The Hum and the Shiver

by Alex Bledsoe

  Bronwyn reached past Terry-Joe, shoved two fingers up Dwayne’s nose and pulled as hard as she could. She heard cartilage give way.

  “Fuck!” he yelled, and released his brother. Terry-Joe collapsed. Dwayne swung wildly at Bronwyn, and she couldn’t step aside fast enough. His huge fist connected with her side, lifting her feet momentarily off the ground.

  Something snapped. They all heard it.

  Dwayne stepped back, eyes wide, buzz completely gone.

  Bronwyn dropped to her knees. “Oh, shit,” she whispered, gingerly covering her ribs. There was that awful moment of anticipation before the pain hit, when she had time to think, This is really going to hurt. Then it washed over her with an intensity she never imagined. She had no memory of her battlefield injuries, which she rationally assumed must’ve been worse, so the agony ripped through her like an angry cat tearing through tissue paper.

  “Goddammit, Dwayne,” Terry-Joe croaked, and crawled to Bronwyn. She coughed, gagged, then spit out a mouthful of blood that hung stringy between her lips and the ground, sparkling in the lantern light.

  When she saw the blood, something more intangible also snapped. She glared up at Dwayne with fury that was pure Tufa, and despite the pain keened, “The arms that hold you are not those of love.…”

  “Oh, fuck this,” Dwayne whispered. That was twice in one night someone had begun singing his dying dirge, and even his gummy brain understood the implications. He turned and ran off into the woods, tearing clumsily through the undergrowth. His footsteps quickly faded, leaving only the sound of labored breathing from the other two.

  Bronwyn’s vision blurred, and she felt a chill settle in her body. She knew she was going into shock. “Terry-Joe,” Bronwyn gurgled, trying to stay calm, “I think this might be serious.” Tears of pain trickled down her cheek. “Oh, God…”

  Terry-Joe got to his feet despite his throbbing testicles. When she looked up at him, the blood on her mouth shone like black lipstick. She took his hand, nearly pulling him down on top of her. They staggered slowly, leaning together, back up the hill toward the car.

  They did not notice Bob Pafford hidden in the shadows just off the trail. When they were out of sight, he emerged, switched on his flashlight, and headed down the gully after Dwayne. His held his cocked gun in his other hand.

  * * *

  Bronwyn had serious trouble breathing by the time Kell’s car left gravel and hit pavement. Terry-Joe floored it across the valley, merged onto the interstate with horn blaring and emergency flashers on, and finally stood on the brakes to leave smoking trails of rubber in front of the emergency room door. He’d managed the whole trip in less than half an hour.

  As they drove, Bronwyn rode waves of pain that seemed to incrementally crush her lungs, making each breath harder to draw and impossible to hang on to. She had a sudden epiphany: What if all the death signs had applied to her, not her mother? Everyone assumed that if she’d been marked for death, it would’ve happened in Iraq; but what if the night wind was just waiting for her to return home before snatching her away?

  The nurses and orderlies took Bronwyn immediately to triage; they knew who she was, and none of them wanted a hero’s death on their shift. Terry-Joe asked for a bag of ice, which he applied to his crotch with an utter lack of self-consciousness. He settled into another of the waiting room’s plastic chairs and waited for his crushed balls to grow numb.

  He looked up as Craig Chess suddenly came out of the examination area, saw him, and did a double take. The minister looked worried and grim. “Terry-Joe, right? Didn’t you leave with Bronwyn Hyatt a while back?”

  Terry-Joe was too tired and sore to argue. “Yeah.”

  Craig looked around. “Where is she?”

  Terry-Joe nodded at the double doors that led back to the actual treatment area. “She had an accident. She’s in there.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  Craig gazed at the doors, then at the entrance. He seemed preoccupied, and made no mention of the ice Terry-Joe held between his legs. At last he said, “Okay, listen. I need your help with something really important. I need you to watch out for her parents. You know them, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, they’re on their way here. Should get here any minute.”

