or was she busy emptying drawers, packing things away, at least a little relieved?

  Did she miss Blue? Did Blue miss her?

  A pickup slowed to a stop beside her. Inside was a middle-aged man, with a curly-haired little boy in the passenger seat. “That’s a lot of stuff to be carrying. You need a lift?” She nodded, hopped in.

  He gave her a ride as far as town. Not Albany, someplace smaller, but big enough to catch a bus in. The bus tickets were sold in a bookstore next to the stop, full of the smell of old books and dust. The woman behind the counter hadn’t showed any interest when Blue slid her note across to her, just took her money and handed her a ticket.

  She’d guessed about a destination. Rochester, a city-sized blot on the map of upstate New York, seemed like the right direction. Not that she had much to go by, beyond the boots, but there was a little.

  There had been four phone calls from Cass over two years, each from a blocked number. The first to tell Lynne she was okay. The second call, three months after she’d gone, came on a Saturday. Blue had been at Teena’s. Just a “Hi, I’m doing fine,” left on the machine. The third call arrived almost a full year after she’d left—her Halloween message for Blue.

  The fourth, eighteen months after Cass had gone, Blue had answered, heard Cass’s voice, felt her heart rush into a gallop as she gripped the receiver tight. “Where are you? Are you coming home? I miss you.” As if she were six, as if Cass were away on business, as if her return were guaranteed. What she heard in response was distance. The sound of traffic, voices on a city street, a muted siren. “Blue,” Cass had said, as if eighteen months translated to endless miles and sisterhood amounted to geography, not soul. “That’s not home. Not for me.”

  A slap, the sting following the blow. “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for what’s mine.”

  “But where are you?” Give me a map, show me how to find you. Don’t leave me alone.

  The blast of a car horn through the receiver. She jumped, as if she were on the street with Cass, not standing by the kitchen bar, a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich in her hand.

  “I’m following a trail. You know the one.” A laugh, sharing something, but Blue didn’t know what. “Listen, I’m fine, tell Lynne. I have to go.”

  No good-bye. Just a click, silence. Cass, there and gone.

  She hadn’t had a clue what Cass was talking about at first. She didn’t know any trails outside of Maine, at least not any with names. But two nights later, lying on Cass’s bed next to Mama’s guitar, she’d gotten it. Mama had left Maine two years into college. She said she hadn’t been sure where she was going, just that it was time to go, time to make music. Tish said she’d woken up one morning on her family’s ranch, looked out at the land that would soon be covered in snow, and decided high school wasn’t something she needed to finish. Instead, she’d taken her fiddle and a bag and headed up “toward the music.” The Gully, she and Mama had named the path they took toward each other, made it sound as if Mama’s guitar and Tish’s fiddle had called to each other until they’d finally met up.

  The trouble was, Blue didn’t remember anything about the stops along their journey. She’d been little when she listened, and they’d always told it as if it had been a fairy tale, not a tour map. Tish had grown up somewhere in Wyoming, she knew that much. If Cass was following the Gully, she’d be headed that direction. Northwest. The boots had agreed so far. Rochester was on the way.

  While she waited, she paced. Back and forth, back and forth. Not much in the way of traffic, all of it passing quickly until a silver sedan slowed. The driver looked out at her. An older guy, graying hair cut military short, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Slower, slower, one hand rising as if to wave. A chill creeping along her spine.

  A roar, a rush of air, and the bus pulled into the stop. She grabbed her guitar, ticket in her free hand, and fell in behind the old woman. By the time she’d boarded the bus, the car had vanished. He’d probably been looking for directions. Shouldn’t have been scary.

  Still . . . She settled into her seat, happy to not be standing on the side of the road.

  By the time the bus reached Rochester, Blue could have eaten her own hand. Not in a vague, metaphorical way, but in an I-haven’t-eaten-for-too-long way, because gnawing at herself began to seem better than going without. Stepping out into the cold air only made it worse. The light was fading fast, and she stood outside the station and looked up and down the street for somewhere to eat.

