by Alex Bledsoe
Don stared and nodded.
She spoke as if discussing Barbies with another child. “You’ll have a choice pretty soon. Your Grandma Benji wasn’t one of my people, but we all loved her anyway. You can go either way. With me, or with Rockhouse here, who’s head of her people.” She nodded at the old man, who said nothing. “You don’t have to choose right now. But you will have to choose pretty soon.”
He couldn’t stop gazing into her eyes. They weren’t those of a child.
“He done chose,” Rockhouse finally said. “He went to your barn dance, not our hootenanny.”
“A man can’t choose if he don’t know both sides,” Mandalay snapped, and the old man fell silent. To Don she said, “You have to pick which one of us you want to join.”
“Like the Seelie or the Unseelie?”
She shrugged. “Call it what you want.”
“What do you call it?” Don asked.
“The Tufa. The Tufa blood in you is singing now. You can either sing along, or wait for it to go quiet again. Or…”
She motioned him closer and spoke softly. “Go outside tonight. Look up at the sky. Listen to the wind. See what it says to you.”
“Hey!” Rockhouse said. “He ain’t got no right—”
“He’s got every right,” the girl fired back, and the old man again fell silent. Then she returned her attention to Don. “Listen for the wind. Listen for the riders. Listen for what calls in your own blood. Then go to Cricket and look at the painting in their library. Then decide.”
He could think of nothing to say. Mandalay smiled, wizened and old now like a Tibetan lama. He nodded, turned, and went back to his car. He was almost to the county line before realizing he’d forgotten the stamps. He wasn’t about to go back for them.
That night he and Susie picked up ice cream on their way home from the Waffle House, and as they sat on the couch eating and flirting, Don said, “Can I ask you something about your work?”
“Is this for your work?”
“No, I’m just curious.”
She nodded as she provocatively licked chocolate syrup from her spoon. “As long as it’s not about a specific patient.”
“You guys get a lot of Tufas in there, right? So they get the usual tests done, I assume. Tell me, is there anything different about them? I mean, different from…” He waved at the air with his own spoon.
“Different from what?” she asked.
“You know … human beings.”
She laughed. “The Tufa are human beings. Just like black people, or Eskimos, or Asians.”
“So, like, blood tests and stuff never come back … weird?”
“No, they come back with all the same things you’d find in anybody’s blood.” She touched the tip of his nose with her spoon, depositing a bit of vanilla ice cream on it. “I think you’re spending too much time dwelling on this.”
He wiped his nose and was hit anew by her attractiveness. “Well,” he said throatily, “I can think of one thing that might take my mind off it.”
“We haven’t finished our ice cream,” she pointed out.
He reached for her hand. “Bring it along.”
Now he looked up at the sky, the wind, the night, and felt something impending within him, a change he both dreaded and desperately longed for. He spread his arms like wings and whispered, “Okay, if anybody’s up there riding the night wind, I’m ready for a ride, too.”
If Susie had looked outside a moment later, she would’ve found the backyard empty.
* * *
Mandalay Harris sat beside the stream, her feet in the water. Even at night the air was humid and warm, and she felt mosquitoes approach, alight on her skin and then buzz away, repelled by something in her nature. A strange but welcome perk of being a trueblood Tufa. She plucked idly at her autoharp, sending random notes out on the wind.
The porch light came on, and her stepmother, Leshell, stuck her head out the trailer door. “Mandy? Y’all out here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mandalay called. She kicked the water and watched it twinkle in the moonlight. The stream was barely a foot deep, and the rock on which she sat bisected its yard-wide channel.
“It’s past midnight,” Leshell said.
“I know.”
Leshell, in a long yellow T-shirt with a deer’s head drawn on it, walked across the wet grass to the edge of the stream. “I think you’re going to have company.”
Mandalay looked at her stepmother and nodded. “I heard. I’ll be in when I’m done.”
