Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels) (21 page)

“Rockhouse?” he asked. “She’s got six fingers like he does. Is that who did it?”

She said nothing.

He sprawled back on the grass, wet against his spine, and gazed up at the stars. “Christ on a stick, Bliss. I don’t know what to believe here. You tell me you’re fairies, and that your sister’s cursed. You say I’m not a Tufa, but because someone smacked me in the head, I can see things only a Tufa can see. None of this makes any sense, you know.”

He turned to look at her. She gazed up at the moon, her back to him. Fireflies lazily swarmed around her, as if their light might provide consolation. Her shoulders shook with sobs, but she made no sound.

He got to his feet, stood behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I know you’re upset, and I’m not helping. Why don’t you just take me back to the motel and we’ll call it a night.”

She turned and looked up at him. “No. I need to sing you a song.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s our story, and you deserve to know it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do.”
Curnen has claimed you,
she wanted to say.
If the curse is broken, she’ll be yours. If not, you’ll go down with her now and you don’t even know it.
But she only repeated, “Yes, I do.”

She took his hands in hers, closed her eyes, and began:

When these hills were sharp as claws

Raked slow across the sky

We rode the wind that wore them smooth

And came to this place to die.

We thought our time had ended

As it does for all true things

But here we found a new green home

And room to spread our wings.

Oh, time makes men grow sad

And rivers change their ways

But the night wind and her riders

Will ever stay the same.”

She hummed a stanza of the melody before she resumed singing. As if she’d somehow conjured it, the treetops above them began to sway in the breeze. He shivered.

We sailed the slopes and valleys

Played in the hollers and hills

Our songs filled nights with wonder

Our tears the storms fulfilled.

Till men came over the mountains

And brought their changing ways

We loved them back when they loved us

And loved the children that we made.

She looked into his face. Her dark hair fell away from her ivory shoulders. She held his gaze as she sang:

And now we are the same as you

Our blood no longer tells

’Scept on nights when we spread our wings

And ride moonbeams cross the hills.

Now you, dear stranger, know our tale

Even though you don’t believe

So eat our bread and drink our wine

And you may never leave.

They stood quietly facing each other, holding hands. Another verse from that day at the post office went through his mind:
Young women they’ll sing / Like birds in the bushes.
It was almost as if the song had been a warning about the Overbay sisters.

She looked into his eyes. “So what do you think?”

He searched for the right word. “I’m … enchanted.”

She smiled, leaned closer, and softly, gently kissed him. It went on for a long time. It inspired no sexual passion, just a tenderness that drained away all anger and worry.

Curnen howled far in the distance. Coyotes joined in from all around, a chorus of loneliness counterpointing the lovers’ connection.

“Don’t worry, sister-girl,” she said to the night. “He’s still yours.”

“What do you mean by that?” he said, but a yawn cut him off.

19

It was dark outside when someone knocked on Rob’s door.

He blinked awake. The pressure in his bladder was horrendous. When he got to his feet, every muscle protested the movement, as if he hadn’t moved once during his sleep. “Coming,” he said, his voice raw in his dry throat.

Where the hell was he? The last thing he recalled, he was in the woods, in a clearing, with Bliss Overbay and her sister, Curnen, who had … Wait, what?

He rubbed his eyes and looked around. He was back in his room at the Catamount Corner. How the fuck had he gotten here? He squinted at the clock on the bedstand. The red numbers showed 4:14
A.M
.

The knock came again. He opened it, squinting against the light from the hall outside.

Terry Kizer stood there, looking very tired and worried. “Can I come in and talk to you for a second?”

“Sure,” Rob croaked. “’Scuse me for just a minute. Make yourself comfortable.” He went into the bathroom and epically relieved himself. Then he brushed his teeth and drank what seemed like a gallon of water.

“I’ve got to go home to Michigan today,” Kizer said from the room. “I wasn’t prepared for an indefinite stay here. But I’m coming back tomorrow to help with the search.”

