Long Black Curl (11 page)

“Mommy,” whispered Luke's other sister, Deetzy.

“Hush,” Claudia said softly but emphatically. Still, she took the little girl's hand.

Mandalay moved slowly around the table. There were things, she well knew, that lived near the Tufa, unseen and unseeable except in rare instances. Most of them were harmless, but not all. Some were both terrifying and incredibly dangerous. Given who she was, Mandalay should have been able to sense what was out there, and thus know how to respond to it. But nothing came to her.

And of course, none of that would matter if, on the other side of the door, waited a fully human maniac who had randomly chosen to slaughter everyone in this particular house.

More scraping sounded through the wood. It couldn't be an animal; the sound was unmistakably fingerlike. And as she approached, Mandalay could tell the sound came from low on the door, from a small child's height. If a child were lost in this weather, as she had been—

“Open the door,” she said.

Elgin looked back at her. The fear and weakness in his face almost made her angry. “No fucking way.”

“Open … the door,” she said, using the same tone she'd used to stop him before.

“Barton,” Elgin said to Luke's older brother. “Hold this gun. If it's anything that looks dangerous, shoot it in the goddamn head.”

“You think it's a
zombie
?” the boy asked. The gun barrel waved in his unsteady grip.

Elgin looked at Mandalay with mixed contempt and fear. “It could be. It could be anything.”

He slid back the dead bolt, took a deep breath, and threw open the door.

It slammed into the wall. That startled Barton, who yelped and fired the shotgun. The noise was like standing right next to a thunderclap. The two younger girls screamed.

The blast went through the open door, harmlessly over the old man sprawled on the porch.

Elgin snatched the gun from Barton and slapped him so hard, it knocked him to the floor. “You goddamned retard!” he shouted, his voice cracking.

“Stop it,” Mandalay said. She knelt by the old man and turned him onto his side.

They all gasped when they saw the face of Rockhouse Hicks.

None of them spoke. Only the wind made any sound, whistling through the door and moaning in the cold sky outside. It tousled the old man's disheveled white hair and sent ripples along his clothing.

“Is he dead?” Deetzy asked.

No one moved to check. At last Elgin said, “My daddy told me this story once. These three fellas were coming across the mountain going to Kingsport, and one of 'em got tired. He told 'em he was gonna sit down on this here stump for a while, but he'd catch up to 'em. They went on into Kingsport, and on their way back they found him still sitting on that stump, froze solid.” He nodded at Rockhouse. “Just like that.”

Then Barton said, “Y'all, look at his hands.”

Mandalay lifted the hand that must have clawed at the door. The wound where his extra finger had been sliced away was scabbed and swollen.

He was too big for her to move on her own. “He's not dead,” she said. “Get him out of the snow.”

“No,” Elgin said contemptuously. “He ain't nothin' to us now.”

“He can't sing,” Claudia agreed, “and now he can't play. We don't have to bow down to him no more.” She pulled Deetzy close and grabbed Ida Mae's hand. “We don't have to keep our girls away from him.”

“We can't leave him there,” Mandalay said.

Elgin put his foot on Rockhouse's shoulder and pushed him outside enough to close the door. “The hell we can't.”

Mandalay turned to Luke. She didn't have to say anything; the boy said, “Get out of the way, Dad,” and took one of Rockhouse's arms. Mandalay took the other, and they dragged him into the living room. Mandalay shut the door.

Rockhouse rolled onto his back. Spittle frosted the corners of his lips. He wore no coat, and his clothes were stiff with frozen sweat and snow.

“How the hell did he get here?” Elgin mumbled. “And what's wrong with him?”

“He walked,” Mandalay said.

“Down from the mountain?” Luke asked in disbelief.

“There's no night wind for him anymore,” she said. “No riding it where he wants to go.”

“Jesus,” Claudia whispered. The climb down was treacherous on a good day, and in this snowstorm, with no coat or other protection, it would be a nightmare. He was luckier than he knew to reach this house alive.

