South

by Frank Owen

  ‘Two . . .’

  ‘Either it’s the Lord saying your pop’s okay, son – or it’s the ghost of my pop crying out ’cause he missed these horses by a day! Isn’t that kind of funny, when you think about it?’

  Vida lunged at the nearest scout, the knife at his stubbled throat. As she pulled back and felt the tendons go, his companion turned and let fly with a bullet that sailed over their heads into the canopy of trees. Dyce threw himself at the gunman and set his hands around his neck. He squeezed and squeezed, but afterwards they found that it wasn’t the strangling that had done the scout in: Dyce had been choking him so hard he’d broken his neck.

  ‘You know who I was thinking of?’ he asked Vida, looking at his hands.

  ‘Ester?’

  They were both shaking.

  It was dark by the time they’d washed in the lake and eaten something to stop the light-headedness.

  ‘Should we bury them?’

  ‘These are Renard’s men. Let’s save our strength for our own dead.’

  ‘All’s fair in love and war, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘Maybe not in all wars, but it sure as shit is in this one.’

  They stripped the scouts’ camp, saddled the horses, and set off back to The Mouth. Dyce had long ago turned pathfinder, his eyes cool and critical in the dark. They moved without talking, not wanting to attract the attention of the night critters, but also in love with the smooth flanks of the horses underneath them.

  Even so, not once did Dyce lean over to Vida and whisper, ‘Where’s Ester?’

  Some things it was better not to know.

  42

  They rode back to The Mouth, high on the backs of horses like long-lost royalty. There they found that the fat man kept his promises, and that the banquet had been arranged. They had heard the music from a mile away – a note now and again from instruments Dyce had thought he’d forgotten. And at their entrance, there had been three cheers for the Callahan Killers. It couldn’t hurt.

  They handed the horses over, along with the scouts’ rifles, and in return they were shown to their accommodation – a tiny shack, same as all the others, the basic furnishings intact. There was a change of clothes there too, laid out side by side on the bed, as though whoever had owned them before had vanished right out of them, translated through the cloth.

  ‘His ’n’ hers,’ breathed Vida, and they laughed. But a change of clothes was a change of clothes, and it had been so long since it felt as if someone else was taking care of them. Dyce and Vida dressed and stood smoothing their shirts, relishing the clean, dry fabric against the skin.

  When they stepped outside again, they were new people. They strode tall between the shacks, arm in arm. Look at how civilized we are, thought Vida, and so dashing.

  The residents of The Mouth had set their best out on the slight slope of the main street, dragged tables and chairs from the adjoining shops, and built fires all around in oil drums so that it felt like a protest or a county fair. Vida kept expecting someone on stilts. Strips of striped cloth and tattered Christmas tinsel hung in strings that looped from budding tree to wireless telephone pole, linking the hurricane lanterns.

  With great care and ceremony the sweating horses were tethered outside the saloon, the first proper use of the poles in years. As soon as Vida and Dyce had dismounted, people went one by one to inspect the animals and to coo in their ears and, when they were deemed friendly, to lift their children on two at a time, for a taste of old-time travel.

  After they had greeted the horses, the same townsfolk came by to congratulate them – or more likely to touch the hands that had dealt death to the scouts and would do the same for the rest of the Callahans. As they introduced themselves, Vida saw the universal hesitation, and then people shook hands firmly, contagion ignored in favor of communion.

  At the center of it all was a squeaky steel-legged table. ‘I know that smell,’ Vida told Dyce. ‘My mama used to make those – duiwelskos.’ When they got up close they saw that the table was packed a foot-deep with mushrooms. Behind it a man in an apron that read FUN GUY said that they were grown down the old mines. It was hard to get your head around, and Vida and Dyce stood gaping. Mushrooms: here they were, some raw and fresh and smelling of the earth they sprang from; some dried from last season’s harvest; some cooked beyond recognition.

  Dyce chose a hamburger made from solid mushroom, and bit into it.

