Motherless Child Page 3

  And that’s when she knew. Understood almost everything, even before she glanced over Sophie’s shoulder out the window and saw the black Sierra in the lot, parked lengthwise across the handicapped spots right in front of the door. The squat African-American woman standing with her arms folded beside the open door of the cab, and beside her the Whistler, all knees and elbows with his work shirt untucked and his chin on his chest and that sombrero over his face so that only his bottom lip was visible. His stance made him look heeled, obedient, like some scrawny Black Mouth Cur.

  Natalie froze, tingling. Her tears damming themselves, now, as the shutters dropped down behind her eyes. Her mother had taught her this trick. Or instilled it, by osmosis. She was amazed to find it still worked. Wiping once at her face, she drew her apron over her head. They all noticed, everyone in the restaurant except Sophie, because they were all watching. Natalie started past her friend for the door. Her body seemed to settle, steel itself under her skin. Her shoulders drew back.

  The father in the booth was the one who finally went past staring, wolf-whistled, and grabbed right up under her skirt as she passed. Natalie broke his nose with one savage, sideways punch. So easy, like smashing a Frosted Mini-Wheat. The secret—as she’d learn later—turned out not to be any newfound strength or power but the spell she cast. The way the sight of her gripped people, got in their muscles and synapses, prevented them from defending or even reacting.

  As she pushed out into the night, she realized she even knew what the whistling in her ears was. Not cicadas. Not power lines. Not the echo of the Whistler’s breath in her ears. Just the sound the world makes rushing through a pipe or pooling in a cistern. Whipping through a dead place, with neither heartbeat nor blood rush to impede it.

  “He’s got something to tell you,” the squat woman said before Natalie had even reached them, and then climbed into the cab and shut the door.

  The Whistler didn’t look at her right away. He kicked at an invisible pebble, the gesture studied and too slow, like he thought was in a car-hop scene from American Graffiti. As if he might ask her to go steady. His mouth pursed even more than last night, and his dark eyes wide, as though he was nervous, full of regret. And something else. Only much later, with a gurgle of disbelief, did Natalie recognize it as hope.

  She stared for a while at those eyes, passed a cursory glance over his mouth. It exerted no pull, tonight. It wouldn’t, she thought, even if he whistled. Because I am no longer capable of being pulled? A tremble rippled through her, and the tears rose again, and Natalie battled them back.

  “Go on,” she said. “Say what you’re going to.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the Whistler, sounding plenty sincere. And then he told her. And then the squat woman got out, and shoved him back in the cab of the truck, and told her some more.

  When they were done and the Sierra had gone, Natalie let herself stand in the empty lot for one long moment. The light behind her almost warm on her back. And nothing else warm, anywhere.

  Eventually, she reentered the Waffle House, balling her apron and dropping it to the floor like shed skin. “Benny,” she called over the jukebox racket and the rumble of ordinary, hopeless every-night conversation, “I quit. Sorry.” As she passed the booth with the family, Jerry Lee urged her to grab the bull by the horns. So she grabbed Sophie by the shirt collar and yanked her off the father whose nose Natalie had broken.

  “What?” Sophie chirped. “I was cleaning him up.”

  “By climbing him?”

  “You broke his nose.”

  “You were suffocating him,” Natalie said, nodding toward the smear of blood across the rim of Sophie’s cleavage. Her Roo had shifted around to her back, still somehow sleeping through it all. The father, dazed, tipped sideways onto the shoulder of his own son. His wife sat blank across the table, staring at her husband in astonishment, not sympathy. Certainly not understanding.

  It’s not his fault, Natalie wanted to tell her. Tingling again. That whistling, that would never stop, ever, threatening to drown out every other sound. Not my fault, either. She watched the father stir. Seem to realize his nose hurt, raise his fingers to his face. But they stopped at his lips. Where Sophie had kissed him.

  With a snarl, Natalie dragged Sophie out the door into the dark. “Hurry up,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat of the Kia and beating repeatedly on the French fry–greased dashboard until Sophie finished locking her son into his seat.

  “What’s your damage?” Sophie snapped. But she knew Natalie better than to wait.

