Before
IT WAS BRANDY’S idea to take a detour from the list and go see Teddy’s mother in Virginia.
Teddy had warned her they had places to go and dead-heads to kill, but Brandy had been adamant. And with how deeply she’d gotten her claws into him, he couldn’t say no. Good thing all her ideas had turned out to be good ones.
Everyone else on the Lullaby Express was afraid of her. Ever since that day in the rest area bathroom when she’d stroked his horns—five inches now and starting to sprout new branches—she’d insisted everyone on the bus call her the Black Widow.
One man who they’d picked up in Pennsylvania, a really twitchy fucker who was on the run he claimed for doing something bad, real bad, refused to call her that, and now he was no longer alive, his body dumped in rural Ohio, having bled out all over one of the Lullaby Express’s seats after Brandy’s knife entered his brain stem from the underside of his chin. Ever since that, everyone on the bus—up to twelve now—respectfully called her the Black Widow.
Teddy pulled the Lullaby Express to a stop outside his childhood home and said, “You sure you want to do this?”
Brandy stood up and yelled to the passengers, “Nobody gets off. You understand what I’m saying?” Some nodded, but others didn’t. She said to Teddy, “Turn that shit down.” He’d been playing lullabies on repeat over the speakers he’d put in; the lullabies seemed to calm a few of them when they got antsy. He turned it down; it had been playing the Haitian lullaby, “Dodo Titi,” another ditty where the baby would come to harm if they didn’t go to sleep.
Brandy repeated herself to the passengers and got all nods this time. Satisfied, she opened the door and said to Teddy, “Let’s go.”
Teddy stood from the driver’s seat and his horns hit the ceiling. Bolts of pain shot down through his skull. He reached to the dashboard for the cowboy hat he’d been wearing to hide them, but Brandy said, “No. Leave it. Let her see you as you are.”
Teddy left the hat on the dash, and thought She ain’t gonna see shit, she’s practically a dead-head herself, but followed Brandy to the front door. It was unlocked, which meant the old widow from next door, Mrs. Chastain, was here helping her eat. Once inside, they found Mrs. Chastain standing in the living room beside Belinda Lomax’s hospital bed, but instead of her typical drugged-out gaze, Mother was sitting up on her own and seemed more alert than she had in a year or more.
Mother turned her head toward them, but after seeing his horns, her smile faded.
Mrs. Chastain gasped, stepped away. “Hello, Theodore.” She spoke in pleasantries, but his horns had spooked her. Not only the horns, but perhaps what Brandy was wearing as well.
“Mother,” said Teddy, and then to their neighbor, “Mrs. Chastain.”
Brandy stared at Belinda Lomax just as his mother stared into her. Not so much in a bad way, thought Teddy, but more out of curiosity. And then the most shocking thing occurred: Mother reached out her hand toward Brandy and Brandy stepped closer and grasped it, lovingly, like they somehow understood each other, when Teddy had assumed that Brandy would have been the last woman on earth of whom Mother would have approved. But here they were, not only holding hands but smiling.
Brandy said to Mrs. Chastain, “You can go now.”
Mrs. Chastain hesitated long enough for Mother to say, “Go on, Margaret.” And then her eyes turned cold. Teddy saw hate flash through them, which he’d seen glimpses of before but never toward Mrs. Chastain. “I know you’ve been wearing my jewelry, Margaret. Wearing my clothes.” Mrs. Chastain paused but wouldn’t look back toward her friend on the bed. Mother said, “I know you’ve been stealing cookies from my cookie jar.” Something about the way Mother smiled made Teddy wonder if she was really talking about cookies. “But that’s okay, Margaret,” said Mother, grinning. “I used to have relations with Stan.”
Mrs. Chastain closed her eyes like she might get sick, or maybe closing them could block out what Mother was saying about her dead husband
But Mother wasn’t finished. “Every Monday and Friday morning,” she said. “For years.”
Jesus Christ, thought Teddy. Who was this woman?
