Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels) by Alex Bledsoe

of her wrist. She whispered furiously, “I’m going to cut your heart out, peckerwood.”
    He held up the guitar to block the blow, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth against the anticipated slashing.
    A vehicle skidded to a halt in the street. “Tiffany!” a sharp female voice said.
    Rob peeked out from behind the guitar. Bliss Overbay stood outside a pickup truck stopped crossways in the street. Dust from her sudden stop hung in the air. She wore dark pants and some kind of official-looking jacket over a white shirt. Two long braids hung from beneath a weathered baseball cap.
    The big woman said, “You stay out of this, Bliss.”
    “No. You want to bust heads, Tiffany, you’ll have to start with mine, and it’s too early in the morning for that.”
    Rob just stared. It was hard to say what surprised him more: Bliss’s appearance out of the blue, or the fact that this female Gargantua was named Tiffany.
    “You been getting away with this shit for twenty years,” Bliss continued, “and it’s time for you to grow the hell up. We ain’t in school, and you can’t just beat up anybody you feel like.”
    “Grandpa Rockhouse said he was pestering him,” Tiffany said, like a guilty child confronted by a strict parent.
    “Bullshit, Tiffany. He’s littler than you, and he’s a stranger, and you don’t need any more reason than that to start a fight. You’re my cousin, and I’ve known you all my life, and I know you’re a bully. But not today.”
    “You ain’t the boss of me, Bliss,” Tiffany pouted. “You ain’t Mandalay. I could snap your skinny ass in half.”
    Bliss’s expression darkened with her own anger. “You think?”
    Tiffany took a step toward her, but Bliss simply raised her left hand and made a motion with her fingers. Tiffany stopped dead, her eyes wide.
    “That’s your ass talking, Tiffany, because your mouth knows better,” Bliss said as she lowered her hand. “Go home. Don’t make me do what you know I will if I have to, just because you woke up on the bitch side of the bed today.”
    Rob glanced back at Hicks. The old man sat very still, his eyes locked on Bliss. The amusement had gone from his face, although Rob couldn’t read his new expression.
    Finally Tiffany sighed, and her huge shoulders slumped with defeat. She put away the knife. Bliss also visibly relaxed. Rob heard the creak as Hicks again slowly rocked.
    “Lots of fuss over nothin’, if you ask me,” the quilting woman muttered.
    The same truck Rob had seen twice before stopped behind Bliss’s vehicle. An old man so small, he could barely see over the dashboard leaned out the driver’s side window. “Get in, Tiffany,” he said.
    “Yes, Daddy,” Tiffany said. She climbed over the tailgate, and the whole vehicle creaked in protest. The two bone-thin boys scurried to get out of her way, while the other enormous girl shifted to one side to redistribute the weight.
    Tiffany settled in with her back to the cab, then fixed her eyes on Rob. In his experience, most fat people had little pig eyes, but Tiffany had huge, menacing black orbs that looked like they might roll over white like a shark’s. A jolt of pain shot through his head, and again two images fought for supremacy: one the street scene before him, the other a freakish variation in which the people in the truck seemed to have eyes like insects and big, folded bat wings.
    He sat back down in the closest rocking chair and closed his eyes. An hour seemed to pass as he thought about random, idle things like what color he wanted his next pair of pants to be. He jumped when feather-light fingertips brushed the hair from his face, and realized only an instant had passed.
    Bliss stood over him. “You probably shouldn’t sleep for a while until we know if you’ve got a concussion,” she said clinically. “Look at me.”
    He raised his eyes to hers. This close, she looked older than she had in the Pair-A-Dice, with little strands of gray at her temples. Her