A Whisper of Blood

by Ellen Datlow

  And waited there, eyes closed, hands spread like a medium on the Yellow Pages. While Alex woke his sister. While Randle used the washcloth. Again.

  Oxbow lakes. Flat country. Randle sleeping in the back seat, curled and curiously hot, her skin ablush with sweat in the sweet cool air. Big creamy Buick with all the windows open. Mitch was driving, slim black sunglasses like a cop in a movie, while Alex sat playing beside him. Old wrapping paper today, folding in his fingers, disappearing between his palms. Always paper. Newsprint ink under his nails. Glossy foilwrap from some party, caught between the laces of his sneakers. Or tied there. Randle might have done that, it was her style. Grim droll jokery. Despite himself he looked behind, into the back seat, into the stare of her open eyes, so asphalt blank that for one second fear rose like a giant waiting to be born and he thought, Oh no, oh not her too.

  Beside him Alex made a playful sound.

  Randle’s gaze snapped true into her real smile; bared her teeth in burlesque before she rolled over, pleased.

  “Fucking bitch, "with dry relief. With feeling. Alex said, “I’m hungry.”

  Mitch saw he had begun to eat the paper. “We’ll find a drive-through somewhere,” he said, and for a moment dreamed of flinging the wheel sideways, of fast and greasy death. Let someone else clean up for a change.

  There was a McDonald’s coming up, garish beside the blacktop; he got into the right lane just a little too fast. “Randle,” coldly, “put your shirt on.”

  Chasing the end of the drive-through line, lunchtime and busy and suddenly Alex was out of the car, leaned smiling through the window to say, “I want to eat inside.” And gone, trotting across the parking lot, birthday paper forgotten on the seat beside.

  “Oh God,” Mitch craning, tracking his progress, “go after him, Randle,” and Randle’s snarl, the bright slap of her sandals as she ran. Parking, he considered driving off. Alone. Leaving them there. Don’t you ever leave them, swear me. You have to swear me, Michie. Had she ever really said that? Squeezed out a promise like a dry log of shit? I hope there is a hell, he thought, turning off the car, I hope it’s big and hot and eternal and that she’s in it.

  They were almost to the counter, holding hands. When Randle saw him enter, she looked away; he saw her fingers squeeze Alex’s, twice and slow. What was it like for her? Middleman. Alex was staring at the wall menu as if he could read. “I’ll get a booth,” Mitch said.

  A table, instead; there were no empty booths. One by one Alex crumbled the chocolate-chip cookies, licked his fingers to dab up the crumbs. Mitch drank coffee.

  “That’s making me sick,” he said to Randle.

  Her quick sideways look at Alex. “What?” through half a mouthful, a tiny glob of tartar sauce rich beside her lower lip. “That smell,” nodding at her sandwich. “Fish.”

  Mouth abruptly stretched, chewed fish and half-smeared sauce, he really was going to be sick. Goddamned bitch. Nudging him under the table with one bare foot. Laughing into her Coke.

  “Do you always have to make it worse?”

  Through another mouthful, “It can’t get any worse."To Alex, “Eat your cookies.”

  Mitch drank more coffee; it tasted bitter, boiled. Randle stared over his head as she ate: watching the patrons? staring at the wall? Alex coughed on cookie crumbs, soft dry cough. Gagged a little. Coughed harder.

  “Alex?” Randle put down her sandwich. “You okay? Slap his back,” commandingly to Mitch, and he did, harder as Alex kept coughing, almost a barking sound now and heads turned, a little, at the surrounding tables, the briefest bit of notice that grew more avid as Alex’s distress increased, louder whoops and Randle suddenly on her feet, trying to raise him up as Mitch saw the first flecks of blood.

  “Oh shit, "but it was too late, Alex spitting blood now, spraying it, coughing it out in half-digested clots as Randle, frantic, working to haul him upright as Mitch in some stupid reflex swabbed with napkins at the mess. Tables emptied around them. Kids crying, loud and scared, McDonald’s employees surrounding them but not too close, Randle shouting, "Help me, you asshole!” and Mitch in dumb paralysis watched as a tiny finger, red but recognizable, flew from Alex’s mouth to lie wetly on the seat.

