He’ll dream of flying then, over branches and leaves, away from horns and treaties and snapping jaws. But each night as he slips into bed, consistently late enough to ensure Twyla Blue’s already asleep, he’ll find hisself crashed back to earth.
Just like them Swangirls, Hésus will learn he simply ain’t got the right wings to take such a flight.
And at the public house, four days after he slips a pearl ring on Twyla Blue’s finger, Hésus will realize how much he and them white-feathered ladies gots in common. They’s all of them caught up in the workings of love, he’ll reckon. All of them let down by appendages a shade too small for their purposes. One chick in particular—look, there she is: the beakless one with devil-red hair, running fierce after the wolf, lashing its rump with a cat o’ nine tails—will show Hésus she gets where he’s coming from. In a voice soft as the down behind her ears, she’ll chat with him at the bar, then join him for a whiskey or ten. It ain’t worth scowling over: she ain’t the first of the little fates to lead an Alabaskan man home to her nest soon after his wedding night, and she sure as hell won’t be the last. How else do y’all think them girls add to their broods?
Of course he’ll go with her, our young man over there, face a mess of blood and left hand white for lack of it beneath the rope, forearm straining to master the wolf that started it all; of course he will. And when he fucks that Swangirl without even asking her name, when he uses her rodeo whip to lash frenzied stripes across her lean arse, when he buries his problems deep, deep inside her, he’ll think of Twyla Blue. As the winged girl gyrates with pleasure, Hésus’s confidence will grow. He’ll stop picturing his wife as she was before: pure and tight and his alone. Instead, he’ll believe he can make her writhe the way the Swangirl is; he’ll make her feel good; he’ll kiss her the way a Minotaur can’t; he’ll run to her on uncloven feet; and together, they’ll love.
Oh yes, oh God, oh yes, they’ll love.
He’ll feel wonderful, never better, for a few minutes. The Swangirl will offer him a towel, point him towards the shower. Warm water will erase all evidence of his deed. He’ll scrub his face, rinse his hair. Relaxed in the comfort of being clean.
Then, as he softens, as the dregs of soap and sex echo down the drain, he’ll feel terrible.
If he gets home right away, Twyla Blue will never know. He’ll never have to see the look on her face when she hears about what he’s done. I can’t lose her, he’ll think, stepping out of the tub. Not now he feels he just got her back.
He’s made a mistake, that’s all—
A mistake.
It must be a mistake!
Six and a half seconds on the clock.
Not eight to win—six point five for the loss.
He’s fallen.
This can’t be.
This. Simply. Can. Not. Be.
Everything’s a blur—can you see Twyla Blue? Speak up—good God, what a noise! There’s a knowing coming on me hard and fast—twice in one day; incredible, incredible. Oh Lord, where is she? What? I can’t hear you. She’s leaving the stands? With a bag full-packed?
I can’t breathe. Don’t y’all worry about me, what’s happening with Hésus? Is he winking at me? Sure he is—look at him! Shit, the fucker has gone and messed with my knowings! How’d he reckon to do that? Ain’t happened but once or twice in my long years—did he throw hisself off that bronco on purpose?
He must’ve.
He must’ve.
I know things. Goddammit, I knows them.
He’s leaving the bullring? Yeah, but more—oh, more—I can see him now. No, not out there; in here, in my noggin. I’m him and he’s me and we’re taking Twyla Blue, the both of us, the him of us. We’re stealing her away; unwon, unearned, unproven.
Oh, Lord. We’re eloping.
Don’t know who’s marrying us; don’t recognize his face. A stranger, must be. One of yers? Christ, we’re being wed by a visiting fool.
My head’s paining me something fierce—no, not his head, mine. Hésus is just dandy now, soon, screwing Twyla Blue, his premature bride, behind his daddy’s mill. Crowing with pride and stupidity; a black-haired raven thieving the Minotaurs’ due.
Give me some water, won’t y’all? A mug of ale? Anything, I’m crumbling with thirst. This knowing I gots don’t feel right. Banshees is wailing and now I’m down in the ground looking up at a leaden sky. Not floating, not feeling life and love pulsing through me, not coasting on warm summer breezes. The air smells of wood smoke and ash, the wind tolling with funeral bells.
