Every Mountain Made Low

by Alex White

  “I told you to see me in my office after the show,” said Tailypo.

  “Okay.”

  “And you didn’t do that, did you?”

  “No. I saw something more important, so I did that instead.”

  He swept up the whiskey glass, its amber contents sloshing with satisfying arcs of refracted light. “Why would you think that there’s anything more important than what I told you to do?”

  She shrugged. “You’re not very important to me.”

  She’d meant to offend him, but he laughed. She couldn’t tell if it was a genuine laugh, or the sort of chuckling someone does before they start yelling.

  “It’s up to me whether or not you get to sleep inside. It’s up to me whether you get to play your violin again. It’s up to me,” his voice rose to a crescendo with that word, “whether or not I sell your whereabouts to Duke for a few bucks.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t control me, and I didn’t take your deal. I don’t have to do what you say. I could walk out of here and you won’t stop me.”

  “You don’t look that strong to me.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I think you like me. I think you might love me. You’re not going to hurt me.” She glared at him. “You want me to like you, too.”

  He swallowed loudly, but kept that smile of his.

  Keep on mouthing off to me, Loxley had once heard her mother say before a swift slap. Her mother had been leering the same way. If he hit her in anger, would his ghost side emerge? If it did, she would draw him into her – just like Nora – and solve that problem right there.

  Tailypo scratched his nose. “So you got this woman downstairs who knows who you are: Marie. You know why I’m okay with your big fight with Duke?”

  “No.”

  “That’s because he’s Consortium, and them company fucks are what took away my goddamned forest. So when I hear you want to kill the most important shill in the Hole, I think it’s a good thing. Bat shit crazy, but good. I can see you’re about to say something; just keep it to yourself.” He ran a finger around the lip of the glass. “When I got my tail back, I hid it away. Buried it in the woods and got myself a good old rest for a couple dozen years. But then these fucking miners… I don’t even know where those bones are anymore. Crushed to powder I guess.”

  She made herself stop tapping her feet and rubbed her sweaty palms against her pants. “You don’t like Duke either?”

  “Hell, no. I want to turn this whole place into a ghost town — just feed it to the kudzu. But that takes time, and you think you can just shortcut it with Marie.”

  “She says she’ll tell Hiram to meet me in the foundry so I can turn myself over. If we don’t show up, she’s going to tell him where I’ve been hiding.”

  “Too much risk. Let’s just put a bullet in her and be done with it. I can have some of the boys dump her body off into the smelting furnace.”

  “The smelting furnace?”

  “Sure. More bones in the steel around here than you might think. I got a bunch of friends that work in there.”

  “That’s what Duke did to Alvin Kimball, and I don’t like it. Marie doesn’t need to die.” She shook her head. “Her plan is good.”

  “You just don’t give an inch, do you?”

  “If you don’t do what I want, I’m going to leave, or Duke will eventually kill me. I won’t be around anymore.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He laughed, and tried to say something else, but trailed off. He snatched up his glass and took a long pull of his whiskey. When he set it back down, his hand tensed, and a few drops slurped over the sides. He muttered something and strode to a stuffed deer, inspecting its black eyes. “Do you know what this is?”

  “It’s a deer. I saw one in a book.”

  “And you don’t think that’s impressive that I have one?”

  She didn’t follow. She had grown used to people taking conversations in random directions, but this one seemed even stranger than normal. What was he trying to tell her? “Other people are going to figure out who I am,” said Loxley. “I got the crowd to clap with me, so I bet more people will come see. You said that people would come from all around to hear. Duke will know about me.”

  “I bet you’ve never been out of the Hole, have you?”

  “No.”

  He stroked the deer’s head, running his fingers along its ear. “Never seen a forest... I’ve got one here, though, enough for both of us. You can have it, if you just give yourself to me.”

  “This is just a room full of dead animals.”

  “Don’t you have an imagination?”

  “Yeah, but I also have eyes.”

