Tide King

by Jen Michalski

  In the distance, they heard an engine. It was not good if they were near a road. But if they were near a road, perhaps they were close to water, to help.

  “Javen daj! Come here!” His mother called after them. “We get the trailer under cover.”

  Ela could feel Tsura’s breath, light and quick on her arm, begin to slow. She pressed her arm closer to her, even knowing that her blood had never saved anyone. It smeared across Tsura’s face, making her look like one of the clowns that sometimes came through with the circuses. Ela tried to wipe it with her the top of her hand.

  “Javen daj! We must go,” Ferki’s mother called. “I do not say again! Akana mukav tut le Devlesa.” I now leave you to God.

  “Go.” Ela looked at Ferki. “I will stay with her.”

  “Never.”

  “It is too late for her. I will be safe—you know that.”

  “Tsura.” Ferki cupped her chin and pressed his ear against her mouth. When he pulled away, sucking in his breath, her lips had left a blood kiss where his ear met his cheek.

  “Akana mukav tut le Devlesa!” Ferki’s father appeared at the head of the woods. He beckoned to them.

  “Javen daj’s dead!” Ferki yelled.

  “They are coming!” His father waved them toward the truck. The engine was louder. Clipped German bit at the air. His hand froze in mid-air as they heard Ferki’s mother scream, voices they did not recognize mingled with it. His father began to wave them in the other direction. “Go! Go! Run!”

  Ferki stared dumbly at his father as he hurried back toward the trailer. Ela grabbed his arm and pulled him the other way into the forest, his feet stumbling in the roots, kicking up leaves, his breath choked wet with tears, until something settled in him, the force of life, and he began to pull her, faster and faster until they were gone from where they were, no idea where they were going.

  During the day, they slept in the trees. Ferki tied one of each of their ankles to the branch on which they lay with the torn-off arms of his shirt so they would not plunge to the ground. They hugged the thick branches with their bodies, and as they fell asleep, their grips would loosen, awakening them. But they were safe. By day, they searched for a stream, a pond, a stagnant circle of water, to wash off the blood and grime. They had heard the dogs, some days as soft as whispers, other days just over a hill, down in a valley. It was possible that they knew Ela’s scent, that they had found Tsura and smelled it on her. That they were gaining.

  “You go on.” Ela stopped walking. The woods spread around them like a maze. Every tree the same, a sliver of moon through a canopy of leaves to guide them. “I will be decoy, you get?”

  “No.” He grabbed her arm and jerked her along. Branches whipped at her face. “We go together.”

  “They smell me.” She stopped again. “You are free.”

  “My heart is chained to you.” He cupped her face in his hands. “I have no family but you. If I do not have you, I have nothing. And I may as well be dead.”

  They went on. They sucked the juice from berries and chewed leaves. Their stomachs, empty, knotted like vines as they moved past seemingly the same trees, the same ruts and indentations in the earth. At night, they again shimmied up the thickest trees, the oaks, and tied themselves to the branches. At night, they wondered whether they would die before they were found. They wondered, sometimes, if they wished the opposite.

  “We will get married when this is over.” Ferki still talked of the future. He nudged her when she could not walk further, massaged her stomach when she was doubled over with the cramps of hunger, saved berries in his pockets and pressed them into her mouth when her mouth was so dry she could no longer speak, when her throat cracked and she coughed, the violence of her convulsions vibrating through the forest for anyone to hear.

  “It will be a great honor,” she answered. “To be your wife.” They did not speak of her curse, even as his clothes, aside from being torn and stained from the forest, had begun to tear at the seams of his calves, his shoulders, as he grew, and she did not. His voice, a soft melodic stream, at times fell into a cave, deep and sharp, before it fell into a stream.

  “I wish we had the herbs.” She picked at plants, unfamiliar, familiar, and ground them between her fingers, smelled them. “We could find a way to protect you.”

  “It is my job to protect you,” he answered, drawing a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “I pray to my mother—she will tell me what to do.” She did not tell him she had prayed to her mother most nights, with no reply. But perhaps she was far, far away, and it would take a long time for her prayers to reach her.

