by Farris, John
"Mad Edgar Langford's chateau?"
"The shit you think I'm talkin' about?"
"What's that got to do with—"
"Got ever'thing to do with what's transpired since, accordin' to Faren, and she's seen more'n I'll ever see in this life.''
"Cover it up," Whit said of the skeleton, getting to his feet and almost falling down. He went to sit on the root cellar steps, head in his hands. He heard Arn whistling a sour tune as he rewrapped the skeleton, put that and the stone loop that possibly wasn't stone back into the deep trunk.
"That thing—couldn't fly," Whit said. "No matter what the wingspread. The bones, the body weight—too much for it to leave the ground, but if it did, then it wouldn't be stable in the air. The whole idea's just a physical impossibility, like—twelve-foot grasshoppers walking around."
"That's funny," Am said. "You know it's a scientific fact that bumblebees can't fly nuther, 'cause their bodies is too big for the size of their wings. So I reckon it can't be bumblebees I see all around the hollyhocks and trumpet vines in summertime. Now, I didn't say the hawkman flew good, that he was some kind of aerodynamic phe-nomenon headin' straight as an arrow or an angel for heaven. Truth is he wallered through the air like a goddamn wild turkey, probably didn't have no more range than a turkey does. If I hadn't shot him I think he'd of fell soon enough anyhow, and broke his neck. But still and all, he did get up there."
Arn imitated the screech of a hawk so uncannily, Whit's blood turned cold. The lid of the trunk slammed down, the brass catches all snapped into place.
"Still hanker to go up to the mountain, maybe get yourself killed in the bargain?"
"I'm going," Whit said. "It's my job."
He felt Arn standing over him silently; he sensed that Arn was glad. Whistling low again between his teeth, but a bit jauntier, old soldiers' marching tune. Whit felt afraid, fear he had never known facing an enemy he understood, men like himself.
"I give you this, Colonel. You never was one to shirk the tough jobs. I always respected you for that. So if you're wantin' to climb up Tormentil, reckon I can accommodate you and show the way. Better get along now to your bed and have you some shut-eye, I aim to leave at the crack of dawn. And I garn-tee it'll be a miserable few miles 'fore you walk off that shine hangover you're gonna wake up with."
Chapter Thirteen
The roof made of hammered metal hubcaps had leaked in a dozen places during the cloudburst, and a pot had been placed on the bed of the old man who was in a coma, to catch the drip there. Faren asked Terry to wait in the main room of the Indians' house, where it was crowded with children, dark (the only window, which was closed, faced the porch), and, as Faren had warned, smelled very bad. At one end of the long room there was a fireplace, the only source of heat in winter. A kitchen had been tacked on to that part of the house; it was barely large enough for a sink and a wood-burning cook stove, the biggest stove Terry had ever seen. The highly prized refrigerator stood out on the front porch. The house had electricity, a recent improvement according to Faren, but it had flickered off almost as soon as the storm began. Furniture was limited to a plank table with benches, a breakfront with warped doors, crackled varnish, and a brick where a leg had broken off, a chifforobe, a bunk-bed corner three tiers high, packed with pillows, ragged blankets, duck down mattresses. Most of the children sat on the floor, where they could find a dry spot, and stared at Terry. One of them was trying to get something other than static from a portable radio. Two of the younger ones played roughly with a puppy, making it cry. After minutes had gone by with no one saying anything, the children would suddenly speak to one another in Cherokee, excited comments flying around the room; he imagined they were talking about him. (This is my friend Terry, Faren had said to them in their language. He lives in Paris, France. I have given him the name Ayunini.) After the chatter everyone settled down again, to giggles, sniffles, the yelping of the puppy, hail banging on the metal roof. Terry stood where he could see into the bedroom, the door having been left open slightly, wavering in a draft. They had given him something to drink in a jelly glass. It tasted like orange Kool-Aid. All he did was taste it; he didn't want a drink, he was having enough trouble just breathing. He felt awkward and uneasy, particularly since he didn't know what was going on there in the bedroom. But at the same time he was fascinated.
