Sparrow Hill Road 2010 By Seanan (13 page)

Good thing she's been dead for a long time. The room the Queen leads me to
has been turned into a makeshift tattoo parlor, white sheets on the walls, a
pillow on the narrow wooden table. One of the younger routewitches--a boy who
looks no more than ten--stands next to it with a tattoo artist's full kit spread
out on a folding TV tray next to him.

"This is Rose, Mikey," she says. "She's the one we were talking about."

He nods earnestly. "Evening, ma'am," he says, and his accent is midwestern,
and out of date by at least thirty years. No one here is what they seem to be.
"It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Same here, Mikey," I say. I look to the Queen, unsure what the etiquette is
here.

She smiles. "Get up on the table, Rose, and let Mikey work. He knows what you
need to have done. The Ocean Lady's agreed to let you carry your protection with
you when you leave here." She must see the hesitation in my face, because she
puts her hands against my cheeks and says, firmly, "Trust me. We want Bobby
stopped as much as you do."

So I get onto the table and stretch out on my stomach, eyes turned
steadfastly toward the wall. The boy Mikey pulls up my dress, begins wiping
something cool across my back. This is not what I expected when I set out to
walk the Atlantic Highway.

The Queen of the Routewitches circles the table, crouches down next to me,
and says softly, "The one who comes to claim the favor will tell you that I sent
her, and give you my name."

"What is it?"

"Apple," she says, and I know where the shadows in her eyes came from--a town
whose name means "Apple Orchard," a place where the whole damn country fed
ghosts into the darkness--and then the needle bites my skin, and like Sleeping
Beauty with the spindle, I don't know anything anymore.

***

The Atlantic Highway ran from Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida, and it's in
Key West that I wake up, sprawled in a truck stop parking lot, back in the jeans
and tank top that I wore when I started walking the Ocean Lady in the first
place. I'm chilled to the bone, back among the dead, but the small of my back
aches like it hasn't caught on to that fact just yet.

I climb to my feet and start for the diner, making small adjustments in my
appearance as I go, fitting my looks to my environment. Time to see if I can't
talk someone out of a sweater and a plate of bacon, and maybe see if I can't get
a fry cook on his way off-shift to strip me down and tell me what the Queen of
the Routewitches ordered written on my skin.

Look out, Bobby Cross. Your diamond days are coming to an end, and I'm coming
for you.

El Viento del Diablo
A
Sparrow Hill Road
story
by
Seanan McGuire

Rose knows what she's got
Rose knows that she's hot
Rose flashes the fools;
Rose smiles, watch 'em drool.

El Viento del Diablo gets Rose tonight.
No Rose if you lose;
Take care what you choose...

-- "El Viento del Diablo," Bruce Holmes.

The true secret of the palimpsest skin of America is that every place is
different, and every place is the same. That's the true secret of the entire
world, I'd guess, but I don't have access to the world. All I have is North
America, where the coyotes sing the moon down every night, and the rattlesnakes
whisper warnings through the canyons. And in North America, the daylight, the
twilight, and the midnight are each divided and divided again into thousands
upon thousands of realities that never seem to touch--barely even seem to exist
in parallel--while secretly, they're like horny teenage lovers who can't keep
their hands off of each other. They're stealing kisses at the drive-in, the
midnight girls with their daylight boys; they're slipping love notes to their
twilight sweethearts, they're telling lies to keep their friends from ever
figuring out. They're ripping holes in the world every day, every hour, every
second
, and they're doing it because people are just people, no matter
what onion-skin level of the world they think of as their home. People are just
people, and people don't like being fenced in.

The true secret of the skin of America is that it's barely covered by the
legends and lies that it clothes itself in, sitting otherwise naked and exposed.
It's a fragile thing, this country and this world of ours, and the only thing it
can do to protect itself from us is lie.

Things that happen in the daylight echo all the way down to the midnight. It
works the other way, too. What happens in the midnight will inevitably make
itself known in the daylight, given enough time to echo through the layers, to
pass hand to hand down all those chains of secret lovers. What happens in the
dark always shines through into the light.

