Page 57 of A Boy Called Lovesong

I realized I was still naked, and his hand was alarmingly close to my crotch.

I lifted it off me, trying not to offend, and replied, “I’m okay. Whoever it was scared the fuck out of me though.”

I looked at him to see he was dressed in a pair of jeans and a white linen shirt with a harmonica sticking out of the breast pocket. I also saw there were no shoes on his muddy feet.

I glanced from his feet to the dried footprints still on the floor.

They were too small to have been made by him.

“Where were you last night? Do you know who it could have been? I didn’t see a face, but whoever it was, they were kinda slender… with big matted hair… and mud everywhere. They were screaming like a goddamn banshee at me till I grabbed the guitar and scared them off. God knows how long they’d been standing there watching me.”

He paused a moment and I could see the thoughts turning over behind his misty blue eyes. “Did you tell anyone about this?”

“No. I was too scared to leave the room. I locked the doors to the balcony and stayed awake as long as I could in case they came back. Who the fuck was it?” I had to ask again, “Wherewere you? Were you out there somewhere? Did I hear your guitar out there in the cotton fields? Where were you last night?”

The words made me sound like a jealous lover. I didn’t mean to. All I wanted to do was piece together this strange small town, a place that seemed to get stranger the longer I stayed.

I could see on Lovesong’s face that he didn’t want to answer my questions, that it was none of my business where he was. All he said by way of reply was, “I had things to do. Long ago I made a promise to myself. It’s a promise I’m yet to fulfill. Y’all wouldn’t understand.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He stood. “I need to get to work.”

The song of the insects was everywhere, deafening, like a plague of locusts in my brain. The heat rippled off the ground outsideEarl’s Auto, and the rusty old fan ticking in a corner of the workshop wasn’t about to make a lick of difference.

Sweat was seeping into cracks I didn’t even know I had, as I stood there watching Earl bending over Joan Collins’s engine.

“Well, you see the problem is right here… and here… and here. Starts with the carburetor and—”

“Please, spare me the mechanic talk, I don’t understand a word of it anyway. Just tell me how long it’s going to take to fix it.”

He wiped his greasy hands on the seat of his coveralls and said, “Maybe a week. Maybe less. Depends how soon I can get the parts in from Baton Rouge. Cybil’s doin’ a cotton run today, I’ll see if she can swing by and get an order placed.”

“I can’t wait a whole week. I didn’t plan on staying here a whole week. This place is… weird.” The word just came out.

Earl started laughing, a wheezing cough escaping his barrel chest. “No offence taken.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that your preacher is full of hocus-pocus, and then last night—” I stopped myself. I remembered Lovesong asking me if I had told anyone about the intruder in our room. He asked in a way that made me think he didn’t want anyone to know.

Why would he do that?

Should I be telling someone, for my own safety at least?

“Then last night… what?” Earl asked.

I shook my head. “Then last night… I had the worst sleep of my life.”

Earl nodded, as though he understood my gripe. “Bugs. Some nights you think they’re gonna eat you alive. Best to keep the doors and windows shut.”

That’s exactly what I had done before bed, but it wasn’t the bugs that worried me.

It wasn’t the bugs that might eat me alive.

A vivid image of the person—the creature—hiding behind the curtain flashed in my mind.

The mud-caked fingers.

The birds-nest mop of hair.

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