Four and Twenty Blackbirds

"Yes, she told me."

She closed her eyes again. "People used to frown on me because I never married or had children, but I've seen what mothers do, and I want no part of it. Avery, he . . . Avery might not have been so bad if his mother hadn't been a witch. She did it to him. She made him what he was because she hated us, and she wanted him to hate us too. She wanted him to hurt us, because she hadn't been able to. She made him into a monster. A sorko. That's what they called him. It's what he called himself, too. Wore it like a badge of honor. Lord, but he hated us all, and she's the one who inspired it."

Can't hardly blame her, I thought, but I kept it to myself. "And Malachi's mother wasn't any better. You've seen a lot of bad mothering in your time. I don't guess I blame you for not caring to have offspring."

"Don't you ever have children either. You've got it too, you know. I can smell it on you."

"Excuse me?"

"I said, girl, I can smell it on you. You're a witch like he was, and his mother."

"I'm certainly not."

"You are. I can smell it. An' I don't need Avery's damned book to divine it. I smelled it on your mother too. All the women in your family, just about. There's a smell to them, and once you've whiffed it, you never mistake it for anything else. Witches, every last one of you."

"Look," I insisted, sitting forward in the chair again. "I don't know the first thing about Wicca, or voodoo, or anything like that. I wasn't even raised with any of the more ordinary kind of churchgoing, so I sure don't know what you're saying."

"I don't mean a religious witch, you silly child. I mean that you've got shining. Everyone knows you talk to ghosts. You and Leslie both. Probably Louise too. All of you. And there's a smell to you. Avery told me, he said, 'You can always know one by her smell.' And boy, was he right."

I tried not to sound too interested when I pounced on the implications, but it was hard to keep the curiosity out of my voice. "I didn't know you ever actually met Avery. Why don't you tell me about his book. Lulu said something to me once about a book, but I don't remember what it had to do with anything."

She ignored me, or she didn't hear me anymore. "I might think that's why Rachel settled on you so hard. She knew your mother was a witch. And Malachi'd heard about you and the ghosts and he figured the worst. That might be it, right there. It's not such a far jump for a mixed-up head to make. Hey—do you hear him?"

"What?"

"I asked you, 'Do you hear him?' He's coming up now. He'll be here soon."

"Tatie?" I asked, using the title again because I didn't know what else to refer to her by.

Despite her prior admonition, she didn't object.

"Huh?" Her eyes were still closed, as if she were on the very verge of sleep. I'd never reclaimed my chair, but was still standing by my father's photograph. I left it on the shelf and approached her, crouching down almost as close as she'd first come to me. This sad bundle of wrinkles and bones was my only real link to the truth, and she was passing out before my eyes. But there were things I still needed to know. The aerosol smell of her Aqua Net hairspray made my nose itch, but I drew even closer, until my mouth was almost at her ear.

"It's not true, is it?" I asked, balancing on my toes and listening hard.

She sighed and shook her head just slightly. "Sure it's true. He killed them all three, and the baby girl with them. His boy, by one of the other women, that was your granddaddy. That's why there's still this whole line of you, coming after my money. But your other aunt, she's got no children, does she?" Eliza cracked an eye open and stared at me from it.

"No. No children."

"Good. Then you're the last of them."

But she'd answered the wrong question. I asked it more directly while I still had her attention. I wanted to draw my face away from hers but I couldn't. It might have broken the spell, and the right question had not yet been aired.

"Tatie," I tried again, "It isn't true, is it? I'm not Avery, am I?"

Despite my best efforts, my words carried a tinge of fear that made her smile. I loathed myself for requiring this weird, uncomfortable intimacy, but what else was I to do? Lulu said Eliza knew, and I had Eliza talking. She might not be telling me the truth, but she was at least giving me something to chew on.

"Malachi thinks you are," she finally responded.

"What do you think?"

"Doesn't matter. So long as Malachi believes you are. You're the last, and when you're gone . . ." Her words petered away. Her slitted eye closed and she exhaled, long and warm so close to my face. Then she drew in a shallower breath and her body drooped, her head lolling against the chair's winged sides. Her wrist went limp and the remaining gin and water dripped onto the floor.

"Tatie?"

She did not reply.

I stood and stretched, leaning my back to crack the kinks out and returning to the photo. I turned it over and pried the frame loose to remove the picture, fully intending to cut Rachel out of it at a later date. I deserved one picture of my father, didn't I?

