Gather Her Round

by Alex Bledsoe

  * * *

  And so, later that night, exhausted and half-lit, he’d gone to his people’s refuge: the old moonshiner’s cave deep in the hills.

  The Tufa were one people, but two tribes, and each had its own place of sanctuary, where only the right people were allowed. The other faction, the one led directly by Mandalay Harris, met in an old barn with SEE ROCK CITY painted on the roof. Duncan’s group, led by Junior Damo since the demise of Rockhouse Hicks, met in this cave.

  First discovered prior to the Civil War years, it had been used to hide runaway slaves, then deserters who saw the war as none of their business. Cloud County’s standing on slavery was really moot: no one was rich enough to own any slaves, and with their black hair and slightly dusky skin, they were often mistaken for mixed-race escaped slaves themselves. So they waited out the war, not getting involved and really not caring about the outcome.

  Bootleggers set up shop in the cave after the war, and during the years of Prohibition, it had been a haven for those sought by the “revenuers.” Cloud County paint thinner, as it came to be called, had a reputation for getting you roaring drunk almost at once, but with no hangover the next day no matter how much you drank. That wasn’t strictly true, but the songs the moonshiners hummed and sang over the sour mash did have an effect on the final result.

  Now it was a social hall, although both moonshine and methamphetamine were brewed in various subchambers of the central cave. In the big main room, with its hole in the center of the cave’s roof to let out smoke, people milled about in groups and gathered to play music. Smaller “rooms,” closed off with curtains, were available for the men and women who wanted privacy. Duncan knew it was considered a degenerate, lower-class hole by those from the other group, with their pristine family-friendly barn; but he’d always loved it, and even though he’d never taken advantage of those little rooms, he felt at home and safe in it. These were his people, and that connection went deep.

  Old deer skeletons hung as warnings at the entrance. With a few simple, strategic modifications, they resembled partial human skeletons. Or perhaps they really were human remains; Duncan just assumed they weren’t, but he didn’t really know for sure. He stopped and stared at one of them; he couldn’t tell.

  The path into the cave was narrow, and the power lines that provided light and heat had been bolted along the join of floor and wall. He had to step over someone who had evidently been leaving, but passed out before making it out. In the dimness, he couldn’t recognize the person, or even tell for certain if it was a man or a woman. At another time, he might have hoisted him, or her, onto his shoulders and carried them back down. But tonight he couldn’t be bothered.

  There weren’t many folks there when he arrived. These were the lifers, the ones who seldom left the cave and even more seldom sobered up. Nearby leaned their banjos with grimy old heads, guitars with whiskers of broken strings, and other instruments that needed just as much attention as their owners, and were just as unlikely to get it. The music they produced was ragged, cacophonous, and cruel to both the ears and the heart.

  “Hey, there, Duncan,” old Snobie Marks said. He had long hair tied back in a haphazard ponytail, still jet-black despite his advanced years and weathered face. He had exactly two teeth left in his head, which made him smack his lips between every other word when he spoke. “Did I hear something happened to that girl you was seeing?”

  “She got killed,” Duncan said numbly.

  “Ain’t that a kick in the head.” He shook his head, spat at the ground, and made a swinging gesture with his hand to acknowledge death. “Sure enough is a kick in the head,” he muttered when he finished.

  “Have you seen Junior?”

  Snobie waved toward one of the tunnels. “He’s back there holdin’ court, trying to make everybody think he’s the boss.”

  “Ain’t he?”

  Snobie snorted, and ignored the spittle that caught on his chin whiskers. “He got a long way to go before he’s another Rockhouse, that’s for sure.”

  “Maybe we don’t need another Rockhouse,” Duncan said.

  “Hey, you know what a pussy hair sounds like before it hits the ground?” When Duncan didn’t answer, Snobie made a quick spitting sound. Then he laughed and wandered away.

  The tunnel had a line of light sockets along the low ceiling, and Duncan had to dodge them as he walked. As he turned a corner, a female voice said suddenly, “Who the fuck are you?”

