Alex Bledsoe - The Hum and the Shiver

He frowned. “So if we did it, you wouldn’t like me anymore?”

“ I wouldn’t feel any different. You might, though, and that could lead to all sorts of mischief. Best we leave it where it is.”

“But I was doing it the right way, wasn’t I?”

She laughed again, and kissed him a final time. “You were sure enough doing it right. I’m so fired up, you could light a joint off me.”

He smiled and reached for his own shirt. “Well, I reckon I can’t be too upset, then.”

She watched him pull the shirt down over his torso, recalling its touch beneath her fingertips. The morning sun through the window glinted off its sweaty contours. She had a brief twinge that perhaps she was making a mistake, that letting him have her might be good for them both. But she knew which parts of her body were talking, and it wasn’t her head or heart. “You’re really not mad?” she asked.

Now he kissed her, on the cheek. “If I leave you better than I found you, how can I be mad?”

She giggled. “You sure enough did that.”

Bronwyn walked Terry-Joe to the front door and watched him amble down the hill to his bike. The buzz as it started echoed off the hills, and when he spun out and headed down the drive toward the road, its whine reminded Bronwyn of a sad, long wail. Yet he waved and grinned as he disappeared.

She leaned on the door until Chloe said behind her, “You’re letting the flies in.”

She closed the screen door and turned around. Chloe wore overalls and carried the big gloves she used for gardening. Her hair was tucked beneath one of Deacon’s baseball caps, this one sporting a bass in midleap. “I heard you two playing, then you stopped. What happened?”

Brownyn nodded toward the boys’ bedrooms. “Anyone else home?”

Chloe shook her head. “Kell and Aiden went fishing, your dad’s out in the fields.”

Bronwyn sat heavily at the kitchen table. “Terry-Joe and I almost… made out. All the way.” She looked at her thumb as it moved back and forth across the wood.

Chloe said nothing for a long moment, then leaned against the counter and crossed her arms. “Why didn’t you?”

Bronwyn shrugged. “I don’t know, it just felt wrong.”

Chloe sat opposite her, deliberately keeping the table between them. “’Cause of Dwayne?”

“No, because of me. And Terry-Joe. I could’ve… well… had a good time with him, and let it go as that. But he’d have fallen in love. It was three-quarters there in his eyes already.”

“Was a time,” Chloe said evenly, “when that wouldn’t have mattered.”

“Yeah, well, that time’s past.”

“And he’s a Tufa. Not pure as us, but close. And what’s there’s true. That’s the only reason I made your daddy put up with Dwayne for so long.”

Bronwyn frowned; then her eyes opened wide. She recalled Mandalay’s words, the promise they tried to exact from her, and jumped to her feet. “You gotta be kidding me,” she rasped. “You mean you pimped me out to Dwayne Gitterman?”

Chloe laughed bitterly. “Don’t be so dramatic. You found Dwayne all on your own, and we couldn’t have pried you off him with a crowbar. But your daddy would’ve sung his dyin’ dirge a long time ago if I’d let him. He knew exactly what Dwayne was about.”

“Did you ?”

“Bronwyn, you ain’t the only woman in this family. Everything you feel, I’ve felt. Everything that you wanted, I’ve wanted. You think I don’t know the appeal of someone like Dwayne? You think I didn’t have someone like that when I was younger? I’ve been everywhere you have, girl. On my knees, on my back. And nobody had to force me there, I enjoyed it.” Her eyes grew shiny and her words harsh. “I laughed at your daddy back then, wanting me to settle down and raise a family. I laughed at the First Daughters telling me he was the right man for me. How could any man so goddamned dull compete with the boys who’d take you off into the woods and show you the hum and the shiver?”

Bronwyn could hardly breathe. Who was this woman? “Holy shit, Mom,” was all she could say.

“And here you are. It’s like looking in a mirror some days, Bronwyn, and seeing myself twenty-five years ago. And you know what? I hate it. I don’t want to know about the boys you chase, and especially the ones you catch. I don’t want to imagine you with them, and you know why? Because when I’m lying awake at night staring at the ceiling, it makes me jealous. I’ll never feel that way again, and some days it feels like I’ve already died.”

She stood, went to the sink, and twisted the cold water tap. The running water covered any other sounds she made.

Bronwyn stood and put her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Mom, I—”

“Go away, Bronwyn,” Chloe said.

Bronwyn felt the breath tight in her chest. “I don’t want you to die, Mom.”

Chloe said nothing.

Bronwyn’s vision grew misty. “You still have to teach me your song.”

Still nothing.

“All right. I’ll be around when you’re ready.” She turned and went back down the hall to her room.

When she heard the door close, Chloe splashed cold water on her face and turned off the tap. Her eye fell on two pictures hanging on the wall beside the front door. One showed Bronwyn in her uniform, fresh out of basic, stern and straight and with her natural fire tamped down by military brainwashing. The other showed Bronwyn and Kell, with baby Aiden in Kell’s lap. Bronwyn had her older brother in a headlock and he was trying to resist and keep his smile at the same time. It showed their dynamic perfectly, which is why Chloe loved it.

She also hated it. Those three children represented the loss of her freedom and tied her to a man she dearly loved but who seldom excited her to a frenzy anymore. She felt a jolt deep inside at the memory of a young dark-haired brute of a man, her own Dwayne Gitterman, so handsome and masculine that just the rumble of his voice saying her name could make her knees wobble. But he was long gone, and she was no longer that girl. How had she allowed that to happen?

And now the threat of death hung over her. Signs that could be ignored individually, together hinted at an undeniable fate, and it took all her strength to pretend she wasn’t scared.

She took off the baseball cap and shook her hair free. This was not the way to think, not the song she needed to sing. Deacon was the best thing that ever happened to her, and none of her children had asked to be born to her. They all deserved better than a mother who despised their existence. Especially Bronwyn, her baby girl, who’d endured such unimaginable torments. She suddenly realized that perhaps Bronwyn’s selfishness as a child hadn’t been an anomaly after all; maybe she actually had gotten it from Chloe. Only a selfish, bitter woman would’ve said the things she’d just told her daughter.

She closed her eyes. There was no time for bitterness, or selfishness. It was time for her to be strong, to be a true First Daughter.

She went to find her autoharp.

Susie Swayback looked across the plate of blueberry pancakes at her husband. It wasn’t her imagination: there really was something different about him, a change that made him somehow more attractive and at the same time disconcerted her. She couldn’t define it exactly, but his amorous attentions had certainly improved and she wasn’t about to complain about that. She said playfully, “What are you thinking so hard about?”

Don blinked back to the moment. He’d been staring past his own reflection in the window, out into the twilight. He watched the treetops wave in the wind, and the sight mesmerized him. It was almost like a song he couldn’t quite recall, hovering just beyond his consciousness. He’d experienced that a lot lately. He smiled and said, “Sorry. Just zoning out.”