Now Typhus thought about loss. Thoughts of loss brought Lily to mind; promises he’d made her, the guilty fact that she’d always lived up to her end of the bargain without question, complaint, argument, or negotiation.
Unexpectedly, something like fear materialized in Typhus’ chest.
What had been pink and lovely had become vaguely dreadful. The gliding grace of alien music stretched and tore into a colorless wail.
Loss = death?
He could not do this thing to Lily, would not do this thing.
Paper Lily. The girl who would neither return his love nor break his heart. The girl he had promised to keep and protect.
Death = absence of pain?
Life =?
Just as the water reached his lips, Typhus threw his head back, pulled his arms above his head and frantically clutched at warm air.
A violent splash. Two heavy hands clasped Typhus just above the elbows, pulling his feet and legs up through cool, smooth mud, provoking a gaseous squeal from around his waist and below, the sound of resistant suction. Typhus looked down and saw his own muddy feet kicking above angry orange. Now thrown back and away from the lake of cool fire, his body smacked into a patch of moist saw grass. Typhus’ eyes blinked hard, then darted-searching for the owner of the saving hands. Finding: A black silhouette. Hearing:
“Typhus? Typhus, you all right, boy?”
It was a voice from his past-one he couldn’t quite place.
A hulking shadow of a man.
“Typhus?”
The face was a murk of swamp grays.
Fuzzy sparks of recognition triggered in Typhus’ mind as the phantom leaned closer. The man was kneeling. Dressed in ancient, filthy rags; nothing but the shoes on his feet offering any functionality. Typhus didn’t recognize the man, but he recognized the shoes. His father’s shoes.
The hair and beard of the phantom were long; copious grays braided and flecked with traces of green and brown. The beard stretched past his naked belly with weird purpose; little curved bumps in various shapes and sizes disrupting its thick mass from chin to tip, suggesting lumpy cells of concealed code. With a sleepy sense of dread, Typhus realized the anomalies in the phantom’s beard were, in fact, a series of woven pockets, and from their mouths gleamed the edges of mysterious implements.
“
The phantom’s shadow-saturated features ignited upwards from concern to amusement, his voice deepening with a rumble of low laughter; “
“Can’t go standing in the orange water, Typhus. It’ll sing to you first, then suck you down second if you ain’t careful.”
Typhus’s eyes struggled to decipher the man’s face. He knew this face. It was not his father, but it was someone his father had known.
“You okay, Typhus?”
He knew this face. He knew that laugh. He remembered. Now, he remembered.
“Typhus, say something. Say anything.”
Typhus meant to thank the phantom. Might have thanked him for all he’d done for his family over the years. Might have thanked him for saving his life just now. Might have thanked him for saving his life ten years previously. Might have apologized for having betrayed all past kindnesses by following him out into the bog on this night, for choosing not to respect the phantom’s simple and single condition of privacy.
Typhus said none of those things. But he did say:
“It ain’t right to wear the shoes of a man you kilt.”
Beauregard Church fell still and quiet; breath hushed, warmth drained from his eyes as pain and regret felt their way through the gray. His heavy head lulled, then dipped. He stood, looked at his feet; at the perfectly fitting shoes of Noonday Morningstar that warmed and protected them. Turned. Walked into darkness, crunching grass and twigs beneath the shoes. Shoes once belonging to a man whose back had held and bled from a family heirloom.
So many years ago.
Orange dimmed, its smooth color inaugurating a fade, then dying completely. The swamp: now black. The ground: uneventfully damp. Typhus closed his useless eyes. A thousand lonely swamp frogs warbled on.
He made his way home quickly. Despite the dark and without moon or stars to guide him, Typhus found in himself a near miraculous sense of direction. To find his way home, he simply followed the brightest thing in his troubled heart.
Lily, on a high shelf in the kitchen, was his North Star.
The phantom returned to the Morningstar home soon thereafter, on a night when mist stifled starlight and sky reached its richest shade of coal. Moist air corrupted the travel of sound, and so Typhus did not make note of footfalls.
That morning, the traditional bundle was found on the doorstep. No note was attached.
Malaria, always first to rise, joyfully carried the lumpy package through the threshold, gaily chirping, “A present from Father!” Typhus and Dropsy dragged themselves from straw mattresses, wiping sleep from dry eyes. Dropsy goosed a groggy smile from his lips, spoke in a cracked whisper:
“Well, what’s in it, Malaria? Dump it out already.”
Before the contents fell, Typhus recognized the wrapping. A burlap bag made for holding coffee beans, but also good for any number of functions, including rebirthing babies in muddy rivers. Malaria held the bag from its bottom corners, pinching fingers and pulling up; spilling its contents to the floor.
Malaria screamed. Typhus’ eyes filled with water. Dropsy accepted, stating simply, “I was hopin’ fer meat.”
On the floor, lay exactly six shoes.
Fresh tracks outside betrayed the recent presence of a large man with bare feet.
Chapter twenty-three. Christ Kid is Risen
The oversized and square right fist of the big white man arced wide to connect with the unguarded cheek of the Christ Kid-and Eugene Reilly felt a twinge of panic tickle his bladder.
The Christ Kid was looking punchy and incompetent-this had not been the plan, had not been the agreement, not at all in accordance with promises made by Crawfish Bob’s allegedly disenfranchised right-hand man Stiffy Lacoume. Still, Reilly held out a hope. Maybe this was all part of the act. Just to make it look good. Believable. Everyone knew Windmill Willie was the easy favorite, a win from the Christ Kid was near unthinkable-and a