  He nodded. Eventually Kell would’ve had to call them. Now, he thought wryly, they’d get double good news. At least Aiden was too young to also go off and try to seek vengeance. “Okay. I’ll send them back as soon as—”

  “No. Please. Keep them here. I’ll keep checking back, okay? Thanks.” Craig turned and went back into the treatment room. Terry-Joe tried to find a more comfortable position, but realized that at the moment there wasn’t one.

  Craig quickly found Bronwyn, who lay flat on her back on a stretcher behind a curtain. An IV had been set up, and she had an oxygen tube beneath her nose. “Ms. Hyatt,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  Her voice was tight and thin. “Don’t make me laugh, Reverend, it hurts. And for God’s sake, call me Bronwyn.”

  There was still dried blood on her lips and chin. He asked, “What happened to you?”

  “Cracked a rib, maybe poked a lung. Waiting for the X-rays to see how serious it is.”

  “How did you crack a rib in the middle of the night?”

  She managed a smile. “I’m the Bronwynator.”

  “Excuse me just a second,” he said, and stepped out to check the waiting room. He returned a moment later.

  “Where’d you go?” she asked.

  “I’m expecting someone,” he said. He touched her hand where it lay on the bed rail. “I sure hope you didn’t do anything too serious.”

  She laughed, then winced. “I think, after everything else, I can handle this. It was scary for a bit, though; amazing how you get used to breathing.”

  He closed his fingers around hers. The room was chilly, and the warmth of their flesh made both tingle. Their gazes met, and held.

  She saw something disturbing in his eyes. “Are you okay, Reverend?”

  Before he could answer, they heard a loud, wailing scream of such despair that it seemed to burrow into the hearts of everyone within earshot. It emanated from the waiting room; the doors and curtains did little to muffle its intensity. Despite the pain, Bronwyn rose on her elbows, eyes wide, because she recognized the voice.

  Her mother, Chloe. In agony.

  29

  Craig rushed out of the treatment area knowing what he’d find. Dammit! He’d done everything he could to prevent this, and at the last moment he’d been distracted by the touch of a pretty girl.

  In the middle of the waiting room, Deacon Hyatt knelt beside his wife. Chloe sprawled on the floor, screaming with an abandon only sudden bone-deep grief inspires. She wore denim shorts and a T-shirt, and as she thrashed, her flip-flops shot across the room. A doctor, middle-aged and tired-looking, stood beside them, his hands extended in useless, unwanted sympathy. Terry-Joe stood as well, his jeans wet from the melted ice, his expression anguished.

  The door opened behind Craig, and Bronwyn pushed past him, cradling her ribs and unconcerned with the way her hospital gown gapped open. Blood trickled from her arm where she’d torn out the IV. She slid down beside her mother, brushing Chloe’s hair back from her face.

  “Mom, what’s wrong?” she shouted over the woman’s cries. Chloe only screamed again, alternately tearing at her hair and beating hands and feet against the floor.

  Bronwyn looked at her father. “Daddy?”

  Deacon, his face stoic, said simply, “Kell’s gone.”

  “Gone where?” she asked in a small voice.

  Deacon’s face darkened. “He’s dead!” he yelled at his daughter.

  At those words, Chloe screamed again. By now, more doctors and nurses had gathered around them, looking uncertainly at one another. Many were part Tufa, so they knew the Hyatts and their status in the community; but they couldn’t just
leave the woman screaming on the floor.

  Finally Craig pushed through them and knelt beside Deacon. “Mr. Hyatt,” he said gently, “let’s get her off the floor and onto a bed.” Deacon nodded, and together they lifted Chloe, who put up no resistance. Bronwyn had seen her mother cry before, but never like this; she felt her own tears battling with confusion, rage, and pain as they sought escape.

  She saw Terry-Joe standing in the door to the lobby, almost comical with the wet stain from the icepack. She rushed to him and threw her arms around him. Words rushed out, tight and thin because of her injury. “Kell’s dead, I don’t know what happened, they said he’s dead, Daddy said he’s dead.…”

  Terry-Joe held her close, careful not to squeeze too tight. Her choked, breathless sobs cut through him, and he felt his own tears boiling free. He stroked her hair, and despite everything thought happily that she’d run to him when she needed comfort.

