Gather Her Round

by Alex Bledsoe

  Behind him, Bliss’s house, rebuilt since it burned down two years earlier, loomed over him like a great protective beast. The community had pitched in and reconstructed it as close to the original design as they could. Still, there were modern amenities: central heat and air, wireless Internet, and satellite television. Not everything about the ole days was good.

  Somewhere a door opened and closed, and the dock’s wood shifted as Bliss walked out to join him. She was wrapped in a thick robe and wore only knee-high snow boots. “Hey, you,” she said through a yawn.

  “Hey.”

  A little fringe of ice decorated the edge of the lake. A month ago it had been frozen solid. Jack imagined the bite of that cold water on his skin. Bliss asked, “What’s up?”

  “That boy’s bones.”

  Bliss suspected that was what had roused him. “What about them?”

  Jack turned to her. “He’s spread out on a table in the fire station. He deserves better.”

  “His people will take care of him.” She put her arms around him. “You’re still angry about that animal, aren’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t you be? Aren’t you?”

  “I’m upset, yes. And wary. But anger doesn’t help.”

  He turned and put his arms around her. “You’re a much better adult than I am, Bliss.”

  “I know. And I understand.” Then she kissed him.

  “Dolph probably got up early and is out there hunting it right now,” he said. “I know he said he wouldn’t, but he also told me he’d wait until spring to go looking for it, and it turns out he’s been going through that valley all winter.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “He’s an old man. And it should be me, not him.”

  “You have a job with a lot of other responsibilities. He doesn’t. He’s trying to help you, not embarrass you.”

  “I know.”

  They stood silently until Jack finally said, “Bliss, I know you people know more than you’re telling me. You always have. I hate to do this, but it’s my last resort. Either you tell me what you know, what the Tufa know, or I can’t see you anymore. And I don’t want that any more than I hope you don’t.”

  “What do you think the Tufa are, Jack?”

  “Some little isolated ethnic group. Part black, part white, part Indian. It’s not that unusual; there are pockets of similar people all over the Southeast.”

  “So you read up on us.”

  “Yeah.” He couldn’t interpret her expression. “Am I wrong?”

  “That’s what most people think. ‘Triracial isolates’ is the technical term. They call ’em ‘Brass Ankles’ in South Carolina, ‘Redbones’ in Louisiana. And we won’t even get started on the Blue Fugates in Kentucky. DNA tests have pretty much established that there’s nothing really special about any of them.”

  “You’ve done some reading, too.”

  “I have. It helps to give people an answer when they ask awkward questions, even if that answer isn’t true.”

  “You’re saying it’s not true about the Tufa?”

  “It’s so not true, Jack, you won’t believe it.”

  “What about the DNA tests?”

  She smiled a little and shook her head.

  “So where does that leave us?”

  Bliss looked up at him, her expression still complex and maddeningly indecipherable.

  “Are you going to say anything?” he asked after a moment.

  “I’m thinking,” she said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been given that sort of ultimatum.”

  “This happens a lot?”

  “Not a lot. But it has happened. Not long ago, a young man came here and wanted to know about the Tufa. So I showed him.”

  “What happened?”

  She smiled at some inner irony. “He ran off with my sister.”

  “That must’ve hurt.”

  “Not really. It was the right ending for that story. And after all my sister had been through, she deserved a little happiness.”

  “And how does that apply to me?”

  “I showed that young man because he needed to know. I’m trying to decide if you do.”

  “I’ll make it easy for you: I don’t. I’ll go right on doing what I do, whether you tell me or not.”

  “I see. I guess I have a different decision to make this time, then.”

  “Which is?”

  “Whether or not I need you to know. I can tell you the real truth about the Tufa, Jack. And I can convince you. But that kind of knowledge can’t be unlearned. And it might alter things between us.”

  “You’re freaking me out a little, Bliss.”

  “Good,” she said seriously. “You should be freaked out. I want to stay with you, Jack, until one or both of us decide we don’t want it anymore, and I want that bad enough to share things with you that don’t get shared with outsiders very much.”

  “Will you get in trouble if you do?”

  “Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve crossed arbitrary lines. And I’ve already shown you some of it. Remember that hand gesture I had you make in the shower?”

  “Yeah…”

  “It’s actually a form of protection. It keeps mortals from falling under a Tufa’s charms. All the smart non-Tufa parents around here include it in ‘the talk’ they give their teenagers.”

  “What happens if they don’t use it?”

  “Usually they die of broken hearts.”

  She said it with such simple finality that he didn’t doubt that she, at least, believed it.

  “I don’t plan to die, Bliss,” he said carefully. “I like you a lot, but not that much.”

  She stepped back a few feet. Again the dock creaked under her weight. “What you’re about to see, Jack, isn’t a trick, or a hallucination, or a dream. Well, maybe a dream, although this kind of dream usually happens at midsummer.” She chuckled at her own in-joke. “I’m asking you one last time: Are you ready?”

