Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  " 'Ma'am,' " Idonia repeats and she has to shake her head. Nettie's politeness is even more puzzling than her being here. "You got a reason for dragging your bony self into my yard?"

  "My name's Nettie Bean."

  "Oh, I know who you are," Idonia says. "I can smell the corbae on you like a piece of road-kill gone bad—that's a stink that doesn't go away with a bath or two, girl." Idonia's been around so long, any human she meets is a child in her eyes. "What I can't figure is what would possess you to come walking in here."

  Nettie doesn't question that Idonia knows who she is, or worry about how maybe this isn't the safest place to be for someone who's known to be a corbae friend.

  While they're talking, Morgans are drifting into the farmyard. Ambling from the barn and outbuildings, ghosting in from the woods, all of them looking pretty much the same, the way a nest of bugs do when you turn over an old stone or stump, you can't quite see what's what as they go skittering away. A few of them are roosting in feathered skins on the roof of the porch and in the twisty boughs of the old crab apple tree growing up along one side of it. But Nettie doesn't seem to notice any of them.

  "I've heard you can teach me how to fly," is all she says.

  Idonia starts to laugh, she can't help it.

  "Where'd you hear that, girl?" she asks.

  "I can't remember—it's like I just knew it one day. But you've got to tell me, ma'am. Is it true?"

  "Well, now," Idonia tells her. "That's about as true as it gets."

  One of the Morgans in the yard snickers and Idonia shoots him a dirty look, but Nettie doesn't catch it. She's got a glow on her from Idonia's news that just won't quit.

  "It's not easy," Idonia warns her.

  "I'm not a-scared of hard work."

  Idonia gives her a solemn nod, fixes a serious expression on that long narrow Morgan face.

  "And it can hurt some," she adds. "At first, I mean. But after that you'll be fine."

  Nettie just squares her thin shoulders. "When can we start?"

  "Right now, girl," Idonia tells her.

  She gets up out of her rocker and joins Nettie where she's standing in the dirt, puts her arm around Nettie's shoulders and starts walking her up the hill to the barn. There's maybe twenty Morgans standing around now, smiling at Nettie, and for the first time she starts to feel a little nervous, hesitates. Idonia gives her shoulders a squeeze.

  "Don't you be fretting yourself about my family," she promises. "We're going to treat you the same as we do all our guests."

  Nettie lets herself relax then, not stopping to think that Idonia didn't say she'd treat her good or bad, just the same.

  "Back off," Idonia tells her family as the whole crowd starts to follow them up to the barn. "Give us some room to breathe. None of you got work to do?"

  By the time they reach the door of the barn, there's only Nettie and Idonia and a couple of her boys left. Daniel and Washington. Don't wonder how I know their names. I know everybody who was there. I've got their names chiseled in my heart the way a stonemason works letters into a tombstone—big and plain, for all to read, so the weather can't wear them down, so nobody can forget. So I can't forget.

  So they're at the door of the barn and everybody else fades away, going back to whatever it was they were doing when Nettie first arrived. The birds that were perched on the porch and in the crab apple tree fly in through the doors ahead of them and get swallowed by the dark lying inside.

  "What's in here?" Nettie asks, feeling a little nervous again.

  There's a smell in the air she can't place. Like something died, but not recently. An old dead smell.

  "This is where we'll fix you up with your feather skin," Idonia tells her as she leads the way inside.

  Nettie follows her in, blinking at the dark. The smell's stronger here, so thick it seems to layer like fine dust on the walls of her lungs. Then her eyes start to adjust to the dimness and she feels faint, would have fallen except there's a Morgan boy on either side of her, keeping her on her feet, fingers holding on to her arms like vises squeezed tight.

  "You're not changing your mind, are you?" Idonia asks.

  "I…I …"

  Nettie can't talk. All she can do is stare up where thousands of crow skins hang from the rafters, dangling on long thin strips of leather like herbs drying—heads, legs, black feathers all still attached. Most of them are our little cousins, but here and there's a bigger shape, some corbae got too close to Freakwater Hollow and didn't get away fast enough.