  Craig returned from getting Chloe onto a gurney, where her cries continued to ring out. He took Bronwyn by the arm, holding her hospital gown closed with one hand. “Come with me,” he said firmly. To Terry-Joe he said, “Could you get her a robe from one of the nurses?”

  Terry-Joe started to ask Craig why he couldn’t get the robe, but the older man’s authority stopped him. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled, and released the girl he now knew he loved.

  Craig took Bronwyn into the little side room where doctors delivered bad news. It was cold, bright, and inhuman. Terry-Joe knocked softly and handed in the thin robe. She sat numbly as Craig draped the robe around her.

  She began to shake. She looked up at him, suddenly conscious of their different ages and positions in life, seeing him as an elder, as someone she should respect. “What happened, Reverend?” she whimpered. “I just saw him an hour and a half ago, he was fine. We were joking, he … The last thing he said to me was, ‘bitch.’” She laughed despite everything, but it was momentary. “They said it was nothing serious.”

  Craig knelt beside the chair and put his hand on her shoulder. He’d never wanted to hold and comfort someone more in his life, and yet he knew that was not his role, not what she and her family needed. As gently as he could, he said, “Apparently the knife nicked a blood vessel that didn’t start bleeding until after they’d treated his injuries. By the time they noticed, it was too late. They did all they could, Bronwyn, I promise.”

  “Did he say anything else?” she asked in a tiny child’s voice.

  Craig shook his head. “They’d sedated him for the pain, so he never woke up. He never felt a thing.”

  She nodded slowly. “Then Dwayne murdered him.”

  Craig said nothing.

  She blinked, rubbed her head, and said, “I didn’t see Aiden. Did Mom and Dad leave him at home?”

  “Yes. They didn’t know how bad it was when they left. It all happened while they were on their way here. I’m sure they thought there was no need to wake him up.”

  “Then he’s home all alone.”

  Craig reached over and took her hand. “I’ll go see about him, and bring him down here to be with everyone else. If you think that’s where he should be.”

  She stared at him. “Why do you care?”

  He was used to the brusqueness of grief, and it didn’t faze him. “Partly because it’s my nature, partly because it’s my job.”

  She took a deep breath, winced at the pain, and said, “I’m sorry, that was rude. It would be very nice of you to go get him, and I would be very grateful.”

  “Will you go back to bed?”

  She shook her head and got to her feet. “I have to be with Mom and Dad. And before you say anything, you’ll have to accept that that’s my nature.”

  “Fair enough.”

  A doctor knocked on the door and said Bronwyn could, if she wished, view the body before it was taken “downstairs.” She leaned on Craig as they joined her parents behind the omnipresent privacy curtain. Chloe, her sobs reduced to choking gulps, clung to Deacon the way Bronwyn did to Craig. Terry-Joe stood off to one side. They all gazed down at the form on the gurney.

  Kell Hyatt’s eyes were closed and his face impassive; he looked young and untroubled. His black hair was brushed back from his face, in a style wholly unlike him. Chloe reached down and tugged his bangs down onto his forehead.

  Bronwyn pulled away and stood beside Chloe. Craig moved back a bit, observing. Deacon had his arm tightly across Chloe’s shoulders, and his chin trembled with the effort of holding back his own tears. Bronwyn silently held her mother’s hand, her injuries forgotten. Only Chloe felt free to truly express what they all felt.

  Craig caught Terry-Joe’s eye and nodded for the young man to follow. They left the Hyatts and returned to the waiting room.

  “Aiden Hyatt is still back at his house,” Craig said. “He doesn’t know what’s happened, and I sure don’t want him to find out by a phone call. Will you take a ride out there with me to pick him up? You’re his friend, and he might need one tonight.”

  Terry-Joe nodded.

  As they prepared to leave, a voice came from behind the double doors, loud and pure and unconcerned with propriety. It broke through Craig’s professional distance and training, and he felt hot tears well in his own eyes. He recognized it as Chloe Hyatt.

  My baby is so tired tonight,

  He does not like the candlelight.

