Down at ground level, Garrett whistled to get the crowd’s attention, and Elizabeth raised her hands.
“Here’s the surprise I promised,” she said. “Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time ever—Banda de Pumas!”
Charlie raised his arms and brought them down like twin axes. Then Banda de Pumas blasted out three of the loudest, brassiest, bass-horn-and-drum-heavy Mexican tunes ever heard in Kingman County. They had put the whole thing together in four days, but they looked and sounded as if they’d been doing it for years. Kaylee even sang on the second number, but it was in Spanish, so I had no idea what it was about. But I knew Marisa’s sousaphone was dominant and perfect, and I knew Banda de Pumas would be sticking around.
Just before the final number, Charlie disappeared for a moment and reappeared with the brass Conn sousaphone on his shoulders. Then he and Marisa played harmonizing bass lines, which I hadn’t even known was possible.
After that, the banda members vanished back inside. All except Marisa, who stepped down from the dock so the audience members could stuff fives, tens, and twenties into her sousaphone bell.
I searched my pockets and came up with two crumpled ones. I had been thinking about a slice of brisket, which smelled pretty good. But what the hell. So when the mob around Marisa thinned, I stepped up and added my bills.
“I assume this is all going to a good cause,” I said.
Marisa nodded. “Sí. Mr. Garrett’s brother Carlos is going to manage the banda, and anything we make after expenses will go to a scholarship fund.” She touched the collar of her red jacket. “The outfits were donated by our benefactor, so we didn’t waste any money there. And if you come to our next gig, I promise we’ll know more than three songs.”
“Y’all sounded swell,” I said. I reached out and touched one of the ragged holes in the sousaphone bell. “Despite a defective tuba made out of fiberglass.”
Marisa gave me a bright smile.
“Es la música,” she said. “No el instrumento.”
I looked around and saw no one else within fifteen feet.
“You knew I’d be there with the money Monday night, didn’t you?” I said. “You must have spotted me Saturday as you drove off in the van. And you knew I was in Garrett’s office when you brought Donny to the band room Monday morning.”
Instead of answering, she pressed her lips to the sousaphone mouthpiece and played seven quick, low notes.
Shave-and-a-hair-cut, two-bits!
Then she spun away, once again like a ballerina. No mean feat while wearing a sousaphone.
“I knew you were smart when you made D. H. Lawrence your bitch,” I called after her. I got a few sharp looks from some of the parents in my vicinity, but I didn’t care.
Then I went to the gymnasium door and ran into Lester coming out. He had a stunning brunette woman on his arm who was a full head taller and at least thirty years younger than he was.
“Any barbecue left, Mister Marx?” Lester asked. “My lovely spouse insists upon some brisket. So I got to get her fed in a big goddamn hurry.”
The stunning brunette smiled. It was dazzling. “Otherwise,” she said in the sweetest of voices, “I’m going to stab him.”
I told them that my share was still there, and I stepped aside and held the door for them. As I did, I looked back toward the loading dock and saw Garrett and Elizabeth talking and laughing. I thought about going over to say good night. But then I went on through the gym, into the foyer, and out to the main parking lot.
The week had not turned out as I’d hoped. I had done much better in much tougher circumstances in Chicago, so I wasn’t sure why I’d had so much trouble in my own hometown. Maybe I could only thrive someplace where I wasn’t comfortable. Like Chicago.
But as I slid into my Toyota, I looked across the Kingman Rural High parking lot … and there, at the gray edge of the artificial light, saw Bobby Tone handing his plastic-covered plate of oatmeal cookies to a chubby guy with a ponytail. Simultaneously, the chubby guy handed Bobby something that Bobby tucked into his denim jacket. I noticed then that the plate of cookies looked bulkier than it had before.
Bobby Tone watched the chubby guy climb into an SUV and drive off. Then Bobby climbed into his big silver Dodge Ram and drove off as well.
It occurred to me that I still didn’t know where he was living these days. And since he was an old friend of the family, that didn’t seem right.