  ‘That’s the one they call the beefsteak,’ the aproned man told him as the saliva spurted into his mouth. ‘They don’t like being cultivated. No, sir. They grow where they like. They are survivors. The oldest kind, probably growing under your feet right now. I hope you like it.’ Dyce nodded, his mouth too full to talk. ‘Because it was a bitch to clean.’ The man laughed, his apron tight over the drum of his stomach.

  As the evening went on and the tasting went with it, Vida and Dyce found themselves dazzled and then sickened by the variety. There were mushrooms that tasted exactly like meat; others that melted before you could chew them; ones that smelt like flowers. Dyce kept thinking back to the time his dad had taken them to a local eatery for the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet – The Last Chance Motel, set right on the blacktop. It was a birthday, maybe, something special, because it was during Concession, when money was tight. Garrett and Dyce had been aware of how much it was costing their dad.

  At first it seemed like a treat, a spread of eggs and bacon and toast and Jello and custard, a midnight fairy feast from a storybook. But when their dad sat them down, he told them the deal.

  ‘This is breakfast, lunch and supper – and then breakfast again, so eat like you mean it.’

  There’d only been money for two, and so their dad had sipped on water, the grim waiter watching him keenly in case he sneaked a bite of sausage.

  The boys had tried their best but Dyce had made a mistake when he tried to keep pace with big-boned Garrett. Hollow legs, his daddy always used to joke, but now it looked that way for real. After they had finished, paid the bill and were walking to their car with its precious petrol ration donated to the outing, Dyce had vomited in the parking lot. He had stayed down for a long time, nose to the sidewalk and the half-chewed mess of precious egg and oats and custard. The Jello had been green. Dyce remembered his dad’s expression, a mix of hunger and fury – their money lying there on the asphalt soon to be squirted away down the drain by a man in overalls, who was even now fetching the hose and tutting, as though this happened a lot.

  ‘Jesus! Dyce!’ was all their dad had said, but later that evening, while Garrett was burping and watching TV, he’d handed Dyce a napkin-wrapped muffin that he had kept back from the buffet. Dyce was starving, so he’d taken it and eaten it all, but it had tasted bad. Like guilt maybe, or disappointment.

  He turned his attention back to the mushrooms. This buffet was different. It tasted like food did in the old days, when you could cut the crust off your bread because you didn’t like the texture. But there was something terrifying about the idea that all those rhizomes were creeping underground even as they ate and talked and listened to the good life going on around them.

  The gut-strung guitars were still twanging, and no one asked about Ester, the alibi Vida had conjured up on the ride home gone to waste. It was taken for granted that she’d died at the hands of the scouts. Dyce didn’t want details, but deep down he knew that it was no accident. There was something about Vida that was beautiful and terrifying: mermaid, Venus, Amazon. He looked at her in the firelight as she sat across from him, the fierce eyebrows, the curving lips, and felt the rush of blood below his waist – but also in his chest.

  ‘Dyce and Vida: luck and life, isn’t that right?’ the fat man was saying. He clapped them both on the shoulders. They smiled and bumped cups to toast.

  ‘Can’t have one without the other,’ said Vida.

  ‘Can I sit down? I knew you’d come back with the horses.’ He had
his arm around Dyce. ‘You two are some mean sons-of-bitches. You just promise to tell me if I’m ever on your bad side. Deal?’

  They smiled.

  ‘You’ll know,’ Vida promised him.

  ‘My name’s Ed, so as you know. Tomorrow I’ll show you around, put you two to work. But for now’ – he spread his arms like a showman – ‘just enjoy this. There’s not much to celebrate in this life now, is there?’

  Vida and Dyce ducked their heads in agreement.

  She held up her cup again, topped up with the homebrew that went down hard and then kicked like a donkey. ‘To friends, present and absent.’

  Dyce kept the smile pasted on his face, but it lay heavy on him. There should be an empty place at the table, the way that some folks kept a chair free for the prophet Elijah. The promised land was here, not across the sea. He wished Garrett had known about this place before they’d settled in Glenvale and gotten mixed up with the Callahans. He stood. Vida watched him carefully, the workings of his mind like a wristwatch cracked open on a jeweler’s bench.

