The Hum and the Shiver

29

Craig rushed out of the treatment area knowing what he’d find. Dammit! He’d done everything he could to prevent this, and at the last moment he’d been distracted by the touch of a pretty girl.

In the middle of the waiting room, Deacon Hyatt knelt beside his wife. Chloe sprawled on the floor, screaming with an abandon only sudden bone-deep grief inspires. She wore denim shorts and a T-shirt, and as she thrashed, her flip-flops shot across the room. A doctor, middle-aged and tired-looking, stood beside them, his hands extended in useless, unwanted sympathy. Terry-Joe stood as well, his jeans wet from the melted ice, his expression anguished.

The door opened behind Craig, and Bronwyn pushed past him, cradling her ribs and unconcerned with the way her hospital gown gapped open. Blood trickled from her arm where she’d torn out the IV. She slid down beside her mother, brushing Chloe’s hair back from her face.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” she shouted over the woman’s cries. Chloe only screamed again, alternately tearing at her hair and beating hands and feet against the floor.

Bronwyn looked at her father. “Daddy?”

Deacon, his face stoic, said simply, “Kell’s gone.”

“Gone where?” she asked in a small voice.

Deacon’s face darkened. “He’s dead!” he yelled at his daughter.

At those words, Chloe screamed again. By now, more doctors and nurses had gathered around them, looking uncertainly at one another. Many were part Tufa, so they knew the Hyatts and their status in the community; but they couldn’t just leave the woman screaming on the floor.

Finally Craig pushed through them and knelt beside Deacon. “Mr. Hyatt,” he said gently, “let’s get her off the floor and onto a bed.” Deacon nodded, and together they lifted Chloe, who put up no resistance. Bronwyn had seen her mother cry before, but never like this; she felt her own tears battling with confusion, rage, and pain as they sought escape.

She saw Terry-Joe standing in the door to the lobby, almost comical with the wet stain from the icepack. She rushed to him and threw her arms around him. Words rushed out, tight and thin because of her injury. “Kell’s dead, I don’t know what happened, they said he’s dead, Daddy said he’s dead….”

Terry-Joe held her close, careful not to squeeze too tight. Her choked, breathless sobs cut through him, and he felt his own tears boiling free. He stroked her hair, and despite everything thought happily that she’d run to him when she needed comfort.

Craig returned from getting Chloe onto a gurney, where her cries continued to ring out. He took Bronwyn by the arm, holding her hospital gown closed with one hand. “Come with me,” he said firmly. To Terry-Joe he said, “Could you get her a robe from one of the nurses?”

Terry-Joe started to ask Craig why he couldn’t get the robe, but the older man’s authority stopped him. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled, and released the girl he now knew he loved.

Craig took Bronwyn into the little side room where doctors delivered bad news. It was cold, bright, and inhuman. Terry-Joe knocked softly and handed in the thin robe. She sat numbly as Craig draped the robe around her.

She began to shake. She looked up at him, suddenly conscious of their different ages and positions in life, seeing him as an elder, as someone she should respect. “What happened, Reverend?” she whimpered. “I just saw him an hour and a half ago, he was fine. We were joking, he… The last thing he said to me was, ‘bitch.’” She laughed despite everything, but it was momentary. “They said it was nothing serious.”

Craig knelt beside the chair and put his hand on her shoulder. He’d never wanted to hold and comfort someone more in his life, and yet he knew that was not his role, not what she and her family needed. As gently as he could, he said, “Apparently the knife nicked a blood vessel that didn’t start bleeding until after they’d treated his injuries. By the time they noticed, it was too late. They did all they could, Bronwyn, I promise.”

“Did he say anything else?” she asked in a tiny child’s voice.

Craig shook his head. “They’d sedated him for the pain, so he never woke up. He never felt a thing.”

She nodded slowly. “Then Dwayne murdered him.”

Craig said nothing.

She blinked, rubbed her head, and said, “I didn’t see Aiden. Did Mom and Dad leave him at home?”