  His little head will soon be pressed

  Against his mama’s loving breast,

  And mama’s song will sound the best.…

  “What song is that?” Craig asked, his voice catching in his throat.

  Terry-Joe was too weary to be circumspect. “Kell’s dyin’ dirge. Every Tufa has one. It comes to the people around him when it’s time for it.”

  Now there was harmony, from the husband and daughter beside her.

  So sing, sigh, little boy sleep.

  So sing, sigh, the wind her watch will keep.

  Oh baby mine, how fondly I love you.

  Oh son of mine, a family’s love is true.

  Craig wiped at his eyes. The sound was so plaintive, so touching, that its sorrow was irresistible. A nurse emerged from the treatment area sobbing into a tissue.

  “We should go,” Craig said.

  * * *

  Aiden came to the door rubbing his eyes, clad in sweatpants and a Transformers T-shirt. “What?” he said, drawing the word out into several syllables.

  “It’s me, Terry-Joe. Can you open the door?”

  “Ain’t supposed to.”

  “This is important, Aiden. I’ve got Reverend Chess with me. We need to talk to you.”

  “To me?”

  Terry-Joe was tired, and his balls ached. “Aiden, open the goddamned door!”

  “All right, all right,” the boy said. Craig put a calming hand on Terry-Joe’s shoulder, but the younger man shrugged it off. He pulled the screen door open as soon as Aiden unhooked it and went inside.

  Aiden looked askance at Terry-Joe’s wet spot. “Did you pee your pants?”

  “Never mind. Listen, something bad’s happened,” Terry-Joe said. He couldn’t look directly at the boy, so he gazed at the floor.

  “Is Bronwyn hurt?”

  “No. I mean, yes, but that’s not the bad thing. The bad thing is…” And Terry-Joe froze. He simply couldn’t say the words.

  Craig stepped up. “Son, I’m afraid your brother, Kell, has passed on.”

  Aiden blinked, and the last of the sleep cleared from his eyes. “Wha … Kell’s dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, then say dead!” Aiden yelled, making them both jump. He turned to Terry-Joe. “What happened?”

  “Ah … he got in a fight with my brother.”

  Aiden stared at Terry-Joe with the kind of betrayal only a child can feel when his idol topples from the pedestal. Dwayne Gitterman had been the epitome of cool when Aiden was a small boy, always showing off and bringing treats. “Dwayne killed him?”

  Terry-Joe nodded, st
ill looking at the floor.

  “Your mom, dad, and sister asked us to come bring you to the hospital,” Craig said. “You should probably get dressed first.”

  Aiden swallowed hard. He was too overwhelmed to cry. He turned and went into his room, and they heard dresser drawers opening and closing.

  Craig looked around at the family pictures. He saw photos of Deacon and Chloe as young newlyweds, then with their gradually increasing brood. He was impressed with how little they had visibly aged; Chloe, especially, was as vibrant now as she’d been as a young woman in the eighties and nineties.

  There were three pictures of only Kell; in one he was a toddler, in another an adolescent proudly holding a stringer of fish, and finally his high school graduation picture. Craig had never met Kell, and he realized now he’d never see him alive. The boy holding those fish was gone forever.

  Another picture drew his eye. Bronwyn, fourteen or fifteen in a halter top and shorts, making a muscle for her father, who felt it and feigned terror. Even though the picture was only a few years old—when it had been taken, Craig was probably finishing his undergraduate degree—there seemed ages of difference between the girl in the photo and the one he’d met. It wasn’t just the trauma of her experience, although that was part of it. There was a power within Bronwyn now that was entirely missing from this earlier girl.

  Then he was yanked back to the present when Aiden strode from his room, dressed and carrying his hunting rifle. “Y’all lock up behind yourselves,” he said without looking at them.

  With cries of alarm, Terry-Joe jumped at Aiden, while Craig rushed to block the door. Terry-Joe grabbed the rifle by the barrel, but Aiden wasn’t letting it go. Craig held up his hands in a calm down gesture. “Aiden, I think you need to take a deep breath.”