Not Flesh Nor Feathers

It was too bad. A few minors would have been helpful. Reckless, and only minimally prosecutable—they would have made glorious mayhem, delightful anarchy. They would have torn the place up like hell.



But when you’re thirty and still wearing duct tape on your shoes, you have to get a little careful. The courts are more forgiving of young hooligans than old ones.



Old hooligans have used up all of their second chances.



And maybe the courts were right, thought Christ as he swung the board again, as hard as he could, at a patio door. But the patio was sturdier than the kitchen glass, or maybe he was getting tired. The door didn’t break.



Behind him, the fire was gaining a good foothold and the sound and smell of crackling ashes climbed up out of the half-built apartment block. If it hadn’t been noticed yet, someone would spot it soon.



Forget it. Forget the patio door.



His hands were starting to shake, and he didn’t know why. Just the force of it all, he guessed—the skateboard against the glass, his arms laden down with debris, his feet numb from running over concrete blocks and vinyl siding.



He shook his head, maybe to clear it. He felt disoriented, and turned around. He knew where he was, and how to leave the compound. Back to the main drag, or over to Manufacturers Row, where the darkness wasn’t so loaded.



The sidewalks ended, the pavement was broken, and there was nowhere to ride—so Christ had to run. Somewhere off to his right, he heard the sound of sirens. They weren’t cop cars. He knew the wail of a cop car, and this siren was longer and louder in its caterwauling—either a fire engine or an ambulance.



Run, then.



His footsteps staggered into something like a jog, and then faster, into a sprint towards the edge of the brand new complex and into the warehouse district. It wasn’t far. It wouldn’t take him long.



That siren was definitely getting louder.



He hoped it was an ambulance—something headed for the hospital just over the river. Not a fire engine, not yet. Let it burn. Let it get going good, and let it spread. It wouldn’t take the whole place down, but it might do enough damage to set back the opening.



It might give him time. He needed time to gather proof, or to wear Eden down. The other two wouldn’t have the nerve to come with him, and they wouldn’t know what to do with proof if it bit them on the ass. But Eden would know. If he could show her, she’d understand.



At least he hoped so.



7



Unwilling Family



Even though it was a pain in the ass, I decided to do Macon as a daytrip. The local news was predicting nasty weather over the weekend, and Malachi and Harry would be here then anyway.



Great. We’d be stormed in together.



Lu and Dave would be delighted.



If I didn’t seek out Eliza soon, it might be weeks before I could make it down again—and when the object of my road trip was a bitchy old crone over a hundred years old, it didn’t make sense to wait any longer than absolutely necessary. I didn’t warn her I was coming either, lest she spontaneously die from pure spite.



Instead, I woke up at the crack of dawn and left a note for my aunt and uncle that said, “Short road trip to Georgia. Back tonight. Call cell if overwhelmed with fretfulness.” I hoped they’d assume I’d gone down to Atlanta or Athens for a concert or some other event. Like Mr. Spock used to say, “Never lie when you can misdirect.”



Tatie Eliza is family—exactly the sort of family that you only approach as a last resort, and even then, she probably wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire. She’s my great-great-aunt, or something like that. The family relationships are a little convoluted that far down the tree, and Eliza likes to pretend that no one on my branch ever existed.



She’s the daughter of a carpetbagger who moved to Macon after the war, and she’s half-sister to my grandfather Avery, give or take a “great” or three. Avery’s the same grandfather who tried to kill me once, tried to kill us all: me and Lu and every blood relative who came before us, after him. He’s the one who gave me this gift of his, and challenged me to live with it. At the time I thought nothing of it, but now I’m not so sure.



And now, if I correctly read between the lines of Harry’s hesitant help, it sounded like the scheming old matriarch must be dying at last. It was hard to believe. I never loved her and I won’t miss her, but she seemed eternal. Nothing that hates so damn hard can pass away easily. It takes a certain brand of tenacity to harbor and nurture such a whole-body grudge.



I once joked to her that Lu and I were the niggers in her family woodpile, and if it hadn’t been perfectly true, she might have laughed. But skin color is no laughing matter to an old white woman like her, especially one who’s the daughter of a scalawag. Fitting in must have been hard enough on her before she knew about us.



