Gather Her Round

by Alex Bledsoe

  “Miss Azure is in touch with some things I’m not. I want to ask her about them.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Kera and Adam?”

  “It does.”

  “What about them?”

  But Mandalay said nothing else. She remained silent until they pulled up the rutted gravel drive and parked behind Azure’s ancient Jeep. The little cottage’s lights were on, and smoke rose from the chimney.

  As they got out of the car, Azure opened the door and stood silhouetted by the light from inside. “Must be important to come visiting this late.”

  “It is,” Mandalay said with a hand gesture of respect.

  Azure responded in kind. “Then come on in. It gets cold out here this time of year. Who’s with you?”

  “Janet Harper, ma’am,” Janet said, and made a similar gesture. Azure simply nodded, though, and did not return it.

  The little cabin was warm and cozy. Azure went to the stove and poured them tea that was already brewed. As she handed them cups, she said, “I assume this has to do with those poor unfortunates who died.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mandalay said. Although in the Tufa world, Mandalay had authority over Azure, she was also sensible enough to know she’d get more flies with honey than with vinegar. So she remained deferential.

  “Terrible thing, just terrible.”

  “I’m wondering about the animal that did it.”

  “What about it?”

  “Well, first of all … were they really killed by an animal?”

  “Yes,” Azure said with no hesitation.

  Mandalay waited until Azure had returned the teapot to the stove so she could look the other woman in the eye. Grimly she asked, “And is there anything about this animal that I should know, and don’t?”

  Azure considered the question. “You want to know if it’s real, or a haint?”

  “Or a manifestation of something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t need your help.”

  Azure visibly puffed up at this. Nothing like having your leader needing your counsel, Janet thought as she watched. Azure said, “If you’ve got time, then, let’s ask the leaves.”

  “I’ve got time,” Mandalay assured her.

  Azure again looked at Janet. “And what purpose do you serve?”

  “She’s here because I asked her,” Mandalay said before Janet could reply.

  “And why would you do that?”

  Mandalay spoke with the voice of her authority, no louder than before but with an intensity that vibrated the air. “Because I wanted her here.”

  Azure stepped back and lowered her eyes. She made a contrite hand gesture to the girl. “My apologies. Finish your tea and let’s take a look.”

  They sat silently, the only sound the muted sipping of tea. Janet was the first one finished.

  “Give me your cup,” Azure said.

  “Me?” Janet said in surprise. “Why?”

  “Because you’re the first one done. Come on.”

  Janet handed over her cup, but looked at Mandalay for some support or context. The younger girl just shrugged.

  Azure put on her glasses and studied the tea leaves. After a long silence, during which the only noise was the distant hoot of an owl and the crackling of fire in the cast-iron stove, she said, “Your monster resides in Half Pea Hollow.”

  “That makes sense,” Mandalay said. “It’s just over the ridge from Dunwoody Mountain.”

  “They say pigs can see the wind,” Azure went on. “Did you know that?”

  “I’d heard it,” Mandalay said.

  “I wonder what they see when the night winds blow,” Azure mused.

  “Is it real?” Mandalay asked.

  “You mean a real animal?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked back into the tea leaves. “Mostly.”

  “How can something be ‘mostly’ real?” Janet asked, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”

  “No worries,” Mandalay reassured her. “That was my next question, too.”

  “When things are born, they come into this world all of a piece, all connected and joined up,” Azure said. “But sometimes, things kind of … leak over. Or drain. Or are called. So they join this world piece by piece, moment by moment.”

  “So it’s not a haint,” Mandalay said.

  “No, it’s not the spirit or trace of something once dead. It’s a whole different thing.”

  “Who would’ve called it?” Janet asked softly.

  Azure shrugged. “Someone with a need for it.”

  Mandalay and Janet exchanged a look. “Somebody who needed a giant killer pig?” Janet said.

  “The way some men need a gun, or some women their cell phones,” Azure said.

