Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels) (9 page)

This distracted Rob just enough so that he didn’t see the punch coming. A ham-sized fist slammed into his left eye and knocked him back between two rocking chairs into the brick wall. His head struck with a solid, melon-sounding
thunk
. Stunned, he would’ve slid to the concrete porch, but the immense woman grabbed him by the shirt and yanked him forward. She slapped him, both flat- and back-handed. The blows seemed to come from far away. He never lost consciousness, but he was too dazed to defend himself.

The woman dropped him back in his chair. His entire head felt numb, and his vision wavered. For an instant it was like two different TV signals battling for the same channel. Then he heard an off-key twang, and his sight cleared just as the woman grabbed his guitar from its case and raised it like a club.

My guitar,
he thought calmly. Then the pain and rage hit simultaneously, and he was suddenly back in the moment. With no time to think, he reflexively kicked her in the groin as hard as he could.

It felt like trying to punt a sack of wet cat litter. The big woman let out a squeak and dropped the guitar; Rob caught it in midair. She took a step backwards off the porch and sank to her knees in the grass beside the flagpole.

Rob checked his guitar for damage, and when he looked back, the woman was on her feet. She snapped open a large pocketknife with a practiced toss of her wrist. She whispered furiously, “I’m going to cut your heart out, peckerwood.”

He held up the guitar to block the blow, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth against the anticipated slashing.

A vehicle skidded to a halt in the street.
“Tiffany!”
a sharp female voice said.

Rob peeked out from behind the guitar. Bliss Overbay stood outside a pickup truck stopped crossways in the street. Dust from her sudden stop hung in the air. She wore dark pants and some kind of official-looking jacket over a white shirt. Two long braids hung from beneath a weathered baseball cap.

The big woman said, “You stay out of this, Bliss.”

“No. You want to bust heads, Tiffany, you’ll have to start with mine, and it’s too early in the morning for that.”

Rob just stared. It was hard to say what surprised him more: Bliss’s appearance out of the blue, or the fact that this female Gargantua was named Tiffany.

“You been getting away with this shit for twenty years,” Bliss continued, “and it’s time for you to grow the hell up. We ain’t in school, and you can’t just beat up anybody you feel like.”

“Grandpa Rockhouse said he was pestering him,” Tiffany said, like a guilty child confronted by a strict parent.

“Bullshit, Tiffany. He’s littler than you, and he’s a stranger, and you don’t need any more reason than that to start a fight. You’re my cousin, and I’ve known you all my life, and I know you’re a
bully.
But not today.”

“You ain’t the boss of me, Bliss,” Tiffany pouted. “You ain’t Mandalay. I could snap your skinny ass in half.”

Bliss’s expression darkened with her own anger. “You think?”

Tiffany took a step toward her, but Bliss simply raised her left hand and made a motion with her fingers. Tiffany stopped dead, her eyes wide.

“That’s your ass talking, Tiffany, because your mouth knows better,” Bliss said as she lowered her hand. “Go home. Don’t make me do what you know I will if I have to, just because you woke up on the bitch side of the bed today.”

Rob glanced back at Hicks. The old man sat very still, his eyes locked on Bliss. The amusement had gone from his face, although Rob couldn’t read his new expression.

Finally Tiffany sighed, and her huge shoulders slumped with defeat. She put away the knife. Bliss also visibly relaxed. Rob heard the creak as Hicks again slowly rocked.

“Lots of fuss over nothin’, if you ask me,” the quilting woman muttered.

The same truck Rob had seen twice before stopped behind Bliss’s vehicle. An old man so small, he could barely see over the dashboard leaned out the driver’s side window. “Get in, Tiffany,” he said.

“Yes, Daddy,” Tiffany said. She climbed over the tailgate, and the whole vehicle creaked in protest. The two bone-thin boys scurried to get out of her way, while the other enormous girl shifted to one side to redistribute the weight.

Tiffany settled in with her back to the cab, then fixed her eyes on Rob. In his experience, most fat people had little pig eyes, but Tiffany had huge, menacing black orbs that looked like they might roll over white like a shark’s. A jolt of pain shot through his head, and again two images fought for supremacy: one the street scene before him, the other a freakish variation in which the people in the truck seemed to have eyes like insects and big, folded bat wings.