I wondered, sometimes, if that’s why Avery had stayed in touch with her all those years—if that’s why he’d kept her medicated with his elixir. He didn’t have to. He must have done it because he wanted to.



Maybe he wanted her to stop hating him.



Or maybe he was just lonely, or bored, or he liked having a feeling of power over her. Family is so complicated, even under the most mundane of circumstances. I don’t think I’ll ever sort out the intricacies of my own.



But that doesn’t stop me from trying, sometimes—like when I invite my half-brother to come up and visit, even though it means my aunt and uncle may well drop dead of simultaneous coronaries. Jesus, I hope they understand.



But I bet they won’t.



The drive to Macon took three hours, but finding Eliza’s house again took me another thirty minutes because I’d forgotten how far out in the boonies it was.



I pulled into the big, semicircular driveway in front of the Georgian brick house, then stood on the stoop for a few seconds gathering the nerve to ring the bell. The paint on the doorframe was peeling and the little windows on the door were cloudy. Eliza might have nurse aids on staff, but I doubted she’d found a replacement for Harry, whose service was terminated when he tied her up in the dining room and helped me ransack the house.



I finally jammed my thumb into the button. It stuck as if the corrosion had crusted it into place, but then slipped and sank. Deep within the house I heard a low gonging noise.



Through the clouded door pane, I saw a swiftly moving figure, coming my way in a light-colored outfit with a dark sweater.



The heavy old door swung inward, and I found myself looking down at a small woman wearing a brown bun and a glum, irritable expression. Her casual scrubs had rainbows and teddy bears on them.



“Can I help you?” she asked, in a voice that implied she didn’t have any real intention of helping me whatsoever, because she had her hands full already, thank you very much.



“I know I’m unannounced, but I’m here hoping to have a chat with Eliza Dufresne. I understand she’s in ill health—”



The nurse ducked her head away and mumbled something that might have been, “Not ill enough.” She shrugged at me and said so I could hear her plainly, “Come inside, then.” She stood aside and held the door open.



I followed after her and she slapped the door shut behind us. “Are you—are you one of her caretakers?”



“Yes.”



“How’s she doing these days? We haven’t spoken in a while, but—”



“She’s fine.”



“Fine?”



The nurse, who still had not identified herself by any name, said, “Fine for 103.”



I threw her a bone. “You can just tell me she’s a pain in the ass, if you want. I know that much already.”



“She’s a paying client.” She didn’t relax, but she slumped a little. “She’s . . . a real piece of work, as my mother would have said. The other girl took the day off. I’m here alone with Miss D today.”



“Oh shit, I’m sorry.”



“That makes two of us. Right this way, please.”



“Doesn’t someone . . . I mean, as old as she is—doesn’t someone live here with her?” I asked, feeling a great swell of pity for anyone with such a post.



“Used to. They keep quitting. Right now we’re working in shifts. There’s a third girl, comes in on weekends and sometimes at night.”



Through the halls we went, and up the stairs, and down the corridors where all the furnishings were threadbare but expensive. The wood paneling threw back every footstep, creak, and breath. Each step and syllable happened twice, or three times where the rug was thin and there was nothing to cushion the noise.



“Look, I don’t mean to sound harsh,” the nurse said, as she stopped and turned to face me. “But if you were close family or friends, I’d have seen you before now, so I’ll just tell you how it is. She’s very old, and we don’t expect her to be with us much longer. She was hale and hardy up until these last few years, or that’s how I understand it. But when they reach this age, sometimes they go downhill suddenly. She’s as bad as you said and more. I don’t know how she’ll receive you, and I can’t even promise you she’ll be lucid. She isn’t, not always.”



“That’s okay. She can’t stand the sight of me, so I’m not expecting any charm or manners here. There’s no need to warn me.”



“Good—because if you don’t know what she’s like already, there’s not much bracing you for her. But remember, would you? Remember she’s a dying old lady. Keep it in mind, before you’re too hard on her when she’s hard on you.”



“I can take it, and I won’t bite her head off. I know what I’m getting myself into.”



“All right, then.” She shook her head, and took another few steps down the hall.



I knew where we were; I remembered the place. I remembered every nook and cranny from when Harry and I had stripped the house bare, looking for a book that was six hundred miles away. When we finally found it there, we let it burn with everything else in that swamp house. We let it burn with Avery, and with his bubbling stove and glass bottles and smelly mixtures.