Motherless Child Page 8

  “Do they have diners there?” Sophie asked. “Or a Waffle House?”

  “You actually want…?” Natalie started to ask, turning in her seat, and the rest of the question died on her lips. She stared at her friend. Felt her thoughts scatter once more. “Oh,” she said.

  “Sooner or later,” Sophie whispered. “We’re going to have to. Know what I mean?”

  Natalie shook her head. Shook it again, harder. “I have a better idea.”

  Five minutes later, she’d parked the GTO in an empty lot half a block from the St. Marys River. “Come on,” she said, and got out. The wind surprised her, whipping in off the Cumberland Sound. On the power lines and in the peach trees, mourning doves cooed.

  “Better!” said Sophie, hopping out behind her. “Perfect. Private. Afterward, we can camp for the day belowdecks in an empty boat and—”

  “Shut up.” Natalie stalked out onto the pier, banging her feet down on the boards to feel them rock underneath her.

  That worked exactly as she’d intended. Within seconds, a stubbly, hungover sea bum stumbled out onto the deck of his little tour boat, greeting them with a, “What the hell’s the racket…” before he got his eyes all the way open and saw them. Natalie stopped, and Sophie beside her. The man somehow staggered without moving his feet, like a wind-whipped shore tree. Then he made one more sound. A surprisingly pretty one. Gentle little whimper.

  “He feels it in his fingers,” Sophie hummed.

  For the first time all night, Natalie let herself laugh. “He feels it in his toes.”

  “Do…” the man tried, and seemed surprised to find his voice still working. He had nice, ripply arms and skin just starting to crack under the three-day stubble and caking of salt spray. He hadn’t been doing this long, Natalie decided. A second career, after losing his wife, maybe. There was hope left for him. If there were days left for him.

  Sophie glanced back toward town, the buildings and streetlights depthless in the pre-dawn gray. “There’s absolutely no one watching,” she said, and looked at Natalie and shivered. From expectation. From nervousness. From regret. How did Natalie know? Because she’d always known Sophie. But more, now, because what else could Sophie be feeling?

  Natalie caught her friend’s eyes again. Tasted her own hunger again. And shook her head. Just once.

  “No?” said Sophie.

  “Not yet.” Then she turned to the sea dude. “Take us to the island. To Cumberland.”

  “Um. Nat?” said Sophie.

  Somewhere back behind his frozen, staring eyes, good only for lapping at the sight of the women before him now, the sea dude found a part of his brain. “Don’t … don’t open for business until nine.”

  “But you’ll take us now.”

  The man’s smile was too weak to be wolfish. Too tentative. As though he couldn’t believe his good fortune. Didn’t believe in good fortune, ever.

  Keep smiling like that, Natalie thought. It just might keep you alive.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Or we could take him now,” Sophie whispered. Natalie pushed her onto the boat deck.

  As the sea dude stumbled up to his driving cabin and started the engines, Sophie tugged Natalie’s sleeve.

  “I said no,” Natalie warned.

  “Yeah, and I said, ‘What time is it?’” Sophie gestured overhead at the sky. The pinkness not streaking it—not yet—but seeping through. Blood under skin.

  Instead of answering, Natalie pulled a tarp out of an open locker at the stern of the little cruiser, slung it over her head, held it up for Sophie to join her. Together, they huddled, the tarp whipping against them as the boat chugged down the slips toward open water and the mainland receded behind them. A sudden urge to jump ship, swim madly for land, haul herself out of the river, and break straight for home almost yanked Natalie to her feet.

  “Hey,” Sophie said, panic surfacing suddenly in her voice. “Cumberland. I’ve read about Cumberland. There’s no … there aren’t any buildings there, Natalie. There’s no shelter. There’s nothing. You’re taking us out there to die.”

  “I’m taking us out there to sleep.”

  “You mean ‘die.’ I know you. I won’t go.” Sophie started to stand. It startled Natalie—terrified and also amused her—to realize that Sophie was serious. “You can do what you want, Nat. That’s the one place I won’t go with you. I don’t want to die.”

  Natalie just held her friend’s wrist. Tightly. “Too late,” she murmured.

