Gather Her Round

by Alex Bledsoe

  “This is common sense,” Pirtle said. “If you give the people more than they can stomach, they won’t absorb any of it. And all the grisly details are not what they want, or at least not most of them. There’s that whole Gwinn clan who’d probably love it, but for the rest of us, we’ll try to stay dignified and above it all.”

  “I don’t remember ‘dignity’ being a concern of Woodward and Bernstein.”

  “They just didn’t talk about it, because in those days, it was intrinsic. Do you know what that word means?”

  “Of course,” she snapped back. “Just because I live on a mountain don’t mean I’m dumb as a rock. Doesn’t mean,” she corrected quickly.

  “And remember: Kera was a human being, just like you. She had the same dreams, the same desires, the same hopes for the future. She lost all that, and so did the people who loved her, the people who are going to read what you wrote. Be truthful, but be kind when you can.”

  “Yes, sir,” Janet said, barely able to contain her excitement. She jumped up and ran out to use the computer in the library.

  When he was sure she was gone, Pirtle laughed. Everyone knew that Janet Harper was destined for great things, and most people were content to just stay out of her way. But even genius needed to be pointed in the right direction. With Janet, he always imagined a billiard ball careening off all the bumpers and scattering the rest of the balls before finally landing in the right pocket.

  * * *

  When Duncan arrived at the Rogers house, there were a dozen cars and trucks parked in the yard and along the gravel road.

  Death was a big deal to the Tufa. There were rumors outside Cloud County that Tufa didn’t die unless you killed one, but that wasn’t true. Well … not for everyone. What was true was that when one of them did die, it affected them all. There were so few of them left, any loss sent ripples through the community. Songs were lost, secrets never revealed, and the night winds blew with one less rider. The circle might stay unbroken, but it grew smaller.

  The first person he saw as he approached the house was Gerald Parrish. They had lost their son Rayford last year, while he was working in New York City. Gerald stood beside Deacon Hyatt, who had also lost a son a few years earlier in a rare incidence of fatal Tufa-on-Tufa violence. Their presence meant that their wives were inside with Kera’s parents.

  “Duncan,” Gerald Parrish said. “I know you was sweet on her. I’m real sorry for your loss, son.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Parrish,” he said, and shook the man’s hand.

  Deacon Hyatt patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll get easier. Not better, but easier.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Hyatt.” It was rote politeness, the kind of social interaction that smoothed over the jagged edges no one wanted to acknowledge.

  He went inside. The living room was filled with people, all seated, with Brenda and Sam on the couch, holding court. Page Paine sat in a corner playing her fiddle. The sound seemed to gather all the sadness in the room into long, faint notes.

  Brenda’s eyes were red from crying, and she clutched Kera’s graduation picture in its plain black frame. Despite himself, Duncan looked at the picture’s image of her bare shoulders in the black drape. How many times had he kissed the little hollow there, or run his fingers lightly along that collarbone? That thin chain was even still around her neck, the buffalo nickel hanging out of sight beneath the drape.

  Make the buffalo roam.

  He looked around for Adam, but he wasn’t here.

  “Bless your heart, Duncan,” Brenda said when she saw Duncan. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  He bent down and hugged her. He felt shudders go through her body, the aftershocks of sobs. She was too exhausted to cry right now; he knew that feeling.

  He shook Sam’s hand and said, “Mr. Rogers, if there’s anything I can do, you just let me know.” Then he took a deep breath and added, softly so the others wouldn’t hear, “If you’ve got a second, I sure would appreciate a moment of your time.”

  “Sure, Duncan,” he said numbly. He squeezed his wife’s hand reassuringly, then got to his feet. They went into the kitchen, where the table was laden with food, including an absurd amount of potato salad. The three people gathered there discreetly slipped out, sensing the two men wanted privacy.

  “Cyrus Crow sent us all this,” Sam muttered. “Reckon he figures we’re a might short on tater salad.” He worked one finger beneath the cling wrap and dipped into the bowl.

