Bluegrass Symphony

by Lisa L. Hannett

  “Keep it up and this here chickadee will be riding your wallet faster than you can say Springwell,” he said.

  Again Cord laughed, but this time his words came out dark. “Keep dealing hands like that last one, Mister Mayor, and ’fore you know it I’ll buy that big white house on yonder hill, and kick the lonesome schmuck who owns it out on his fuckin’ arse.”

  “Now wouldn’t that be something?”

  “Cord,” I warned, my heart racing, but he ploughed on, not knowing or not caring who it was he was challenging.

  “I reckon. So all’s you got to do is keep piling them chips in front of me like you done just now, get me them few steps closer to sleeping under that shingled roof. Then this bad-news angel can ride me and my wallet to Hades and back, for what it’s worth, until the three of us is fucked dry.”

  “And where does Springwell come in?”

  Cord snorted and adjusted his bet. “Last I checked my girl weren’t into fucking no horses, winged or otherwise.”

  “Oh, he’s a quick one, Herramiss,” Maldoon said, eyeing my date. He took the cigar from his mouth then licked his thumb, marking each card with his soul-laden spit as he snapped them down on the table. “Ain’t he just?”

  Maldoon turned to me for a response, but Cord got in first. “Fastest windcharger I ever seen.”

  God bless you for an idiot, I thought. Not so much as a blink when a man insults you to your face. After a swig from my drink I took the chance to divert the conversation to safer ground. “I’ll wager he’s faster than the chest-beatings of two shit-talking men.”

  As soon as the words came out, I realized my mistake.

  On a dais next to the bar, a band started tuning their instruments. I strained to hear Maldoon over the jangle of off-key mandolins and the screech of bowstrings waking up for a night of old-time fiddling. His voice, when it came, was so deep it sounded black. “You’ll wager, will you? Well, now. It’s high time you gone and made things interesting.”

  He drew on the cigar until its cherry flame singed new threads of grey into his goatee. Swallowing smoke, he dropped the chewed cigar butt; it hissed to the bottom of my glass. I pushed the wasted liquor away, my throat too constricted now for drinking anyway. “Alimunny,” I began, as the musicians launched into their first number. “You know that ain’t what I had in mind.”

  “Now, now, Herramiss.” Maldoon’s arms seemed to grow longer—a trick of the light, surely—as he reached over and placed a wide hand on Cord’s shoulder. “No reneging on a fair bet. Already your man has set the prize: he wants you and my house. Fair enough; I want the same.” Cord’s eyes widened as Maldoon’s fingers kneaded, kneaded. “What’s say winner gets both then. Agreed?”

  “All right,” Cord said, those two words so stupid I’ll never forget them, no matter what other, more pleasant, things he might do with his tongue.

  I stood so quick my chair clattered to the floor. “To hell with the both of you—I won’t be part of this.”

  “That’s a shame,” Maldoon said. “Considering it’s your challenge that’s to decide the winner.” His arms were too long. Smoke seeped between his fingers, steamed from his nails. “How did you put it? That your freak of a horse is faster than our chest-beatings? Well.”

  For a big man, Maldoon sure can move. His hand plunged through Cord’s breastbone, twisted, and pulled back out again before my mind registered the thud of flesh meeting flesh.

  “Oh,” Cord said, a man-shaped balloon deflating against the card table. His eyes were still open, his lungs still sucked in and expelled air, his hair still curled to the nape of his neck, sweet and waiting to be grabbed—but he was absent. While I stood there gormless, the heart had gone out of him.

  The Mayor held it, not a squelching veined mess in his palm, but a transparent silver-blue ghost. Pulsating though it seemed made of glass, filled with hourglass sand instead of lifeblood. Grinning, he shook it like a tambourine to the banjo’s manic rhythm, then tipped it upside-down. A cascade of crystal grains spasmed a counter tempo with each beat of Cord’s displaced heart.

  “Now his chest matches his head,” Maldoon chuckled. “Empty, unless you’re around to fill it.”

  “Fuck you,” I said. My mouth went dry and my own ticker pounded hard enough for the both of us. Cord blinked vacantly at me. Not smiling, not laughing, not pulling me close for a kiss. “Set the terms.”