  ‘Going to ask around. See if anyone saw Garrett.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Vida pushed her chair back too. It was useless, she knew, but letting Dyce go off alone wasn’t right. Let him do something to set it right, she told herself. He let her. He could see that Vida was a little tipsy, and so what? She had had a hard couple of days – and before that he had no idea of how bad it had been. She kept close to his side as they went from table to table like a bridal couple, and let him do the talking.

  ‘He’s tall, kind of heavy in the shoulders, blond hair, acne scars that make him look like he’s boiling hot all the time. He’s wearing cargo pants – like these – and he’s got a checked shirt on, sleeves rolled up, probably.’

  ‘You really think we’ve seen him?’ said one woman, drunk and pink-skinned. She waved a hand at the walls. ‘These walls are here for a reason. Heaven with a view of hell ain’t heaven, baby.’

  They moved round the place, and they were met with the same blank stares, the same friendliness that turned sour when people understood what they were asking.

  But their stomachs were full, and the booze kept coming. It blurred the lines that Dyce was trying to connect, blotted out the distrust, softened Vida’s discomfort with the waste and the lavishness of the place. When the singing began, to the thrum of a pair of guitars, the last of their reservations evaporated. They gave in to the night and the feeling.

  ‘It’s going to be okay,’ Vida whispered. She stroked Dyce’s hair back from his face. ‘Give it a little time. We can ask again in the morning, when everybody’s thinking clearer. Whaddaya say?’ She was a little unsteady herself, and Dyce had to keep his hands on her waist.

  The musicians had gathered a small crowd, and somewhere a couple of fiddles had materialized, and other instruments Dyce didn’t know well enough to say. The man who was speaking for the musicians came forward in his pointy black boots and he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to start slow, and you know why. But we have a lot of stamina, don’t we?’ The crowd laughed, appreciative. ‘Yessirree! We get better as we go!’

  He stepped back and signaled to the others and they began an old song that pulled the childish heartstrings of everyone who heard it. People joined in one by one, or in groups, as soon as they recognized the tune, the words springing fresh from the dusty cupboards of their minds, lost and found, grabbing hold of the red thread that once bound all humanity and led them safe through the lair of the minotaur.

  Hush-a-by,

  Don’t you cry

  Go to sleep, you little baby

  When you wake you shall have

  All the pretty little horses

  Dapples and grays, pintos and bays

  The singers went on, and Vida protested. ‘Hey, now! You all have skipped out a verse there!’ Her voice was too loud, Dyce thought, and he tried to get her to sit down, but she was too enervated by the unfairness of being passed over. She turned to Dyce, her eyes bright, ‘That was my favorite verse,’ she told him. ‘I used to sing it again and again.’

  She focused on the musicians. ‘Come on! Sing it right!’

  They looked at each other and seemed to decide, because they launched into the next verse.

  Way down yonder

  In the meadow

  There’s a poor little lambie

  The bees and the butterflies

  Pecking out its eyes

  The poor little lamb cries ‘Mammy!’

  Dyce pulled Vida up to dance before she could say any more, and they turned slowly, holding each other close, the faces around them blurred into arcs of flame-lit flesh, ruddied by the drink.

  Vida fell against his neck and mumbled, ‘You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have a confession.’

  ‘Speak, my child.’

  ‘I love you.’

  Dyce laughed. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I was worried you were going to tell me something else.’

  They kept circling through the dancers, Dyce keeping his eyes half-closed against the giddiness, so it was Vida who saw her in the throng – the dark hair dragging at her face, wet as weeds from the river, the hollows of her oil-slick eyes.

  Vida tried to get Dyce to stand still, but he twirled her again, and she pushed him away more roughly than she meant. He stumbled back and said, ‘Hey! What the hell was that for?’

  Vida was staring behind him. Maybe it was the drink. Maybe the specter would have disappeared.

  The girl was still there, grinning at them with her bloody gums, the cushion baby imprisoned in her arms.

  Dyce saw her too now, and froze, the alcohol evaporating from his blood as it chilled. Vida felt like rubbing her eyes, but when had that ever worked?

