Alex Bledsoe - The Hum and the Shiver

“I don’t know,” Bronwyn repeated.

In the twilight, Deacon and Aiden walked down the hill toward the gate. Three vans and a dozen people were still there, their huge lights drawing clouds of eager insects. All the camera lenses swung toward them as they approached, and questions flew at them.

“Is Bronwyn planning to return to the army?”

“Does she remember being shot?”

“Can she tell us how many people she remembers killing?”

Deacon calmly put up his hands. His left one curled his pinkie and ring finger into his palm, making a variation of a peace sign. When the reporters paused to hear his answers, he said, “Y’all just calm down, we brought you some leftover brownies and we’d like to ask you to be a little quieter so Bronwyn can rest. It’s been a heck of a day.”

The bombardment began again instantly, and he simply stood there, hands up, smiling benignly. It took a moment, but one by one, the most persistent of the reporters fell silent, and looked away in something very much like shame. The big lights were switched off, and they were plunged into darkness while their eyes adjusted. The insects attracted to the glow flitted away into the night.

“Thank you,” Deacon said. “Aiden, hand out them goodies, will you?”

Aiden took the pan of brownies to the fence and handed them across the aluminum gate to the reporters. As he did so, he hummed a tune his mother taught him, so softly, none of the reporters had any idea they were even hearing it. The first to sample the brownies responded with an enthusiastic “Mmmm!” and the others quickly followed suit. Once they’d all tasted them, Deacon dropped his left hand and held out his right with the thumb across the palm, as if indicating the number four.

“Hope y’all enjoy those,” he said. “And please, let my daughter get some rest for the next few days. She won’t be hard to find once she gets back on her feet, and if she remembers anything, I’m sure she’ll want to tell about it.”

The reporters all left within fifteen minutes. Many of them felt a combination of sudden, inexplicable guilt at their scavenger-like scrambling after the story; those without the moral capacity for such feelings, and because of that unprotected by the magic in the Tufa song, dealt with more prosaic digestive issues brought on by Chloe’s brownies. Nothing so crude as poison had been used, merely the kind of intent a true Tufa could sing into anything, even cooking.

Chloe helped Bronwyn undress and use the bathroom, then bathed her with a sponge. Finally she helped her into a clean T-shirt with the Tennessee Titans logo across the front. “You’ve put on some weight,” was her mother’s only observation about her daughter’s shattered, stitched, and scarred body.

“Yeah, well, hard to jog when you’ve got this cell phone tower wrapped around your leg,” Bronwyn said as she leaned on Chloe’s shoulder and maneuvered to the bed. She sat heavily, then reclined as her mother carefully positioned her leg. The ceiling above her was comforting and familiar, even with the flag banners dangling from it.

“You’ll be out of that thing in a week, you know,” Chloe said as she adjusted the pillows.

Bronwyn nodded. “I won’t mind, believe me.” She certainly looked forward to seeing the look on the doctors’ faces when they saw how quickly she healed now that she was home.

“Aiden asked if you needed him to sleep on the floor in here. In case you had nightmares.”

Bronwyn smiled. “Yeah, he’s suddenly my bodyguard. Good thing you didn’t bring him up to the hospital.”

Chloe lit a candle on the bedside table. It was homemade, and laced with something that quickly filled the room with a softly pungent aroma. It took Bronwyn a moment to recognize it.

“That’s heather,” she said, frowning. “What’s it for?”

“You’ll have company later,” Chloe said. “A haint.”

Bronwyn sat up straight. She remembered Bliss in town, and the bird tapping at the window. “Now, wait a minute—”

“It is what it is,” Chloe snapped. “Talking to me about it won’t make any difference. Talk to it. ”

“Does it have anything to do with the death omen I saw today?”

“What death omen?” Chloe asked almost mockingly.

Bronwyn knew when her mother was hiding something behind sarcasm, and said, “Bird pecking at the window trying to get in.”

“Birds can get confused just like anything else.”

“Yeah, that’s what Daddy said.”

“He’s a smart man.” The two women looked into each other’s eyes; finally Bronwyn sighed and turned away. Chloe placed the candle on the windowsill. “The candle should draw the haint here shortly.”

Bronwyn flopped back on the pillow. “Not tonight. Hell, Mom, I’m exhausted.”

Chloe chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Reckon you have a point. But you can’t put it off too long. It’s been coming around for a week already.” She blew out the candle and took it with her as she turned off the light and went out the door.

Bronwyn lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. The flag banners rippled slightly in the breeze through the open window. She glanced over and saw the ragged piece of blue glass on the sill, protection against the uninvited. No haint could pass that, even one summoned by the smell of heather. But haints, she knew, had all the time in the world.

Death omens didn’t, though. They appeared only when the end of someone’s life was in the near future. Chloe’s harsh reaction told Bronwyn that this wasn’t the first one, either. The question was always, whom were they meant for?

There was a song, a short little ditty that Tufa children used to make wishes on the night wind, hovering just beyond Bronwyn’s consciousness. If she could’ve called it forth, she would ask the wind for clarity, and for an explanation. She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to bring it forward.

She was asleep within moments.

Craig Chess watched some of the TV vans pull into the Catamount Corner parking lot while the rest continued on out of town. All the motel’s rooms were booked, and Peggy Goins was making a small fortune with her special “media rates.” As Craig sipped his coffee, the reporters rushed up the stairs to their rooms as if their feet were on fire. Some held their stomachs as if they might not make it to the bathroom.

The Fast Grab convenience store was new in town, built on a lot catty-corner across from the motel. Two picnic tables were set into the concrete patio outside. At the moment only Craig sat there, although earlier he’d had the pleasure of hearing two different men on cell phones explain to their wives how nothing was going on with their pretty young interns. He could’ve gone home hours ago, but he just couldn’t tear himself away from the chance to encounter more examples of the worst humanity could offer. A minister, he reasoned, had to know the enemy in order to combat it.

That was the other reason he’d stayed in Needsville long after the parade. He needed to know these people by sight and name if they were ever to trust him. For the last two Saturdays, he’d hung out at the Fast Grab, speaking with the clerks and any willing customers. There had not been many.

He’d known coming into this assignment that he’d been given an almost impossible task: ministering to a people with no interest at all in his faith. It wasn’t missionary work, because missionaries brought other things, food or medicine or money, to use as tangible spiritual bait. Craig could offer the Tufa nothing but his own sincerity.

The last person out of the news vans, a young man with a ponytail and a small bar through his septum, walked over to the store. He was clearly not an on-camera personality, but one of the myriad support staff who made sure the reporters looked their best. He sat down across the table from Craig and said without preliminaries, “Can I ask you something?”