Finally, Steve put his hand on her shoulder, and everyone clapped, and she stood up, a little bewildered, which made them clap more. “So special,” she heard one woman whisper. She gripped the handle to the guitar case so tightly she believed she could have counted every stitch on the edge.
They’d made room for her on the bench in front of the little upright piano. She laid the guitar case beside her, opened it, running one hand over a hymnal as she did. Nothing. No flame, no voice of God, nothing at all. She suspected it would be the same even if she stroked a Bible.
She tuned quickly, took a breath, and played a warm-up tune. Just pretty, the sharp plucks of a music box, slowing toward the end as if the box were winding down.
Everyone clapped politely. They knew it wasn’t a song, wasn’t even enough to be a fancy instrumental. She touched her fingers to her lips, blowing on them just a little. Took a pick out of the case. Smiled as sweetly as she knew how.
The song felt like fever through her hands. That eager to come, that caught between dream and reality. Mama was in the chords, and the smile she always gave Tish as they hit the chorus together. Tish was there as well, a pair of raven wings spreading out from her shoulders as the missing fiddle sounded in Blue’s ears. More than anything, she could feel the empty space in her throat, the place where the words wanted to come from, the story they could tell, the change from purr to growl and back again as the song progressed.
Belief. That’s what it took to play for a crowd. That’s what Mama had had. And for the first time, ever, Blue felt it within herself.
She enjoyed the applause at the end. It wasn’t the music they applauded, she knew, it was the idea they had of her. She’d succeeded because she’d gotten them to applaud a lie.
Steve looked happy enough to burst when he led her out of the room. She pushed quickly away, losing him among the people coming into the kitchen for coffee.
She made it to the bathroom, locked the door, and studied herself in the mirror until the noise from outside had subsided. She came back out, turning away from the loud buzz in the kitchen. There was nowhere really to go but down the hall and into Ruthie’s study. She pushed the door open, stepped in, froze.
“You do have a way of turning up,” the man in the blue shirt said. He grinned as he spoke, revealing smooth, straight white teeth. He was alone, but he chewed a few times, as if she’d caught him at a snack.
Run, Blue’s mind said, but her feet stayed put. Each breath rose and fell as if being sucked through mud: thick, sluggish.
He looked at her, head cocked. “I don’t think you’re ready to sell yet. Soon, though. That performance moved you along nicely.” He sniffed the air. “Like waiting for a roast to be done. Don’t worry, I’ll find you when it’s time. Buyer’s market, after all.” Bigger grin, more teeth. His breath smelled of cold wet rain, of sorrow by a graveside. “Fire sale! Bargain basement prices! Buy one, get two free! You know the drill, don’t you?”
Blue’s feet woke. One step backward, two, the doorframe behind her, his grin growing even wider. With a sudden movement, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
She ran. Down the hall, back the way she’d come, past the kitchen, and smack into Steve. “There you are,” he said, a touch of panic in his eyes. “I didn’t know where you’d gone.”
She grabbed his sleeve, dragged him into the garage. He stared back into the house. She looked, too, at the empty hall, nothing alarming at all behind her.
Inside her, something tipped, something heavy and hard, concrete pouring down, coating everything. She was crazy. Maybe the crossroads were a dream. Maybe the only danger she faced was her own mind.
Steve, backed up by Cynthia and Ruth, insisted they should stay the night. Blue didn’t want to fight, didn’t even know what she’d argue, so she just lay down on the air mattress and waited, pretending to sleep. She had to leave. Maybe none of this was real, but she couldn’t take the chance of something bad happening. Once things got quiet, she’d grab her bag and start walking.
In the meantime, she tried to piece things together. She’d assumed the woman in the red dress and the man in the blue shirt were the same. But every time she’d seen the woman, her appearance had changed, while the man’s did not. Could there be two of them, some sort of evil yin and yang? The woman sucked people in and the man destroyed them?
