Devil and the Bluebird

by Jennifer Mason-Black

  Because that’s the way Mama was. What she gave at the mic, what people loved, was simply part of what she gave everywhere else.

  “The other one, the fiddler? She was intense. I drew vines all over my arms with markers the next day.”

  They must have played Chicago when Blue was as little as the girl in the backseat. She and Cass had probably been in the dressing room while Mama and Tish played. Her life and Andrea’s had brushed past each other on some snowy night.

  “Anyway, thanks for helping with Lacey. With any luck, she’ll sleep the rest of the way.”

  Blue cradled her guitar close and thought about the music it had played. If the woman in the red dress was right, then every Dry Gully concert still echoed inside. Blue pressed her ear against it and listened as the miles rolled by.

  They stopped in a parking lot somewhere outside of Minneapolis, buildings suddenly appearing after what felt like endless rolling fields of snow. A mall. She’d come all the way from Maine to hang out in a mall, without any money.

  Andrea looked around. She seemed fidgety, as if something dangerous lurked among the shoppers heading in and out of the stores. She hushed Lacey when the girl tried to ask her a question, and urged her back into her seat. Finally, she looked at Blue.

  “Can we talk outside for a minute?”

  Outside, it was cold, gusty, the air filled with the sound of plows, the damp chill scent of snow.

  Andrea came around to Blue’s side of the car. “Listen,” she said. “We’ve both got our . . . things going on, right?” She pointed at Blue’s neck and the bruises there. “Lacey and me, we’re going to a place I found out about. Not a shelter. At least, not the kind people think of.”

  Blue just looked at her. She knew what her “thing” was. She needed to know about Andrea’s. Andrea didn’t feel dangerous, but whatever she was dragging behind her did.

  “Shit. Listen, he’ll have people after us already. He’s a cop, Interstate. His dad’s a cop. His brother’s a cop. You think any of them would take my side over his?”

  Blue opened her notebook.

  He? Your boyfriend?

  Andrea looked at the page. She swallowed before speaking. “Husband. I got pregnant when I was seventeen. It seemed like a good idea, the getting married part. Just the rest sucked. But you know about that. Who was it that hurt you? Dad?”

  Blue shrugged. Inside, she was doing a double take of Andrea. Cop? If she was running away with her kid, it wasn’t like they just didn’t get along. It had to be worse, right? She wasn’t sure if the feeling in the pit of her stomach was pity or fear.

  “Anyway, I thought you could come with us. You need a place. You could be like my backup. In case things are weird.”

  With me, things are guaranteed to be weird. Not that she was about to explain any of her life to Andrea. Go with her and hide from the police, or hang out here and hope that a warm place to stay fell into her lap. It wasn’t a no-brainer as much as it was the best of bad options. She nodded.

  Andrea took Lacey out and the three of them went inside the mall. There weren’t many shoppers there. Digging out, Blue guessed, Or happy for an excuse to stay home. Andrea led them to a bench and sat down, Lacey in her lap. Like that, Blue could see the relationship, Lacey’s big brown eyes twins to her mother’s. The little girl nestled against Andrea’s neck, Andrea’s hand on her back.

  Blue stood. The ache in her feet sent tendrils like ivy up her legs. She didn’t know if staying was the right thing to do. Cass was waiting for her somewhere. The only way to find her was to keep moving. Tomorrow, though. One night in a bed while she made a plan.

  A small woman approached them. She glanced at Blue warily, looked at Lacey, Andrea. “You all look tired,” she said, with an accent Blue recognized as Minnesotan from watching Fargo with Beck. “Don’t suppose you’re friends of Ruth Kenally.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we are.” Andrea’s voice was confident, though her skin had gone pale.

  “Well, hey now, that’s an okay thing to be.” The woman looked at the little girl again, met Blue’s eyes on a second sweep of her face. “Your family here, they must be tired of traveling. We got, what, a brother, too?” Andrea nodded before Blue could even react. “Want to come with me, find a place to rest?”

  Andrea stood, took Lacey’s hand. She looked at Blue as well, a guarded glance that said This is it, be quiet, be someone I can trust.