  Hammerlock, no time to care if it hurts him, Randle already slamming her back against the door to hold it open and Alex’s staining gurgle hot as piss against his shoulder, Randle screaming, “Give me the keys! Give me the keys!” Her hand digging hard into his pocket as he swung Alex, white-faced, into the back seat, lost his balance as the car jerked into gear and fell with the force of motion to his temple, dull and cool, against the lever of the seat release.

  And lay there, smelling must and the faint flavor of motor oil, Alex above collapsed into silence, lay a long time before he finally thought to ask, “Where’re we going?” He had to ask it twice to cut the blare of the radio.

  Randle didn’t turn around. “Hope there’s nothing in that house you wanted.”

  Night, and the golden arches again. This time they ate in the car, taking turns to go inside to pee, to wash, the rest rooms small as closets. Gritty green soap from the dispenser. Alex ate nothing. Alex was still asleep.

  Randle’s lolling glance, too weary to sit up straight anymore. “You drive for a while,” she said. “Keep on I-10 till you get—”

  “I know,” louder than he meant; he was tired too. It was a chore just to keep raising his hand to his mouth. Randle was feeling for something, rooting slowly under the seat, in her purse. When he raised his eyebrows at her she said, “You got any cigarettes?”

  “Didn’t you just buy a pack?”

  Silence, then, “I left them at the house. On the back of the toilet,” and without fuller warning began to weep, one hand loose against her mouth. Mitch turned his head, stared at the parking lot around them, the fluttering jerk of headlights like big fat clumsy birds. “I’m sick of leaving stuff places,” she said. Her hand muffled her voice, made it sound like she spoke from underwater, some calm green place where voices could never go. “Do you know how long I’ve been wearing this shirt?” and before he could think if it was right to give any answer, “Five days. That’s how long. Five fucking days in this same fucking shirt.”

  From the back seat Alex said, “Breaux Bridge,” in a tone trusting and tender as a child’s. Without turning, without bothering to look, Randle pistoned her arm in a backhand punch so hard Mitch flinched watching it.

  Flat-voiced, “You just shut up,” still without turning, as if the back seat had become impossible for her. “That’s all you have to do. Just shut up.”

  Mitch started the car. Alex began to moan, a pale whimper that undercut the engine noise. Randle said, “I don’t care what happens, don’t wake me up.” She pulled her T-shirt over her head and threw it out the window.

  “Randle, for God’s sake! At least wait till we get going.”

  “Let them look.” Her breasts were spotted in places, a rashy speckle strange in the greenish dashlight, like some intricate tattoo the details of which became visible only in hard daylight. She lay with her head on his thigh, the flesh beneath her area of touch asleep before she was. He drove for almost an hour before he lightly pushed her off.

  And in the back seat the endless sound of Alex, his rustling paper, the marshy odor of his tears. To Mitch it was as if the envelope of night had closed around them not forever but for so long there was no difference to be charted or discerned. Like the good old days. Like Alex staggering around and around, newspaper carpets and the funnies especially, vomiting blood that eclipsed the paler smell of pigeon shit from the old pigeon coop. Pigeonnier. Black dirt, alluvial crumble and sprayed like tarot dust across the blue-tiled kitchen floor. Wasn’t it strange that he could still remember that tile, its gaudy Romanesque patterns? Remember it as he recalled his own nervous shiver, hidden like treasure behind the mahogany boards. And Randle’s terrified laughter. Momma. Promises, his hands between her dusty palms; they were so small then, his hands. Alex wiping usel
essly at the scabby drip of his actions, even then you had to watch him all the time. Broken glasses, one after another. Willow bonfires. The crying cicadas, no, that was happening now, wasn’t it? Through the Buick’s open windows. Through the hours and hours of driving until the air went humid with daylight and the reeking shimmer of exhaust, and Randle stirring closed-eyed on the front seat beside him and murmuring, anxious in her sleep, “Alex?”

  He lay one hand on her neck, damp skin, clammy. “Shhhh, he’s all right. It’s still my turn. He’s all right.”

  And kept driving. The rustle of paper in the back seat. Alex’s soft sulky hum, like some rare unwanted engine that no lack of fuel could hamper, that no one could finally turn off.

  And his hands on the wheel as silent as Randle’s calmed breathing, as stealthy as Alex’s cities, the litany begun anew: Florien, Samtown, Echo, Lecomte, drifting forward like smoke from a secret fire, always burning, like the fires on the levees, like the fire that took their home. Remember that? Mouth open, catching flies his mother would have said. Blue flame like a gas burner. What color does blood burn?