Not for Hésus and Twyla Blue, though, them paramours is happy as lambs. There’s grass stains on his knees and her back. Cicadas singing matrimonial hymns so loud in their love-stoppered ears they won’t hear the tread of wolves.
Everywhere, everywhere, wolves.
Christ Almighty.
I think that y’all better go.
To Snuff A Flame
Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: Lola Mae ain’t wicked. Sure, she ain’t none too happy caring for her brothers and sisters, ’specially now Annie’s due to add to their brood, but that don’t make her rotten. Hell, I ain’t too fond of the little beggers meself. Seems every young’un after Retti, Annie’s first, has been a thorn in my backside. Hooting and hollering next door from sunup to shuteye, playing at sheriffs and injuns and all fool sorts of make-believe. Always getting lost in the woods between my land and theirs, then crying “Doolittle! Mester Doolittle!” ’til I comes and sets them aright. Reminding me every day, with their noise and their pranks, their tears and their giggles, that I’m nigh on thirty and still ain’t got no young’uns of my own.
Lola Mae ain’t the mothering type. Never mind that, at fourteen, she’s the same age her Mamma were when she birthed Retti. Now there was a sight to behold. Pretty Annie nursing that beautiful child, looking for all the world like Mary cradling the baby Jesus. Excepting, of course, that Retti weren’t a boy. And, far as such things go, I reckon Trick must’ve felt a bit like Joseph when the two of them got together—a craftsman sweet on a woman whose belly were already good and filled with another man’s seed. Like old Joe before him, he watched without a word as the babby growed into a shape that looked nothing like his.
Don’t go feeling sorry for him, mind. Trick knew what he were up to when he rode down to Portage to steal a tumble with Annie. I can’t hardly imagine what he done to convince her to leave her man and take up with him instead. Raises my bristles just thinking on it. “Your daddy’s going to skin you clean,” he’d probably said, “soon as he gleans you gots your bustle on wrong.” Then he would’ve laughed and pulled at her dress ’til the fabric stretched taut across the five month swell of her middle. Annie would’ve blushed and said, “Ain’t nothing I can do about that now, is there?” And that’s where Trick would’ve got her.
He’d have took lengths of hemp and twine he’d brought from his workbench, twisted them together in a serpentine weave, then wrapped the rough magee belt ’round Annie’s waist. Concentrating ’til tattooed bracelets glowed ’round his wrists, he would’ve whispered, “Shift,” or some such command—then watched as the belt tightened. Within seconds, her stomach would’ve cinched flat. With the babby gone all Thumbelina, Annie’s bulge would’ve repositioned to fill out her hips and tits with its extra bulk ’til she looked like a pinup girl from the pictures. Problems is solved easy as that, for one with Trick’s talents. And a girl like Annie—who ain’t got no magics of her own apart from the looks Ma Nature gave her—well, she would’ve been beside herself seeing the weaver at work. So powerful, so confident. He left no sign of a babby and got his way, simple as breathing.
Gives me chills thinking on it, even though spring is already chewing the hardest edge off winter. There’s been melt enough to widen most paths through the woods, allowing easy passage. My boots make nothing more than a dull thumping sound as I walk. Last year’s
harvest of leaves, black with decay, is mixed with pine needles and slush until all sounds is muffled. Lola Mae’s tread is silent before me. She’s so focused on her work, a whole posse of Marshals could creep through the bush without her noticing ’til it were too late. Even I could walk over right now and sweep her up in my arms while she folds and criss-crosses the pine needles, sticks, and brambles she’s gathered. I could lift her capelet, throw it over her face so she wouldn’t know who it were that nabbed her, then nibble on her exposed neck, lick the salt from her skin. It’d be so easy.
It’d serve her well to be more careful.
I hang back, two whoops and a holler over, let her be. Soon enough she’ll learn it ain’t wise to wander alone in this forest.