  “Mr. Rogers, I want your blessing for something,” Duncan said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Me and Adam Procure are going to go kill that damn pig.”

  Sam smiled, but it was so weak, it barely touched the corners of his mouth. “Duncan, I think you best leave that to the folks who know what they’re doing. I done spoke to the game warden, and he’s going to take care of it. But I sure do appreciate you wanting to do it.”

  “I’m serious, Mr. Rogers. I’ve got nothing against them wildlife folks, but they ain’t lost anybody. We have. I want to even it up as much as I can.”

  “You think a pig’s life will balance out Kera’s?”

  “No, sir, that ain’t what I’m saying. I’m just saying that fucking … excuse me, that damn animal needs to go down by the hand of someone who suffered from what it did.”

  “And how will that help?”

  Duncan had no real answer for that.

  “Duncan, I know it always seemed like I didn’t care for you, and to tell the truth, I didn’t. I wanted better for Kera.”

  Again Duncan had no response.

  Sam licked the last of the potato salad from his meaty fingertip. “But I can’t deny that I know how you felt about her, so I know that right now, me and you, we’re closer than family. We’re men with our hearts broke.”

  Duncan nodded.

  “Last night I stood out in that backyard, my old deer rifle loaded, and dared that hog to come out. I sang to it, I called to it, I begged the night winds to send it my way. They didn’t. And this morning, when I woke up to a house without my baby girl in it, I understand why.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “Because it ain’t my place to do it. Just like it ain’t yours. Killing that hog won’t spackle over that crack in your heart. Only time can do that. And if you let yourself get all righteous and angry about it, then all that stuff will stay in your heart once it does heal up. Kera wouldn’t want that for either one of us.”

  He patted Duncan’s shoulder and went to rejoin his wife. Duncan didn’t mind. His whole purpose in coming here was to establish that his motives for hunting the pig were pure, and in a sense, they were: despite Sam’s warning, he did want to be the one to put a bullet in its stinky, bristly hide.

  But his other plan, the one that began to form over breakfast that morning, involved another bullet. And even though he doubted he had the nerve to follow through, he still enjoyed thinking about it, and planning it, and imagining it coming to fruition up there in the dense forest on Dunwoody Mountain, or over the hill in Half Pea Hollow.

  8

  It was midafternoon before the WHOMP team gathered at the site of Kera Rogers’s death. They were grim and single-minded, as befitted an elite force.

  Dolph Pettit wore camouflage pants with many pockets, and carried a Sako Finnlight .260 Remington. Max McMaynus dressed in a bark-pattern jumpsuit and toted an Ambush 300 Blackout rifle slung by a strap over his shoulder. Bronwyn Chess wore black, with her dark hair tucked up into a black baseball cap marked with the WHOMP logo: the letters in white stitching, except for the O, which contained a snarling boar’s face crossed with a red line, like the Ghostbusters emblem. She carried a Hoyt Spyder Turbo compound bow.

  Jack faced them like a commander briefing his troops, his own 20-gauge Savage M220 Stainless camouflage-patterned shotgun loose in his hands, the barrel pointed at the ground. “I want to thank y’all for coming out here today. If we’re lucky, the pigs will come back through here tonight or tomor
row morning. They came around here last night, or at least a few of them did, according to the tracks.”

  “Any sign of the big one?” Max asked.

  “Nothing conclusive. But we’ll assume he’s running with them.”

  “Why?” Dolph asked. “The big ones—”

  “I know,” Jack interrupted. “But the tracks were all made at the same time. For whatever reason, he’s with a herd.”

  “Damn,” Max said, and shook his head.

  “Normally we’d put up the feeder for a few days before setting up the corral,” Jack continued, “but under the circumstances, I don’t think we can wait.”

  “If we mess up,” Dolph said, “that’ll trap-spook ’em. We’ll never get ’em in one.”

  “We’ll have to take that chance. This is about a lot more than property damage.”

  Bronwyn said, “How big is the one we’re after again?”