Several adults, most of them, like the children, of mixed blood, were crowded around the bed inside. The center of attention, the stricken man, had a deeply runneled face that reminded Terry of the accumulation of candle waxes on the Chianti bottles you found on every table in cheap Italian restaurants. His mouth was open as if his jaw were out of joint. Terry couldn't tell if he was breathing or not, but he was drooling; a woman his age with a bird's-nest knot of gray hair at the back of her head wiped the spittle away with a cloth. The emaciated body was covered with a sheet. The fingers of his hands, outside the sheet, were hooked into claws. The people muttered to themselves, sometimes in English. It sounded as if they might be praying. Since entering, Faren had been nearly motionless at the foot of the bed, her head bowed; occasionally she would bring her joined hands to the underside of her chin as if to steady herself, or formalize some conclusions she had reached. This went on for much too long as far as Terry was concerned.
A little girl with a shiny thatch of black hair tugged at his elbow to get his attention. Startled, Terry looked down at her. She wore ragged red shorts and a T-shirt.
"If you're not going to drink your Kool-Aid," she said, "can I have it?"
Terry handed her the glass.
"You speak English?"
"No, Chinese," someone else said, and a titter went around the room. "Big deal," a girl said indifferently. An infant pulled the puppy's tail; the puppy yelped.
A boy said, "Yellow school bus stop at bottom of hill every day. Indian children get-um on school bus, go to Consolidated school. Study hard. Learn white man's ways."
"No shit?" Terry said.
They loved that. They had shut him out while they looked him over; now they were letting him in, tentatively.
"How tall are you?" the oldest girl asked.
"Six feet one," Terry said, cheating a little.
"How old are you?" From another part of the room.
"I'll be fifteen in June."
"how come you live in Paris?'
"I live with my mom, and that's where she lives."
The little girl handed back the glass, her mouth rimmed with orange that looked iridescent in the gloom. "I saved you some."
"Yeah, thanks," Terry said.
"Ayunini is a very important name to Cherokees," the oldest girl said severely. "He's one of our heroes."
"I didn't know that."
One of the kids turned from the window and said, "Look at the size of those hailstones." They all flocked to the window to have a look. Terry joined them.
"I'll bet it doesn't rain like this in Paris."
"Huh-uh. It mostly just drizzles a lot."
The oldest girl, who wore glasses and had Faren's features but somehow lacked her beauty, said, "I'm Sara Davidson. The Kool-Aid hog is my sister Edwina."
"I'm not a Kool-Aid hog!" Edwina pondered a put-down and came back with, "You're just jealous because I got a part in Unto These Hills and you didn't."
Sara said evenly, "I am not jealous. I don't want anything to do with the pageant. It's a distortion, full of lies about the Cherokee. When you're older, you'll know better."
After a while it got boring just looking at the rain and the hailstones that were strewn like moth balls on the perimeter of the porch and most of the kids drifted away from the misted window. Someone found a box of Hi-Ho crackers in the kitchen and it was passed around. One of the little kids crawled into a bunk to nap. Sara Davidson stayed at Terry's side.
"We live across the road. It's raining too hard, you can't make out the house now. Do you mind if I just call you Terry? None of us use our Cherokee names much. Mine's Two Doves. I think that's
just a little bit precious. But it doesn't sound any better in Cherokee. What grade are you in?"
"Tenth."
"Me too. Faren's going to try to get me a full scholarship to Carson-Newman. That's a college near Knoxville. Do you want to come to supper? It'll be less crowded at our house."
"Thanks. I'll have to ask Faren what she wants to do."
They had supper with the Davidsons. William Davidson, Sara's father, was the man they had seen on the tractor when they drove up. He was co-owner with his brothers of the hundred acres he farmed. The Davidson house wasn't as poor-looking as the one they had spent most of the afternoon in. There were bright rag rugs on the polished floors, and the air was better. They had two bedrooms and an indoor toilet. The rain had slackened, but the electricity was still off. Mrs. Davidson made supper on the old wood-burning Wilson Patent stove in her kitchen. They had pork chops, hominy, light bread, and sweet milk by candlelight. Faren looked weary throughout the meal. He was dying to ask what she'd been up to in the sickroom, but he didn't feel right about saying anything until they were alone.
