“Longest train tunnel in the U.S.,” he explained. “All that diesel exhaust gets trapped inside. There are giant fans to blow it out in between trains, but it can get tough in there.” He hesitated. “Here. Maybe you should wear it.”
She shook her head and pushed his hand back toward him.
He tugged a strap, back and forth. “Listen, we can share. I’ll wear it for a bit, then you. Back and forth. If one of us gets dizzy, we’ll swap for longer.”
They have to be fitted, right? All that adjusting? You know more about trains than me. You need to keep us both safe, so you need the mask.
He gave in at the last minute, as the dark space grew larger, closer. She drew a couple of deep breaths, curling one arm around her face.
Then the tunnel engulfed them.
The only tunnels she’d ever been in had been on highways, none of them a length that took more than a minute or two to traverse, all brightly lit by streetlights. This was nothing like those. The dark grew as the mouth of the tunnel shrank behind them. Everything seemed smaller and tighter, until she was certain that the ceiling would close in and crush their car like a mosquito against a knee.
Dill’s hand enclosed hers. He spoke loudly, hard to hear over the noise and the cover of his respirator.
“The first time I went through, I screamed. Just like a little kid, you know. I didn’t wet my pants or anything, but I was freaked.
“I was by myself then. A friend had told me about riding, said it was like being God, going where there were no roads, no houses, just wilderness all around. He died before he could ride with me, so I figured out how to ride the section he loved and spread his ashes along the whole way. Even in this tunnel. Now I feel like he’s here all the time, like somewhere there’s this guy, this tall, skinny guy with red hair and bad teeth and long fingers, giving his hand to someone to help them on the train when they need it. That’s who he was. Couldn’t take care of himself, but he always wanted to help other people.”
Blue would have asked lots of questions if she could have. Things like how Dill’s friend died, and why he spent so much time on trains, and how Dill had met him. She thought of her mother then, of what it meant when people asked how she died, their faces pulled a little tight, as if it were something unpleasant. One mother, one cancer, one girl in a well-labeled box. There was so much more to Mama than cancer, or even than being Blue’s mother. Maybe asking how someone lived was at least as important as asking how they died.
The air tasted of fumes, hot and foul, and her head began to spin a little. She gripped her guitar more tightly and started to count. One, two, three, four . . . Cough once, suck in a lungful of hot factory breath. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . . She held her eyes closed tightly for a moment, streaks of lightning flashing across them. Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine . . . Or had she counted those already?
She sucked in another deep breath, only to be overwhelmed by another bout of coughing. Nothing seemed clear. It was as if her brain had been wrapped in bubble wrap and packed away. Time was passing—it had to be—but she had no idea of how fast.
Then everything opened into daylight again. Dill’s face hovered near hers, and his hands gripped her shoulders. “You okay? You okay?”
Blue felt as close to a bird as she believed it possible to be. The air rushing past smelled of melting water and pine, not just heat and exhaust. The sky was everywhere. She lifted one hand, waved her arm in the wind, and opened her mouth wide.
She pressed up against Dill the way they had before the tunnel, only this time she thought of how he had whispered to her in the dark. It made her feel alive, as though her feet reached down into soil like roots while her hands reached toward the sun. In that moment, there was only one right thing to do: turn her face toward him and touch her lips to his. And the most right thing he could do was kiss her back, touch his hand to the back of her neck, his fingers rising under her hat to slip through her hair.
By the time they reached the city, night had settled deep. Lights and highways spread out around them, the trees replaced by buildings. Fog smoothed all the edges, making ghosts of everything. The smell of the ocean was subtler but unmistakable—she felt as if years had passed since she’d last breathed in salt air. Dill looked happy—thrilled, even—and she reminded herself that he was returning home. Seattle was nearly the end of travel for him, not merely another stop.
As soon as the train slowed to a halt, he pulled her down and off the train, scooting past other cars, other tracks, and out to a road. As they walked, Dill fished a phone out of his pocket. She stared at it dumbly for a moment. He had a phone.
