Long Black Curl (14 page)

“Ain't you the gentleman. Lots of white boys could learn a thing or two from you, you know that?”

“I have no doubt.”

“Well, before you get too tangled up in whatever she's got in mind, you need to ask her 'bout Jeff.”

“Ah, yes, the infamous old boyfriend she used to sneak out to see. What about him?”

“She needs to tell you.” All the assurance and sexual arrogance left her. “Look, I done said a lot more than I should have. You
do
seem like a nice fella, and I don't want you to get hurt because of it. You have a good night.” She turned, and the motion fully dislodged the belt at her waist. The robe swirled back like a cowboy's duster, but before he could even glimpse her bare flesh, the door closed, the light went out, and again Nigel was in darkness.

He stared after her, wondering if he should wake Bo-Kate to enjoy the arousal her cousin had engendered, or simply go back to bed and pull the covers over his head until morning. But now he really
did
need to pee, so he crept down the hall until he reached the top of the stairs. By then his eyes had adjusted and he was able to see enough to descend to the living room.

It was chillier downstairs, and he wished he'd brought his coat. He found his boots by the front door and carried them into the kitchen.

The room smelled of decades of dinners, and breakfasts, and the kind of good, heavy food that poor people the world over cooked to get by. His own mother had made amazing things happen with the simplest and cheapest of ingredients, and he recalled how her kitchen always smelled similar to this.

But something was missing here, and as he sat at the table and pulled on his boots, he realized what it was: warmth. Not physical warmth, but the warmth of laughter, and teasing, and occasional tears that his mother's kitchen always held. Here there was no remnant of the joy those meals should have brought to the Wisby family. This was just a room where food was prepared, not a real kitchen. Certainly not, in the broad sense of the word, a
hearth.

If Bo-Kate grew up here, no wonder she kept her feelings guarded and locked away.

He peered out the kitchen door and, sure enough, saw the little outhouse about fifteen yards away, at the very edge of the backyard. The snow had been trampled flat between it and the house.

He stepped outside. The cold bit through his clothes to his sweaty skin, and finished off Tain's effect on his body. The half-full moon cast enough light for him to see. He expected to smell the outhouse, then realized that anything it held would, obviously, be frozen. That made him glad they hadn't waited until spring to visit.

When he reached the outhouse, he paused. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the plaintive sound of a lone fiddle. It didn't come from the Wisby place, but from somewhere beyond the forested hill that rose behind the outhouse. He couldn't make out the tune, but the feeling it carried was so sad, so lonely, that he choked up and almost wanted to cry.

Then the wind picked up, and the song was lost.

He stepped into the outhouse, did his business quickly, and stepped back outside. A male voice said, “Who the hell are you?”

He looked around in time to see a big man come down from the trees. He was dressed in camouflage, wore a ski mask, and carried a rifle. He stopped when he got a good look at Nigel.

“You're a nigger,” he added.

Nigel looked at his hand and feigned surprise. “My God, you're right. And I believe the appropriate term for you is ‘peckerwood,' if I'm not mistaken.”

He didn't blink at the insult. “What are you doing here?”

Nigel realized who this man must be. “I'm accompanying your sister, Bo-Kate. Are you Canton or Snad?”

The man smiled. It wasn't friendly. “Bo-Kate cain't never come back here. Everybody knows it. Not even if she wanted to, and I cain't imagine that.” He lowered the gun and held it loosely in both hands, not pointed at Nigel but clearly now a threat. He cocked his head back and looked down his nose. “How about you try again?”

“That might have been true about your sister once. But I assure you, we arrived this evening, and she is asleep in her old room right now.”

He thought this over. “And they're making you sleep in the outhouse,” he said at last. It wasn't a question, just a statement.

“No, I used it just before you appeared.” He tried a smile. “I'm Nigel, by the way.”

“Canton Wisby.” He offered his hand in a big, well-worn glove. “Pleasure to meet you.”

Nigel nodded at the gun. “And do you always creep about your yard with a gun?”

“Nah, I was just out in the woods. Never can tell what might slip up on you out there.”

“Indeed you can't,” Nigel agreed.

A light appeared in one of the house's upstairs windows. Canton stepped back into the outhouse's moon-cast shadow. He said quietly, “You got good timing, boy. The show's about to start. Get back here before she sees you.”

“What show?” Nigel whispered.

“Just watch. Better'n Cinemax.”

Nigel joined Canton in the darkness. Whatever the “show” was, it made Canton entirely forget any doubts about Nigel.

The illuminated, and apparently curtainless, window allowed them to see into a bedroom. There was a big mirror on the opposite wall, and a moving shadow on the ceiling told them someone was there. Then Tain Wisby appeared and raised the window all the way up despite the winter cold.

And she was naked.

“Now, that,” Canton said, “is a sight that don't never get old.”

Nigel agreed with the sentiment. Tain unclothed was as spectacular as he'd imagined she would be, every part in perfect proportion and firm with youthfulness, strength, and beauty. She let the cold air blow over her and showed not the slightest bit of discomfort.

She sang in a voice like Norah Jones crossed with Lauren Bacall's growl:

The winter it is past, and the summer's come at last.

The small birds are singing in the trees

Their little hearts are glad oh but mine is very sad,

For my true love is far away from me.

Nigel felt fresh goose bumps that had nothing to do with the temperature ripple along his skin. He glanced at Canton, whose face was as rapt as a devout Catholic's at Easter Mass. And honestly, that didn't seem unrealistic. Tain was so beautiful, so unencumbered by societal shame or self-consciousness, that in many ways it was like seeing a goddess. He remembered in primary school they'd covered the story of the goddess Artemis and Actaeon, the unfortunate hunter who'd accidentally glimpsed her naked while she was bathing. She was so angry, she turned him into a stag, and his own hunting dogs killed him. Nigel wondered if he risked a similar fate.

“That'll bring back the spring,” Canton murmured. “Sure enough it will.”

Then Tain put one bare foot on the sill and pulled herself up to stand.

“What is she doing?” Nigel asked.

Before Canton could answer, Tain crouched slightly, then jumped.

Nigel started to rush forward and cry out a warning, but before he could do either, Tain shot
upward,
into the night sky.

Nigel stared up at the stars, mouth agape. He blinked several times and shook his head. He looked at the snowy ground beneath the window, where Tain
must
have landed. But there was no sign of her.

“Great gosh a'mighty,” Canton said in wonder but not surprise. He took off the ski mask and revealed a broad, soft face with big eyes and a tangled mass of black hair. It was curly, like Bo-Kate's, but cut shorter. “That girl's so hot, if they ever sent her to the North Pole, Santa would end up living on a raft.”

Nigel said nothing.

Canton clapped him on the shoulder. “Well, if my sister's in there, I reckon I better get in there, too. Memaw's probably having a cow.”

Nigel just nodded and looked back up at the stars.

“You seem like a decent boy,” Canton continued, tightening his grip slightly. “I reckon you won't be telling people you saw me out here starin' at her titties, will you?”

Nigel forced his attention back to the moment. “You keep my secret, my friend, I'll keep yours.”

“That's the right answer,” Canton said. He shook Nigel once, demonstrating an immense physical strength, then released him and strode whistling toward the house.

Nigel continued to stare up at the sky. He thought he glimpsed a shadow, visible only where it blocked out the stars, of something that resembled a woman with enormous butterfly wings. But it was too fast for him to get a good look. Then, faintly, he heard the distant, plaintive fiddle.

He thought again about what Bo-Kate had told him of the Tufa. Suddenly it all registered anew with fresh seriousness, and more than a little fright.

What in the world—or in the Other World—had he gotten into?

 

10

1958 … ish

Byron Harley listened intently as the old man John played yet another sad, mournful tune on his fiddle. There was something familiar about the man, yet Byron couldn't place it. He wasn't someone he knew, nor was he another musician he'd played with on one of his many barnstorming package tours. In fact, he wasn't really a very good musician at all. So how in the hell could Byron know him?