  The other woman waited. Blue looked at her, at the puffy blue coat zipped almost to her chin, at the thin skin pleated at the corners of her eyes and the gray streaks in the dull brown of her hair. She’d know the monsters; that was what Lou had said.

  But she’d missed Florida.

  No, she hadn’t. She’d walked away from her, not for any clear reason, but that didn’t matter. She’d walked away. She’d known.

  Blue impulsively touched Andrea’s arm, slid her hand down to cover where Andrea’s fingers wrapped around Lacey’s. The muscles trembled beneath her touch, Andrea, looking past her and still somehow into her, their secrets reaching for one another.

  “That sounds like a great idea. Thanks.”

  The woman led them to a battered minivan driven by a boy. A boy maybe a bit older than Blue. Longish black hair in a ponytail, dark brown eyes, and a real smile, big as all get-out, as Teena’s mom would have said.

  Andrea hesitated at the sight of him. The woman waved them forward. “This here’s Dill,” she said. “He’s been helping us out. We don’t want too much traffic, you know. Draws attention. Dill does some driving, drops us off so there aren’t no cars left around.”

  “Hey,” he said. His accent was different, subtler, unrecognizable to her.

  “How old are you?” Andrea stood by the door, skeptical.

  “Nineteen.” Another shot of that smile, bold and gentle at the same time. “I’m traveling, studying up on communities, seeing how different types work, structure and stuff. I try to be useful when I can.”

  It was enough to coax them inside. Blue loaded their bags and the guitar in back while Andrea fastened Lacey’s car seat. Lacey sat farthest back, Andrea and Blue in the middle, the woman in the front passenger seat. The boy turned on the radio, tapping his fingers in time to the honky-tonk that played.

  “Traveling,” Andrea said. “This is your van?”

  He glanced in the rearview, his eyes meeting Blue’s for a moment. “Nope. I don’t have a car.”

  “So how are you traveling? Train? Bus?”

  “Train mostly. I hop freight as much as I can. Hitch the rest. Hiked a little.”

  “Hop freight?” Andrea’s thoughts seemed to run a parallel track to Blue’s. “Like a hobo?”

  “Yup. There isn’t anything quite like it. This time of year, in the north, not quite as awesome. Kind of cold. That’s why I’m here for a stretch.” Eyes in the mirror again. Blue looked down. A real live hobo driving them around. She thought about the librarian’s father.

  “What about your parents?”

  “They’re in Washington State.”

  “And school?”

  It wasn’t as though any of this made a difference to where they were headed. It seemed more like chatter to pass the time. To cover up whatever Andrea was trying not to think about, just like the things Blue didn’t want to remember about last night. Something squeezed inside her, a organ constructed of sadness and worry and isolation.

  Dill cleared his throat. “I finished up my homeschooling. I haven’t decided yet whether I want to go to college.”

  “You can go to college if you’ve been homeschooled?”

  A glance at traffic merging in from the right. “Sure. I was offered a free ride at a couple of schools when I applied. I wasn’t ready, though. Felt like I had other things to do.”

  “Like this?” Andrea gestured at the car interior, the snow outside, disbelief on her face.

  “Exactly. Like this.”

  With that, Andrea stopped her questioning. Dill seemed content to drive in silenc
e. Blue hunched down in her seat, feeling unbearably old, terribly young, completely and utterly lost. All she had left was her guitar. She had no real home. No way to stop moving, not really, not if she didn’t want to end up like Amy, or destroying everyone around her.

  She shivered and closed her eyes.

  They glided past the city and away, in and out of fields and forests. No pine, not like Eliotville. Leafless, gray, and somber. They finally turned down a narrow road and bumped along on the plow-packed snow. She watched eagerly for the house, ready to be out of the car.

  There wasn’t one. Just snow and trees and sky.

  “How—” Andrea began once they stopped; but the woman cut her off.

  “The snow makes it hard. We’ve got to do a bit of walking, so’s not to leave tracks right to where we’re going.”