When she turned back to the stream, Bronwyn Hyatt stood beside it.
“Hey,” Mandalay said, as if the woman’s sudden appearance was the most normal thing in the world.
“Hey, Mandalay,” Bronwyn said, a little breathless. “Leshell.”
“Bronwyn.” Leshell nodded and went back inside.
Bronwyn’s hair was windblown, and big sweat circles spread from under her arms. “Got a minute?”
The girl shrugged. At moments like this, her reality as a ten-year-old seemed strongest. She played a few bars of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” “Not much happens this time of night.”
Favoring her ribs, Bronwyn pulled up an old milk crate that lay in the weeds beside the creek and sat. She took long, deep breaths until she could speak without gasping. “You know what happened tonight, I suppose.”
The girl nodded. “I’m real sorry. We all read the signs wrong. Some days it seems like the only sign that’s clear is red and says Stop. The night wind was there for him, though.”
“Is it there for me?”
Mandalay kicked at the water again. A distant rumble of thunder came over the mountains. “If you want it. You’re a trueblood, and a First Daughter. If you call the wind, it’ll answer.”
“Even if I call it for something selfish and wrong?”
Mandalay giggled. “Listen to you. What’s selfish and wrong? You want revenge for Kell’s dying. Who can blame you?”
“I don’t want revenge, Mandalay, I want Dwayne to be stopped. If he’s not, somebody else will suffer like I am, like my parents and little brother are. And…”
“And what?”
“I think I’m the one who’s supposed to stop him. It has to be me because I’ve killed people before. It won’t change my song like it would my daddy’s, or Aiden’s, or Terry Joe’s.”
“So you remembered what happened to you, then?”
“No. I know what happened, and that’s enough. If I remembered what happened, then the next time I tried to do it, it’d get all tangled up with those memories.” She recalled the cliff-top conversation with Bliss. “The night wind’s been preparing me for this, Mandalay. There’s a need out there, and I can fill it. But it’ll be on my terms.”
“And what’re those?”
Bronwyn smiled coldly. “Whatever I say they are.”
“And how’s that different from how you used to be? The Bronwynator, doing whatever she wants?”
“Maybe the ‘how’ ain’t any different. But the ‘why’ is. You and the First Daughters wanted me back, didn’t you? Now you’ve got me. And if it means you got the hum you wanted but the shiver’s different, well, that’s tough.”
Mandalay looked down at the silver wakes caused by her dangling feet. “Is this one of those times when we should’ve been careful what we wished for?”
Bronwyn laughed. “Maybe so.”
Mandalay kicked at the water. “Then why are you here asking me? I’m just a kid. It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”
“Yeah,” Bronwyn said sadly.
Mandalay shook her head in that smug way children have when they know something their parents don’t. The collective wisdom and history of the Tufa was bound in this little girl who could talk before she was a year old and pick out tunes on a piano by age two. She had the history, but not the experience; so often her pronouncements and warnings would come out in little-girl metaphors or childish descriptions. Now that she was older this happened less often, but the dichotom
y was both disconcerting and sad. “That’s not right, you know. I’m not a kid.”
“I know you’re not, sweetie.”
Mandalay leaned down and let the current play over her fingers. “What was the desert like? I always wanted to see it.”
Bronwyn laughed. “You want to talk about it now?”
“Might not get another chance.”
Bronwyn caught the warning, but let it go. It didn’t matter anyway. “Well, it’s all space. There’s no trees, no mountains. It rattles you at first, makes you feel even more exposed than you do ordinarily.”
“Did you know the Tufa were called Yellowbacks for a long time because we never fought in any of the wars, even when we were drafted?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But you fought.”
“Daddy thinks it’s because the war over there was easier to fight than the one here.”
“Was it?”
She shrugged. “It was different. It took a lot of nerve just to stand there, knowing a bullet or a bomb could come from anywhere. But you also didn’t know the people shooting at you or blowing you up. Here … well … they’re family.”