"Maybe you'll come and see us again," Sara Davidson said to Terry when it was time to go. She had done her hair differently before the meal, taken off her glasses. With her eyes unmasked, everything appearing equally vague to her, she seemed, shyly, not to know where to look. "If you want to send me a postcard from Paris, it's care of RFD one-twelve, Cherokee, North Carolina. Faren knows the address, if you forget it."
"Somebody else has a crush on you," Faren teased when they were in the car.
"She's nice," Terry said, a little full of himself. But Sara was just a kid, unequal in appeal to Faren: her maturity, her densely interesting sex.
"Well, let's hope we've seen the last of this rain," Faren said as she ground the starter of the coupe. "These roads are going to be bad until we hit the highway south.
The car wouldn't start for a long time, then the engine coughed itself to life, but the effort had been hard on the battery. The road revealed in the feeble headlights looked more like a creek bed.
"It'll be easier leaving than it was getting here," Faren said a little nervously, driving down the hill. "We're only about four miles from town."
After a slow and slippery couple of minutes, Faren leaning over the wheel to wipe the misted windshield in front of her with the heel of her hand, Terry imposed on her concentration.
"You said you had to see the old man because they wanted to know if he was going to die, or what. But you're not a doctor, and it looked to me like he was almost dead already. I mean, how could you tell anything about him?"
"Well, Terry, I don't need to be a doctor, or even have the healing gift. Which I don't have, by the way. But I can usually tell from a person's aura what's happening to him."
"What's the aura?"
"Every one of us has a light around the body until we take our last breath on earth, then the light flickers real low and just disappears. Changes colors, too, depending on whether we're happy or sad or sick. Grandpap's aura was so faint and fuzzy I had trouble making it out. Spirit's still there in his body, but it's fixing to leave. Trudy held the same opinion, but she hasn't been reading auras long as I have."
"His spirit? You mean his soul?"
"Whatever you want to call it."
"What does it look like?"
"Doesn't take a definite shape. It's a light, though, so pure and white you can't focus directly on it."
"Have you seen my aura?"
"So chockful of energy I couldn't hardly miss it. Today there on the Oconaluftee it was shooting out six feet in all directions from your head and hands. Red and orange flame."
"What does that mean?" Terry asked skeptically. All he could see when he looked at his side of the windshield was the same old face, metalized in reflection but nothing more.
She smiled. "Means you were excited about something. I wonder what?"
"Uh-huh. What color was your aura?"
"Now, don't be fresh with me. I can see mine only when I'm in a room that's nearly dark, and it helps if I don't have any clothes on. Then I just kind of sideways glance at a mirror to read the aura. Because I have to be careful about looking directly in mirrors or dark windows or even still water."
"Why?"
"Ofttimes I see things I don't want or shouldn't ought to see. And there's temptation, too, I can be charmed into going places I better not go, and may not be able to get out of."
Terry's mouth was dry. His heart gave a bump. "That sounds—"
"Crazy? Terry, you and me are part of a world we just don't know a whole lot about. There's so much more to it than we can see or hear or touch. Too many people have been visited by ghosts for it to be a lie. We think we're the smartest creatures there are, but so-called dumb animals know hours ahead of time when there's going to be an earthquake. Honeybees fly miles looking for pollen, and when they find it they go straight back to the hive and do a little dance that tells the other bees exactly where to find it too. Trees and plants and vines in the woods communicate with one another, science knows that. Call it supernatural, whatever. But I've seen—"
"Seen what?"
"Oh, I can't tell you any more," she said, giving him a wide-eyed, leery look. "I've got you bothered enough already."
"No, you haven't. I really want to know about this."
There was lightning, quick as the little jots of light he sometimes saw behind the lids when he rubbed his eyes hard. Then a boomer. Then rain fell again, heavily. The wipers couldn't keep the windshield clear. Faren frantically scrubbed circles on the misted glass trying to see where she was going. Her face yellow in the dashboard light.
