Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels) Read online

  * * *

  “… and then ol’ King of the Hill, he put on that devil costume and started down the street, trick-or-treating,” Doyle’s father, Finley, said, laughing. “That old crazy Christian woman, she just got all puffed up like a bullfrog ’cause all them kids starting following him instead of her.”

  Doyle nodded patiently. His father always assumed the title of any movie or TV show referred to the main character. It worked okay with things like Matlock and Shane, less well when he insisted that Bruce Willis’s name in the movies was really Die Hard, and Angela Lansbury played a woman called Murder-She-Wrote. He said, “Glad it was a good show, Dad.”

  “You and Berklee should watch it. Give you something in common.”

  “We got plenty in common, Dad.”

  “Not too much. I ain’t tripped over no grandchildren yet.”

  “Everything in its own time. Berklee’s not ready yet. She wants to get promoted at the bank before we start a family.”

  “Son, you ain’t never ‘ready’ to have kids, you just have ’em and hope for the best. Hell, I was five months laid off from the timber mill when you was born, you know that?”

  “Remember it like it was yesterday.”

  Finley scowled. “You must’ve got that smart mouth from your momma.”

  “Hey, look,” Doyle said.

  Finley leaned forward and squinted through the dust-coated windshield. “Appears that fella’s got car trouble. Looks like a Tufa. You know him?”

  “Nope,” Doyle said. He slowed down as they approached. “Better see if he needs a hand, though.”

  * * *

  The pickup truck stopped. Rob stood mock casually beside the car, radiating all the self-assurance he’d learned from his weeks on TV. The glare on the dirty windshield hid the driver, but the old man in the passenger seat grimaced, an expression that, if he’d had all his teeth, might have been a smile. He leaned out the window and said, “Car broke?”

  “Yeah, it’s been out of work for a while,” Rob said.

  The old man laughed, a barking sound bracketed with wheezes. “That’s a good’un!”

  Rob smiled. “Thanks. I had to stop quick, and now she won’t start back up.” He patted the fender like the car was an old, usually reliable friend.

  The old man spoke to the driver, who shut off the engine and stepped out of the truck. He was about thirty, tall and thick bodied. His hair was light brown, which meant he wasn’t a Tufa. He carried a toolbox almost as large as Rob’s guitar case, and the oval name patch on his blue work shirt read DOYLE. “I can take a look at it if you want. If you need a tow, my garage is just down the road.”

  Rob stayed between Doyle and the vehicle, like a warrior defending a fallen comrade. “No, that’s all right, really. I can call Triple A.”

  Doyle stepped to one side, and again Rob jumped in front of him. Doyle frowned, then saw the Kansas license plate. “Sorry. Didn’t realize you was from out of town.”

  “He ain’t from Needsville?” the old man called from the truck.

  “Nope. From Kansas,” Doyle said.

  “He sure looks like one a’them high-yeller Tufa nigras, don’t he?”

  “Dad,” Doyle said sharply. To Rob, he added, “Sorry.”

  “I’d probably be pissed off if I knew what that meant, wouldn’t I?” Rob said.

  “Probably,” Doyle agreed. “He don’t mean nothing bad by it, that’s just how old folks are around here. When he was my age, white folks didn’t stop to help coloreds. Everybody stayed with their own.”

  “I’m ‘colored’?” Rob repeated, unable to keep an outraged chuckle from the word.

  “That’s just the way my dad thinks. It’s that Tufa hair of yours. To me, you’re just a fella who needs help, I don’t see no color.”

  Rob shook his head. His experiences observing racism firsthand as he drove the length of Tennessee had completely startled him. His skin was darker than most “white” people, due to a Filipino grandmother brought to America by his grandfather after World War II; she’d also passed down his jet-black hair. So far in the South, when he wasn’t recognized from the TV show, he’d been mistaken for Mexican or part African American, referred to as “boy,” “son,” and “Paco,” and once even actually denied use of a restaurant bathroom when other, more Caucasian-appearing tourists were allowed. (“I said it’s out of order, boy. You lookin’ for trouble?”) And now came the ultimate irony: being mistaken for one of the very people he sought.

  “I won’t charge you nothing for just looking at your car, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Doyle continued. “And I know you Yankees depend on them cell phones, but you’ll have a hard time getting a signal out here to call Triple A. Once you get down into the valley, it’s fine, but there ain’t enough towers to get down into these hollers. And even if you did get ahold of ’em, they’d probably just send me anyway. Not a lot of garages around here; most people fix their own.”

  “Well … all right,” Rob said, and stepped aside. He quickly added, “But let’s talk some more before you do anything, okay?”

  Doyle opened the hood. As he studied at the engine, Rob looked back down the road for either the boy or the mysterious creature that had caused him to swerve. It had really and truly seemed, based on just the blur of movement, like a mostly naked girl in a tattered dress.

  “Yep, it’s the starter,” Doyle said. “Lucky for you, I got one at the shop that’ll fit.” He closed the hood; the unnatural metallic noise echoed among the trees. Somewhere a dog or coyote responded with a sharp, yipping cry. “We’ll tow it in, and I can get right to work on it. Won’t take too long, and,” he added with a grin, “I won’t charge you the usual Yankee price.”