  He nodded and crossed his arms. Although the rational part of his brain said this was all some elaborate put-on, he couldn’t ignore the dead-serious way she spoke, and the utter grim purpose with which she stepped out of her boots and then let her robe drop to the dock. Her pale skin shone blue-white in the moonlight, and the snake-and-acorn tattoo stood out in sharp relief.

  “Honey,” he began, “you don’t have to—”

  “Close your eyes.”

  He did. He sensed no change from her, no movement, nothing.

  “Now. Look at me.”

  He opened his eyes. And gasped. And was speechless.

  Because what stood before him was beautiful, and magical, and transcendent.

  But it wasn’t human.

  24

  Some things about the South, and Appalachia in particular, were clichés. That didn’t mean they weren’t often true. After all, clichés didn’t develop in a vacuum. And often, those clichés served the useful purpose of ensuring no one looked past the expected surface.

  Popcorn Mantis’s entire life, then, seemed to be a cliché.

  He lived in a stereotypical mountain shack, the kind immortalized in countless black-and-white photographs taken by well-meaning outsiders. There were many similar homes across Cloud County, hidden in the hills and at the end of barely passable drives. Quickly slapped together sometime in the last century, often as temporary dwellings while moonshine was brewed nearby, they proved sturdier than even their builders had expected, to the point of being viable for the new century’s moonshine, methamphetamine. They weathered the mountain climate, resisted fire and mildew, and ultimately became a part of the landscape around them, almost indistinguishable from the rocks and trees.

  Unless their owners were determined to draw attention to themselves. Like Popcorn.

  Mandalay walked up the little path paved with old hubcaps pounded flat by mallets, feet, and time. Even though it was cold, the crickets had begun to emerge for the spring, and they sang in the weeds that encroached on the yard. A si
ngle lantern burned in one window, but she wouldn’t have cared if the house had been totally dark. On an occasion like this, rank had its privileges, and time was a factor.

  “Popcorn!” she called out.

  “Go ’way,” a man’s voice called from inside. “Cain’t you read the damn sign?”

  Mandalay glanced at the yard-long board propped up on the porch that said at the top, NO TRESPASSING! Beneath that, in smaller letters, it read, What part of NO don’t you understand?

  “It’s Mandalay Harris, Popcorn.”

  “How I know that?”

  “Open the damn door and look at me.”

  “How I know you ain’t a revenuer?”

  “Because no revenuer could ever find this place. I’m coming up now.”

  “I got two barrels packed with thin little dimes pointed right at you, you best stop where you are.”

  “You shoot me, Popcorn, you ain’t never seen the haint like the one I’ll slap on your sorry ass,” Mandalay said as she climbed onto the porch. A fringe of dried groundhog skins hung around the edge of the roof. She knew they weren’t decorative; Popcorn used them to make banjo heads.

  Popcorn Mantis was the best banjo maker in Cloud County, and that meant he was one of the best in the world. But he never sought recognition for that. He made what he wanted, charged what he felt like, and ignored entreaties from the rich and famous. In fact, while his name was well known in those rarefied circles, few knew where to find him, and even fewer had actually met him. But his signature on an instrument caused grown men to bow their heads.

  Legend said that country star Son Emerson heard about his skill and once showed up at his door, insisting that Popcorn build him a banjo. He promised him any amount of money. Popcorn supposedly told Son exactly where he could go, and slammed the door in his face. Emerson denied it, of course, and Popcorn couldn’t be bothered to comment.

  Mandalay rapped on the screenless screen door. “Come on, Popcorn, open up.”

  Popcorn eased the inner door back. Heat and the odor of tanning hides surged out. Silhouetted against the glow of an open iron stove, he held the double-barreled shotgun leveled at Mandalay. “I ain’t got no truck with you, Mandalay. You just scurry on home.”

  “You do got truck with me, Popcorn.” She raised her left hand, clenched into a fist, then made two short, simple gestures with her fingers and thumb. “Now stop acting like some hillbilly in a horror movie and let me in. It’s cold out here.”

  He carefully uncocked the twin hammers and lowered the weapon until it pointed at the floor. “You can’t be too careful.”

  “Yes, actually, you can.”

  “So what’s so damn important?”

  She pulled the four bones from her pocket. “I brought you something. And I need something from you, soon.”

  “You know I work when I want to. Don’t nobody tell me what to do or when.”

  “You want to. Elsewise, I’ll have to keep coming back and checking on you. Can we get out of the cold, please?”

  Popcorn looked her up and down. “Wouldn’t think someone like you would get cold.”

  “You’d be wrong.”

  “Then I suppose I have to make us some damned tea.”

  “I’d prefer the green kind,” she said, but the sarcasm was lost on him. She followed him in, stepping over the homemade doormat that read, POPCORN SAYS FUCK OFF.

  The decor inside the shack looked exactly as Mandalay remembered it. Her father had brought her here to get her first banjo, before she’d settled on the guitar as her preferred instrument. She’d been five, but of course, the vast history in her head had churned up other memories of Popcorn, from his time as a dapper young man to his sad decline into alcoholism, and finally to his partial rebirth as a sober but unpleasant old craftsman. Which explained why her first question to him back then, as a five-year-old girl, had been, “Are you still drinking?” Which, in turn, explained why he couldn’t stand the sight of her to this day.

