Gather Her Round

by Alex Bledsoe

  They were also drunk.

  “… so I finally said I’d meet him at the coffee shop in the Walmart over in Unicorn,” Harley was saying. “We’re talking, everything’s going fine, and then he gets this weird look on his face. ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask him. ‘Nothing,’ he says, ‘I just have to fart.’ And he does! I heard it, right there in the Walmart!”

  They were now a dozen yards away. Spook switched on a flashlight and shone it ahead of them. The circle of light caught Mandalay where she stood.

  “I hope there weren’t no second date,” Spook said as if he didn’t see the girl at all.

  “There wasn’t even the end of a first one. I swear, Spook, dating is the hardest damn thing in the world.”

  With no warning at all, Spook burst into tears. The flashlight shook in his hand.

  “Goddammit, Spook,” Harley said.

  “I just cain’t believe she’s gone,” he said, drawing each word out in a series of stuttering sobs.

  “I came up here because you promised you wouldn’t do this.”

  “I cain’t help it!” He threw his arms around his sister, who was a full foot and a half shorter. She staggered back under the sudden weight.

  “Look, what’s done is done,” Harley said. “Get yourself together and grow a pair.”

  Janet started to stand up, but Mandalay gestured sharply for her to stay still. The brother and sister remained in place, the flashlight swinging wildly as Spook adjusted his hug.

  “I was going to write a song for her wedding someday,” Spook said. “I’d even started it. ‘My baby sister—’”

  “Stop it!” Harley snapped, and pushed him to arm’s length. “This ain’t helping you, or me, or her.”

  “But I just don’t understand it! Why would that monster kill her? She was an angel—” And again he dissolved into sobs.

  Harley slapped him. It made no difference. Then she drew back and drove her knee into his groin.

  His sobs cut off at once, he let out a soft squeak, and fell to the ground. The flashlight rolled away back toward the house.

  “Now, stop that,” she said.

  “Owwww…”

  “I’m sorry, but you needed it.”

  He got slowly to his knees. She helped him up the rest of the way, and the two walked back down the hill to the house, picking up the flashlight when they reached it.

  When she was certain they were too far to hear, Janet said softly, “Why didn’t they see us?”

  “I hid us.”

  “You’ve got to show me how to do that sometime.”

  “If I showed you,” Mandalay said sadly, “you’d have to carry all I carry.”

  Janet brushed dirt off her jeans and said nothing. Mandalay knelt and opened the small coffin, with the remains of Kera’s hand in it. Janet couldn’t see what the girl was doing, and truthfully didn’t want to. In a moment, Mandalay closed the box and said, “All right, let’s put it back.”

  Although she was exhausted, Janet worked diligently, because the sooner the hole was filled in, the sooner they could get the hell out of there.

  * * *

  As the pearl gray light of dawn peeked in around the curtains, Duncan watched Renny sleep. She lay on her stomach, her black hair covering her face. He wondered if that position would hurt the baby, but decided he or she was so young, it probably didn’t matter.

  She’d essentially moved into his place, although they agreed they would soon have to look for someplace larger. There was no room for a baby in this bachelor-sized pad.

  He brushed the hair back from her face. Her mouth was open, half-scrunched on the side pressed into the pillow. In the dimness, her expression looked a bit like Sylvester Stallone. That made him smile.

  Then her eyes opened. “Stop staring at me,” she said sleepily.

  “I’m not staring, I’m looking.”

  “Why?”

  “Wondering how I got so lucky.”

  She rolled onto her back and smiled up at him. “Maybe I’m the one who got lucky.”

  “Maybe we both did.”

  “That still don’t explain why you’re not sleeping.”

  “I have a lot on my mind. I mean, I don’t know anything about being a daddy.”

  “You think I know what it’s like to be a mother? Have you met my mother? Hell, when the Ekvails moved in down the road, Mama had to warn ’em that despite what they might hear, my middle name wasn’t ‘Goddammit.’”

  “Well, you won’t be like that as a mama.”

  “I’ll try. Except, to tell you the truth, I don’t even like kids.”