  “What did you just do, Sophie? What were you doing with that guy?”

  “What? What guy? That dad? He was hot. Sort of. I guess. I don’t know, I just kind of…” She looked at Natalie. Looked startled, at last.

  “Take me home. Right now.”

  “What’s happening, Natalie?”

  “Take me home. Tell you later.”

  Sophie blinked once. Swung around, checked her son in his car seat. Then, finally, she keyed the ignition and drove them back to Honeycomb Corner.

  “Don’t move,” Natalie snapped when they’d pulled up in front of her mother’s dark trailer. She got out, stalked around the Kia, opened the backseat door, and had Roo out of his straps before Sophie realized what was happening.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Natalie whirled. Sophie’s son squirming once in his blanket in her arms. Little coil of heat. “Say good-bye,” Natalie said.

  Sophie stared. Teared up. Started to get out.

  “Stay there,” Natalie hissed.

  Sophie hesitated, half-in half-out of the Kia. Tears finally overflowing, spilling down her face. “Nat?” she said. So small.

  Inside, Natalie laid the boy next to Eddie in the bassinet. Both of them squirming now, settling into each other. Wolf-pups in a den. While their moms go hunting, she thought, growled the thought down, went into her mother’s room, dropped her hands on either side of her mother, and woke her up.

  “Don’t say anything,” she said, staring hard down into Jess’s still, silent face. The eyes already open, sharp, quiet. She just lay there, in that stupid flowered bathing cap she always wore to sleep in, because she said she hated her hair tickling. “Mom. Just listen.”

  Her mother stared back. Not scared. Not anything she was going to reveal yet. Still and always the single smartest living thing Natalie had ever known.

  “Get out of Charlotte,” Natalie said. “Tomorrow. Take them both. Eddie and Roo. Leave no trace. Do you understand? No trace.”

  No reaction.

  “Mom. Are you listening?”

  Stupid question. She’d never once stopped listening, all Natalie’s life.

  “I’m sorry,” Natalie said, let the shutters behind her eyes crack open just once, then slammed them shut again. “No trace. I’m not planning to come looking. Which may not mean I won’t. But please. Mom. Whatever you do … don’t let me find you.”

  Sophie was out of the car when Natalie emerged from the trailer. The empty sling hung like a burst cocoon husk from her shoulders. She was crying but not asking. Starting to know. Natalie moved toward her, stopped in the dirt, under the crescent moon, and stared at the Kia. Then she glanced toward the edge of the lot, where the dark-chocolate GTO she’d spent five years saving for and two rebuilding sat against the fence, like a stallion in its paddock, just waiting.

  “Come on,” Natalie said. “We’re taking my car.”

  4

  He made sure, the next night, while Mother drove due south down the 55 and wouldn’t stop and wouldn’t even turn on the radio, to stay curled against the door, sombrero tilted down, arms wrapped tight to himself. Poor little tomcat. That was him.

  “Why would you do that?” she kept asking, and he kept not answering, tucking his chin down tighter so she couldn’t see his face. “Why? All these years and years—how many years?—and you’ve never once done it.”

  “Never even tried,” he murmured.

 
; “I didn’t even know you knew how.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He could feel her stare through the tilted-down hat-brim, and from somewhere way down in the oldest nuclei of his oldest cells he felt a delicious, discomforting flicker. Not fear of her. But memory of fear of her. From the years right after she’d found him.

  “Then how?”

  “How did you?” he purred, quietly-quietly, just so. And the question quieted her for a bit. Oh, yes, it did. Because what could she say? Admit how much she’d needed him? Deny it, and set him free? As if he weren’t free already. As if both of them didn’t already know it.

  What she did say, eventually, was, “I’m calling Sally.”

  The Whistler snorted. Couldn’t help it. “She’ll give you some numbers. Those will help.”

  “That woman knows more about you—about all of us—than you ever will. She gave us a Way. Asked nothing in return, nothing, not even—”

  “When did we last see her, again?” said the Whistler. Yawning. Bored. “Remind me when that was?”