  He roared and shoved the deer. It slid across the marble floor into a murder of crows, which toppled like bowling pins. “You are so infuriating sometimes. Why don’t you just do as I say?”

  “Help me kill Hiram.”

  He wheeled. “Shut up about Hiram!” He swept across the room toward her, his red silk coat billowing like fire, his skin growing sallow. He planted a boot on the seat between her legs and loomed over her, furious. The temperature plummeted, and Loxley saw the stuffed deer in the corner kick its legs momentarily. Black wings fluttered.

  A nervous, atonal hum erupted from her and she cringed. When she glanced about the room, all eyes were upon her. Every head had turned to see.

  “I’ve never wanted anything like I want you. There’s something about you. I need every part of you,” he rumbled. “Are you scared?”

  She flapped her hands. “Yes.”

  “Why? What happened to all that strength from before?” he asked, his voice suddenly smoothing like a singer’s.

  “I’m scared that you’re weak and stupid.”

  He arched an eyebrow.

  Loxley wiped her eyes, and her hand came away slightly damp. “You can’t seem to control yourself. You might hurt me or worse, and then you won’t have me around at all. You don’t understand that there is only one way to do things around here.” She struggled to control her breathing as she let her eyes fall closed. She couldn’t look at his face anymore – not so closely, with its twitching muscles. “My way or nothing.”

  “You don’t have to take my deal, then, if you want Hiram dead.” He leaned closer, and she felt his cold breath on her neck as he whispered into her ear. “Maybe if you sweet talked me a little. Maybe with a kiss,” he cooed.

  Her eyes shot open and she struck him solidly across the cheek. Her palm arced with pain as though she’d broken a bone, and she screeched in agony. He bolted upright before stumbling backward, clutching his face in shock.

  The room’s warmth returned. A blink, and the stuffed animals had returned to normal. She rose, her chest heaving in time with the throbbing of her hand.

  “I don’t need your fucking permission,” she snapped. “For anything.”

  She made for the door. Tailypo didn’t stop her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Just a Taste

  THE STAGE LAY empty, the theater lights long since extinguished, save for one of the table lamps Loxley had switched on. It bathed her immediate surroundings in its incandescence, but stopped after a few feet – a tiny sphere submerged in a darkened sea. She traced the patterns of the lacquered maple wood tabletop, unable to count the striations because of the way that they faded into one another like cirrus clouds.

  She hadn’t grown the gills she’d hoped for; she’d carried her own air down into the depths, and she had the distinct sense that it was running out. Loxley imagined the lamp dimming, the light shrinking, until it flickered out like a candle, leaving her to drown. She rubbed her eyes, crushing away a tear with her palm.

  Her hand throbbed where she’d slapped Tailypo. A nasty pink bruise spread over her palm. Tomorrow, it would be yellow and purple, the same as Nora’s touch, and Alvin Kimball’s before it. Loxley’s theory had proven out: when Tailypo lost control of himself, he became a ghost.

  What if he’d entered her the same way N
ora had? What would it be like, to channel a creature like Tailypo? What sorts of unwelcome thoughts would consume her? She considered how betrayed she’d felt when she gathered Nora’s feelings on Marie, then settled on the idea that Tailypo would be profoundly disturbing.

  Before she’d come to the theater for peace and quiet, she’d stopped by Marie’s room. Jayla told her they’d sent Marie home, and the hare-lipped woman had left a note. It read:

  Stacker. Thursday. Midnight.

  Everyone knew the stacker – the enormous, filthy machine on the southwest side of the foundry spraying coal from the rail lines into mountainous piles with its boom. The cloud of coal dust often swept across the southern side of the eighth ring, staining every house black in its wake. Loxley hadn’t been up close to it, but she often watched it at night from the roof of Magic City Heights, vibrating with its yellow sodium vapor lights and low thrum.

