The Hum and the Shiver

7

Don Swayback sat down at his mother’s kitchen table. He used to think of it as his table, too, but since he’d grown up, he had a hard time feeling connected to this old house, these old things, even this old woman now settling into her own seat across from him. Even the town, Rossell, had grown and expanded until it was unfamiliar and alien.

“It’s good to see you, son,” his mother said. Her name was Gloriana, although everyone called her Glory. “And it’s not even Mother’s Day. Shouldn’t you be at work? You didn’t get fired, did you?”

“You know, if you keep picking on me, I’ll stop coming at all,” he teased.

“Then I wouldn’t have to do dishes more than once a month,” she shot back. She was eighty-two, still self-sufficient except for the twice-weekly cleaning woman.

Don sipped his coffee and buttered a biscuit. “Mom, can I ask you something? Which side of the family has the Tufa in it, yours or Dad’s?”

Glory’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Lord, son, why are you asking something like that?”

“I have to get an interview with Bronwyn Hyatt.”

“Who?”

“You know, that girl from over in Needsville who was captured by the Iraqis? Got rescued on live TV?”

“Oh, I sure remember that. They played it enough on the news. Well, now, that’s just something,” Glory said with a shake of her head. “Hasn’t she been talked to enough?”

“That’s just it,” Don said as he added homemade pear reserves atop the butter. “She’s been talked about, but not to. No one’s really had an in-depth interview with her about what it was like to be a Needsville Tufa so far from home.”

“And that carpetbagger you work for wants you to do it?”

He nodded. “The Tufas don’t cotton to outsiders, so I figure the best way would be to go through family. I know we’re related to some Tufas somehow, but I don’t know the particulars.”

“Well, what makes you think I do? We don’t associate with that Needsville trash, never have.”

“Then where’d I get this?” Don said, and tugged on a lock of his black hair.

Glory sighed. “If you must know, son, it’s through your late daddy’s side of the family. The Swaybacks mixed with the Tufas when your great-granddaddy Forrest married a Tufa widow woman named Benji. I can’t remember what that was short for. They met working on one of them Roosevelt WPA projects during the Depression. Something about ‘documenting the rural lifestyle,’ or some such nonsense.” Her disdain for Roosevelt, Democrats in general, and the Tufa all combined to give her words a sour, bitter flavor.

“Do you know Benji’s family name?”

Glory shook her head. “Your daddy’s family never talked about Grandaddy Forrest very much. He’d passed on by the time I met your daddy.” She suddenly snapped her fingers. “But you know what? I bet it’s writ down in the old family Bible that your aunt Raby has. She’s the last of your daddy’s brothers and sisters, so I know she’s got it, probably tucked away in the attic or something. You might drive out there to see.”

Don nodded. He took a bite of biscuit, and was transported for a moment back to Sunday breakfasts when he was a child. He had felt a part of things then, with the Swaybacks and his mother’s family the Dorchesters all around, cousins and in-laws liable to appear at any moment to join in post-church fellowship. But the instant passed almost with his act of swallowing, and once again he realized he had virtually nothing in common with the old woman seated across from him.

“I haven’t seen Aunt Raby in a while,” he said. “I might just do that.”

When Bronwyn awoke from her nap, the house was empty.

Deacon was working in the fields, Aiden was in school, and Chloe was no doubt off running errands. In any other situation, such neglect would be unforgivable: she was supposed to be watched at all times for any relapses, physical or psychological. The VA doctors stressed that she could, essentially, freak out at any time. But the Tufa, especially purebloods like the Hyatts, would know if she wasn’t safe. They could not see into the future exactly, but could sense if certain actions were likely to have unwanted consequences. It was not a perfect ability—Bronwyn had sensed nothing before her ambush in Iraq, for instance—but in the Needsville valley, in the heart of Tufa country, it was as infallible as it was possible to be.

She moved from her bedroom to the living room couch. The clock read eleven thirty. She felt sticky, and wished for the billionth time that she could take a proper shower. The open windows let in the cool breeze and the soft tinkle of the wind chimes. She considered turning on the TV, but didn’t want to come across any news stories about herself. She still hated the fact that she was now a current event.

There was a firm knock on the door and a cheerful voice said, “Special delivery for the Bronwynator.”

She turned to see a heavyset man in a postman’s uniform, a large mail sack at his feet. “Hey, Ed,” she called, and waved him in. “’Scuse me for not getting up.”

Ed opened the door and dragged the sack in after him. “Now, never you worry about that, young lady. Your job right now is to mend those boo-boos, and that’s all you should be concentrating on.”

“Boo-boos?” Bronwyn repeated with a grin. “I’m twenty years old, I don’t think I still have ‘boo-boos.’”