  “It’s as easy as three county lines.” Carrying the heart in front of him like a king’s orb, Maldoon sauntered over and took me by the elbow. Though every part of my body shrank from his touch, his hold on me was unshakeable, reinforced by the strength drawn from his soul leaf cigar. He’d pay for it later, this magic few sane men ingested; already his skin looked more wizened than it had an hour ago. But for now, his will was supercharged and he had the grip to prove it. A busboy ran ahead of us as I was manoeuvred to the front door, which the young fellow, compelled though I hadn’t heard so much as a whisper from Maldoon, held open until we had passed.

  “What’s the catch?” Outside, the shadows grew long, stretching across the hitching post and striping Springwell’s pure hide with fingers of evening soot. My windcharger neighed a greeting as I unhooked my empty satchel from the pommel of his saddle; then his nostrils flared, snorted as he caught a whiff of the Mayor. “Three county lines—then what?”

  “It must be crippling,” Maldoon said. “Carrying such a world of distrust on your shoulders.”

  I stared at him until he continued.

  “No tricks,” he said, sighing, a real martyr in blue cowboy boots. “No catches.” He stroked Springwell’s muzzle, then handed me Cord’s hourglass heart, watched avidly as I strapped it into my bag. “You and the horse cross three county lines before your man loses his gumption. If you make it before the sands run out, he lives. If not, well.” He took both my hands in his, traced patterns in my palms with his thumbs. “Soon as he’s planted in Cobb’s boneyard, you’ll be trading your black veil for happier white.”

  Stomach churning, I squirmed free of his grip. Instantly, a map of Plantain and surrounds came to mind, my delivery routes described in lines and dots of imagined ink. On a good day, Springwell can fly us from here to Reverend’s Hollow in forty minutes, fifty tops. And if we deke around Portage, we can cover twice as many districts and be back in just over an hour. “How long have I got?”

  “Long enough.”

  Springwell screamed as I gripped his shoulder joints and pulled myself into the saddle. Air exploded in his pinion sockets, taut sinews snapped, and plum-coloured bruises bloomed wherever I laid a hand to soothe him. “Shhhh,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. Panicking, I rubbed his muscles more fervently. It didn’t make sense—instead of healing his shoulders, neck, back, every caress left them all bloodied. “Hush now, honey.” His wings drooped as I smoothed his marginal feathers, each stroke crushing delicate bones and streaking his pale plumage red.

  “What are we supposed to do now? He can’t fly like this, you fucking bastard.” Crying openly, I scrubbed my palms along my thighs and tried to rid them of whatever magics Maldoon had planted with his godforsaken thumbs.

  The mayor shrugged. “He got four legs, ain’t he? Use them. No one ever said nothing about flying.”

  With that, he slapped Springwell in the rump then stepped aside to avoid rearing hooves and the spray of horse-kicked soil.

  We’d just cleared the saloon yard’s fence when I heard Maldoon’s shout. “Ms. Grace—” Ignoring him, I urged Springwell forward. The first arrow nearly threw me from the saddle as it thunked into my ribs. I was no less prepared for the second or third, but when they struck I was so winded I couldn’t even whimper, much less respond.

  “Three for three! Now you’ll know when you saved your man’s heart.” I swear I heard him laugh then, far away as I was. “Sorry, did I say when?” He hooted, voice ringing like chapel bells
. “Darlin’, you know I meant to say if!”

  Plantain county ends and Chippewa begins somewhere between the honky-tonk and the summer carnival fields. Folks sit outside on warm nights like tonight, sharing a toke or nursing a pint after a hard week’s work. The drunkest ones holler for us to join them, but most ignore me and Springwell as we bolt across the roadhouse’s gravel lot, sprinting for grass and that first intangible line.

  Cord’s heart is still beating—I can feel it pulsing a sparrow-rhythm against my hip—though my skirt has grown heavy with a galaxy of sand. Looping the reins around the saddle horn, I take my eyes off the track for no more than half a second. Just long enough to flip the satchel flap; to see we’ve already pumped through a third of our time; and to miss the family of raccoons scooting out of a copse of ticket-seller’s booths at the edge of the field, their bandit eyes glinting as they cut across our path.

