Long Black Curl (19 page)

“Don't bullshit me. Rockhouse was the thing that we all agreed on. Whether we were part of his bunch or Mandalay's, we knew he brought us here, picked this spot, told us how to behave and how to interact with the other folks as they started to settle in around us. He was the thing we had in common. He was the one thing we was all afraid of. Mandalay cain't never be that.”

Snowy stopped searching and looked steadily at Junior. After a thoughtful moment, he said, “Hell, you might have a point there.”

This emboldened Junior. “So since Mandalay can't be the one to fill that, we need someone who can do what she does, but for my folks. And also work with her when it needs to be done, which Rockhouse never could do.” His bravado left, and he said sincerely, “I can do that, Snowy. Nobody expects it, but I can.”

Snowy smiled. “Might be, Junior. But you'll have to take it up with your bunch. And you best not forget that Bo-Kate's nosin' around, interested in the same job.”

“Oh, I can handle
her.
”

“Really? How?”

Junior grinned. “Now, Snowy, I can't be giving away all my secrets, now, can I?”

“I reckon not.” He closed the last drawer on the dresser. “Well, that axe ain't here, is it? I bet Bo-Kate has it.”

“Won't do her any good,” Junior said.

“Well, that remains to be seen. I have to get this banjo down to the funeral. I assume you'll be there?”

Junior pulled out a small envelope edged in black, an old-style obituary notice. “Found this under my door. Wouldn't miss it.”

“Well, we best get going.” With the banjo in one hand and Junior's arm in the other, Snowy took them out the door. It closed on its own behind them.

 

13

It would have been the perfect time to break into almost any house in Needsville and Cloud County, because everyone, the entire Tufa community, gathered on Emania Knob to say good-bye to Rockhouse Hicks.

Well, almost everyone.

Bo-Kate and Nigel sat on the roof of her family house. He was terrified of heights in general, and the slanted, rough-shingled surface only added to his fright. Bo-Kate seemed not to notice, though; she stood astride the roof's peak, peering over the tops of the trees with binoculars she'd gotten from her father. They were old, and the rubber grips were cracked and dry-rotted, but they seemed to work fine.

“Would you look at that,” she said. “I've only seen that many people on Emania Knob one other time.” She held out the binoculars. Nigel took them without standing. “You won't be able to see anything sitting down.”

“That's all right. You paint a vivid word picture.”

“You'll be fine.” She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up. One foot skidded on the shingles, and he almost threw himself flat to keep from sliding off. Bo-Kate laughed.

He repositioned himself with as much dignity as he could. “Now, what is it I'm looking at?”

She pointed. “That way. The top of that flat hill.”

Nigel looked through the binoculars. “My goodness. That is indeed quite a gathering. And all for the funeral of that old man you visited?”

“He was the cheese, that's for sure.”

“Yesterday you said you didn't kill him.”

“I didn't. But apparently he died anyway.”

“I think you bear some responsibility.”

Bo-Kate waved her hand dismissively. “There's not a person on that hill who's sad that the old bastard is gone.”

“And that makes murder acceptable?”

Bo-Kate gazed at him in a way he'd never seen before. She had the look of someone debating whether to kill a pest or simply chase it out of the house. “Nigel, you've done nothing but criticize me since we got here. It's getting old. I've told you what I'm doing, and I've been honest with you. If you've got a problem with it…”

She let the unfinished threat hang between them.

Nigel sighed. “My apologies, Bo-Kate. This is all very new to me, and I'm unsure how to navigate this situation.”

She looked at him for another long moment. Then, apparently satisfied, she took the binoculars and resumed watching the distant ceremony.

“Is your family there?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah. Mom, Dad, my brothers, and Tain.”

“Why aren't we attending?”

“It's all about marketing, Nigel. This isn't the time for our product reveal. We don't want it to get all tangled up with funeral stuff in people's minds. When we unveil ourselves, I want the moment to be all about us.”

He nodded and said nothing.

She grabbed the front of his coat and kissed him. “Now, come on. We have another important errand to run.”