No, I wasn’t going back to Chicago or anywhere else for a while. I was curious about too many new developments in the land of my birth. Things like Lester’s unlikely marriage to his possibly violent showgirl wife. Things like Donny’s and Tyler’s indentured servitude to Deputy Beeswax. Things like whether Kaylee would choose Jared or Baylor. Things like Marisa’s burgeoning banda career.
And of course I should at least stick around long enough to see if Elizabeth needed me to teach on Monday.
Besides, I hadn’t liked it when Bobby Tone had told me I couldn’t steal anything back. I didn’t think that was his call.
I waited until the Dodge’s taillights were almost out of sight out on the highway. And then I started up my Toyota, flipped on my headlights, and followed Bobby Tone into Kingman.
I didn’t know what he had slipped into his jacket.
But I knew it was going to be mine.
Cherie Priest
Sometimes, when things get tight, a bad man is the best one to have on your side. And the worse things get, the badder that man needs to be …
Cherie Priest is probably best known for her steampunk Clockwork Century series, consisting of the novels Boneshaker, Clementine, Dreadnought, Ganymede, and, most recently, The Inexplicables, as well as the chapbook novella “Tanglefoot,” but she has also written the Southern Gothic Eden Moore series, consisting of Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Wings to the Kingdom, and Not Flesh Nor Feathers, and the urban fantasy Cheshire Red Reports series, consisting of Bloodshot and Hellbent. She’s also written the stand-alone novels Dreadful Skin, Fathom, and Those Who Went Remain There Still. Her latest is a new novel, Fiddlehead. She lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
“HEAVY METAL”
Cherie Priest
Kilgore Jones wrestled free from the Eldorado and kicked the driver’s door shut. It bounced and swung back open again, so he gave it a shove with his hip. The old car rocked back and forth, creaking in protest, but this time the latch caught and held—mostly for its own good. The Jolly Roger was a big car, but its driver was a big man.
It wouldn’t be a real bold stretch to say he was six and a half feet tall, and a good carnival guesser might put his bulk at a quarter ton. Bald of head and fancy of facial hair, he boasted a carpet of impressive brown muttonchops that shone red in the sun, and a pair of mirrored aviator glasses. Everything else he wore was black. If you asked him why, he’d straight-faced tell you it was slimming.
His wardrobe notwithstanding, Kilgore threw a globe-shaped shadow on the ground—a one-man eclipse as he walked across a set of ruts that passed for parking spaces.
The old hoist house loomed before him: a nineteenth-century behemoth built for work and not beauty. It was red brick with a green roof, and easily the size of the grand old church in Chattanooga where he was no longer welcome—because a pastor singing about Satan made sense, but a layman going on about monsters was just plain silly.
As he approached, he saw patched-up places where new brick filled in old windows, doors, and shafts. He noted the remains of white paint around the main door and its entry platform, all of it lead, most of it peeling and fluttering in a cold, sharp November breeze.
Gravel crunched beneath his feet, and the wind yanked at his coat. The sun was vivid and white against a crisp blue sky without any clouds, but there wasn’t much warmth to go around. The Smokies were not yet brittle like they would be in another month, but he could smell it coming.
“Hello?” Kilgore called. The word went wild, echoing against the hoist-house walls and adjacent boiler rooms, ba
nging off the time shack and the bit-building across the way, rattling against last century’s mining equipment abandoned on the end of the track. “Anybody here? Miss Huesman?”
He scaled the steps of the entry platform and stood on the wood-slat landing—gazing toward the cavernous interior. Inside he saw pumpkins, left over from a Halloween fund-raiser, if the banner could be believed. They were laid out on pallets with discount signs scrawled by hand in thick red marker. Even the largest, a gourd advertised as a seventy-pounder, looked tiny beneath the vast, gabled ceiling strewn with crisscrossing tracks that toted great tubs of ore back before Kilgore’s grandparents were born.
Wind whistled through the rafters above, scattering dead leaves and ruffling the fat little birds who huddled on the hauling lines.
“Hello?” he tried again. “Anyone here?”
