Long Black Curl (43 page)

“Y-yes, ma'am?” he stammered.

She looked up into his face, his eyes, his soul. She saw the small, trembling center of him hidden behind his paper-thin bluster, and within that, the core of manipulative power that flickered like a pilot light awaiting a surge of natural gas. She also understood that at this moment, with a word, she could either stoke it, or put it out forever.

You have until the full moon to find your opposite number,
the night winds had said,
or take the crown yourself.
“You want to take Rockhouse's place and help me lead the Tufa, Junior?”

“I…”

“Shit or get off the pot, Junior. Right now.”

She'd never seen anyone look so frightened, but he managed a nod.

“You'll have to listen to me, you know. You're not Rockhouse. I will always be stronger than you. Are we clear on this?”

Again he nodded.

“Good. We'll talk more later.”

She released his hand. She wondered if she'd just made the expedient decision of a leader, or the cowardly choice of a child afraid of taking on adult responsibility. There was no way to tell until the damage was already done.

She turned to the rest of the Tufa. “Is that all right with everyone? Things go on like they were. Only difference is Junior instead of Rockhouse. What do you say?”

There were gradual murmurs of assent. If anyone disagreed, they were too frightened of the possible consequences to speak up. Still, the tension in the room remained cranked to the sticking place by the showdown between the two women. Folks glared at each other, and spoke in urgent, soft voices that were somehow worse than yelling. If everyone wasn't careful, the lid could still blow.

*   *   *

While Jeff took Bo-Kate away and Mandalay spoke to Junior, Byron was forgotten. He looked out across the crowd, everyone speaking at once, some people arguing and shoving each other. He realized that, whatever future he'd potentially had, it was gone now. Like Donna. Like Harmony.

It was time for him to go as well.

He lifted his guitar and dug in his pocket for the real pick he'd used at the campfire. That day she'd brought him out of the woods, he deliberately gave her the wrong one from the stash he always carried. It was an impulse born of his instinctive mistrust of strangers, particularly attractive women with their own agendas, but now he was glad he'd done it. If that pick had absorbed something from all that time, he suspected he knew what would happen when he played with it.

He played, and softly sang:

I went down to the depot

Lord, not many days ago

Got on my train

And the train went a-flyin'

I looked back behind

And my baby was a-cryin'

Said he's gone and left me all alone.

You can count the days I'm gone

On the train that I left on

You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles

If that train runs right

I'll see home tomorrow night

Lord, I'm nine hundred miles from my home.…

With each chord, each note, Byron changed. He grew achy and stooped, and his hair thinned and turned gray, then white. His square-jawed face sagged and softened. All his borrowed time drained away, and he teared up as he contemplated seeing Harmony again. He hoped he'd recognize her on the other side, and that she'd understand why he'd failed her.

But because of the magic in the pick, most of the chattering Tufa didn't notice his rapid aging. When they looked at him, they saw the man they expected to see. When he finally fell to his knees and collapsed sideways, people gathered around to see an old man who was too sick to have any business coming out tonight, lying dead atop his guitar.

The few purebloods who were fully aware of what had really happened held their peace. The hand of the night wind was not something you idly discussed in crowds.

*   *   *

Outside, the wind picked up, whipping old snow from the ground and swirling it around the two former lovers. Jeff shoved Bo-Kate away from him, and she stood with her fists clenched.

“You hit me!” she yelled.

“You're lucky I didn't fucking shoot you with your own gun.”

“That wasn't
my
gun, you moron. So now what? You going to beat me up? Did you suddenly regrow a pair? You got your own gun, maybe? How are you going to stop me, Jeff?”

He gazed at her with something she never expected to see on his face again: tenderness. For her.

“I don't plan to stop you, Bo-Kate. We've both just been marking time until this moment.”

There was real pain in her voice when she exclaimed, “You had your chance up on the mountain, you gutless sack of shit!”

“Not that.
This
is the moment when we admit we haven't changed. We can't change. We don't
want
to change.”

“I never did,” she said proudly.

He looked at her with a sadness that carried the weight of all those years of exile. “Well, I did. And I tried. But some songs run too deep.”

He took the class ring from his shirt and let it hang outside his coat. Then he stepped close and took her in his arms. She put a hand on his chest to push him away, but she gasped at the feeling of the ring against her palm. His embrace sheared away the years of isolation and bitterness, and she felt as she always did in his arms: safe, powerful,
loved.

“Jesus, Jeff,” she said over the wind. “I never thought I'd feel this again.”

“Neither did I.”

“Remember when Michael Finley tried to make out with me at the sock hop and you beat him up so bad, he got a concussion?”

“Yeah.”

“And when we made love beside Jesse Spicer after you beat him to death for trying to see me naked?”

“Yeah, I remember that, too.”

“Do you think we can ever feel that way again?”

“No, Bo-Kate. We never can. This is the last thing we'll ever feel.”

And for the first time in forever, since that day on Emania Knob when the whole Tufa community gathered to banish them from Needsville, from Cloud County, from music and love and life, Bo-Kate Wisby and Jefferson Powell kissed.

And had anyone been there to witness it, they would've seen the two lovers rise slowly into the windswept sky, borne aloft on their love and their half-seen wings.

*   *   *

Less than a minute later, Mandalay, Bliss, and Bronwyn came outside. Bo-Kate and Jeff were gone.

“Where are they?” Bliss said.

Mandalay slowly looked up. “They're dancing,” she said softly.

Bliss and Bronwyn followed her gaze into the sky, but it was too dark and cloudy to see anything. Then wet droplets splattered down on them. But it wasn't cold winter rain—these drops were warm, and in the glow of the security lights, red.