  Flint Rucker emerged from the shadows of a small side passage, clumsily twirling like a dancer. She wore cutoffs despite the cave’s chill, My Little Pony tennis shoes, and a T-shirt with a sparkling rainbow across it. Her black hair was tangled into dreadlocks, and her wide eyes were just as black, the pupils huge and almost obliterating the iris. She sang, her voice high:

  As I went forth one bright shiny day,

  A dainty young couple were coming my way.

  The one a fair Damsel of beauty most clear,

  The other a …

  She stopped and looked him up and down, as if measuring him for a new suit of clothes.

  … mourner, as it does appear.

  “Hello, Flint,” Duncan said. “I’m here to see Junior.”

  Flint shuffled closer. She looked barely twenty, but everyone, certainly Duncan, knew better. Flint Rucker had been accidentally trapped in a cave for over forty years, living on lichen, insects, and blind fish. When he heard that some spelunkers had found and rescued her, Rockhouse Hicks laughed and said, “Yeah, I probably shoulda tole her family about that forty years ago.”

  But the time had altered her. She looked exactly the same age as the day she’d been caved in. She preferred darkness, and her eyes could see not just in the dimmest light, but some said into your very soul. Now Junior had installed her as his assistant, serving the same function for him that Bliss Overbay did for Mandalay Harris. To get to him, you had to get past her. And not everyone could stand up to those penetrating black eyes.

  Certainly, drunk and exhausted as he was, they gave Duncan the willies. They were almost insectlike in their unblinking intensity.

  “Here to see Junior,” Flint repeated in her singsong way.

  “Is that okay?”

  “Is that okay?” she repeated.

  Duncan gritted his teeth. “Flint, please. This has been a horrible day. I really need to see Junior.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “You should be with her. To gather her round.”

  “Gather who round?”

  “Flint!” Junior yelled from far down the hall. “Stop being a damn psycho and let him through.”

  Flint shrugged, smiled her enigmatic smile, and twirled back into the darkness down the little side tunnel.

  Junior had turned one of the small chambers into an office. He had a desk, made of an old door and four milk crates, and sat behind it, watching porn on his laptop. Luckily he didn’t have his pants down around his ankles this time, and Duncan loudly cleared his throat before he stepped into the open.

  Junior snapped the laptop closed, shutting off the video in mid-squeal. “So what’s so damn important, Duncan Gowen?”

  “Sorry, sir,” Duncan said. He made the elaborate hand gesture he’d learned as a child to show respect to a Tufa leader. It had seemed appropriate for the larger-than-life Rockhouse Hicks, but far out of proportion for his successor. Junior was smaller in every sense.

  Junior knew it, too. His own responding gesture was curt and perfunctory. “I asked you what you want.”

  “Did you hear about what happened to Kera Rogers today?”

  “Yeah, I did. I was real sorry to hear that. She was a mighty pretty girl.”

  “She was my girlfriend.”

  “That ain’t what I heard. She wasn’t steady with you.”

  “No,” he had to agree. “But I loved her.”

  “Then I’m sorry for you, too. Is that all?”

  Duncan could tell this would go nowhere. Any justice he asked for, any
revenge he demanded for his shattered honor, would be granted only at the cost of what little self-respect he had left. The only remotely good thing was that this wasn’t Rockhouse, because that old man would’ve known exactly why Duncan was here, probably before he knew it himself. Rockhouse had led the Tufa for longer than anyone could remember, and his passing was as traumatic to the community as it was to him. Junior, on the other hand, was one of those people who advance to positions of authority they neither deserve nor can handle.

  Duncan said, “Yeah, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure you knew about it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Junior said as he got to his feet. He gave Duncan a narrow-eyed measuring look. “That’s bullshit. You didn’t come here just to tell me that.”

  “Sure I did.”

  “Uh-huh. You want something. What?”

  Duncan thought fast. “I want to be the one who kills that motherfucking pig.”

  Junior looked him over, judging his sincerity. “Why tell me?”

