Chapter Text
Clarksdale, Mississippi
Summer, 1932
𝐎𝐍 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓𝐒 when the moon shrunk to a thin, wailing slit, you felt like you were next in line to disappear.
Your mama taught you lots of rules, but none of them prepared you for Annie.
Rumor wrapped itself around that woman same as the Summer heat. Folks said she could put a spell on you with just her eyes, and, truth be told, when she turned them on you, you felt something knot in the pit of your belly.
She was witchy as all that, skin glistening like she had stars working their way loose from her pores, and there you were on the black side of town, standing outside the store with its wood-slat walls and dusty windows, feeling like one of those ghosts folks say can't find peace.
You passed well enough for white, but not when you were standing there, alone and bare to the night.
Most days you were something fine to look at, white boys leaning into you, calling you as pretty as a pitcher, but there was a strangeness to your blood. They felt it even if they couldn't see it at first, didn't know why they turned their heads a little too quick when you walked by.
Pretty as a pitcher, but not a pitcher they wanted on their mama's shelf, with your hair as dark as Annie's skin and your eyes that could've been polished stones, and your lips too full, too ripe, too ready to be noticed.
Your mama called it beautiful. She was beautiful herself, although the kind that scared the neighbors. If they were feeling kind, they said she was Spanish. The other words they used, well, she wouldn't let you repeat.
The town creaked, riddled with chatter and the smell of frying oil, the curbs off-kilter beneath the slow churn of heavy skies.
Girls played patty-cake on the wooden porch, eyes like wide-cast nets the minute you set foot across the threshold. Old men with their straw-thread hats and weathered hands made as if they weren't looking, but you knew that they knew you didn't belong.
You stood there a moment, letting the cool dimness of the store wrap around you like a burying quilt, waiting for someone to scare you off.
Annie must've sensed you looking lost.
She poked her head out the doorway like it was the most natural thing in the world to see a white girl standing where you were.
"You standin' out here all night?" she asked, one eyebrow raised in challenge, or maybe in greeting—hard to say with Annie.
She came close, too close, where you could smell the sweet and sharp of sweat and lavender, and she took your wrist and said, "c'mon in, 'less you waiting 'round for the devil to ask you to dance?"
A banded barrel loomed in one corner, dark and gleaming as a deep-sea catch, with shadows huddling up against it like they were plotting. Annie dropped your hand and fished out a bottle, milk-glass white with a black cork pressed tight against its mouth. Her fingers looked like they might snap the neck right off, and you flinched in spite of yourself. You weren't used to hands like hers, strong but gentle.
Jars lined the shelves, full of pickled okra and beans in larger quantities than you could count. Green tomatoes sat like emerald marbles. Red-plumed roosters, drawn with thick, childish lines, decorated boxes of rice. Everything about the store was color-slick, bursting, untamed, and you felt like you'd stepped into a room full of loud-talking strangers.
She was rifling through a wicker basket, the bright colors of her cotton skirt flaring around her, and you just knew she'd clocked you long before she ever turned her head. Simple enough, that look.
"Why's you sad, sweetling?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Mm, ain't no use cryin' if you ain't hankerin' for someone to see."
"Di—didn't mean to disturb you fine folk. Just a bit melancholy. Can't sleep lately. A shame my troubles haunt y'all."
"They's hauntin' much more than just us folks if they's got you out chillin' in this here grove."
"Prone to wanderin' off."
She laughed, and the necklace of clay and bone clinked gently.
"That kinda night?"
You didn't know if Annie ran the store or just ran like she ran everything else—the street, the men, the stories that grew as thick as kudzu around her. All you knew for sure was that her bracelets sang lovingly against her skin whenever she moved.
She raised an eyebrow like she was sizing up trouble, but there was a hint of a smile like maybe she liked trouble just fine.
"How'd a white youngin' like you end up on the Northside? You gotta know State and Main's the last place you wanna show your face."
"Word gets around," you replied. "Heard the store over here had a tincture to help me sleep. Looks like I must've dozed off before I even got my hands on a bottle."
"Luck's on your side, not wakin' up to the sheriff," she spoke it like a fact, then smiled suddenly, amused.
"It ain't me he's watchin'."
"Ain't that the damn truth," she said.
Annie considered you hard, the way a gambler might consider a stacked hand—trying to figure if it was worth playing—and she nodded like she'd decided something. Pushed the bottle into your hands. The glass was cool; you half expected it to burn.
"This'll fix you tight as a tick in no time."
She turned away, her blue-and-yellow skirt dappled with light, and you felt it: a pull that settled into your marrow.
You opened your mouth, closed it. Reached for a handful of words and found them slippery, elusive.
"I—thank you," you stammered.
"Save it," she said. "You'll owe me."