  Springwell spooks. Muscles contracting, wings flopping as he fails to fly, he runs across the fairground. Weaves between skeletons of sideshow tents and scaffolds and ballyhoo platforms. Banks hard to the left; circles right. Hooves slip on grass littered with the faded relics of cotton-candy days; scraps of manufactured happiness that dissolve with the summer, leaving folk with sugar-spun memories and a hankering for something more substantial.

  I yank the reins hard as I can, try to impose some direction on his insane dash—but porcupined with arrows, “hard” is a relative term. Springwell plunges ahead. We chew through a mile of parade grounds until he spits us out on the far side. Silver shoes ringing against pavement, the windcharger finally slows as we reach the highway, where we find ourselves facing, then passing, a familiar plywood cowboy.

  The sign’s lit up so bright you’d have to be blind not to see its peeling Welcome to Chippewa! blazed across the falling dark. I’m numb with pain from gut to gullet, but I would’ve known we’d crossed the first county line even without the cowboy’s painted greeting. There’s a change in tone coming from my back—a bit less clackety-clackety, now more of a subdued click-click—that lets me know one arrow has vanished.

  Thank Christ, I think, risking another glance in my bag. Cord’s heart flutters. Crumbs of his lifetime escape, trickle down my leg, and slide into my boot. They settle in a soft pile beneath the arch of my foot.

  Three for three, Maldoon had said. Three arrows for three county lines.

  “C’mon, darlin.” Chest heaving, Springwell canters to catch his breath. His wings shudder, instinctively reacting to my command. He whinnies and stamps, picks up speed. The road is a dark gash across fields shading from dusk to nightfall. Every so often streetlights flare, then drown in my windcharger’s liquid eyes—eyes that should be spangled with stars, not crusted with dirt. Free of black flies and reflecting the topsides of clouds, soaring high out of the Mayor’s reach.

  “C’mon now, Spring—”

  We can’t let Cord die.

  “C’mon—”

  I’d sooner kill Maldoon than marry that horse-maiming son-of-a-bitch.

  “Giddup!”

  As Springwell launches into a gallop, he veers to the left. Races past a tractor puttering along the roadside, heedless of jutting hitches and balers. Sharper and sharper, he turns until we’re facing the direction from which we just came. He barrels full-tilt down the road to Plantain, every inch of his body aching for rest in the warm stable Daddy built specially for him. “Oh, no you don’t,” I say, tugging uselessly at the reins, striping his haunches with the whip. “It’s the prairies for us, darlin’.”

  But he isn’t having it and I’m about as strong as a sack full of feathers. “Turn around, for Christ’s sake!” He forges on. I’ve used up all the adrenaline desperation had to lend, so there’s nothing for it but to think quick.

  Cord’s blank stare. His heart sand. The musky scent of his skin. The touchable curls of his hair.

  Concentrate. We won’t reach Reverend’s Hollow from here, but if we make for the bridge we can cross the wedge of Kaintuck land jutting between Chippewa and Portage, knock the other two county lines off the list. Head back to the saloon well before moon-up.

  Hold on ’til then, babe. Hold on.

  Once more, the Chippewa cowboy looms in the distance. Still smiling that timber smile, he exclaims, Y’all come back now! while his painted lasso threatens to make us do as he says. Set for home, Springwell’s pace doesn’t slacken one iota, broken wings and wooden threats notwithstanding. Soon, we’ve navigated the carnival grounds and can hear strains of bluegrass lilting from the honky-tonk’s open windows. Despite our troubles, I feel my soul lift at the sound of that sweet Plantain music.

  And I feel my back straighten, ever so gently, as the second arrow disappears.

  Me and Springwell crossed that fucking line between Chippewa and Plantain about twenty more times, but the third arrow didn’t budge. Wasn’t until I let the horse have his head, holding on as he sped back into town, that I reckoned what the Mayor was up to. Take a single goddamn step into a different county, that counts as one. Go back where you come from, cross that same fucking line from the other side, and that’s two. So simple—once you remembered never to take Maldoon at his word.

  He never said cross the county, just like he never said anything about flying. He said, cross three county lines. Cord’s life reduced to semantics and a failing, hourglass heart.

