Duncan was exhausted. He’d pushed through the woods, watching all around for both the giant hog and the strange coyote-woman, but had seen neither. He’d also seen no sign of civilization. He was sweaty from the exertion, chilled from the night air, and mocked by the winds that tousled the treetops above him.
He knew all the stories of slow time, tales of people who spent hours or days lost in the woods, only to emerge and discover years had passed. But the Tufa had always been immune to that; some, in fact, could slip in and out of it at will. Was he being punished that way, like that old rockabilly singer who appeared out of nowhere, not a bit older than the day he’d supposedly died sixty years ago?
Each time he stopped and checked his phone, it was no different. He got no signal, and the percentage of power went down: 10, 8, 5, now 3 percent. He quickly turned it off, wondering how many more tries he’d get before it died for good.
And as the phrase “died for good” went through his mind, he thought about Renny, and their unborn child in the truck. And he pushed on.
* * *
Janet drove faster than she should have, and she knew it. But it felt like the cave, with its ghastly smells and sights and atmosphere, refused to recede into the distance. She repeatedly glanced into the rearview mirror to assure herself that it wasn’t still right behind them, the skeletons glowing red in their taillight.
Mandalay rode in the passenger seat, one foot again propped up on the dashboard. They hadn’t even turned on the radio. At last the girl said, “Turn just ahead.”
Janet slowed down and turned off the highway onto another rugged road. They bounced along until Mandalay said, “Stop here.”
She did. Ahead the road continued into the darkness beyond the headlights. To one side was a bare field, recently turned prior to planting. On the passenger side, a wire fence blocked off the forest.
Mandalay got out. She reached into the backseat and grabbed the banjo as Janet turned off the car. “Follow me,” Mandalay said, and didn’t give Janet time to respond.
“Are we going to burn the banjo?” Janet asked as they climbed over the fence.
“Don’t talk,” Mandalay snapped without looking back. Janet obeyed, because something in the girl’s voice struck her like a slap.
They hiked through the dark woods. Mandalay never stepped wrong, and it was all Janet could do to keep up. She wanted to ask all the basic journalist questions: where, what, why, who, and how? But she knew better.
Then Mandalay stopped, and Janet almost knocked her down. The younger girl held up her hand for silence.
Janet looked around. They were in the middle of the forest at night, with no references in any direction.
Then they heard a sharp yipping cry. A coyote.
“This way,” Mandalay said, and started off again. Janet rushed to keep her in sight, and only tangentially realized they were heading toward the coyote.
Unbidden, the memory of a folksinger killed by coyotes in Canada came to her. It had happened several years earlier, but now she wished she’d paid a lot more attention to the details. Hell, she’d never even seen a live coyote, only dead ones on the side of the road.
It yipped again, closer and from behind them. The one ahead answered. There were two.
“Mandalay—”
“Hush!” Mandalay said urgently.
They emerged into a small circular clearing. The trees around it were all deciduous, and the area reeked of their freshly surging sap. Janet leaned against one to catch her breath, and her hand came away sticky.
The coyote ahead yipped, and it sounded like it was just beyond the clearing. Behind them, the other also sounded close. Janet stood beside Mandalay, ready to flee. In the darkness, the moonlight cast harsh shadows and turned the grassy ground silver.
Something stepped in the forest. It was no coyote: it was far too large. Janet imagined a bear, recently awakened from its hibernation and hungry for anything, even teenage girls.
Then she thought of Piggly-Wiggly, the giant hog. She began to tremble, wishing she knew where they were so she’d know which way to run.
But neither a bear nor a hog strode out of the darkness. Instead it was a tall man, naked except for a small animal-skin girdle and a kind of cap decorated with a rack of immense stag horns. The horns made him nearly eight feet tall, and his chest was broad, muscular, and hairy. Janet had, in fact, never seen anyone so overwhelmingly masculine.
From the other side of the clearing, a young woman emerged. She also wore a skimpy fur outfit, was barefoot, and her hair was twisted into dreadlocks. She walked over to the man and, without exchanging a word or a glance, crouched at his feet. These two newcomers watched Janet and Mandalay with knowing, faintly amused expressions.
Then Janet yelped as another barefoot woman appeared directly behind them and sauntered casually toward the other two. Like him, she wore only a loincloth, and like the other girl, her hair was twisted in dreads. She crouched at his feet on the other side.
Mandalay made a complex hand gesture, and the antlered man responded. Then Mandalay walked forward and stood looking up at him.
“This has served its purpose,” she said, indicating the banjo she held. “The spirits it binds need to be released to their rest.”
The big man replied, but his voice was so deep, Janet felt it in her chest, rather than hearing actual words.
“Of course,” Mandalay answered.
And then the antlered man, all eight feet of him, went down on one knee. Mandalay handed him the instrument, touched his bearded cheek, then turned and walked away. The banjo looked like a toy in the man’s hands as he stood upright.
The two girls at his feet also rose and scurried with surprising silence into the forest. The man turned and followed them. Moments after they disappeared, two coyotes howled from the direction they’d run.
Mandalay walked back to Janet. “You can talk now.”
“Who … what … why…?” She was still so stunned, it was difficult for the words to come out.