“She hasn’t turned up?” Rob asked as he came out of the bathroom.

“No, not a trace,” he said bitterly. “I mean, I can imagine her running off, even shacking up with some other guy for a while just to piss me off. But not without money, or her ID, or any of the stuff she swears she needs before she leaves the house. She’s always thought she was smarter and tougher than everyone else, no matter where we were. So yeah, I think something’s happened to her.”

“What do the cops say?”

He snorted. “The cops think
I
did it, even if they don’t know what ‘it’ is yet.”

“No, I meant about your leaving. Do they know?”

“Yeah, they know. I’m going to get a lawyer before I come back, that’s for sure.” He handed Rob a folded piece of paper. “This is my phone number and e-mail address. You seem like a decent guy. If anything happens while I’m gone, could you let me know? Please? I somehow doubt the Mayberry Police will go out of their way to tell me anything except my Miranda rights, and then only after they beat the shit out of me.”

“Sure,” Rob replied. He almost blurted out that he’d seen Stella, but stopped himself at the last moment. He didn’t want Kizer running afoul of Rockhouse. Or Bliss. He needed to think much more clearly than he was able to at the moment.

“Thanks,” Terry said. He started to leave, then stopped. “
You
don’t think I had anything to do with anything, do you?”

“Not a bit,” Rob said honestly.

“Thanks,” he said, sounding genuinely relieved. “Oh, Mrs. Goins asked me to give this to you, since I was coming up.” He handed Rob a folded note.

When Kizer left, Rob sat numbly on the bed. His bones felt rusted and his head thick and cobwebby. He unfolded the note and had to blink several times to focus his eyes.

I’ll call you in the morning. I imagine we have a lot to talk about. Bliss.

She’d drawn a little design next to the message, a symbol he didn’t recognize.

He pocketed the note, took out his guitar, and aimlessly picked the strings, skirting half a dozen melodies before deciding on one:

Oh, time makes men grow sad

And rivers change their ways

But the night wind and her riders

Will ever stay the same

He stopped, shook his head to clear it, and without thinking scratched the itching on the back of his head. He winced as the injury throbbed, and abruptly felt as if a hazy curtain had been drawn away from his eyes. He remembered everything clearly now. And he knew he needed help.

*   *   *

He drove way too fast out to Doyle’s trailer, and pounded on the door with more urgency that he’d intended. The porch light blinded him when it came on, and Berklee peered through the safety chain gap. Her eyes were bloodshot. “Hey, there, Robby-bobby,” she said. “What are you doing up this early? Or have you not been to bed yet?”

“Is Doyle here?”

“Naw, he went in early. Probably stopped to pick up his dad, too.” She belched softly; the smell was rank and vivid.

Rob felt real sadness that such a beautiful and fiery woman seemed determined to dive so thoroughly into alcoholism. He wondered what she was like completely sober; he’d never actually seen her that way.

“Why don’t y’all come on in and have a drink with me?” She undid the chain and opened the door all the way. She wore a robe cinched far too loosely. “I can be late to work. My boss couldn’t care less.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll try to track down Doyle.” He didn’t want to be alone with Berklee; a drunk woman with something to prove was more than he could manage, and Doyle was big enough to use him for a chamois cloth if he got the wrong idea.

He met Doyle’s truck at the end of the driveway. They each rolled down their windows. “Hey,” Doyle said with an edge of suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. Berklee said you went to work.”

“Forgot my lunch. So much for getting an early start.”

“Can I talk to you?”

“Sure. Just back on up and—”

“No offense, but your wife’s still half-lit, and this is serious. Can we go somewhere else?”

Doyle chewed on the ends of his mustache. “Yeah, I reckon,” he said at last.

*   *   *

Berklee finished her morning beer as she watched Doyle’s truck and Rob’s car drive off into the gray predawn. She carefully placed the can in the recycle bin. Then she went into the bathroom, leaned on the sink, and studied her face in the mirror.

