Every Mountain Made Low

by Alex White

  “Nora Vickers hates you,” said Loxley. “She hates that lip of yours.

  Marie mouthed the words before she managed to say them. “She’s dead.”

  “Look into my eyes and tell me I’m not her.” She looked out from behind Nora’s smile like the mask she’d worn onstage. Loxley and Nora tangled up inside her, becoming one, like playing her violin to the rhythmic clapping of the audience. The clanging of the foundry grew deafening.

  Marie’s eyes met hers and her mortified expression betrayed her belief. “Oh, sweet Jesus, save me.”

  The more in-step Loxley became with Nora, the more she had a gnawing feeling in her gut that what she was doing was wrong. The raw fear radiating from her would-be victim infected her, and her rage and disgust transformed to a morbid pity. As much as she tried to shut it out, she thought of the child, no doubt alone and waiting for Marie to return home.

  “What were you doing at the Hound’s Tail?”

  “Buying coke for Hiram. I heard you playing, and I stayed to watch.” The woman was miserable, frightened and meek. She had to have been just as abused as Loxley, maybe more so.

  “Do you like your job?”

  She sobbed. “Not anymore. Oh, God, not anymore.”

  Dizziness washed over Loxley, and she reeled. Her time was almost up. Nora’s tenuous hold on her body had begun to dissipate. “Why not?”

  “They’re murdering folks. They make me drive them places and... They didn’t use to. It started after they shot that Alvin Kimball. I saw them, and Duke... he just looked at me and said, ‘I own the police.’” Her voice cracked, barely audible through her lisp. “I can’t leave. My son has to eat.”

  Loxley swooned. The ground swelled under her knees. “I can find you another job. I... I need to kill Duke and Hiram. They... they need killing. You... I’m going to let you live.”

  Marie’s expression changed to dark resolution – still afraid, but she clearly sensed a new path. “I can help you.”

  “Do you believe it? Do you know I can wipe these men off the earth?”

  The hare-lipped woman nodded in response, not a single gesture, but an ongoing convulsion. Again, disgust surged in her, but the emotion was not her own. Loxley knew her gaze was still Nora’s.

  The rock tumbled backward from Loxley’s fingers, clattering onto the rubble. Her viewpoint spun lazily to one side before her cheek struck cold stone. Marie crawled out from underneath her as all strength fled Loxley’s limbs. Blackness tugged at the periphery of her vision. As the spirit of her friend fled her body, Loxley collapsed the same exhaustion she’d felt the night she’d knocked on Don Fowler’s door. Summoning spirits taxed her to helplessness, and she had no choice but to trust Marie.

  “You don’t have to be bad anymore. I need you to take me back... to the Hound’s Tail.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Childish Things

  LOXLEY HELD A book in her hands as she sat at her dining table in Magic City Heights. She shifted her weight, feeling the splintery, rickety wood of her old dining chair. With the events of days past, the familiar had become alien – like returning to places she’d seen as a child, only to find them smaller now. She looked up to find Nora luxuriating across from her, clothed only in one of Loxley’s work shirts. She smiled widely.

  Unable to translate Nora’s expression, and a little nervous, Loxley looked down at her book. Orange block letters across the top said something, but what? She squinted at them, and they wandered across the page in rebellion. Was this her farming manual? She opened it, flipping through the pages, unable to read a single letter or number. When she found the half-tone picture of the farm, she stopped, seeing it with pristine clarity – perhaps clearer than she’d ever seen it.

  The little black square in the background came into focus. She’d always wondered if it was a farmhouse, and it was. Microscopic men streamed from its door, their shoulders hunched and beaten with the day’s coming work. She pulled the book closer to her eye to see the sweat drenching their bodies even before they’d accomplished their first tasks. One of them turned to her, his slate gray eyes boring into hers. It was a young Duke Wallace.

  She yelped and dropped the book, its pages flapping closed. Her eyes burned with tears, and she glared at the cover with its slippery letters. How dare he go there, to her special place?

