The Tangled Bridge (15 page)

Severin appeared.

She was but a glimmer at the back of the room. Madeleine narrowed her eyes at her.

And then Bo moved on and was shaking Ethan's hand, his grin wide and pointed high. “How you doin?”

“Just fine,” Ethan whispered.

Mare shoved Bo's shoulder. “You. Out.”

Madeleine said, “But if you don't mind we'd prefer to—”

Mare said, “I ain't his mama, and you ain't talkin to him unless his mama wants you to. And she's asleep.”

She opened the door and steered Bo by the neck. “Get on outta here, Bo.”

“Bye!” he said with a wave just as the painted aluminum door slammed shut on him.

Madeleine watched through a crack in the blackout curtains as he ran down the stairs, causing the entire trailer to quake, his clicking audible through the thin walls. Hard to believe the boy had no eyes. He vaulted over the chain-link even though the gate stood five feet away. The wheelchair speedway game recommenced with Bo and Ray exchanging not a single word between them.

Severin pressed her face to the window. Madeleine watched her, biting back reproach. Then Severin pressed her face
through
it, through the glass, and crawled up toward the roofline. Her filthy ankle disappeared somewhere above.

Once again Severin was disregarding their bargain. Annoying. Ominous, even, but Madeleine could do nothing about it at the moment.

Full voice, as though the rule of whispering had vanished with Bo, Mare said, “I guess y'all wastin your time. You wanna leave your number, Esther'll call ya when she gets up.”

Ethan said, “He always run like that? Like a bat outta Hell?”

“Always.” Mare sighed and went to a mirror where she dabbed powder over her face, then reached for an eye pencil. “He never stops runnin, which is why this place look like a trash hole with Esther wrappin the trees with padding. Bo run into'm enough times.”

Ethan said, “Those boys OK playing in the drive?”

She said, “Ain't no cars. That boy nothing but trouble. He was always in a sling or a cast since he's a baby. He's runnin before he was walkin. No joke. Didn't matter he had no eyes. They took'm out when he was just a few months old.”

Ethan said, “Cancer?”

Mare nodded without taking her gaze off the mirror. She'd moved on to lip pencil.

Madeleine said, “We came here because we wanted to make sure Bo had a place to sleep tonight.”

Mare shrugged. “He sleep here.”

“OK, good. Things have gotten really dangerous on the street, and—”

“I said, he sleep here,” Mare's eyes fixed on Madeleine's reflection in the mirror.

Mare snatched a receipt and scribbled something on the back, then thrust it into Madeleine's hand. “That's Esther's number. Call her another time. I don't know what your business is, but I know it doesn't have to be part of
my
business in
my home
.”

Ethan and Madeleine looked at one another.

Mare said, “Look. Y'all need to move along cuz I'm fixin to go to work and Esther's sleepin.”

Madeleine said, “I'm not trying to get in your business. I do want to caution you to keep your doors locked and keep the gate locked, too, and be careful about answering the door.”

Mare looked from her to Ethan. “What the hell is going on? Is Bo causing trouble?”

Madeleine said, “No, it's nothing like that.”

“He always gettin into fights at school.”

Ethan said, “Bo's a fighter?”

Mare nodded. “He can't keep his mouth in check. Esther let him do whatever he wants. She used to be a junkie, cleaned up her act when Bo was born. Found God. But she uses it as an excuse to let Bo run wild and get into fights.”

From the far end came a voice: “That ain't true. Bo don't get in no fights.”

It was Esther, standing at the end of the hall, twisting a velvet-rayon robe to a knot at her chest. “There's a difference between getting into fights and getting picked on by bullies.”

Mare pointed at Esther. “Bo done found trouble and now these people come here to tell us to check the locks! People getting shot and stabbed out there!”

Ethan said, “Hey, Bo didn't do anything—”

“How'm I supposed to live like this, huh?” Mare shoved her feet into a pair of high heels and stalked for the door.

Esther remained rigid where she stood. Mare snatched a bag from an easy chair and left with a slam. The sound of Bo and Ray filtered through the walls, high and spirited and then compressing to hollow tones as they continued past.