“Hello?” someone called back, then added more, but he couldn’t make it out. The voice came from deep inside, past the pumpkins on their pallets and back against the far wall … behind a door that might lead to an office.
He headed toward the sound of the speaker.
“… sorry if you’re here about Rich. He’s gone home for the day—and I think he took the money pouch for the pumpkins. But if you want one, and you have exact change, I’ll see what I can do. All the proceeds go to support the museum …”
The door banged open, forced that way by the shoulder of a woman whose arms were full of miscellany: files, papers, magazines from the first Bush era, and a messenger bag from which peeked the sleek shape of a tablet. She paused. Or more precisely, she froze. Whatever she’d been expecting, Kilgore Jones wasn’t it.
“Can … can I help you?” she asked. She shifted her weight and deposited her armload of stuff onto an old telephone seat that languished against the wall.
She was young, lanky, and tall. Long blond hair, shiny and well kept. Wearing an oversized cardigan over a black tee shirt for a band Kilgore didn’t recognize, and that was saying something. Her dark jeans were dusted with Ducktown, Tennessee’s, ubiquitous red dirt in the shape of handprints. Her own, he assumed.
He pushed his sunglasses onto the top of his head. “Miss Huesman?”
“Yes? I mean, yes.” She nodded, finding some relief in hearing her own name. “I’m Bethany. No one calls me Miss Huesman outside the university. And you are … ?”
Now he stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Kilgore Jones. Jennifer Andrews told you I was coming, I think?”
Bethany’s stiff fight-or-flight stance softened. “Yes! You’re the guy who worked with Pastor Martin on Sand Mountain, back in the day. And you’re … you’re The Heavy? Well, Jenn did say …” She extended her hand to take his, and shook it. Her fingers were small and cold, and they sported a cute assortment of shiny silver rings.
Kilgore smiled, and hoped it was disarming. At his size, putting people at ease took extra work, so he’d learned to watch all of his language. “Let me guess: She said that when you saw me, you’d know why people call me that.”
She blushed, or maybe it was only the chill hitting her cheeks. “More or less. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. Any friend of Pastor Martin’s …” Her voice trailed off and her gaze swept the hoist house, scanning the vast interior as if making sure they were alone. “Jenn said the pastor wouldn’t come. Why do you think that is?”
Kilgore should’ve said something about Sand Mountain. After all, she’d brought it up first.
He kept his mouth shut anyway. She deserved the truth, but it wouldn’t do her any good. “I couldn’t say, but I’m here to help if I can. If you’ve got a few minutes, I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Okay, but can we go someplace a little warmer to talk?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Just up the hill,” she indicated with a toss of her head. “The museum’s closed, but I have a key—and they have a heater.” She retrieved her messenger bag but left everything else where it was sitting. “We can walk it, no problem. Even with the wind, it’s so close that it’d be crazy to drive.”
He was inclined to disagree with her, but he restrained himself. “All right. Can I help you carry anything?”
“Naw,” she said dismissively, yanking the office door. It closed with a sticky squeak. “This stuff’ll be fine where it is. There’s nothing worth stealing, and nobody to take it. Not since …” She paused, and changed her mind. “Not anymore. But I’ll tell you about that when I’ve got a cup of coffee in my hand.”
The hill was blessedly short, but not so short that he didn’t wish for the Jolly Roger to help him scale it. He hated hills. Counted them among his archest of enemies. But at the top waited the museum, a squat, single-story building that was too modern to match the old buildings, but too new to call vintage. Its roof sloped unevenly above cheap white siding, fronted by a gravel lot that might’ve held half a dozen cars if you stacked them right.
Kilgore pulled a bandanna out of his pocket and wiped his forehead, never mind the breeze. “Museum doesn’t see a lot of traffic, does it?”
“Why would you say that?” she asked, digging keys out of her bag and unlocking the door.
“The parking lot says they don’t expect much company.”
She looked over her shoulder. “Oh. Yeah, I guess you’re right. Come to think of it, I’ve never seen more than three or four cars up here. And one of those usually belongs to Ammaw Pete.”