Why wouldn’t he? She’d have one, too, if she hadn’t left hers at Lynne’s. Now it seemed so odd. A phone meant people to call, other people with phones. It meant money. It meant voices.
She suddenly felt tired. Hungry, too, and more than a little dirty. She watched him text for a minute, trying to remember the last message she’d sent. It must have been to Lynne, a day or two before she left.
“My sister’s partner’s on the way,” he said, tucking the phone back in his pocket. “You can stay with us tonight, if you want. It’s a drive, but you’d love it there.”
He talked quickly, a little self-consciously. The words didn’t register at first. Stay at his sister’s. Tonight. She’d kissed him, and now he felt he should bring her home with him. He knew nothing about her, though, except that she played guitar and didn’t speak and had lived in a hole for a bit. And really, what did she know about him?
She trusted him, though, and staying with him sounded far better than searching for something alone. She nodded.
A station wagon pulled up soon after. An African American man wearing a hand-knit red sweater several sizes too large for him stepped out and hugged Dill. He paused to shake Blue’s hand, then threw their bags in the back. Only when he tried to take the guitar did she move, gripping it more tightly and shaking her head.
“I just thought you’d like more room in the car,” he said. “You can keep it with you in the backseat.”
“Uh, Fray, this is Interstate. She doesn’t speak, and she’s been on the road awhile.” There was a long pause. He would have mentioned all this in his text. This was for her sake, not Fray’s—letting her know how he’d explained her to them. “She’s a good friend of mine.”
“That’s what Yar said. Interstate, I’m very pleased to meet you.” He held out his hand again. She took it, slowly. “Sorry if I moved too quick. It’s that Yarrow needs me home. It’s William’s time—” He turned to Dill. “I’ve been away most of the day and we still have a long way to go.”
She fished in her back pocket, took out notebook and pen, pausing to yawn.
No prob! Thx so much!
The noise of the car doors woke her. The air smelled damp, the lights outside swaddled in fog. Blue could make out an open door to a house, a woman’s voice. Dill’s face swung into view in her window. “Come on,” he said. “Come and meet Yarrow.”
He vanished into the fog. She followed a moment later. Toward the door, toward lit windows and laughter. Dill and Fray had been joined by a woman who looked so much like Dill that she had to be his sister. She shared his black hair and dark eyes, but was smaller and curvy, as though shaped by a baker who delighted in her dough.
“Interstate,” the woman said. She looked like the hugging type, but she merely shook Blue’s hand. “I heard about you from Dill during the winter. I’m so glad you met up again. You’re welcome here.”
Here. A two-story house with a single-floor arm of an addition stretching to one side. Blue caught a brief glimpse inside before being led through a sitting room and a kitchen and out a back door. Dill followed, her bag resting on one of his shoulders. The guitar she’d held on to.
“You’ll probably be happier out here—” Yarrow directed her across a grassy lawn and through another door. “Dill usually stays in the yurt when he’s visiting. Right now Roe is in here, but she’s happ
y to share. Do you mind an air mattress?”
Yarrow turned a battery-powered lantern on with a click. The room was round, maybe twenty feet across; and the walls were made of latticed wooden slats covered in canvas. An empty futon rested on a frame on one side. An air mattress lay on the other, made up with sheets and blankets. A drum kit stood in the middle.
“Roe probably won’t be home for another hour or so, but she promised to be quiet coming in.”
Dill laughed. “As if that’s ever been a problem for her.”
Yarrow laughed as well. They even laughed the same, their noses wrinkling along the same lines. Families, Blue thought, and she gripped her guitar more tightly.
After a sandwich in the kitchen, she took a long shower in a very small shower stall situated in a bathroom off a long hall. Yarrow and Fray had vanished after making sandwiches, and Dill’s gaze had kept sliding to the door until Blue said she was tired and wanted to go to bed. Clean and alone, she returned to the yurt. Someone had laid a nightgown on the air mattress: flannel made for someone shorter and wider than her. She put it on and slid beneath the covers. Everything had a faint bleach smell and felt stiff and clean as hotel linens.