Esther let out a stream of breath and sank into a chair at the kitchen table. “God, I hate that woman.”

Madeleine said, “I think I alarmed her.”

Esther rubbed her already-ragged eyes. “Y'all are from the shelter, right? St. Joseph's volunteers?”

Madeleine nodded. “We came here to make sure you and Bo are going to be safe. I don't mean to pry, but if your friend's letting you stay here…”

“She ain't no friend. She's my cousin—who the good Lord sent to keep me humble I guess. And she staying with us, not the other way around.”

“Oh. Didn't you and Bo spend a night on the levee?”

Esther nodded. “Was because Mare had a date, had us clear out. She don't get her way she ain't gonna pay me rent. My car actin like it wanna quit on me. We need the money.”

“I see. I don't know if you're aware of this, but someone was killed not far from where you were camped on the levee.”

Esther fell silent.

Ethan asked, “
Did
you know about the murder?”

“No. I heard, but I wasn't sure. Is that why you're here?”

Ethan and Madeleine exchanged glances, and Madeleine said, “Yes and no. There was a quilt left behind at your encampment. And Bo's cane. It looked like you left in a hurry, which is why we thought you might have been nearby when it happened.”

And then Esther narrowed her eyes at Madeleine. “We met somewhere before?”

“I saw you that day under the bridge, but I don't think we've actually met. Unless it was at St. Jo's?” But Madeleine couldn't recall having seen Esther there.

Esther was frowning and shaking her head. “Don't think so. But I'm sure I know you.”

“What's the matter with your car?” Ethan asked.

Esther shrugged. “It's old.”

“Well, let's take a look.”

Her expression lifted a fraction, and she rose from the table. “It's just outside.”

Esther grabbed a set of keys that looked like it could double as wind chimes, and they went out to the carport. Bo and Ray were still at it, their silhouettes strobing by as they passed behind trees from the other side of the grove.

Esther unlocked a silver Buick and Ethan checked under the hood, which looked to Madeleine about as decipherable as reading tea leaves. Growing up, Madeleine had done the cooking and hunting and some of the fishing, but her brother was the tinkerer, and he eventually became an electrician.

Ethan said, “I'm no mechanic, but the engine definitely doesn't sound right. That belt needs to be replaced. Pronto. You shouldn't drive it until you can get a new one.”

Esther said nothing.

Ethan wiped his hands. “I can at least do that—pick up a new belt and throw it on there.”

“Really?” Esther looked relieved.

“But it still needs work. The belt's the least of its problems.”

Esther nodded. She licked her lips and glanced at Ethan, then at Madeleine. It looked like she wanted to say something but felt she ought to be careful about it.

Madeleine said, “We may be able to help, you know. I'm not talking about the car.”

Esther cut her gaze for a moment, then looked Madeleine in the eye. “You said before that we left that quilt and that cane there on the levee because we left in a hurry. You're right about that. But it's not like we knew what was happening. Bo, he's real sensitive. That morning he clicked on something he didn't like and told me, ‘Mama, we gotta go now.' That's why we left. Over the years I learned to listen to him when he acts like that.”

Madeleine said, “The thing is, though, we want to make sure y'all are going to sleep here at home for the time being.”

Esther looked next door where Cheryl was still bent over her garden, the evening sun illuminating her clamdiggers and casting a pink halo along the lattice beneath her trailer. “We only do that when Mare makes a fuss. We stayed on the levee because I don't like to go into the blights. To Bo it's like camping.”

“I understand. But for the time being…”

Madeleine paused and wet her lips. “For the time being, until the danger passes, please do keep Bo here. I don't think y'all are gonna be safe anywhere else. Definitely not the levee. Probably better stay away from St. Jo's, too.”

Esther was watching her carefully. “I know who you are now. I remember seeing you on TV. That psychic from that murder trial.”

Madeleine's lips parted. When she'd been a star witness at Zenon's murder trial, the prosecutor had exposed to the court how Madeleine often talked to “an invisible little friend named Severin.” The story had been all over the news. Madeleine, a psychologist and witness to a murder, had looked like a complete crackpot. It was a disaster. In the wake of it, some folks thought her crazy, others called her psychic, and the judge, well, after some of the jurors proved tainted by information overload, the judge had declared a mistrial.