You didn't have the nerve to ask what it cost. Whatever it was, Annie probably knew you couldn't pay it.
You twisted around, braids slapping your spine like twin rattlesnakes, the eyes of the old men brushing your back like a mean wind, and you cradled the bottle against you like it was something stolen.
Listlessly, you wandered. Past the edges of the Northside. Past the wide fields of cotton stooped under their own weight. Past the little shotgun houses that bled light and music. Past the bottleneck hum of a slide guitar and voices like deep water.
Past the old men with their own voices humming.
"Fool girl, fool girl."
You were thirsty and you didn't want to wait, so you dug out the cork and drank.
Dandelion-yellow liquid slipped past your lips, fingerlings of it draping down your chin and pooling in the hollow of your throat.
It tasted like peaches and chalk, sweet and acrid at the same time, the way you'd imagine the moon might taste if you could get your mouth around it.
Under the dark arms of the magnolias, you felt your bones get heavy.
You passed through the empty square, past the empty barbershop, past the empty filling station, drinking, the liquid smoking down your throat. The street signs swam, letters unwinding themselves into a murky tangle, and you walked unsteadier, walked fuzzier, walked like you might just curl up in the middle of the sidewalk and let the world spin for a while longer.
An old Model T choked past you, headlights like ghost hands reaching. You were near the edge of things, where the tracks split the town, and it seemed like they were waiting just for you—matching ribbons silvered in the dark.
That was when you saw him, leaning against the rusted spine of a boxcar, his eyes catching yours and holding them tight. The ironwork behind him looked like it might buckle from the sheer weight of his waiting, but he held himself still, his mouth quirking like a half-written invitation.
"Gallivantin' a bit, ain't you?"
His voice was a collision, a Southern sound with something vaguely foreign crouched beneath.
"I must've drunk a whole barrel," you said, and it came out slurred and tongueless.
"I like you this way," he said, and you could feel the smile in the dark.
"This way?"
"Floatin' loose."
You wanted to say you liked him, too, but the words curled up and went to sleep before you could unwind them.
"Don't go three sheets on me now," he teased. "Ain't got the heart to carry a girl like you."
It made you laugh, loud and sudden, and it felt good—better than you expected, like you'd been holding your breath for a long, long time.
"Little late for a lady to be walking."
His eyes glinted like mica in the spill of moonlight, and you couldn't decide if he was as old as the tracks or as young as the century. His skin was pale, paler than any white boy's, white like the inside of a shell.
"Don't see many girls like you, this side of the color line."
"Don't see many like me, any side," you said, and it sounded like a dare.
"Smart girl," he said, and his accent lilted upwards, the edges of it turning like the hem of a song.
"Where you from?"
"Around," he said, then cleaner, "a long way off."
He moved as if he had time to spare. As if he had more of it than anyone else.
"You got a name?" you asked, and he seemed to consider if he did.
"Remmick."
You tried it out, letting it slip around your tongue.
"Remmick."
The moon winked out, slipped back, dangerously thin. His smile was slit-wide.
You stumbled.
"Remmick. Nobody 'round here is called that," you said. "Nobody 'round here is called anything like that."
"Told you I liked you this way."
"Tipsy?"
"Loose."
He was closer now. You saw that the blue of his eyes wasn't quite blue, more like a pale gray, a color that shifted when it met the light. You were drunk. You were sure you were drunk. You were drunk and spinning towards him, and it seemed like a good idea. It seemed like the best idea you'd had in years.
You tilted your head like you might nuzzle into him, and a soft, missed-it heartbeat later, you were.
He laughed.
"Got yourself a feelin' too fine," Remmick said, looking down at you with a kind of pleasure.
"You think so?"
"I know so."
A slip of the tongue, Irish and lilting. He reached out, catching your elbow before it hit dirt.
"You hungry, child?"
The question prickled, strange and alive.
"Wouldn't say no to a biscuit," you said, hungry for so much more.
He moved slowly, lethargically, head bowed and fingers grazing the chiseled line of his jaw, like he was thinking profound thoughts, like he was having his fun with them.
"You white?" he asked.
The bottle hung negligently from your hand, moonlight splitting against it.
"Does it matter?"
"Doesn't," Remmick said.
The night shivered, river-cold.
You wanted to say something beautiful about how that wasn't even the half of it, how you weren't white, not really, not more than anything else—just your mama's strange spawn—but the words drooped like thick, thirsty vines, and you were light-headed and dizzy, bone-tired and sleepy.
They slipped away, smooth as river stones in his pocket.
"No," you said finally, "I'm not."
He took your wrist unassumingly, his thumb a quiet weight against your pulse.
"Good," he said.
"What if I was?"
"I'd like that, too."
You stumbled against him, and he was ready for it. Quick as lightning, your neck was bare to the sky.
