Mist upon the Marsh: The Story of Nessa and Cassie (7 page)

“Mysterious?” said Nessa. “No. Not so very mysterious. If I were, say, to explain a few things to you – I would be no more mysterious than anyone else.”

Cassie looked directly into Nessa’s face, and said quite seriously, “Would you explain them to me?”

Nessa laughed – this time, rather nervously. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Best to leave it for another time, I think.”

“Then you’ll come back?”

Nessa was becoming so very flustered and confused, that she hardly knew how to answer these questions which were being put to her. She looked into the young woman’s face – no younger, and no older, it seemed, than her own – and was struck once again by her incredible beauty. Having perhaps forgot it a little, while they sat together in the semi-darkness, knowledge of it returned to her now; and she could think of nothing to say, so astonished was she by the sight of it. 

Neither did it seem to her, as she mulled over their twisting and turning conversation, that such thoughtfulness and presence of mind were suited to this particular brand of beauty. She was the small-town prom queen, who loved the small-town prom king. She was Mama and Daddy’s little girl, angelic in every look and action, but perhaps a little more badly-behaved than either of those adoring parents did think her. She was the girl who worked in the diner, for a few years after high school, perhaps pondering the limited number of paths she might cut, in a small Southern town. She pondered whether she would stay, and marry the prom king, who would inevitably do her no better than three or four children, and a great future heap of condescension, drunkenness and infidelity. She thought of this, and then pondered whether she would leave, fleeing perhaps to Baton Rouge, or maybe even to New Orleans – and indeed, if she did choose to do this, there would never be anything more heard of her, in the small town she had left. A few of the women, in their little circles, perhaps, would recollect the prom queen; and would mourn over the grief which she had caused her poor mother and father, who had only ever tried so hard to “raise her right.” A few of the men would reminisce with the prom king, and remind him of the wife he might have had; but then fall back upon the
wife he
did
have, who was not half as beautiful as the prom queen, but who was loyal and dutiful, and who knew how to fix a good supper; and so the men would clap the prom king on the shoulder, and assure him that all had worked out for the best.

Nessa thought of all this, with next to no reason – and wondered, which of these would be the path of her tailgate-companion?

Here is your small town. Here is your beauty, and here is your diner. So where is your prom king, Cassie MacAdam?

“Shall we go home now, sister?”

This last question seemed not to have a place in Nessa’s line of cogitation. She did not consider, either, that the voice was quite that of her own thoughts. Befuddled, she turned about, and saw Caramon striding out of a cluster of shadows, nestled there beneath the eaves of the diner. She realised that she still held his Turin in her hand.

Due to the angle of the shadows that moved before Caramon’s eyes, the shape of Cassie MacAdam was all but swallowed up, till he reached the very tailgate upon which she sat beside his sister. But, because he was Caramon (and because his run seemed to have dispelled the darkest of his worry for Dechtire), he wore a face neither of question nor disdain, and simply smiled at the woman.

“Hello,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to be formally introduced. My name is Caramon.”

The waitress reached out to shake the hand he offered, and said, “Mine is Cassie. Cassie MacAdam.” Here she smiled almost mischievously, and looked at Caramon with that single eyebrow arched – an expression she had first presented on the evening of her inquiry as to the problem that seemed to have been taking place at the corner booth, whence Caramon and Orin had fled, and at which Dechtire sat examining her hamburger for clues as to any sort of unpleasant surprise that the blue-haired waitress might have left behind. “But I suppose,” she went on, “that there is no more to you than Caramon – as there is no more to your sister, than Nessa?”

Caramon laughed heartily. “I see you have been having a nice little conversation with Nessa,” he said.

Nessa took advantage of this exchange, to steal a subtle and uninterrupted view of Cassie’s face; but was shocked to the point of flushing, when she saw that the woman was looking at her already. A smile passed between them, which served only to deepen the flush, and Nessa hopped reactively off of the tailgate. Cassie traded a final pleasantry with Caramon, but then looked back to Nessa, and asked, quite as if nothing at all had taken place between this moment, and the previous occasion of her asking:

“Then you’ll come back?”

