Listen ...Homesong

HOMESONG by Misha Crews
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Prologue

August 1989

Everything about the little house said dead and gone.

It stood, empty and alone, at the intersection of two old dirt roads. Scraggly bushes had grown up over the peeling walls, poking their way inside through broken window panes. The skeletal remains of an old vegetable garden jutted long bony fingers out of the brown scrap of yard by the front door, and the house's shingled sides had been spray-painted with graffiti. But that too had turned brown, as if even the vandals had moved on to greener pastures.

Reed sat silently in his car, biting on his thumb as he looked out at the place where he had grown up. Cicadas, stirred by the heavy heat of the early August morning, whirred their drowsing song in the tall grass by the side of the road. The sun hadn't even crested the far hills yet, and already the inside of his ancient yellow VW felt like an oven, with sweat gathering along his hairline to drip down his neck, sticking his shirt to the small of his back.

It was strange to think that he hadn't laid eyes on the place in almost a year. He had been born in that house, as had generations of Fitzgeralds before him. His grandmother had raised him there: he had crawled along the bare, uneven floorboards, taken his first wobbly steps in the patchy front yard. The old place had never been beautiful. It wasn't some picturesque cottage nestled in the heart of rural Virginia. It was a squat, ugly dwelling that had seen too many deaths and not enough births, but which knew the pain of both.

The original foundation had been laid by a long-ago Fitzgerald ancestor in the hardscrabble years following the Civil War – a tough little house built by a tough little man, who had gone on to found the very town that sprawled not two miles from here. Later, of course, the Fitzgerald family had built themselves a home more suited to their own sense of importance – an elegant country house high on the hill. It had been a gracious building that rode the crest of the hill as pretty as a boat on the water. From the front of its wide wraparound porch, you could look right past this tiny hovel to the town that lay beyond.

The big house had burned down when Reed's grandmother was a child. But money and a kind of careless confidence had resurrected it in the late '60s, just a few years before Reed had been born. A new family – outsiders, as his grandmother always said, her voice thick with anger – had come in from out of town, snapped up the land, and rebuilt the house from the original blueprints.

Kate's family, Reed reminded himself, trying not to notice the way his heart snaked in his chest at the thought of her. He tugged at the handle on the car door and pushed outward with his shoulder, ignoring the painful squeal of rusty hinges as the door swung open. He unfolded himself from the front seat, peeling himself carefully away from the old plastic covers, then stretched his long and lanky frame before leaning backward against the car, crossing his ankles with a casualness that he did not actually feel.

If he had turned his head and looked upward, he would have been able to see that big house – empty now, but still all white and shining with majestic beauty. Instead, he just shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down, contemplating the dirt at his feet. He was on his way out of town. Everything that he owned was packed into two cardboard boxes on the cracked back seat of his car. One box held his clothes, which were secondhand but clean and carefully folded. The other held a dozen books and what Grand had once scornfully called the family legacy – an old photo album covered in crumbling black leather, and lined with stained and threadbare purple silk.

And that was it. That was all that was left of his family. Generations of men and women who had lived and loved, killed and healed, taught and raised children. Some kind and generous, some mean and scheming. But all of them Fitzgeralds, and all of them dead. And with all of that history…there was nothing left but a broken, faded photo album at the bottom of an old cardboard box. By this time next week, even the shack in front of him would be gone.

And so would he.

Listen ...Still Waters

STILL WATERS by Misha Crews
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PART ONE: DEATH

"Under the wide and starry sky, dig the grave and let me lie." – Rudyard Kipling

Prologue

Summer 1984

Storms break when we least expect them. We float out onto the open sea, with calm water beneath us and clear skies overhead, luxuriating in the benevolence of the universe. But then the air grows thick, and the wind changes direction. Clouds gather overhead, the rains let loose, and all at once the water is our enemy.

Sea change. There's a reason for that expression.

Driving home from his grandmother's funeral, Chris Appleton could feel a change coming. It was in the prickle on the back of his neck, and the itchy feeling under his skin. Foreboding had settled beside his grief and exhaustion: three black crows sitting side-by-side on his chest.

Chris glanced in the rearview mirror. His mother and stepfather sat in the back seat. They were silent, each one looking out a different window. Only their hands, touching slightly on the seat between them, told the story of the closeness that they shared, in body as well as spirit.

Outside the air-conditioned comfort of the automobile, heat-drenched lawns and sun-hot sidewalks rolled slowly by. Christopher would have liked to be out there: walking in the hot, wet air, with the damp round scent of summer blackberries in his nose, feeling the sun beat down on his shoulders. He'd like to wander down to the creek and climb on the mossy green rocks, the way he had when he was young.

But today was not the day for walks, or for dipping his feet in the cool waters of memory. Today, unfortunately, was a funeral day – not the first he had known, nor the last he would see.

From an early age, Chris Appleton knew Death. With his own eyes he had witnessed the twitching, staring void that marks the passing of a living creature. And, like most human beings, he found it terrifying. And fascinating. After the glory of a human life, death is a sorry inevitability. And maybe that's why Chris had become a doctor.

Of course, he hadn't exactly gone from childhood directly to medical school. He had been born in 1951, the year of Catcher in the Rye, and started med school in 1973, the year of Gravity's Rainbow. In between, a lot of stuff had happened, including the Sixties. Now here they were in 1984, the year that had so terrified him when he'd read Orwell's book in junior high. The world was a very different place, and he was definitely not the same human being who had first come face to face with mortality.

He turned the car onto First Street, drove around the traffic circle with its giant holly tree, and pulled into the short driveway in front of his house. He looked up at it for a minute before setting the brake. From the back seat came his mother's voice, sad but soothing.

"I'm so glad we didn't sell this place when we got married," she said. In the rearview mirror, he could see Mother touching Dad delicately on the wrist. Then she turned her head and met Chris' gaze. The wrinkles around the corners of her eyes and mouth only seemed to accent the gracefulness of her face. Her hair, which had once been as black as night, was now run through with silver. "It was such a pleasure to see you move back here when you started your practice, Christopher. I know it made your grandparents happy, too." There was a pause. "Did Bess say she was coming over later?"

"She and Kevin will meet us for dinner."

"Good."

Chris's sister had flown in from Seattle for the funeral, and after the wake she and her husband had decided to go back to their room to rest. Mother and Dad had tried to convince her to stay with them, but Bess, who knew her own mind and who had always liked her privacy, had opted for a hotel.

Christopher got out of the car, watching as Dad crooked out his elbow and Mom took his arm. She looked over at Chris and smiled, her expression positive despite the tinge of sadness brought on by the passing of his beloved grandmother. There was a time, oh so long ago, when Mom had only given him that smile on special occasions. Although she'd tried to hide her melancholy, for the first part of his life his mother had been a distant, beautiful mystery. Like the moon, she was luminous but lonely.

But not anymore. Not for a long time.