Bluegrass Symphony

by Lisa L. Hannett

  While the two of them were too busy fighting to notice it.

  “Get that flea-bitten thing away from me.” The hen’s foot connects with the egg, sends it over the shelf’s edge. As if in slow motion, Aurora watches the treasure sail earthwards, her hands clumsy and slow, swiping at empty air seconds too late.

  A dark blue fault line splits the egg from top to tail as it cracks against the bucket’s rim, then bounces in with a splash. With a shriek.

  Surrounded by shards of bobbing blue shell, a fox-faced hatchling cries as he fights to keep his head above water.

  Oh, Minnie. Aurora’s eyes flood as she watches his baby wings weaken, his thrashing grow more frantic, his screams more shrill. Without moving, she waits to see if the newborn far-seer will resurface. Fair’s fair, ain’t it? The fox-hen gasps for breath, goes under again. And again.

  Even is even.

  Outside, Reynard whimpers, calls out for his wife. Just as he’s done every morning upon waking, finding himself tailless and trapped in animal form, bitten by flies and regret. Tailless and alone.

  Life ain’t even, Aurora thinks. She knocks the pail over and its contents drown the henhouse floor. Leaning over, she rescues the sputtering lad. Uses a rag to pat his wings dry, then dabs at his cheeks with her fingertips. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  The chick sneezes. Opens his golden, Reynard-shaped eyes, and winks.

  Aurora snorts. She pulls the fox-tail from her hatband, wraps the sodden oracle in its russet length. Holding the bundle close to her heart, she takes a deep breath. Gathers her nerve. Plans what she’s going to say to her husband, then slowly walks outside.

  From the Teeth of Strange Children

  What do ghosts look like?

  The whisper cracks my voice, but I know he’s heard me. He takes a hesitant step forward and drops his rucksack inside the entrance. Dust lifts off the bag, settles onto the scuffed floorboards. Then he stands there, half in the daylight, half in the dark of our lampless, curtained sitting room. He clears his throat and fingers the house key like he’s amazed it still works. As though Ma was the one who’d left, not him, and changed the locks on her way. I couldn’t have been more than nine when his pack last disappeared, leaving nothing but a few scratches in the doorframe to show where he’d dragged it out behind him. Eight years later, he’s got a truck to carry most of his things, more white in his auburn hair, and an expression so downcast I can’t yet tell whose father he is. Mine or Harley’s.

  “Ada,” he says, nothing more. No questioning lilt to the way he pronounces my name—he recognizes me even though I look nothing like the little girl he once protected. And hearing the rumble of his coffee-and-cigarette voice, I know him in return. In a familiar, unconscious gesture, Banjo runs his hand over his stubbly beard. Harley’s dad always was a fidgety one, never could sit still for more than a minute. A need to see the world beyond our farm, to do things the way city folk might, set his muscles twitching and kept his feet planted on the trail. I reckon he’s much like his twin in that sense; Ma once said neither he nor Jez, my father, ever had it in them to stay put for long. And as long as they didn’t mind other men keeping the chill from her bed, she didn’t begrudge them their freedom.

  Again, Banjo coughs. Too many excuses, too many overdue answers fight their way up his throat. A lifetime of words glue his mouth shut.

  I don’t get up from the couch, so I have to crane my neck to the right to see him. “That’s what Harley asked me,” I explain, motioning Banjo to come all the way in and close the door. The summer months have scrubbed the sunlight thin over the fields but it’s still too bright for Ma. She’s curled up on the cushions beside me, skin clammy with sweat though she’s stripped to her petticoat, mouth clamped on wads of cotton and gore. I pull the afghan up to cover her shoulders, wipe the blood from her cheek. “The first time we saw Mister Pérouse at one of Ma’s parties, Harl asked—almost hissing, so Ma wouldn’t catch us sneaking—he asked, ‘What do ghosts look like? Ain’t that one?’ Peering through the slats in the pantry door where we were hiding, Harl’s eyes stretched wide enough to swallow the night. His hand shook, clutching mine, but a smile tickled his lips as we stared. A mix of dread and awe—but that’s just like our Harl, isn’t it? Always mistaking fear for excitement. Then again, seeing that man, so pale he was more blue than white, so skinny he seemed to float while the rest of us clung heavy to our footsteps, for once I knew how Harl felt.”