“Yes. They didn’t know how bad it was when they left. It all happened while they were on their way here. I’m sure they thought there was no need to wake him up.”

“Then he’s home all alone.”

Craig reached over and took her hand. “I’ll go see about him, and bring him down here to be with everyone else. If you think that’s where he should be.”

She stared at him. “Why do you care?”

He was used to the brusqueness of grief, and it didn’t faze him. “Partly because it’s my nature, partly because it’s my job.”

She took a deep breath, winced at the pain, and said, “I’m sorry, that was rude. It would be very nice of you to go get him, and I would be very grateful.”

“Will you go back to bed?”

She shook her head and got to her feet. “I have to be with Mom and Dad. And before you say anything, you’ll have to accept that that’s my nature.”

“Fair enough.”

A doctor knocked on the door and said Bronwyn could, if she wished, view the body before it was taken “downstairs.” She leaned on Craig as they joined her parents behind the omnipresent privacy curtain. Chloe, her sobs reduced to choking gulps, clung to Deacon the way Bronwyn did to Craig. Terry-Joe stood off to one side. They all gazed down at the form on the gurney.

Kell Hyatt’s eyes were closed and his face impassive; he looked young and untroubled. His black hair was brushed back from his face, in a style wholly unlike him. Chloe reached down and tugged his bangs down onto his forehead.

Bronwyn pulled away and stood beside Chloe. Craig moved back a bit, observing. Deacon had his arm tightly across Chloe’s shoulders, and his chin trembled with the effort of holding back his own tears. Bronwyn silently held her mother’s hand, her injuries forgotten. Only Chloe felt free to truly express what they all felt.

Craig caught Terry-Joe’s eye and nodded for the young man to follow. They left the Hyatts and returned to the waiting room.

“Aiden Hyatt is still back at his house,” Craig said. “He doesn’t know what’s happened, and I sure don’t want him to find out by a phone call. Will you take a ride out there with me to pick him up? You’re his friend, and he might need one tonight.”

Terry-Joe nodded.

As they prepared to leave, a voice came from behind the double doors, loud and pure and unconcerned with propriety. It broke through Craig’s professional distance and training, and he felt hot tears well in his own eyes. He recognized it as Chloe Hyatt.

“What song is that?” Craig asked, his voice catching in his throat.

Terry-Joe was too weary to be circumspect. “Kell’s dyin’ dirge. Every Tufa has one. It comes to the people around him when it’s time for it.”

Now there was harmony, from the husband and daughter beside her.

Craig wiped at his eyes. The sound was so plaintive, so touching, that its sorrow was irresistible. A nurse emerged from the treatment area sobbing into a tissue.

“We should go,” Craig said.

Aiden came to the door rubbing his eyes, clad in sweatpants and a Transformers T-shirt. “What?” he said, drawing the word out into several syllables.

“It’s me, Terry-Joe. Can you open the door?”

“Ain’t supposed to.”

“This is important, Aiden. I’ve got Reverend Chess with me. We need to talk to you.”

“To me?”

Terry-Joe was tired, and his balls ached. “Aiden, open the goddamned door!”

“All right, all right,” the boy said. Craig put a calming hand on Terry-Joe’s shoulder, but the younger man shrugged it off. He pulled the screen door open as soon as Aiden unhooked it and went inside.

Aiden looked askance at Terry-Joe’s wet spot. “Did you pee your pants?”

“Never mind. Listen, something bad’s happened,” Terry-Joe said. He couldn’t look directly at the boy, so he gazed at the floor.

“Is Bronwyn hurt?”

“No. I mean, yes, but that’s not the bad thing. The bad thing is…” And Terry-Joe froze. He simply couldn’t say the words.

Craig stepped up. “Son, I’m afraid your brother, Kell, has passed on.”

Aiden blinked, and the last of the sleep cleared from his eyes. “Wha… Kell’s dead?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, then say dead!” Aiden yelled, making them both jump. He turned to Terry-Joe. “What happened?”

