PULLING UPHILL

Jerome Holmes opened his eyes and stretched before smacking his alarm clock silent. He wasn’t sure whether he’d hit the snooze button or the off button, so he turned his head to check. Damn snooze. Carefully, he picked up the clock, switched it off, and set it back in its place, pleased that he’d resisted the childish urge to bash it to smithereens. It was six in the morning, and Jerome had collapsed next to his wife at three.

He’d been up most of the night preparing for the storm. Yolanda had picked up ice and sandbags while Jerome and the kids boarded up the windows and moved water gallons into the deep freeze.

After the first storm report on WWOZ, he and Yolanda had discussed evacuating—taking the opportunity for a rare vacation, but with the precaution of bringing the deed to their house and their other important documents with them. In the end, they’d decided against it. It had been quite a while since they’d visited Yolanda’s family up in Jackson, but… there just didn’t seem to be a point. The storm would turn, and things would be fine—just like always.

“Another day,” he said.

“Million more dollars,” his wife mumbled from her side of the bed. “Leave me some coffee, Romy, hear?”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Jerome said.

The bedroom was a mess, but he knew Yolanda would pick up in here if she awakened in time. Otherwise, she’d sleep through her own alarm and awaken in a white-hot hurry, forced to rush off to her job at the doctor’s office. This was the year, though—this had to be the year—they could stop working for other people. Between the taxicab, the photography, and the car yard, this could be it.

Unless the storm wiped them out again.

Jerome shook his head. Impossible. They’d been blessed last time, and the Lord would smile on them again.

Jerome would have to make himself presentable before heading over to the studio, but after setting the coffeemaker, he shrugged into his bathrobe and headed out back to check on the yard.

The morning was unseasonably cool, but the overnight fog seemed to have let up a bit. The air smelled of drying laundry and cut grass.

Jerome crossed a length of crazy paving toward a wire gate with a curved top. On the other side of it, the car yard lay quiet with sleep, smelling of motor oil and mechanical dreams. “What it—what it—what it doooooooo, Bossaman?” Cholly called from inside as soon as he sensed Jerome’s approach. His voice sounded like an engine trying to turn over.

“Same as it ever was,” Jerome called back as he fit his key into the gate’s lock. “Quiet night?”

“Quieter than some,” Cholly said, appearing on the other side. Jerome’s father had cobbled Cholly together from odds and ends, and the robot looked like a walking yard sale. Dinner plates, car parts, various appliances, small and large, with wires threaded through. His torso was a potbellied stove, his head was an old-fashioned ghetto blaster, and his feet were RC cars. The old robot’s knees had begun to rust again, and Jerome knew he’d have to oil them up before he turned in for the night—or what was left of it.

“That alley cat had her babies in the trunk of a Datsun,” Cholly said. “I left her some kibble and water.”

Last week, the elderly tortoiseshell had surprised Jerome by turning up heavily pregnant. Jerome hadn’t known it was possible for a cat so old to bear a litter.

“How your eyes and ears?” he asked. “You need new parts?”

“Dey good enough for now,” Cholly said. “I hunt up something and replace ’em my own self, me. You got more than enough to do round here.”

Jerome shrugged. “If you say so.” He grabbed a gas can off the shelf by the gate and nodded to Cholly. “All right,” he said. “Let’s make the—”

“Hot damn!” a child’s voice called from somewhere within the maze of junked cars and machinery. “We back, baby!”

“Who’s that?” Jerome asked.

Cholly scratched his metal scalp with a metallic skritch. “Dunno, Bossaman. Want me to call five-oh?”

Jerome grinned. “I am the police, baby.” He took any chance he got to make that statement, even though it was no longer technically true. He’d turned in his badge and his gun some time ago. “We’ll go together. But you must be getting old, letting vandals past you. This the second time this week.”

Cholly stiffened. “Now, listen,” he said. “Ain’t nobody get by Cholly. I got eyes in the backa my eyes.”

“Maybe you should build somebody younger to help you out,” Jerome said. “Because we got company.”

“Brendy!” someone—a boy?—called. “Where you is?”

“Here I’m is!” came the answering call. “We in the city, baby! We back!”