  "Where'd you think you'd get your feather skin?" Daniel asks her, his voice a throaty rasp in her ear. "Outta thin air?"

  "Now don't you go scaring her, Daniel," Idonia says.

  Washington laughs. "Too late for that."

  Nettie finds a last piece of strength, lying there at the bottom of her heart, half-buried by the sickness that seeing all those dead crows has put in her. She tries to pull away, but those Morgan boys just haul her along, deeper into the barn.

  It's not Nettie's dying that calls to me, but her need to make her peace. That's what brings me to her where she's lying at the bottom of the craggy point up past the Bean farm. The Morgans left her there, broken like a raggedy doll, made her a skin of feathers and then dropped her off the top of the cliff. They left her for dead, but she's too strong for them, can't die until she knows that lost daughter of ours will be looked after.

  That need of hers focuses sharp as a knife. It reaches out to me where I'm visiting some cousins on the coast of northern Oregon, puts a fire and a pain in my chest and draws me to her side. I take the first flight out of Portland to Newford and fly the rest of the way under my own steam, but I still don't get to her until late in the day. And then I'm standing over her and all I can do is weep to see what's become of my little wild fox girl.

  "God … goddamn … you … Jack …," is what she says when her gaze focuses on me. "Always … too late…"

  I can't talk. There are no words to ease what's been done to her. I kneel at her side, drop some water between those parched lips of hers, wipe her brow with a wet cloth, and all the time I'm dying inside.

  "You … you've got to … do this … thing … for me …"

  The peace she needs to make isn't with me. It's with that lost daughter of hers.

  "You got to … promise me. You'll … find her. You'll … keep her … safe."

  I haven't got crow girl magic. I can't mend the broken bones, the torn flesh. I don't even know if they can, this is so bad. But I've got to get them to try.

  "Let me get the girls," I tell her. "See if they can't—"

  "Promise me."

  Those sky-blue eyes of hers are cloudy with pain, but their gaze pins me and I can't turn away.

  "I promise," I say. "I'll find her, no matter how long it takes. I'll find her and bring her over from wherever it is she's gotten lost."

  "Suh … safe …"

  I nod. "And I'll keep her safe. But right now you've got to let me …"

  But that's all she was hanging on for. She hears me say what she needed me to say and then she finally lets go. I stare at the stillness that she's become and all the darkness in the world comes swelling up inside me. I can't hardly breathe. I can't think. My hand's shaking as I close her eyes, then I bow my head to the ground and I can't stop crying.

  I keep asking myself, over and over, why'd I ever have to come into her life? Why'd I have to make such a mess of everything?

  But there aren't answers to that kind of thing.

  I lift my head and scream my grief into the sky, scream until my throat's torn raw and all that comes out is a whispery rasp that still holds more pain in it than I ever thought a body could bear.

  It's almost dark before I can finally stand up and carry her back to the farmhouse. I take out those feathers, one by one, wash her body, dress her in one of those pretty flower-print dresses of hers. I comb out her hair and then I carry her again, down that familiar path we used to take through the woods.

&
nbsp; I bury her in that field of grace, with the stone where we first met to watch over her. With every shovelful of dirt I can feel myself growing colder and colder, like I'm carrying a piece of winter inside me. When I finally get the job done, I stand there in the moonlight and look down at the grave.

  "I know I made you a promise," I say, "and I'll keep it. But …" I have to swallow, but it doesn't do much for the big lump that's sticking in my throat. "I've got me some other business to get out of the way first, Nettie. I … I'm hoping you'll understand."

  Grief is a stone in my chest and I know nothing's going to ease the pain because nothing can bring Nettie back. But this isn't something I can let go. Everything's shut down in me, except for this thing I've got to do.