  My gaze drifts to Ma’s face as I speak. Anxiety lines her forehead, even in sleep. Each breath she takes is shallow; her exhalations are thick wheezes of air.

  “I’ve thought about this a lot,” I say. “Spent years doing little but.”

  Banjo’s fingers worry at his chin, scritch-scritching over his bristles.

  “I can’t stop hearing his voice,” I continue. “Even now I’m back here. ’Cause, far as I can tell, that was it: the parties, those outfits, that ghost of a man. His dreams. His high notions of what made proper living. Everything that changed us; right there, dancing on the other side of the pantry door.

  “Of course, how could we know that then? Harl always was young for his age—you said so yourself, remember? And Ma thought I was too sweet for fourteen, too innocent to wear such a grown-up face.” I feel the colour rising in my cheeks. Outside, Banjo’s truck cools, settles with a series of metallic pings. There’s no wind to shake the trees ringing our twenty acre lot, no harvest for revving tractors to tend. Crickets hum pure white noise, thrumming beyond register in the heat. Silence plods into the room, sits like a boulder between me and Banjo.

  I can see he wants to ask more about Harl.

  Instead, he shifts from foot to foot, still hanging back. “Where are the girls?”

  “With their brother.” I swallow hard; there’s no time for tears. “It’s rude to linger in doorways, you know.”

  Harl’s dad squints and takes a good look at me, but doesn’t show any sign of moving.

  “I’m fine,” I say, sighing. Baring my teeth, I run my tongue across their blunt edges. “See? Harmless as Ma.”

  He releases a pent-up breath and finally lets the door swing shut. My eyes take a minute to adjust to the returned gloom. Outdoor scents waft from him as he sits in the worn recliner across from me: maple and pine and a rich hint of hot earth. He brushes invisible dirt from his jeans. Smooths out the lifelines they’ve collected over the years; exhausted white wrinkles like the ones on the backs of his hands.

  “I’d offer you a drink.” I look down at Ma, then back at Banjo. “I don’t know if she’s got any. And after this morning . . . she couldn’t even tell me if she’d change for the phone box. I hunted for her purse and she kept crying the whole time; crying and pulling at my arms, telling me not to go. When I found it I had to lock her in the cellar—don’t look at me like that! It’s the only way I knew, to keep her from chasing me to the truck stop. . . .

  “She’s only just dozed off. She might not even remember telling me to call you.” I hesitate before admitting, “You and Jez.”

  Banjo nods once. Doesn’t ask who I called first—he’s never been much of a talker. I think that’s why Ma got together with him in the first place, why she kept taking him back when she wouldn’t have a bar of his brother. After a while, my father’s opinions were too vocal, too hard for her to handle. You call this living? Jez’d said, on more than one occasion. Scouring dirt for scraps what ain’t fit for eating, guzzling potato wine, pumping out babies what ain’t got no hope of leaving this heap? Even when she made an effort, took a job in town, it wasn’t enough for my dad. The costume shop embarrassed him—as did the parties Ma threw. Our closest neighbours happily travelled the five miles between their places and here, just to come dressed in Ma’s wares. The stitching on her pieces proved so fine, she started getting mail orders from all over the country—her boss even gave her a raise! All that only seemed to make things wors
e with Jez.

  Ain’t no old-fashion time we’s living in, Wendy, he’d say, looking at her fine silks and brocades like they were sewn from pig-hide and dung. This here’s the future, fer fuck’s sakes—even them radio jockeys says so. Why don’t y’all give them a listen, since you clearly ain’t gots the sense to hear me?

  Guilt trips didn’t work so well on Ma. Day after day, she frocked up in skirts with bustles, whalebone corsets, and elaborate jackets. Jez hollered like a good thing when she stopped taking us to the church ladies’ bazaars to buy our clothes, and started making everything but the hard leather boots she selected from Roebuck catalogues. He split her lip when she cancelled the electricity, opting to use candles and a woodstove. An old icebox and the house’s root cellar kept our goats’ milk fresh and veggies from our garden cool. And when she sold the car for thirteen bales of cotton, Jez grabbed a bag from the linen cupboard. Shouldered it and said he needed to check out a breach in our property’s fence.