Jerome followed the voices, turning right past a stack of broken washer-dryers and left past a pyramid of TVs. One of the sets had lost its glass, and wildflowers grew inside as if starring in their very own show.

Here, the car yard opened into a dirt-floored clearing, and Jerome saw the boy who’d yelled standing with his back to him, his left hand visored over his eyes as he scanned the higher stacks that stood against the western fence. An old potato sack hung from his right hand. “Hey, you kids!” Jerome called.

A barefoot redbone girl in a grimy red dress with white trim strode out of a narrow aisle full of shelved car parts. She glanced at Jerome and waved, but made straight for the boy. “I hear music,” she said. “Close. It’s in here with us.”

“Hey,” Jerome said. “How you get in here?”

A smaller girl in a blue-and-white polka-dot dress danced up to join the other kids, beaming in the sunlight. She seemed unable to contain her high spirits, bopping in place as she grinned up at the sun. Jerome tried to sound stern, but his voice failed him. He barked a laugh.

“Hey, there, Mistuh Man!” the little dancing girl called. “And you, Mistuh Robot! You seen a song thinks it’s people?”

“A song that—? What?”

The redheaded girl cocked her head, listening. “I hear her,” she said. “She in here, and she ain’t alone.”

“What in…?” Jerome asked, helpless. He turned to Cholly. “Damn, Cholly, how many people you let in here?”

“Baby,” Cholly said, “I don’t even know. This embarrassing, is what this is.”

This was an adventure, and this was what adventurers did, Perry reminded himself. The fact that he, Brendy, and Peaches had only just emerged from the Clackin’ Sack didn’t mean they had time to celebrate, or even to slow down and take stock—the time for that had passed. Peaches had heard another song, and regardless of whether Doctor Professor was friend or foe, they might as well gather up the songs he had set them to find. Perry didn’t even have time to marvel at the old robot made of car parts and stereo equipment that stood beside the heavyset man who’d challenged their presence in—what was this place? A car yard?

Brendy danced up, excited but ready for action. Every few moves she made, she reached into her dress pocket to curl her hand around her magic rock. “Hey, there, Mistuh Man!” she sang. “And you, Mistuh Robot! You seen a song thinks it’s people?”

The grown-up had no idea what she was talking about. He turned and said something to his robot. Perry reminded himself to shake hands with the robot before all this was through. He’d seen robots from afar from time to time, but he’d never met one personally.

“All right,” Peaches said. “We need a plan. You ready, Perry?”

“Yeah,” Perry said, “I’m ready.” He was a little surprised to find that it was true.

“She thataway,” Peaches said, pointing toward an aisle full of refrigerators and microwaves. “I’ma go up top and flush her out. When she come running this way, you use your sack, you dig?”

“I dig,” Perry said. “Which one is she, though? I gotta call her by name to get her inside.”

“That’s the hard part,” Peaches said. “I can’t tell from here. Maybe once you catch sight of her, you’ll know.”

“Well, it ain’t the world’s best plan,” Perry said, “but it’s better than nothing.”

“Brendy, you back Perry up this time,” Peaches said. “If he can’t figure out her name to grab her with the sack, you get Billy to put it on her.”

“Yeah,” Brendy said, still dancing. “But how?”

“Freeze her in place, maybe?” Peaches said. “If you can unburn me, you can freeze her, right?”

“Yeah,” Brendy said. “Thass what I do!”

“But what we do about You Know Who?” Perry asked.

“Him?” Peaches said darkly. “I guess once we get her, we call him up and have words, you feel me?”

“Right,” Perry said. “Break!”

“Break?” Brendy asked. “What you talking bout?”

Perry rolled his eyes. “We was huddled like football players. When the huddle’s over, everybody says ‘break!’”

“Oh,” Brendy said, and now she stopped dancing and put on a serious face. “Okay, then. One, two, three…”

“Break!” they all said in unison.

“Hey,” the grown-up said, but his voice sounded even more uncertain than before. “Hey, y’all.”

“Not now, Mistuh Man,” Brendy said. “We got work!”

