by Alex Bledsoe
“Then I wouldn’t have to do dishes more than once a month,” she shot back. She was eighty-two, still self-sufficient except for the twice-weekly cleaning woman.
Don sipped his coffee and buttered a biscuit. “Mom, can I ask you something? Which side of the family has the Tufa in it, yours or Dad’s?”
Glory’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Lord, son, why are you asking something like that?”
“I have to get an interview with Bronwyn Hyatt.”
“Who?”
“You know, that girl from over in Needsville who was captured by the Iraqis? Got rescued on live TV?”
“Oh, I sure remember that. They played it enough on the news. Well, now, that’s just something,” Glory said with a shake of her head. “Hasn’t she been talked to enough?”
“That’s just it,” Don said as he added homemade pear reserves atop the butter. “She’s been talked about, but not to. No one’s really had an in-depth interview with her about what it was like to be a Needsville Tufa so far from home.”
“And that carpetbagger you work for wants you to do it?”
He nodded. “The Tufas don’t cotton to outsiders, so I figure the best way would be to go through family. I know we’re related to some Tufas somehow, but I don’t know the particulars.”
“Well, what makes you think I do? We don’t associate with that Needsville trash, never have.”
“Then where’d I get this?” Don said, and tugged on a lock of his black hair.
Glory sighed. “If you must know, son, it’s through your late daddy’s side of the family. The Swaybacks mixed with the Tufas when your great-granddaddy Forrest married a Tufa widow woman named Benji. I can’t remember what that was short for. They met working on one of them Roosevelt WPA projects during the Depression. Something about ‘documenting the rural lifestyle,’ or some such nonsense.” Her disdain for Roosevelt, Democrats in general, and the Tufa all combined to give her words a sour, bitter flavor.
“Do you know Benji’s family name?”
Glory shook her head. “Your daddy’s family never talked about Grandaddy Forrest very much. He’d passed on by the time I met your daddy.” She suddenly snapped her fingers. “But you know what? I bet it’s writ down in the old family Bible that your aunt Raby has. She’s the last of your daddy’s brothers and sisters, so I know she’s got it, probably tucked away in the attic or something. You might drive out there to see.”
Don nodded. He took a bite of biscuit, and was transported for a moment back to Sunday breakfasts when he was a child. He had felt a part of things then, with the Swaybacks and his mother’s family the Dorchesters all around, cousins and in-laws liable to appear at any moment to join in post-church fellowship. But the instant passed almost with his act of swallowing, and once again he realized he had virtually nothing in common with the old woman seated across from him.
“I haven’t seen Aunt Raby in a while,” he said. “I might just do that.”
* * *
When Bronwyn awoke from her nap, the house was empty.
Deacon was working in the fields, Aiden was in school, and Chloe was no doubt off running errands. In any other situation, such neglect would be unforgivable: she was supposed to be watched at all times for any relapses, physical or psychological. The VA doctors stressed that she could, essentially, freak out at any time. But the Tufa, especially purebloods like the Hyatts, would know if she wasn’t safe. They could not see into the future exactly, but could sense if certain actions were likely to have unwanted consequences. It was not a perfect ability—Bronwyn had sensed nothing before her ambush in Iraq, for instance—but in the Needsville valley, in the heart of Tufa country, it was as infallible as it was possible to be.
She moved from her bedroom to the living room couch. The clock read eleven thirty. She felt sticky, and wished for the billionth time that she could take a proper shower. The open windows let in the cool breeze and the soft tinkle of the wind chimes. She considered turning on the TV, but didn’t want to come across any news stories about herself. She still hated the fact that she was now a current event.
There was a firm knock on the door and a cheerful voice said, “Special delivery for the Bronwynator.”
She turned to see a heavyset man in a postman’s uniform, a large mail sack at his feet. “Hey, Ed,” she called, and waved him in. “’Scuse me for not getting up.”
Ed opened the door and dragged the sack in after him. “Now, never you worry about that, young lady. Your job right now is to mend those boo-boos, and that’s all you should be concentrating on.”
