About the Author
Poppy Z. Brite’s first novel, Lost Souls, was nominated for Best First Novel of 1992 by the Horror Writers Association and for a Lambda Literary Award. Her second book, Drawing Blood, was also nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies. She lives and writes in New Orleans.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
As he walked to work each afternoon, Kinsey Hummingbird was apt to reflect upon a variety of things. These things might be philosophical (quantum physics, the function of Art in the universe) or prosaic (what sort of person would take the time to scrawl “Robin Fuks” in a freshly cemented sidewalk; had they really thought the legend was important enough to be preserved through the ages in concrete?) but never boring. Kinsey seldom found himself bored.
The walk from his house to downtown Missing Mile was an easy one. Kinsey hoofed it twice a day nearly every day of his life, only driving in when he had something too heavy to carry—a pot of homemade fifteen-bean soup, for instance, or a stray amplifier. The walk took him past a patchwork quilt of fields that changed with every season: plowed under dark and rich in winter; dusted with the palest green in spring; resplendent with tobacco, pumpkin vines, or other leafy crops through the hot Carolina summer and straight on till harvest. It took him past a fairytale landscape of kudzu, an entire hillside and stand of trees taken over by the exuberant weed, transformed into ghostly green spires, towers, hollows. It took him over a disused set of train tracks where wildflowers grew between the uneven ties, where he always managed to stub his toe or twist his ankle at least once a month. It took him down the wrong end of Firehouse Street and straight into town.
Missing Mile was not a large town, but it was big enough to have a run-down section. Kinsey walked through this section every day, appreciating the silence of it, the slight eeriness of the boarded-up storefronts and soap-blinded windows. Some of the empty stores still bore going-out-of-business signs. The best one, which never failed to amuse Kinsey, trumpeted BEAT XMAS RUSH! in red letters a foot high. The stores not boarded up or soaped were full of dust and cobwebs, with the occasional wire clothes rack or smooth mannequin torso standing a lonely vigil over nothing.
One rainy Saturday afternoon in June, Kinsey came walking into town as usual. He wore a straw hat with a tattered feather in its band and a long billowing raincoat draped around his skinny shoulders. Kinsey’s general aspect was that of an amiable scarecrow; his slight stoop did nothing to hide the fact that he was well over six feet tall. He was of indeterminate age (some of the kids claimed Kinsey wasn’t much older than them; some swore he was forty or more, practically ancient). His hair was long, stringy, and rather sparse. His clothes were timeworn, colorfully mismatched, and much mended, but they hung on his narrow frame neatly, almost elegantly. There was a great deal of the country in his beaky nose, his long jaw and clever mouth, his close-set bright blue eyes.
The warm rain hit the sidewalk and steamed back up, forming little eddies of mist around Kinsey’s ankles. A puddle of oil and water made a swirling rainbow in the street. A couple more blocks down Firehouse Street, the good end of town began: some shabbily genteel antebellum homes with sagging pillars and wraparound verandas, several of which were fixed up as boardinghouses; a 7-Eleven; the old Farmers Hardware Store whose parking lot doubled as the Greyhound bus depot, and a few other businesses that were actually open. But down here the rent was cheaper. And the kids didn’t mind coming to the bad end of town after dark.
Kinsey crossed the street and ducked into a shadowy doorway. The door was a special piece of work he had commissioned from a carver over in Corinth: a heavy, satin-textured slab of pine, varnished to the color of warm caramel and carved with irregular, twisted, black-stained letters that seemed to bleed from the depths of the wood. THE SACRED YEW.
Kinsey’s real home. The one he had made for the children, because they had nowhere else to go.
Well … mostly for the children. But for himself too, because Kinsey had never had anywhere to go either. A Bible-belting mother who saw her son as the embodiment of her own black sin; her maiden name was McFate, and all the McFates were psychotic delusionaries of one stripe or another. A pale shadow of a father who was drunk or gone most of the time, then suddenly dead, as if he had never existed at all; most of the Hummingbirds were poetic souls tethered to alcoholic bodies, though Kinsey himself had always been able to take a drink or two without requiring three or four.