Susan Brown strained in her bonds. Her skull ached something fierce. She could feel the skin of her forehead stretched over a throbbing knot of pain. Something cold and hard grasped her wrists, her ankles, but it was more reactive than metal shackles would have been. When she struggled, the material moved with her, expanding or contracting to maintain a cold, implacable grip.

Bound like this, arms above her head, she hung against a concrete wall in what seemed near-total darkness. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to see clearly even with the lights on. Twisting her neck to look around sent a wave of sickness roiling from the pit of her belly.

The blunt gray scents of mold and dust mingled and rushed over her in a wave. The sharp yellow taste of vomit splashed into the back of her mouth. With some effort, she swallowed it back down. Throwing up all over herself wouldn’t help her get to walking any sooner.

A flash of memory came to her. She remembered marching down Poland Avenue, enjoying the swing of her arms and the rhythm of her steps. Then a sick weightlessness as the big man with the cigarette eyes yanked on her multicolored robe, pulling her off her feet. Acting on instinct, Susan had tried to shed the robe and get back walking, but she was buttoned up tight, even if sweat glazed her limbs. She’d grabbed at the big man’s hand, and that was when light exploded across her vision and faded into darkness.

She squinted. Had there been motion in the gloom just now? She clenched her teeth to keep from shouting as the darkness turned its head. As a blood-red eye opened to glare at her.

it isn t personal  it whispered.

She didn’t ask what the spirit meant. She sensed a struggle in it, as if it warred with itself. No. There were things inside it, moving frenetically like moles digging in a yard.

free  free  we must be free at last

Once, as she marched through the Botanical Gardens, Susan had seen thick ropy orange tendrils drooping down from the leaves of a diseased tree. That was what she thought of now as the ghost’s pale face opened like a flower. When they touched her, a melting heat spread beneath Susan’s skin.

She understood now that her walking days were over and surrendered to the pain.

Perry didn’t think the grown-up could be dismissed so easily—and he was right. The man’s expression clouded, and Perry could tell he was preparing to assert his authority. Perry’s mind raced for an explanation this man would understand. Surely there was something. He had a kind, open face, and his voice, even when he protested, sounded like a friendly purr—but there just wasn’t time.

As Perry examined him, the grown-up’s mouth fell open, and the tension ran out of his body. He goggled, amazed, at a point somewhere over Perry’s shoulder. Of course. He must have seen Peaches in action. The way she leaped up the side of the junk heap, beelining toward her target. Nobody could watch her do something like that for the first time and take it in stride. The grown-up would need some time to digest what he’d just seen and integrate it with his understanding of the world. That would probably give Perry and the girls just enough time to execute their capture before he could get in the way.

Which song? Perry wondered. Which song? At least they knew this one was a woman.

Perry blinked, and a sensation of vertigo bubbled from his belly as his perspective abruptly shifted. Panic welled in Perry’s chest, but he clamped down on it. Whatever was happening right now, he had to let it ride so things wouldn’t go to pieces because of him. He could feel the sun on his shoulders and his shirt lying against his narrow back—but he felt those things from a remove, as if he were far away from them. If that was so, how had he gotten here from there? And where was “here,” exactly?

Perry stood lightly atop a pile of metal sheeting, staring into the aisle below. He couldn’t tell how high up he was, but he was high enough to worry. If he fell from here— Wait. A woman in a tight tank top and painted-on jeans half sat, half lay against a metal rack of dishwashers, smooching with a man in baggy jeans and a blue-and-red diamond-print polo shirt. She ran her skinny fingers over his fade, making wet kissing sounds.

Ew, somebody said.

What? Perry tried to say.

“I gots ya now,” Peaches crowed. “You ain’t no lady, you a song!”

Startled, the lovers looked up, and for a beat the woman seemed truly stunned. The man was just irritated. “Get on outta here,” he said. “We busy.”

“Naw,” said the woman. “Naw, Leon. I gotta go!” She shoved him off and took off running.

Wait, Perry tried to say as his predicament dawned on him. He should have kept quiet, because this time Peaches sensed his presence. Surprise stole her footing, and Perry’s stomach pitched as Peaches lost her balance. She tumbled toward the ground.