  She looked back to Nora, still wearing that unnerving smile. Loxley touched her own lips and remembered: she’d been smiling like that as she’d mounted Marie. She remembered what she’d been thinking, too, as she sized up Marie’s hare-lip. She’d been disgusted. She thought the woman was a freak. She’d nearly said it out loud, but had managed to stay in control of herself. As Nora’s emotions had filtered into her, Loxley had begun to feel compassion and empathy, but that hadn’t changed her first reaction.

  “Did you think I was a freak when you first met me?”

  Nora said nothing, but stood from her place at the table, the chair scooting out with a loud squawk. She sauntered around, slowly taking each step as though caressing the floor with her bare feet. She wouldn’t stop smiling, unbuttoning her shirt as she walked, to reveal more of her freckled flesh. When Nora was still inches away, Loxley caught herself humming nervously, recoiling in her chair from the approaching figure.

  “P-please. I want to know if you thought I was stupid, or crazy.”

  Nora stopped, and looked away.

  “You can’t talk, can you?”

  The other woman’s shirt was fully-unbuttoned, and Loxley’s eyes trailed from her slender neck to her vagina. Nora held out her hand without making eye contact, and Loxley let it hang in the air. She couldn’t forget that nasty thought that had rumbled through her head: that Marie was pathetic, not worth stepping over in the street. Ugly.

  “You’ve got parts I don’t understand,” Loxley said.

  She turned from Nora and grabbed the agriculture manual from the table. She willed the pages to make sense, to give her brain some perch to land on so it could pick apart the text, but they wouldn’t unscramble. Letters slid crossways, distorting under her gaze, twisting and writhing to decouple themselves from the constraints of meaning.

  She didn’t comprehend the letters, but the truths. These things she wanted – a farm, Nora – they were so far from her grasp. Nora wasn’t simply a doting friend and potential lover; she had hatred just like everyone else. The feelings that Loxley had channeled, the things she said and noticed, unsettled her. They’d been friends so long that Loxley couldn’t remember, but Nora might have patronized her when they first met. Loxley had gotten better at reading faces since then, sensing when people made fun of her.

  The farm was a place for men like Duke – killers and thieves. He was strong, influential and well-spoken, but even he wasn’t the leader of a farm out there. Farms belonged to the Consortium, and he was just a cog in their machine. He still hadn’t escaped it, and so he would kill to try. Loxley would be nothing out there in the farmlands: just another dead body joining the thousands of others.

  Her apartment seemed unfocused, frosted like glass. Who was she, if not a farmer? Nora’s hand remained outstretched. Loxley batted it away. She didn’t want to be soothed.

  She wanted to be powerful.

  Warmth

  “LOX, LOX, LOXLEY... Get up, up, up.”

  Loxley’s eyes opened to her dim room at the Hound’s Tail. A shard of yellow light cut across the floor where the door had been left slightly open. Her eyes drifted upward, and she counted the boards between ceiling joists.

  “I’m awake,” she said.

  She didn’t know what time it was. There weren’t any windows in the staff area. She still felt exhausted. Her bra and panties scratched uncomfortably at her, and she slipped them off under the covers, dumping them onto the floor. She didn’t sleep in clothes, no matter what. It was something she’d told Jayla to get used to. She huddled under the covers, pulling them tightly around her like an embrace.

  Voices drifted into the ro
om from the hallway: Jayla’s voice, against Tailypo’s low grumble.

  “Not right now, you can’t, Tee,” said Jayla, her voice quiet but forceful.

  “This is my building, and I’ve got business.”

  “And she’s got to rest.”

  “You backtalking me, woman?”

  “Yes, I am. You pay me to get shit done, and that’s just what I’m doing right now.”

  Tailypo chuckled. “How is this ‘getting shit done?’”

  “That girl is going to pack the house tomorrow night, Tee. You let her get her strength.”

  Loxley heard the rustle of Tailypo’s silk suit. “Fine, but you tell that girl I ain’t giving a goddamned job to that straggler who brought her in. Freaky bitch can stay one night and that’s it.”

  Footsteps sounded down the hallway, then paused. “Unless,” said Tailypo, “Loxley wants to take my deal.”

