“The Tufa. The Tufa blood in you is singing now. You can either sing along, or wait for it to go quiet again. Or…”
She motioned him closer and spoke softly. “Go outside tonight. Look up at the sky. Listen to the wind. See what it says to you.”
“Hey!” Rockhouse said. “He ain’t got no right—”
“He’s got every right,” the girl fired back, and the old man again fell silent. Then she returned her attention to Don. “Listen for the wind. Listen for the riders. Listen for what calls in your own blood. Then go to Cricket and look at the painting in their library. Then decide.”
He could think of nothing to say. Mandalay smiled, wizened and old now like a Tibetan lama. He nodded, turned, and went back to his car. He was almost to the county line before realizing he’d forgotten the stamps. He wasn’t about to go back for them.
That night he and Susie picked up ice cream on their way home from the Waffle House, and as they sat on the couch eating and flirting, Don said, “Can I ask you something about your work?”
“Is this for your work?”
“No, I’m just curious.”
She nodded as she provocatively licked chocolate syrup from her spoon. “As long as it’s not about a specific patient.”
“You guys get a lot of Tufas in there, right? So they get the usual tests done, I assume. Tell me, is there anything different about them? I mean, different from…” He waved at the air with his own spoon.
“Different from what?” she asked.
“You know… human beings.”
She laughed. “The Tufa are human beings. Just like black people, or Eskimos, or Asians.”
“So, like, blood tests and stuff never come back… weird?”
“No, they come back with all the same things you’d find in anybody’s blood.” She touched the tip of his nose with her spoon, depositing a bit of vanilla ice cream on it. “I think you’re spending too much time dwelling on this.”
He wiped his nose and was hit anew by her attractiveness. “Well,” he said throatily, “I can think of one thing that might take my mind off it.”
“We haven’t finished our ice cream,” she pointed out.
He reached for her hand. “Bring it along.”
Now he looked up at the sky, the wind, the night, and felt something impending within him, a change he both dreaded and desperately longed for. He spread his arms like wings and whispered, “Okay, if anybody’s up there riding the night wind, I’m ready for a ride, too.”
If Susie had looked outside a moment later, she would’ve found the backyard empty.
Mandalay Harris sat beside the stream, her feet in the water. Even at night the air was humid and warm, and she felt mosquitoes approach, alight on her skin and then buzz away, repelled by something in her nature. A strange but welcome perk of being a trueblood Tufa. She plucked idly at her autoharp, sending random notes out on the wind.
The porch light came on, and her stepmother, Leshell, stuck her head out the trailer door. “Mandy? Y’all out here?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mandalay called. She kicked the water and watched it twinkle in the moonlight. The stream was barely a foot deep, and the rock on which she sat bisected its yard-wide channel.
“It’s past midnight,” Leshell said.
“I know.”
Leshell, in a long yellow T-shirt with a deer’s head drawn on it, walked across the wet grass to the edge of the stream. “I think you’re going to have company.”
Mandalay looked at her stepmother and nodded. “I heard. I’ll be in when I’m done.”
When she turned back to the stream, Bronwyn Hyatt stood beside it.
“Hey,” Mandalay said, as if the woman’s sudden appearance was the most normal thing in the world.
“Hey, Mandalay,” Bronwyn said, a little breathless. “Leshell.”
“Bronwyn.” Leshell nodded and went back inside.
Bronwyn’s hair was windblown, and big sweat circles spread from under her arms. “Got a minute?”
The girl shrugged. At moments like this, her reality as a ten-year-old seemed strongest. She played a few bars of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” “Not much happens this time of night.”
Favoring her ribs, Bronwyn pulled up an old milk crate that lay in the weeds beside the creek and sat. She took long, deep breaths until she could speak without gasping. “You know what happened tonight, I suppose.”
The girl nodded. “I’m real sorry. We all read the signs wrong. Some days it seems like the only sign that’s clear is red and says Stop. The night wind was there for him, though.”
“Is it there for me?”
Mandalay kicked at the water again. A distant rumble of thunder came over the mountains. “If you want it. You’re a trueblood, and a First Daughter. If you call the wind, it’ll answer.”
“Even if I call it for something selfish and wrong?”
Mandalay giggled. “Listen to you. What’s selfish and wrong? You want revenge for Kell’s dying. Who can blame you?”
“I don’t want revenge, Mandalay, I want Dwayne to be stopped. If he’s not, somebody else will suffer like I am, like my parents and little brother are. And…”
“And what?”
“I think I’m the one who’s supposed to stop him. It has to be me because I’ve killed people before. It won’t change my song like it would my daddy’s, or Aiden’s, or Terry Joe’s.”
“So you remembered what happened to you, then?”
“No. I know what happened, and that’s enough. If I remembered what happened, then the next time I tried to do it, it’d get all tangled up with those memories.” She recalled the cliff-top conversation with Bliss. “The night wind’s been preparing me for this, Mandalay. There’s a need out there, and I can fill it. But it’ll be on my terms.”
“And what’re those?”
Bronwyn smiled coldly. “Whatever I say they are.”
“And how’s that different from how you used to be? The Bronwynator, doing whatever she wants?”
“Maybe the ‘how’ ain’t any different. But the ‘why’ is. You and the First Daughters wanted me back, didn’t you? Now you’ve got me. And if it means you got the hum you wanted but the shiver’s different, well, that’s tough.”
Mandalay looked down at the silver wakes caused by her dangling feet. “Is this one of those times when we should’ve been careful what we wished for?”
Bronwyn laughed. “Maybe so.”
Mandalay kicked at the water. “Then why are you here asking me? I’m just a kid. It sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”
“Yeah,” Bronwyn said sadly.
Mandalay shook her head in that smug way children have when they know something their parents don’t. The collective wisdom and history of the Tufa was bound in this little girl who could talk before she was a year old and pick out tunes on a piano by age two. She had the history, but not the experience; so often her pronouncements and warnings would come out in little-girl metaphors or childish descriptions. Now that she was older this happened less often, but the dichotomy was both disconcerting and sad. “That’s not right, you know. I’m not a kid.”
“I know you’re not, sweetie.”
Mandalay leaned down and let the current play over her fingers. “What was the desert like? I always wanted to see it.”
Bronwyn laughed. “You want to talk about it now?”
“Might not get another chance.”
Bronwyn caught the warning, but let it go. It didn’t matter anyway. “Well, it’s all space. There’s no trees, no mountains. It rattles you at first, makes you feel even more exposed than you do ordinarily.”
“Did you know the Tufa were called Yellowbacks for a long time because we never fought in any of the wars, even when we were drafted?”