Charles Grant - Night Songs

The sea whispered.

The thought died.

"I will sing you, Gran," was a prayer and a query, and her voice filled the shack though its volume was low, the words swooping like ravens, darting like hawks, waiting like predators on the dead man's heart. Without joy, without promise, but a hard hopeful urging that surged to match the tide and hold, hold, until the words became a humming that lasted until dawn.

The words Gran had taught her to call on his gods.

And when she had finished and had slept for an hour, she started again.

For five days she worked at the luncheonette until seven, then returned to the shack where she ate, slept, and passed the night singing-staring at the cheap decanter she'd bought at Peg Fletcher's. There was gleaming red liquid in the cut-glass container, and each night a little more.

Five days later she walked into the police station and told them Gran was dead.

Dead.

And she didn't notice the way people looked at her now-except during those brief moments when the mind fog lifted and she wondered where she was.

A movement. Her eyes shifted. There. There on the water. Seven longboats making their way south just beyond the breakers. Dark against the sea, the figures within black in their slickers. She blinked rapidly to drive off the hazy past, and saw the people on the beach. Only a few yet, but a few more stumbling down the dunes; not one of them looked in her direction.

The boats turned, pitched, and rolled as they crested the waves and made their way toward shore.

She searched for Colin. Of all the people for all this time, only he understood what magic Gran had had in his fingers, in his soul, to bring to life the driftwood and the pine. He'd helped Gran sell, asking nothing in return, had helped deal with the big city galleries that came sniffing around the shack, hands on their wallets and handkerchiefs to their noses. Gran, however, refused most of Colin's assistance. More often than not he gave the sculptures away, then complained bitterly into his bottle about the few dollars he'd saved. And the closer to death he came, the angrier he grew, lashing out at the island without once ever taking any blame for his failures on his own frail shoulders.

She seemed to recall, then, that the songs he had taught her while he lay on the bed were angry as well. But it was only a feeling, one she could not pin down.

She shivered and hugged herself more tightly.

The afternoon before, Colin had visited her when school was over, having heard through the grapevine that she didn't want Gran buried in the sea despite the fact it was Haven's End's way.

She had met him on the sand, away from the shack.

"Lil, it's all right, y'know," he'd said, hands thrust into his pockets, brown hair caught in the sea breeze. "If you don't want to do this, it's all right."

She shook her head slowly. "You don't understand, Colin."

He managed a smile. "I'm trying." His look said, why don't you help me?

She felt a swirling of the mind fog that had blinded her since the night before Gran died. "It's not a matter of want, it's a matter of must." And she hoped she wasn't overplaying the bereaved role, one she sometimes felt wasn't a role at all. Whenever that feeling came she knew Gran was listening, watching, waiting to stop her. Then the feeling would leave and the fog would come again.

"Lilla… Lilla, I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"I'm still sorry."

She found herself smiling.

A gull shrieked, and veered sharply away toward the water.

He'd looked to the sea, down to the sand, raised his eyes without lifting his head. "Lil, are you all right? I know this isn't easy for you, but… are you all right?"

She'd wanted to tell him then; the singing, the nights, the fog stalking her dreams. But she couldn't. Do all I tell you, child, and it will all come right. She would have to let them do what they wanted without saying a word.

Then she would do what she must.

There were more people on the beach. They took hold of the longboat's gunwales and dragged them from the surf, hauled them around to face the way they'd come. Cigarettes and a thermos jug of coffee were passed around. Faces, small and pale, were checking the sky as if sniffing the wind. There were no children, and only a handful of teenagers.

Lilla's eyes closed slowly, and she wished Peg were here to hold her, to whisper something to make her feel right, and smile.

She wished Gran were here. The real Gran. The grumbling and mumbling and whittling and bitching Gran. Not the Gran who lay so maddeningly still there in the back room.

Her eyes opened, and she sighed.

Any moment now they would come to take him away. Any moment now Colin and someone else, perhaps Chief Garve Tabor, would climb over the last dune, talk a little, see who was down there and who had stayed away, and then do what they had to do. Colin, who didn't know Lilla would have given every one of her eighteen years if he'd taken her to his bed just once before that man… that man at the college… that man who'd given her all that horrid stuff to drink and had brought her back to his room and had… that man… who'd made a bet that black women were different where a white man thought it counted.

That man.

At the beginning of last August a full year ago, over Gran's protests, she had gone to the college for a weekend's orientation.

That man-his name and face gone, leaving only his expression when she returned the next day and spat in his eyes before heading for the Registrar to withdraw her name from the rolls.