  Five years ago? Ten? The years and years like miles and miles, road and road, looping and doubling and spooling away into years and miles and roads and years.

  “So,” he said. “Whatever her Way is, it’s clearly been critical for us. Clearly been—”

  “Really,” Mother cooed. In a new voice. Or an old one. Flirty-hurt one. From when she used to sing with him. Tease and taunt him. Need him. Which meant she still did, or thought she did, and the Whistler shuddered, not even sure which idea was more tantalizing. More tasty. “Baby,” she said. “How’d you make it happen?”

  He shrugged. Yawned again. Nice and slow. “I think I just … wanted to.”

  A jerk of the wheel, a spatter of gravel and pebbles, and the truck ground to a stop on a lightless stretch of shoulder. Flat, empty highway in both directions. Tobacco fields to either side, their wrinkled leaves lolling like dry tongues, stretching for the moonlight. Cicadas whistling.

  “Why?” Mother said again.

  He looked up, then. Let her see his face. “Because she’s my Destiny,” he said, and watched Mother draw back. He enjoyed that.

  “I am your destiny. I’ve kept you safe, all these years. And well fed.”

  “I think…” the Whistler said, and pursed his lips to Whistle, and decided that was rude. Unnecessarily cruel. Maybe just a bit dangerous, which made him want to start again. But he didn’t. “I think I have been yours. Isn’t that right, Mother?”

  Instead of answering, Mother drew herself up. Still so lithe when she rose like that. Beautiful black mamba. So fast. Taller, suddenly, than even he expected, and he knew every inch of her, every gesture. “And if you’re right?” she murmured. “What do you imagine that changes?”

  He didn’t answer. Wasn’t ready to, not quite yet. So he gazed out across the fields, feeling the pull of his Destiny. Relishing that. Thinking of her eyes staring up at him as he fed on her, reached for her, across the moat of her own blood. So nearly his, she was. Though not quite yet. Not until she chose, not that she’d have a choice. Not until she came to him. “It’s what you imagine that’s going to matter,” he said. “That’s going to be the determiner. Don’t you think?”

  “Eighty years,” Mother hissed. “Eighty years. I’d call that destiny. Both of ours. Wouldn’t you? In fact, we’ve been all sorts of people’s destinies. You and me.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Like cancer.”

  “Like a car crash,” Mother agreed, right in rhythm, reciting the catechism Aunt Sally had taught them. Taught them all: Trust the numbers. Trust the Policy. Choose at random. Disappear.

  “Except cancers don’t actually choose, Mother. And they don’t have Destinies.”

  “They also—”

  “And they can’t fall in love,” he said.

  Mother couldn’t have choked to more satisfying silence if he’d thrown his hands around her neck and wrung it. From down in his lungs, in the dead reservoir under his heart, he could feel his whistle rising again.

  “Love,” Mother said, as though pushing out a peach pit. Then, with more force, “Love!”

  “You haven’t been with her,” he said. “You don’t know her.”

  “I know you.” And then—for the first time in so very long—she surprised him. Reached across and touched his shoulder. Then his face. “We’ve gotten along. We really have.”

  “Mother. This has nothing to do with you. It’s love.”

  “All this roaming we’ve done.”

  Two thousand miles we roamed. Just to make this truck our home. He hummed in his head all the way to the whistling part. The greatest whistling part—the whistle of the singer’s own death coming, three days after he recorded it—but he stopped his lips from pursing, for just a little longer. Like a lover, teasing the song. Teasing himself. Such total, exquisite agony. He turned, and he and Mother looked at each other. Not-mother, not-son.

  “Looks like nothing’s going to change,” he said.

  “Stop it.”

  “Can’t do what my Mother tells me to do.”

  “You really think you can have love, and still eat? You think you even remember what love feels like, assuming you ever felt it?”

  So badly, the Whistler wanted to whistle. To call his Destiny to him. Instead, he shrugged. “They eat.”He gestured out the window into the world.

  Abruptly Mother’s face twisted into its snaky smile. “So if you love her … why did you lie to her?”