  “I estimate around eight hundred pounds,” Jack said. “Seven- to nine-inch tusks. I assume it’s a farm escapee, since it’d be hard to find enough food to grow that big in the wild. But I could be wrong.”

  “You might need something more heavy-duty than that pot sticker,” Max said teasingly to Bronwyn.

  “All depends on where in the pot you stick ’em,” she said.

  “I’m hoping it won’t come to that,” Jack said. “If we can get him in the trap, we can put him down quickly. I admit it, I don’t cotton to hunting him down on foot.”

  “We could set up a blind here, instead of a trap,” Dolph said. “What do you think, Max?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, I could put up in a tree blind. I’ve got a seat in my truck. If it looks like it won’t go for the trap, I can tap it.”

  “Let’s do that,” Jack said. “We’ll come get you out, whatever happens, so you don’t have to come back by yourself in the dark.”

  “That’s appreciated,” Max said.

  “We’ll set up a trail cam we can watch on my laptop from the Rogers house,” Jack said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know if we should just assume it’s okay to use their place,” Bronwyn said. “The wake’s still going on. And I mean, would you want to see the animal that killed and ate your child?”

  “Will you ask them?” Jack said. “If you’re right and it bothers them, then we’ll just take turns sitting and watching in my truck down the road a ways.”

  “Sure,” Bronwyn said.

  They headed back down the trail toward the house, each of them calmly watching the woods for something they knew lurked out there. A wild hog would normally never hunt a human being, but this was no normal animal, and none of them were taking any chances. This beast already had enough blood on its tusks.

  * * *

  Adam looked at Duncan in disbelief. “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, because I ain’t no hunter, for one thing. If it’s bigger than a squirrel or a rabbit, you can have it. I’ve never even shot a deer. And for another thing, I hear the game warden’s got professionals already out looking for it. We can’t compete with that. I’d rather just wait and spit on its carcass.”

  They sat across a table at the Pair-A-Dice, the local roadhouse that served as a neutral gathering place for both sides of the Tufa community. The beer Duncan sipped deadened the last of his hangover, and gave him the courage he needed to move his plan forward.

  On the little stage in the corner, an old woman sawed away at her fiddle. Her technique was crude, but there was no denying the ache that sailed forth from her instrument. She was the last of eleven children, the only sister, and you could feel the loss of each and every brother in her playing. It was like she was tapping into the very feelings Duncan was doing his best to suppress in himself.

  She sang in a high voice that trembled with age,

  And once they gave Arete as bride in the foreign lands

  and years of misery and months of anger came

  and death fell upon them and the nine brothers died

  the mother was left all alone.…

  Duncan closed his eyes against a sudden fresh rush of nausea. Or was it revulsion—at himself, at what he planned, at a world that let such thoughts exist?

  He stood up and threw his coaster at the old woman. “Goddamn, ain’t we depressed enough? Play something about somebody alive, will ya?”

  He dropped back into his chair. For a moment, there was dead silence; then the old woman resumed her song, and conversation returned all around them. He didn’t listen to see if it was now all about him.

  “Wow,” Adam said quietly. “You’re awfully wound up.”

  “My girlfriend just died,” he snapped back. Then he watched for any response.

  Adam only nodded. “Yeah. I’d probably be wound up, too.”

  The nerve, he thought. The sheer nerve of this asshole. How can he just sit there like that? He started to ask him about it straight up, demand the truth about him and Kera. But he’d seen the pictures and read the texts; there could be no doubt. It wasn’t one of those TV-movie misunderstandings. There had been a selfie of the two of them in bed, bare-shouldered and tousle-haired; what else could it be? And now here was Adam complaining that he was too “wound up.”

  I’ll show you wound up, he thought. Just wait. “So are we on for tomorrow?”

  “Duncan, it’s crazy. It won’t accomplish anything.”

  “It might settle her haint.”

  “Her haint?” Adam repeated, a little too loudly. More softly, he asked, “Holy shit, man, have you seen her?”