It didn’t fit, not with Mama’s stories, not with what Blue had read. She imagined the man and the woman sharing an office, the woman rising from a desk with wilting roses in a vase, brushing the fallen petals away. Smiling, taking Blue’s coat, running her hand against Blue’s neck as she did, making chills and heat rush together where she touched.
“He’ll see you in a minute,” the woman said, in that voice like smoke. Blue nodded. “He’ll see you in a minute,” the woman said again, only this time she sounded different, like Mama. “You don’t need this, Blue. You don’t need to wait. He’ll only be a minute and you need to go—”
Blue jumped. The room was lit by the streetlights outside. Steve was curled up in his sleeping bag, fast asleep. She ran a hand through her hair, confused, then saw the glow of Steve’s watch.
11:55.
Fuck.
She jumped up. Somehow, she’d fallen asleep. Stupid, stupid. She grabbed her sleeping bag, wadded it, and strapped it to her pack, the edges trailing behind. Everything else was already in the bag. She slipped her feet into her boots, laced them tight, hoisted the pack to her shoulders, and grabbed the guitar. She tripped over Steve’s foot as she went, and he let out a surprised cry.
“Hey!” he called as she rushed down the stairs. She didn’t stop.
The cold was intense after the warmth of the sleeping bag. It cut through the lingering touch of sleep within seconds. Move, her boots said, and she agreed.
She heard nothing but the sound of her own steps at first, the occasional crunch of ice beneath them. Then, from behind, came the racing slap of other feet. She didn’t bother turning. By the time Steve caught her, he was winded, puffing two breaths for her one.
“Why’d you take off?” He had his bag, too, clothes hanging from the pockets. She just stared at him, not slowing.
“I don’t believe you. You were in the middle of a church group and nothing happened. If you really were, you know, touched by the devil”—he spit out the word, as if it might call down a volley of brimstone—“if you were, then you shouldn’t have been able to . . .”
Play for the nice people? Why not ask the man in the blue shirt about it? She felt a lurch inside her like a twisting fish at the thought of his chewing. Who had been his victim there?
“They would have given us a ride in the morning. Do you even know where you’re going?”
No idea, but her feet liked what she was doing, so she’d keep doing it. Steve struggled to keep up, taking two steps to each of her determined strides.
“You don’t even have any proof that that woman is dangerous. She could have just been—”
She spun on him. One finger deep in her mouth, pointing to where her voice should have been, as she dared him to argue. He froze. She shrieked, or made the motions, her lips stretched tight, while the night continued on undisturbed.
“How do I even know you lost your voice that way? Maybe you never had one.”
Out came the notebook from her pocket.
Right. Just like maybe you keep all your clothes on when you sleep because you’re cold, not bccause you don’t want anyone to see what’s underneath.
He flinched. Even in the dark she could see it, as sure as if she’d swung at him. His voice was steady, though. “That’s my business, not yours. I’m who you see.” Now a quaver, close to tears. “I’m a boy. People who really care about me see that.”
She started walking again. It was like cutting into a potato, that satisfying slide through the crispness, just enough resistance to make it feel real. She’d cut into Steve, and he deserved it, for ignoring what she said, for siding with the others.
Only he didn’t. Not really.
Not at all. He was flying in circles, looking for a safe spot to land. She was flying long-distance, over water, over land, heading someplace she didn’t know, could only feel in her bones. Just because they weren’t doing the same thing didn’t mean she had any right to hurt him, even when it felt good.
She looked back.
He was standing in the middle of the road, a shirtsleeve hanging from his pack almost to the ground. His eyes glittered, thin lines shining on his cheeks. She walked back.
Right. Not my business. My mom used to be in a band with another woman, Tish. Tish always said that anyone worth more than a drink—
She paused, embarrassed to write the words.
—and a grope would always be able to see the little grain of truth in the heart of the pearl.
It looked weird to her written out, rather than said in Tish’s casual way. She didn’t follow it with the rest, that most of the world was only interested in the shine of the pearl, not what made it.