  “Your mother tells you to stay with me—we’ll be okay.” He bent over and rubbed his foot. He had torn it shimmying down a tree trunk a few nights before, the cut since muddied with dirt. She had rubbed the husks of the walnuts they ate to dress it, but they were not eating enough to heal, for the healing powers of the herbs to work with their bodies. Now, a thin veil of pus leeched from the cut. “When this is over, we will figure out something. We’ll never be apart—you have my promise.

  They came upon a Bartok, a wide, stout oak with low, thick branches the size of other tree’s trunks.

  “This is good sign.” Ferki smiled at her in pink dawn light. The forest began to rouse with bird songs, the travel of squirrels and foxes. “We shall get good rest in God’s arms.”

  She climbed up the tree, and he followed.

  “The branches—too wide for tying.” Ela frowned.

  “We not need—we sleep at base of branch, next to trunk.” He leaned against the trunk and motioned her to him. She backed herself into him, and he wrapped his arms around her. “I can feel something—people, water. They will not turn away children. We will be safe for a little bit, maybe.”

  “Kocham cie,” she whispered to Ferki in Polish. I love you.

  “Te iubesc,” he answered in Romani. She turned her head, and his lips caught hers. She held them with hers, hoping she would fall asleep like this.

  “Sleep.” He pushed her head on his shoulder. “I join soon.”

  She dreamed of a barn, a few strands of dung-sticky hay to sleep on, a fingerful of cold water to whet her mouth. She did not dare dream of a bed, food, warmth. She dreamed of her matka in heaven, wondered how she would get to her, see her again. She did not fear death, even as her life force propelled her from it. If it caught up to her, somehow, she would welcome it like an old friend.

  She dreamed of dogs, German shepherds, with hair sticking off their neck like spikes, their hackles striped down their back, teeth white against their black muzzles. They barked from below the tree, circling, and she was glad she was only dreaming.

  Ferki shook her. The dogs did not disappear. They circled the base of the Bartok, changing positions with fluidness, like water slipping around river stones, a devil’s dance, baring their teeth and calling to them in growls and barks. Four soldiers in uniform, Nazis, joined them, with harnesses and whips relaxed in their hands, gloved with leather. The smoke from their cigarettes swirled up into the trees as they laughed. She picked up bits of their German as she straightened herself on the branch.

  “Look, it is Hansel and Gretel in the tree.” One of them slapped his thigh. His eyes were brilliant blue, like the sky. She did not think a man so evil deserved such beautiful eyes, or his squared, dimpled chin.

  “You are false gods,” she spat at them in Polish. “You are beneath dirt.”

  “Oh, no, no—not Hansel and Gretel.” Another ribbed him, ignoring her. “They are a rare species—Juden birds.”

  They all laughed harder, bending over, as the dogs circled the tree again and again, hairy sharks, their barks searing her spine.

  “Kocham cie.” Ela kissed Ferki’s cheek and steadied herself to standing. “When I jump into dogs, you jump the other way and run.”

  “No.” He grabbed her arm, tried to pull her back to him. She opened her mouth and bit him as hard as she could on the forearm. When he left go,
his mouth opened wide in pain, she leapt from the tree and tackled two of the dogs, pulling at their necks and gouging their eyes as they sank their jaws into her legs as if they were mere twigs. Their teeth tore into her muscles, and even though she could not die, she could feel pain. It covered her in a cold sweat and burned her like fire.

  “Oh, dear—the Juden bird cannot fly.” One of the soldiers aimed his luger at her. Suddenly Ferki fell from the tree on top of him, wrestling for the gun. The dogs crowded over her, biting her cheeks. The blood ran over her lips, her eyes. One emerged with her nose in his teeth. She heard the scuffle of boots on the forest floor, and then a single shot. But she was too weak, the crush of hairy bodies on her, to see who had won. She imagined this was what dying felt like. She closed her eyes tight, as blood filled her throat and trickled into her lungs. She hoped the dogs would tear her to bits and eat her to nothing. She hoped, when she and Ferki would meet again, it would be in heaven. She hoped, as she closed her eyes, that she would finally see the earth for the last time.