  He put his hand on her still-flat stomach. “I bet you’ll like this one. I hope he or she likes us.”

  Renny put her hand over his. “Dude, what’s really bugging you?”

  Duncan glanced at the clock. It was a little after five-thirty. It seemed like the time of day when honesty was demanded. He said, “All my life, I’ve been trying to be right about everything. It was important to me to be right. I used to get into fights about it as a kid.”

  “I know. I remember watching a couple at school.”

  “Did I win?”

  “It was a split decision both times. Coach Leckie came out and broke them up.”

  “Well, I feel different now.”

  “You don’t want to be right all the time?”

  “No. I just want to be…”

  “What?”

  “Better. Better each day than I was yesterday.”

  She took her hand from her stomach and touched it to her face. “Oh, honey,” she said, all her usual sarcasm absent.

  He kissed her. “I love you, Renny.”

  “I love you, too, hotshot.”

  * * *

  Ginny opened the back screen door of her family’s porch. She yawned, still in her sleep shirt, and turned on the porch light. When she saw it was Janet who’d rung the doorbell, she said, “It’s five in the morning and it’s a school day. What are you doing here?”

  “Get dressed,” Janet said, and pushed her back inside. She kept shoving all the way into Ginny’s bedroom.

  Ginny’s family lived in a one-story house that had seen better days, but was still comfortable and homey enough. Ginny’s room was a mess, cluttered with books, clothes, and pieces of artwork that depicted mythological creatures. She’d even painted an enormous unicorn on her closet door. She cast around for something to wear in the discards.

  “Do you ever do laundry?” Janet asked.

  “Look, you come banging around here at sunrise, waking everybody up—”

  “Oh, I didn’t wake anybody but you.”

  “The hell you didn’t!” Ginny’s father yelled from their bedroom. Janet always forgot how thin the walls were in this old house.

  “Anyway, come on. I have got to talk to you.”

  Minutes later they were back in Janet’s car. “Where are we going?” Ginny asked.

  “I don’t know. I just … I can’t … it’s like…”

  “Wow, calm down.” She dug a roach from her pocket and took the lighter from its place in the ashtray. After she lit it, she said, “It’s too small to pass. Lean over.”

  She took a drag, then blew a stream of smoke into Janet’s face. Janet sucked in as much as she could. Ginny did it twice more before saying, “Now: what happened?”

  “Mandalay wanted me to drive her somewhere, right? Just like when we went to see Miss Azure. Only we went to where Kera Rogers was buried and … and…”

  Ginny had never seen Janet so distraught. “What?”

  “We fucking dug her up.”

  “What, you mean like you dug up her grave?”

  “Yes.”

  Ginny was speechless for a moment. Then she asked, “Is that why you smell like that?”

  “What, do I smell like the dead?”

  “No, you smell like dirt.”

  “Then yes.”

  “Why did she want to do that?”

  “I don’t know! She took som
ething out of the coffin, and then we buried it back.”

  “What did she take?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see.” She shuddered. “The coffin wasn’t any bigger than a damn shoe box, Ginny. I don’t even know what was in it. I’d heard that hog ate some of her, but if that’s all that was left…”

  Ginny shook her head and pulled the last bit from the roach. “That’s crazy.”

  “I know! I know it’s crazy! That’s why I’m freaking out!” She took several deep breaths to calm down. “Ginny, I don’t know what to do here. I mean … what if she really is crazy? We always knew Rockhouse was mean, and capable of some bad shit, but there was, like, clear cause and effect with him: You piss him off, he fucks with you. But he wasn’t crazy.”

  “Have you talked to Bliss Overbay?”

  “No, because what would I say?”

  “You can tell her what happened. There has to be a reason why Mandalay is dragging you into this instead of her. Bliss is supposed to be her second-in-command, red right hand, or whatever you want to call it.” Ginny sat up straight. “Shit. What if Bliss doesn’t even know?”

  Janet drove in silence, mulling this over. “Maybe you’re right. But keep this between us, okay?”

  “Who the hell am I going to tell?”