  “The rental company better pay for it,” Rob said.

  “I imagine so.” Doyle looked at him oddly. “You sure do look familiar. Did you used to live around here?”

  “Nope,” Rob said. He hoped they wouldn’t press the issue. He was quite ready for his fifteen minutes to be over. “Grew up in Kansas.”

  “Same place as your rental car,” Doyle observed.

  “That’s where I got it. Left straight from home.”

  Doyle and his father quickly chained the car to the truck, Rob squeezed into the cab with them, and fifteen minutes later, they pulled into the station. It wasn’t much: two gas pumps outside a cinder block building divided into a garage and a tiny convenience store. The faded sign read, COLLINS AUTO SERVICE STATION AND SCRAP METAL, with an added placard at the bottom stating, WE BUY FUR. Doyle opened the garage door, while his father shambled over to unlock the store.

  “So you’re a long way from Kansas,” Doyle said as he returned. He carried a round mechanical device Rob assumed was the replacement starter.

  “That’s the truth,” Rob agreed. “But please, no Dorothy jokes.”

  Doyle popped the hood again. “What brings you here?” When Rob hesitated, Doyle added, “I’ve got my hands under your hood, you know. We’re practically engaged.”

  Rob laughed. “Met a fellow who told me about Needsville, and I thought I’d see it for myself.”

  “Told you what about it?”

  “Well … about the Tufa.”

  “You didn’t believe them stories, did you?”

  “Didn’t tell me any stories, really,” he lied. “Just said it was an interesting place, and the folks were good musicians if you could get them to open up.”

  “We do like our music,” Doyle agreed. “What do you play?”

  Inside, Rob sighed with relief. Doyle didn’t recognize him. “Guitar, mostly. Mess around on keyboards sometimes. How about you?”

  “Me? All I play is the stereo.”

  Rob recalled something his college music history professor once said during a class: “In primitive societies, everybody sings. In agrarian societies, most people sing. In modern societies, hardly anybody sings.” Since Doyle knew about cars, had it cost him his cultural heritage? Or was Rob just generalizing abou
t things he really didn’t understand? “So you don’t know any Tufa songs?”

  “Everybody knows all the old mountain songs, but I don’t recall ever hearing a song that was specifically Tufa.”

  “Huh,” Rob said noncommittally. “Well, how about … cave carvings?”

  “Cave carvings?”

  “Yeah, you know, like … words carved into the walls of a cave. Or a cliff somewhere, like that giant bird in Ohio.”

  “Uh, I hate to break it to you, but we don’t have any cavemen or giant birds around here. The Tufa ain’t no different from anybody else: They live in houses, they got bills and cable and the Internet.”

  Rob realized how patronizing he sounded, yet he’d come all this way.… “Anyone who might know about it? Either one, Tufa music or rock carvings—?”

  Doyle crossed his arms, and Rob was suddenly conscious of the other man’s considerable physical size. “You know, we get a few strangers now and again coming through Needsville poking into the Tufa. They write books, put up Web sites, make their little reality shows for the History Channel, and promise the people here things that ain’t never gonna happen. If you smack even a dumb dog enough times, he learns to see it coming. We’ve been smacked a fair bit.”

  Rob put up his hands. “No smacking here, I promise.”

  “You say that now. But when you have to choose between either keeping your word to a bunch of strangers back in the hills, or signing on the dotted line in Nashville or L.A., you might not remember. I’ve seen it happen. There’s a song on the radio I know for a fact a fella who lives over on the highway toward Bristol wrote, but you don’t see his name on it. And ain’t no checks in his mailbox.”

  The mechanic resumed work, and Rob tried to think of some way to convince him he meant no harm. But he wasn’t sure that was the truth. If the sequined man’s ludicrous story turned out to be right, what Rob sought here needed to be shared with the world. What would he do if he did find it, if it actually worked, and if he could, in fact, take it for his own?

  Doyle dropped the ratchet handle in the toolbox. “Slide in there and try the ignition.”

  Rob did, and the engine snapped to life. Doyle moved his toolbox and shut the hood. He listened to the car idle . “There you go. Sweet as.”

  “What?”

  “Huh?”

  “‘Sweet as’ what?”

  “It’s just a saying.” Doyle wiped his hands on a rag, then spotted something on the ground by his foot. He picked up a penny, faceup, and wiped the dirt from Lincoln’s profile. The omen seemed to indicate Rob could be trusted, if he read it right; certainly his grandmother had drilled him enough on signs and omens that he should read it right. Had the penny been facedown, it would’ve meant the opposite, and he wished that had been the case. It was always easier to send strangers on their way. He said, “I reckon I could introduce you to some people.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  Doyle looked hard at him. “You sure I don’t know you from somewhere?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know you,” Rob said truthfully.

  Doyle held up a small can of spray paint. “There’s a scratch on the right fender. I know how rental places are, so I’ll touch it up for you, if that’s all right. No charge.”

  “Sure.”

  It only took a second. Doyle gave the can to Rob. “Use this if you get any more dings.”