  I could take Maldoon’s shoestring tie and garrotte him with it.

  Every building, every vertical surface, taunts me with his unnatural hair, his too-old face. Hundreds of printed eyes glint, dozens of inked mouths sneer as we tear past shops that are now well and truly locked down for the night. Open windows glow with warm light, casting lace and gingham shadows from upper storey apartments onto awnings and gutters below. Steak and onion breezes waft past us, gut-wrenching aromas of dinners cooling on tables, being enjoyed by husbands and wives. Boyfriends and girlfriends. People who’ve only recently started to date.

  My satchel is too light. It beats about once every thirty seconds.

  “Giddup, darlin’.” Springwell’s ear twitches at the sound of my voice. “Hang in there.” His gallop echoes toward the saloon, bounces back to us interrupted. Main Street is empty. It’s just me and my steed; us and the paper Mayors, their flat gazes universally vigilant. Observing my failure, keeping watch on Maldoon’s county.

  I can just imagine the smug look on his face, like the one he wears whenever he deigns visit “his” town. The expression that heralds his self-appointed claim to all and sundry in sight.

  Jesus H. Christ.

  All feeling rushes back and, with it, energy, pain, and anger. So much anger. “Go, Springwell! The fucking bastard—go!” It feels like the windcharger’s strong legs are wading through molasses. I stand in the stirrups, lean over his neck to help him surge forward. Hollering, I drive him until my thighs are shaking, my ribs razorblades of agony; until Springwell chokes on each breath, his lungs bellowing in and out with sharp whines. “Go!”

  I curse myself for not seeing it. The catch Daddy warned me about so long ago, when Maldoon won the election.

  Never cross a man who smokes his own soul leaf cigars.

  There’s no point hitching Springwell outside the saloon. Good luck to anyone who tries to steal a windcharger with mutilated wings and legs shivering for rest. I fling the door open, send a cigarette girl flying into a couple of dumplings in overalls near the bar. She squeals as one pinches her arse while the other pinches a pack of smokes from her tray.

  “Back so soon, love?”

  Sitting at a red velvet booth in the far corner of the room, Alimunny Maldoon cleans his fingernails with a toothpick. A full rack of spareribs has been picked clean before him; grey bones lie congealing in pools of hickory-smoked fat on the plate. Four punters are blowing their wages at the blackjack table to his right, but none of them is Cord. “Where is he?”

 
The Mayor looks at me, puts the stick in his mouth. He shifts it from side to side with his tongue, lifts his eyebrows, and shrugs. Looking at the couples swirling and dipping to the band’s rollicking two-step, he asks, “Care for a dance, Ms. Grace?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Alimunny—”

  My heart pounds when I see him. Cord is propped up on the bandstand; head flopped toward the young kid playing accordion, boots pointed at the girl whose singing voice is richer than maple syrup. I’m on the move before Maldoon manages to slide his gut around the table. I cross the floor and plant myself in front of him, right where anyone not too deep in his cups can see, and grab the silver-tipped end of his shoestring tie. The floppy bow loosens at my touch; the cord slinks, snake-like, from beneath the Mayor’s collar. I throw the black string to the ground, straighten it out with the pointed toe of my boot.

  If Maldoon fancies himself Plantain County personified, I reckon this here’s closest thing he gots to a line.

  I cross it.

  Without looking back, I keep going until I’m so close to the stage I’m liable to get kicked by the foot-tapping musicians. The Mayor’s stare burns into my back as I lift the glass heart from my satchel and smash it into Cord’s chest. Breaking, it resounds with a bass twang, an echo sprung from the hard-packed earth, not the crystal tinkling I expected. The sound fades as Cord’s big hazel eyes focus. Silence catches the third arrow as it drops from my ribs, absorbing it into nothingness.

  The band plays on.

  “Three for three,” I say, waiting for Maldoon’s challenge.

  He doesn’t offer one. Instead, he tips his hat, condescending in defeat. “Well played, Ms. Grace.” Swinging his cane, the Mayor of Plantain, man and county, ambles over to the blackjack table. Taking the croupier’s spot once more, he searches his pockets, sparks up another cigar. Casually picks up the well-shuffled deck, starts laying the cards in pairs of two.