  So that was where Hiram would be. She was clever and quick. She could hide and stick Cap’s knife into him, then get away before he made a ghost. Would he be ready for her? After she’d killed his friend in the limousine, almost certainly. He might even have new friends. Would her bruised hand be better by then? Hiram might prove more difficult if it wasn’t. Still, Duke would be a lot easier to murder if he was out of the way, and she needed to take it one ghost at a time.

  “You pissed Tee off pretty good, Loxley,” came Quentin’s voice. He sauntered around the table and pulled up a chair, scooting into the light.

  “I hate him.”

  “So I gathered.”

  “He won’t stop trying to,” she thought about it for a second, “do things to me. I think he’s trying to fuck me.”

  Quentin removed a long, silver tube from the jacket pocket of his silk suit. He opened it and pulled out a cigar. Three o’clock in the morning, and he was still dressed like he was working the restaurant. “I’ve met most of his ex-wives. You don’t seem like his type.”

  “You don’t believe me?” she asked with a scowl.

  He clipped the stogie, depositing the tip into an ash tray. “You and I both know Tee wants more from you than sex. You know he’s not like the rest of us.”

  The flash of his lighter was blinding in comparison to the darkness around it. Leaves flared red to black like the coloring of some poisonous insect, and a torch flame ejected from the end of the cigar with each puff.

  Curling smoke, billowing and clouding. Rapid flashes. Lips. Puff. Lips. Puff. Eyebrows rising. Nostrils flaring. The lamp and the lighter both bright. A hundred chairs in the shadows.

  She scrunched up her eyes, but the leathery smoke drilled through her nose and into her brain. It threatened to overwhelm her. She’d never been close to a cigar before, and she hated all of it. Humming loudly, she slapped at where Quentin sat, and a prickly burn slashed her palm as she hit the cigar. She batted at it again, the tips of her fingers just brushing Quentin’s stubbly face. She wanted to tell him to stop, but the word wouldn’t form in her mind.

  “Jesus, girl!”

  She didn’t stop slapping the air until she was sure he’d retreated.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that Quentin had jumped to his feet and was frantically brushing the front of his silk suit. The stogie lay shattered on the table, a thin wisp of smoke trailing from it before snaking wildly through some unseen turbulence. She reached out and thumped the stick onto the floor.

  “For fuck’s sake, Loxley!”

  With a yelp, she noticed the black burn mark on her already-bruised hand. The pain of it roiled around the thought of the ash on her skin. Now she had ash there instead of skin, and that was bad. Get the skin back. She rubbed the mark to no avail. She brought it to her lips and licked; an acrid tasted filled her palate. The room tilted, and she struggled to orient herself. She retched, but managed to keep her lunch as she scrubbed her hand across her pant leg. Searing pain jangled her spine from the bruise and the burn.

  Then, she pressed her thumb into the burn so she couldn’t see the mark. The fluctuating pain became a constant stab, and stability returned. Up was up again. Words came back.

  “Jesus Christ, haven’t you ever seen someone smoke before?” Quentin boomed, stooping to pick up the cigar. He dropped it into an ashtray a few tables away.

  “Nora smokes pot,” croaked Loxley, and she got the distinct impression of a toad in the summertime. What would a toad think of so much smoke? Would it ribbit out a smoke ring? Would the other toads jump through it? That seemed like something they’d like. She chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Toads.”

  “Are you always like this?”

  “Yeah.”

  Quentin swore under his breath as he picked at a piece of ash on his sleeve. She hadn’t meant to hurt him or scare him, or even ruin his clothes, yet there he was, angry and burned. Her hand stung so much that her eyes watered, but she could still see how much she’d upset him through the pain. She didn’t know how to make him feel better.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but he shook his head.

  “Why is it okay for Nora to smoke pot, but I can’t light up a cigar without getting slapped?”

  She’d never considered that question. She thought on it for a moment. “Because pot is small. It doesn’t make a big flame and lots of smoke like cigars do. The smell is weird, but it’s Nora’s smell and I love her.”

  “You’re something else, girl.”

  “Why did you take Tailypo’s deal?”