  I make a visit to a gunrunner down in Tyson, wake him out of bed around four in the morning. He starts to give me some jaw, but then he takes a look at my face and he shuts right up. I tell him what I need, my voice still a husky rasp, and he sells me an old army-issue U.S. carbine, a .30 caliber Ml, throws in a half-dozen boxes of ammo rounds, thirty cartridges to a clip. By four-thirty I'm heading back up past Hazard in a stolen car.

  It's getting on to dawn when I leave the car at the foot of 'Shine Road and start walking up toward Freakwater Hollow and the Morgan farm, the same route Nettie took, though I've got different business with the Morgans. The pockets of my duster are weighted down with ammunition clips. The rifle's in my hand, loaded. I'm not making any secret of what I'm doing up here. You don't need to see the rifle—all you've got to do is look in my face.

  If those Morgans were smart, they would have hightailed it as far and fast as they could go, left the county, left the damn country. But they're not smart. They're mean, through and through. Bullying, cruel, maybe even cunning. But not smart.

  The first guard's dozing under one of those tall lonesome pines. He jolts awake as I come walking past him, starts to get up. My bullet takes him in the throat and drops him back into the pine needles and I keep walking. I kill the second one, too, but the third lives long enough to tell me what I need to know. I engrave the names he gives me on the stone in my chest.

  Idonia. Washington. Daniel. Callindra. A half-dozen more. These are the Morgans directly responsible for what happened to Nettie.

  "You … you're a dead man," he says, coughing up blood.

  "You think I don't know that?" I tell him.

  He has something else to say, but I pull the trigger before he can get it out.

  It goes on like that. I keep cutting down Morgan boys and make my way up that winding dirt road. I take my time, doing a thorough job of it. I shoot some of them out of the air, most of them in the woods that run alongside the road. A few of them get off a round or two, but it's like the cold stone of grief that's lodged in my chest is an enchantment against their bullets. I can't be touched.

  By the time I step into the farmyard, I've gone through my first clip and snap another into the carbine. Behind me I've left a trail of dead Morgan boys, but I'm only getting started here.

  They don't deserve to die clean and fast like they do, but this isn't just about vengeance. I mean to clean out the whole nest of them, the way you deal with vermin. What happened to Nettie can't happen again to anyone else.

  The sun's up now.

  Somebody steps out of one of the outbuildings. She's got her hands up in front of her, like she wants to talk, but there's nothing to discuss. The rifle lifts in my hands. There's the loud crack as the bullet exits the muzzle, traveling at six hundred and fifty yards a second. When it hits the figure, it slams her back against the wall of the building.

  There's a flurry of gunfire then, coming from all sides, but the charm that's kept me alive this far is still holding. I start picking them off, through the windows, from the rooftops, in the woods.

  It's over fast. The quiet that follows is profound. Nothing much lives up in Freakwater Hollow, but you can't hear anything now. No birdsong. No insects. Just the stillness, smelling of death. I drop a second clip onto the dirt of the farmyard and snap in the next. Wait a moment. See a movement alongside the barn. Drop another Morgan.

  There's a shout from the house then. Anger or grief? I can't tell. I turn to face the clapboard building and Idonia's standing there in the doorway with a shotgun in her hand.

  "How many of us are you planning to kill?" she says.

  The barrel of that shotgun's aimed my way. It's a good weapon for a mediocre marksman. Lots of stopping power and the odds are good of scoring a hit if you're in the limits of its effective range. I'm well within the limits.

  "How many you got?" I ask.

  "Christ, you're such a little pissant," she says. "Can't you take a joke?"

  We both know how this is going down. There's nobody left. If there were, she wouldn't be standing there by herself. But if she's got to take a fall, she's going with bravado. The only thing a cuckoo carries more of than meanness is pride.

  "I didn't think it was funny," I tell her.

  I drop her before her finger can tighten on the trigger, shoot her in the throat like I did the first of her boys down on the road coming up. The impact sends her reeling back into the house. The shotgun goes off, blowing out the upper right-hand corner of the doorjamb, but it's only a reflex of her hand muscles.