  And his head hanging down as if shamefaced, as if dunned and stropped by the blunt hammer of anger, old anger like the fires that never burned out. And his eyes closing, sleeping, though he woke to think, Pull over, had to, sliding heedless as a drunken man over to the shoulder to let himself fall, forehead striking gentle against the steering wheel as if victim of the mildest of accidents. Randle still asleep on the seat beside. Alex, was he still saying his cities? Alex? Paper to play with? “Alex,” but he spoke the word without authority, in dreams against a landscape not welcome but necessary: in which the rustle of Alex’s paper mingled with the slower dribble of his desires, the whole an endless pavane danced through the cities of Louisiana, the smaller, the hotter, the better. And he, and Randle too, were somehow children again, kids at the old house where the old mantle of protection fell new upon them, and they unaware and helpless of the burden, ignorant of the loss they had already and irrevocably sustained, loss of life while living it. You have to swear me, Michie. And Randle, not Randle then, not Francey but Marie-Claire, that was her name, Marie-Claire promising as he did, little sister with her hands outstretched.

  The car baked slow and thorough in the shadeless morning, too far from the trees. Alex, grave as a gargoyle chipped cunningly free, rose, in silence the back door handle and through the open windows his open palms, let the brownish flakes cascade down upon Mitch and Randle both, swirling like the glitter-snow in a paperweight, speckles, freckles, changing to a darker rain, so lightly they never felt it, so quiet they never heard. And gone.

  The slap of consciousness, Randle’s cry, disgust, her hands grubby with it, scratching at the skin of her forearms so new blood rose beneath the dry. Scabbed with blood, painted with it. Mitch beside her, similarly scabbed, brushing with a detached dismay, not quite fastidious, as if he were used to waking covered with the spoor of his brother’s predilections.

  “I’m not his mother!” Screaming. She was losing it, maybe already had. Understandable. Less so his own lucidity, back calm against the seat; shock-free? Maybe he was crazier than she was. Crazier than Alex, though that would be pushing it. She was still screaming, waves of it that shook her breasts. He was getting an erection. Wasn’t that something.

  “I’m sick of him being a monster. I can’t—”

  “We have to look for him.”

  “You look! You look! I’m tired of looking!” Snot on her lips. He grabbed her by the breasts, distant relish, and shoved her very hard against the door. She stopped screaming and started crying, a dry drone that did not indicate if she had actually given in or merely cracked. Huh-huh-huh. “Put your shirt on,” he said, and remembered she didn’t have one, she had thrown it away. Stupid bitch. He gave her his shirt, rolled his window all the way down. Should they drive, or go on foot? How far? How long had they slept? He remembered telling her it was his turn to watch Alex. Staring out the window. Willows. Floodplain. Spanish moss. He had always hated Spanish moss. So hot, and Randle’s sudden screech, he hated that too, hated the way her lips stretched through mucus and old blood and new blood and her pointing finger, pointing at Alex. Walking toward them.

  Waving, extravagant, exuberant, carrying something, something it took both hands to hold. Even from this distance Mitch could see that Alex’s shirt was soaked. Saturated. Beside him Randle’s screech had shrunk to a blubber that he was certain, this time, would not cease. Maybe ever. Nerves, it got on his nerves, mosquito with a dentist’s drill digging at your ear. At your brain. At his fingers on the car keys or maybe it was just the itch of blood as he started the car, started out slow, driving straight down the middle of the road to where he, and Randle, and Alex, slick and sticky to the hairline, would intersect. His foot on the gas pedal was gentle, and Alex’s gait rocked like a chair on the porch as he waved his arms again, his arms and the thing within.

  Randle spoke, dull through a mouthful of snot. “Slow down,” and he shook his head without looking at her, he didn’t really want to see her at this particular moment.

  “I don’t think so,” he said as his foot dipped, elegant, like the last step in a dance. Behind Alex, the diagonal shadows of willow trees, old ones; sturdy? Surely. There was hardly any gas left in the car, but he had just enough momentum for all of them.

  I am uncomfortable with afterwords, forewords, and so on because to me a story is useless if it doesn’t speak solely for itself. That said, I will note that “Teratisms” is about love, and hunger, and one of the many districts where they intersect.

