Someplace to Be Flying (9 page)

“Well,” Lily said. “I think I know.”

Rory was quiet for a long moment when Lily had finished her story. What he wanted to say was, Be careful, Kit. Walker moves in a rough crowd. You don’t want to get caught up in it. But that wasn’t what she needed to hear right now.

And then there was this other stuff, right out of stories that Christy or Jack would tell.

“I believe you, Kit,” he said instead.

“Really?”

“Why would you lie?”

“I wouldn’t. It’s just … I don’t know if I’d believe myself. But I was there and I saw what happened.”

“I can see why you needed time before talking about it.”

“I know. It’s all so weird. What do you think the girl meant with that business about the cuckoo?”

“Beats me,” Rory told her. “It sort of sounds like a folk song, but I don’t see the connection.” He paused for a moment, thinking he heard someone running down the hallway outside his apartment. “You know, the way you described those women they could almost be our crow girls.”

“You mean those tomboys who live on your street?”

Rory chuckled. “Sure, if they were older and feral instead of just mischievous kids. I think I heard one of them running down the outside hall a moment ago—Lord knows what she was up to.”

“Why do you call them crow girls?”

“I don’t. I think Annie started it and now she’s got me doing it, too. It’s got to do with the way they’re always messing around in the trees outside and getting into everything—like the crow girls in Jack’s stories.”

Lily was quiet for a moment. “The girls that rescued us were like birds,” she said. “I mean, they had a birdish feel about them, and then a friend of Hank’s told him they must be the crow girls, the ones in Jack’s stories.”

Rory could see where she was going.

“They weren’t the twins, Kit,” he said. “How could they be? The twins are just kids.”

“Of course it wouldn’t be them,” she replied. “It’s just odd.”

Not a fraction as odd as her story had been, Rory thought, but he let it go.

Instead, he got her talking about other things, sticking to more conventional topics until Lily finally said good-bye.

“Thanks for listening,” she said. “And for not, you know, blowing me off.”

“I’d never do that.”

“But it’s a crazy story.”

“Well, it sure stretches the way we think things are,” Rory said, being diplomatic.

“I wish you could have been there.”

“Me, too. You take care, Kit. Get some sleep.”

“I’ll try. Thanks again.”

He cradled the phone and sat back in his chair, staring at the contact sheets pinned to the corkboard above his computer. He’d circled the shots he liked the best with an orange grease pencil. It was terrific work, but then Lily’s photos usually were. She was so grounded. Had a little bit of trouble with self-esteem, it was true, but she dealt with it in the same matter-of-fact way she dealt with everything. It wasn’t that she couldn’t see the whimsical side of things. It was just that she’d always known the difference between what was real and what wasn’t.

At least until now.

Jack’s stories had started it—that much was obvious. But where was the jump from enjoying his stories to thinking you’d stepped into one? And where did Hank Walker come into all of this?

Rory hadn’t lied to Lily. He did believe—not necessarily that it had happened the way she’d said it had, but that
she
believed it had happened that way. Only where did he go with it now? What did you do when one of your best friends turned the corner and stepped from fact into fiction?

After awhile, he turned back to his computer and logged on. He had eight messages waiting for him, but it was the last one that caught his immediate attention.

Sender: dgavinStama.com
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 1996 00:37:52 -0500
From: 'Donna Gavin' 
Organization: Tamarack Publishing
To: [email protected]
Subject: Do we have a problem here?
Hi Rory
I hope you don't mind me contacting you like this--I
got your email address and phone number from Sass.
I tried phoning, but your line's been busy for
ages, so I'm sending you this instead.
It's about Lily.
I just got the strangest phone call from her and I
need to talk to somebody about it. I'm going to be
out of town at a conference until Tuesday, but if
you could email, and let me know the best time for
me to call you, I'd really appreciate it.
I don't want to worry you, but something _really_
weird is going on with Lily.
Donna

No kidding, Rory thought.

He hit “Reply,” composed a quick response to Donna’s message, and sent it. He tried going through the rest of his messages, but he couldn’t concentrate. Finally he shut his computer down and sat staring at the blank screen.

There was no one except for Donna that he could talk to about this—at least not without betraying Lily’s trust, and he wasn’t about to do that. At least not yet. If he decided she was putting herself into danger, then all bets were off, but for now all he could do was wait.

If there was any one place Hank might call home, it was that broad empty slab of concrete he’d cleared off in the Tombs. Big cleanup one spring, maintenance since then. Once the Tombs regulars figured out it was his space, they pretty much left it alone. No one had any use for it anyway, except for Hank.

That was where Moth found him, closing in on four A.M. that night. Hank sat cross-legged in the middle of that flat stretch of pavement, not doing anything except maybe thinking.

“Pretty night,” Moth said, claiming a piece of the pavement beside him.

Hank nodded.

“That dog of yours was watching me as I came in. If I hadn’t checked out, I think he’d have taken a piece of me.”

“He’s nobody’s dog,” Hank said. “He’s just what he is.”

“Like all of us.”

“Like all of us,” Hank agreed.

Moth let a piece of the quietness lie between them for awhile.

“You okay?” he asked after awhile.

“I don’t know. Used to be I knew where everything stood, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Because of these animal people?”

Hank nodded. “Them, and Jack’s stories.” He turned to look at Moth, his face ghostly in the starlight. “Feels like something’s coming down, just like in those stories of his.”

“Doesn’t have to touch you.”

“But that’s just it,” Hank said. “It already has. Thing is, I don’t know where it’s taking me.”

He sounded tired, Moth thought.

“You get any sleep today?” he asked.

“Crashed in Tony’s back room for a few hours.”