  Andrea looked far from certain. There, with the sun bouncing off the pristine snow, she looked as pale as a person could get, her sunglasses dwarfing her face. Blue wanted to reassure her—would have, had she known anything about what was going on.

  “This is safe?”

  “Whole lot safer than staying out in the cold. Ain’t no one gonna see you out here, either. Gives you space to get things figured out and all. That’s what you’re looking for, right?”

  A slight nod. A glance down at her feet, shod in the kind of trendy hikers that Blue saw on a lot of tourists’ feet, nothing like the sturdy leather she’d slipped back on as they’d come to a stop.

  “Okay, Lacey, let’s go.”

  The snow came up to the tops of the little girl’s boots, threatening to fill them with each step. Andrea, carrying two duffel bags, started to kneel down by her. Dill stopped her, taking both bags from her. “I got these if you’ve got her.”

  That same look from Andrea—part hard, part scared. Blue moved closer and, gripping her guitar in one hand, took one bag in the other. She was pretty sure Dill wouldn’t run off with a bag full of little girl clothes, but if it helped Andrea feel safer, she could carry it. Andrea smiled and lifted Lacey to her hip.

  Dill looked at Blue. Close up, his eyes were velvety dark, his skin with a hint of rust to it. He offered up that giant smile. “Thanks. I can take it back if you get tired.”

  The paths they traveled through the snow twisted back and forth on each other in snaky coils, around and around, crossing here and there. The scent of wood smoke blew past her, off and on, and she imagined things cooking on a fire—bacon, eggs, potatoes, toast cooked on a fork, s’mores even. Her stomach rumbled.

  Dill stopped in a small clearing. The woods weren’t dense the way they were in Maine. The snow in the clearing was churned up, footprints everywhere. Away from the center, five wooden frames rested on the ground, leaves and sticks piled inside them. A damp fire circle sat in the middle, a few stray wisps of smoke blowing upward.

  So much for bacon and eggs. She looked around at the snow, the trees, the lack of anything like a building, or even a tent. So much for a bed and a place to stay as well.

  “It’s cool, isn’t it?” Dill waited for her response.

  She couldn’t think of an honest one that had anything to do with cool. If she’d wanted to hike around in the snow in the woods, she could have stayed at home, with the promise of hot chocolate and cookies.

  She shrugged.

  “I mean, screw waiting around for someone else to fix things. Just make it happen yourself, right?”

  She stared at him.

  “Um, sorry. I guess it’s not really what you’re thinking about right now, huh?”

  She reached for her notebook but stopped cold.

  One of the frames moved. More than moved. It flipped back, revealing a hole, a face peering out at them. A pale woman’s face, pinched tight with worry. The woman relaxed when she saw Dill.

  “It’s okay,” she called back down into the hole. “It’s just Dill and the new folks.”

  She crouched, swung a leg up, and stepped out. Behind her came a boy who looked to be ten or so.

  Another frame moved. Another face emerged, this one a girl who looked Blue’s age, her hair braided tight away from her face. She stared at Blue, studied her up and down. “Didn’t know there was a boy coming.”

  A boy. She was pretending, and the trouble with pretending was that unless you did it constantly, unless you dedicated yourself to it, it didn’t stick. She held the guitar a little more tightly and tried to imagine Teena’s cousins, greasy rags in their hands as they leaned over a car engine. How would they stand? What would they do?

  “He’s part of the new family. The mama’s little brother,” the woman from the mall said.

  “Whatever.” The girl flicked her hand at Blue, dismissing her.

  “Mama?” Lacey clung to Andrea’s side. Her lower lip stuck out, and she rubbed at the hem of her jacket.

  “It’s okay, baby. It’ll be like camping. Just for a little while.” The little girl began to cry, and Andrea hugged her tighter, the tiny booted feet swinging.

  Other people emerged as well. Women, young children, one gangly boy who looked thirteen or so. All of them studied the newcomers with wary eyes.

  Blue took her notebook out, crouched to balance the guitar on her knees as a table.

  Underground?

  She held it up to Dill.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Can’t you talk?”

  She shook her head.

  “No sign language, either?”

  Another shake, the missing brush of hair on the nape of her neck.