  “No,” Duncan said quickly. Haints were nothing to joke about in Cloud County, and he couldn’t believe he’d been so clumsy. “I’m just saying, if she is restless, she’ll stay that way until someone who—” And here he caught himself, but there was nothing for it, he had to keep plowing ahead. “—loves her,” he continued, “avenges her death.”

  “But you don’t know that she is restless.”

  “And you don’t know that she’s not. Come on, Adam, grow a pair. Let’s go find this fucker and put him down.”

  “Where do we even look?”

  “Down in Half Pea Hollow.”

  “Why there?”

  “It’s just over Dunwoody Mountain from Kera’s place, and nobody ever goes there.”

  “You know why, too.”

  “You believe it’s haunted?”

  “I believe it’s a bad idea to go traipsing through it to find out.”

  “We’re not going there to find out if it’s haunted. We’re going to find a wild pig. Look, just come with me. We come in from each end of the hollow, catch whatever’s in there between us, and wipe it the fuck out. Then we bring that sucker’s head back on the hood of my car.”

  Adam thought it over. “Well … I wouldn’t mind seeing it dead, that’s for sure.”

  “That’s right,” Duncan said, keeping his elation in check. “You bring that Nosler your daddy’s got up on the wall, and it wouldn’t stand a chance. That thing would stop a buffalo.”

  Adam tapped his fingertips on the tabletop, thinking. It took all Duncan’s self-control not to try to persuade him more, but he wanted to make sure Adam had time to choose this path himself. Then whatever happened would be Adam’s own fault.

  “All right,” Adam said at last. “When?”

  “First thing tomorrow morning.”

  “What time?”

  “Four.”

  “Jesus. Does the world even exist that early?”

  “We want to be out there at first light. I’ll call you at three thirty to make sure you’re awake.”

  “No, I’ll be awake. Just be quiet when you drive up, and don’t gun your engine or anything.” Adam lived above the detached garage at his cousin’s place; Duncan had been there many times, and now fought down the image of Kera naked on Adam’s old trundle bed.

  Adam drank from his beer and turned to listen to the music. Duncan watched his handsome profile, the way his chin jutted out just enough, the way his
black hair swept back from his face. Soon enough, you smug GQ-looking SOB, he thought. Soon enough.

  * * *

  Mandalay Harris sat at the desk in her bedroom and waited for the other end of the phone call to pick up. Her homework was spread out before her, but that could wait; it never took her long, anyway. Right now, she needed to speak to the person who refused to pick up his damn phone.

  It rang many times, too many, and never went to voice mail, but she knew he was there. She tapped the beaded fringe around the shade of her desk lamp, enjoying the way the afternoon sun sparkled on the little aluminum beads. Her concentration had been lacking at school, and her teachers noticed it. Ms. Ogletree, whose New Age hippie past meant she never got upset, had pointed out that Mandalay “seemed to be awfully bummed out.” Mandalay put it down to Kera Rogers’s death, which was the talk of the school. But while that might be part of it, it was far from all.

  Which was why she grew more and more annoyed with each ring.

  At last he picked up. “What?” Junior said.

  She responded, “It’s me.”

  “Who?”

  She sighed impatiently. “Jesus, Junior, don’t tell me you don’t have my name programmed into your phone.”

  “All right, whatever. What do you want?”

  “Something’s in the wind. Do you feel it?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, you don’t. That’s why I’m telling you.”

  “If you’re so goddamn smart, tell me what it is, then.”

  “If I knew, I would. I think it’s got something to do with Kera Rogers’s death.”

  “A pig ate her. No mystery about that.”

  “Maybe. But keep your eyes open, will you? And if you suspect anything, tell me. We have to work together, remember.”

  “Is this how you worked with Rockhouse?”

  “No. And you see how it turned out for him.”

  “Hmph,” Junior said. He knew perfectly well what had happened to Rockhouse, now buried on Emania Knob: first robbed of his voice when his own betrayed daughter tore out his throat, then mutilated by Bo-Kate Wisby when she tried to claim his position and take over the Tufa. “Well, I’ll let you know.”