  “Ain’t you the man?”

  “What makes you think I can control that? Hell, I ain’t the god of pigs or nothing.”

  “In that case, then, like I said, I’ll be going.” Duncan turned to leave, trying to ignore the creepy feeling of Junior’s eyes on his back.

  “You sure that’s what you want, Duncan Gowen?”

  The voice was not Junior’s, and Duncan froze. There was no one else in the room, and there was certainly nowhere for anyone to hide in the ragged stone walls. Yet he was certain the voice wasn’t Junior’s, and equally as certain whose it was.

  He’d heard the stories, whispered over swigs of liquor or between choruses of songs, that Rockhouse Hicks might be dead, but he wasn’t gone. He haunted Junior Damo, lurking around him and whispering advice, especially when Junior was in this cave. Some claimed to have actually seen him; except he wasn’t the old, white-haired monster he’d been at his death, but young, in his prime, his hair as black as the mocking hatred in his eyes.

  Duncan’s mouth went dry. Did he dare turn around and see if Rockhouse’s haint stood behind Junior? He’d never seen a haint himself, although many of his friends had, and he’d heard all the stories.

  “I’m sure,” he croaked out. Then he left as fast as he could without actually running.

  * * *

  Bliss Overbay sat at the kitchen table in the volunteer fire department. She was alone in the building, and worked on the paperwork she’d need to give Alvin Darwin to close the investigation into Kera Rogers’s death. Among the Tufa’s many skills was staying off any official radar, which meant that all deaths were natural, all property sales were routine, and all taxes were paid on time and with few eye-catching deductions.

  Sometimes, though, things were so strange that they couldn’t be glossed over, and Bliss worried that this was one of them. A natural death could be hidden; a murder could be minimized. But slaughtered by a monster? That was much harder to hide.

  “Hey,” a new voice said. Bliss looked up.

  Mandalay Harris stood before her. She wore old-fashioned bell-bottomed jeans and a tank top, with her Tufa-black hair pulled back in a ponytail. There had been no sound of the heavy door opening or closing.

  “Hey,” Bliss said, the sudden appearance as normal to her as the air around them. “So you heard.”

  “Yeah. Alvin Darwin came by and told me and Junior.”

  “How did Junior take it?”

  “Same as he takes everything.”

  “He didn’t send Flint Rucker out to bring him the hog’s head on a pike?”

  “I don’t think he trusts Flint with anything but ankle-biting folks who try to bother him.”

  “How long are you going to put up with him?”

  Mandalay wouldn’t meet her eyes. “He does his job.”

  “With Rockhouse gone, it should be your job. There’s no need for two tribes anymore.”

  “I disagree,” the girl said simply. And Bliss knew that was that. After a moment, Mandalay asked, “Was Kera really killed by a wild hog?”

  “That’s what it looks like. An absolutely huge one. Feet this big.” She held her hands about six inches apart to indicate the size.

  Mandalay sat at the table. She folded her arms, rested her chin on them, and said, “That’s got to be one of the worst ways to die I’ve ever heard of happening around here. Even worse than Ellis Parker dying after being buried under thirteen tons of peas.”

  “He should’ve told somebody he was working in the silo,” Bliss said.

  “Oh, how shall I, this wild boar see? Look left, he’ll come to thee, drum-down, rum-down,” she sang softly. Then she asked, “So where did this giant killer pig come from?”

  “I don’t know. Alvin’s calling Jack Cates. He’s the game warden for this region. Maybe he’ll know.”

  Mandalay nodded. “And Alvin will handle the police?”

  “Yeah.”

  She paused thoughtfully. “There’s something else going on here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. If I knew, I wouldn’t have to be cryptic, would I?” Her little smile defused any snarkiness.

  “It crossed my mind that if someone were to kill a young woman and feed her to the hogs, it’d look a lot like what we saw today,” Bliss said.

  “That’s true. But that sort of thing would make the night winds rattle the trees. Or at least, that’s what it usually does.”

