The Hum and the Shiver

28

The car rumbled through the night, traveling up and down the uneven gravel roads far into the hills above Needsville. Terry-Joe—so tense, his chest hurt—skidded and nearly missed curves he normally handled easily. Bronwyn braced herself against the dash and passenger door, ignoring the seat belt.

Occasionally he thought he saw headlights far behind him, and wondered who else would be out at this time of night, on these isolated roads. But the lights always failed to appear when he slowed a bit to let them catch up, so he wrote them off as just other folks going about their own nocturnal business.

Bronwyn said nothing, simply staring ahead into the dark. Once Terry-Joe turned on the radio to break the silence, and she immediately turned it off. He took the hint.

Finally, forty-five minutes after leaving the hospital, he slowed and stopped at the side of a gravel road. The dust from their passage drifted past them and gave the headlight beams sharp outlines in the darkness. Insects almost immediately appeared, drawn from the surrounding forest.

He killed the engine, then the light. The thick old-growth forest blocked out most of the moon’s illumination. The noise of the summer woods quickly filled the silence. He glanced in the mirror, but saw no sign of their intermittent pursuer; perhaps he’d been imagining things.

He nodded at Dwayne’s pickup, its shape barely visible behind some thick bushes. Only reflection from the obsessively polished chrome gave it away. “His truck’s blocking the road. We’ll have to walk.”

“He’ll be drunk off his ass by now,” Bronwyn said with certainty. “Might even be passed out.”

“He’s scared, Bronwyn. He told me about jail once, about some of the things that happened. Stuff he did, stuff that got done to him. He doesn’t want to go back.”

“Should’ve thought of that before he stabbed Kell,” she said coldly.

Terry-Joe turned in the seat to face her in the darkness. “Maybe we should talk to Bliss Overbay or Mandalay Harris or somebody. One Tufa stabbing another might be something they should know about.”

“They know,” she snapped. “They always know. I’m surprised Bliss wasn’t at the hospital before we were. But this has nothing to do with them, this is between Dwayne and me.”

He put his hands on her shoulders. It was the first time he had touched her with any real assertiveness. “Why, Bronwyn?”

“I need to look into his eyes and see what’s there,” she said. “I want to know if the Dwayne I remember ever existed for real, or was just something I made up in my head.” I did love him once, didn’t I? she asked herself.

“He’s just another hillbilly fuckup. Being Tufa doesn’t change that.”

She shrugged out of his grip. “Don’t pretend you know what I’m thinking, Terry-Joe. The only thing you can do is help me, and if you can’t do that, you’d best wait in the car. Which is it?”

He felt his own anger rise, then quickly subside. Wearily he said, “You know which it is.”

“Then let’s get going.”

Dwayne’s truck blocked a wide path that followed the land’s contours. Their eyes had adjusted enough they could see by the patches of intermittent moonlight. Ahead, a dim glow grew stronger as they approached.

They topped a ridge and immediately knew they were in the right place: Nickelback blared out at them from the darkness. “My God,” Bronwyn muttered, “that’s the same shit he was listening to when I left for the army.”

She descended into the gully, no longer needing Terry-Joe’s help. The light from a battery-powered lantern guided her into the clearing, where marijuana plants nearly five feet tall grew packed together in the half acre of open space. The trees around them provided ideal cover, hiding them both from the ground and from overhead, yet still allowing enough sunlight for them to flourish. Within his limited area of expertise, Dwayne was a gardening genius.

He sat in a canvas camp chair, smoking a joint amid a scatter of beer cans. His old CD boom box rested beside his feet. Mosquitoes and midges drawn to the lantern swirled around it. With the light blinding him, he did not notice his visitors until Terry-Joe shut off the music and Bronwyn kicked his boot to break through his daze.

His red, heavy-lidded eyes blinked. Then he snapped wide awake and jumped to his feet. “How the fuck did you find me?” he screeched, his voice panicky. Then he saw Terry-Joe. “Why, you backstabbing little pissant—”

Bronwyn jabbed him in the chest with her finger. “You best stay focused on your immediate problem, fuckhead. You stabbed my brother.”

Dwayne shook his head, tried to back up, but tripped over the chair. “I ain’t going back to jail, Bronwyn. That ain’t happening. I’ll kill so many cops, they’ll have to shoot me down.”

Bronwyn laughed, a sound so cold and heartless, it made Terry-Joe freeze in midstep. “You couldn’t kill anybody, Dwayne. You’ve hurt some people, because behind that Tim McGraw smile you’re stupid and mean. But you’ve never killed anybody.” She dropped her voice so only he could hear. “I have.”

Dwayne scurried around the chair, keeping it between them. “Stay away from me, Bronwyn.”

She rushed forward and shoved him so hard that he tripped over his own feet and landed on his back. He jumped to his feet, glazed eyes blazing, one fist cocked.

Terry-Joe jumped in between them. “Whoa, there, big bro. This won’t help anything.” His voice shook a little.

Dwayne grabbed him by the shirt. “You been bird-dogging after me, you little faggot. That’s why you were sucking up to her asshole brother, wasn’t it?”

“Back off, Dwayne,” Bronwyn said. “This has nothing to do with him.”

Dwayne continued to stare at Terry-Joe. Then slowly he smiled, the smile that caused girls all over the mountains to sigh and drop their panties. “Aw, ain’t no thang, little brother,” he drawled, then with his free hand grabbed Terry-Joe’s genitals and crushed with all his strength. Terry-Joe screamed but could do nothing.

Bronwyn reached past Terry-Joe, shoved two fingers up Dwayne’s nose and pulled as hard as she could. She heard cartilage give way.

