The Hum and the Shiver Read Free

queen.”
    “I agree,” Maitland said. “The thing is, it would make it much easier for all those people to see you. So it’s really not for you, it’s for them. ”
    There was no arguing with that. Left to her own preferences, Bronwyn would’ve returned home in the middle of the night wearing sunglasses and a blond wig. This carnival was for everyone but her.
    The platform for her return consisted of an enormous Ford pickup truck jacked up on gigantic tires, towing a small yacht. The masts had been removed, and a sort of throne had been mounted high on the foredeck. The bow sported the now-ubiquitous high school moniker known far and wide since her rescue: THE BRONWYNATOR .
    When she saw the name, she muttered, “Oh, God,” and shook her head. “Do I get to keep it when we’re done?” she asked sarcastically.
    “Ah … no, I’m afraid not.”
    Bronwyn managed a knowing smile. “You’re very good at your job, sir.”
    “I’m just grease for the gears of necessity,” he said with absolutely no irony.
    *   *   *
     
    Craig threaded through the crowd lining the street until he reached the incongruously new post office building. Rockhouse Hicks sat in a rocking chair on the porch. Something about the old man stopped strangers from approaching him, and even other locals gave him plenty of space, inside an invisible circle that kept everyone else away. The effect was almost tribal, as if Hicks were a chief or medicine man. Craig’s research on the Tufa, though, insisted they were all fervent individualists with no hierarchy, so he couldn’t be any sort of leader. Unless Hicks’s peculiar birth defect—six working fingers on each hand—fulfilled some unknown community superstition, Craig could only work with the idea that people avoided the old man because, simply, he was a shit-head.
    But with the Tufa, you could never be sure. Dark haired and dark skinned, yet not white, black, or Native American (although often content to be mistaken for any of the above if it meant they’d be left alone), the Tufa kept their secrets so close that, to Craig’s knowledge, no one even knew how they’d turned up deep in Appalachia. Yet when the first official Europeans had reached this valley three centuries earlier, the Tufa were already here, living quietly in the hills and minding their own business.
    Craig, however, was determined to reach out to everyone, even (or especially) the ones no one else would accept. One of the first things he learned was that no one in Cloud County really liked Rockhouse, and he sympathized with the mean old man’s isolation. So he leaned against the wall beside him and asked, “Ever seen a helicopter over Needsville before, Mr. Hicks?”
    Hicks slowly turned. He had sun-narrowed eyes that made his expression impossible to read, but the hint of malevolence shone through. Craig imagined that as a younger man, Hicks had been serious trouble.
    “Reverend Checkers,” he said.
    “Chess,” Craig corrected with a smile.
    Hicks continued to glare at him. Then just as slowly, he returned his gaze to whatever he’d been contemplating before. Craig knew this counted as a dismissal, but he wasn’t giving up that easily. “She’s getting quite a welcome. Can you see okay from here? I bet they’d let you sit up on the podium if you asked.”
    “Seen that girl since she was knee-high to a wet fart. Don’t reckon she looks that different now.”
    “Now she’s a hero, though.”
    Hicks said nothing, but spit out onto the tiny lawn at the base of the post office flagpole.
    “You don’t think so?” Craig persisted. “She killed ten enemy soldiers single-handed.”
    “They say.”
    “You don’t believe it?”
    Hicks spit again and shrugged. “Wasn’t there. Don’t trust stories about killings unless I see the corpse myself. Been burned that way.”
    The hint of mystery piqued Craig’s interest, and the annoyance in Hicks’s voice felt like as big a triumph as a whole