Carvin’ Ed Shill, the lone mailman for all the widely dispersed families in the valley, was only one-quarter Tufa, but it informed his whole being: he shone with the Tufa spirit even though his hair was sandy brown and freckles covered his face. “Sure you do,” he said, and kissed her on her cheek. “You’ll always be mean little, I mean sweet little Bronwyn to me, who didn’t go a summer without her knees and elbows scraped all the time. You used to run up and show me your boo-boos then.”

She gestured at her leg. “Well, this is my latest one.”

“Lord A’mighty, it looks like a sausage caught halfway through a grinder.”

Bronwyn laughed. “What’s in the bag?”

“The best medicine in the world: get-well cards from your fans.”

She stared at the bag, then at him. “From my fans? I don’t have fans.”

“Well, you got a lot of people mighty concerned about you. There’s five more of these back at the post office, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you.”

“Five more? Holy shit, Ed, you’re kidding me.”

“No, ma’am.” He took one card from the bag and looked over the envelope. “This is from little Emma from up in Kentucky. I assume she’s little, she could be a big girl who just never mastered turning her E’s the right way. And it’s sealed with a USA sticker.”

Bronwyn numbly took the card. She couldn’t bring herself to open it, and placed it beside her on the couch. “Thanks, Ed. It’s weird thinking that so many people know about me, you know?”

“Are you telling me the Bronwynator has gotten stage fright? Say it ain’t so, Bro! You used to crave attention like a sponge does dishwater.”

“I did not.”

“So writing ‘Bronwyn was here’ on every school bus in the county was your idea of being discreet?”

“Dwayne did that. I just kept watch for the cops. And besides, that was before I got a truck dropped on my head.”

“Yeah,” he said sadly, and touched her cheek. “I had an uncle in Viet Nam. They say he was a cut up, class clown guy before he went. Now he barely sleeps and won’t sit with his back to a door.”

“I hope I’m not that bad,” she said with a wry smile. She’d been warned about posttraumatic stress at Walter Reed, and offered the kind of psychiatric help the army provides; she knew she’d be better off trepanning herself with a hammer and nail.

“Well, if you need anything, just let ol’ Carvin’ Ed know.” He touched the brim of his cap in a salute. “Some days, especially during deer season, this job feels like the armed forces. Wouldn’t think a mail carrier looks much like a buck deer, but I’ve got two caps with bullet holes in the brims. And they say postmen are trigger-happy.”

“I’ll swap tours with you. Baghdad’s bound to need some mailmen.”

He chuckled. “No way. Least with my job, there’s days people ain’t trying to kill me. Oh, and before I forget: I made you a little something, too.”

From one of his voluminous pockets he pulled a small wooden box about the length of Bronwyn’s hand and perhaps two inches high. Vaguely Celtic designs decorated the corners.

She took it. “Ed, that’s so sweet. Really.”

“It’s not the box, bonehead. Open it.”

Carefully Bronwyn lifted the lid and pulled the object from its cradle of cotton.

The figure was about three inches high, carved from a single piece of catalpa wood. It depicted a young woman playing a mandolin, standing on one foot as if dancing. From the figure’s back extended a large pair of curved, two-lobed wings, similar in shape to a butterfly’s.

The resemblance to Bronwyn was unmistakable. “Wow, Ed,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

“Only ’cause the subject is.”

She ran her fingers lightly along the edge of the wings. They were carved so thin that even slight pressure caused them to bend. She felt a sympathetic tug in her own shoulders. “It’s been a while since…”

“I figured. But you never lose it.”

She looked up at him. “I hope you’re right.”

He grinned and playfully yanked one loose strand of her hair. “I know I am.”

After Ed left, Bronwyn stared at the mailbag for a long time. A robin sang outside the window, encouraging her. At last she tentatively opened the card Ed handed her earlier.

Dear Private Hyatt, it began. The handwriting was clearly a child’s, much younger than Aiden. I hope you are getting well. We saw your rescue on TV and want you to know we are praying for you. You’re my hero. It was signed simply, Emma, with a backwards capital E.

A picture was included as well. It was a school photo of a pudgy little girl with lank brown hair put back in barrettes. An adult had written, Emma, age 6 on the back.

Bronwyn stared at it, trying to imagine the girl’s feelings as she wrote this. No doubt her whole class had done so as well; Major Maitland told her that schools all over the country were sending her get-well cards. But she could find no common ground. Whatever emotions left to her did not include this degree of empathy.

And yet a fragment of melody and a long-hazy lyric sprang to her mind:

And that was all.

She put the picture and card back in the envelope. Then she went back to bed. She placed Ed’s carving of the mandolin-playing fairy on her bedside table.