Nessa nodded; but then fled without another word into the truck. She sank down in her seat, and peered through the bottom of the window, as Cassie MacAdam climbed into an old black Pontiac. She was so very intent upon watching her, that she received a nasty fright at the opening of the rusty, creaking and squeaking passenger door. Caramon settled himself into the cab; but Nessa waited until the Pontiac had made it clear of the parking lot, before she dared to raise herself up in her seat. She put the key in the ignition, but did not turn it. It seemed that Cassie MacAdam had turned North on Junction Road, and would therefore be travelling for a time in the same direction as the old pickup truck. Nessa decided to give her a minute or two of a head start, before she
ventured herself out onto the road, and in that way reduce the chance considerably that she should catch sight of her taillights in the dark.

“What in the world is the matter with you?” asked Caramon. “Have you gone daft?”

Nessa did not hear the greater majority of these inquiries, but only turned her head at the sound of her brother’s voice, and said, “What?”

“What are you
doing?”

Initially, Nessa gleaned a very different interpretation from this question, than that which Caramon truly intended; and for that reason began to stammer and to stutter, as he looked at her confusedly.

“What are you talking about?” he asked. “I was only asking if you wished me to drive. You seem to have forgotten how.”

“Oh,” said Nessa.

And that was all she said.         

~

So as not to draw out any further the condition of Dechtire, after Ceir and Ima had finished working upon her, it should well be noted now the state in which Nessa and Caramon found her, when they returned home from the diner. Quite naturally, Caramon jumped out of the truck even before Nessa had brought it within a hundred yards of the barn, and raced away to the house; so that when Nessa finally arrived in the parlour, he had been kneeling down beside his mate for some minutes, and was weeping already tears of joy and relief.

“Oh, do compose yourself,” muttered Dechtire, whose voice was shallow and hoarse. Yet she smiled anyway, and reached up a hand to touch Caramon’s face.

Chapter IX:

Persistence

T
o have spoken with Cassie MacAdam that night, as Nessa had, was to know nothing at all of what the previous evening had held for her: namely the theft of her money, the subsequent battering of Tommy Wells with a table lamp, and the very familiar conquest of one Birdie Post over her daughter’s seemingly stagnant condition. Yes, we might say stagnant – for, despite the fact that she had been gone some months from the loud, bawdy, and occasionally painful environment which was the trailer of Bobby-Ray Williams, she seemed only to have shifted herself to an equally unpleasant dwelling-place.

Nessa had wondered where Cassie’s small-town prom king was to be found. Well, the truth of the matter was this: that Cassie had never been prom queen to begin with, but that that particular title had been reserved for one Missy Bartenson, whose king had been one D.W. Taylor. While they were being crowned, one Cassie MacAdam was located not in the crowd that formed before the stage, and not even in the restroom, so that her absence might have been excused; but was instead positioned behind the school with one Bobby-Ray Williams, taking the first step down the long road of her first miscarriage. (Just for the sake of noting, we shall add that there were two others, which followed the first; and that, being deathly afraid of a non-repetition during her fourth pregnancy, Cassie was forced to resort to abortion at the most distant clinic her vehicle could manage.)

One might wonder, why exactly she was so very ignorant as to make the same mistake four times. We will only say, for the sake of the young woman’s reputation – but also for fear of perhaps revealing too much at an inopportune moment – that the first steps down those following three roads, were not always of her own choosing, or even of her own permission. But she was young, and alone, and unable to return home; for, at that time, her hateful father still lived, and would not suffer her presence in his house after she turned sixteen.

And that bit of information should for the time serve well enough so as to disprove all of Nessa’s theories, and to offer some assistance in the preservation of Cassie’s character. For, truly, it was not a bad one.