  I know I've cleaned out the whole nest of them now, but they're not all dead. Not all the Morgans live up here in Freakwater Hollow. But these are the only ones I had to deal with today. These are the ones that hurt my wild fox girl.

  That grief swells strong in me again. I let the carbine fall to the dirt and I can't move. All I can do is stand there, with my heart turned to stone.

  I’m still standing there when the sheriff’s men come. They don’t see a corbae wearing a man’s skin when they pull up in their vehicles, falling over themselves to haul out their guns and train them on me. They see a black man.

  Nobody ever had any love for the Morgan clan in these hills—they made about as many human friends as they did corbae. But the difference is, they looked white, and bad though they were, some things always come down to skin color. In these hills, poor white trash is still a tall step up from a black man.

  They take me to the county seat in Tyson to stand trial. There's some more killing as I wait for my court date. The ones dying are Morgans, coming up from other parts of the country, looking for payback, meeting up with corbae before they can get to me in the jail. Pretty soon those Morgans get the message.

  Chloë stands me a lawyer, but there's not much he can do. The only thing I'll say in my defense is, "They needed killing," and that's no defense at all. It leaves everyone to worrying about what's going to happen to me. Except for me. I don't think at all. All I am is empty and cold. All I know is that stone of grief I'm carrying with me. I don't go away like Raven—the grief holds me here—but I don't know much else. Everything goes by fast and I don't pay much attention to any of it, can't seem to focus. Not on the trial, not on the jury's verdict of guilty, not on the judge's sentencing. Makes no difference to me if I'm in the county jail while the trial's on, or sitting on death row waiting to die.

  Because Nettie's still dead. None of their words, nothing they can say or do to me, can change that.

  That lawyer Chloë hired me wants to appeal, but I'm not interested. He means well. He tries to argue with me, but all I can think is, when did Nettie get a chance to appeal?

  When they finally set a date, I don't even hear them tell me I've got two weeks left to live.

  It just doesn't seem all that important.

  One winter's night, the week before my execution, Annie comes to see me. I don't know how she gets in. Slips in through some window somewhere, I guess, and ghosts her way down to my cell. Or maybe she finds a fold in the way the fabric of place is bunched up around here. I haven't been looking myself. There's no need for shortcuts where I'm going.

  I'm stretched out, taking up most of the narrow bed in my cell when she comes in. My eyes are open, but I'm not look
ing at anything. It takes me a while to register her presence. I don't know how long she's been sitting there on the end of the bed before I finally notice her.

  "You got a death wish?" she asks.

  It takes me a while to work that through.

  "I don't have any wish at all," I say.

  Though that's not true. Given a wish, I'd ask for Nettie to be alive. For her not to have died, and died so hard and alone.

  Annie shakes her head. "When're you going to tell us what this is all about?"

  "Nettie's dead."

  "We know that, Jack. But what happened? What did those Morgans do to her that'd make you up and kill them all?"

  I've never explained. It's bad enough I've got the memory of it, that big stone of grief taking up all the breathing space in my chest, without handing over pieces of it to the rest of my kin. No one else should have to feel this cold I've got in me, like they're walking dead.

  Annie leans forward. "Jack," she says. Her voice is soft, soothing. Always was. Lord, that girl can hold a tune. You'd never think she was a jay, to hear her speak. "They're going to kill you next week."

  "I know that."

  "I'm not even going to argue with you about why you're not putting up a fight," she says. "But you can't let her story die with you."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's not right. You've told me yourself, in the end, stories are all we've got. They're who we are and what we are and why we are. We've got to share them with each other, the good and the bad. Maybe especially the bad, you said to me once, because anyone who doesn't remember history is doomed to repeat it. Do you want whatever it was that happened to Nettie to happen to someone else?"

  I shake my head wearily. "That's why I killed them all."

  "You didn't kill them all," Annie says. "The world's still full of cruelty and meanness—human and blood. Cuckoos are still breeding and dropping their eggs in other people's nests. You think your killing a few Morgans is going to stop all the rest of the misery in the world? You think it'll stop those cuckoos from hurting somebody else?"