  We loved Ma for all of it; more so after Jez left. Even Harley, who kicked up a stink fighting for costumes much plainer than us girls’—even he never said our way of living was odd. Chopping and carrying wood to heat the house, drawing water from a pump out back, shitting in a flea-bitten outhouse. Anyone who came ’round our place played their part in Ma’s old-style life, right up until it was time for them to go home.

  Ain’t it just a lark, Ada? they’d ask, buttoning themselves back into overalls and faded work shirts, putting on their regular life suits. Ain’t it grand playing the regal lady like yer Ma?

  And I’d smile, knowing how lucky we were to have her, how special. Knowing it wasn’t just play. Ain’t goin’ta deny it, I’d reply—that’s how I spoke then, all ain’ts and y’alls and none of yer never minds, uttered without the slightest shame—Bring them fiddles and guitars with y’all next time, and we’ll have ourselves a regular honky-tonk!

  Their music burned like fireweed down the hall to our bedroom at night; in the morning, fast jigs and slow reels echoed through our daydreams. While Ma worked her shifts in town, Harley and I stayed home and explored our land’s twenty acres, learned the ins and outs of its crazed wheat fields and dry river gullies. Sometimes we spent hours, days, searching the flat land for Panagonquin treasure. Empty-handed we ran as far from the highway as our short legs could take us; took shelter in copses of birch and sycamore; made bracelets from wisps of white bark. Around us Chinook winds whistled through parched branches, told us our fortunes in the language of dried autumn leaves.

  As the oldest, it was only right that I’d watch the kids, keep them from climbing too high or falling off edges. Feed them when they were hungry, bandage their skinned knees. I didn’t mind. Most of the time, it was no more trouble than caring for puppies.

  On burning summer days, when the sky stretched along with the hours and scalded air leached clouds from the endless blue, we’d stay inside. Harl hated being cooped up—his skin was baked brown as clay from all his time outdoors—but even he’d settle down if it meant Ma would tell us tales of our seafaring ancestors, folk whose ships had led them astray, stranding us in this landlocked county. He loved those ones most, Banjo’s son. Stories of heroes and betrayals. Of men thriving against all odds.

  The way I remember it, Banjo mostly observed all this without comment. He wasn’t fussed about what we wore, or that we didn’t go to school—said he reckoned a lady with Ma’s talents was well-suited for teaching her own children. With Banjo, Ma never had to worry about being contradicted or criticized. Not so she could hear it, anyway. He was easy to smile when the mood struck, open with his affections—even with me, his brother’s daughter. Even with Bethany, who was born a year after he and Ma split the first time. And so too with Miah, who followed her sister into this world ten months after Banjo’s boots found their way back to our porch. Yes, even Miah got her share of his love, though her black hair and tawny colouring screamed she wasn’t of his stock. Dandling the brown babe on his knee, Banjo never said a word: the grins she and Ma wore all his doing.

  Sometimes, that was enough.

  When it wasn’t, his opinions were no louder than the front door hinges squeaking open. Quiet as footfalls receding down the gravel path to the highway.

  “Wendy’s dress fits you pretty nice,” he says now, trying small talk.

  It doesn’t. The collar is too high for my neck. I have to wear it open, ruining the aesthetic of having a long line of buttons up the front. The bodice and sleeves hang loose, emphasising the swell of my belly, the sag in my bust and the scrawniness of my arms. And I’m swimming in heavy red drapery, skirts swinging too low around my distended waist. With her curves and her deep brown hair, Ma could pull this dress off. But after so long with Mister Pérouse, I know I’ll never again wear her creations comfortably.

  “She seemed so upset . . . I thought it might help her relax.” As if, after three years, I could’ve zipped back into her life like nothing had happened between costume changes. I look down and shrug. “And you don’t notice her blood as much on this fabric.”