  “I know, but just keep this extra between.”

  Ginny made a motion like she was zipping her lips shut.

  “Thanks.” She turned to begin the long swing back to Ginny’s, since they had school later that morning.

  23

  The next night, after it was full dark, Mandalay left her trailer, stepped into the backyard, and abandoned her glamour. She knew her father and stepmother watched, but also knew they wouldn’t interfere. They knew who and what she was.

  Within moments her wings spread wide and carried her easily up into the sky. She rode the night winds high above the mountains, where the air was cold, thin, and filled with the things the Tufa worshipped. But she had more to do than simply commune.

  The previous afternoon, she’d left the fire station with Junior at her heels, insisting in his whiny way that she tell him what she knew. She finally ordered him to leave her alone, and enforced it with a hand gesture that she’d used only three times in all her incarnations. It was one of the signs that asserted her full authority, and the fact that Junior could aggravate her to the point that she used it was something she’d have to seriously ponder.

  Then she’d drafted Janet Harper into helping her exhume Kera’s remains. The night winds had been whispering about Janet for years now, and Mandalay figured it was time to get to know her. Their apparent age difference meant they’d never cross paths socially, so Mandalay had taken the initiative. Now she wondered if she’d actually frightened Janet away from the destiny the winds had for her. Only time, that most malleable of things for the Tufa, would tell.

  But Janet had done her part, and it was now up to Mandalay.

  In less time than it took to think it, she stood atop Esketole Mountain at the southwestern edge of Cloud County. The view was spectacular, and depressing: from here she could see the scars, white in the moonlight, of mountaintop-removal mining in other counties. It was a terrifying thing to witness, and its economic worth never seemed to trickle down to those who saw their world ravaged. As always, the money that was put into Appalachia pretty much left the same way it came.

  But no one would ever touch Esketole, or any other mountain in the Tufa domain. There were countless riches to be found there, but they were as hidden as the Tufa’s true nature from those who would claim them. Not since Sadieville had anyone tried to mine in Cloud County, and that town had been wiped from memory by time, and magic.

  Atop Esketole there was a small clearing, unreachable to most without a day’s arduous hike through bear- and bobcat-infested woods. Every landmark on its slope bore an intimidating name: Copperhead Pass, Thunder Rocks, the Devil’s Steps, Spider’s Way. Rumor said that the bones of the first man to climb it, Merle Elswick, lay in a deep crevice and would never be recovered. So no one would just idly visit Esketole, which was the whole point, given what waited at the top.

  She stood barefoot at the edge of a little spring-fed pool that formed the head of a trickling stream. The grass was stiff with frost, and crinkled when she stepped on it. The pool’s water wound its way down the mountain, becoming an underground river that actually traveled deeper than the artesian aquifer that formed it.

  This was the singularity, the point where tradition held that the Tufa arrived in the New World. Custom said that the Fairy Feller, the woodsman whose hubris caused them to be exiled from their home far across the sea, first drank the water of the New World from this spring. Ever since, all Tufa kept a jar of this water somewhere in their house, so that new children could also have their first drink from this spring, a sort of Tufa baptism. Some, such as Mandalay herself, were actually dunked in this spring as a newborn, to awaken the Tufa within. Legend held that once you drank from the Esketole spring, you were bound to this spot, this valley, these mountains. It was more a tradition than actual magic; that came, she knew, from a completely different source. The wind tousled her hair, as if punctuating that thought.

  She knelt and unfolded the square of soft linen, revealing the four finger bones. As she washed them in the icy water, rubbing the residue off until they shone pure white in the moonlight, she sang “The Two Sisters” just loud enough to be heard over the gurgling.

  There were two sisters, they went playing,

  To see their father’s ships come sailing.

  And when they came unto the sea-brim,

  The elder did push the younger in.

  “O sister, O sister, take me by the gown,

  And draw me up upon the dry ground.”

  “O sister, O sister, that may not be,

  ’Til salt and oatmeal grow both of a tree.”

