Long Black Curl (16 page)

He looked at the picture again. The Jefferson Powell he knew was older and, in every picture or video Nigel had seen, immaculate. Yet there was an undeniable resemblance to this youth with his jaunty grin, cocky stance, and mussed hair.

He tucked the picture back in the frame and replaced it on the floor.

His eye was drawn to another photograph. He recognized the style: an artist's professional publicity shot. It showed a young man with a guitar in mid-strum, eyes blazing over the microphone before him. Nigel moved close enough to see the name printed at the bottom:
BYRON HARLEY
, along with contact information for his official fan club. This was the one Bo-Kate had sighed over when they first arrived.

Something seemed to be smeared on it. He leaned closer, and saw that it was actually red lipstick; someone had once kissed the picture, right over the singer's face. Did teenagers still do that sort of thing?

If Bo-Kate had truly been a teen during the '50s, when Byron Harley was alive, then she'd be in her sixties or seventies now, which he knew was patently untrue … unless, of course, “time doesn't work the same for everyone.” Whatever was going on here, whatever he'd been drawn into by his boss/paramour, it must be based in reality. The Good Folk wouldn't live in decrepit old houses; women clearly in their thirties hadn't grown up in the era of Elvis and Byron Harley.

He heard someone move somewhere in the house, and quickly returned to the bed and turned out the light. But Bo-Kate still did not appear.

*   *   *

Mandalay sat at her desk. The only light came from her computer screen, and the only sounds were the clack of keys and the soft moaning of the cold winter wind. She searched YouTube and found a video of the song the Somervilles sang at dinner.

The singer and songwriter, Lou Buckingham, stood before a row of abstract watercolors in what appeared to be a coffeehouse or upscale bar. She had soft brown hair, and held an acoustic guitar that was separately miked. She began to sing, and this time Mandalay did not try to stop herself from crying. When the singer reached the verse about the Valiant being towed away, Mandalay felt as if she'd rip open with grief for many other things than the car in the song. She fought to keep it quiet, so that her father and Leshell wouldn't come check on her. This grief was nothing they could share, nor did she think she could explain why she was crying over Rockhouse.

But to her surprise, that wasn't the last verse. She choked her sobs down to hiccups as the woman sang:

But the Fury still runs true

Though it's a few years older than you

And life beats down like that southwestern sun

Fading its finish but you're not alone

We'll ride the Fury again I know

Listening to songs on the AM radio

With no particular place to go

The Valiant and Fury Girls.

Now Mandalay laughed through her tears. The song wasn't sad at all; bittersweet, yes, but with the promise of life continuing with love and tenderness. She wondered if the Somervilles even knew there was another verse.

She couldn't keep this quiet, though, and someone knocked softly on her door. “Honey?” her father said. “You okay?”

“Yeah, Dad, I'm fine,” she said, reaching for a tissue.

“Okay. You come get us if you need us.”

“I will.” She blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and shut the computer. For a long time she stayed there in the dark, listening to the wind. Then she got up and went out to do one of those thankless tasks that nevertheless had to be done.

She needed to collect the sin eater.

*   *   *

Bo-Kate's thighs and calves ached with the effort of climbing up a mountain twice in one day, as well as the added exertions of her romp with Nigel. Ahead, the haint of Rockhouse walked with the ease of someone no longer bound to the world. She could see him plainly now, and he looked like the mental image of him she'd carried all these years: gray hair, black eyebrows, wearing overalls and a flannel shirt. This was the way he'd looked that day when he touched her, and then suggested that such a pretty girl should learn to get down on her knees without so much trouble.

She heard the music before she saw the fire's glow. She stopped when she got close enough to make out the tune. “I'm Nine Hundred Miles from My Home” rang through the cold air, and the high fiddle notes seemed to shimmer around her. She leaned against a tree and listened.

I used to have a woman

She would walk and talk with me

Now she loves sitting

On some other rounder's knee

And she done told him

What she won't tell me

And I hate to hear that lonesome whistle blow.…

Rockhouse spoke from just behind her. “Know who that is playing that guitar?”

