Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

“Maybe,” she said. “I know the right song to sing.”

“You know part of it,” he said. “And you can’t find the rest, not without Mandalay’s permission. And that little girl ain’t even bleeding age yet. And as for them Yankees…” He trailed off with a cold little smile.

“What?” she asked darkly.

Now the Rockhouse everyone in Needsville feared turned and smiled up at her, his feebleness replaced by smug arrogance. “I know what that boy with you found out behind the fire station. I know he done told that other Yankee boy, the fat one with the wife, all about it. You think them rubbings are dangerous, but I done took care of them. And as for that gee-tar-playin’ boy… well, even though he’s probably caught up in your sister’s curse now, I didn’t want to wait. I done took care of him, too.”

“What did you do?” Bliss demanded. Rockhouse’s grin faded, his eyes closed, and his chin dropped to his chest. “What did you do ?” she repeated, and shook him. But although he still breathed, she knew he was no longer in the room.

She drew back and slapped him so hard, it knocked him from the rocker, then left him sprawled on the uneven plank floor. The wind whined through the chimney when she threw open the door, momentarily causing the fire to flare up. That same wind rustled the trees above her all the way down to her truck.

Rob considered his strategy as he drove the deserted highway back to Needsville. He turned up the music, which always helped him think. Sirius was tuned to an all-bluegrass station, and he sang along with a sprightly version of “Shenandoah.”

There was one solid hint about how to proceed. Something about that line from the epitaph had stopped Stoney dead the previous night, and even gotten Old Man Rockhouse’s attention. Why?

As he topped a hill, an emu stood in the center of his lane. He didn’t want to pass it on the left, because he might collide with another car coming over the next rise. He stopped ten feet from the bird and honked, but the animal stayed put.

He put the car in park and got out. He waved his hands at the bird. “Hey! Move, will ya!”

The bird blinked. Then its head turned slightly, toward something behind Rob.

He caught just the hint of a movement in the corner of his eye, but it was enough to make him duck, and the ax handle swished through the space an instant earlier occupied by his head.

He spun around. He was being ambushed.

Well, fuck me, he thought. He looked Hispanic and had attended a Kansas City public high school, so he knew how to fight when he had to. And if they were swinging ax handles at him, he definitely had to.

Rob dived right at the man who’d tried to blindside him and tackled him to the pavement. The ax handle skidded away across the blacktop. He straddled his attacker’s chest and punched him in the face, sending a jolt of pain through his own hand. The guy clutched his nose and cried, “Shit!” He had black hair and dark Tufa skin, and looked barely old enough to drive.

Then someone else hit Rob hard across the back with what felt like a baseball bat. He cried out in agony and surprise, then reflexively jumped to his feet. The blow made him gasp for air. He kicked the fallen man hard in the groin to put him out of commission, then turned to face the second attacker, his fury rising until it blanked out any sensation of pain. “Come on, you son of a bitch!” Rob croaked.

The second man, also a young Tufa, brandished a shiny aluminum bat and took a wild, clumsy swing that Rob easily avoided. Despite the pain, he body-blocked the second man into the car’s fender. The bat clanged off the hood and landed in the road. Rob head-butted the man and drove his knee hard into his crotch. With a thin moan of pain, the second man joined his friend on the ground.

Rob blinked, momentarily dazed by the skull-to-skull contact, then retrieved the baseball bat and stood over the two men. Both curled fetally and clutched their groins.

His back felt numb and hot, but he knew the pain would return soon enough. The urge to pound them into hamburger was incredibly strong, but he managed to hold back. “What the hell! ” he yelled at the two. “Who the hell are you guys?”

“Get… the fuck out of Needsville,” the first man wheezed.

Rob slammed the end of the bat against the pavement next to the man’s ear so hard, the tarmac cracked. “Says who? Stoney Hicks? Rockhouse?”

“You just need to go, man,” the second man added, his voice whiny from pain. “Ain’t no songs for you here.”

Rob felt under the driver’s seat for the can of spray paint he’d gotten from Doyle. He put one knee on the first man’s chest and sprayed bright red paint all over his hair and face. “I’ll know exactly who you are if I see you again, asshole,” he snarled. “Tell Hicks Junior and Senior that they need to send full-grown hillbillies next time.” He turned to mark the second man, but he’d already staggered off into the weeds, and Rob didn’t feel like chasing him.

Beyond him, for just an instant, Rob thought he saw a third figure, wide and distinctive. But the shadow he imagined to be Rockhouse Hicks vanished the moment he looked straight at it.

Breathing heavily, Rob got back into his car and, hands shaking, drove into town. He repeatedly counted to ten until his temper got back under his control.

Back in his room, he went into the bathroom and gently removed his shirt. A purple bruise ran across his shoulder blades, and it was already tender to the touch. A few inches up, and the guy would’ve knocked his head clean off. He dug out the piece of paper Doyle had given him with Bliss’s phone number on it. He got no answer, and no machine picked up.

Whom could he go to? The police would do nothing. Doyle had his own problems, and Bliss was unavailable. Even the only other stranger, Terry Kizer, had left town. He was on his own.

He paced for a long time, trying to walk off the rush from the fight. Finally an idea struck him. He turned on his laptop and searched for the address of the closest public library. He wanted archives of the local newspapers, to verify Doyle’s story of Stoney Hicks’s former flames. If he could show Stella that the big lunk was such bad news that his girlfriends actually died, perhaps she’d find the strength to break free of him.

Needsville had no library or newspaper, which didn’t really surprise him, but a quick search revealed a library located in the nearby town of Cricket. The link to the library went through the town’s main Web site, where he found the odd description under the title, “Welcome Ye to Historic Cricket.”

The world watched in 1875 as famous British author, statesman, and social reformer Roy Howard dedicated the new town of Cricket. It was to be a cooperative, class-free society, a Utopia where artisans, tradesmen, and farming families could build a new community through agriculture, temperance, and high moral principles. Today, in a gentle mountain setting little changed by twenty-first-century technology, this would-be Shangri-la survives. More than two dozen of its decorative, gabled buildings remain, and Cricket’s dual Victorian and Appalachian heritage is everywhere visible.

A Victorian village in the middle of the Smoky Mountains? Why had he not run across this before? He clicked on the link to the library.

Visitors to the Roy Howard Library will find it just as it was more than a century ago, when Cricket’s early colonists enjoyed its reading pleasures. The collection of Victorian period literature and all furnishings are original to the building. The library was the pride of the colonists and many first editions were donated by admirers and publishers, along with unique and notable works of art.