She laughed at her own joke, then looked up at the sky. The clouds were creeping in, and the wind tore at the trees higher on the slopes. With calm certainty she said, “I’m also going to marry that preacher, Mandalay. Not Terry-Joe Gitterman.”
“Because that’s what the Bronwynator wants?”
She shook her head. She felt serene, as if this were all reasoned out and decided even though it was literally coming to her as she spoke. “Nope. Because just when I thought I was all alone, he showed me I wasn’t. I had every intention of this being my last flight on the wind in this world.”
“You’d do that to your parents? Two of their children gone?”
“Hell, they ain’t sure I’m back yet anyway. But it’s beside the point. I’m gonna marry the preacher, but I’m still going to have Terry-Joe’s baby. Probably a girl. Next year, or the year after. Another First Daughter.”
“She won’t be a pureblood.”
“No. We have to get past that idea anyway. Her blood will be true, and that’s enough.”
“How will the preacher take that?”
“Between now and then, I’ll have to get both him and Terry-Joe ready to understand it.”
“If you survive the night.”
Bronwyn smiled wryly. “Mandalay, you’ve been watching too much TV. You sound like the bad guy in a spy movie.”
“I can’t see you in the morning, though. I can’t hear your song.”
Bronwyn was silent for a moment. At last she said quietly, “Maybe that’s because I’ll have a new one by then.” She stood, suddenly feeling stronger than ever before in her life. “Thanks, Mandalay. You take care.”
“You, too,” the girl said.
She watched as Bronwyn opened herself to her full Tufa nature, spread her wings, and once again caught the night wind.
32
Dwayne slammed face-first into a tree. He felt—and worse, heard—the bridge of his already-broken nose crack again from the impact. He staggered back, slammed into another tree, and fell awkwardly to the forest floor. His whole face was numb, and his skull rang.
He raised his hands to his face, convinced he would find his nose completely flattened. It was still in place, although when he touched it, the formerly strong upper line now felt mushy. He whimpered in anticipation of the pain.
He was totally lost. After the realization that he’d seriously injured Bronwyn penetrated his dope-fogged brain, he’d tried to return to his truck, but could not find his way. Then he remembered that he’d also knifed Bronwyn’s brother. The law would be after him now, to send him back to prison. He had to get out of Cloud County, out of Tennessee, maybe even out of the country somehow. But first he had to get out of these goddamned woods.
He tried to orient himself. It didn’t matter which way he went, he reasoned, as long as it was downhill. Just as he was about to start walking, a new sound reached him and stopped him dead. Somewhere nearby, someone was crying.
He followed the sound and emerged into a clearing where a lone figure lay curled up on the ground. As Dwayne approached, the man raised his head and stared up at him.
“Thank God,” Fred Blasco said. He crawled to him, holding his laptop computer to his chest, and clutched Dwayne’s legs with his free hand. “Oh, sweet Jesus, thank you. You’ve got to help me, I can’t find my way out of these woods, I’ve been wandering for days, I need help, I’m lost, I’m starving—”
Dwayne kicked the man away. “Get the fuck off me!”
“No, please, don’t leave me!” Blasco begged. “I can pay you, really, you can have my credit cards, anything you want.”
“Fuck you!” Dwayne said, and ran off into the night. Blasco began to cry again, a sound so forlorn, only the hardest, coldest of hearts could ignore it. Dwayne did.
He stumbled up a ridge and down into a gully. He tripped over a root, slid in the wet leaves, and rolled downhill until he slammed, again face-first, into a half-buried boulder. He turned slowly onto his back, groaning, wondering if his nose would ever look right again.
“That must’ve hurt,” a voice said from the dark.
He sat up and looked wildly around. The forest was so thick, there were only little shafts of moonlight visible, like blue gray splinters piercing the blackness. Nothing moved in them.
“Fuck!” Dwayne bellowed into the night. Could the cops have already found him? Or someone worse? “Who the fuck is out there?”