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Dyce.

  ‘It’s not Ester, is it?’ Vida said.

  ‘No. Worse.’

  Standing there was Julia, the last of the colostrum sisters. She had made her way in after all.

  43

  Tye Callahan was used to it – doing everything himself. He packed the scouts’ tent, noting the black-rimmed bullet hole in the side where they’d shot the bear. It wasn’t ever going to be windproof anyway, just a bit of shelter on whichever leeward hill Tye would next find himself. There were other big things too – pots and pans – that he’d have taken if he’d had a horse. But the animals were long gone and he had to limit his scavenging to the essentials. The tent, he figured, would make a pair of trousers, a jacket, even, something to keep a man dry when he had to take a chance and sleep out in the open.

  He found a Mars Bar turfed out of an upturned pack, where it had rolled under the coil of a camping mattress. Tye sat on the bank and ate it all while his bird watched, restless, rustling her harness. He had to fight the nausea as he choked down the concentrated sweetness. Some things you found were like that – meant for consumption in an easier time. His body wasn’t used to the soft life anymore, and things that were meant to be treats could turn on you.

  What he couldn’t carry, he would take up in his arms – mugs and hats and boots and sporks and maps and canteens: enough to keep an entire household alive for much longer than the two worthless scouts had ever spent on the road. Tye spat in the dust. Useless sons of bitches. He had done a better job on foot, by himself, for all their fancy gear.

  The bird wasn’t settling. ‘What now?’ Tye asked her. She regarded him, her eyes bright with message, and Tye wished he could reach out and pet her like a dog. She would probably take his fingers off right then and there. Rat with wings, the other Callahans had called her, on account of the fleas and mites attending most any bird. Still, he had always preferred her to the people around him. With a wild creature, you knew where you stood.

  The bird lifted her wings a little, as if she was airing the hidden downy feathers, and she looked away. Tye went back to his riverine contemplation, rubbing his stomach. His digestion was playing up some. The Mars B
ar had soured on him and now it lay in his guts, heavy as dread.

  He leant into the cramp, hoping it would go away before he had to transport the scouts’ goods, and tried to take his mind off the twinges that came before the diarrhea. Look at the water, he told himself. Like a picnic spot. Ain’t that a pretty sight?

  Except it wasn’t. The water was muddied. The weeds bobbed and clung, trapping every little thing that the currents brought up and swallowed down.

  Tye forgot his stomach.

  There was something big caught in those weeds. Something man-size, and it couldn’t move on.

  He got up and went as close as he could to the water’s edge, the mud sucking at his boots.

  The girl was floating face-up, her long dress rucked over the bony knees, her flesh slowly taking on water like the sponges the Callahan women used to wipe Bethie’s body down. This one still looked halfway healthy, Tye thought, except for the lipped slashes in her abdomen that leered through the torn cloth. She had long ago stopped bleeding, but soon the fish would get at her, and there was something awful wrong about that. Man had to stay top of the food chain. What else was there?

  He took his boots and socks off, and ignored the smell. That wouldn’t offend her none now. Then he divested himself of his trousers and his shirt.

  The water was cold, but Tye had been worse places – and recently too. He hooked his hands under the drowned girl’s armpits. Jesus, she was heavy! ‘No offence,’ Tye told her.

  He let go and stepped back to think a minute. Then he felt underneath her body in the water. He scraped his knuckles against a rock, lodged somewhere it shouldn’t have been, bound into the cloth. There were a couple of them, weighting her like an anchor. No suicide, this one, though she looked calm enough. Someone had made sure that she was dead, through and through – killed her twice.

  Tye freed the rocks from the folds of the dress, tearing it as he worked.

  He got the body to the bank easily enough after that. ‘You want me to help you, ain’t that so?’ he muttered. He pulled her onto the bank where she lay steaming a little in the sun. He half-thought to try to resuscitate her – God knows, he’d had partners even less willing before, and he would again – but it was clear she had been dead a while. Rigor mortis maybe even come and gone; he wasn’t an expert.