Madeleine said, “Not really a psychic. That was…”

“You see devils. They after Bo?”

A lump was forming in Madeleine's throat.

“Tell me!”

Ethan was eyeing the grove of devilwood. The boys had gone quiet.

“I'll be right back.” Ethan closed the hood and started for the trees.

 

eighteen

NEW ORLEANS, NOW

ESTHER AND MADELEINE BOTH
stepped down the drive. Esther was still in her robe and slippers. Through a gap in the trees, Madeleine saw Bo standing with his hands on Ray's wheelchair. They were facing a group of boys. Four boys. Older than Bo and Ray by a few years, and filthy. And then Madeleine recognized the stains under their noses. The same group from yesterday, minus Mako and Del.

“The huffers.”

“Damn bullies,” Esther said.

Madeleine turned her head upward and saw Severin grinning from the roof. She was watching the boys. Ethan was already through the gate and striding toward them.

The strange thing was, although Ray was shouting at the boys, no one else said a word. The huffers weren't taunting like they'd done yesterday. Bo was clicking in an unbroken stream. Madeleine recognized Oyster's frizzy hair, and saw that he was carrying a long silver Maglite. Two of the other boys were holding objects, too—one had a beer bottle and the other held a length of white painted wood that looked like it used to be a porch spindle.

“My God, my God,” Esther reached into her robe pocket and pulled out a cell phone. “They never leave him alone.”

Ethan had reached them. The four boys moved as one. An initial lurch followed by more fluid, independent movement. They formed a wide box around Bo and Ray. Bo's clicking accelerated.

Madeleine heard Ethan telling the huffers to back off. She looked back at Severin. Was Zenon here? No sign of him.

Madeleine looked toward the huffers and tried:
Drop what you're holding.

No response.

She scanned the grove and the houses nearby, letting her sight recede into itself before opening up again. Briar sight. And she saw him. Zenon. Standing with his river devil near the wild olives. Zenon looked whole and fresh and young, at the peak of his prime, just like he'd been in the briar. Nothing like the limp shell that was giving itself over to atrophy in the hospital bed.

The briar revealed, too, how Bo glowed with a light from within. It struck Madeleine with awe. His lumen glow.

The piece of wood rose in one boy's fists, and he swung it at Bo. Bo sprang away. Even though he was blind and couldn't possibly have seen it coming. He was in tilt, careening sideways with his hands locked on Ray's chair.

“Get away from my boy!” Esther cried.

Ethan knocked the spindle from the boy's hand and it went clattering to the dirt. But the boy barely even looked at Ethan. His gaze never left Bo. They all kept watching and moving toward Bo. Bo moved like a charging boar and could probably give them a run for their money, but he seemed unwilling to let go of Ray's chair.

“This way,” Ethan cried.

His leg prevented him from keeping up with the chase. Ray was shouting, and Esther was shouting, and in her mind, Madeleine shouted at Zenon, “Stop it, Zenon! Get out of here!”

The neighbors had stepped from their mobile homes and were watching from their yards, clucking and calling in alarm. Even through her panic, Madeleine noticed an oddity about them all in the way they appeared through the lens of the briar. Some of them had devils. Everyone did, really, it's just that some flourished more than others. But some of the neighbors seemed to radiate something else through the briar lens. Something strange.

Esther was hollering into the cell phone, “I need the police, just send the police! Oh, God.”

Bo rounded the devilwood grove with Ray's chair just like he'd been doing earlier. No way they'd be able to outrun the huffers with the wheelchair slowing them down.

A loud crack. It sounded like a shot. Esther screamed. But whatever it was none of them slowed down.

“I got Ray, just go,” Ethan was calling.

Bo finally let go of the chair and ran, ran, ran. One of the boys picked up a softball-sized rock and threw it, catching Bo on the shoulder, but Bo never paused. He shot from the drive and zipped through the devilwood grove, weaving through the trees and clicking like mad. The four boys went in after him.