“Talk to Jack?”

“Couldn’t find him.” Hank hesitated for a moment, then added, “But I talked to Lily. The woman from the other night.”

Moth waited.

“She feels the same. Drawn in, but doesn’t know to what or where. Feels like she’s just waiting.”

“Waiting for what?’

Hank shrugged. “Just something. I don’t know what.”

Moth leaned back on his elbows and stared up at the night sky. It was quiet here. You couldn’t hear the traffic from either Williamson or Yoors, light as it would be at this time of night. Couldn’t hear the bikers either, and they were usually still partying. Listening to what Hank had to say, thinking of Jack and the story he’d gotten from Jimmy, he felt himself slipping somewhere else, too, into a version of the city where that kind of thing could happen. Was happening.

Hell, he was already there.

“Went by Jimmy’s today,” he said without looking away from the stars. “Got him to tell me that story again—the one about the dog-headed guy.”

“I remember you passing that on,” Hank said. “What about it?”

“Just wanted to remind you that you’re not alone.”

Hank gave a slow nod. “We had a good laugh about it that night. I mean, Jimmy of all people.”

“But we’re not laughing now.”

“Not much,” Hank said. He went somewhere inside his head, came back. “Jack tells the other side of that story—about the game and all.”

“Yeah, but Jimmy says it took three hours, not three days.”

“That’s because Jack tells a better story.”

Moth didn’t have to turn to see the smile. He could hear it in Hank’s voice.

“I won’t argue that,” Moth said. “But then Jack’s not just passing along something strange. He’s got other reasons for telling his stories. You know that thing he says, how when we understand each other’s stories, we understand everything a little better—even ourselves.”

Hank nodded.

“Guess we’re going to have
try
to understand his a little better,” Moth said.

The quiet lay down between them again, easy as an old dog.

“Maybe not just his,” Hank said after awhile. “I was talking to Katy today.”

Moth didn’t say anything. He waited, content to let the night sky slip down into his eyes and fill him. Big sky like that, it did wonders for the soul. Put everything into perspective. How serious could your problems ever be when you were this small in the overall scheme of things?

After awhile, Hank lay down on the pavement beside him and started to talk.

Hearing him out, Moth realized that he’d never really known the meaning of “strange” until now. Above him, the sky seemed so enormous that it swallowed the very idea of the two of them lying here, looking up.

Moth turned to look at Hank. “So … do you believe her?”

“I don’t know. But something’s on her mind and it’s hurting pretty seriously.” Hank met Moth’s gaze and even the poor light couldn’t hide the trouble in his eyes. “Is this the way it works?” he asked. “They just line up on you, one after the other? You accept one impossible thing, so then you have to accept them all? You believe in ghosts, so now you’ve got to believe in aliens? Animal people are walking around among us, so Elvis is, too?”

Moth nodded. He understood perfectly. Where
were
you supposed to draw the line?

“So where do you go from here?” he asked.

Hank didn’t hesitate. “Wherever it takes me,” he said.

A PIECE OF NOWHERE

They say that history repeats itself, but I have

an embellishment on that. History repeats itself,

but at an accelerated pace.

—D
WIGHT
Y
OAKAM
,

FROM AN INTERVIEW IN
N
EW
C
OUNTRY

(N
OVEMBER
1995)

The room’s all fogged, up, thick with a gray cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke. Only thing that cuts through are the lights above the tables, the dick of the balls as they hit each other, the thump when they drop into a pocket. Jimmy’s Billiards has been around pretty much forever and it hasn’t changed over the years. It’s still the same one-up above that pawn shop at the corner of Vine and Palm, scratched wooden floors, plaster walls and ceiling dingy with smoke stains, beer on tap and only one brand, bags of chips, smokes sold in packs, single Cuban cigars, some of Jimmys hooch if he knows you. You want anything else, you’re in the wrong place.

Mostly we all know each other here. Sharks show up, they can play by themselves or sit and watch. We don’t take too kindly to anybody trying to make a fast buck off of us, got little enough as it is.

But the game tonight’s different. The slip of a girl and the tall man she’s playing, they’ve been in before, played a few racks with most of us, but never like this. She’s never played like this.

He’s looking like a riverboat gambler, flat-out handsome as always, black jeans, boots, and jacket, black flat-brimmed hat just like mine sitting on the bench by the table, white shirt, bolo tie. She’s wearing black combat boots, black leggings coming down from under an oversized black sweater that’s got so many pulls and loose bits of wool coming off it looks like it’s made of feathers. A raggedy girl to his long cool. But they could be family, looking at them. Cousins, maybe. Something similar in the cut of their features. Maybe he’s got that dark gray hair, hint of red in it, while hers is blue-black with those two bands of white running back from her temples, but they’ve got the same too-dark eyes with just a hint of yellow in them. Same dark skin, too. You could take them for Indians, or light-skinned blacks, but I know better. They’re first people, like me. Got a trouble between them that goes way back.

Nobody was paying much attention when Cody won the coin toss. He broke the rack and starting putting away balls, ran them for over an hour until he finally missed an easy corner shot on a five ball. He shrugged and smiled at Margaret when she stepped up to the table, but I could tell he wasn’t pleased. Something in his eyes, the way the skin on his face shivered for a moment, looking like fur, gone before anybody else could notice it.

Margaret, she’s been going through racks ever since
—
three days now. Nobody’s seen playing like this before. Talk’s gone dead. The other tables are empty and Jimmy’s cut the lights above them. Everybody just drinking their beer, smoking, and watching. Going home to sleep, going to work, but always coming back, shaking their heads when they see she’s still at the table, sinking those balls.