*   *   *

Rockhouse's grave was only three feet deep, thanks to the frozen rocky ground. Even with the fire that had melted the top layer of soil, they couldn't dig any deeper. But it was enough. Here on top of Emania Knob, there was no way Rockhouse could summon uphill the blood that Bliss drained from his corpse. And without that, he was, as his own song title said, chained to this spot. Or at least, everyone hoped he was.

The grave had been dug on an east–west line, and the body would go in with the feet pointing toward the sunset. The superstition was that, since the Summerlands and Isles of the Blessed were all to the west, the rising spirit would see them and know which way to go. But Rockhouse's spirit wasn't going anywhere.

Mandalay stood by the grave, dressed in a long-sleeved black dress, with her hair pulled severely back in a bun. She wore her puffy winter coat but still shivered with cold.

The log coffin lay beside the grave, ready to be rolled in when the ceremony was finished. Leather straps held the lid on. Inside, Rockhouse's mutilated hands were crossed over his chest, and the banjo Snowy brought was tucked in beside him, along with a copy of his only vinyl album. Mandalay had taken the news about the Fairy Feller's axe with equanimity; it wasn't exactly a surprise. It was, however, a problem that would have to be addressed.

For now, though, there was nothing to do but put the old man in the ground.

Noah Vanover, known to all as Uncle Node, stood as gatekeeper to the mountaintop. He checked that everyone who arrived was either someone he knew, or brought one of the black-edged funeral announcements. It was an academic screening, since no one would be able to find their way to the mountain if they weren't meant to be here, but in these community-wide ceremonies, it was important to observe all the proprieties.

Bliss stood with Bronwyn and the Hyatt family. The two men, Deacon and his thirteen-year-old son Aiden, were dressed in uncomfortable-looking suits. Chloe and Brownyn wore simple black dresses, and Chloe had added an appropriate black veil. Bronwyn looked miserable, and kept shifting her position, trying to find a comfortable way to stand.

Finally she said softly, “Y'all, I got to walk around a little. I'll be back when the service starts.”

*   *   *

“And now where are we off to?” he asked as Bo-Kate drove them along the deserted country roads.

“To the home of Bliss Overbay,” she said. “She's … What do you Brits call a person who fills in for a king when he's too young to rule?”

“That would be a ‘regent.'”

“Yeah, well, she's the regent for the other half of the Tufa.”

“And who's the king?”

“Not a king, a queen. Her name's Mandalay.” She said the name with distaste. “But I'll deal with her when the time comes.”

They drove vigilantly through the mountains. The snow was gone from the main highway, but once they returned to Cloud County's much less traveled roads, it became an issue. Bo-Kate handled the SUV with great skill, steering through the couple of times they skidded and continuing unerringly higher until they stopped at a battered old mailbox. The name
OVERBAY
was painted on it; the artist had misjudged the size, so the final
Y
was on a line below the rest of the word.

Bo-Kate put the vehicle in park, lowered the windows, and turned off the engine.

“What are we doing?” Nigel asked after they'd waited for several minutes.

“Listening,” Bo-Kate said.

“For?”

“Any sign that Bliss Overbay isn't up at Emania Knob right now.”

Nigel heard nothing but the winter wind and the occasional bird. Eventually Bo-Kate put the SUV back in gear and turned down the driveway. They picked their way over a rickety bridge above a creek, then emerged into a small valley.

*   *   *

Junior stood next to his wife, trying to ignore the great wheezing gulps of air she sucked in around her cigarette, a habit no doctor or husband could convince her to abandon. She clung to his arm as if he were all that held her up.

Above the heads of all the assembled Tufa, the bare tops of the trees waved in the wind. They seemed synchronized, like the hands of a crowd during the slow part of the encore. The clouds thinned enough for the sun to almost break through, making them luminous.

“You shoulda brought me a camp chair,” Loretta said, as always picking the perfect time to break the spell of beauty and wonder.

“You shoulda asked for one,” he said without looking at her.

“I shouldn't have to ask you for this shit, you should know it,” she shot back.