He sat back down in the closest rocking chair and closed his eyes. An hour seemed to pass as he thought about random, idle things like what color he wanted his next pair of pants to be. He jumped when feather-light fingertips brushed the hair from his face, and realized only an instant had passed.

Bliss stood over him. “You probably shouldn’t sleep for a while until we know if you’ve got a concussion,” she said clinically. “Look at me.”

He raised his eyes to hers. This close, she looked older than she had in the Pair-A-Dice, with little strands of gray at her temples. Her eyes were also a lighter shade of blue, filled with intelligence and compassion, along with something indefinably distant and sad. She said, “Well, your pupils aren’t dilated, so I reckon you’ll just have a lump. But you might want to get some aspirin and some ice.”

Annoyed, he waved her hands away from his face. “Never mind that, where do you find the cops in this town?”

Bliss said patiently, “Talking to the police about Tiffany won’t do you any good.”

“So people can just attack you with a knife in broad daylight, right on Main Street, and nobody
does
anything?” He struggled to rise.

“Calm down. I just meant—”

All his life, people had told Rob to calm down when he got upset. It had led to conflicts with parents, teachers, friends, and the occasional law enforcement officer. He’d even punched the TV executive who told him to calm down after informing him that his contract required him to perform two days after Anna’s death. There was no surer way to send him over the edge into genuine, ranting fury than to tell him not to do it.

So now he jumped to his feet and roared,
“Don’t you fucking tell me to calm down!”

Bliss jumped, startled by his vehemence, and for an instant her expression filled with such rage that it seemed possible she’d hit him, too. Then it was gone, and she said quietly, “Please.”

Rob had to remind himself to breathe. The anger he’d glimpsed in her eyes had short-circuited his own, and that single, muted syllable slipped through his rage and ran a light, cooling touch over him. Bliss had also somehow changed in that same instant, and now he saw the woman who’d been onstage the night before, as gentle and soulful as a medieval painting of the Virgin Mary. He felt suddenly enveloped in an almost absurdly metaphysical calm that drained all his fury as surely as any therapist’s technique.

He closed his eyes, disoriented by the rush of peace, and out of habit ran his hand through his hair. When he withdrew it, he saw blood on his fingers. “Uh-oh.”

“Let me see.” Bliss turned him and stood on tiptoes to examine the spot where he bled. He found himself facing Rockhouse Hicks. He winced as Bliss touched his scalp. “Enjoying the show?” he said to the old man.

“Ain’t nothing to me, one way or the other,” Hicks said.

“You didn’t have to call for help.”

“Son, I didn’t call nobody. We just watch out for our own.”

Bliss finished her exam. “You need a couple of stitches.”

“I’ll be all right,” Rob said. “Now, are you going to tell me where the police are in this town, or do I just dial 911?”

“The police won’t do anything about Tiffany. She’s been that way her whole life, and nothing helps it. The Gwinns only come into town every three months or so, so it’s best to just stay out of her way.” He started to protest, but she cut him off. “And if the police went looking for her, they’d never find her. The Gwinns live way back in the hills, and the people up there take care of their own.”

“Really,” he said, with a pointed glare at Rockhouse.

“Really,” she said patiently. “You stood up to her, and most people around here don’t do that, so maybe she’ll skip the next couple of trips into town until she knows for sure that you’re gone. That means nobody will see her until next spring.” She waited for him to say something else, but he simply scowled.

“Okay,” she said when it was clear he was done. “Come with me and we’ll get you stitched up.”

“Oh, are you a doctor, too?” The back of his head began to throb.

“I’m an EMT,” she said, and turned her shoulder to display the patch on her sleeve. “Nearest doctor is an hour and a half away. The local fire station is fifteen minutes up the mountain. Everything the doctor would have, I’ve got there.” Then she walked to her truck.

Rockhouse’s eyes followed Bliss, and Rob thought he saw real, genuine animosity in them. That was odd, considering they’d played together so well onstage, although he knew from experience that musicians didn’t have to be friends in order to sound great. There were more undercurrents here than among the contestants of
SYTYCS?,
and that was saying something.