  “That’s rough.” He studied her for a minute, as if he hadn’t really seen her before. “Yeah, so, this is literally an underground shelter. They started digging it in the spring. One of the former members here had some experience with building, and they found stuff online.”

  Doesn’t anyone notice?

  Dill sucked on his lower lip. He thought before he talked, slow and careful. “This is a wildlife sanctuary, so there’s no hunting. That was the biggest concern. But there’s lots of land out here for hiking and stuff, so they just chose a place without trails, and without anything really special that would draw people to it. So far, so good.”

  No way. She tried to understand what exactly she’d walked into. Not scary, but really weird. Tunnel dwellers.

  Why not regular shelters?

  Surely kids didn’t need to be living underground. Well, little kids. Kids who had moms.

  He gave her an odd look. “What did your sister tell you?”

  Right. Her sister. She looked at Andrea, wondered what she’d known in advance. More than that, wondered how Andrea had even connected with these people.

  “Shelters are okay for some people. But, well, you wouldn’t be able to stay with your sister in most of them. You’re what, like fourteen?” She remembered all the things that made her think Steve was younger than he was, and nodded. “You’d probably be in a men’s space. Unfortunately, shelters can be dangerous, too. And most of these women have other reasons to stay clear of social workers or police. They stay here and can keep their kids with them, and they share everything, and kind of police each other.”

  Stay clear of the police. That was why Andrea was here. For her, the chance to live underground was better than what she’d left behind.

  They were assigned a hole. The others called it a unit, but she couldn’t think of it as anything but a hole. The wooden frames on the ground had canvas screens over them, and the leaves and twigs were attached to the canvas to disguise it. Beneath lay a tunnel that went downward at a long slow angle, eventually opening into a wider room.

  The room—it was a room, even if it had curved dirt walls and smelled of soil, and even if the ceiling was scarcely higher than Blue’s head—had two nooks carved in the walls, with bedding laid atop sheets of plastic. A flashlight on a length of twine hung from the ceiling, the light shifting as it slowly revolved. Here and there were holes, plastic tubing set at sharp angles, heading upward.

  “Ventilation,” Dill said. He stood cl
ose behind her. “They were worried about the air getting stale without any exchange.”

  She nodded.

  “See, Lacey?” Andrea, sounding the way mothers do when they want things to seem better than they are. “It’s a hobbit hole. We’re gonna be hobbits.”

  Lacey sniffed. “Hobbit houses don’t smell like worms. And they’re warm.”

  “It doesn’t smell like worms. And it’s warm enough in here.”

  “It’s not warm.” The girl pouted.

  “We’ll be warm enough.” Andrea sounded less than certain about that fact.

  “You have the space to yourselves.” The woman from the mall had followed them down. “It’s below the frost line, so it stays manageably warm, and no one comes out here to bother us, long as we don’t call attention. We share meals, so you got to do your part, like we talked about. And when you make plans to move on, you got to promise not to say anything about us.”

  Andrea nodded along. She looked like the squirrel that had once fallen from a tree onto the hood of Teena’s truck: dazed, anxious, and clueless, the difference being that the squirrel had stared through the window for a moment, shaken its head, shaken its tail, and then leaped off the hood to vanish into the woods. Andrea just kept shifting and making quick little glances around them at the dirt, the plastic that hung from beneath the bedding, the imprint of a foot in the wall.

  The entire space suddenly felt too small, too close, too likely to collapse on their heads. Blue pushed past everyone, headed back up the tunnel, hunched over to keep from brushing against the ceiling.

  Back outside, the cold was noticeable. She kept on going, through the trees, kicking at the snow as she went. She couldn’t stay underground, waiting for the next bad thing to find her in a dead-end tunnel with a little girl.

  She finally stopped by a large bare tree. She knew better than to punch it. Tish had once punched a wall, and Dry Gully had sat out four weeks of shows. Hands were precious, more so when you couldn’t speak.

  Toes, on the other hand . . . It hurt to kick the trunk, but she didn’t do any real damage to her foot or the tree. Just hard enough to knock a pile of snow down on her head.