  Sophie stared at her. After a surprisingly long while, when the other boats had fallen away behind them and the mainland had blurred into the shadows, she settled back down again.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I guess that’s true.” And then, “You’re not really taking us to die. Are you?”

  “To sleep,” Natalie said.

  “Just sleep?”

  “And think. And hear alligators bellow. Ever heard an alligator bellow? It’s better…” And she stopped. Astonished. Now she was crying. “It’s better than the Whistler’s whistle.”

  Another long while passed before Sophie shrugged and laid her head against Natalie’s shoulder, shivering in the morning chill. “Okay,” she said. “Cool.”

  At the island, they leapt together onto the pier before the sea dude even got his ropes uncoiled and sprinted for the trees. Behind them, Natalie could hear the sea dude calling once, the call not angry, not even surprised, but full of longing. Like birdsong. The sound almost made her turn. But then she sensed the sun, just rising off the surface of the water, spreading its great, orange wings.

  “Come on!” Sophie shouted, laughing, now, and then they were laughing together, rocketing up the hill into the woods, which welcomed them with its prickle arms. They crunched through the fallen needles and leaves while the shadows closed behind them.

  The place Natalie had in mind proved easy to find, less than a mile from the boat landing, right on the main trail. There, just as she remembered, the woods cleared and they came to the ruins of the summer mansion the Carnegies had built and then abandoned after the wedding of their daughter, in the wake of the stock market crash. In the shade of the live oaks, as sunlight slid across the grass and over the tumbles of crumbled white brick and into the algae-covered pool, Sophie and Natalie crouched, quiet, leaning together. Snorting in the foliage behind them startled Sophie, but Natalie held her still. A few moments later, three white horses, their hides bramble scratched and flea-bitten, their hooves high and hard, stepped into the clearing, shuddered together as the light hit them, and then went still, like statues that had come to life in the night and then resumed their places for the coming day. Later, having retreated a little farther into the woods in case any other visitors came along, Sophie and Natalie saw the leaves around the nearest horse’s hooves hump up, as though waves had formed there. Again Sophie spooked, and again Natalie quieted her.

  “Armadillos,” she whispered.

  “Aww,” Sophie whispered back, and leaned forward, almost to the edge of the light. “Here little guys. Want some gum?”

  Their silvery backs winked amid the leaves as a little family of them made their way across the overgrown lawn and around the other side of the roof-less main hall of the mansion.

  “It’s like The Wind in the Willows,” Sophie whispered.

  “Yeah, but then that would make us…”

  “Weasels!” said Sophie. “Nifty.”

  “We can’t stay here, Sophie. People come here all the time. Day tourists.”

  Way back in the oaks, where the leaves got dense again and the shadows heavy and thick, they found a gazebo with its latticed sides collapsed but its columns and domed roof intact. They curled themselves in a corner, and Natalie drew the tarp she’d stolen from the boat over both of them.

  “I don’t think anyone will come here, do you?” she said, feeling the tarp warming, a little. Nowhere near enough to keep either her or Sophie from shivering.

  “Even if they do, they won’t l
ift this tarp,” said Sophie.

  “Unless they do,” said Natalie.

  Sophie turned her head, grabbing Natalie’s eyes. “Unless they do.”

  A long time later, when both of them had rolled around on the hard, cracked ground and neither of them had slept—do we ever need sleep? Would it come? The Whistler hadn’t said one way or the other—Sophie propped up on her elbow.

  “Natalie. We have to pick someone.”

  “I know, Sophie.”

  “We have to.”

  “I said I know.”

  “He said if we didn’t, instinct would take over, right? And then we’ll just do it. To whoever happens across our path. And that’s not right. Is it?”

  “Lie down. What if someone’s coming?” Natalie murmured, through the crimping in her stomach. The tickle in her parched, dry throat, that water would not ease.

  “I miss my Roo,” Sophie whimpered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Natalie,” said Sophie, after a pause that might have lasted hours, as her freezing fingers laced into her friend’s. “I’m so hungry.” Then she squeezed, hard.