In 1970 he inherited the mechanic’s job from the garage where his father had worked off and on. Kinsey was better at repairing engines than Ethan Hummingbird had ever been, though deep inside he suspected this was not what he wanted to do.
Growing older, his friends leaving for college and careers, and somehow the new friends he made were always younger: the forlorn, bewildered teenagers who had never asked to be born and now wished they were dead, the misfits, the rejects. They sought Kinsey out at the garage, they sat and talked to his skinny legs sticking out from under some broken-down Ford or Chevy. That was the way it always was, and for a while Kinsey thought it always would be.
Then in 1975 his mother died in the terrible fire that shut down the Central Carolina Cotton Mill for good. Two years later Kinsey received a large settlement, quit the garage, and opened the first-ever nightclub in Missing Mile. He tried to mourn his mother, but when he thought about how much better his life had gotten since her death, it was difficult.
Kinsey fumbled in his pocket for the key. A large, ornate pocketwatch fell out and dangled at the end of a long gold chain, the other end of which was safety-pinned to Kinsey’s vest. He flipped the watch open and glanced at its pearly face. Nearly an hour ahead of schedule: he liked to be at the Yew by four to take deliveries, clean up the last of the previous night’s mess, and let the bands in for an early sound check if they wanted. But it was barely three. The overcast day must have deceived him. Kinsey shrugged and let himself in anyway. There was always work to do.
The windowless club was dark and still. To his right as he entered was the small stage he had built. His carpentry was unglamorous but sturdy. To his left was the art wall, a mural of painted, crayoned, and Magic Markered graffiti that stretched all the way back to the partition separating the bar area from the rest of the club. The tangle of obscure band names and their arcane symbols, song lyrics, and catchphrases was indistinct in the gloom. Kinsey could only make out one large piece of graffiti, spray-painted in gold, wavering halfway between wall and ceiling: WE ARE NOT AFRAID.
Those words might be the anthem of every kid who passed through that door, Kinsey thought. The hell of it was that they were afraid, every one of them, terribly so. Afraid they would never make it to adulthood and freedom, or that they would make it only at the price of their fragile souls; afraid that the world would prove too dull, too cold, that they would always be as alone as they felt right now. But not one of them would admit it. We are not afraid, they would chant along with the band, their faces bathed in golden light, we are not afraid, believing it at least until the music was over.
He crossed the dance floor. The sticky remnants of last night’s spilled beer and soda sucked softly at the soles of his shoes with each step. Idly brooding, he passed the restrooms on his right and entered the room at the back that served as the bar.
He was brought up short by the stifled screech of the girl bent over the cash drawer.
The back door stood open, as if she had been ready to leave in a hurry. The girl stood frozen at the register, catlike face a mask of shock and fear, wide eyes fixed on Kinsey, a sheaf of twenties clutched in her hand. Her open handbag sat on the bar beside her. A perfect, damning tableau.
“Rima?” he said stupidly. “What …?”
His voice seemed to unfreeze her. She spun and broke for the door. Kinsey threw himself over the bar, shot out one long arm, and caught her by the wrist. The twenties fluttered to the floor. The girl began to sob.
Kinsey usually had a couple of local kids working at the Yew, mostly doing odd jobs like stocking the bar or collecting money at the door when a band played. Rima had worked her way up to tending bar. She was fast, funny, cute, and (Kinsey had thought) utterly trustworthy, so much so that he had let her have a key. When he had another bartender, he didn’t have to stay until closing time every night; on slow nights someone else could lock up. It was almost like having a mini-vacation. But keys had a way of getting lost, or changing hands, and Kinsey didn’t entrust them to many of his workers. He had believed he was a pretty good judge of character. The Sacred Yew had never been ripped off.
Until now.