  He raises his eyebrows. I tell him Ma wore this dress when she revealed what it was to be a woman in our family. Fabric red as the moon bloods she told me to tuck away where no one could touch them. Don’t tell a soul where you hid them, she’d said, handing me rags for the task. Out here, blood is power. It ain’t just a bond. Ain’t just what gave you my eyes and Harl that great cleft in his chin. Leaning so close I could smell her lavender soap, she took my hand, pressed until I felt the throb of her pulse. There’s folk out to take advantage of that red tide, baby. Wrong folk and cold. Keep them rags safe, like you do yer kin. Yer blood carries our secrets, our stories. Our future. Believe you me; it’s gonna hold our memories long after my body is dust.

  “Well,” Banjo says, shifting in his seat. His eyes trace the mess of Ma’s mouth. His hands clench to keep from wringing the blood-soaked cotton stuffed between her gums, to keep from wiping and wiping until the mess of her face is clean. “I s’pose I should take her. Keep her from turning to dust too soon, hey?”

  He doesn’t smile though his tone is friendly. I hold his gaze, lock onto it.

  “Not yet,” I say, getting my thoughts in order, my voice under control. “I need to tell you this. My tongue—my lips need to shape these words, need push them out. I can’t send it in a letter. Paper is too flimsy to carry the weight of Ma’s head in my lap, the history in my belly.” I tear open the useless buttons on my bodice, lift my camisole to reveal the scars dotting my swollen abdomen. Dozens of puncture wounds scabbed over, raised in tiny red welts. Anyone can see the nape of my neck is unblemished, smooth as a pearl. My stomach tells a different story.

  One shaped by the teeth of strange children.

  “For three years I’ve told you what’s happened. You, Ma, and Jez. In my head I’ve rehearsed, imagined how I’d explain where I’ve been, what I’ve done. What’s been done to me.” I wish I had that drink now. My mouth is so dry, my voice already breaking. “And now you’re here. Bethany and Miah—and Harl, poor stupid Harl—they may never get a chance like this. So you’ll wait, and maybe you’ll judge.”

  Again, I take in the sight of Ma nestled against my pregnant belly and I almost can’t say, “But no matter what, you won’t end up like us.”

  He opens his mouth and I cut him off.

  “Stop. Before you take or lay blame, sit here a spell and listen.”

  Listen.

  They came for us at night.

  Mister Pérouse shook me from a dream. The light from his candle obscured my vision. My head was bleary with sleep, so what I saw after I’d rubbed my eyes didn’t make much sense. Strangers, two men and an old woman, were leaning over the children’s beds. They were pressing their faces too close to Harl’s; to Bethany’s; to Miah’s. Each adult paired with one child, as though whispering secrets into their ears, or nuzzling their necks so they’d laugh.
But there was no laughter, no talking. More like a snuffling, a smacking, accompanied by the kids’ night-time sighs.

  “How are you feeling, chérie?” Mister Pérouse’s voice ruffled like pages in a book. His breath smelled of roast lamb.

  “What?”

  “Are you well?” He brushed my forehead with his fingertips. I flinched from the cold of his hand, not from his touch. It felt like months and months had passed since Harl and I’d first seen him from our hidey-hole in the pantry; in that time he’d become Ma’s favourite evening visitor. With his wan colouring and milkweed hair, he was a hit at her parties—he had no need for makeup or wigs. He wasn’t stingy with the grog either, though he rarely drank. And while he always left in the wee hours of night, more than one morning greeted us with a gold-toothed smile when we found the coins he’d left behind for our trouble.

  “Leave it to an out-of-towner to show us locals how to treat a host,” Ma had said, the only time she commented on Mister Pérouse’s contributions. “Ain’t no hick ’round these parts would spare a crust for a starving man unless he were kin.”

  That didn’t stop her from inviting these old hicks to her shindigs, of course. But from then on she kept the newest and best apparel aside for Mister Pérouse: a square-cut velvet waistcoat belted with a fringed sash, tied in a drooping bow; ribbed leggings tucked into high boots; a lacy cravat spilling from his collar; a floor length, hoodless mantle worn open on the shoulders. All of which, apart from the blue-black cloak, were the fine grey of sodden ash.

  Mister Pérouse fired questions at me. “Does your head hurt? Mal au ventre? Can you sit up?” He stroked my cheeks with the back of his hand, then took hold of my chin and forced me to look directly at him. His irises were pink in the candlelight, his lashes long and white. Over his costume he wore the rancher’s coat Ma had made for him when she learned he dealt in livestock.