Bliss sat down in the driver’s seat, put the truck in gear, and looked back at him. “Well? You coming with me, or you just going to stand there and bleed?”

Rob put his guitar back in its case. “Thanks for the Southern hospitality,” he muttered to Rockhouse as he went to the truck.

“Bless your heart,” the old woman called after him.

9

Bliss drove past the closed gas station at the far end of town and turned left at the light. Almost at once, the road became a shattered ribbon of potholes and rippled pavement. The way the truck bounced on the uneven blacktop made Rob’s head hurt more. He tried to look at Bliss, but couldn’t keep his vision focused. Just like the Gwinns in their truck, there were two overlapping images, and he couldn’t make his eyes decide on just one.

Bliss tapped her thumbs on the steering wheel in time with her racing mind. Just when she’d thought herself free of whatever effect this stranger had had on her at the Pair-A-Dice, there he was on the street,
her
street, about to be pounded senseless. She
had
to act; her own people’s laws and rules would not allow her to simply ignore it and drive away. Now he was in her truck, under her protection, and shortly she’d be alone with him,
touching
him. Would that same desire return?

They arrived at a small volunteer fire station, a cinder block square with one big garage for a single fire truck. A basketball goal hung over the door, which sported many ball-sized dents. Rob hoped they were better at fighting fires than they were at pickup games.

He stepped out of the truck, and his head swirled the moment he stood upright. “Hang on,” Bliss said calmly as she slipped one hand around his waist and draped his arm across her shoulders. It was a professional reflex, and by the time she belatedly realized she was touching him, it was clear he had no more effect on her than any injured person. She wanted to laugh at her own worries.

“I don’t need any help, I can walk,” Rob protested weakly as they crossed the driveway.

“I could tell,” she said. “Must be some newfangled kind of walking I haven’t seen before.”

“I didn’t mean right
now,
” he said as she guided him to the building. She propped him against the wall while she unlocked the door, then helped him inside.

He winced as the fluorescent lights flickered on, revealing the white utilitarian room used as both kitchen and staging area. “Going down,” she said, and dropped him into a folding chair at the table. He sat with his eyes closed.

Bliss put down a white cloth, then carefully arranged bandages, needle, and suture thread on it. “I should shave around the cut before I sew it up, but I’m guessing you won’t want that.”

“No, thanks.”

She dipped her fingers in a small container and smoothed the hair down away from the cut. “No problem. This curdled possum fat works just as well.”

Rob jumped and looked around, then scowled when he saw the Vaseline label. “Very funny.”

“It’s
kind
of funny. Now, be quiet or I’ll stitch your mouth shut, too. I’ll be right back.”

She went outside and returned with something he couldn’t see. She pressed it to his scalp around the cut.

“Ow. What is that?”

“Spiderwebs.”

“Ha ha.”

She held up her hand, with a bundle of the fine threads between her thumb and forefinger. “Seriously. It does wonders to stop bleeding.”

“Spiderwebs,” he repeated.

“The night wind didn’t give us any sickness or injury that it also didn’t give us the cure for.” Immediately she wanted to kick herself.
Why am I mentioning the night wind?
Trying to change the subject, she said, “Folks can live a long time using stuff like spiderwebs and pine needles.”

“Like that old bastard at the post office?”

“Yeah, he’s lived a long time, all right.”

“Peggy at the motel said he was a couple hundred years old.”

Good God,
she thought,
even Peggy is forgetting herself when it comes to this boy.
“Oh, she was just exaggerating. I’m sure his family feels like he’s been around that long, though. Still, he’s a heck of a banjo player.”

“And that quilting lady? The one who looked like a dried-apple doll?”

She snorted. “That’s just Momma Rita.”

“Margarita?”

“No, Momma … Rita. She’s seventy-five years old, and lives all alone with her old blind husband. Believe it or not, they got about a hundred and twenty direct descendants.” She snorted. “And not a blessed one of ’em is of any account.”

One of her long braids fell in front of him, and he found himself focusing on the individual strands looped and twisted together. As her movements caused the braid to sway, his slightly fuzzed mind went through a list of connections: a black racer snake, a bullwhip, a horse’s mane, and finally a hangman’s rope. A lyric struck him: