Long Black Curl (15 page)

“Well, that's a good idea,” Marshall said. “I mean, they're dead, right? Hurrying won't help 'em, and if you fell down a gully, wouldn't do you no good, either, would it?”

Byron nodded, because it did make sense. But Marshall's very presence still seemed off somehow. What was it?

John scratched on his fiddle, idle notes that sailed through the cold night. “Anybody but me feelin' squirrelly havin' to sit still?”

Byron positioned his guitar across his lap. “Well, that corn liquor's sure got me loosened up. What should we play?”

“You know ‘Old Dan Tucker'?” John asked.

“I reckon,” Byron said. His own Southern accent was growing more pronounced; the years of living in the Midwest, then traveling in both the army and for his career, had almost driven it out, but the moonshine and the company were bringing it back.

John scratched out the tune, and Byron joined in. After a few bars, the older man cleared his throat and sang:

Old Daniel Tucker was a mighty man,

He washed his face in a frying pan;

Combed his head with a wagon wheel

And he died with a toothache in his heel.…

The two of them joined in the chorus.

So, get out of the way, old Dan Tucker,

You're too late to get your supper.

Supper's over and breakfast cooking,

Old Dan Tucker standing looking.

John nodded at him. “You pick 'er up now, son.”

“All right,” Byron said. “Here's how I learned from my granddaddy.

Old Dan Tucker was a fine old soul,

Buckskin belly and a rubber asshole,

Swallowed a barrel of cider down

And then he shit all over town.

By the time he'd reached the end of the second line, Byron realized who the old man was, but the profane lyrics had them all laughing so hard, they could barely play. When they finished the song, Byron said in a mix of awe and surprise, “John, are you by any chance Fiddlin' John Carson?”

“I reckon I am,” John said with a grin.

“Well, goddamn,” Byron said. “I grew up listening to you. My daddy had a big ol' stack of your records he brought up from Georgia when he moved to Minnesota. If us kids touched 'em without asking, he'd make us go cut a switch and then tan our hides good.” He extended his right hand. “It's a real pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“Thank you, son,” John said as he returned the shake. “Pleasure to be met.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I'm on the Kerosene Circuit: whorehouses, moonshiners' stills, and roadhouses. Played at a place called the Pair-A-Dice just down the road. Now, I have to ask you, what are
you
doing here? You're not a half-bad picker yourself.”

“I get by,” Byron said. He felt shy, something he hadn't experienced since he turned professional. But he could only imagine how excited his old man would be to hear that he'd met Fiddlin' John Carson.

“You sure do make that violin sing, sir,” Marshall said.

“Violin?” John said in mock offense. “Son, I play the fiddle. See right here?” He turned it over and displayed the back of the instrument's neck, which was painted bright red. “That's how you know it's a fiddle: Just like me, it's got a red neck on it.” He held his straight face for a moment, then busted out laughing. The others did as well.

Marshall said, “Well, I got to be going. Peggy'll kill me if I'm out too late. I'll give the police a call when I get down, all right?”

“Can I come with you?” Byron said.

“Best if you just wait here, especially with that bum leg of yours.” He pulled on his coat. “Somebody'll be here around daylight, I imagine.”

“Reckon so,” Eli agreed. Again there was a look between the two that Byron couldn't interpret. He stared as the man waved and strode off into the night.

Byron turned to John, who positioned his fiddle under his chin. As he began to play, something nagged at the back of Byron's mind. He couldn't quite tease it forward, so he tried to ignore it. But it stayed there, mosquito-like, at the edge of his consciousness.

They played two more songs, old folk tunes that they both knew, and passed the jug again. As he handed it back to Eli, Byron remembered what had struck him as odd.

It was 1958. Fiddlin' John Carson had died ten years earlier. He remembered his father telling him. So who was this man here, clearly nowhere near that old, who nonetheless sounded exactly like the voice and fiddle from those scratchy old records, and in fact claimed to
be
him?

John caught Byron staring at him. “What, son? You look like you done seen a ghost.”

“Maybe I have,” Byron whispered.

 

11

2015

Bo-Kate opened her eyes. Something had startled her awake. She faced the wall and lay still, getting her bearings. She wasn't in her Nashville mansion, she was …

Home.

She rolled over. The room was dark and heavy with cold air. “Nigel?” she said sleepily. “What are you—?”

“Ain't your nigger,” a voice said.

She sat up straight then, jolted fully awake. Rockhouse Hicks stood in the room.

She barely made out his shape in the darkness, and she couldn't see his face. But there was no mistaking the silhouette, the atmosphere of dread he always brought with him, or that voice. She grabbed a pillow to cover her nudity. She thought of the gun and knife in her purse. They were across the room, though, and he was between her and them.

Rockhouse said, “I want to show you something.”

He's speaking,
she realized.
How can he do that?
She tried to keep her own voice steady as she demanded, “What are you doing here? How'd you get in here?”

He laughed. “Ain't no place can keep
me
out, Bo-Kate.”

“But you … I mean, you're.…”

She still couldn't see his face, but she felt his cruel smile in his words. “Yeah, I am. Thanks to you.”

Then she sorted it out. He wasn't real. He was dead, and this was a
haint
.

She scooted back against the headboard and gathered the sheets around her. She was more scared than she'd ever been in her life, but she wasn't about to show it. “What do you want?”

“To help you get what you want.”

“And why would you want that?”

He stepped closer. “You reckon because you came after me like you did, I want to get back at you, don't you?”

She nodded.

“Well, I would. Except there's others I want to get back at worse. And one of 'em is that little snot-bitch Mandalay.”

“I got no quarrel with her.”

“Well, you should. You want to take over my half of it, but why not take over it
all
?”

Bo-Kate said nothing. Could he read her mind now?

“Ah, I see you're thinking about it. Well, let me tell you, it ain't just about getting rid of Mandalay. If that's all it was, I'd'a done that. You got to also make everybody else see that you're stronger than her.” He chuckled. “Not just meaner.”

“And how do I do that?”

“You need a secret weapon. Now, get your pants on and I'll show you where it is.”

“Turn around first,” she said.

He folded his arms. “Hell no. I intend to see this. You got nothing to be scared of anyway, my pecker ain't no more real than the rest of me.”

She didn't move for a long moment, then crawled out of bed and gathered her discarded clothes. She watched his face, hidden in shadow, as she dressed. “Get an eyeful?” she said as she finished buttoning her blouse.

“You're a pretty girl, Bo-Kate. Always have been. Too bad you got sung out before we could get to know each other.”

“I knew all about you that I wanted to.”

“Now, don't be mean. I'm here to help you, remember?”

“Where is Nigel, anyway? What did you do to him?”

“He's out back with your brother and cousin.”

“No way.”

The haint shrugged. “Believe what you want. He ain't my problem. Now, come on.” Even though she was looking right at him, she couldn't spot the point when he dissolved into the darkness around him.

Without his presence, she immediately wondered if she'd hallucinated him. But no, she was wide awake, and while she might have imagined or dreamed his ghost, she'd never have invented his offer.

He could be luring her to her death, she knew. But she couldn't pass up this chance. Even if she tried, nothing could stop him returning to her over and over. The only thing that dispelled a haint was letting it, or helping it, accomplish its purpose.

She opened the door and stepped into the hallway, and saw his barely visible form waiting at the head of the stairs.

She did not see Tain, sweaty and windblown, peek out from her darkened room, noting her cousin's departure.

*   *   *

When Nigel got back to the room, Bo-Kate was gone. He undressed and waited in bed, but she never returned. Someone moved around in a distant part of the house, making the ancient wood squeak, but he heard no voices.

He turned on the bedside lamp and looked up at the canopy. Now he could make out the scene: fauns and sprites dancing to a little fairy band playing lutes, flutes, and bodhrans. At any other time it would've been annoyingly twee, but after what he'd just seen, he kept going back to Bo-Kate's insistence that her family, that all the Tufa, were descended from fairies and could, if the parameters were right, assume their fairy forms, wings and all. Just as Tain had done.

He tried to conjure rational explanations for what he'd seen. It had been dark, and cold, and certainly he didn't entirely trust his perceptions in the middle of the night. Tain might have simply jumped onto the roof, not actually leaped into the air. Yes, she'd been naked, of that he was
totally
certain, but some people got off on the cold. The Polar Bear Club, after all, was quite well populated. And the creature he'd spotted flying could have been the same owl he'd heard earlier; some of those in the United States were quite large, he knew from watching Animal Planet back when it had shows about animals.

The problem with all this was, when it came right down to it, he could accept Tain as a fairy. There
was
something otherworldly about her, an attractiveness and compelling quality he could easily put down as “glamour.” But Bo-Kate? Bo-Kate Wisby, his lover and employer, flying naked on gossamer wings?

Bo-Kate was one of the most ruthless concert promoters in Nashville, and that was saying something. She had the ear of all the major country performers, and could get them to agree to terms that should have made their managers laugh in her face. Her pushiness had made her rich and powerful, spoken of with awe in Music Row boardrooms and Second Avenue nightclubs. There was even a term, never used to her face, called being “Bo-Kated,” which meant that you'd agreed to terms common sense should've prevented.

Under it all, though, there was something else, a rage and defensiveness that drove her more than money, power, or sex. Nigel had seen it before, and recognized it. Bo-Kate sought, above all,
revenge.

Yet he always wondered—against whom?

Not her family. She never talked about them with anything stronger than annoyance, certainly never intimated that there had been abuse or mistreatment. She never mentioned any friends, either; perhaps that was it, but in Nigel's experience, folks driven to elaborate retribution couldn't keep their mouths shut about the target of their ire.

But now that he'd seen what he thought he saw, after spending the day seeing how ruthless she really was, he was pretty sure he understood. She wanted revenge against the people who'd cast her out, who had taken away the ability to spread wings and fly as he'd seen Tain do. She wanted vengeance against the Good Folk.

He got out of bed and moved slowly around the room, perusing its treasure trove of vintage decor. Here was an apparent capsule summary of Bo-Kate before she left home as a teenager. He tried to ignore the strange time disparity, and the sheer oddness of her parents keeping her room immaculate, and just concentrate on what the items told him about the girl who'd lived here.

There was jewelry in the box on the vanity, which softly played Byron Harley's “Hip-Shakin' Black Slacks” when he opened the lid. He quickly closed it, but not before glimpsing pearls and assorted faux diamond pieces. He spritzed some of the perfume, labeled
MOONLIGHT MIST
, and sniffed it. It did not smell stale, although the heaviness did make him regret his curiosity. The rest of the items could have belonged to any teenage girl, of any era. But then he saw the picture.

It lay on the floor beside the dresser, facedown. When he picked it up, shards of glass remained in place. It had either fallen or been thrown, and recently if the lack of a dust pattern around it was any indication. Then that phrase, “Time doesn't work the same for everyone,” came back to him. Who knew when the picture had been broken?

It was a black-and-white photograph of a very handsome teenage boy. Like Bo-Kate, he had the Tufa dark hair, and wore an old-fashioned American football letterman's jacket. He leaned against a motorcycle, one hand casually on his hip, the other braced against the seat.

Since the glass was broken, one corner of the picture poked out. He gently pulled it free and turned it over. On the back, someone had written,
Jefferson Powell, senior year.

Nigel's eyes opened wide.
Jefferson Powell.
Tain had mentioned a “Jeff,” but Nigel hadn't put two and two together.
Jefferson fucking Powell.
It was a name he knew as well as his own, that everyone who worked behind the scenes in the music business knew.