Mrs. Chastain stormed out, but not before giving Teddy’s horns one last look. The screen door slammed shut.
Belinda Lomax looked at Teddy. “I’m tired of fighting it, Theodore. So God damn tired.”
Teddy stood speechless. Never had he heard his mother take her Lord’s name in vain. This wasn’t the mother who’d raised him. Wasn’t the mother he’d expected Brandy to meet. Wasn’t the mother who’d constantly gotten so under his skin he’d tried to kill her.
Tired of fighting what, he thought?
Mrs. Chastain started screaming outside.
Brandy let go of Mother’s hand to look out the window. “Oh shit.”
“What?” asked Teddy.
“The guy with the axe got off the bus.” Brandy headed for the front door, hurried out, shouting, “Put her down!”
Teddy heard Mrs. Chastain screaming, and then she stopped. Brandy gasped loud enough for Teddy to hear her through the wall.
Teddy moved toward the window, pulled the curtains aside. Mrs. Chastain’s body lay in the grass a few paces away from the bus. The big, beefy son of a bitch with the axe was stepping back onto the Lullaby Express, mission accomplished, blood dripping from the blade he liked to sharpen as they drove. The bus shook under his weight. Teddy didn’t know his name, because the man didn’t talk much. He’d been the third passenger Teddy had picked up, weeks ago in the Detroit area, and maybe this outburst had been brewing for some time. Brandy had warned that the man seemed to be getting fidgety and more anxious by the day. Like he badly needed to use that axe on something.
On someone.
Teddy looked back to Mrs. Chastain’s body on the grass; the man had lopped her head clean off and placed it on her chest, eyes open and facing the road. Teddy should have been horrified, but the tingle inside his skull made him feel otherwise. From the tip of his horns on down to his toes he felt the thrum. Fuel coursed through his blood and bones and gave him a jolt.
Brandy turned toward him at the window and held out her hands like What the fuck?
Teddy thought, maybe we shouldn’t have turned the lullabies down so low.
He gave Brandy a look that said You handle it, and then turned back toward his mother.
Belinda Lomax looked tired. She held a yellow paper out to Teddy. “Margaret got this out of the mail.” Teddy grabbed the paper from his mother. She said, “Take me there.”
Before he could read what was on the yellow paper—at first glance it looked like a flyer of some sort—Brandy came storming back inside.
Brandy had a temper and Teddy liked it.
Teddy told her, “Take her around back. Bury it.”
“We’re gonna burn it first,” she said.
“Who’s we?”
“Freddie. The dude with the black greasy hair and the lisp. Like Elmer Fudd. Sits two benches behind your driver’s seat.”
“Elmer Fudd doesn’t have a lisp, he stutters,” said Teddy. “You’re thinking Sylvester. Although I think he does that on purpose.”
“Whatever,” said Brandy. “We picked him up in Kalamazoo. Right after you did that dead-head in Saginaw.” She gestured toward the window. “He just walked off the bus and said his name was Firestarter Freddie.” She scratched her head like she was annoyed with all of it. “And I said, ‘Oh really?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I start fires. That’s what I do.’ Except he said it with that lisp.”
“Bring it in here,” whispered Mother Lomax. “The body … Burn it all down” And Teddy thought, now we’re talking, just let me get a few things from my room first.
He said to Brandy, “Tell Freddie to bring the body in here. Get that weirdo with the horseshoes to help carry it.” Brandy rolled her eyes. He said, “It was your idea to come here.” And that got her moving, albeit with major attitude and some bounce to her rump, barely concealed by that black miniskirt.
Finally, he looked at the yellow paper his mother had handed him, when she’d said Take me here. It was a flyer advertising the grand reopening of the historic Beehive Hotel in some place called Harrod’s Reach, Nebraska.
At first, Teddy thought, No way, no how, Mother, but then the name Harrod’s Reach struck him like a church bell.
Harrod’s Reach was where he’d been heading to before this detour, where the most recent name on his list resided.
Some dead-head named Solomon Dupree. Goes by Sully.