  “Like Quentin?”

  “I take care of him, don’t I?”

  “That you do, Tee. That you do.”

  Loxley listened as footsteps receded down the hall.

  The door creaked open, and Jayla poked her head inside. “You are awake. Thought I heard you creeping around in here. How you feeling?”

  Loxley pulled down the comforter to uncover her mouth. “I’m hungry. What time is it?”

  “Four in the a.m.”

  Her joints ached, and she remembered passing out in the tunnel after beating Marie. “Did Marie bring me back here?”

  “She came and got us. Said you’d passed out. I think Quentin was about ready to bust her nose when he saw you.” Jayla leaned against the door frame. “You were bleeding and bruised, half frozen on a pile of rocks. I thought you might’ve been dead.”

  “No, but I saw a ghost.”

  She chuckled. “Other than Tee?”

  “Yeah. I saw the ghost of my friend Nora. She was happy to see me, but I don’t feel like I know her anymore.”

  Jayla shook her head. “I’m fairly sure Tee isn’t dead, honey.”

  It dawned on Loxley that her friend had been sarcastic moments before. She kicked herself for not recognizing that. “You don’t think I can see ghosts.”

  Jayla put her hands on her hips. “When did I say that? Touched people can see a lot of things the rest of us can’t. I think some of those things are real. I believe in ghosts, too.”

  “Touched?”

  “Different in the mind.”

  Loxley sank back into the covers, half-muffling her words. “Crazy, you mean.”

  Jayla came and sat on the edge of Loxley’s bed, patting her leg through the covers. “No. Just different.”

  Loxley sat up and the covers slid from her shoulders. “I can see ghosts because my mother could see them, and she wasn’t different like me. And she could see ghosts because of my grandma. Neither of them were touched. Ain’t crazy to see ghosts. It’s crazy not to.”

  “Okay, but honey, the Hole is a dangerous place. Why don’t you see ghosts all the time?”

  “Most people burn the bodies around here. I can only see a ghost when the body has some juice in it. That, and sometimes the ghosts just give up and go away.” She pulled her knees up to her chest. “Did you know you’re the first person to ask me how it works, being dead? Nora never asked.”

  “I’m pretty sure Nora knows by now,” said Jayla, making a strange face that Loxley didn’t recognize, sort of like she was going to laugh but sort of like she’d just sat on a tack.

  “Yeah.” Loxley smoothed down the ripples of her sheets. “Can I ask you something about Quentin?”

  Another chuckle. “You still sweet on him?”

  “No. I don’t like men. Not like that.”

  “Oh, uh... Okay. Well, uh, what was your question?”

  “Is he Tailypo’s boyfriend?”

  Jayla’s braying laughter startled Loxley enough that she had to cover her ears. The woman doubled over, slapping one of Loxley’s knees as she struggled to overcome the fit and draw a normal breath.

  “Boyfriend!” Jayla wheezed.

  “What?”

  “More like bitch, if you ask me.”

  Loxley was never sure what someone meant when they said that. “Okay, but they’re fucking, right?”

  “No!” Jayla giggled, wiping a tear from her eye. “Who told you that?”

  “When I first got here,” Loxley began, hugging herself, “Tailypo asked me if I would give myself to him. When I said no, he told me Quentin took the deal.”

  “Aw, baby, no. He’s just nuts like that. He says shit all the time. Tee and Quentin have a partnership, and Quentin does anything he can to keep this place going.”

  “Don’t call people nuts.”

  Jayla laughed again. “Why not? They all are. We act normal, but there ain’t a normal one among us. You ought to learn to like the way you are.”

  “Why? Everyone else hates it.” Loxley’s voice sharpened as she spoke, a little anger flashing inside. She gripped her legs tighter. She made eye contact with Jayla for a moment, annoyed to see the woman staring at her, and diverted her gaze back up to the ceiling. She slid her gaze up and down the parallel lines, almost wiping away the discussion before her.