  “Can I make myself a gin?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “You’re not going to slap it out of my hands or anything? Gin smells weird.”

  Shame burned in her cheeks. “Don’t make fun of me.”

  “All right, all right,” he grunted, rising.

  She watched him saunter over to the bar – a long, polished counter that curved around the whole back wall. It sparkled with hundreds of different bottles and glassware, and Loxley averted her eyes, not wanting to be taken in by its details. After a minute or so, Quentin returned with a large glass of clear liquid. She could detect its Christmastime scent from across the table.

  “When I was growing up on the eighth ring, there wasn’t nothing here worth a damn,” he said plopping down. “It wasn’t the kind of place you could walk around, day or night, unless you wanted to get all your valuables boosted, or worse. My momma worked in the mines – not a place for someone as pretty and nice as she was. Every day, me and Elsie, my sister, went up to my Gran’s house on the fourth ring, and momma went to work. Every day, you feel me? Not just the weekdays, but weekends and holidays, too. One day, we came home, and there was a Con-man waiting for us. That’s what we used to call the Consortium administrators.

  “Told us momma had been killed in a collapse. Gave us a check for three hundred dollars. We didn’t have to buy a casket, because they said they couldn’t dig the bodies out. So we started living with Gran, but she wasn’t the same after mom’s death. Gran started drinking, and she went downhill fast. She didn’t live more than another year. That put me and Elsie on the street.”

  Loxley remembered the police carrying away her mother’s corpse. She’d screamed and banged her head until Birdie came and told her to stop. She didn’t know how long she’d been at it, but it had left her forehead bloody, along with a dark, red streak on the wall. She swallowed her tears and shook her head as hard as she could, pulling herself back into the moment with Quentin.

  “You should have taken up farming,” she said.

  His voice laughed, but his face didn’t. “I’ll be fucked if I ever go out to those farms, girl. That ain’t no kind of life for anyone. And I wasn’t going to let Elsie go out there, either. The kind of men that choose that life are either desperate, vicious or both. I was going to take care of us, no matter what, but a farm ain’t the place for taking care of anything. I enrolled myself at the mines, just like momma, working for her old boss. I brought home a paycheck. I reconnected with some lost family. I wa
s on track to become a foreman one day.

  “But, you know, in the end, it didn’t matter. One day, Elsie disappeared. I searched for weeks. I even paid a guy everything I had to investigate. He took my money and moved to Atlanta. My cousins couldn’t help me. No one could find Elsie. I don’t think she’s alive. I started drinking and making a pest of myself. I robbed a few places. I hurt some people. I may not look it now, but I got pretty mean back then.”

  “You beat up that guy in Harrison Hoop Station,” said Loxley, remembering the clobbering Quentin had administered the thief who’d stolen her money.

  “Aw, Hell. That was just a little love tap. You should see me when I actually mean someone harm.”

  She tried to imagine it. “No. That sounds scary.”

  “So I spent my whole check every week on partying. I couldn’t pay my rent, but I could always find an excuse to go drink on the second ring. The bars up there were top-notch. Unbelievable furniture, decorations, the works. Loved it up there. Only reason I didn’t drink in Edgewood was that none of them would’ve let me in.”

  “Why not?”

  He snickered. “Shit. Don’t worry about it. They just didn’t like the look of me, is all.”

  “But you’re nice now.”

  “I’m getting to that part. I’d ruffled more than a few feathers all over the Hole, and everyone was just about done with me, I think. Some kids jacked me on the eighth ring, not far from here. When things went wrong, I wound up with a knife in my ribs, bleeding like a stuck pig. I crawled maybe thirty feet before hitting the pavement face first.” He pulled up his shirt, showing a light, jagged scar sliced under his ribs. “See that right there? Had to be at least a seven inch blade. Straight on in.”

  She imagined something larger than her pruning knife sliding into his skin. She’d opened up a man’s leg with little trouble, but Quentin had survived far worse, or so it seemed.