  She saw nothing. A busy road, traffic shooting past, the station set off by itself. More roads, and some run-down buildings farther along. She gripped her guitar a little more tightly. Again, the empty space where speech should have lived surrounded her. No calling after the people walking away from the bus, the little woman with the plastic bags. The bus driver, quick to disappear into the building.

  She was alone. Almost. A woman, a little shorter than Blue, a little stout, dressed in a blue fleece jacket and a bright green fleece hat, watched her. When their eyes met, the woman smiled.

  “Traveling? You look like a traveler.”

  Blue nodded.

  “I knew it.” The woman smiled like Blue’s guidance counselor, phony through and through. “Not that you look much different from the Eastman students, but I just knew. In my heart, you know?” She pressed her hands to her chest.

  Your heart, my ass. Not really the sort of thing she’d say out loud, even if she could, but it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She hoped her smile was sweeter than her thoughts.

  If it wasn’t, that made no difference to the woman. “You’re so lucky. Out here, meeting people, learning about the world. The opportunity for growth gives me goose bumps.”

  Shrinking’s more likely if I don’t get some food. This close, the carved rings the woman wore—not too expensive, but not cheap, either—and the opals in her ears shimmered as she moved. Someone who dressed her money down.

  Blue scribbled quickly.

  Yeah, it’s cool. Just got into town, looking for a place to crash.

  A tinny burst of sitars sounded. The woman rummaged through her patchwork purse, held up one finger as she answered the phone. Blue studied her. Black leggings stretched over short legs; a woven scarf, Mexican maybe, around her neck. An expensive smell—sandalwood softened with something sweet—wafted from her.

  The conversation sounded private, but the woman stayed put, as if Blue were a tree instead of a girl. “I know,” and “I miss you, too,” and “We should never have tried that to begin with, but you know how these things are.” Blue’s stomach twisted with hunger. She checked her watch. The screen was blank. She tapped it with one finger, shook her wrist, but the blankness stayed.

  She began to wonder whether the raised finger had been for her or was just some reflex associated with the phone. Standing on the sidewalk wasn’t getting her any closer to eating. She picked up her guitar from where she’d set it and started down the street. She made it twenty feet before the woman yelled behind her.

  “You, wait a minute, come back.”

  She turned back, pointed a finger at her chest. The woman nodded and returned to her conversation.


  Exactly how long was she supposed to wait? And why? So they could talk about how cool it was to be wondering where she would spend the night? If she’d known where to go, she wouldn’t have waited, but nothing looked promising along the road. She stood a few more minutes, the ache from her boots traveling up her legs, her frustration traveling down until they met somewhere around her waist.

  She couldn’t put her finger on what it was about the woman. Didn’t matter. The woman was annoying, and Blue’s stomach had swallowed her patience and dissolved it completely. She picked up her guitar again.

  “I’ll be home soon. You should call me later tonight. No, you should call. I won’t remember. We can make real plans then.” The woman tucked the phone back into her bag.

  “You know how it is when you’re thinking about someone and then they call you, just like the universe recognizes that energy and opens right up for you? I knew she needed me, and I opened myself, and there she was. Just like with you. That’s just how things are for me. It’s a gift, though it can be hard sometimes.”

  Blue waited, one foot cocked. The sinews in her ankles, her knees, felt stretched to their limits, as if they might tear at any minute, letting her legs walk away without her. Finally, she wrote.

  Well, gotta go. Need to find food and a place.

  “Oh, no, come stay with us,” the woman said, with a patient smile. “It’ll be a blessing for us. Travelers are considered magical in so many cultures, you know. We could always use a bit of luck.” She gave a little laugh, as if luck were the punch line to a private joke.

  You are off your rocker, lady. Not that Blue considered herself very threatening—average height, average build, curly brown hair, no ink, just a couple of loops in her ears—but still. She could have had Beck’s bowie knife in her backpack, could have been pretending not to talk because it made her look harmless.

  “Come on, I’m parked over there.” The woman pointed out a black SUV.

  Blue hesitated, but only for a moment. Truck-driving Lou had said to trust her gut about people. This woman, this nameless woman who did nothing but talk, didn’t make her nervous. Annoyed, yes, bored, maybe, but she didn’t make Blue’s skin crawl the way a dangerous person would.