“Ammaw Pete? The volunteer coordinator?”
The door swung open. Bethany reached inside and flipped on a light though the day was still bright enough they almost didn’t need it. “How did you know?”
“I called this morning before I came out, and she’s the one who answered the phone. Seems like an … interesting lady.”
“Interesting. That’s her. She volunteers here most days. Other than that, she’s retired.” Bethany tossed her bag onto the counter and led the way to an understocked and overdirty kitchenette.
She rummaged for the Folgers, scooped out a filter’s worth, and fidgeted around the small, cold space while the coffee brewed and the freshly rebooted heater took the frost out of their breath. It had its work cut out for it; the building had the cheap, temporary feel of a trailer, and the walls were thinner than sandwich cheese. It hadn’t been closed up more than a couple of hours, but all the warmth had bled out already.
She dug her fingernails into the cup, leaving small half-moons in the smooth white surface. The heater hummed loudly and the coffee oozed warm curls of steam.
Bethany cleared her throat.
“I know how crazy this sounds … but Adam and Greg are dead. I don’t know why it took them, and I don’t know if I’m next. There’s … there’s a lot I don’t understand, about what happened. About this place. About that thing.”
Kilgore prompted, “Is this your first time in Ducktown?”
She nodded. “If it weren’t for the program, I never would’ve heard of the place. The ecology department at UTK has been involved in the cleanup here for ten or twelve years now—monitoring it and making recommendations. I’ve gone through the files and casebooks; it’s fascinating stuff, if you’re that kind of nerd. And if I weren’t, I’d be doing my grad work in something else.” She added a soft, quick laugh that was meant to sound light but only sounded strange.
“All right. And to be clear, it was you, Adam Frye, and Greg Malcolm on this trip, correct?”
“That’s right. I took point because they were first-years, and I’m only a semester away from finishing my master’s. The bulk of my research was geared toward the mountaintop removals. You know—the coal companies to the north and east of here. But the Burra Burra Mine is a legend, and the destruction it caused in the copper basin is virtually unique in scope; so even though it wasn’t my cup of tea, when the field assignment came up, I threw my hat in the ring. It sounded like a good idea at the time.”
“Famous last words.” Kilgore poured himself another cup and slipped the carafe bac
k onto the burner. “Now tell me, when did you first arrive?”
“A week and a half ago. We were staying at a Holiday Inn Express out by the highway. The university put us up, gave us a little per diem, the whole nine yards. We were supposed to check the soil pH levels across a mapped grid, and catalog the plant creep along the preserved area.”
He frowned. “Preserved area?”
“It’s a stretch of the old red dirt—the blighted turf left from the sulfur dioxide—where nothing grows and nothing lives. The government’s restoration campaign left this one section unreclaimed. I heard they did it as a reminder, but I bet they just ran out of funding.”
Kilgore knew about the dead red dirt, but he hadn’t realized there was any of it left. He’d seen the old pictures from the EPA reports, and a big spread in LIFE magazine from decades ago, before the cleanup. Fifty square miles of lifeless landscape, nothing but poisonous red hills as far as the eye could see. Except for the smattering of houses, churches, and the central hub of the mine facility, it’d looked like the surface of Mars.
Bethany continued, intermittently raising her eyes to see if he was listening. “It looks normal now, like the trees have been here forever, and we’re surrounded by regular old forests; but it took years of planning—adding new species of acid-resistant grasses to anchor the turf, and planting specially imported trees. They brought in plants that could filter toxins with their roots, and flora that would give these hills a fighting chance at recovery. Eventually.” She waved her hand in the general direction of the valley. “It worked. But they left this one stupid patch of the old red dirt, down by the water. That’s what we were sent to examine. That, and the water itself, down in the crater.”
His ears perked. “Where is the crater? If this museum’s on the old mine site, it must be nearby … ?”
“It’s on the other side of the parking lot. You know what? Forget this coffee. It’s terrible.” She rose suddenly and tossed the cooled contents of her cup into the nearby sink. “Come on. I’ll show you.”
Rogues Page 38