  “That’s a little offensive,” Mandalay said with a tiny smile.

  “Or,” Azure said as she leaned back from the cup, “it was called up by its brethren.”

  It took a moment for that to register. “What, the other pigs?” Janet said.

  “Pigs aren’t stupid,” Azure said. “They’re smart enough to get by just eating and rolling in the mud. Not many people can manage that.”

  “Yeah, but still,” Janet said. “Calling up their own…” She trailed off, unsure of the word to use.

  “God?” Mandalay finished for her.

  “They say everything creates God in its own image,” Azure said. “If you want to know more about that, though, you’ll have to drive over and ask Bronwyn’s husband, the minister.”

  “No, that’s all I need to know,” Mandalay said. She made a quick but elaborate gesture. “Thank you.”

  “There’s one other possibility,” Azure said. “That maybe it just happened. Maybe it’s just one of those things.”

  Mandalay thought this over, then nodded. “I’ll think on it. You ready, Janet?”

  Janet stood, almost knocking the chair over. “You bet. Thanks, Miss Azure.”

  In the car on the way back to town, Janet asked, “So, seriously, Mandalay: Why was I there?”

  “This may sound strange to you, Janet,” the girl said, “but I value your cynicism.”

  “I’m a cynic?”

  “You are. You question everything, especially motives. You always assume the basest reasons for people doing things. I’m not saying you’re always right, but a lot of times I’m too sympathetic for my own good, and I tend to give folks the benefit of the doubt. So it’s nice to have the other side of the argument sitting right next to me.”

  “Thanks,” Janet said dubiously. “So what happens now?”

  “We leave things to the professionals. Let that wildlife guy and his people deal with it.”

  “Do you really think the other pigs conjured it up?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe someone else did, to use it for their own ends.”

  “Who would want to do that?”

  “You’re the cynic, you tell me.”

  “No one’s really benefited from it.” She paused, and her eyes opened wide with realization. “No, wait: no one’s really acted like they’ve benefited from it.”

  In the dark, Mandalay smiled.

  “Duncan Gowen,” she said with a gasp of insight. “If his girlfriend and Adam Procure were sneaking around…”

  “Which they were,” Mandalay said.

  Janet shook her head. “I’m not sure he’s that good an actor.”

  “Maybe he didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Janet snorted. “And I’m definitely not sure he’s that good a Tufa.”

  “He probably has as much Tufa blood as you. He just doesn’t express it.” After a long silence, she said, “This is all just conjecture, anyway. We need something concrete to tell us what’s going on.”

  “Like what?”

  Mandalay looked out at the night. “Like a bone song,” she muttered, but didn’t explain. And after all the evening’s weirdness, for once Janet Harper didn’t ask any more questions.

&nbs
p; * * *

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Ginny asked. “What’s wrong now?”

  Janet stood at the window in her T-shirt and underwear, staring out at the cold darkness. Ginny sat up and repeated her question. She’d just gotten back to sleep after Janet returned home and told her what happened, and was a little annoyed at being awakened again.

  “Why would Mandalay Harris invite me to drive her to see old Miss Azure, Ginny?”

  “She told you why,” Ginny said, and yawned. “You’re important.”

  “She told me something. But I’m not sure I believe it.”

  “Oh, come on, Janet. You’ve heard that shit your whole life.” In a singsong mockery of an adult voice, she said, “Law, that Harper girl, she’s done gone and got the magic, don’t she? I ain’t never heard nothing like it.’”

  Janet couldn’t help but smile. “It wasn’t like that, though. I mean, I didn’t do anything, I just carried her back and forth.”

  “Why don’t you ask her, then?”

  “Because it’s three A.M.”

  “Oh, so you’ll wake me up, but not her?”

  Janet sat back down on the bed. “I didn’t mean to wake you up, dumb-ass. You sleep so lightly, a moth can flap once and wake you up.”