  And Natalie squeezed back and closed her eyes. Which were completely dry, now.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  10

  He had the air in his lungs and the rhythm in his legs and his lips puckered and he was just leaning back to kiss the sky once more when he realized he was going to kill Mother. Really kill her. Tonight. Before he ate.

  But after the set. The whistle was in his throat, roaring toward the open air, and he couldn’t have stopped it if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to. That first shriek shocked even him, as it often did, and he felt himself soar up behind it, straight out of his dead-leaf skin. Up and up, until it really did seem he could look down from way above the stage, straight through the too-low ceiling of this cramped little club that could never contain him, through clouds that couldn’t hold him, either, and see those pathetic bodies below, their faces turned up, hands frozen as if they weren’t sure whether to throw them over their ears or up in the air. As if they really believed they could block his whistle out. Even the band he’d joined for the night seemed to fall away, still spurting noise, spent stages of the rocket he’d used to catapult himself free.

  And then he swooped back down. Rode the rhythm right back into his rib cage, right there among all those watchers, so he could feel their shudders as the whistle went in, catch their breaths in the hairs of his arms. Kneeling at the foot of the stage, he opened up a staccato gunfire burst and watched the whole front row rock back, then fall forward as he sucked them in. Every single one of them with eyes open and on him, mouths, too, half-screaming, half-begging. Offering themselves to him, because the call was irresistible despite being recognizable. They were moths who knew what the light was, knew what it would do to them. And came anyway.

  Which was what made Whistling to them so addictive.

  And so he gave them just a taste of what they craved. Let the Whistle just glide, first, a little ghost-caress down the pores of their skin. There you go, little moths. One silky-soft brush of the end your whole being longs for, races toward, except the part that wakes.

  Leaving the club proved difficult. They kept screaming for more, not just the audience but the band, too, and one particularly alluring boy down front laid a paper orchid he’d fashioned out of a napkin on the lip of the stage. Such a brave, bold thing to do, for a boy in these parts. Any other Feeding time and the Whistler would have knelt immediately, clutched such a present to his chest, led the supplicant to a quiet corner, and given what was asked. It was what he lived for, after all. To Whistle. To set them free. To promise and then to deliver.

  But if he fed, he knew, he’d be slower. Just that little bit less desperate. And that wouldn’t do. Not with Mother. Especially since Mother already knew he was coming. Had to. Was too cagy and savage a predator not to.

  And yet, Mother believed she still had time. Because the Whistler had believed she did, too, until just a few moments ago. And that was all the advantage he needed, as long as he played smart. And stayed Hungry.

  With a glance over his shoulder, one last locking of eyes with the orchid boy—so the boy would know just how sorry the Whistler was to be leaving, and so the boy’s heart would break—the Whistler slipped out the back of the club, across the parking lot, and away into the fetid Mississippi night.

  It took some time to walk back to the motel, and he’d even lingered longer in the club than he realized. Because of the orchid boy, and because he was Hungry. And because the thought of what he was about to do whipsawed through him like not even music had in such a long, long time. Was this grief? he wondered. Fear of change?

  Or was it love? For his Destiny? My God, was this love? Well, wait right where you are, Destiny, he thought, and started to hum. Wherever you are. I’ll be back in the time it takes to break a heart. Nothing you can do to make me turn around.

  Across the empty highway from his hotel, in a shadowy stand of longleaf pines, the Whistler paused, just for a moment. Glancing up, he was astonished to see the faintest flush of pink at the very edge of the horizon, far out across the flats that fanned north from this place toward the Delta. How long, he wondered, since he’d come this close to daylight? Since he’d so much as dreamed the world through which the waking walked? Cautiously, he stretched out his arm, let the dawn coil, sleepily, around his skin. Immediately the light penetrated, like poison sumac, and he felt the itch roar all the way up into his shoulder.

  Good night, Mother, he thought to himself, said to himself. And smiled, though he also did feel some sadness. At least, it seemed to him like sadness might have felt. Hello, Darkness. Old Friend. And hello, Destiny, out there somewhere, darting around in the last of the night like a newborn firefly, desperate and wild. Shooting off sparks. The way Mother told him he had, once.

  Ducking his head, he scuttled across the roadway into the motel lot. Up the back stairs to the room Mother had rented them. Where she’d already be sleeping. Her last sleep.