The three women quickly got out of the way. Bronwyn wiped her face with her sleeve and said, “What the hell was that?”

“The end,” Mandalay said. “Of Bo-Kate and Jeff.”

“What, did they
explode
or something?”

“They're gone,” Mandalay said. “That's all that matters.” But she kept looking up. “Go back inside. I need a moment alone here.”

Bliss and Bronwyn exchanged a look. “Uhm,” Bliss began.

“I'll be perfectly safe.”

They couldn't really argue with her, or overrule her, so they did as she asked.

Mandalay stared up at the swirling sky. The silence was broken: once again the night winds spoke to her as they always did, plainly and clearly, conveying the truth about what had happened. She felt a sudden, unexpected jolt of sadness at the idea that these two lovers could neither live together or apart, and so chose not to live at all. Or at least, one of them made the choice for both.

And
that song
came back to her.

Shadows at midnight

Shadows at dawn

Why won't your shadows

Go and leave me alone

I hear footsteps on the stairs

Someone's sneaking out the back

It's two in the morning

And the moon has gone black.…

“I've made the choice,” she said to the winds. She waited, but they said nothing back.

Then she heard a vehicle making its way down the road. A white Ford E350 church van pulled a single-axle trailer that looked as if it could fall apart at any moment. Behind it came another car packed with people.

The van slowed when the driver saw Mandalay. It stopped, and the driver rolled down the window. He had long black hair and a neat beard. “Excuse me,” he said, “but we're trying to find the interstate. Are we anywhere near it?”

Mandalay looked at the trailer. “You're a band, aren't you?”

“Yes. We're out of Gatlinburg. And we're lost. Can you or someone else give us directions?”

“We need a band,” Mandalay said. “Right now. There's a building full of people who need an excuse to dance and have fun.”

The driver chuckled. The woman in the seat beside him, who had black curly hair, leaned over and said, “Well, honey, I'm sorry, but we've already got a gig for tonight. If we can find it.”

Mandalay realized with a start that they saw, not a leader, but a twelve-year-old girl. It had been a long time since that had happened. And of course, it wasn't their fault.

Then Junior Damo appeared beside her. He smiled, all reasonableness and assurance. “She's right, fellas. We really need a good, kick-ass band tonight. We're a sad bunch, and we need a reason to not be. Like the song says, you can't dance and stay uptight.”

Before the driver could reply, the van sputtered once and died. He tried to restart it, but nothing happened. He exchanged a look with the woman, who was trying to use her cell phone. “Still don't get a signal,” she said.

“I bet it's that alternator.” He sighed and said, “Well, looks like we're stuck here. The car can't carry all of us
and
pull the trailer.”

The people in the car behind the van emerged, zipping up coats and pulling on mittens. They were all young, and beautiful, and Mandalay could see the music that danced around them, and through them. Whoever they were, they lived for the playing, and that was something any Tufa could understand.

She smiled. “So if you're stuck, you might as well play. Right, Junior?”

“Right,” he agreed. “How long does it take you to set up?”

The driver looked from her to Junior, unsure whom to address. “Uh … half an hour, maybe.”

“We'll pass the hat and pay you what we can,” Junior said with a smile. “Whatever it comes out to, it'll still be more than you'd make sitting on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck all the way out here, ain't that right?”

“That's probably true,” the driver agreed.

“What's your band's name?” Mandalay asked.

“Tuatha Dea.”

Mandalay and Junior exchanged a look whose significance was totally lost on the band. As was the reason behind their wide, enigmatic Tufa smiles.

“I'm Junior. This here's Mandalay.”

“I'm Danny, this is my wife Rebecca, and the rest of the band is all family, too.”

“A tribe,” Mandalay said.

“That's what we call ourselves,” he agreed.

Rebecca said, “Can I ask y'all something?”

“Sure,” Junior said.

“I know we crossed into Cloud County, because that was right before the Google Maps went out, so … are you folks Tufa?”

Junior looked at Mandalay. “We are,” she said.

Now Danny grinned. “I've heard you folks are some kind of good players.”

“We can be,” Junior agreed.

“You think anybody'd want to sit in with us?”

“If you're up for it, I'm sure a bunch of us would be honored.”

“Then let's get to it,” Danny said. “We need to get the trailer off the road first.”

Junior winked at Mandalay. She wanted to smack him, but couldn't deny that he'd made the situation go much smoother than it might have. She motioned him close and said softly, “Go get some help. We want to get this party started as soon as possible. And while you're at it, ask Canton and Snad Wisby what they did with the body of Bo-Kate's assistant.”

“How do you know he's dead?”

“Because he's not here. And wherever he is, he deserves better. He tried to stop her.”

Junior nodded and strode back through the cars toward the Pair-A-Dice. When Mandalay turned back, she let out a yelp. Luke Somerville stood right before her.

“Didn't mean to scare you,” he said. He nodded at the van, where the members of Tuatha Dea were already pulling out instruments. “Who are they?”

“A gift from the night winds.”

“Seriously?”

“You tell me. We have practically the entire Tufa population in there so wound up, they might all gut each other before morning if something doesn't happen to help 'em let off steam, and a band shows up out of nowhere. A band called Tuatha Dea.”

His eyes opened wide. “No way.”

“Yes way.” She paused, then said, “Why are you here?”

“I snuck out.”

“You mean now, or the other day?” she shot back.

“Yeah. I'm not too proud of that. I just got spooked.”

The breeze tousled his unruly hair, and his shy smile melted her annoyance. She said, “You could've e-mailed, or texted, or even called.”

“I was embarrassed. I didn't like to think of myself as a coward, or think … that you thought about me that way.”

She was impressed with his honesty, but wasn't yet ready to let him off the hook. “So why are you here tonight, then?”