In places the canopy is too thick to cast shadows, so Lola Mae parks herself in a patch of light. Her fingers is long and fine: they dart in and out, knotting and bending branches so quick it’s hard to see what she’s doing before it’s done. She gots her back half-turned, but in her hands I can see a knobbly twig animal—one what looks to be a squirrel—made from grasses and straw and bits of thread. Too young and inexperienced to have earned tattoos, as she concentrates, woven cornsilk bracelets change from pale yellow, to red, to glowing white on her wrists until her creation is all lit up like a solstice bonfire. She ties a length of twine around its neck, tugs it tight to make sure it holds, then whispers, “Shift.” Bracelets flash with a firecracker snap. The air fills with the pong of sulphur, then the squirrel chitters and comes alive.
What you up to, girl?
“Go’on.” She tosses the squirrel into the nearest tree, but keeps a firm hold on his tether as he slithers out of sight. After a minute or so, she asks, “What you got up there, Chip?”
“Leaves, leaves, leaves,” comes the high-pitched answer.
“Get me a nest,” she says. “Two would be better.”
Pinecones and maple keys, shreds of birchbark, and cobwebs rain down on Lola Mae as she waits for the squirrel to return with her supplies. The string bobs back and forth, then stretches taut in her hand.
“Ain’t got enough rope.”
“You better not be messing with me, Chip,” Lola Mae says. “You ain’t here for a Sunday stroll in the treetops, you know.”
“Ain’t got enough rope.”
“Fine,” she says. “Hang tight.” Scanning the edge of the path, she uproots a few suitably long blades of grass and plaits them around the lariat. Again, her dark brow furrows, her bracelets blaze, the air thickens with the stench of sorcery—and the rope grows about twenty feet longer.
Shoot, she’s got skills. No matter how many times I seen her weave shift, never ceases to amaze me how nimble that little girl’s fingers is got. Trick sure learned her good. Past dozen-odd years, I seen him show Lola Mae the ins-and-outs of such magics enough times to know what he must’ve done to hook Annie. Far as I can tell, shift-weavers gots the knack to work two ways: some fuse their power to any old thing—grass or twigs, strings or wools—and so long as it’s flexible they can knit theirselves a glamour tight enough to stick for good. Others take things a step further, lead their threads straight into folks’ minds by way of charms and other doo-dads. Little milkweed baubles behind a girl’s ear leave her high for a day or so, changing how she sees things ’til their magic dries up and gets washed down the drain with vanilla-scented soapsuds. Boleros for cowboys convince them their balls is that much bigger than the prairie injuns’, even as tomahawks gets lodged between their shoulder blades. Hairdos twisted just so by one with the right hands, the right tattoos, the right bracelets, can hook folk on illusions running from hair to roots to brain, make them want it all for real. Make them desperate to get back to that false life when the spell dies.
Most of them weavers ain’t strong enough to work the hoodoo what fucks with the user’s head so hard, so they stops at the minor twisting—messing with appearances, creating handsome facades. Most ain’t got the nerve to run deals right under the Marshals’ noses, to sell such pretty opiates and flaunt the law for all to see. Most ain’t as greedy as Trick.
He does whatever it takes to fill his coffers or his bed, a habit what started long before he swindled Annie. That bit of conjuring he done for her ain’t stopped Retti from being birthed—Annie never would’ve gone so far as that, no matter how much her daddy scared her. But it did go so far as let Trick take his payment atween her legs the way he wanted. Without a second thought she let him lasso her with his sugared talk of the future.
Then he fashioned her a pendant, one what she ain’t never took off since.
Bleary-eyed on Trick’s weavings, she stepped on down to the courthouse with him. As though marrying a man ten years her senior would turn her more respectable than getting hitched to the kid what knocked her up. Not that Trick cares about such things, truth to tell. But if a man finds a set of tits like Annie’s here in Two Squaw, he’d be a fool not to hang tight to the body what carries them. And Trick ain’t no fool.