"Maybe you'd better slow—"
The coupe skidded.
"Merde!"
They dropped suddenly on Terry's side and he tried, in a moment of stabbing fright, to brace himself, seeing trees too close in the lurching weak headlights. There was a nasty thump-screech beneath the car and they came to an abrupt stop before running into pillars of glistening bark. Terry lost his grip on the seat and sprawled face first onto the dashboard, his lower lip splitting like a ripe plum.
"Hey!"
"Are you hurt?" Faren was rubbing her chest where the scalloped steering wheel had dug in.
"I'm okay." He sat back, blood welling from his lip; he caught it on his fingers. "What happened?"
"Ran off the road." Faren pounded the steering wheel with a fist. The other hand still holding her chest.
"We're stuck," he advised, tasting blood on his tongue. "Better turn off the engine."
"Terry, God, is that blood?"
"I cut my lip, that's all."
"Oh, what's your daddy going to think of me?" She pulled her handkerchief from her purse and handed it, wadded, to him. "Press that against the cut. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. All of a sudden I couldn't see." She turned the key in the ignition, and turned off the lights. They sat in a stifling silence in a flood, in the dark. Faren put her sweaty face in her hands.
"What are we going to do now?" he mumbled, the handkerchief sticking to his lower lip.
"I don't know! If the fuckin' rain would just quit."
"It will," he said, quietly authoritative. "We'll be okay."
She put her hands in her lap, twisting them together. "I didn't mean to yell at you, Terry. I get jittery sometimes, I don't like to drive at night. And now look. Is the bleeding stopped?"
"Yeah, almost."
Faren turned and, kneeling, reached over the back of the seat, felt blindly for a slicker and flashlight on the floor. She draped the slicker over her head and got out of the car. He could see her vaguely, moving around in the downpour, see the bright beam of the flash diffused through the streaming windshield. Then Faren and the light vanished long enough to alarm him—had she fallen, hurt herself?—before the driver's door was yanked open and Faren crawled in, half soaked despite the slicker.
"Hung up on a stump," she said tiredly. "Probably took the oil pan out, I could smel
l hot oil leaking all over the place. Even if the two of us could budge it off the stump it won't run. Need to get help."
"Around here?"
"While I was outside I thought I heard music—a hymn. We could be close to the church I go to. It's Wednesday night, regular service. Hick Smith aught to be there with the other Church of God ministers who've been meeting today."
"Which way do we go?"
"Well, it doesn't make sense to go anywhere until the rain slacks off, or lets up entirely. Then we'll locate the church. Sits high up on a hill, we can't miss it if we walk in the right direction." She dried her face on the sleeve of her blouse, looked at Terry. "We'll be late getting back, real late, if we make it at all tonight. I'll try to get to a telephone and call, but telephones are one of the things they don't have much of on the Boundary. Reckon Whit's going to worry about you."
Terry shrugged.
Still watching him, she said, "Some day we've had. Let's see that cut."
Terry carefully pulled the handkerchief loose from his lip. She aimed the flashlight across his face and down so as not to blind him. "Um-hmm. That's not so bad. Shouldn't need stitches."
"No."
"Hot in here. Can't crack the window even a little bit. We need all the rain, though. Been a dry spring so far, and that usually means bad fires."
Terry didn't say anything, and Faren stopped talking. There was a glimmer of lightning through the deluge; Terry saw her eyes closing, her mouth slack. He put a hand on her shoulder and tilted her his way. She nestled readily in his lap, knees drawn up. She took three deep, slow breaths and went to sleep. He gazed at her during the infrequent flickers of lightning, feeling competent, protective, worthy of her. The storm rumbles seemed farther off. When the rain slackened he rolled down the window halfway, letting musty cool air in. Faren slept on, obliviously. Because of the steady splashing from the drenched leaves of the trees hanging over them, it was hard to tell when the rain finally stopped. He wondered how his friends were getting along on their sail to Corsica. He was lost in a wilderness with a woman he found lovely, desirable, and perplexing, and he didn't regret not being aboard the boat.