Mandalay looked around at the Somervilles. “I know how you feel about him, but look at him. He's nothing now but an old man who can't talk, and who's seriously hurt. Claudia, can you get me a cloth soaked in warm water? And Ida Mae, fetch me a blanket or a comforter.”

As they went to their tasks, Elgin said, “He ain't stayin' here. You can take him with you when your ride gets here.”

“I will,” Mandalay said.

Elgin spit, not directly on Rockhouse but definitely in his general direction.

Luke asked quietly, “Who do you think cut off his fingers?”

Mandalay shook her head. “I don't know yet.”

Headlights raked across the front curtains, and the squeak of brakes came over the wind. Then a shadow passed in front of the light, and someone knocked firmly on the door.

Elgin opened it. Darnell Harris stood there, dressed in insulated coveralls, his bearded face guarded and wary. “I'm here for my daughter, Elgin.”

“Right here, Daddy,” Mandalay said from the floor.

Darnell stared down at her, at Rockhouse, and then around at the gathered Somervilles. “Looks like I missed the party,” he said at last.

“Ain't no party,” Elgin said. “Take your damn daughter, and take this sack of shit with you.”

Darnell saw by the look in her eyes that Mandalay had already decided. He nodded and said, “All right. Hold on, I need to go get something.” He turned and walked away.

“And hurry up!” Elgin called after him. “We're gonna have more snow in the damn house than we do in the yard!”

A moment later he returned with Bliss Overbay. Mandalay immediately stood and let the other woman, a professional EMT, kneel beside Rockhouse. She checked his pulse, examined the wounds on his hands, and brushed the hair back from his forehead. “We need to get him out of this cold,” she said.

“Yeah, that's what I've been telling you,” Elgin said.

Mandalay took her coat from the wall hook and stepped back into her still-damp tennis shoes. “Thank you, Mrs. Somerville. I appreciate y'all taking me in out of the storm. I'll get these clothes washed and give them back to Luke at school.” At the door, she stopped in front of Luke and looked right into his eyes. This time he looked back. “Thank you,” she said softly.

He nod-shrugged, and shyly smiled.

Then she stepped aside while her father lifted Rockhouse from the floor. The old man protested weakly, but he'd shrunken so much in recent months that it was no effort at all for Darnell to overpower him.

*   *   *

In the cab of the truck, Mandalay sat between Bliss and Darnell. Rockhouse was stretched out in the back, under the camper shell, wrapped in a heavy blanket. Falling snow spiked through the truck's headlight beams as they drove.

“Reckon we need to take him to the hospital?” Darnell said.

“No, just take us up to the fire station,” Bliss said. “I can tend him there.”

“He might need more than tending,” Darnell said.

Bliss looked at Mandalay. She said, “It'll be all right, Daddy. Bliss knows what to do.”

Darnell sighed, but nodded. As an afterthought, he pulled a tiny semiautomatic pistol from his pocket and handed it to Bliss. She put it back in the glove compartment.

“You brought a gun?” Mandalay said.

“Honey, when I found out where you were, you're lucky I didn't bring a tank.”

“They were good to me,” Mandalay said.

“That's because they were afraid of you.” They drove in silence; then he said, “Bliss, if I drop all of you at the fire station, can you give Mandalay a ride home? I got to be somewhere in a little bit.”

“Sure,” Bliss agreed after seeing Mandalay's faint nod. They both knew where he was going. Darnell was a pure-blooded Tufa, just as they were, and thus he was a member of the Silent Sons.

 

8

Because the old Norfolk Southern Railway locomotive, parked on a long-abandoned side track, had white whiskerlike stripes painted on it, it was known as the “Catfish.” A single boxcar was still coupled to it, emitting a faint glow through cracks in its sides.

A half dozen trucks and cars were parked along the track. By the time Deacon and Marshall arrived, music echoed down the pass cut through the mountain by the railroad gangs over a century earlier.

Along came the F15 the swiftest on the line

Running o'er the C&O road just twenty minutes behind

Running into Cevile head porters on the line

Receiving their strict orders from a station just behind.…

They left their vehicle and walked down the tracks toward the train. Deacon glanced at Marshall, who had to stop and catch his breath. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Cold air messes with my asthma.”