  “The night winds are changing. That’s what you’ve said.”

  Mandalay was silent, staring into space across the tabletop. After centuries of passive steadiness, the last few years had seen the night winds exhibit extraordinary activist behavior. The return of Bronwyn Hyatt after she left to join the army. The fall of Rockhouse Hicks, brought about by an outsider guided here by the winds. The rise of Bo-Kate Wisby, and the destruction that followed. So not even Mandalay, who understood clearly what everyone else heard only as indistinct whispers, could say what the night winds truly wanted anymore.

  At last she said, “You have to be thinking the same thing I am.”

  Unbidden, the image of Rockhouse Hicks, with his six-fingered hands, came vividly to her mind. “Him?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s dead. More importantly, dead and gone.”

  “You think.”

  “Do you?”

  “I haven’t sensed even a whisper from him since he died,” Mandalay said. “And it wouldn’t be like him, even as a haint, to hide away. He’d want everyone to know he was back. That nothing we could do could stop him.”

  “So it’s not him.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So what should we do?”

  “Keep our eyes open. Try to catch it before it gets out of hand and draws too much attention. And hope I’m wrong.”

  Bliss tugged a stray strand of the girl’s black hair in mock annoyance. “You’ve really got that ‘inscrutable visionary’ thing down, don’t you?”

  Mandalay smiled. “It’s no fun for me, either. It’s something like a bug crawling on you in the dark: you know it’s there, but you can’t see it.”

  “Speaking of, how are things with you and Luke Somerville?”

  “All right. We see each other when we can. We play at the Pair-A-Dice a lot. School just started back, so I hope it won’t be weird for him. Kids talk.”

  Luke was from the other half of the Tufa, the ones under Junior. His relationship with Mandalay mirrored the one between Bo-Kate Wisby and Jefferson Powell, the only two Tufa ever to be banished from Cloud County. Bo-Kate and Jeff’s return had wreaked chaos the previous winter, and a lot of the Tufa saw the same potential in Mandalay and Luke. So far, though, it had been nothing but a mutual teen crush.

  But that was a secondary concern at the moment. Right now, the most urgent matter was the killer animal still out there roaming the hills and hollows of Cloud County.

  “We need to know if this monster is real,” Mandalay said at last, “or just a
way of hiding something.”

  “That’ll be the game warden’s job. I’m sure when he gets here, he’ll want to see Kera’s remains.”

  “So you’ll keep an eye on him?”

  “Might even keep both,” Bliss said, matching Mandalay’s little smile. “Jack’s a good-lookin’ fella.”

  5

  The next morning, Jack Cates answered the phone at the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency’s Morristown office. Jack was thirty-six, with short blond hair that turned almost white after any time in the sun. He looked older than he was because of so much time spent outdoors. He was tall, lean, and wore his green uniform with ease and comfort. He was comfortable: he liked who he was and what he did, and was content to make that most of his world.

  Normally the receptionist, Georgina, answered the phone, but she was away from her desk, and Jack was the kind of guy who pitched in and didn’t worry about how it looked. “TWRA,” he said.

  “May I speak to Mr. Jack Cates?”

  “You got him.”

  “Mr. Cates, this is Alvin Darwin from the highway patrol. I’m up outside Needsville, in Cloud County, investigating a death. I’m pretty sure the victim was killed by one of them wild hogs, so I figured you’d be interested, too.”

  Cates sat down behind the desk and reached for a pen. “What makes you say that?”

  “Hog tracks everywhere around the body, for one thing.”

  “Hogs might eat a dead body if they found one, but they wouldn’t—”

  “One of them tracks was a hoofprint six inches wide.”

  Cates sat up straight. “Six inches?”

  “I can e-mail you pictures with a ruler beside it for scale.”

  “Please do. And you’re sure it’s not deer tracks? They can look awfully similar.”

  “I’ve been hunting deer since I was eight; I’m pretty sure. We also found some partial remains.”

  “Partial?”

  “Part of a hand. Two fingers and a thumb.”