The voice began to laugh. A shape emerged from the darkness as if exuded from it. “You don’t know me, Dwayne Gitterman. But I know you.”
The gathering clouds parted enough to let one wide, clear beam of moonlight reveal a shambling figure with a long beard and baggy clothes. The sin eater, Dwayne thought in terror: the man who waits outside the homes of the recently dead. Those inside take a plate of food from the corpse’s chest and leave it at the back door; when the sin eater consumes the food, he also consumes the bad deeds of the deceased. No one knew his name, only that he did his job without complaint or fuss. And, of course, that it was a monumentally bad omen to meet him.
“What do you want?” Dwayne said, scooting back against a tree. “You following me?”
“I’m not looking for you, Dwayne. You crossed my path, remember?”
Blood ran both down his face and throat, coating his senses in its warm, salty taste. “Fuck you, then.”
The sin eater laughed again. “Your old standby, eh? Don’t you hear what’s on the wind tonight? Hear the song?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
The sin eater sang, his voice surprisingly clear and true:
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.…
When he finished he coughed a little, then said, “That’s someone’s dying dirge. Now who you reckon could be dead tonight?”
Dwayne almost gagged on his own blood as he said, “Not Bronwyn. I didn’t hit her that fucking hard, it was just a tap, a fucking shove.”
The sin eater smiled, and laughed again. “If you were smart, you’d wish Bronwyn Hyatt was dead, son. No, that’s the song of Kell Hyatt, who’s dancing in the wind tonight.”
The memory of the fight, of the pure satisfaction of burying his knife in the other man’s flesh, came back to him as he comprehended. “Wait, wha … Kell’s dead? But he…”
The sin eater came closer, so that his charnel odor washed over Dwayne. “You got so far away from yourself that you started to think all those Tufa stories about riding the night winds and songs with the power of life or death were just dumb-ass superstitions, didn’t you? But you can hear the wind tonight, can’t you? And baby, it can hear you.”
Dwayne’s laugh turned into a g
ag, and he spit blood on the ground. “You been smoking what I been growing, old man.”
“That’s true,” the sin eater agreed. “And you do grow a nice crop, I’ll grant you. But it doesn’t change anything. I won’t be eating your sins; you’ll tote them with you. I know what’ll happen to the Tufa part of you; as for the rest, well … send me a postcard from Hell.”
He did not move, but the shadows seemed to pull him back and reabsorb him. Dwayne threw the first rock his hand found after the sin eater, but it bounced harmlessly off a tree. He stuffed the front of his T-shirt against his face to stanch the blood and resumed moving forward. If he kept going downhill in a straight line, eventually he had to cross a road where he could flag a ride and get home. There he had guns, money, and transportation.
But he emerged from the trees and saw, stretched before him, the entire Needsville valley and realized with a start that he’d been climbing, not descending. The terrain ended at the edge of a cliff, and far below he saw the dark tops of trees waving slightly in the wind. The moon hung full and clear in the cloudless half of the sky; the other half was dark and shimmery with the approaching thunderstorm.
“Thanks,” a familiar voice said. “You saved me the trouble of tracking your sorry ass down.”
33
For a moment, Bronwyn appeared to have wings, the kind Tufa stories told of: big, diaphanous structures, double lobed like a butterfly’s, shimmery with rainbow-hued textures. It was how the real Tufas, the total purebloods and the ones who worked to maximize their Tufa nature, rode the night winds. As a child, Dwayne had been told he was one of them, but the world’s temptations drew him away. He finally stopped believing in their literal truth.
But now, when Bronwyn hovered in the air just past the edge of the cliff, held steady by those enormous wings made of something other than earthly matter, he could not deny the reality he’d once mocked.
Then Dwayne blinked, and she was human again, her feet on the ground. Surely she’d just used some shortcut. Man, he needed to stop smoking so much of his own stuff.