“Didn't know you had asthma.”

“Didn't know it myself until this year. One of the perks of getting old, I reckon.”

Deacon continued to look at his friend. “Does Peggy know about this?”

“Does your wife know whenever you get sick?”

“Hell, she usually knows about it before the germs do.”

“There you go.” He pushed on past Deacon toward the train, stepping on the cross-ties between the old rails. In truth, it was more than asthma, as a tingling in his left arm always accompanied the shortness of breath, but Marshall wasn't worried, because Peggy wasn't worried.

Deacon watched his friend for a moment, until an owl hooted from the nearby trees. It broke him from his reverie.

Inside the boxcar a dozen men waited. The youngest appeared barely old enough to shave, while the oldest sat shrouded in blankets, puffing on a homemade corncob pipe. One, a thin man with a beard almost to the middle of his chest, continued playing “Engine 143,” although no one was singing. A kerosene heater sat glowing in the middle of the floor.

“Damn, y'all, you'd think your mothers died, and your dogs ain't doin' too well, either,” Deacon said as he climbed into the car. He helped Marshall up, and the two of them slid the door shut. Someone closed the opposite one, and the men all gathered at the heater like old-time hoboes around a fire.

All the Tufa knew about the First Daughters, the exclusive organization that provided guidance, a forum for grievances, and occasional discipline up to and including execution. The group's members were known, respected, and in the case of Bronwyn Hyatt Chess, feared.

But the Silent Sons were different.

To be a First Daughter, you had to be, well, a firstborn daughter. Both parents had to be pureblood Tufas, a trait that was getting harder and harder to find. But to be a Silent Son, you had to pass an elaborate, multi-part and sometimes multi-year ritual designed to test both your courage and discretion. Almost like the
Fight Club
clich
é
, you had to prove you could keep a secret before you were allowed into its ranks. And since its membership was the most confidential thing, no one outside the group was quite sure who was in it.

The man playing guitar stopped. In the stillness, the heater hissed, and the wind whistled through rusted chinks in the boxcar walls. Marshall said at last, “Is there some reason we can't meet in somebody's house in the winter?”

“Tradition,” a younger man with prematurely white hair said. His given first name was Conway, but he'd been known as “Snowy” since his hair went white in eleventh grade. “All about tradition.”

“Yeah, well, tradition's about to freeze my damn balls off,” another man said.

“Then let's get this over with as fast as we can,” Deacon said. “Bo-Kate Wisby is back. Peggy Goins saw her. She visited Rockhouse, and cut off his two extra fingers.”

There was a long moment of stunned silence at this news, so simply stated but earthshaking. At last Snowy asked, “Is Jeff back, too?”

“Ain't nobody seen him,” Deacon said. “I'll call his office in New York in the morning, just to check.”

“He won't talk to you,” the old man in blankets said. His name was Adecyn Condilia, and he tugged the blanket around his shoulders as he spoke. “Hell, I'm not sure he can. Getting sung out and all…”

“Don't need him to talk to me, just need to know he's there. Secretary can tell me that.”

Adecyn coughed, spit to one side, and said, “We knew somebody was going to try to do this. Once Curnen Overbay silenced Rockhouse for good, we knew somebody, sometime, would try to take over his spot. We figured we could handle whoever it was, 'cause we thought it'd be somebody from the county, like Junior Damo. We shoulda thought harder.”

“Bo-Kate shouldn't even be
able
to come back,” said Macen Ward, a young man with an enormous mustache. “Ain't being sung out supposed to be permanent?”

“It sure is,” Adecyn said. “I was there, remember? But it's the first and only time we've ever done it, and I reckon we didn't sing as good as we should have.”

“Can
she
sing?” asked the bearded guitar player, known only as “Whizdom.”

Everyone looked at Marshall. He shrugged. “Peggy didn't say nothing about it.”

“Well, if she can't sing, then…” He trailed off.

“I don't think we can afford to wait to find that out,” Deacon said.

“What do the First Daughters say?” asked Draven Altizer, the youngest of the Silent Sons.