Watching Dill and Yarrow had opened a spot inside her, sore and sweet and full of the things she’d misplaced over time. She tried to remember everything she could about her sister, good and bad. Cass had been good at making people laugh. She’d take things in directions people didn’t expect—lewder, darker, more absurd—then ambush them into responding.
Blue had always assumed the humor was Cass’s own, but now she recognized it as coming from Tish. So much of Cass seemed to stem from Tish, not looks as much as attitude. Mama had given birth to Cass, but Tish had been her parent, too, for longer than she had been Blue’s. Where would Tish have gone, if she’d run away like Cass? As nice as it was here, she could still feel the tick of the clock beneath her ribs. Cass was a riddle whose answer she was running out of time to find. She couldn’t stay, not for long.
She hadn’t spent much time thinking about it before the door opened and closed. Rain had begun to fall, creating a soft, steady drumming on the membrane of the yurt, and the intruder’s footsteps hidden beneath it. Blue fumbled for the lantern switch. The light revealed a girl with her shirt over her head and nothing on beneath.
“Uh . . .” The girl gave her a steady look, neither raising or lowering her shirt. “I’ll assume you’re the mute girl, because anyone else would be apologizing right now, and because you’re wearing Yarrow’s clothes.”
The mute girl. Was that how Dill had introduced her to his family? Blue assumed this girl was part of his family, though she didn’t look the same. She was tall and angular, with honey-colored eyes and chin-length hair the shade of a golden retriever. She unabashedly finished pulling her shirt off, then took a much longer one from under her pillow and put it on. Blue was too tired to even think to turn away.
“Yes? Go ahead and nod.”
She did so, a little annoyed, a little too sleepy to care.
“Okay. I’m Roe. Yar probably told you, right?”
She nodded again.
“And I’m totally beat, so what about lights out now? We can play twenty silent questions in the morning. ’Kay?”
Blue turned off the light, listening to the rustle of Roe getting into her bed. Somewhere in the house a light still shone, casting a sliver of warmth on the lawn. Dill, maybe, still awake in bed, or Yar and Fray, talking about their guest, about the return of wandering siblings.
Blue woke with a start from a dream of flashing lights and rushing traffic. The futon was empty, its blankets thrown back. Either Roe was a stealth artist, or she’d slept like the dead. Either way, she felt a little exposed. That’s me: Mute Girl, doesn’t speak a word and sleeps through anything.
She dressed quickly and left the yurt. Dampness engulfed her. It was like stepping into a sea of someone else’s sweat. Tall evergreens formed a curtain of dark green around the yard. She hurried to the house, guitar in hand, unwilling to leave it alone.
Last night she’d missed a lot of things. The dry-erase board in the kitchen containing a list of names and numbers, for example. The pair of locked cabinets. The industrial-sized oven with six burners.
Fray came in while she was paused in front of a typed phone list that included not only hospitals and emergency services but also funeral homes and churches. He wore the same large sweater as last night, only now he also had a stethoscope looped around his neck. He smiled.
“You’re up early. Didn’t expect you for hours yet.” He took a key ring from his pocket and opened one of the locked cabinets. Inside were rows of pill jars, prescription pads, and a pile of files. He pulled a small paper cup from a dispenser and in it placed two pills from a vial.
Is this a nursing home?
Only a few unused pages remained in the notebook. She’d need a new one soon.
Fray had moved on to filling a glass with water but stopped to read her note. “Didn’t Dill explain it to you? I would have assumed—” He cocked his head at a sound from the hall, then continued. “No, I suppose it didn’t come up, did it?
“This house is part of the Willow Wind community. We try to provide a safe place for those who choose to step outside of mainstream society, for those who are pushed out, for those with no one to depend on. Everyone needs a home, Interstate.”
He glanced at his watch. “I need to bring these down the hall. Would you like to come with me?”