He shifted his bad leg and winced as the bent brace pinched him again. The pain momentarily cleared the haze from his mind, and he remembered anew what had happened to him that night. His urgency returned: he had to get to a phone, call the police, and most important, call Donna to let her, and sweet little Harmony, know he was all right. He didn't want them to hear about the crash on the news or, worse, when reporters started flocking to his house.

John saw Byron's grimace, paused in the middle of “Brandi Jones,” and said, “Something wrong with your leg, son?”

“Yeah, got an iron on it,” Byron said. He raised his foot to display the metal piece that went under his instep and took most of his weight when he walked. “Messed it up in a motorcycle accident a few years ago. Doctors wanted to cut it off, but I wouldn't let 'em.”

“That's doctors for you,” John said. “Sure enough, if they can't get your money by making it well, they'll try to get it by cutting it off.”

Byron chuckled in assent. Without any conscious realization, the haze enveloped him again, pushing all urgency aside. Sure, he needed to get moving eventually, but for right now, there was nothing wrong with hanging out with these gentlemen, sipping rockgut and listening to good music. Now he only thought about how much he instinctively distrusted doctors, and between the VA physicians and the ones he'd been able to afford since becoming a star, that distrust had grown exponentially. “Reckon the plane crash bent the frame on the iron, and it's pinching me something fierce if I move wrong.”

John slapped his own leg. “When I was a young man, I was messing around and shot myself in the right foot.”

“What were you aimin' at?” Eli asked.

“My left foot,” John said with a guffaw. “Anyway, it sure laid me up for quite a while, I tell you what. Still twinges when the weather's about to change. And you know something else? I work with a one-legged guitar player. He's got a wooden leg, so you can't really tell unless he tries to move fast, but he ain't got but one real one, I swear.”

Byron bent down and opened his own guitar case. “Well, maybe there's something 'bout musicians that makes our legs act up. Sure explains Elvis, don't it?”

John looked blank at the name. “Who?”

“Elvis Presley. From Memphis. ‘Hound Dog,' ‘Heartbreak Hotel.' You know … Elvis.”

John shook his head. “'Fraid not.”

This made Byron pause, and the fog again withdrew. How could anyone, no matter how isolated, not know about Elvis Presley?

He glanced at the other man, who idly scratched his dog's head. What was up with that guy, anyway? Why was he dressed like a beggar from one of those movies about Scrooge and Christmas? Why was he out in the woods on a cold winter's night? Why did he seem completely unsurprised by the plane crash, or Byron's appearance?

“What's going on up here?” a new voice said. “Eli, you getting people drunk on that paint thinner again?”

Another man strode into the clearing and sat down beside Eli, shaking his hand like an old friend. He was about fifty, with black gray-streaked hair and a big, white-toothed grin. He wore a thick coat made out of some plastic material Byron didn't recognize;
THE NORTH FACE
was sewn over his heart. “Hey, y'all. I'm Marshall.”

“Byron,” he said, and offered his hand. “This here is John.”

“Always glad to meet a friend of Eli's,” John said, and they also shook hands.

Marshall sat near the fire and unzipped his coat. “Sure glad to see that fire. My toes are turning into ice cubes. Reckon that jug could pass around my way?”

John handed it to Eli, and he passed it to Marshall. Byron couldn't place what it was, but something seemed off about the newcomer, some detail that didn't match up. Marshall wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “So, how's everybody doing?”

“Can't complain,” Eli said. “If I did, nobody'd listen.”

“Beats working in a coal mine,” John said.

Marshall turned to Byron and asked, “And what brings you up on the mountain in the middle of the night?”

“My plane crashed,” Byron said, the words sounding strange in his ears. “Hit the mountain up thataway. Three people are dead.”

Marshall let out a long, low whistle. “That a fact. Reckon you'll need the police, then.”

“Yeah,” Byron agreed.

“I done told him we'll take him down in the morning,” Eli said. Byron thought he saw a look pass between him and Marshall.