A harsh image gazed back from the glass. Even with the flattering effects of the vanity lights, she knew she looked awful. Without her “face,” or the fake cheerfulness that got her through work, she appeared forty years old even though she wasn’t yet thirty. The bags under her eyes could carry groceries, and the corners of her lips sagged in a perpetual frown. Even her forehead, once smooth and unblemished, was creased with lines from the perpetual nagging sense that she was incomplete, that something essential was missing. No, not missing:
taken.

After nearly eight years, it still felt as if it had happened the day before. The way he’d rolled off her after bringing her to the greatest, most sublime climax she’d ever known, then sat on the edge of the bed and fished for his clothes on the floor. She could barely breathe or move for long moments afterwards, and then she felt only this
craving,
an irresistible desire to touch or be touched by him, something that took her over in those postcoital moments and had not lessened a bit in the time since. That stormy afternoon she’d reached for him, for his strong broad back and tousled ebony hair, only to have him shrug away and mutter, “Stop it, will ya? Dang.” She felt the reproach like a knife to her belly, and withdrew her trembling hands. He stood, his magnificent form lit in the gray light from outside as he pulled on his shirt. “I gotta go. Your parents’ll be home soon, and your ma don’t like me.”

Her mother …

The day her mother took her outside to the front porch and gave her “the talk” had been scorchingly hot. Her mother wore a thin cotton dress and no shoes, and the porch swing squeaked as they sat. Yellow jackets buzzed around the flowers. There had been a breeze, hot and steaming, appropriate for the subject matter. Berklee had been fifteen years old.

The talk included a lot of religion, a smattering of practical advice on birth control, and the solemn warning every non-Tufa mother gave her daughters in Needsville: “Now, them real Tufa boys will make you feel everything a woman’s supposed to feel when she’s with a man, but if you don’t make the sign, they’ll own you. You’ll never be able to feel anything with any other man, and if they don’t want you—and them true-blood Tufas never want you twice—it’ll just build and build until you can’t bear it no more. These hills are filled with the bones of girls like that; don’t you be one of ’em.” Then her mother had taught her the hand gesture that would allow her to dance with these devils and not pay the piper.

But that rainy afternoon with Stoney, a little high and a lot amazed that anyone so gorgeous would bother with
her,
she’d forgotten the warning. She wanted to get back at Doyle, who’d gone off to college and left her alone in Needsville. So she brought the big Tufa to her bedroom in her family’s house, and in Stoney’s arms, beneath his dominating weight, she felt utterly beautiful for those few moments, as if his attention had somehow erased every bit of self-doubt she’d ever known.

Fifteen minutes of ecstasy. And now a lifetime of aching, unfulfilled need.

As he’d left her that day, she begged him to stay with her, promised obscene acts and utter devotion. Her family’s empty house felt tomblike the moment the screen door slammed, and as his pickup drove away, she’d screamed in torment because her mother had been horrifyingly, utterly right: She could imagine no other man touching her, ever. And even though she’d allowed Doyle to claim his husbandly prerogative when she could find no way to avoid it, each time was private, thorough agony. And he
knew
she hated it; they’d been celibate for the past two years.

Tears trickled down her face. Nothing could take it back; nothing could cure it. It was done.
She
was done. And yet she didn’t take the step so many other girls had taken when left in this state. There were two reasons for that: One was the forlorn but still present hope that Stoney might one day want her again, that she might experience that amazing sensation of being transcendently beautiful. And two—the most frightening of all—was that she wasn’t sure this addiction wouldn’t also follow her to the other side. Perhaps Stoney was surrounded by the haints of girls like her, all still tied to him and aching for corporeal pleasures they could never again experience. She would sometimes lie awake at night, wide-eyed, contemplating that.

*   *   *

Rob and Doyle sat across from each other at the Waffle House near the interstate, outside a town called Unicorn. It had taken half an hour to reach it, but Rob didn’t feel comfortable talking anywhere near Needsville. He wanted to be completely off the Tufa radar until he decided how much he could really trust Doyle.