Out of breath, she shook her head.

“Who's the last person you'd expect to see up here?”

“You.”

He grinned. “Other than me. Who's your secret love, Little Miss Bo-Kate?”

She glared at him. “I don't have a secret love.”

“Ah, that ain't true.” He leaned so close that, had he been alive, she'd have felt his breath on her skin. She resisted the urge to turn around. He said softly, “Who died on this very mountain fifty-some-odd years ago?”

“Everybody knows that, Rockhouse. Guy Berry, Large Sarge, and Byron Harley. So what?”

“Uh-huh. And whose picture inspired you to learn to touch yourself down there?”

She turned angrily, but he was gone.

She leaned against the tree again, exhausted. Was she crazy? Had her desire for revenge driven her over the edge? Had she hallucinated Rockhouse's appearance, externalizing her own insanity in the image of the person she most hated?

The “secret love” bit was nonsense, but she knew exactly who had spurred her to her first sexual feelings. She was a charter member of his fan club, and every night she used to kiss his picture before going to bed. But Byron Harley was dead; he'd died in a plane crash sixty years ago on this very mountain.

Then a jolt of realization went through her. Yes, his plane had crashed, killing everyone on board and, known only to the Tufa, that impulsive idiot Tarvell Moon who'd caused the crash in the first place. But Byron Harley's body had not been found, and it was assumed to have burned up in the explosion and fire that followed. Forensics were not as advanced back then, and sifting the ashes for DNA was not done. But what if he'd survived the crash? People could get stuck here, sometimes accidentally, sometimes out of someone's malice. They could exist in here for untold amounts of time with no one, human or Tufa, knowing about it. Had Byron Harley been stuck like that? And more crucially,
was
he still here?

She heard footsteps approaching, crunching the frozen leaves. Rockhouse's haint made no sound, so it couldn't be him. She ducked behind the nearest tree and held her breath.

Marshall Goins passed obliviously by her. He looked worried, but not unduly so, which meant he had no idea what was really going on. He whistled as he continued down the mountain.

When she could breathe normally, she climbed higher and closer. At last she made out the three men around the fire, one playing a fiddle, another with a Jew's harp to his mouth. But it was the third one, with the guitar across his lap and one leg straight before him, that she gazed upon with a mix of disbelief and arousal.

He was huge, easily a foot or more taller than the other two men, with broad shoulders that reminded her of Steve Reeves in those old
Hercules
movies. His hair was delightfully disheveled and fell in his eyes, causing him to toss it dramatically. She remembered that from the times she'd seen him on television when she was a girl. He also smiled as he sang, something that so many self-important lesser performers never did.

It really was Byron Harley.

She stared for a long time. The reality that this, the first love of her young womanhood, was here, alive, exactly as he'd been back then, overpowered her. Six decades he'd been stuck in this little clearing, but to him, no more than an hour or two must have passed.

“Your secret weapon,” Rockhouse said into her ear. She jumped and turned, but no one was there.

What did that mean? How did Byron Harley's continued existence qualify as a “weapon”?

She made sure Marshall had time to get far ahead, then headed back down the mountain, toward her house. She could not wait to see Nigel's calm, reassuring face.

*   *   *

Mandalay stood in the forest darkness, not hiding but certainly not drawing attention to herself. Both Marshall Goins and Bo-Kate Wisby went right past her, but never looked her way. When both were out of sight and beyond hearing, Mandalay continued up the mountain.

When she saw the glow, she stopped. Once again, as she had earlier before Luke found her, she heard someone playing “I'm Nine Hundred Miles from My Home.” She smiled as she recognized the voice: Fiddlin' John Carson. He had toured through Cloud County one year late in the fall, playing at house parties and barn dances, including the Tufa barn dance held just at the edge of this special, mercurial space. It had taken no effort at all that night to lure him away from the barn with the promise of moonshine, and he'd been here at the fire ever since. Mandalay knew that when he finally did work up the wherewithal to leave, he'd find only a few hours had passed, and would return to a career that ended with him as the honored elevator operator at the Georgia State Capitol. But for now, he was just a working musician taking time out for a drink of home brew. And that was okay. She was here to summon Eli the Sin Eater for Rockhouse, anyway.