That man Gran wanted to kill when he found out. She'd cried herself to sleep too many times and he was there, trembling in indignation while she talked and wept, and she held the old man and begged him not to leave her.

That man, who had taken every man from her bed before she'd known, before she'd loved.

She'd fled back to Haven's End, but Gran was never the same Gran again.

"You listen to me," he said last spring, "this place is no good. It took my fortune. It needs a teaching to show them I am…" He stumbled, not finding the words. "They took it because I am old and I am this way." He pinched his thin forearm to show her the color. "I will not forget that they took what is mine."

"Gran-"

"You are my Lilla. I love you, and you will help me and I will make it all right. I know this is true because I am your Gran."

A few heads turned to a point just to her left, and she knew who had finally arrived. There was no stopping it now. Colin and Garve Tabor were here, and now it was done.

She turned away from the window slowly, in stages, as if she were dazed. With a shuddering sigh she lowered her arms to her sides, her hands slipping into the folds of her black dress.

— the songs, child, the songs, if you want me back again-

She moved flat-footed, bare-footed, from the front room to the back, to the bed where Gran lay.

— they will take me to the water, give me drink to keep me safe-

Not an hour earlier she had finished the last singing, the words beyond translation giving her comfort nonetheless. They were his promises (though they sometimes seemed like threats), and when she was done she felt the air close around her like a giant's fist. She waited. And the air rushed from the shack like a banshee's furied scream.

— be patient, child, I will be waiting-

Then she had wrapped his body in gray canvas, with a round, ten-pound weight settled in the bottom, and had slowly sewn it closed-except for the face.

She started at it now, biting her lower lip, feeling a burr try to rise in her throat while an abrasion of tears made her eyes sting.

The room was silent; not even the sea.

Gran, can you hear me? Oh, Gran, I'm doing my best, believe me. I tell them you're my Gran and I don't want you to leave me, and they just smile and tell me everything's all right, it's all right, don't worry.

Gran, they love me, they truly do. They only want to see me smile again. They just don't know what it is to be so alone. They love me, but they don't know.

And I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.

I sing and I sing and I know it's right because you told me.

I sing and I sing, but I don't know if I sing enough. Oh, Gran, why don't you sing me again?

She picked up the decanter and pulled out the stopper. The mindfog parted, her hand trembled, the fog returned. She poured the sweet-smelling red liquid into Gran's open mouth. All of it. Every drop. Then she reached down to the floor and picked up a long, heavy, curved needle. She held it close to her eyes in the lamp's wavering light. She licked her lips clear of salty tears and leaned over the corpse, brushing her cheeks before taking hold of the canvas. The needle slashed into the shroud, closing it, covering by stages the waxen black face (with a trace of red at the lips) and the wide staring eyes that did not blink when the needle passed over.

And when she was done, she slipped needle and coarse thread through a gap in the canvas, taking care not to prick her grandfather's scalp.

Then she stood at the foot of the bed, hands clasped at her waist, and she waited. Not moving. Scarcely breathing. As still as the body that waited there with her.

THREE

Light slipped from the air rapidly once the sun had dropped below the mainland forest, and what remained was a dark-spotted haze that tired the eye and made shadows lose their sunset definition. Streetlamps switched on with an insect buzzing, the amber traffic signal brightened in monotonous winking, and the Anchor Inn's neon was a harsh, colorless glare. On the corner behind the police station the Clipper Run's spotlights softened the gold frigate on the stucco wall, and the hedging surrounding the parking lot seemed taller, more forbidding.

For a long moment, nothing moved, nothing breathed.

For a moment, Haven's End waited.

On the mainland, Wally Sterling moored the ungainly ferry to its dock after completing his last commuter run and peered down the road toward Flocks. He saw no lights and grunted, wiped a brusque hand under his white-blind eye, and lit a twisted black cigar with a flourish and a loud, relieved sigh. He expected no more business for the rest of the night. After all, it was Thursday. Gran's funeral. And in the very slight breeze he could sense coming rain. A storm tonight, no question about it. The way things were going these days, he wouldn't be surprised if it was followed by a Carolina Screamer before the weekend was over. They were due for one of them late fall storms-high winds, high seas-so why not now, when it was all goin' to hell anyway.

He forced a belch, and pulled a cheap silver flask out of his hip pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a long pull at the brandy inside. A brief yellow-toothed grimace, and he pulled off his seaman's cap to scratch vigorously at white hair trimmed to a ragged marine cut. A tug at his hawk's nose. A swipe of a hand over his cleft chin to catch a dribble of brandy he licked off his scrawny finger. Another drink, and he was ready.