“What song is that?” Craig asked, his voice catching in his throat.
Terry-Joe was too weary to be circumspect. “Kell’s dyin’ dirge. Every Tufa has one. It comes to the people around him when it’s time for it.”
Now there was harmony, from the husband and daughter beside her.
Craig wiped at his eyes. The sound was so plaintive, so touching, that its sorrow was irresistible. A nurse emerged from the treatment area sobbing into a tissue.
“We should go,” Craig said.
Aiden came to the door rubbing his eyes, clad in sweatpants and a Transformers T-shirt. “What?” he said, drawing the word out into several syllables.
“It’s me, Terry-Joe. Can you open the door?”
“Ain’t supposed to.”
“This is important, Aiden. I’ve got Reverend Chess with me. We need to talk to you.”
“To me?”
Terry-Joe was tired, and his balls ached. “Aiden, open the goddamned door!”
“All right, all right,” the boy said. Craig put a calming hand on Terry-Joe’s shoulder, but the younger man shrugged it off. He pulled the screen door open as soon as Aiden unhooked it and went inside.
Aiden looked askance at Terry-Joe’s wet spot. “Did you pee your pants?”
“Never mind. Listen, something bad’s happened,” Terry-Joe said. He couldn’t look directly at the boy, so he gazed at the floor.
“Is Bronwyn hurt?”
“No. I mean, yes, but that’s not the bad thing. The bad thing is…” And Terry-Joe froze. He simply couldn’t say the words.
Craig stepped up. “Son, I’m afraid your brother, Kell, has passed on.”
Aiden blinked, and the last of the sleep cleared from his eyes. “Wha… Kell’s dead?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Well, then say dead!” Aiden yelled, making them both jump. He turned to Terry-Joe. “What happened?”
“Ah… he got in a fight with my brother.”
Aiden stared at Terry-Joe with the kind of betrayal only a child can feel when his idol topples from the pedestal. Dwayne Gitterman had been the epitome of cool when Aiden was a small boy, always showing off and bringing treats. “Dwayne killed him?”
Terry-Joe nodded, still looking at the floor.
“Your mom, dad, and sister asked us to come bring you to the hospital,” Craig said. “You should probably get dressed first.”
Aiden swallowed hard. He was too overwhelmed to cry. He turned and went into his room, and they heard dresser drawers opening and closing.
Craig looked around at the family pictures. He saw photos of Deacon and Chloe as young newlyweds, then with their gradually increasing brood. He was impressed with how little they had visibly aged; Chloe, especially, was as vibrant now as she’d been as a young woman in the eighties and nineties.
There were three pictures of only Kell; in one he was a toddler, in another an adolescent proudly holding a stringer of fish, and finally his high school graduation picture. Craig had never met Kell, and he realized now he’d never see him alive. The boy holding those fish was gone forever.
Another picture drew his eye. Bronwyn, fourteen or fifteen in a halter top and shorts, making a muscle for her father, who felt it and feigned terror. Even though the picture was only a few years old—when it had been taken, Craig was probably finishing his undergraduate degree—there seemed ages of difference between the girl in the photo and the one he’d met. It wasn’t just the trauma of her experience, although that was part of it. There was a power within Bronwyn now that was entirely missing from this earlier girl.
Then he was yanked back to the present when Aiden strode from his room, dressed and carrying his hunting rifle. “Y’all lock up behind yourselves,” he said without looking at them.
With cries of alarm, Terry-Joe jumped at Aiden, while Craig rushed to block the door. Terry-Joe grabbed the rifle by the barrel, but Aiden wasn’t letting it go. Craig held up his hands in a calm down gesture. “Aiden, I think you need to take a deep breath.”
“I think y’all need to step back,” Aiden said.
“You’re not leaving with that gun,” Craig said seriously.
“The hell I’m not,” he said, and began tugging to get it away from Terry-Joe. Craig jumped forward to intercede just as a loud crack filled the room. Terry-Joe jumped back, and Aiden dropped the gun.
Craig put his foot on the barrel to keep anyone else from grabbing it. For a moment no one moved. Then he asked, “Are you two hurt?”
Terry-Joe shook his head. Aiden stared wide eyed at the wall. The bullet had passed through a framed picture, shattering the brittle glass. Craig glanced at it, then looked more closely; it appeared to be a piece of sandpaper. He tentatively touched it and confirmed this, then saw an X drawn with a Sharpie. The words, I’m going here were written beside it, and the signature, Love, Pvt. Bronwyn Hyatt.
Craig picked up the gun, unscrewed the tube, and poured the little gold cartridges out into his hand. He worked the bolt action several times to make sure nothing was left in the chamber. Then he tossed the weapon onto the couch. “That wasn’t real bright,” he said through his teeth, forcing his anger down. The boy had just gotten terrible news, after all.
Aiden turned to Terry-Joe. “Sorry, Terry-Joe, I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” he said flatly, as if discussing a ball game. “But I reckon I have to kill your brother, either tonight or eventually.”
Craig turned Aiden’s face to him. “Aiden, listen to me. Right now the living need you more than the dead. Your mom, dad, and sister are at the hospital, and they want us to take you there. Unarmed. Okay?”
Aiden nodded. Then his lower lip began to tremble.
Craig managed a wry, sad smile. “I don’t blame you, I’d cry, too.”
Aiden burst out with a sob, splattering saliva and mucus in Craig’s face. He ignored it, dropped to his knees, and wrapped the boy in a big hug.
Terry-Joe, still shaken by the gunshot, suddenly had a thought. He ran into Bronwyn’s bedroom and grabbed her mandolin from under the bed.
Craig picked Aiden up and carried him outside. The boy cried all the way to the hospital.
30
At the hospital, Bronwyn was back in her bed, her parents seated in chairs beside her. Kell’s body was now in the morgue, evidence of a capital crime. The police had been notified, and the search for Dwayne Gitterman went from casual to much more serious.
None of the Hyatts spoke. They knew that, in the lobby, members of the Tufa community had begun to gather, but none of them felt like making an appearance.
The wrapping around Bronwyn’s chest had begun to pinch and itch, and the artificial weariness of the pain medication kept her mind fuzzy. She fought the drowsiness, though; she couldn’t imagine sleeping through a time like this.
Kell. Was. Dead. The certainty of that encircled her and cinched far worse than the bandages. The older brother who’d taught her to shoot and drive, who’d helped her hide from her parents the first time she came in drunk, who’d advised her repeatedly not to hang out with that no-account Dwayne Gitterman, was now gone.
Dwayne. The bad boy with the good heart. Except he didn’t have a good heart, or it had gone bad while she was away in Iraq. Whatever the cause, he couldn’t be allowed to roam free anymore.
Suddenly her mind cleared. The dream returned, its meaning suddenly obvious.