  The question caught him off guard. He hadn’t even realized she’d listened when he’d talked to his Destiny, though of course she would have. He’d been too hypnotized by his Destiny’s face to care. Her furious but tear-less eyes in the yellow Waffle House light. Dark, sweat-damped hair on her neck, and the night threading through her, knitting her to it.

  “Why?” Mother pressed, sensing, unerringly, his momentary weakness. “Why not tell her what’s really going to happen? If you love her. If you’re planning to travel together. Forever.”

  For just a moment, the Whistler forgot music. Forgot his Hunger, which was all but overpowering, now, because he hadn’t eaten enough, hadn’t been able to, not if he wanted to save his Destiny. Forgot the rules of the game every conversation with Mother became, catch-and-parry. He simply considered the question she’d asked.

  Eventually, he sighed. “I’m not sure. Instinct, I think. She’s … strong, my Destiny. Stubborn. Better to let her fend for herself, for a little while. Discover for herself. That way—”

  “Destiny,” Mother snorted. “Is that why you changed her friend, too? The little blonde?”

  Now the Whistler did smile. And he finally let out his first, long, piercing whistle of the night. She’d had him off-balance for a second. Uncertain. Until she’d accidentally reminded him of exactly how strong his love for his Destiny was.

  “The blonde is to keep her company,” he said, silencing Mother yet again. “For a little while. So that she’s not lonely. Or else the energy just spilled over. Or maybe it was my Destiny’s Need, not mine at all. You have no idea how strong she is, Mother. The day will come when she knows, when she’s ready. And sooner than you think. Sooner than you think.”

  Once more, Mother snake-swayed in her seat. Watched, while he sat, whistling. Two cobras, their dance instinctive, automatic. Mating, killing, same difference.

  “What if she doesn’t Finish?” Mother said. The Whistler didn’t answer, and she leaned forward. Smiling, all teeth. “What if she won’t? She’s strong, your Destiny. You said it yourself.” When he still didn’t answer, she let her smile slip. “Are you Hungry?”

  And right at that moment, the way it happened sometimes—surprisingly often, almost often enough to convince him that Aunt Sally was right, after all, that he and Mother’s existence really did follow a trajectory, a logic if not a Destiny—two hitchhikers appeared in the truck’s headlight beams. The first was a prickle-faced, sandy-haired youth, maybe twenty-five, with a suitcase in one
hand and the other in his coat pocket, curled around whatever he had that he thought was going to protect him. The girl beside him looked much younger. Too young, really. When they could, he and Mother generally avoided the young ones.

  Poor little girl. Hair like frayed yellow yarn, eyes glassy in the headlights, dead as headlights. The Whistler sat up straight. Whistled, long and sad, while the prickle-faced youth cautiously stepped around the hood of the truck, hand coming out of his pocket to lock like a handcuff around the girl’s resistance-less wrist.

  I will liberate you first, the Whistler thought, watching the girl. I will sing you to sleep.

  “Will she do?” Mother asked, softly.

  “Oh, yes,” the Whistler breathed.

  In response, Mother gunned the engine and sent the truck hurtling past the diving hitchhikers and down the highway. And in spite of himself, the Whistler twisted around, looked back to watch them recede, vanish in the thin night mist.

  Beside him, Mother let out a low, humorless laugh. But she didn’t turn, the Whistler noticed. Wouldn’t quite look at him. Which meant that she knew—though she wouldn’t admit it, not yet—that she should probably be afraid.

  Smiling, the Whistler settled back in the passenger seat, tucked his arms against the Hunger-knot in his guts, closed his eyes, conjured up his Destiny’s face. And hummed.

  5

  On the first night, they just drove. East, initially, almost all the way to the edge of the state, and Natalie considered following the 64 right off the edge of the continent, out to the Outer Banks, where she’d never been, or been once, but not so she could remember. When she was newly born. When her father was alive and he and her mother had taken her places. When she was a baby.

  When I was a baby.

  “We have to go back,” she announced, turned the GTO off the freeway, hung a left, then floored the gas and sped right past the on-ramp that would have returned them to Charlotte. Instead, she drove into the empty, grassy hills. Into nowhere.