He weren’t never unkind to Retti, I’ll give him that much—though his affections for that child was a summer breeze compared to the tornado he gots for Lola Mae. Now, them two was cut from the same leather. She’s his first: his shiny bright. Born with her daddy’s gift flowing through her veins, she wears his olive skin and stares out his fox-clever eyes. And unlike Retti, who weren’t strong enough to survive her third year, Lola Mae ain’t no soft pudding. Soon as her fingers could bend a reed, Trick started learning her to weave shift. One of the first glamours she done was as a five-year-old over at the coal miner’s honky-tonk—she braided her long black hair in a circlet ’round her neck, shifted herself a woman’s body, and got up on stage to sing a set of Patsy Cline tunes. The audience were so enchanted by her crooning, none noticed Trick’s doings backstage. Atwixt the daughter’s singing and the Pa’s fast-talking, enough shift got sold that night to keep Trick’s tail out the mines for a month.
Only hiccup in his plan came when it were time to take their earnings and head back to Two Squaw. The two of them had quite the quarrel, between the rows of coats and rifles in the cloakroom. I overheard them as I were strapping on my gun belt, fixing to get my Stetson from the hatstand.
“Ain’t time for you to grow up yet, darlin’,” he’d said, holding a wad of Lola Mae’s fingernails, hair and spit in his fist, set to ram this antidote down her gullet if she looked set to resist him. Jaw clenched, the woman looked down at her high heels, at her knees showing beneath a hemline cut two inches above proper, at the tiny bone buttons pulling the dress tight over her tits. She were a real strapper. There were power in that shape: Lola Mae could see it in the way the miners was staring at her all night.
“It’s a piece of you, or a piece of me you gots to swallow, girl.” Trick weren’t brooking no nonsense—reckon he would’ve had his hands full with an irate Annie if he came back home with Lola Mae all changed like she were. No matter that the girl’s spells weren’t nowhere near as durable as his—no doubt she’d be a young’un again before moon dark, even without the remedy he was trying to force through her clenched teeth—but it were clear Trick were using the opportunity to learn his girl a lesson.
“You gots to pick your battles,” he’d said. “To turn a permanent shift, you gots to want it, need it, real bad.” He held her jaw with one hand, pressed the pellet to her lips with the other. “And this ain’t the time for doing that kind of undoable, star.”
Lola Mae stared at her daddy long enough for ol’ Duke to finish his banjo solo in the next room and launch into a new tune. I buttoned my jacket to the rhythm of a familiar song, readjusted my pistols as the snare drum kicked in. Duke’s reedy voice caught Lola Mae’s ear, set her to smiling. Trick’s fingers cut deep into her rouged cheeks as she eased her mouth open and gulped down those bits of her true self. She lost her curves and height and fancy clothes soon as they was ate, went back to being Trick’s shiny bright babby.
It’s a strange kind of love, what they share. I knowed its like meself, so it’s easy enough to recognize. One what makes folk sacrifice anything to get what they’s yearning for. One what make a little girl reckless enough to go into the forest alone, just to save her daddy. One what makes that daddy suffer all manner of indignities, if it means she’ll always be his. His alone.
Instead of flaunting her that night at the honky-tonk, getting cowboys hooked on the sight of her, Trick would have done better to keep her magics secret, ’specially since she ain’t licensed to do half the stuff she can. Not that I’m set on turning her in, mind. But anyone else ’round here catch sight of her doings and she’ll wind up in the pokey. Just like her Pa.
Still can’t hardly believe them Plantain Marshals nabbed him, after all these years.
Trick swore he weren’t going to dig the Devil’s nuggets ’til his lungs blackened him into an early grave. To prove it were true, he started running shift over the border atwixt Plantain and Portage. Taking his business out of Two Squaw; away from kin, away from me. Fooled hisself into thinking it weren’t greed, but his family’s needs what kept him tripping over county lines. As if making dirty deals in another county were somehow safer for them all than if he’d stayed in the mines. Way I see it, now that Trick spends his days pacing the length of a Two Squaw cell, damned near anyone can hit him where he’s vulnerable. And there’s all kinds a reasons a man would see fit to harm that weaver’s folk, as a means of repaying his so-called good intentions.
Meantime, Lola Mae’s running loose in the bush without her daddy’s protection, getting up to all kinds of mischief. I keep to the shadows while she steps further into the light. With a shrill whistle and a yank on the rope, she reels the squirrel back in. I crouch to get comfortable as I can in the scrub.
Bluegrass Symphony Page 15