When I turned around to leave, Harry was standing in the doorway. He must have seen me take the picture, but he said nothing to indicate that he planned to do anything about it.

I waved at the softly snoring old woman in the chair. "She fell asleep."

Harry nodded. "I'll see to her."

"Hey, Harry?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"There's a cemetery near here, right? A family plot?"

"Leave to your right, out of the driveway. Go up the hill—you can't miss it."

"Thank you, Harry."

"You're welcome, ma'am. Ma'am?"

"Yes?"

"She wasn't too hard on you, was she?"

I grinned, clutching the picture to my chest. "Nothing I couldn't handle."

6

Up the Road a Piece

Maybe the old coot was right. Maybe Malachi wason his way. I went ahead and left her there, sleeping in her oversized chair, but it wasn't because I was afraid of him. I'm afraid of some things—spiders, drowning, needles, and the like. But I'm not afraid of Malachi. He simply isn't intimidating, even with his True Faith to bolster his aggression. He hides behind God and guns, and ineptly at that. It can't have been more than luck that caused him to kill Terry. He was a terrible shot when I was a kid, and I didn't think he'd spent much time practicing his aim in prison.

It must be hard for him. He believed so firmly that he was right, and that his mission was blessed, but he failed at every turn. What did it say about him that he tried so hard? He was either very devout or very stupid, I figured. More likely a sampling of both.

I almost felt like I owed him fear. He'd worked so hard to kill me, the least I could do was be just a tad nervous. But no. I couldn't muster it. The best I could do was summon up a healthy sense of caution, and toss him a minor, grudging respect for his persistence.

Tatie would certainly tell him I'd been to see her, but I hadn't given her any indication of where I might be headed, so it wasn't as if she could point him my way. She might be able to guess about the cemetery because of my questions, but beyond the cemetery, even I didn't know where I was going. I was almost disappointed that my quest had ended so quickly. I hadn't found all my answers, but I had found my father. That was more than I might have expected.

As for Avery and his mysterious book, it might be better to decide that Lulu was right and it didn't matter. Let the dead who can sleep lie undisturbed.

I cast the police a backwards glance on my way out. They did not make any indication that they saw me, cared about me, or intended to pursue me. I half imagined them as uniformed ostriches with their heads in the sand: If we don't see you, you don't see us. I hoped they stayed right where they were and caught my wayward cousin-brother, if only to make a liar out of Eliza.

As for me and the Death Nugget, we headed up the hill in the dark.

The cemetery was on the right, enclosed by a low iron fence with a broken gate. I parked beside it and rummaged around in my trunk until I found the huge flashlight I kept for emergencies or for after-hours excursions.

The gate's lock could have been easily repaired, but I wasn't surprised that no one had bothered. The fence was primarily a boundary marker, altogether too stubby to have prevented anyone over three feet tall from entering; and I didn't suppose anyone was too worried about its residents trying to get out.

The graveyard was dark and silent, and held only twenty or thirty monuments that I could immediately see. Most of these could be summarized as phallic obelisks with Masonic symbols for the men and towering, virginal angels for the women. In a moneyed family grandiose markers were the order of the day; even infants who had died within a day or two of birth were graced with enormous lambs and stone lilies. Everything looked at least a century old, so I followed a gravelly path until I came to some newer, somewhat less gaudy statuary. Here were the more recent graves, with pseudo-modern slabs of granite and slate cut in nearly geometric shapes.

I shined my tube of light on each one, wincing at the reflected glare.

At the end of the row, occupying half of a married couple's headstone, I found Arthur Henson Eller Dufresne. August 3, 1945–January 11, 1979. Beloved father and husband. And lover,I might have added for spite, but I didn't know how true it was to say that Leslie loved him, considering she fled from him the last months of her life. Besides, it seemed unkind to speculate when I considered that half the marker was still blank, waiting for his devoted wife to join him. "Till death do us part" had become "Till death reunites us." Too bad, Rachel. My mother got him first.

I left my light trained on her name. Rachel Bostitch Dufresne. May 23, 1948, and then the anticipatory spot where her demise would be marked. I bet to myself that she wouldn't return to claim Macon as her resting place, not if she'd been gone this long. Poor Arthur. Even after he was dead, the women in his life kept running away from him. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">