  He put a kettle on the stove and then lit two lanterns. The great lifetime’s-worth of clutter alternately shone and cast shadows, making the little foyer seem like some kind of incredibly complex labyrinth. She wondered where some of these pieces of wood, wire, and cloth had come from, and what Popcorn had in mind for them. But she knew better than to ask, since she needed a favor from him. She could pull rank, but it was always better to inspire people to be helpful than to command them against their will.

  “I learnt about this tea over in Germany when I was in the service,” Popcorn said as he put the loose leaves into a pair of rusty old infusers. “We used to go to this little tea shop because the owner had a half-dozen blond daughters, and they was all prettier than a sunrise without a hangover.”

  “Did you like Germany?” Mandalay asked, to keep the conversation friendly.

  “Oh, hell yeah. Anytime we’d go into town, all the little kids would come up to us and wave, shout stuff, and so on. I asked my sergeant why they were so damn friendly. He said, ‘If you got your ass kicked twice by somebody, you’d be friendly, too.’” He laughed, a big barking noise that frightened something alive in the clutter and made it scurry away. He blew the dust off two old cups and asked, “So what brings a little girl like you out here on a night like this?”

  “Have you heard about what happened to Kera Rogers and Adam Procure?”

  “Them the ones that pig killed?”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s all I’ve heard. Some pig killed ’em.”

  “There’s more to it than that. At least for Adam.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not completely sure.”

  “You? I thought the night winds tucked you in every night and brought you coffee every morning.”

  “Not quite.”

  He poured the tea before the pot whistled and put the cups on a table. “You can sit down.”

  “Thanks. Sugar?”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you have any Equal?”

  He snorted. “Not in this life.”

  “I meant sweetener.”

  He put a mason jar in front of her. “That’s honey I harvested myself.”

  “Thanks,” Mandalay said, retracting the dipper from the thick liquid and letting it drip into her cup.

  “So what does that have to do with me?”

  She put the bones on the table. They clattered in the silence. “I need these made into tuning pegs. And then I need you to make a banjo around them.”

  He picked up the biggest one and held it toward the lantern. “These ain’t pig bones.”

  “No.”

  His eyes opened wide in his wrinkled face as he realized. “Well, damn, girl.”

  “I know,” she said as she sipped the bitter tea.

  “Do their folks know you have these?”

  “No, and I don’t plan to tell them.”

  He held one up and squinted at it. “I can signify that this is a young man’s bone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Hey, I got my secrets, missy, and you got yours.” He looked at the others. “And those are a young lady’s.” He snorted sarcastically. “Gee, I wonder who they could belong to?”

  “Don’t get smart with me, Popcorn.”

  “It cain’t be legal for you to have these.”

  “Is everything you do legal?”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “Nobody.”

  He put the bone back down with the others. “Only got four.”

  “Then it’ll have to be a four-string, won’t it?”

  “Don’t you get smart with me, little missy. You’re playing with some powerful stuff here.”

  “I know that. How fast can you do it?”

  “You need me to build the whole thing from scratch, or can I put these pegs on one I’ve already got?”

  “I need the whole thing from scratch. It’ll get played once and never again.”

  “That big a deal?”


  “That big.”

  He thought it over. “Give me a couple of months. I got some paying jobs ahead of it.”

  Mandalay started to protest, then caught herself. She could order him, of course, but she was already imposing. It wouldn’t be polite to make it a demand, and given the nature of his work, it might pervert the final result. “Okay,” she said.

  He was still mad. “You know, you coming in here like this, demanding all my attention, I don’t appreciate at all. I’d expect it from ol’ Rockhouse, but not you.”

  “Popcorn, this is serious. Two people have already died, more could die, and we won’t know the truth about it until you—” She pointed at him. “—give us the means.”

  “Who is ‘we’?”

  “All of us,” she said with soft deliberateness.

  * * *

  Jack watched the glow at the heart of the fire, where it went from red to orange to white and back in random alternating patterns. All the patterns he’d counted on in his life had just come crashing down with the reality of what Bliss had told him, and then shown him.

  Back in her robe, Bliss snuggled against him on the couch. “It’s a lot to accept,” she said.

  “It is that,” he agreed without turning to her. “So are all the Tufa…?”

  “Some more than others. It’s a matter of how much true Tufa blood you have in you. I’m a pureblood.”

  Now he looked at her and waved his hand in the air where those beautiful, fragile-looking wings should be if what he’d seen was real. There was nothing. “Do they, like … retract?”

  Amusement crinkled the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t laugh at him. “It’s more complicated than that. And subtle. I can’t fully explain it.”

  “I can believe that.” He paused. “Bronwyn Chess? Can she do this?”

  “She can.”

  “I’m a scientist at heart, you know. I think that way. Everything exists for a reason, and fits into the world in a specific way. Nothing evolves for just the hell of it.”