A Choir of Ill Children (7 page)

She doesn’t often seem to mind being traded away by her mother, but tonight seems to be an exception. Dodi scowls at the ceiling. Velma Coots knows spells to keep a tempest like this at bay, potions intended to hold the hidden evils back. The thumping and tapping at the walls is like the hammering of the damned waiting to get inside. Why they’d want to, I don’t know.

She covers her ears and lets out a muffled cry, the sheets twisting tightly around her lithe body, each flawless curve shown off. “I can’t stand much more of this, Thomas. I can feel the demons out there, roving about.”

“It’ll pass in another day or two.”

“Storms like this one don’t just leave on their own, you’ve got to do something to run it off. It’s a storm of souls, the granny ladies say. The dead want back in and they’ve brought all the sins of the people along with them. Mama would know what to do.”

“Do you want to visit her? I’ll take you in the morning.”

“I ain’t going out there.” She speaks in a way that makes it sound like the rains, and what’s in them, have come specifically for her or for me. “Can’t you feel how badly it wants us?”

“Us?

“All of us.”

We can’t call her mother because Velma Coots doesn’t have a phone. That’s uncommon even in Potts County, but not unheard of. “It’s late, Dodi, try to sleep. Maybe by morning this will have blown over.”

“You have to go, Thomas.”

“What?”

“You gotta go.”

“Where?”

“To see Mama and find out what to do.”

I pull the blankets around us. “If there’s really something that could be done, wouldn’t she be doing it already?”

“She might need some help. Mama’s strong in her ways but she can’t protect all of Kingdom Come by her lonesome. It’s been a labor for her so far, and it’s getting worse.”

I don’t sneer and I don’t question. If I chose to scoff and dispute what goes on in Potts County I’d never stop, and I’d wind up like my father. “The other conjure women can join her.”

Branches scratch at the shingles, wood clapping on wood. It’s a familiar sound, and one I like, but Dodi snaps up as if a child killer is just outside. Sweat courses down her neck, dappling my legs. Her fear is intoxicating and erotic but also sobering. I want to take her roughly but a detached terror is filling the room. I wonder what’s going on between Sarah and my brothers, and if they can feel this too. Or whether they all sleep blithely and dream of each other. I think I hear talking.

Dodi moves forward across my chest, the wet sheet drawing unpleasantly over us now. Beads of sweat hang off her nipples. I want her desperately, and I don’t want her at all.

“Maybe it’s got to do with that little gal from the flat rock, and what happened there,” she says. “Or what hasn’t happened yet and still needs to be done.”

“What do you mean?”

I’ve always known that Velma Coots didn’t give Dodi to me in payment for fixing a goddamn roof and digging screw worms out of a couple of sick cows. There was another agenda to the transaction. There usually is. When Dodi looks at me in this fashion, I remember once more it’s true, and I realize she’s actually here to spy on me for some reason. There’s genuine panic in her flitting eyes, and the last piece of the masquerade slips from her as she trembles in my arms. I can see the purpose, but not the objective.

“What’s your mother want from me?” I ask.

“You got power, Thomas, more than any of the granny witches. More than all of them. There’s power in names and it was your family that named this town. In one way, you
are
the town, and we’re you.”

“Dodi, I think you’re getting a little carried away here—”

But she isn’t. I hold her on the bed for a long while until her head droops and her breathing eases. Her skin dries with strange outlines of salt streaks. She falls asleep to the muted whispers of Sarah and Jonah down the hall. I let her slide from me and cover her with a blanket.

I take the truck into town, driving carefully along the flooded roads. I’ve got to stop several times in order to shift debris so I can ride by. When I get to Velma Coots’s shack she’s standing in her doorway, glowering at the folds of swarming rain, waiting for me.

“’Bout time you got here,” she says. “Was starting to think you weren’t gonna show.”

I step inside and I’m somewhat gratified to see that even in this torrential downpour and heavy wind, the roof job I did is holding up. A brass cauldron in the fireplace spews noxious fumes and sloshing black liquid. A short curved blade lies on a table nearby.

“What the hell do you want from me?” I ask.

“Jest a little blood and vinegar, there, in the pot.”

“Vinegar?”

“Some of yer seed.”

“My seed?”

“Sperm.”

“You’ve got to be shittin’ me.”

She isn’t, and her expression is so contorted that the hinges of her jaw look like they’re in the wrong places. “Evil’s come looking for us. It’s here to stay one way or another. The bad is just gonna get worse. The demons and the spirits, they up in arms and on the loose. You know that, and you believe it, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” She purses her lips and gives me a slow once-over, as if this will be the last time she ever sees me. “’Sides, the carnival will be coming through soon. We ain’t got much time at all.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everybody’s got sacrifices to make,” she says. “Or don’t you know that already?”

I shake my head but it’s all right. I take up the blade and cut my hand open over the boiling brew. Where my blood strikes the liquid it hisses and spits. The flames bend and sputter as if drinking. I remember my father’s failures to change these ancient ways, and how his defeats and nearsightedness eventually drove him into the one hope of Kingdom Come, his own miserable mill.

Velma Coots gives me a scarf and I bind my wound.

“Now, your seed.”

“No.”

“I need it!”

“Sorry, I have more use for my vinegar than you do.”

She starts hopping in place. “You got to. The magic won’t work proper without it!”

“Do your best.”

She takes the blade and holds it out toward my belly as if she plans to use it on me. The fire reflects in the sheen of my blood coating the knife. I glare at her, waiting to see if she’s really going to make this kind of move. She’s castrated a thousand pigs in her life. Rain crashes harder and still the roof holds against it. I can take pride in that, if nothing else, why the hell not.