“He has that affect on people sometimes,” Mandalay said. “Especially women. Makes you wish you had a boyfriend.”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.”
Mandalay nodded knowingly. “You and Ginny.”
“What? No! Why would you think that?”
Mandalay looked surprised. “Well, the two of you—”
Janet held up her hand. “Stop right there, okay? Ginny and I are just friends. In fact, I’m just friends with everybody. I have no boyfriend; I have no girlfriend. I have no interest. Can we go home now?”
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Mandalay said. “And I certainly wouldn’t judge.”
Janet looked around at the dark woods. “I’ve never felt the way you’re supposed to. The way the songs say. I don’t think I can. There’s a word for it, but…”
Mandalay put a hand on her arm. “There’s no need for it here. You are who and what you are, and the Tufa don’t care. It’s your music that matters to us.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Janet took a deep breath. A weight had come off, one she didn’t realize was there until it left. “Wow.” She chuckled, took a few more deep breaths, and said, “So who was that? The big guy?”
“If you think about it, you’ll know who he is.”
She remembered the whispered tales around campfires, at swimming holes, and in the dark outside the barn dance. “But I thought he was … I mean, just a story.”
“We’re all just stories, Janet. Or songs.”
With that, Mandalay walked past her and back into the forest, although now there was a wide, clear trail. It led quickly back to their car, through a gate in the fence that was conveniently left open. She said nothing as Janet backed them back onto the highway and started the drive to Mandalay’s house.
* * *
At last Duncan emerged into a different clearing and collapsed onto the damp grass. Above him the sky was cloudy, and the hidden moon cast a dim, grayish glow that diffused across the whole vista. He was thoroughly spent, and rested until his pulse no longer pounded in his ears. Then he got to his feet.
He looked around. He saw the cars and trucks. He smelled the rank odor.
Wait a minute, he thought. I know this place. And then he realized.
He was outside the old moonshiners’ cave, the place his people gathered and celebrated, the place where even now, he might find help. He checked his phone again, but its battery was totally drained.
He ran to the entrance, stumbled down the tunnel, and emerged with a cry.
“Somebody, please!” he shouted. “Kera’s stuck in my truck at the bottom of a holler. That big-ass hog ran us off the road, and she’s hurt.”
There were a lot of people in the cave, most of them men, all gathered around Flint and Junior Damo. They fell silent and turned to look at him. Their gaze was cold and hard.
“What’s wrong?” he said. He was so tired, he could barely stand, and had to lean against the nearest cave wall for support.
No one spoke. They just stared.
“Come on!” he exhorted. “Move!”
No one did.
“All right, then please, someone, anyone, just call 911 for me. My phone’s dead.”
Their total silence scared him more than anything. Then Porter Procure pushed his way to the front of the group. Procure was red-eyed and red-faced, and pointed an accusing finger at him.
“You!” he yelled, his voice charged with emotion. “You let my son die when you could’ve saved him!”
Duncan’s legs collapsed, and he slid down the wall. He closed his eyes in defeat and disbelief. How did the man know?
“Aw, no,” he whimpered. “No, not now…”
Porter Procure wasn’t the only one. Everyone glared at him with the same hatred, the same knowledge. Fuck, did they all know?
“No, it wasn’t like that,” he said, eyes still closed. “It was just—”
“We know what you did!” Porter screamed, his face distorted with alcohol and rage. “We know! We know!”
Tears ran down Duncan’s face. Hearing the truth spoken by someone else drove home anew what he had done, and gave it a reality that he couldn’t ignore. He wanted to curl up and die.
But Renny still needed him. He opened his eyes and pushed himself back upright. The crowd was now all around him, blocking any possible escape. Porter Procure stood in front, Junior Damo and Flint just behind him.
Duncan forced himself to look at his father-in-law. “Please, Mr. Procure, your daughter is hurt, we have to—”
But Porter was drunk, and enraged, and headed a mob that loved nothing more than an object at which to fling its ire. “We know!” Porter kept repeating, and soon the whole bunch chanted it. “We know!”
And then a song began. It was one Duncan had never heard before, but it had a kind of awful familiarity just the same, a connection with him that made each note, each lyric, as inevitable as the sunrise.
In every man there dwells a dark and unforgiven place
Where no amount of light could show redemption, or replace …
Duncan felt himself grow smaller, weaker, more pitiful. This must be his own dying dirge, the song that could take his life and return his spirit to the night winds for their disposition. He couldn’t stop it, and he had no song to counterpoint it.
He slid back down to the floor and drew his knees up to his chin. “Please,” he begged again and again. “Please, help Renny, she’s hurt.…” He looked up and made eye contact with Junior, whose face was a mask of disapproval and amusement, but whose eyes revealed the fear that his own role in what had happened might be brought to light.
Duncan got to his feet, pushed his way over, and grabbed Junior by the shirt. “Please,” Duncan begged Junior. “Please.”
Then Porter Procure hit him with a piece of lead pipe, crushing in one side of his skull. As his people, his tribe, descended on him, he died in a shower of blows and kicks, his dying dirge swirling around him.
Though my reason held me steady when it came my time to act
I stood still against the raging wild, and cannot take it back.…