Cassie arrived home at a quarter to four in the morning, and was met at the door by a raving Birdie Post.
What
she was raving about, Cassie did not know, and she took not a moment in the finding out.

“What do you want me to do about it?” she snapped; though having no idea at all, even as she spoke the words, to what this
it
referred. “I have nothing for you! You took everything, don’t you remember?”

She started up the stairs, but was pursued relentlessly by Birdie. For her own amusement and consolation, she turned about on the fifth step (no doubt, it would have been even more greatly amusing, and even more greatly consolatory, if she had waited till she reached the landing), and pushed Birdie away from her. She watched her tumble backwards, and strike the floor at a perfect angle with her well-cushioned buttocks, so that she was not harmed at all, but only severely incensed. Yet her consumption of alcohol seemed to have been so considerable this night, that she could form no proper curses for her daughter; and when she attempted to rise from the stained and threadbare
carpet, she only dropped back again, and fell asleep on the spot, with a disgusting string of saliva hanging from her lip which rather suited her disgusting face.

Cassie sighed, feeling neither so amused nor so consoled as she had thought she would be; and so trudged on up the stairs. There was nothing left, for the time being, but to drop to sleep in her own bed, with the window propped open and the door locked fast.

Before emerging full upon the landing, she peered about in the darkness for Tommy Wells. When she had assured herself of his absence, she crept on down the corridor, and hurried soundlessly into her bedroom. Here she collected a towel, and a set of pajamas, and chanced Birdie’s temporary state of unconsciousness for a quick shower. Certainly she would not have done it, if she were not entirely sure that Tommy was gone from the house; but due to the fact that she had heard him roar not even once, and had witnessed herself the emptiness of his and Birdie’s bed, she had no worry for the moment.

~

Barricaded finally behind her door (which she had equipped upon moving back into her mother’s house, with a secure deadbolt), Cassie was able to free her mind. She needed not think of whether Birdie was awake, or whether Tommy was returned from the bar; for, despite the fact that she had opened her window as planned, she was fully certain that the attempted approach of either of them by that route would only result in their immediate deaths; and for that reason, to be true, she almost wished them to give it a try.

Regarding the perfect silence of the house for what it was – a rare opportunity – Cassie fetched her guitar, and set her notebook open to the next empty page. There was a strange persistence in her heart, that she thought at first to be nothing more than lingering anger over her vanished funds. But to accompany this strange persistence, there was an even stranger image come to flash repeatedly through her mind.

This image consisted solely of a face, a face exceedingly pale, surrounded on three sides by hair that was not blonde, but
white.
Perfectly white. White as of those women who have gathered to themselves five-and-eighty years, but paired with a face full of youth and beauty, to which the troubles and impediments of age were a thought that had not yet even occurred. Somewhere in the midst of all this was a pair of black eyes. Eyes black as the raven; black as coal; black as the heart of Birdie Post.

Beside this face, if Cassie wished to imagine it, there appeared a brother-face, whose skin seemed very brown in the juxtaposition, and whose hair seemed very black. There were many similarities between the two, but more evident were the differences. White face, brown face; white hair, black hair. Yet it was the former of either of these conditions that held the attention and interest of Cassie, even in their absence; and it was the former of either of these conditions that she was beginning to believe had the most to do with that strange persistence.

Persistent, that persistence was. Cassie attempted to describe it, through the strings of her guitar, and the pages of her notebook; but she had played many combinations of notes, and filled many empty lines, before she realised it was only fitting: that the song which expressed the singularity of that one white face, would most certainly prove just as elusive as the face itself had been, even so near to Cassie’s own, on the tailgate of a pickup truck. But she fought on in vain, unwilling to admit so soon that she was defeated. She had not yet even paused to wonder, exactly
why
she should fight for such a thing. She had not yet stopped to think it strange; or at least, any stranger than was that strange persistence.

Persistent, that persistence was.