  1960

  They were somewhere between Nevada and Kansas, stuffed in a station wagon with a bunch of pickers, Dwayne Zukes and Bobby Hill and Terry Mann, when Heidi was born. Two hundred miles, an inch on Dwayne’s roadmap, a thousand in the prairie dark, snaked from the piston-powered engine of their wagon to the gig in Kansas City. If only the road, if only the road was all, but now, sometime after midnight, the snow began to fall like an act of malice, swirling and bleaching the night with salt. Stanley stopped the car and the pickers slid out of the backseat, checking some of the equipment that they had tied to the hood.

  “The baby’s coming now, honey, snow or not.” Cindy lifted her legs and pressed them against the dashboard, so short there was barely a bend in her knee. Her naked toes grew blue as her face began to color and contort in rhythm with the mysterious will of God contracting and moving within her, the same mysterious will that planted seed in Cindy’s 41-year-old womb.

  Of course it was not his. He knew it because of the way Cindy sat on Dwayne’s lap at the bars, snuggling against his head. How they’d disappear for hours in the pickers’ hotel room to work on music, how, certain nights, Cindy would come in and straddle him, demand they have sex, as if to cover her bets. He did not know what to do except sit in the bar and nurse whiskey and accept that he had failed as a man but was pretty good at being a roadie, driving the car on the two-lane highways while everyone slept, dragging amps and putting together drum kits on stage.

  And now he was going to be a father, at least in name. It had been hours since he’d spoken to Cindy, after she agreed to the gig in Kansas City at the last minute, on their way home from Reno, when they should have been headed straight for the nearest hospital. When he put his foot down, and she threatened to leave him there at the shack its owners had billed as a casino and club, the New Texas Lounge. By its looks, he wasn’t sure what was so new about it.

  He put out his cigarette and turned toward her. The new had already gotten old, the dates that their manager arranged haphazardly for them across the country, as if he were shooting rubber bands while spinning in a circle. The sleeping in the car, the show promoters skimming money off their ticket sales, the pickers—great guitar players but lousy men—the jeering, the leering drunks in the audiences who called Cindy names, sometimes threw bottles. It would have been enough for Stanley. But for every breakfast of coffee and toast, every lost shoe and blown tire, every boo, there was applause, encouragement, people who bought their single and fawned over Cindy. And that was enough for Cindy to stand the rest of it.

  And now there was the child. He leaned over her and held out his hands as Cindy’s face went red and purple and white and then went again like Christmas lights. He patted the claw of her fist that had begun to separate the vinyl fabric of the front seat from the stuffing. He tore off his jacket, an old shearling rancher’s coat, and held it between her legs, ready to cloak the pink nub of hairy eraser, Calvin or Heidi, that had appeared and bring its little plum-sized heart next to his, and Cindy’s hair, long and blonde, caught her lips as she groaned and pushed once, twice, three times, and the slippery girl wormed out into the cocoon of Stanley’s coat, Heidi.

  Heidi. Her breath made a little cloud above her face, so honey dark in color, before Stanley pressed her against his chest, wrapped the cord around his index finger and nicked it free with his pocket knife. Cindy wiped herself with the quilt, the quilt they slept under, would have to sleep under whenever they slept next.

  “Jesus H. Christ. Look at that.” Dwayne, whose Indian skin glistened with the same syrup color as the baby’s, shook the snow off his shoulders and climbed into the back seat. If he had any thoughts about his new fatherhood, they came second after his guitars, strapped to the hood. “Two miracles tonight—my Gibson’s okay, and a baby.”

  “Can we make it to town?” Stanley felt sleepy, the warm bean on his chest beginning to stir and cry for food, shelter. His baby. He cupped the caramel head with his pink hand, felt the wet of her dark hair against his palm. Dwayne’s baby. He handed her to Cindy and revved the engine.

  “It’s as white as a sheet out there. But I don’t see what other choice we got.” Dwayne said as Terry and Bobby piled in, bringing with them the snow and the cold.

  “Close the doors. I gotta feed her.” Cindy unbuttoned her blouse, the rawness of birth now hidden under the blanket. She brought the baby to her breast as if she were brushing her teeth.