There are times when I truly wish that people weren't so good at forgetting
that everything is connected to everything else. Because those are the times
when people get hurt.

***

The itching at the small of my back is a low, constant burn, the sort of
thing that hasn't been a problem since that hot June night when a dead man ran
me off the road at the top of Sparrow Hill. My car went up in flames, my body
went with it, and things like the steady itch of healing flesh ceased to be my
problem. Try telling that to my back. It's been itching for three weeks now,
ever since the Queen of the North American Routewitches decided that dying young
in the 1940s shouldn't deny me the right to have a tramp stamp tattoo of my very
own.

I squirm against the seat of the battered El Camino that's currently
devouring miles along I-75 North, the highway that runs between Key West and
Detroit. I'll hop out when we hit the Michigan state line, catch another ride,
and make my way toward Buckley Township. There's a phantom rider I know who runs
a cargo route through there. He can give me a ride along the ghostroads to the
Last Dance, where Emma can hopefully tell me what the hell the sore spot on my
skin really means. Hopefully. Fifty years dead and gone, and I'm still no better
at some aspects of this "ghost" shit than I was the night Bobby pushed me into
the ravine.

I squirm again, attracting the attention of the man behind the wheel. I try
to turn my squirm into a seductive wiggle, smiling at him from under coyly
lowered lashes. I couldn't tell you his name if you paid me, but I've met his
kind before. He'll keep me in the car as long as I don't make trouble, or until
we hit the state line. Then he'll put his hand on my thigh and ask whether I
want to make a few bucks to help me get wherever it is I'm going. I'll tell him
the ride's worth more than the money, and things will proceed from there. Same
dance, different partners.

I was a virgin when I died. There's a sort of weird irony to that, because I
really don't remember why I thought was so important. I just wanted to be loved.
I still do, I guess but it isn't an option anymore, so I have sex with strangers
in truck stop parking lots and rest stop bathrooms in exchange for the life they
let me borrow and the rides they're willing to give me.

It's not a living, exactly, but it's the only thing I've got, and that makes
it good enough for me.

The smile didn't do the trick. The man looks at me oddly, brow furrowed, like
he's no longer sure just what I'm doing in his car. I know that look. That's the
look a man gives a girl when he picked her up hoping for sex without strings,
and has suddenly realized that sex without strings isn't always a good idea. I
don't normally get that look until after the fucking ends, when they decide that
"a pretty girl like you" who does the things I'll do must be nothing but a
whore. Styles change, music gets hard to listen to, and hemlines bounce up and
down like kids on a trampoline, but hypocrisy is the one thing that never goes
out of style.

"Where did you say you were going again?" he asks, sudden suspicion in his
words.

I bite back a sigh before it can get away from me, trying one more smile as I
reply, "Toward Detroit. I gotta get to my aunt's place before Sunday, or she'll
call my folks and tell them I'm late. They'd be pissed if they found out I went
to Florida for Spring Break, you know?" It helps that I'm sweet sixteen forever,
dewy-eyed peaches-and-cream girl, no matter what I do to myself. Death has its
privileges.

But something about me is bothering the driver, and whatever I'm trying to
sell, he's not buying anymore. The car slows as he eases off the gas, navigating
us toward the side of the road. "I misunderstood. I'm not going that way after
all."

He's lying. I know he's lying, and he knows I know he's lying, and it doesn't
matter, because there's not a damn thing I can do about it. He's the one with
the car, and he knows I'm not carrying any weapons, because the outfit I'm
wearing leaves me nowhere to hide them. Bikini top, cut-off shorts,
rainbow-stripe socks: the very picture of a party girl trying to get home before
she's missed. He never asked what I was doing in Key West without a bag. They
never do.

"Oh," I say, letting my smile slip away into confusion. "I--I'm sorry? Did I
say something wrong? I'm just trying to get home." It's too late; I see it in
his eyes.

