Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

“Get going doing what, exactly?”

Rob smiled coldly. “The very thing that brought me here.”

Bliss reached the Pair-A-Dice. Vehicles already filled the parking lot. She clipped one old station wagon as she parked, but neither her truck nor the other vehicle would notice one more ding in the paint. She slammed her door closed and stalked between rusted old flatbeds and huge vintage Buicks, batting leaves from her face. She looked at the distant Widow’s Tree towering above the forest and felt her stomach tighten. What should’ve taken weeks was now being done in hours, if not minutes. In a triumph of utter vindictiveness, Rockhouse wanted to ensure Curnen was gone for good.

Bliss stopped at the entrance and listened. Over the wind she heard the muffled noises of many people inside. When she pulled the handle, though, she found it locked.

She stepped back and kicked the door hard. “Open this goddam door now!” she yelled. Her voice had a timbre she rarely used, something her mother taught her and then warned her to employ only sparingly. “It’s like when you beat a dog,” she’d explained. “If you do it all the time, eventually the dog don’t notice.”

The dogs noticed this time. The door creaked open and a face peered out. It belonged to a man in his late teens, and seemed to be covered in red paint. “Miz Overbay?” he asked in disbelief.

She yanked the door from his grip and pushed past him. “What the hell happened to you, Cartille, you look like you got licked by a damn tomato. And where is that bastard uncle of yours?”

Cartille said nothing and quickly disappeared into the crowd. She pushed through the tightly packed mob until she reached the stage, where Rockhouse sat alone, tuning his banjo. The old man looked up, looked away, and then did a perfect double take. “What in the—?”

Bliss snatched the banjo out of his hands. “You and me, fart-knocker,” she growled so only he could hear. “In the kitchen, now.”

He sputtered, “You ain’t got no—”

Bliss slammed the instrument into its case, then made a hand gesture at him, another of the ones she’d been warned to save for special occasions. He drew back as if physically slapped. “You’re crazy,” he whispered.

“No, I’m pissed off. Now follow me.” She grabbed him by the strap of his overalls and pulled him to his feet. He felt small and fragile to her, but she knew that was as deliberate a disguise as the way she made sure no one else in the room paid any attention to them. She slammed the kitchen door shut behind them, leaned back against it, and crossed her arms. The rowdy noise that came through the horizontal service window did not distract them.

“Honey, you must be on the rag something fierce to come stompin’ in here like this,” Rockhouse said.

“You insufferable old glob of possum spit,” she hissed. “Tell me why you did this.”

“Just felt like playin’ me some music, that’s—”

Before she even realized it, Bliss had slapped him so hard, her fingers were instantly numb. The blow knocked him onto the griddle surface, which luckily was not heated for cooking. He clutched the appliance to keep from falling, then turned and looked back over his shoulder at her. His eyes were black with rage. “You done made—”

She hit him again, this time a short punch to the kidney guided by her skill as an EMT. He groaned and fell to his knees, clipping his chin on the edge of the stove.

She was breathing rapidly now, and sweat coated her body under her clothes. She’d never physically attacked anyone before, and the thrill was almost sexual. “Now stop jerking me around,” she whispered hoarsely, “and tell me what you’re after.”

He got slowly to his feet. Blood ran from his chin down onto his shirt. “Careful I don’t git ahold of you like Stoney does his girls,” he said as he eased himself back onto his chair.

She laughed. “Not a chance, old man. We’re equals, remember?”

“Equals,” he repeated dully.

“But since you brought it up, what’s the deal with Stoney and this Yankee girl? I know he’s done with her by now; why won’t he just send her back to her husband?”

Rockhouse laughed. “Says she gives the best blow job in the valley.”

“That’s not it.”

He wiped his chin and stared at the blood on his palm. “Ain’t nobody broke my skin in a coon’s age,” he muttered.

She took a step toward him, and he flinched. She felt a rush of power. “Tell me,” she repeated.

“Her husband done found some of the poem on the Swett gravestones,” he said with a sigh. “Too much of it for my tastes. Needed to get hold a’them rubbings he made, but none of us could sneak into Peggy Goins’s place without her knowing. So we had her go git ’em. That woulda ended it, except Stoney decided he liked having a Yankee girlfriend.”

Bliss gasped. The utter cruelty of what he’d revealed was more than she’d imagined even Rockhouse capable of. A debilitating enchantment that could never be broken doomed the hapless Stella to waste slowly away for no more reason than Rockhouse’s convenience. “You mean you ruined that woman’s whole life for nothing more than some drawings ?”

“I didn’t ruin nothing!” Rockhouse cried, suddenly furious. “It was you ! You brung that Yankee boy around, showing him everything. You showed him the Swett plot, you took him up to y’all’s singing.”

Bliss slowly shook her head. For the first time in her short life, she truly felt her authority. “I always knew you were small, Rockhouse,” she said softly. “I never knew how pitiful you were until now. I can’t believe you ever scared me.”

He smiled, his eyes atwinkle with malevolence. “You best be scared, Bliss. If that song gets out, if I go down… you all go with me. Including that little snot Mandalay.”

She laughed. “Do you think I’d mind? You really ain’t paying attention. The only reason I care is because I don’t want to lose something so important to our people. You brought us here by pretending it was your idea, even though everyone knew you’d been kicked out on your fat ass. We’ve all played along because it’s in our nature to do it, but you knew eventually we’d outgrow you. That’s why you tried to keep us pure, and when that didn’t work, you trotted out that idiotic music career. Did you really think the winds couldn’t find you just down the road in Nashville?”

“So what’s your big plan, emergency girl? How you gonna put a bandage on this?”

“All right, here’s what’s going to happen: I keep Rob from blowing your cover, and you drag your vermin back to their cave. This place stays neutral. Stoney sends his playmate back to her husband. And you take the curse off Curnen.”

“It’s too late for that.” For emphasis, the wind rattled the sign on the roof.

“Not until the last leaf falls off the Widow’s Tree. That’s my deal. No negotiating.” Then she made the hand sign that offered a binding agreement.

Rockhouse licked his lips. “And if I don’t along with it?”

“If that song comes out, then you go down, and the Tufa have to acknowledge that they’re free to leave. And they will. Whether I go with you or them is up to the night winds, but you lose the power to order people’s lives around. You become what you really are.” She stepped closer. “You got no choice, old man.”

Without meeting her hard gaze, Rockhouse began to make the proper gesture in response that would seal the agreement. Just then they heard a commotion outside, and Rob’s voice came over the speakers.

“A tyrant fae crossed the valley….”

“Oh, no,” Bliss breathed.