Steve gave a little shrug. “That’s kind of weird. And, um, not the kind of thing an adult should say to a kid.”
That angry streak rubbed back up to the surface, irritating everything along the way. She pushed it back.
She wasn’t saying it to me. Just saying it, ya know? You coming?
Tish also used to say that people needed to understand that anyone else’s life wasn’t theirs—not theirs to judge, or applaud, or anything. Once you started thinking you had that right, then you started thinking you had other rights, too, rights having to do with control and decisions and all sorts of wrongness.
After a minute, Steve caught up with her. She slowed a little, and he walked more comfortably. Without stopping, she grabbed the sleeve dangling down and shoved the end back into his bag.
After what felt like hours, they left the neighborhood behind and hit a grid of roads. There was traffic as well, not tons, but cars passing, the occasional truck. Steve thought they should try to hitch. Blue still didn’t know where to go. Her boots said Move, but they didn’t come with a compass, at least not one she’d found.
As long as they kept moving and kept away from the wake of passing vehicles, she stayed warm enough. Stop even for a minute or two, and the cold worked its way in, icy tendrils along her cheeks, down her neck, through her jeans. She wanted to be in a house. Not just any house. She wanted to be at home, in her own bed. The more she thought about it, though, the more she didn’t know where that bed would be. Was home a place or a person?
She kept looking up, expecting to find stars. Instead, she saw only the yellow glow of the city. At one point, she imagined it a giant fire, the flames reaching out toward her; only, they chilled rather than heated. Cities drew people, that much she knew. She tired of them quickly, though. Sound and light and busyness, people looking down at their feet or straight ahead, instead of at one another. Mama used to drop coins into cups, smile at strangers; she’d give directions, or at least encouragement when she didn’t know how to get somewhere. There had to be lots of people there like Mama and like the librarian, but it never felt that way to Blue in a city.
There was no way to avoid Chicago, though, not with it right in front of them. And, on the plus side, cities made it easier not to stick out. Small towns told everyone’s stories—during lunch at school, in the aisles of the grocery. Maybe, in Chicago, Steve could be Steve, not whoever people insisted he was.
He tapped her arm. “Bus stop. We could wait and see what comes.”
Blue felt in her pockets. The money was there. Plenty for a city bus. They’d be warm in it. They might even be able to sleep. Though she felt wide awake, she knew she’d crash as soon as she started to warm up.
She nodded. They set their packs down on the bench. She immediately regretted stopping. The cold didn’t creep; it attacked, racing along her frame like a tidal wave. Hopping from foot to foot did almost nothing, and her feet began to ache as well. She couldn’t switch into her shoes, not without chilling herself further, so she walked in small circles.
Steve wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. After a few minutes, Blue joined him, moving in close enough that their breath met between their faces. She put her arms over his shoulders. It felt like a mistake at first, the heat escaping where her arms were no longer pressed against her body. New heat formed, though, between them, in all the places their bodies were close. Now they each had only their backs exposed to the wind.
They stood like that for a while. Eventually they lowered their heads to each other’s shoulders, and Blue slipped in and out of a dream state, the lights flickering around her, the world full of a guitar and a banjo, their notes twirling round and round together. A song like she’d never heard before, melancholy and joyful at the same time.
It ended when Steve stepped away from her. “Look,” he said.
A silver sedan idled just down the street from them. It rode a little low, as if there was something heavy in the trunk. The man at the wheel had graying hair in a buzz cut. He watched them, one finger tapping time on the steering wheel. When he caught her eye, he nodded.
A different kind of cold raced down her spine. She shook her head, one hand out to grab her guitar. Steve didn’t move. “He could give us a ride.”
She needed her voice. She needed to ask Steve what kind of guy picked up kids in the middle of the night, what kind of guy kept showing up wherever she was, whenever she needed a ride? It was him, she was sure of it—the same guy who passed them before Cynthia had picked them up.
He had no reason to follow her. He wasn’t the woman in the red dress or the man in the blue shirt. He was just some weird old guy, and she didn’t want to know what he wanted.