She lets loose a snarl and stabs the knife into a wooden table. “Then whatever happens from here on out is on your conscience, Thomas, you hear that? It’s on your head.”

“Of course it is,” I say. “So what else is new?”

S
OMEONE IS CALLING MY NAME.

She needs help and is begging adorably, the way we all like.

In the night I awaken to find my brothers talking to the face. They sway in the darkness, a shambling mass of bodies—of body. Sebastian is delirious with fury, his complaints coming from three throats, hitting three different notes, harmonizing well with a little doo-wop shuffle going on. They glare at each other, stuffed with devotion and anger and regret, each third of that brain filled with memories and needs.

Sarah isn’t here and neither is Dodi, but I feel a female nearby, one that makes me possessive. They want her, and they’ll go through me to get her. I listen, hoping to hear her voice, but there’s nothing now but the cruel whispers of my brothers, the feel of lips playing against my side. It’s too dark to know which of them is kissing her. Perhaps they’re taking turns, each attending the face in his own manner.

I try to enter myself, aware of every breath, the singular beating of my sole heart. The chill of my belly and the cold pressure of their mouths. I go further inside, hoping to discover muscles that might be making her eyes blink, small indented nostrils breathing deeply, misplaced cheekbones, lovely earlobes.

There isn’t anybody. It’s a bruise or a scar. Cole is weeping and Sebastian, in his hate, bites into my side. The storm is no match for his own fever. Pain erupts, but I’m not certain it’s mine. Blood runs thickly down to the mattress. They scurry away, one of them laughing as they move, in spasms, with a whirl of limbs and clashing purpose.

I get up and turn on the light. Rain thumps and the house creaks and settles. My brothers are under a sheet, flinching, pretending to sleep, baiting me. It gets like this sometimes.

The vast and overpowering noise of a massive tree toppling fills the room. It sounds as if the whole house is about to be crushed beneath a hundred tons of history. The rafters rock and the pounding rain withdraws into vacuum, the sudden displacement bringing us to total silence for an instant before the thunderous blast.

The oak falls directly past the window. A million branches undulate like snakes crawling by, striking the ground in an earsplitting explosion of mud and splintered timber.

I tear the sheet aside and grab hold of Sebastian, lifting his stunted frame and taking the others along too. The mouths are going at once, all of them talking at the same time with a dissonance of words, the tributary voice, the subtext and cacophony of tone and meaning.

They make no sense and neither do I. I’m yelling, but I’m not sure what about. I’m leaking all over, and I’ve got my own rage. This is when it’s good, when everyone is at his best. I try to look my brother in the eye but I can’t, he’s forever turned inward facing the others, glowering at Cole who continues to sob.

“Why did you bite me?”

“I didn’t,” Sebastian says from their throats.

“I’m bleeding.”

“No, you’re not.”

The blood drips and patters on the floor, loud in the room even with the wind bashing at the house. Is he being purposefully dense or is he playing word games? . . . telling me that another—the face that may be my sister—is the one who is bitten and bleeding? Is he trying to wrangle me into an admission? In that forebrain anything is possible.

“It hurt.”

“Not you it didn’t.”

I want to hit him but I’d break my hand on that threefold skull. I go to the bathroom to clean myself up, searching each shade and line of my side. I’m looking for the familiar face but see only Sebastian’s teeth marks.

Perhaps she’s with them now—adhered on a chest, growing in an armpit, or dangling off a kneecap—beloved and finally wanted, and so much the luckier for it.

D
RAGGING HIS PAST BEHIND HIM LIKE A MILLSTONE,
the private eye meets me in my office.

His name is Nick Stiel and two months ago his wife of eight years died of leukemia. He says it flatly without any emotion. His eyes are half-lidded as if it’s an ordeal for him to open them all the way. His hands are slender but his wrists are surprisingly thick. The watchband is too tight, and coarse black hair sprouts from around it. His palms are callused, the first two knuckles scarred and distended. He’s studied martial arts for years. One of the Japanese disciplines, I’d guess. None of the spiritual doctrine has helped him to get over her loss.

I’ve given him one file containing a full report on the situation concerning Eve and another on the dog kicker. There’s also a map of the county, names and home addresses of everybody currently involved, photos of Eve, keys to a 4x4 wagon I rented for him, and a three-thousand-dollar retainer.

“Why me?” he asks.

“You concentrate on lost child cases and you’ve got a high rate of success.”

“In Los Angeles. This is a whole different world.”

“You ain’t kidding.”

He blinks, attempting to think it through. He knows it doesn’t feel right but he’s too distracted by his wife’s death to get past the fog. His heartbreak is so apparent I can tell he’ll get along well in Kingdom Come. If he tried to beguile the people of Potts County, or lie to them or provoke or bully or trade witty banter, he wouldn’t get so much as a shrug from any of them.

“You don’t have a lost child here,” he says. “You’ve got a found one.”

“A considerably harder job for you, I’d guess.”

“It is,” he confesses. “Missing children cases almost always involve a parent, family member, neighbor, or pedophile with a prison record. It’s a matter of investigating the home situation and canvassing the neighborhood for suspects.”

“The same might hold true here.”

“It might,” Stiel says. “If she was brought here for a reason.”

“It’s a working theory.”

Thunder performs a contrapuntal to our voices, booming during pauses, in a slow but rhythmic collision like waves striking the shore. He’s unnerved by the noise, and after three days of it, so am I. He’s so emotionally battered that he’ll be able to deal with the townsfolk’s customs and the bad attitude of the granny witches. There’s distrust among their kind, but anyone with eyes like his has a better chance of being welcomed.

“She still doesn’t remember anything?” he asks.

“That’s what she says.”

He nods. “You sound as if you don’t believe her.”