Then she heard the
other
voice.

This was unexpected. She knew she'd find Fiddlin' John sitting with Eli, but who else was there? She searched her memory, and could find nothing. Had something changed without her being aware of it? If it had, then the night winds had to be behind it, and also behind keeping her in the dark.

That
worried her. A lot.

She licked her suddenly cold, dry lips. She had to see who it was.

Careful to make as little sound as possible, she got within sight of the fire. Many times in her life, she'd slipped out here to see who was caught in one of these little bubbles of existence, wandering lost through the woods, unaware of time or distance. Folklore said that some people could spend lifetimes there—Washington Irving's tale of Rip Van Winkle was a variation on that concept—but usually it was no more than days, enough to cause confusion but not attract that much undue attention. And, since alcohol was usually involved, those affected tended to blame themselves for any lost time.

But for someone to be pulled into faery time without the head faery knowing about it … that was unusual, all right.

She peered around an oak tree's trunk, through the winter-bare shafts of a briar bush, and saw him. He was impossible to miss, being twice as big as Fiddlin' John, and dressed completely differently from Eli. He had a guitar across his lap that looked almost like a toy in his big hands, but he handled it with ease. His hair was mussed and askew, the way it was back in the '50s when Brylcreem and its ilk were popular.

But that voice …

To quote her father Darnell, holy fucking horseshit. It was
Byron Harley.

Byron Harley, Guy Berry, and Large Sarge had died in a 1958 airplane crash. Everyone knew that. It even inspired a song, “State of the Disunion,” in the '70s, which referred to the crash as “the night the music flew away.” But here he was, playing along with Fiddlin' John Carson, who had also died, but long before that day in '58.

She leaned against the same tree that had supported Bo-Kate and felt the cold air going in and out of her lungs. What was going on here? Where did he come from? And what did Marshall Goins
and
Bo-Kate Wisby have to do with it?

They finished “I'm Nine Hundred Miles from My Home.” Fiddlin' John's laugh rang out through the trees. “Boy, you sure can pick that thing,” he said to Byron Harley.

“Thank you, sir,” Harley said with a shy, polite nod. “I purely wish my daddy was around to hear you say that.”

“Has he passed on?”

“No, he's…” Byron's voice trailed off, and he seemed to struggle to remember something. Eventually, he gave up. “He's out in California with the rest of my family.”

“Well, you sure tell 'em I said howdy,” Fiddlin' John said.

“Hey, how about something else,” Eli said. “Y'all know ‘Sugar Blues'?”

“Clyde McCoy?” Byron asked,

“That's the one.”

“I know it. Saw him do it, even, in St. Louis. Called it the ‘Sugar Blues Boogie.'”

“Well, you take us off, then.”

“Hell, I ain't got no horn to play.”

“Don't you know the words?”

“Never heard the words.”

Eli looked at Fiddlin' John, who shrugged. “Heard the tune, that's all.”

“All right, then, y'all about to get schooled.” Eli picked a rhythm on the Jew's harp, Byron picked it up, and Fiddlin' John played what would've been McCoy's trademark trumpet line.

In a growly voice at odds with the jaunty music, Eli sang,

My lovin' mama, sweet as she can be,

But the doggone gal turned sour on me.

I'm so unhappy, I feel so bad,

I could lay me down and die.…

Mandalay eased closer to the fire. Her heart wanted to explode from anxiety. At last she stepped into the open. “Hello,” she said.

They all stopped playing. “Well, hello, there, Miss Mandalay,” Eli said as if he saw her every day. “What brings you out here at this time of night?”