Another car flashed its lights, and both drivers drove on by, the man watching as he went. It looked as if he smiled as he passed, fleshy, feral. Patient.
A bus came soon after, driven by a dark-skinned man singing a blues song in a gravelly voice as he opened the door. He stopped midchorus to ask where they were going.
Blue just handed him a pile of money. He took a long, slow look at her, at the guitar and the backpack, and at Steve. “Now that’s a whole lot more than you need to give, young lady. Tell you what.” He sorted through the bills and change. “This much’ll take the two of you as far as I go, and if you settle in the back, I’ll turn the heat up for you.”
She could have kissed him. She and Steve bumped their way down the empty bus to the back, where they each took a seat and spread out. Pack between her ankles and one arm around her guitar, Blue loosened her bootlaces, pulled the tongues out, and soaked in the heat that rose around her.
The sky was light when she woke. Steve was snoring softly, his head resting on his bag. The bus wasn’t moving. There were no passengers, no driver.
She looked out the window into a yard full of buses. Not the kind she expected, though. Some had missing hoods, some had dried vines twining around the flat tires they rested on. Most of the doors were open. The bus next to theirs had an abandoned bird’s nest on the dashboard.
They had gotten on a bus, a real one. She remembered it—the driver, the songs, the heat. The heat! She should have been cold, but she wasn’t. She sidled down the aisle, out the door, ready to touch the engine and see if it was warm.
It wasn’t. It was possible the engine was warm, somewhere. Just not here. The open hood revealed empty space, dried grass poking up through the snow.
She hurried back in. The sound of her steps woke Steve. He rubbed at his eyes as she whipped out her notepad.
You remember the bus last night?
She shoved the note at him. He read slowly, gave her a bewildered look.
“Of course. Why?”
She pointed out the window.
It’s a bus graveyard. Ours doesn’t even have an engine!
He couldn’t take her word for it, of course. She led him out of the bus, watched his eyes widen as she waved her hand in the empty space.
“But . . . We drove here. The bus driver . . . You saw him, right? Skinny guy, big voice.”
Yeah. Sang a lot.
Sang like someone auditioning, pulling out all the stops.
She looked around. Skyscrapers rose before them: the gateway to the city, the sunlight turning their glass to gold. A chain-link fence surrounded the yard. Even the fence was old, the top pushed down here and there, holes cut in places.
We should get moving. It’s gonna get cold here. I’m hungry.
“Okay. Do you still have money?” he asked. Then he shook his head. “No, wait. We rode a real live bus last night and we woke up on a dead one. This isn’t possible.”
Oh, Steve. She would have said it if she could, complete with a big sigh. Somehow she’d become an expert on things that did not make sense.
It just happened. I know it’s freaky, but it got us here, right?
She reached in her pocket and counted what she found as he read. Counted it again.
I could have sworn the driver took $5.
Steve watched, the color draining from his face. Stolen money mattered more than magic buses. “Did he take more?”
She shook her head and thumbed through the bills one more time.
Nothing. There’s plenty of $ for breakfast.
And lunch, too, and dinner, but after that . . . ? She gave Steve a smile meant to be more cheerful than she felt.
They didn’t have to walk far to find a diner. The Bluebird Diner. Its sign, the paint chipped away until it merely implied the original shapes, showed a little bird perched, head cocked, a bit of faded blue left on the wings. Blue felt warm as she went in, as though the place had been made for her. The inside was as weathered as the sign—torn vinyl on the seats, the air greasy in her lungs. She didn’t care. She would have eaten a vat of lard, had someone set it down in front of her.
The good sign was that there were plenty of customers. Working-class people in jeans and uniforms and worn shoes. At home, the local diner filled up with loggers and truck drivers and kids coming in after school for french fries and ice cream. On the weekends, there’d be families out to dinner, sometimes even her and Lynne. Real people, just like here.
Devil and the Bluebird Page 11