MUSA STEPPED FROM THE trees, looking at the square white house across the field. The O’Donovans’ place. He’d already been home to alert his mother and sisters, slipping through the back door at first light and rousing them as gently as he could, telling them of their father’s wishes—to head to the Kentucky side of the river until the danger passed.
“And who is this?” his mother had asked, pointing a whole hand at the giant wolfhound that had followed him into the house, long nails tapping on the wood floors.
“This here is Moose.” Musa had found the name scratched onto a piece of ancient coal scrip strung from the dog’s neck on a thin length of twine. He looked at the big hound. “He was Miss Beulah’s.”
His mother’s eyes softened. “Was?”
Musa nodded. “Yes’m. I went to see her on my way here.” He paused, breathed, and touched the dog between the ears. “She’s passed, Mama.”
His mother held a hand to her mouth, then took Musa into her arms. She said nothing, just held him, cupping the back of his head.
Now, while she and his sisters readied the mule and cart, Musa had come to alert the O’Donovans. He’d never been up to Aidee’s actual house before—they always found each other in the woods, along the creek or atop one of the lookouts.
Her father had been a king hogman, a raiser of prize red Durocs, and Musa had never felt comfortable around him. He seemed to appraise the people around him with a hard-squinted eye, studious of their grooming and muscling, coloration and poundage. A man who never let his neighbors forget how long his family had been on the land, how deep their blood ran through these hills. Though he’d died last spring, his spirit seemed to hang about the homeplace.
Now Musa had to march in there and hello the house. Hiking thirty miles in a day was scarce bother to him, but this last hundred yards was harder than all the rest put together. Moose looked up at him, waiting. Musa squatted down beside the dog and scratched the back of his neck, then wrapped his hand in the strap of his possibles bag.
“Faith,” he said, then rose and set off toward the house.
Aidee herself answered the door. He saw her green eyes first, which seemed to glow bodiless within the dark interior of the house—bright as whole worlds—and then the rest of her came into view, pale and lithe, her feet bare. Her eyes and mouth were wide, as if she’d still grow into them, and though they were both undersize for their age, she was half a head taller than he was, her body slim and angular, draped with a frayed gingham dressing gown.
“Musa,” she said. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flush behind the cracked door. He couldn’t tell if she was excited or worried to see him—maybe both.
“I’m sorry to call out the blue,” he said. “But I got an important message for your mama.”
“Is everything okay?”
He nodded. “Daddy and I been up at Blair. He’s afraid this Redneck war could come this way, wants us to hightail it across the Tug till it dies down.”
“He doesn’t think we’ll be safe here?”
“They dropped bombs already, Aidee. From aeroplanes. They say there’s more coming—” A claw caught his throat. Hot sparks behind his eyes. He looked down and coughed into his fist.
“Is your daddy still up there?”
Musa nodded. He didn’t feel he could speak. That swell in his throat.
Behind him, he could hear the world coming alive, blackbirds and robins sporting in the trees. Moose stood just shy of the porch steps, where Musa had asked him to heel. He thought of his father back at the schoolhouse, covered in sweat and blood. His throat again.
“Why don’t you come inside,” said Aidee.
Musa rocked from one bare foot to the other. “Ain’t washed.”
Aidee reached out and took his hand, leading him into the house. “May I have that note for Mama?”
Musa handed it to her, the paper creased neatly beneath his mother’s index finger.
“I’ll take it up to her and be right back, okay?”
Musa nodded again. Aidee set her bare foot on the first step of the staircase, then turned, walked back to him, put both hands on his cheeks, and kissed him on the mouth, hard and long and sweet, and it was the first time ever. Then she was gone, up into the mote-swirling dimness of the stairs, her bare feet flashing as she went.
His heart was a crazy thing in his chest.