“Boo-boos?” Bronwyn repeated with a grin. “I’m twenty years old, I don’t think I still have ‘boo-boos.’”
Carvin’ Ed Shill, the lone mailman for all the widely dispersed families in the valley, was only one-quarter Tufa, but it informed his whole being: he shone with the Tufa spirit even though his hair was sandy brown and freckles covered his face. “Sure you do,” he said, and kissed her on her cheek. “You’ll always be mean little, I mean sweet little Bronwyn to me, who didn’t go a summer without her knees and elbows scraped all the time. You used to run up and show me your boo-boos then.”
She gestured at her leg. “Well, this is my latest one.”
“Lord A’mighty, it looks like a sausage caught halfway through a grinder.”
Bronwyn laughed. “What’s in the bag?”
“The best medicine in the world: get-well cards from your fans.”
She stared at the bag, then at him. “From my fans? I don’t have fans.”
“Well, you got a lot of people mighty concerned about you. There’s five more of these back at the post office, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”
“Five more? Holy shit, Ed, you’re kidding me.”
“No, ma’am.” He took one card from the bag and looked over the envelope. “This is from little Emma from up in Kentucky. I assume she’s little, she could be a big girl who just never mastered turning her E’s the right way. And it’s sealed with a USA sticker.”
Bronwyn numbly took the card. She couldn’t bring herself to open it, and placed it beside her on the couch. “Thanks, Ed. It’s weird thinking that so many people know about me, you know?”
“Are you telling me the Bronwynator has gotten stage fright? Say it ain’t so, Bro! You used to crave attention like a sponge does dishwater.”
“I did not.”
“So writing ‘Bronwyn was here’ on every school bus in the county was your idea of being discreet?”
“Dwayne did that. I just kept watch for the cops. And besides, that was before I got a truck dropped on my head.”
“Yeah,” he said sadly, and touched her cheek. “I had an uncle in Viet Nam. They say he was a cut up, class clown guy before he went. Now he barely sleeps and won’t sit with his back to a door.”
“I hope I’m not that bad,” she said with a wry smile. She’d been warned about posttraumatic stress at Walter Reed, and offered the kind of psychiatric help the army provides; she knew she’d be better off trepanning herself with a hammer and nail.
“Well, if you need anything, just let ol’ Carvin’ Ed know.” He touched the brim of his cap in a salute. “Some days, especially during deer season, this job feels like the armed forces. Wouldn’t think a mail carrier looks much like a buck deer, but I’ve got two caps with bullet holes in the brims. And they say postmen are trigger-happy.”
“I’ll swap tours with you. Baghdad’s bound to need some mailmen.”
He chuckled. “No way. Least with my job, there’s days people ain’t trying to kill me. Oh, and before I forget: I made you a little something, too.”
From one of his voluminous pockets he pulled a small wooden box about the length of Bronwyn’s hand and perhaps two inches high. Vaguely Celtic designs decorated the corners.
She took it. “Ed, that’s so sweet. Really.”
“It’s not the box, bonehead. Open it.”
Carefully Bronwyn lifted the lid and pulled the o
bject from its cradle of cotton.
The figure was about three inches high, carved from a single piece of catalpa wood. It depicted a young woman playing a mandolin, standing on one foot as if dancing. From the figure’s back extended a large pair of curved, two-lobed wings, similar in shape to a butterfly’s.
The resemblance to Bronwyn was unmistakable. “Wow, Ed,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”
“Only ’cause the subject is.”
She ran her fingers lightly along the edge of the wings. They were carved so thin that even slight pressure caused them to bend. She felt a sympathetic tug in her own shoulders. “It’s been a while since…”
“I figured. But you never lose it.”
She looked up at him. “I hope you’re right.”
He grinned and playfully yanked one loose strand of her hair. “I know I am.”
After Ed left, Bronwyn stared at the mailbag for a long time. A robin sang outside the window, encouraging her. At last she tentatively opened the card Ed handed her earlier.