“Fuck!” he yelled, and released his brother. Terry-Joe collapsed. Dwayne swung wildly at Bronwyn, and she couldn’t step aside fast enough. His huge fist connected with her side, lifting her feet momentarily off the ground.

Something snapped. They all heard it.

Dwayne stepped back, eyes wide, buzz completely gone.

Bronwyn dropped to her knees. “Oh, shit,” she whispered, gingerly covering her ribs. There was that awful moment of anticipation before the pain hit, when she had time to think, This is really going to hurt. Then it washed over her with an intensity she never imagined. She had no memory of her battlefield injuries, which she rationally assumed must’ve been worse, so the agony ripped through her like an angry cat tearing through tissue paper.

“Goddammit, Dwayne,” Terry-Joe croaked, and crawled to Bronwyn. She coughed, gagged, then spit out a mouthful of blood that hung stringy between her lips and the ground, sparkling in the lantern light.

When she saw the blood, something more intangible also snapped. She glared up at Dwayne with fury that was pure Tufa, and despite the pain keened, “The arms that hold you are not those of love….”

“Oh, fuck this,” Dwayne whispered. That was twice in one night someone had begun singing his dying dirge, and even his gummy brain understood the implications. He turned and ran off into the woods, tearing clumsily through the undergrowth. His footsteps quickly faded, leaving only the sound of labored breathing from the other two.

Bronwyn’s vision blurred, and she felt a chill settle in her body. She knew she was going into shock. “Terry-Joe,” Bronwyn gurgled, trying to stay calm, “I think this might be serious.” Tears of pain trickled down her cheek. “Oh, God…”

Terry-Joe got to his feet despite his throbbing testicles. When she looked up at him, the blood on her mouth shone like black lipstick. She took his hand, nearly pulling him down on top of her. They staggered slowly, leaning together, back up the hill toward the car.

They did not notice Bob Pafford hidden in the shadows just off the trail. When they were out of sight, he emerged, switched on his flashlight, and headed down the gully after Dwayne. His held his cocked gun in his other hand.

Bronwyn had serious trouble breathing by the time Kell’s car left gravel and hit pavement. Terry-Joe floored it across the valley, merged onto the interstate with horn blaring and emergency flashers on, and finally stood on the brakes to leave smoking trails of rubber in front of the emergency room door. He’d managed the whole trip in less than half an hour.

As they drove, Bronwyn rode waves of pain that seemed to incrementally crush her lungs, making each breath harder to draw and impossible to hang on to. She had a sudden epiphany: What if all the death signs had applied to her, not her mother? Everyone assumed that if she’d been marked for death, it would’ve happened in Iraq; but what if the night wind was just waiting for her to return home before snatching her away?

The nurses and orderlies took Bronwyn immediately to triage; they knew who she was, and none of them wanted a hero’s death on their shift. Terry-Joe asked for a bag of ice, which he applied to his crotch with an utter lack of self-consciousness. He settled into another of the waiting room’s plastic chairs and waited for his crushed balls to grow numb.

He looked up as Craig Chess suddenly came out of the examination area, saw him, and did a double take. The minister looked worried and grim. “Terry-Joe, right? Didn’t you leave with Bronwyn Hyatt a while back?”

Terry-Joe was too tired and sore to argue. “Yeah.”

Craig looked around. “Where is she?”

Terry-Joe nodded at the double doors that led back to the actual treatment area. “She had an accident. She’s in there.”

“What kind of accident?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

Craig gazed at the doors, then at the entrance. He seemed preoccupied, and made no mention of the ice Terry-Joe held between his legs. At last he said, “Okay, listen. I need your help with something really important. I need you to watch out for her parents. You know them, right?”

“Sure.”

“Well, they’re on their way here. Should get here any minute.”

He nodded. Eventually Kell would’ve had to call them. Now, he thought wryly, they’d get double good news. At least Aiden was too young to also go off and try to seek vengeance. “Okay. I’ll send them back as soon as—”

“No. Please. Keep them here. I’ll keep checking back, okay? Thanks.” Craig turned and went back into the treatment room. Terry-Joe tried to find a more comfortable position, but realized that at the moment there wasn’t one.

Craig quickly found Bronwyn, who lay flat on her back on a stretcher behind a curtain. An IV had been set up, and she had an oxygen tube beneath her nose. “Ms. Hyatt,” he said. “Are you all right?”

Her voice was tight and thin. “Don’t make me laugh, Reverend, it hurts. And for God’s sake, call me Bronwyn.”

There was still dried blood on her lips and chin. He asked, “What happened to you?”

“Cracked a rib, maybe poked a lung. Waiting for the X-rays to see how serious it is.”

“How did you crack a rib in the middle of the night?”

She managed a smile. “I’m the Bronwynator.”

“Excuse me just a second,” he said, and stepped out to check the waiting room. He returned a moment later.

“Where’d you go?” she asked.

“I’m expecting someone,” he said. He touched her hand where it lay on the bed rail. “I sure hope you didn’t do anything too serious.”

She laughed, then winced. “I think, after everything else, I can handle this. It was scary for a bit, though; amazing how you get used to breathing.”

He closed his fingers around hers. The room was chilly, and the warmth of their flesh made both tingle. Their gazes met, and held.

She saw something disturbing in his eyes. “Are you okay, Reverend?”

Before he could answer, they heard a loud, wailing scream of such despair that it seemed to burrow into the hearts of everyone within earshot. It emanated from the waiting room; the doors and curtains did little to muffle its intensity. Despite the pain, Bronwyn rose on her elbows, eyes wide, because she recognized the voice.

Her mother, Chloe. In agony.