  Jayla caught her chin, forcing Loxley to face her, even if she wouldn’t make eye contact. “Loxley, honey, I think you’re great – so does everyone who heard you play tonight. Even after you beat the shit out of that lady down the hall, she still tried to bring you back here.”

  “Marie is down the hall?”

  “She’s resting three rooms down... and you’re going to let her.”

  “I told her I could get her a job.”

  “You’re just going to have to think about that later,” said Jayla, standing up.

  “Okay.” Loxley itched her nose. “You said Tailypo and Quentin weren’t fucking.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about you and Quentin?”

  Jayla snorted. “What are you, the love police?”

  Loxley shook her head. “You don’t have to love someone to fuck them. I know because Nora –”

  “Pshaw. Every woman knows that.”

  “Okay, so are you? Have you? With Quentin?” Loxley imagined she was. After all, he was tall and scary, but kind, and a lot of girls probably wanted that. Loxley couldn’t pick men, but she was willing to bet Nora would have wanted him because he was better than Jack. Jayla would want him, too, because no one good could want Loxley. Never had happened. Never would.

  Jayla came and sat on the edge of the bed and patted her knee. “I give you one kiss and you think you own the whole damned world.”

  Loxley’s heart fluttered and she sat up straight, pulling on the sheets. Her hands didn’t want to cooperate, and she gripped even harder.

  The woman’s soft chortle stung. She wasn’t taking Loxley seriously. “I ain’t got to tell you who I have and haven’t laid with.”

  “No... Yeah, but you do!” She hadn’t meant to shout, but her voice gave way like a rusty faucet – squeaky at first but pouring forth once started. Now, the reverberations of her outburst drained away through the cracks in the floor, leaving only surprise. Always shouting, Loxa-lox! You keep it down; Gonna embarrass your momma!

  Jayla’s eyebrow cocked, and she tongued the inside of her cheek. Loxley swallowed hard – she knew that face: the face of disappointment. It was one of the only expressions she had consistent training with.

  “Why?” asked the woman. “Why do you need to know?”

  “Because you kissed me and n-now I want to...” She couldn’t explain it better, because her mouth didn’t want to help. It locked around the word ‘know’. She wanted to understand Jayla, to see where her tastes lay – to find out if it was a kiss or pity.

  “All right, then,” Jayla began, “yeah. I’ve been with a lot of boys around here. Had my first when I was twelve. Sweet little boy named Shaun, and I stole the sweetness right off him. So many others after that I lost count. Tried to get with Quentin, to
o, couple of years ago, but he wouldn’t have me. Been with a couple of girls, wouldn’t you know? And out of the whole lot, men and women, ain’t a damn one of them worth anything.”

  “Why do you say that?” It was all going wrong, just like it always did. Jayla didn’t understand, and now she would hate her.

  “You see a ring on this finger, sugar?” She stood, looking down on Loxley. “So how about that answer? How do you like that kiss now? You happy, knowing you licked the same piece of candy as everyone else?”

  Loxley had to stop her, had to show her she cared. “No!”

  “I thought not. Everyone wants something until they got it. Never should’ve given you that kiss.”

  “No! I... I – I – I mean, I don’t mind.”

  “You don’t mind? What does that mean?”

  Loxley’s eyelids flickered as she blinked away her nerves. Her fingers burned, and she white-knuckled the blanket. “A piece of candy... is always sweet.”

  One hand rose to the curvy woman’s hip to rest there. “Is it now?”

  “And I haven’t licked you yet, so I don’t know, uh, what you taste like.”

  Jayla suddenly went wide-eyed and looked away. She coughed loudly, clearing her throat. “You hungry? You want me to make you something?”

  “Jaylabiscuits.”

  “You ever going to ask me to make you something else?”

  “And fried okra. Don’t put gravy on it.”

  She paused at the door, looking back. “You’re a weird one, sugar... maybe I like that.”

  Loxley smiled feebly as Jayla exited, then laid back down, hoping to nap until the biscuits were done. No matter how hard she tried, she didn’t feel remotely tired, and soon she padded out of bed to don some clothes. She slipped into a pair of canvas pants and a thermal cotton top, then crept out of her room.