The Hum and the Shiver Read Free Page A

congregation answering the call to salvation at the end of a service. Any reaction Craig got from the old man was a step forward, a break in the isolation. “Well, I’m going to see if I can find a better spot to watch from. Y’all have a good day, Mr. Hicks.”
    As he worked his way back along the road, he bumped into the man he’d seen earlier, the Tufa reporter. He said, “Excuse me,” and tried to catch a glimpse of the name on the press pass. It read SWAYBACK .
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    The yellow ribbons tied to trees, fence posts, and telephone poles, clichéd as they were, made Bronwyn feel surprisingly warm inside. She recalled tearing ribbons from some of the same trees when she was a kid, convinced they were too hokey to have any meaning. But now that they were displayed for her, she understood them in a new light, even if she still thought they were inane.
    Like Cleopatra on her barge, she was towed slowly down into the valley toward Needsville. She sat in the ludicrous chair and gritted her teeth against the vibrations going through her shattered leg bones. Somehow they’d mounted a leather recliner to the foredeck, with a modified footrest to support her injured leg. It seemed solid enough, but did nothing to make her feel less ridiculous. She thought about waving with the back of her hand turned out, like Queen Elizabeth, or mouthing “This is so lame,” as Nancy Kerrigan had at Disneyland. But at least for a little while longer, she was still a soldier; she’d do neither.
    She wanted to stare straight ahead, at the fresh lines painted on the highway after the state repaved it earlier in the spring, but there was no resisting the pull of the mountains. At first she looked only with her eyes, cutting them enough to see the lush trees and rolling slopes visible past the MPs standing at the deck rails beside her. But like that first taste of liquor to an abstaining drunk, it only made it worse. The leaves sang to her, tunes blew through the breeze, and for a moment something that had been silent and still since she’d left this place vibrated deep in her chest. But it was only a moment; like everything else, it faded to numbness and left her aware of its presence but unable to actually feel it.
    Except somehow, she sensed danger. Not the immediate kind as she’d known in Iraq, but real nonetheless. It was like a shadowy animal glimpsed over the tall grass that ducked out of sight the instant before she turned to look directly at it.
    It took twenty minutes to drive the half mile from the city limits to the bandstand and podium set up outside City Hall. The crowd’s response was every bit as loud as the helicopter’s engine. Bronwyn saw few heads of straight black hair or dark sullen eyes among the throng; and, as she expected, Rockhouse Hicks had not moved from the post office porch. It was okay, though; she’d have plenty of time to see the locals. These strangers weren’t here to see her, anyway; they wanted the Bronwynator.
    Two MPs carefully carried her to the stage, where Maitland provided the promised crutches. Her injured arm could barely do its job, but it was a matter of pride that she stand before these people. She reached the podium and waited patiently while the applause continued and the cameras fired away.
    As the cheering died down, Major Maitland eased up to the microphone. “Private Hyatt will make a statement, but as you can see, she’s not up to any questions. We ask that you respect her courage, and her injuries.”
    Bronwyn unfolded the two pages of typing with the word APPROVED stamped in red near one corner. She blew into the microphone to check her distance from it. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Thank y’all for being here. It’s great to be back in Needsville.” She stopped for renewed applause. Her voice sounded thin and weak in the loudspeakers, certainly not strong enough to belong to a First Daughter of the Tufa.
    “I’d like to thank everyone who hoped and