"Can't promise a biscuit. But I can give you somethin' better," Remmick said, grinning.
"You got a taste for somethin' different, huh?"
"You could say that," he said, and he carefully drew you closer, enough to feel the soft tremor in your veins, the fast slide of blood.
He lingered over it, like he was savoring the thought of you. Then he led you between the tracks and into the stand of trees beyond, a little grove where the arms of the oaks tangled together, their trunks pulling the moon down into a sway-lit circle.
"Come on, then," he said, blissfully settling into the grass.
He unclasped from your neck and bit deep into his own wrist, held it to your mouth, and let you drink until you were heady and full and washed in the bright, crimson light of him.
"That's it, now," he said, his voice a warm drawl.
"Drink up, baby girl."
His words slipped in and out of you, slick as minnows.
The blood burst like a hot dam flooding your mouth. It was warm, copper-sweet. You could feel its insistent thrum all the way to your toes.
Without warning, you saw the great woods of Ireland, deep and unbroken. Saw the long stretch of hills and river. Saw a stranger land than your own, a time when it was green and Autumn-red and colonizing feet had yet to trample the bones of it. You heard voices like wind hymns, old tongues still blithe and singing. You smelled the smoke of peat fires and rabbit stew, saw wide-cheeked women with hair like yours, saw boys with eyes like Remmick's, their faces fiercely painted.
The world thrummed like a colony of bees around you. Instantly, you were back just as abruptly as you were transported.
Remmick laughed, a low ripple cutting through the swell.
"Don't drift too far, child. I might miss you."
His hands worked into your bones. You felt yourself trembling incessantly, a single chord vibrating skyward.
"That's it," he coaxed, his fingers now twining darkly through your hair. "You drink as much as you want."
He made a noise, low and wolfish, but he didn't stop you drinking.
"That's my sweet girl. That's my good little girl."
He went lazily under your weight, laying back and pulling you with him. You straddled him, the whole earth a hammock fanning loose beneath you.
The sky was red, red, red.
"Say my name again."
You felt boneless and loose-tongued; you were pretty sure he could ask you to say anything, and you would.
"Remmick."
It came out careless, and he laughed the way he had when you first spoke, like he was surprised by how much he enjoyed the sound of it.
"Remmick," you said, his blood speaking through you breathlessly.
"Good," he whispered, "so damn good."
"Remmick," you whined it this time, grinding down on him.
He groaned, a sound low and untethered in his stomach, like he was holding more pleasure than he knew what to do with. He was getting drunk on this, you thought. He was getting drunk on you.
You sighed into his neck, and he eagerly wrapped his legs around you.
"Yeah," Remmick breathed, a little off-time, a little rough. "You just keep sayin' that name."
He lifted you, your bare neck singing against him, and then he paused and twisted away, breath hitching. He turned and turned and turned, as if that would shake the need.
Finally, a hoarse half-whisper.
"You better be glad I'm practicing."
Remmick pulled your hands around his, then brought one to his mouth, kissing the blood-bright stains on your fingers, savoring them too much. He looked pleased and curious and frustrated all at once, like somebody who couldn't decide if he'd won or lost.
"You like it?" he asked.
Your head spun in jolly circles.
"Mhm."
He rested back and watched you like he'd just gotten away with something.
"Got that pretty color to you now. Mighty hard to resist."
"You're practicing," you said, the words spinning like pennies on their edges. "Practicing what?"
"Restraint, darlin' o' mine."
His hips found a rhythm, slow and steady, that matched the new rhythm of your pulse. You stayed on top of him, and he let you.
Remmick hissed instantaneously, and you could feel him hard against you, urgent as anything. The sound of it vibrated through your chest, half a warning, half a plea. His fingers went wild through your hair, tangling in and out with hungry insistence, and he loosened a little, body moving restlessly beneath yours.
His mouth found your ear. "Ain't easy, you know."
Remmick's hand moved up your back, and you saw it: a band of gold, plain and burnished and fitting him too well. It was a weight on him, the way you were a weight on him, and you wondered who he had loved enough to marry.
He must have seen you looking. He must have felt you stiffen.
"You," he said, and the word was dense with something you couldn't place.
"You," he said again, and drew you close to him, close enough to drown in the gray-lit pools of his eyes.
"We'll have us a good long time," he said, "but not tonight."
The moon was a thick scarlet scab rising steadily above the trees, and you wondered what it looked like, this river of red, through his eyes. Maybe he wondered, too, what all of this looked like for you.
"Next time," he said suddenly.
"Next time?"
He stroked your cheek with the back of his hand.
"Next time," he said, and you tried to stay awake, awake enough to watch him, but everything was falling away into the blackness of your lids, and you were falling with it.