  “You don’t mind that when we’re camping and a bear comes around.”

  Janet playfully yanked her hair, and they both laughed with practiced quiet. Then they stretched out beside each other again.

  “I wonder why,” Janet asked, “no one’s been able to kill that pig yet?”

  “Maybe it’s not of this earth,” Ginny said through a yawn.

  Janet nodded her agreement on the pillow. “That’s exactly what Miss Azure told us.” But Ginny was already asleep again.

  17

  “So now we’re going to skip ahead a few months,” Janet said to the crowd at the storytelling festival. The sweaty, rapt faces gazed up at her with wide eyes, hanging on her every word. She loved this aspect of performing here, and was grateful that there were no drunken boors determined to break the spell. At this festival, unlike her arena concerts, no one would dream of interrupting her with a request or a sexual remark.

  She strummed a gentle refrain of “Handsome Mary” as she continued. “After all, the winter shuts everything down. We get ten inches of snow on the ground, and it gets colder than your boyfriend Tom when you accidentally call him Harry. So nobody does much of anything. Well, except for what I told you that troubled boy and his best friend’s sister were doing just now.”

  She chuckled along with the audience’s laugh.

  “But I’ll get back to them. The game warden and the paramedic settled into a relationship that fit them both like an old comfortable hand-me-down quilt you snuggle under when the wind’s howling against the windows. They saw each other when they could, talked on the phone and texted when they couldn’t. They didn’t make a big show of it, but pretty soon everyone knew about it, and they were happy for them. The paramedic had spent her whole life caring about other people, making sure they were safe and happy, fighting the fights the girl with the secrets in her head wasn’t yet ready to handle, and she’d earned this. The warden was a decent guy, not too imaginative, but far from stupid. If he noticed strange things about the paramedic or the other Tufa, he kept it to himself, content to enjoy what he had. If only more people could do that.”

  Then she changed to a more chopping melody, one of her own tunes, “The I-40 Reel.” In concert she played it on a fiddle, but now she got the same feeling from her electric guitar. “The troubled boy and his best friend’s sister, though … they were different. They were young, and filled up with feelings they couldn’t put into words, or even songs.”

  She segued into a “wacka-wacka” riff, mocking the cliché music found in old porn movies. The audience laughed.

  “So they went at it almost every night after that first time: at her place, at his place, and at any place they could find. They discovered that they were a perfect match that way, and since they were young, and hurting, and this made them feel better, they took refuge in it. Everyone in town thought it was a fine thing. It had that symmetry about it, you know? Dead man’s sister and dead man’s best friend. There was a song in that somewhere, everyone knew, and it was just a matter of time before someone sang it at their wedding.”

  She segued into the Peter Gunn theme; only a few people in the audience recognized it. “But not everyone felt that way. Since the game warden spent a lot of time with the paramedic, going to Tufa barn dances and shindigs at the Pair-A-Dice, he also had a chance to watch the troubled boy and his best friend’s sister. He still had a sneaking suspicion about the boy, something he couldn’t put into words. And so did the girl with the secrets. It wasn’t that she thought the troubled boy had killed his old girlfriend, or his best friend; there was absolutely no evidence of that. But something important hadn’t come out in the open yet, and the night winds weren’t telling, neither. So both the warden and the girl with the secrets watched, and waited, to see what it might be.”

  She slowed to a steadier, even darker rhythm. “And while this was going on, the monster slept. There was a big mass hunt, with over three hundred people marching through Half Pea Hollow and over the slopes of Dunwoody Mountain, but it was all for nothing. No one saw it, no one heard it, certainly no one found it. It, too, had its mysteries, but no one had begun to discover them.

  “But that didn’t keep the warden’s old friend from looking. He had no dog in this hunt, as they say around here, but that didn’t mean he was ready to walk away. He was an old man, and he felt like this was his last chance to do something that mattered. And if that monster got him in the process, then he’d go out standing up, with his boots on. So he spent every spare moment of those short winter days traipsing through Half Pea Hollow, looking for pig tracks in the snow, poking into every hole and cave, looking for the monster’s den.”