Perry returned to himself with a jolt. He felt a fizzing sensation against the vault of his skull. And in just one beat, sweat soaked through his clothes.

“Perry!” Brendy was shouting. “Perry! What your problem is? She getting away!”

“What?” Perry asked. “Who?”

“I dunno,” Brendy yelled. “But her wig falled off!” She pointed.

Perry whirled to see the bald-headed woman attempt to thread the needle between the grown-up and his robot, headed for the gate. The grown-up still wore a stunned expression, but acting as if on instinct, he stepped gracefully to the left and stuck his right foot into her path.

The fugitive song tripped, went down hard, and now Perry heard a snatch of her music:

She a Balllllllhead Betty—!

“Ballhead Betty!” Perry shouted. For a moment, he forgot what to do next. Then he thrust his sack out before him. “Clickety-clack! Get into my sack!”

“Awwwwwwwwww!” the song wailed. While the cry was one of frustration and regret, it was also one of the most beautiful sounds Perry had ever heard. Now it was as if the woman were made of multicolored dust. A high wind blew past her, straight into Perry’s sack, and the more it blew, the more it carried her particles with it. In two blinks of an eye, all of her had disappeared.

The grown-up gaped at Perry, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

Perry gaped right back, equally amazed.

“Well, hell,” said the robot. “Guess I need me some new eyes after all!”

“Damn it, Perry!”

Perry shook off his shock and turned back to see Peaches striding his way. Her face was red, and anger brightened her eyes. Perry thought how beautiful she looked, but then he remembered Peaches was mad as hell—at him. And why shouldn’t she be?

Peaches halted a few feet away, hands on her hips, and glared. “That was not the plan!” she said. “That was one hunnid percent grade-A stupid. Whatinhell you was doing inside my head?”

“What?” Brendy asked.

“This Negro,” Peaches said, “insteada doing like he sposedta standing ready with the sack climbed all up inside my head and damnear ruined everything!”

A chill crept across Perry’s back. That was what had happened? He’d ridden shotgun with Peaches? He didn’t like the feeling of being divided from his body. Honestly, all his life, he’d thought of himself and his body as one. He knew that church folks claimed that the soul, the spirit, was separate from the flesh, but Perry had never taken the time to consider what that meant. And if—and if Perry had left his body, had he been dead? Had his heart continued to beat while he was gone? Had his lungs continued to breathe? These thoughts raced through his mind in a matter of seconds, as Peaches glared her fury.

“I didn’t—! It wasn’t on purpose,” Perry said. He hung his head, but caught himself, looked up again, suddenly angry. “I messed up. Of course I messed up! Why does everybody think I can just do this! I told mama I can’t do it. I told Brendy I don’t want it. ‘You can do it. You like a cop show on the TV. You special, Perry!’”

The anger drained from Peaches’s face. “Aw,” she said. “Perry…”

“That’s it?” Perry demanded. “That’s what you got for me? This ain’t games no more, Peaches. This ain’t fun! This the real shit, and the bad part ain’t that I am definitely going to die behind this shit, it’s that everybody counting on me and because of me, they’re gonna die, too!”

“That’s not true,” Peaches said. “I will not let you die.”

“It’s not up to you!” Perry raged. “This is bigger than you! It’s bigger than everybody! I—I—I— We in each other’s heads, now? I’m just supposed to roll with everything when my body ain’t even my body no more? You took me over first!”

A caught expression appeared on Peaches’s face. “That’s what that was?”

“That’s what I—!” Perry caught himself. He’d been on the verge of screaming at the top of his lungs into the most beautiful face he knew. And for what? What would it change? Everybody was wrong, and he couldn’t do this, and everyone was going to die because of it; what would it help to scream and cry about it? Couldn’t he just keep on keeping on and hope he was mistaken? The thought didn’t make sense to him, but he was afraid to examine it more closely. If it was enough to keep him from feeling he was drowning, that black water was filling his lungs, then he’d just leave it at that for now.

“I, uh… I think so,” Perry said. “Something like, anyway.”