Dear Private Hyatt, it began. The handwriting was clearly a child’s, much younger than Aiden. I hope you are getting well. We saw your rescue on TV and want you to know we are praying for you. You’re my hero. It was signed simply, Emma, with a backwards capital E.
A picture was included as well. It was a school photo of a pudgy little girl with lank brown hair put back in barrettes. An adult had written, Emma, age 6 on the back.
Bronwyn stared at it, trying to imagine the girl’s feelings as she wrote this. No doubt her whole class had done so as well; Major Maitland told her that schools all over the country were sending her get-well cards. But she could find no common ground. Whatever emotions left to her did not include this degree of empathy.
And yet a fragment of melody and a long-hazy lyric sprang to her mind:
When love gets you fast in her clutches,
And you sigh for your sweetheart away,
Old Time cannot move without crutches,
Alas, how he hobbles …
And that was all.
She put the picture and card back in the envelope. Then she went back to bed. She placed Ed’s carving of the mandolin-playing fairy on her bedside table.
8
“Bronwyn,” her visitor said. The figure stood in the bedroom door, backlit by the hall light.
Bronwyn blinked, looked at the window, and saw it was now dark. The clock on the bedside table read 1:45 A.M. “The hell?” she said sleepily, dragging her leg up the bed until she could rest against the headboard. She’d been asleep over twelve hours.
“Bronwyn,” the voice said again.
I can’t deal with the haint yet, Bronwyn thought fearfully. She felt her immobility more than ever, and winced with each crushing heartbeat; for an instant she thought she might really be having a coronary, her body too weak to survive this level of terror.
Then the voice registered. “Bliss?”
“You knew I’d be coming,” Bliss Overbay said. “I’m going to turn on the light now.”
Bronwyn scrunched her eyes shut, but still saw the sudden illumination through her lids. She blinked into it and waited for her vision to adjust.
“You look awful,” Bliss said with a smile.
“You look exactly the same as you did when I left,” Bronwyn replied. And it was true: Bliss was still slender, broad shouldered, and straight backed. She wore her long jet-black hair in a single braid that fell down her back almost to her waist. Her dark face had deep smile lines bracketing her wide mouth, which made guessing her age difficult for outsiders; she could’ve been anywhere between twenty and fifty. Her eyes seemed light blue or green, and often actually twinkled like they were illuminated from within. She wore faded blue jeans and a sleeveless jersey that displayed the snake tattoo around her upper arm. There was something disconcerting about the inkwork; it was the only thing in her appearance that hinted that she might be more than just another backwoods girl.
Bliss closed the door, knelt beside the bed, and examined Bronwyn’s broken leg. As an emergency medical technician, she knew how to interpret the damage. “Wow. Broke the femur in three places?”
“Four. The last one was a hairline crack that didn’t show up on the X-rays until they’d already put this thing on. And my fibula was practically pulverized.”
“That is one messed-up leg,” Bliss agreed. “How’s your arm?”
“This?” She pushed up her T-shirt sleeve. The puckered hole on either side of her biceps was scabbed and red, but no longer required a bandage. “It’s nothing. The bullet went right through. Except for being sore, it’s good as new.”
Bliss tenderly brushed a strand of hair from the younger woman’s face. “And your head?”
“I get headaches sometimes. And the crack is still sore if I touch it, so I try not to touch it.”
“I meant the inside of it.”
Bronwyn paused, then shrugged. “I’ve been better.”
Bliss nodded. Then she smiled and said, “We’ll have these pins out of your leg in a week, you know.”
“The doctors said six.”
“And if they were looking after you, it might be six. But you’re home now.”
“I don’t feel like it,” Bronwyn said, and gazed out the window. Nothing moved in the night. Had the haint already come, been unable to rouse her, and departed? Chloe would be livid.
Bliss folded her arms on the edge of the bed and rested her chin on them. “So you’re having some problems. Other than all the extra holes.”