  And so she sank, she never swam,

  Until she came unto the mill-dam.…

  As she sang, she was careful not to let the finger bones drop into the pool. Its depth, like its mystical waters, was a thing of legend, and she didn’t want to test it. When she was done, she took each one and polished it clean with a chamois cloth. Then she rolled them in her palm, where they clacked like dice.

  What did he do with her breastbone?

  He made him a lute to play thereupon.

  What did he do with her fingers so small?

  He made him pegs to his lute withall.

  What did he do with her nose-ridge?

  Unto his lute he made him a bridge.…

  The wind stirred the trees, and something moved behind her. She turned. A shadowy figure stood in the deeper shadows between the trunks, visible only when she didn’t look directly at it.

  “Kera?” she said, hoping like hell it wasn’t the other ghost she knew prowled these woods, the one with six fingers on each hand and a meanness that held on far past the grave. “Kera Rogers, are you unable to rest?”

  Nothing happened. The wind rustled the trees, but the shape did not respond. Wherever she was, Kera had no unfinished business. That was a relief.

  But there was the other. “Adam?”

  “Yes,” came the voice, just barely over the wind. Then the shape dissolved into the other shadows.

  Mandalay waited to see if Adam’s shade would return. Adam hadn’t manifested at the fire station when she first tried, so she’d known that only here might he be summoned. Ghosts were not uncommon in Cloud County, or probably anywhere; most people didn’t sense them, very few saw them, and only the rarest spoke with them. Mandalay had ghosts inside her head as well, so they were just part of her world. But that didn’t make them any less unsettling.

  Still, she held the dead man’s finger bone in her hand, and had sung up his ghost with it. Unlike Kera, he wasn’t resting. He must have more to say than just hello.

  “Adam Procure,” Mandalay said loudly. “If you have a tale to tell, come out here and speak with
me. You know who I am. Don’t be afraid.”

  There was no movement, but again the figure seemed to coalesce out of the shadows. “I’m here,” he said, a voice made out of the sound of wind-rattled leaves.

  Mandalay clenched the bones tight in her hand, willing the connection to grow stronger. “Did you deserve to die, Adam Procure?”

  The figure’s voice was as faint as a birdcall from the valley below. “I was tricked.”

  Mandalay sighed. Was it too much to ask for a straight answer to a yes-or-no question? But she knew it was. Ghosts were often only partial revenants of the dead, and their minds didn’t always fully comprehend the cause-and-effect of questions. She tried again.

  “Adam Procure: Were you murdered?”

  “No.”

  Then what the hell are you so upset about? she thought. “But you were wronged.”

  “Yes.”

  A light went on in her head. “Could you have been saved by another?”

  “Yes.” And then he faded again, and Mandalay knew she was alone on the mountaintop.

  She considered calling him back up, or trying again to summon Kera, but she’d heard enough. The girl’s nonappearance spoke to the accidental nature of her death; there was no one to avenge. But whatever had happened subsequently in Half Pea Hollow was different. If not a murder, then at least a killing that could’ve been avoided and wasn’t.

  She carefully folded the cloth around the now-clean bones and tucked them back in her pocket. Again she looked out at the mountains, from the scarred ones in the distance to the safe ones that she, and the night winds, protected. She was truly, deeply tired, but there was one more stop before she could rest. She looked up into the starry sky, where the night winds crossed and danced in their eternal flights. And a moment later, the mountaintop was deserted.

  * * *

  Jack stood on the short dock, watching the stars, the bright moonlight shining down. There was no light pollution here, and even with the moon, he made out the belt of the Milky Way across the sky. He was restless, but he couldn’t pin down the reason. Certainly the last hour or so with Bliss should have taken his mind off anything and everything. The woman’s energy and imagination seemed inexhaustible.

  He wore his khaki uniform pants and leather jacket, but he was shoeless and bare-chested. Mist rose from the water, curling in little tendrils, and something large sloshed out of sight. That got his attention—what could live in this pond that was large enough to make a sound like that? It was no bass or bluegill surfacing, and if it was a catfish, it was gigantic. He’d have to ask Bliss if she’d stocked something unusual in it.