  They rode in silence, inches, white, creeping. The sound of snow crunching under tires, pickers breathing, baby suckling. The white erased them from everything in the world, everything from them. They were quiet in its vortex, except for Heidi, who had screamed as if they all owed her something.

  Cindy was awake. She was awake when on stage, signing photos, and doing interviews at the radio stations. She was asleep in the car, in the hotel room, feeding Heidi, and whenever Stanley wanted to kiss her and maybe more.

  She was awake now because of the call. She called Eddie every few days to check in, and after today’s call, lipstick containers and fake pearls and hairbrushes rattled and rolled across the vanity until Stanley lifted his head from the pillow.

  “What?” He was up with Heidi until just a few hours ago, hours that felt like minutes. “You’ll wake the baby.”

  “Oh my dear Lord, Stanley, ‘Forever in My Arms’ is number 1 on the Billboard!” Cindy half-skipped, half-danced over to him. “On my mother’s grave, baby. This is not a joke.”

  “That’s great.” He turned over, his face in the hotel room pillow, sour and lumpy like a kindergarten bean bag. Good things for Cindy seemed to mean trouble for him. They had not been home in five months, even with a newborn baby.

  “You know what this means honey?” She stood by the bed, stroking his hair. “It means we’re gonna be on the Opry! Wendell told me, once we hit the top 5, we were going to get a call. He was promised. Oh, Stanley, they do love me!”

  “Even if they didn’t, baby, I would still love you.” He sat up in the bed, rubbing his temples. He had stopped drinking on the road but still felt like shit. Hours and hours of padding around the hotel room, the hallway, backstage, coaxing Heidi to sleep. Colic, the doctor back in Nashville had said. Babies need to be home. They need stability, regular feedings. Not the road.

  Just one more gig. Cindy had said it again and again. So they don’t forget us. I’ll be a mother forever, but I’m only a star now. So Stanley padded back and forth in his socks while Heidi cried. I won’t be a baby forever, she seemed to say. But Stanley would always be her father. Even if he wasn’t. He cradled her head and sang to her, the little golden stranger with yellow-green eyes and caramel hair, and walked in circles until she was heavier than the forty pounds he’d dragged on his back through Europe, heavier than bodies he dragged into shallow ditches and unused foxholes. Heavier than Johnson in that space where his heart used to be. Then she would smile and coo, staring at Stanley with love, her eyes like little
drops, little shards, of Dwayne’s.

  “I know you love me, baby.” Cindy crawled on the bed. “But it’s good to know other people do, too.” Her hair, still in various stages of primping from last night’s show, framed half of her face, the other side matted where it lay on the pillow. She looked like some sort of mythic creature, a temptress turned siren. She smiled at him and he touched her face, a face he did not recognize some nights, behind the stage lights and the lipstick and rouge. A little woman propped on a stool in the front of the pickers so the audience could see her, a little woman with a big voice. Perhaps, he had never known her. Perhaps, he was one rung of the ladder on which she was climbing her way to adulation, to acceptance. A hunger for approval, for love, that seemed insatiable. A love Stanley had thought, foolishly, he could provide solely. And her love for him? On stage, she was everyone’s savior, dressing their wounds with her voice, her eyes.

  “If one person loves you, that should be enough.” He took her hands and squeezed them, smelled the woman of her. He pushed her back on the bed, released her hands. He felt himself push against his pants as he straddled her. “You don’t need anybody after that.”

  “Baby, not now.” She wriggled underneath him. “I have to call Wendell back. We’ve got a lot of free dates next week. There’s got to be a barn dance or radio show we can do while we wait to hear from the Opry. I bet they’ll give us a spot on the Louisiana Hayride after that show we did on KWKH.”

  He leaned over her, his strength quelling her struggle, as he loosed his drawers. Heidi began to cry in the crib, a little cry that cracked his spine upright, sending pressure to his head, a headache. He gathered her and brought her to Cindy, who took her to her breast.

  “Think we got a little country star on our hands, baby?” She stroked Heidi’s head. “Momma’s baby. Maybe we can get mother-daughter act going, when the time’s right.”

  “Isn’t one selfish little country star enough?” He grabbed his shirt and his boots, his erection sinking. “I’m leaving.”