Bronwyn couldn’t look at her. “Yeah. Two big ones. One is a haint that Mom says wants to talk to me. If she came tonight, she didn’t knock loud enough. And the other…” Now those tears threatened again. “Bliss,” she said very quietly, “I can’t play.”
“Because your arm’s hurt?”
“No, because I can’t remember how.” And then the tears really did come, weeks of them silently bursting free and running down her cheeks. She felt her face contort with the sobs aching to follow, but she held them at bay. “It’s like someone deleted the file from my brain.”
Bliss leaned over and hugged her. “That’s awful,” she agreed. “But not permanent.”
“What if it is?” Bronwyn whimpered into Bliss’s hair. “What if I never remember?”
“Then you’ll learn it all over again.”
Bronwyn pulled away and wiped furiously at the tears. “I’m a little old to be starting over.”
“What choice do you really have? You have to play. You have to learn the song when your mother passes it to you. You only have brothers, there’s no other option.”
Something in her tone got through to Bronwyn. That sense of danger returned, stronger and more tangible. She remembered the bird pecking at the window. “Wait a minute, is that why you’re here?”
“I’m here representing the other First Daughters. Something’s come up that affects you, and us, and we need you with us.”
The rhythmic pain in her chest returned. “What?” Bronwyn asked slowly.
Bliss paused before speaking, allowing her words to accumulate the weight they would need. “Peggy Goins saw one of the chairs on her motel porch rocking with no wind. Mandalay Harris had a picture of her mom with Chloe that fell off the mantel. I dreamed of muddy water. And your mama saw the sin eater come out of the woods and stop at your door before moving on.”
Bronwyn knew all these things were traditional omens of death, just like the bird she saw. But the sin eater changed everything. Suddenly she knew why her father had fashioned the strange feathered chime clapper, a time-honored way to ward off or delay malefactions. “It’s not me,” she whispered. “My mom’s gonna die.”
“Don’t know for certain. But someone’s marked for it, and the picture falling pretty much says it’ll be in this house.”
Bronwyn knew Mandalay’s mother was already dead, having expired from the complications of giving birth to her. So she read the signs the same way Bliss did. “Wel
l … we have to stop it, then.”
“There’s no stopping it, you know that. You’re either marked or you’re not. You weren’t. That’s why you didn’t die in Iraq. Chloe might be.” Now Bliss spoke with the quiet authority of a Tufa leader. “And maybe that’s why you were spared. You have to learn her song. Now.”
“But I can’t,” she said simply. “I can’t play. When I pick up Magda, there’s nothing.”
Bliss walked to the window and looked out into the blackness. “You have to learn to play so you can learn the song. There’s no way around that. A First Daughter who loses her mother’s song diminishes all of us. We’re diminished enough already.” She faced Bronwyn with all her Tufa authority. “If we don’t know the melodies hummed in the night wind, then all that’s left is the shiver of the grave.”
“But how will I learn? Will you come and give me lessons?”
Bliss shook her head. “Not me. I play guitar, anyway. But someone will turn up.”
Bronwyn nodded. The conversation had left her more numb than usual. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot. But can I ask you something?”
“Chloe knows,” Bliss said, anticipating the question.
Bronwyn nodded. It explained her mother’s outburst that morning, at least.
Bliss looked out the window again and said, “And I’ll take you into Knoxville next weekend to get those pins out. I can use the county ambulance. It’s good PR for when we have to apply for funding next year.”
“Thanks.”
Bliss kissed Bronwyn on the top of her head, then saw the figure Ed had given her. She picked it up and looked it over, paying special attention to the delicate wings. “Pretty good resemblance,” she observed.
“Maybe two years ago,” Bronwyn said.
“You’ve been through a lot. But you’re home, and we care for our own.” She put down the carving and made a slow, elaborate hand gesture. “You know that.”
Bronwyn responded with another similar gesture, but it was weak and weary, as she now was. “I know. But they tried that with Humpty Dumpty, too. Didn’t work out.”