  She abruptly stopped and gave the audience a sly smile. “Oh, but y’all don’t care about that pig, do you? You care about the troubled boy and his best friend’s sister, and what’s gonna happen to them, right?”

  The crowd murmured its assent.

  She grinned and returned to the melody of “Handsome Mary.” “Well, let me tell you. If you thought that things weighed heavily on the warden, or the girl with the secrets, you can imagine how they pressed down on that poor troubled boy. From the knowledge that he’d deliberately caused his friend’s death came the absolute certainty that he had to watch everything he said and did, to make sure he didn’t give that away. And you know what? It wears on you to live like that. It plumb grinds you down. It makes you short-tempered, and makes you seek out things to take your mind off stuff. And that’s what that boy did, even as something else he didn’t expect was just about to change his life all over again.”

  18

  “Dude, I’m pregnant.”

  Duncan looked up from his coffee. Renny sat on the other side of the bistro table in his apartment, looking as she always did in the morning: disheveled, intimidating, and adorable. In only blue panties and a man’s undershirt, with thick wool socks on her feet, she watched him with the same scrutiny she applied to NASCAR and Halo.

  He stopped in mid-sip. The coffee jammed in his throat as he choked out, “What did you say?”

  “Pregnant. Knocked up. A defective typewriter. Robin is in the Batcave. Pea in the pod. Eating possum for two. You know.”

  Duncan coughed the coffee down, sat silently for a long moment, then said, “A defective typewriter?”

  “I skipped a period. It’s from Grease.”

  “Okay. I mean, though … are you sure?”

  “I’ve got a little forest of blue sticks with my pee all over ’em on the bathroom counter if you want to double-check. I’m pretty sure.”

  He very carefully put down his cup. Outside, the wind blew hard and made the little window over the sink rattle. In the winter it was always a little chilly in the apartment,
but now Duncan began to sweat. He glanced up, but couldn’t meet her eyes. “So … what do you want to do?”

  “Do? I’m gonna finish my coffee, wash out my cup, maybe watch some Stranger Things on Netflix—”

  “About the baby.”

  “I imagine I’ll be changing a bunch of diapers about seven months from now. Used to babysit for Idgie Mulligan when her twins were little, and if I could keep up with them, I ought to be able to keep up with one of ours. Oh shit, though, what if we have twins?”

  She said this so calmly, with so little overt emotion, that he laughed.

  “And this is funny how?” she snapped back.

  “It’s not funny. You are. This is huge, and you’re just…”

  “Not freaking out?”

  “Well … yeah.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ears. He’d learned the hard way that this gesture meant she was not in the mood for nonsense. “Duncan, if you want me to laugh, or cry, or do a crazy dance around the room, you’ve got the wrong girl. You ought to know that by now. I only freak out if you hit the right spot. Otherwise … this is me.”

  He took another sip of coffee, wishing it were something much stronger. “Do you want to get married?”

  “Because I got pregnant? No. Absolutely not. I’ve seen how that sort of thing turns out.”

  “What if it’s because I love you?”

  “What if I don’t love you?”

  “You’ve said you did.”

  “Oh, sure, when you’re slamming me against the headboard or you’ve got me bent over the kitchen counter. I ain’t exactly thinking critically then.”

  “And the rest of the time?”

  A very small smile touched the corners of her lips. “Don’t worry, hotshot. I love you the rest of the time, too.”

  “So will you marry me?”

  “Because you feel like we should, because I got pregnant?”

  And then the fog that he perpetually lived in cleared. He felt a certainty that he hadn’t experienced in months. “No. You should marry me because we love each other. You should marry me soon because we’re going to have a baby.”

  Her smile grew. “I used to think you weren’t that bright, did you know that?”