“Ah… he got in a fight with my brother.”

Aiden stared at Terry-Joe with the kind of betrayal only a child can feel when his idol topples from the pedestal. Dwayne Gitterman had been the epitome of cool when Aiden was a small boy, always showing off and bringing treats. “Dwayne killed him?”

Terry-Joe nodded, still looking at the floor.

“Your mom, dad, and sister asked us to come bring you to the hospital,” Craig said. “You should probably get dressed first.”

Aiden swallowed hard. He was too overwhelmed to cry. He turned and went into his room, and they heard dresser drawers opening and closing.

Craig looked around at the family pictures. He saw photos of Deacon and Chloe as young newlyweds, then with their gradually increasing brood. He was impressed with how little they had visibly aged; Chloe, especially, was as vibrant now as she’d been as a young woman in the eighties and nineties.

There were three pictures of only Kell; in one he was a toddler, in another an adolescent proudly holding a stringer of fish, and finally his high school graduation picture. Craig had never met Kell, and he realized now he’d never see him alive. The boy holding those fish was gone forever.

Another picture drew his eye. Bronwyn, fourteen or fifteen in a halter top and shorts, making a muscle for her father, who felt it and feigned terror. Even though the picture was only a few years old—when it had been taken, Craig was probably finishing his undergraduate degree—there seemed ages of difference between the girl in the photo and the one he’d met. It wasn’t just the trauma of her experience, although that was part of it. There was a power within Bronwyn now that was entirely missing from this earlier girl.

Then he was yanked back to the present when Aiden strode from his room, dressed and carrying his hunting rifle. “Y’all lock up behind yourselves,” he said without looking at them.

With cries of alarm, Terry-Joe jumped at Aiden, while Craig rushed to block the door. Terry-Joe grabbed the rifle by the barrel, but Aiden wasn’t letting it go. Craig held up his hands in a calm down gesture. “Aiden, I think you need to take a deep breath.”

“I think y’all need to step back,” Aiden said.

“You’re not leaving with that gun,” Craig said seriously.

“The hell I’m not,” he said, and began tugging to get it away from Terry-Joe. Craig jumped forward to intercede just as a loud crack filled the room. Terry-Joe jumped back, and Aiden dropped the gun.

Craig put his foot on the barrel to keep anyone else from grabbing it. For a moment no one moved. Then he asked, “Are you two hurt?”

Terry-Joe shook his head. Aiden stared wide eyed at the wall. The bullet had passed through a framed picture, shattering the brittle glass. Craig glanced at it, then looked more closely; it appeared to be a piece of sandpaper. He tentatively touched it and confirmed this, then saw an X drawn with a Sharpie. The words, I’m going here were written beside it, and the signature, Love, Pvt. Bronwyn Hyatt.

Craig picked up the gun, unscrewed the tube, and poured the little gold cartridges out into his hand. He worked the bolt action several times to make sure nothing was left in the chamber. Then he tossed the weapon onto the couch. “That wasn’t real bright,” he said through his teeth, forcing his anger down. The boy had just gotten terrible news, after all.

Aiden turned to Terry-Joe. “Sorry, Terry-Joe, I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he said flatly, as if discussing a ball game. “But I reckon I have to kill your brother, either tonight or eventually.”

Craig turned Aiden’s face to him. “Aiden, listen to me. Right now the living need you more than the dead. Your mom, dad, and sister are at the hospital, and they want us to take you there. Unarmed. Okay?”

Aiden nodded. Then his lower lip began to tremble.

Craig managed a wry, sad smile. “I don’t blame you, I’d cry, too.”

Aiden burst out with a sob, splattering saliva and mucus in Craig’s face. He ignored it, dropped to his knees, and wrapped the boy in a big hug.

Terry-Joe, still shaken by the gunshot, suddenly had a thought. He ran into Bronwyn’s bedroom and grabbed her mandolin from under the bed.

Craig picked Aiden up and carried him outside. The boy cried all the way to the hospital.