He was carrying pills and had a stethoscope around his neck . . .
You an MD?
“Yes. One who’s about to be late with someone’s meds. Are you coming?”
Blue nodded and followed. A hippie doctor who lived on a commune; a drummer; and a smiling woman—these people were Dill’s family. She saw him in a whole new light.
The hall led into the single-story addition she’d noticed last night. It looked a lot like a nursing home, only nicer. It was clean but not sterile; Monet prints hung on the walls between doors. Most of the doors were closed; Blue stopped at one that was ajar. The noise coming from within was one she would have known anywhere. In an instant, she was back in Lynne’s house, curled in a chair, listening to the agonizing rasp of her mother’s faltering breath.
She stepped back, away from the door.
Fray stopped, looked at her. “You’ve seen someone die before.”
Yes. No. What was the right answer to that question? She settled for nodding.
“William. We’ve been taking turns sitting with him. I’m sure Yarrow would welcome the company if you want to go in.”
Go in and watch someone die? He couldn’t possibly mean it. If she hadn’t stayed with Mama, how could she possibly stay with a stranger?
She peeked around the corner. A withered old man lay in the bed. His dark skin was a grayish hue, and his lips had faded to blue. Yarrow smiled at her, holding up a vast expanse of cloth she was knitting out of maroon yarn. “Have you come to sit with us?”
Blue shook her head, backing rapidly away. The only place she knew to go was the kitchen, where she found Dill and Roe eating toast at the butcher-block table.
“Hey,” Dill said. “Sit down. Let me make you some toast.”
She shook her head again. Her hands were trembling so hard, she was afraid she might drop her guitar. If she had had any breakfast, it would have come back up again. He was just a man she didn’t know, dying elsewhere in the house. She needed to get a grip.
Both Roe and Dill were watching her. Did it show—the fear that had sent her scurrying away?
“Dad’s one hundred and fifty percent thrilled that you’re back in time to help. It’s like nothing quite so stellar has ever happened before,” Roe said, shifting her gaze to Dill. “He said he’d be here by nine tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, well, when is he ever not that excited about things? Um, Interstate, are you okay?”
She wasn’t getting a grip. If anything, it was getting worse.
She took her notebook out.
You know that man in the other room?
“Man in the other room?” Dill repeated.
“William,” Roe said. “She means William. Right?”
She nodded, feeling like a bobble-head doll.
“Sure I know him. He doesn’t really go for William. Yarrow’s the one that calls him that. Anyway, he prefers Willy.”
Where’s his family?
Dill answered. “Most of his friends have died. He never had a partner or kids. He was a musician—a bluesman.”
“No was about it, bro. He’d be pissed as hell to hear you say that.” Roe looked up at Blue. “He plays guitar, like you.”
You never turn down a musician in need.
Only he wasn’t in need, right? Yarrow was with him, and other people would take turns. She didn’t owe anything to this little old man lying in a bed down the hall. There was nothing she could do for him that they couldn’t.
Only there was. Her heart beat a little harder as she reached for the guitar case resting by her feet.
She couldn’t find Cass, and she couldn’t save herself, but she could sit next to Willy and talk to him in the language they shared. She could stay.
You think I could sit with him?
She almost changed her mind at the door, when she heard his rasping breath again. But Yarrow smiled, and Roe followed her in. Yarrow offered her chair to Blue, saying she needed a break.
An almost completely empty bookcase stood beneath the window beside her. The middle shelf held a glass of water, a washcloth, and a digital clock, its red numbers dim in the daylight. On the top was a single, framed, black-and-white photo of a man playing a guitar.
She looked at the man in front of her. He was so small now, except for his hands resting on top of the blanket. They were huge and rough and curved as though still cradling the neck of his guitar.
She opened her case and tuned up the guitar, strumming the first notes to “Bluebird.” Somewhere in the strings she could hear her voice. It was different from the one she’d had—a realer one, made of train smoke and soil, snow and good-byes.
Devil and the Bluebird Page 24