  Kathe Koja

  M IS FOR THE MANY THINGS

  Elizabeth Massie

  Here is another story about a family, although this one is strictly structured in contrast to the chaos of Koja’s, and is voluntary. Well, mostly. A perfect example of the adage the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

  Mother was dying. Her forehead was splotched and red, and her hair was brittle and dry on the pillow. She sweated without relief, her body like a huge hot cloud on a summer’s day, raining steadily, the water collecting in the creases of her flesh and dripping to the folds of the sheet beneath her. The sweat smelled of Vicks VapoRub, and the soiled linens, piled in the corner of Mother’s room, added a scent of urine and diarrhea. It was Barbara’s job to do the linens, but they were dirtied so quickly now that she had a hard time keeping up.

  Grace, feeling ill herself, dabbed Mother’s body with the edge of a towel. Mother’s breathing had been labored for two days. She was dying. The sense of impending loss and despair roiled in Grace’s bowels. Emotions of which she could make no sense were tangled in her chest, causing her lungs to hurt. She shuddered, and wiped the length of Mother’s collarbone.

  Greg, Grace’s brother, came into the room. He stepped lightly on his bare feet, and sat beside Grace on a low chair. Grace gave him the towel. He dabbed Mother’s arm. He said nothing. Grace knew he was waiting for her to decide if she could talk about this, or wanted to leave it in silence.

  Pain squeezed Grace’s vocal cords, and she said, “How can I bear this?” Greg didn’t look at Grace, nor touch her. None of the brothers and sisters knew how to comfort each other. That was Mother’s duty. He lifted Mother’s massive hand and gently dabbed the moist places between each finger. Then he said, “Stay strong if you can. I’ve been through this before, and I know what I’m saying. Stay strong.” Grace swallowed, and it hurt.

  “Why don’t you go to dinner?” Greg said. He put Mother’s hand down, then wiped her breast. “I’ll take my turn. Mary has made a nice stew. She’s upset that no one was on time to the dining hall tonight.”

  Grace closed her eyes. Several heavy tears joined the sweat on the bed. Then she rose and left the room.

  Outside the door, Grace slipped on her clothes and stepped into her shoes. She walked along the hall to the top of the staircase, passing the two open doors of the girls’ rooms and the closed door of the nursery. A s
oft squeak emanated from behind the nursery door, and Grace let her hand touch the wood briefly as she went by. It was Grace’s job to do the hourly feeding, but it was only six-thirty. From below was the bland aroma of Mary’s cooking, and the sound of Eldon buffing the living-room floor.

  At the top of the stairs, Grace’s kitten lay in a weak ball. Grace picked it up and squeezed it tightly. It was a shame; this kitty was no good. It had been a nice, healthy animal when Grace had found it in the backyard, but now it was thin and weak and its fur was coming out. Just like all the other kittens Grace had tried to keep as pets. They had been playful and cute and full of energy. Then they each got sick and died. Grace had loved them greatly. And they all died.

  Suddenly Grace was flushed with the need to go back to Mother. She dropped the kitten and grabbed the top of the banister, her jaws clenching. Then the sensation passed. Greg was with Mother, it was his turn. And Grace did need to eat. It was almost twenty minutes past dinnertime.

  Downstairs, Mary stood in the dining hall, arms crossed, bushy eyebrows a furious dragon across the top of her face. She was the oldest of the children, nearly thirty-nine. She was usually the cook, and always the assigner of chores. She was the rememberer of the rules and the doler of punishments. Mary was the only one of the children to have a room to herself. No one argued with Mary; they complained about her under their breaths at work or in the darkness on their cots at night.

  “You’re last,” Mary told Grace. “You’ll have dish duty, then.”

  Grace said, “That’s all right.” She slumped to her assigned seat at the long wooden table, poured herself a glass of milk from the carton, and picked up her spoon.

  Mary took up a rumpled cotton napkin and looked at it steadily, then sat down across from Grace. “How is Mother?”

  “The same.”

  Mary sighed. “Maybe I’ll help you with the dishes,” she said. “It will keep me from thinking.”

  Grace ate a piece of carrot. It caught in her throat. “I wish I’d had time in the infirmary, Mary. Don’t you? Maybe then we would know what to do.”