The car drifts to a stop on the shoulder of the highway, and I step out
before he can ask for his jacket back. Once I'm out of the car, he'll have to
decide whether it's worth pursuing me. They almost never take that risk. He's
like all the others, because he doesn't say a word as he leans across the seat,
slams my door, and hits the gas, leaving me alone, too-warm and still healing,
on the side of the road.

Sighing, I stick out my thumb and start walking. Another ride will come along
eventually. Another ride always does.

***

The best thing about having a jacket is the way it makes me live again, at
least until the sun comes up the next morning--dawn to dawn, that's the longest
a borrowed life can last. The worst thing about having a jacket is the way it
makes me live again, especially when it's afternoon in the middle of Georgia,
and the sun is beating down like it has a personal grudge to settle. The novelty
of sweating wore off an hour ago. I wipe my forehead as I trudge along the
median, giving serious thought to taking the jacket off and letting myself drop
into the twilight, where I may be cold, and hungry, and itchy, but at least I
won't be broiling.

The car that just blazed past slows, hazard lights coming on as it pulls off
to the side of the road. I recognize a ride when it's offered to me. Tugging up
the collar of the jacket to make it look a little less ill-fitting, I break into
a jog.

It's a bottle-green Ford Taurus with a dent in the passenger-side door. The
man behind the wheel looks like he's in his late twenties, sandy hair, brown
eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. He lowers the window as I come jogging up, and
asks the question that begins this ritual--a question that pre-dates cars, and
highways, and even the United States of America:

"Where are you heading?"

Something about the honesty of his expression pulls the real answer out of me
before I have time to consider: "Buckley Township, up in Michigan."

"I've never heard of it."

That's why honest answers are a bad idea. Name big cities, major
thoroughfares--places people know. You're more likely to get a ride if the
driver believes you're heading for a real place. "From here, you just drive
toward Detroit." I muster a smile. "Please? I'll go as far as you'll take me." I
don't tell him any stories, don't try to sell him any lies. I'm too tired and
too hot for that. I just wait.

That seems to be the right approach, for once. After a moment, he nods, and
unlocks the door. "Hop in," he says. "I can get you a good chunk of the way
there."

"Thanks," I say, hooking the door open and sliding into the smooth, well-worn
embrace of the front seat. "Thanks a lot."

"Don't mention it," he says. The engine starts and we pull away. I allow
myself to relax, trying to ignore the sweat trickling between my breasts and the
constant itching on my back. Maybe this day won't be so bad after all. I've got
a coat; I've got a ride; there's even the chance I'll be able to talk the driver
into pulling off somewhere for a milkshake and a cheeseburger. You try being
dead for fifty years and see if you can describe a better day.

So why do my nerves feel like they're on fire, and why do I feel like I'm
missing something?

The driver stays silent until we're back in the flow of traffic, moving
through the sea of station wagons, pickup trucks, and sport cars. Then he
glances over, light glinting off his lens, and asks, "So what's your name?"

His accent is familiar, all the flat plains and open spaces of Michigan
tucked into his vowels and hidden in his consonants. He sounds like home.
"Rose," I tell him--and since this is a day for honesty, I add, "Rose Marshall."

"Well, Rose, I'm Chris." His smile is as quick and bright as the light that
glinted from his glasses. "I'm heading for Detroit. So I guess I can get you
most of the way to Buckley. You have family there?"

"I used to." My own accent is tissue-thin and faded from the road; I could be
from any part of the country or every part of the country at the same time. I
offer a smile of my own, and add, "I grew up there."

"Heading home?"

"Something like that."

Chris nods. "Well, then, Rose, let's see if we can get you home."

***

It's a much nicer day when viewed through a car window, flashing by at a
speed feet can never match--the speed my hitchhiker's heart tells me the world
was meant to move, miles turning into dust and memory behind us. The heat of the
day is no match for the air conditioning, which cools the sweat from my skin and
leaves me grateful for the coat I'm wearing. I sort of wish I had some pants,
instead of my coquettish party girl cut-offs, but my clothes turned solid when I
donned the coat, and taking it off would give me a whole new set of troubles.