“Oh, lawd,” Brendy said with a roll of her eyes and a theatrical sweep of her right arm. “Last thing I need is y’all switchin’ bodies on me. Magic Negroes is even more triflin’ than regular Negroes.”

“I won’t, though,” Peaches said. “I won’t let you die. You know that, right?”

Perry smiled sadly. “Yeah, Peaches. I know.”

Peaches grinned. “I’ll pull you uphill if I have to. And you know what yo mama say…”

“‘It’s haaaaaaard pullin’ Negroes uphill!’” they quoted in unison and let laughter take them.

“We caught the song, though,” Brendy said brightly once they had taken a beat to recover. “I didn’t even have to call Billy!”

“Yeah,” Peaches said, her cheer restored, “but that’ll be the last one we catch if we keep messin’ up like this!”

Perry stuffed the sack roughly in his front pocket and showed Peaches his palms. “I know, okay?” he said. “We gotta be more careful. Especially since me and Brendy ain’t used to being magic. I think her rock and my sack, they’re still changing us—but—”

“Butt!” Brendy crowed.

Perry rolled his eyes and shook his head. “But we are where we at, and what we gotta do is figure out our next move.”

“We don’t even know what part of town we in,” Peaches said, deflated.

“I bet you Mistuh Man know where we is,” Brendy said. “Don’t you, Mistuh Man?”

All three kids turned to look at Jerome. Jerome himself realized in that instant that he wasn’t just shocked, he was terrified. Nola was a crazy place, all right, what with the P-bodies, the zombies, and the bizarre wilderness of City Park, but the madness had never encroached upon Jerome’s own property. These kids were younger than his own, and they’d just—!

“You kids,” Jerome said. “What you done to that woman?”

“Oh, that wa’n’t no woman,” the littlest one said. She couldn’t have been older than six or eight. “That was a song.”

“You know,” said the boy. “‘Ballhead Betty’? ‘Looka there,’” he sang, “‘She a ball ball ball ball Ballllhead Betty!’”

“I ain’t playing, now,” Jerome couldn’t hear himself speaking, and he hoped his voice was slow with authority. “I was an officer of the law, and you need to fill me in on what just happened here. Who are you? What are your names? Who was that woman? Where is she now?”

The redhead looked at Jerome with the same expression he saw in the faces of the little gangbanging kids in the worst parts of town. She couldn’t be older than twelve, and she should not yet have learned how to make her face close like a fist.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We leaving directly.”

“You’re not going anywhere until I get an explanation,” Jerome said. “Then I’ll call your parents to come get you.”

“Who gone stop us?” the little one asked. “You and yo robot?” There was no malice in her voice. She seemed excited and genuinely curious—and that was what frightened Jerome most of all.

“We don’t want no trouble, baby,” the redhead said. “Y’all just keep it cool, and we be right out your hair.”

Reflexively, Jerome reached for his absent holster.

The kids tensed: The little one reached in her dress pocket. The redhead balled her fists, and veins corded out along her skinny arms. The boy reached for the potato sack sticking out of his left front jeans pocket.

Jerome froze. Time ground nearly to a halt, the same way it had the only time he’d been forced to shoot an assailant. Electricity seemed to course along his limbs. He’d never had this sensation come over him when he was unarmed, and now he felt out of his depth. He concentrated on his expression, willing his mask of control to remain in place. The children glared right back at him, unafraid.

“… Now,” Jerome said, acutely aware that he did not want to share whatever fate had befallen the woman he’d tripped. “… Now, listen…” What would he say next? What was there to say?

A piano intro split the air, played by no one at all.

“Damn,” said the redhead. Jerome felt that if he’d been close enough, he could have seen his own reflection disappear from the surface of her eye. Now that she heard the music, Jerome might as well never have existed.

This is good, Jerome thought. This is a good thing. Turn around and leave them to whatever this is.

But… but they were kids, and they were clearly in danger. Jerome couldn’t just leave them.

The piano continued to play, its sound filling the car yard and spilling into the neighborhood beyond. A shadow began to form in the clearing.

The redhead shared a look with the boy. “You ready?” she asked.

“Naw,” said the boy. “But that don’t matter now.”