He still didn't look at her. The thought of punching her in that fat, whining face was so vivid that he was afraid he wouldn't be able to control himself. Instead he remained calm, and stoic, and everything that was, in his mind, appropriate to a future leader.

She pulled on his arm. “Oh, Junior,” she said, her voice weak, “I think I'm having a contraction.…”

He took as much of her considerable weight as he could on his arm. His aloofness vanished at once in his surge of concern. “Do we need to go get Bliss? Or Granny Rogen?”

“No,” she sighed, “it's passing. Just … a false alarm, I think.”

“You okay, then?”

“Yeah. I'm gonna go sit in the truck.”

He held her hand tightly in his and kissed the top of her head. He hated himself for this weakness, but his sense of obligation, to both her and their baby, was something he couldn't seem to shake. He'd have to work on that to be the ruthless leader he wanted to be.

*   *   *

Bronwyn walked over to the row of vehicles parked along the edge of the mountaintop, went around to the far side where she'd be reasonably out of sight, and leaned heavily against the fender of the nearest truck. The baby was kicking her a lot now, dancing to the music running through their mutual blood. It was almost as if the little bozo was delighted that Rockhouse was gone. And maybe so, Bronwyn thought. She had to admit, it didn't bother her at all to imagine her daughter growing up in a Rockhouse-free world.

“You okay?” a voice said.

She looked up. Loretta Damo, just as pregnant, climbed out of the truck. She also leaned on the fender as they spoke.

“Hey, Loretta,” Bronwyn said. “Yeah, I'm okay. You know how it is.”

“I surely do,” she said. “What are you having?”

“A girl. You?”

“A boy. Be just as worthless as his father, I reckon.”

“Maybe not,” Bronwyn said with a groan. She'd known Loretta all her life, and the woman was never happy about anything. Having a child probably wouldn't change that. “How's Junior handling it?”

“Him? He's always off working or hanging out with his friends or creeping around on one of his secret missions. I swear, you'd think he was damn James Bond, the way he acts sometimes. Did you know he thinks he can take over for Rockhouse?”

“I'd heard that.”

“Yeah,” she spat. “Let's see him take care of his own family first, I say.”

Bronwyn remembered the way Craig held her hair while she threw up with morning sickness, kneeling right there on the tile with her and stroking her back. She hadn't wanted him there at first, but then she realized that nothing she could ever do—even vomiting like a woman getting over a three-day bender—would ever make him love her any less. The security of that was something she never expected to experience.

“When are you due?” Loretta asked.

“A month. Around the end of February. You?”

“First week of March.”

“Well, good luck.” Suddenly all Bronwyn wanted to do was be beside her husband. She pushed herself off the fender and walked—waddled, really—back toward the grave.

*   *   *

Nigel drank in the valley's spectacular view. Snow gleamed off the bare ground and powdered the vast forest. Ahead rose a big, old house beside a small frozen lake. The house, unlike most of what he'd seen so far in Cloud County, was beautifully restored and tended. The driveway ended at a circle outside the garage.

“What does this Bliss person do?” he asked.

“She's an EMT.”

“I don't know that term.”

“Emergency Medical Technician. Paramedic.”

“Their union must be quite influential. Or she married very well.”

“What, this? Nah, she inherited all this. And she'll never get married as long as she's looking after Mandalay.”

She parked and got out so quickly, Nigel had to rush to catch up. She stepped up to the door and pressed the bell. It rang inside the house; after a couple of minutes, she tried again.

“It appears you were right,” Nigel said, looking around again at the amazing scenery. “No one's home.”

“Good,” Bo-Kate said, stepped back, and kicked the door twice until it flew open. “Break on through to the other side,” she said with a wry cackle.

“Jesus!” Nigel exclaimed, looking around. The noise echoed back at them. By then Bo-Kate had strode into the house, and he rushed to follow. “Bo-Kate, I must register my disapproval.”

“The stakes are high, Nigel,” she said as she looked into each darkened room. “People's lives are at stake.” She paused and looked at him. “You likely want to remember that.”