  He didn’t wait. Didn’t think. He threw open the door and leapt.

  He knew, even before he landed, even as his teeth tore a throat-sized gash in the pillow and his fingers ripped the heart out of the mattress, that he was too late. And for one astonishing, mesmerizing second, for the first time in so very, very long, he felt himself freeze, his neck stretch helplessly into the dark, exposing itself even as his spine attempted to accordion his whole body shut while his brain fired conflicting impulses to his locked limbs to jump, run, duck, flee, scream. He was wildebeest again. Lion no longer. Vulnerable. Prey.

  It felt fantastic.

  Then the rest of the signals reached his brain. The empty air. The motion-less shadows.

  She wasn’t here. She was gone. Mother was gone. He saw the note moments later, laid square on the table, held in place by the Gideon Bible. A last little joke.

  Better hope you find her first, the note read. Although even that won’t help you. Or her.

  With a growl that was at least half smile, the Whistler leapt back toward the open door but stopped on the threshold. It had been too long since he’d touched the sun. It wouldn’t kill him, he knew. But it would hurt. And he was out of practice with hurting.

  Of course, so was Mother. So her head start wouldn’t amount to much. With half a dozen songs rising to his lips and his ears wide-open to the world, he eased the door closed, sank down under the drawn curtains, and crouched against the radiator. Someday soon, he thought. Whistled. To his Destiny, to Mother, he wasn’t even sure which excited him more at that moment. It didn’t matter, because he’d see them both. Be with them both. Someday.

  Soon.

  11

  “Take the goddamn gun out of your mouth and give me a Juicy Fruit,” Natalie snapped, jerking the wheel and sending the GTO skidding through yet another blind curve.

  Sophie leaned back in her seat with the barrel of the gun on her tongue and the sea wind whipping t
hrough her hair. Another endless stretch of straight, 3 a.m. road unspooled in front of them, and the car’s headlights skimmed over its surface and into the surrounding pines like skipped stones. This evening, on the last ferry back from Cumberland, Natalie had felt the dry scratch of thirst in her throat catch and spread, until the entire cavern of her mouth seemed ablaze. Only the emptiness in her chest could distract her from the sensation. And only one person on Earth could have filled that.

  And that one was safe with his grandmother, now. Somewhere gone.

  “I thought you couldn’t taste Juicy Fruit,” Sophie mumbled around the gun. “Thought you didn’t like that taste.”

  “Take the goddamn gun out of your mouth,” Natalie snapped, and caught a glimpse of her own face in the rearview mirror. No paler or harder than usual. No more or less pretty, as far as she could tell. Just her face, with slack skin, empty eyes. And black, black windblown hair. Has my hair always been that black?

  Out of the corner of her eye, Natalie saw Sophie give the nozzle of the gun an obscene little tongue-flick before dropping it to her lap.

  “Better?” she asked. “Madame Alligator-bellow?”

  “Juicy Fruit,” said Natalie, clenching her teeth to keep from roaring.

  Patting her hand around the glove box, Sophie found one last stick of gum curled into its foil wrapper like a dead caterpillar. She held it toward Natalie. “Ugh. Even touching it gives me the wallies, now.”

  “This from the woman last seen sucking a gun barrel.” Natalie glanced down to unwrap the gum, and the car swerved onto the gravel shoulder before she caught the wheel with her knees.

  “Watch your driving,” Sophie said.

  “So I can see the nothing when we hit it, you mean? Where the hell are we?”

  “Natalie, seriously. Given that we’re apparently going to be around for a long, long while, I’d like to have the use of my limbs. So I can run to my Roo, when you finally cave and take us home.”

  Wrenching the wheel to the right, Natalie turned the car onto a dirt trail she’d barely registered as being there, and they bumped down it half a mile or more until the pines fell away. In front of them, three sand dunes humped out of the ground like whales surfacing. Natalie braked to a stop and shut off the car. For a while, they sat. In Natalie’s throat, thirst crawled like a living thing. She half-believed she could hear her gums drying, cracking, like drywall flaking away. She held the wheel and tried to think of a song and not of Eddie.