  “Thanks.”

  Doyle looked him over thoughtfully, and finally said, “So do you know where you’re staying in town?”

  “I have a reservation at a motel called the Catamount Corner.”

  “I know Mrs. Goins, the lady who runs it. How about I call you there when I get off work? Maybe we can go grab a beer or something, check out where some of the local boys play and sing.”

  “That’d be great,” Rob said with genuine appreciation. “Really. Thanks.”

  Doyle held out his hand. “Well, my name’s Doyle Collins.”

  “Rob Quillen.”

  Rob waited for the look of recognition, but it never came. Doyle said, “Pleased to meet you.”

  Rob laughed. “Really?”

  “Well, truthfully, I don’t know yet. But I bet I’ll find out pretty soon.”

  An old pickup truck with a bunch of black-haired kids riding in the bed pulled in as Rob left the station. He knew he couldn’t keep his past a secret—somebody would eventually recognize him, he was sure—but he wanted to hold it off as long as he could. People got weird around famous people touched by tragedy, especially people famous because they were touched by it.

  3

  As he drove, Rob noticed something in the yard of an old shack ahead on the right. At first he thought it was one of those elaborate homemade mailboxes, fashioned into the shape of a tractor or a gas pump. Then it stepped into the road and blocked his way.

  He had plenty of time to stop. The emu, an ostrichlike bird six feet tall and brownish green in color, stared at Rob’s vehicle with mildly stupid curiosity. Rob knew some people raised these birds for their meat, but this one appeared to be roaming loose, and in no hurry to get out of the road. Rob used his phone to snap a quick picture.

  A wiry, dark-haired man in jeans and a denim jacket ran out of the shack. He had the distinctive Cloud County look, just like the boy. “Hey, hey! Git outta here!” An aluminum baseball bat flashed in the sun.

  Rob’s muscles tensed in anticipation of a fight, but the man’s rage was directed at the emu, which took off and disappeared into the woods across the road. The man shook the baseball bat menacingly after the bird, then skulked off the way he’d come. He never even glanced at Rob.

  Rob let out his breath in a long, heavy rush. Welcome to the land of the Tufa.

  * * *

  The road rose and fell several times before it topped a final hill and descended into the valley where, at the center, awaited Needsville, Tennessee.

  Needsville’s “main street” was simply a wider stretch of the highway with buildings along either side. A lone traffic light flashed yellow to control access to a road winding up into the forested hills. Beneath the sign that identified the city limits, a smaller homemade placard advertised the Catamount Corner Motel, half a mile ahead on the left.

  He found it easily enough and parked out front. The steps up to the porch sagged a little, but otherwise it seemed in excellent condition, with all the wood recently painted. He’d been afraid of some run-down fleapit used by truckers and fugitives.

  The staggering reality of the scenery hit him anew. The horizon in Kansas was impossibly distant and flat; here it loomed over him. The rounded mountaintops were daubed with spots of yellow and orange as the trees began to turn. Beyond them, the far peaks rose ponderously, clothed in somber hues of spruce. Where the forest had been cleared from the slopes, the hills swelled with lush grass. Tiny dwellings perched here and there, some visibly new, most as old and gray as the rocks beneath them. Cell phone towers poked into the sky along the ridges; they reminded him of hairy moles on an old woman’s chin.

  He immediately tried to find metaphors for the beauty, words that captured the overwhelming sense of massiveness and antiquity. He imagined the first European settlers reaching the top of one of these ridges and seeing the valley in which he now stood. Whether they’d been English, Scotch-Irish, or German, they would have been overwhelmed by the vista before them: all this untouched virgin land just waiting to be cleared, built on, and developed.

  And when those first settlers arrived, they found the Tufa already here.

  The wind shifted direction, and he shivered. His guidebook said the temperature change could be extreme in late summer and early fall, from the high seventies during the day to the thirties at night. He grabbed his bags and quickly went inside.

  The lobby smelled like potpourri and fresh flowers; lace-edged country knickknacks covered every surface, and one corner was set up with displays of the same items for sale. He stepped up to the desk, carefully propped his guitar case against i
t, and less carefully dropped his duffel bag to the floor. “Hello?” he called.

  A woman in her fifties, with dark skin and ebony hair touched with gray, appeared from the office. She wore a T-shirt decorated with appliqué hearts. “Hello, young man. Can I help you?”

  “I’ve got a reservation. Robert Quillen. Hope I’m not too early to check in.”

  Peggy Goins looked him over with the practiced evaluation of a woman who had never lost touch with her inner horny teenager, the one who’d spent a single glorious summer in the 1960s traveling and fucking all along the eastern seaboard. This Robert Quillen was slender, with a thick head of black hair, an easy smile, and dark, piercing eyes. She’d seen eyes like that before; they spoke of the capacity for furious anger, and other furies far more intimate. He carried a single bag, which meant he traveled alone, and a guitar, which said he was musical.

  Although he looked like one of them, she knew immediately there was no Tufa blood in him. It happened occasionally; people ran across the “Tufa mystery” on the Internet or in a book and imagined they, too, were somehow connected. But there was more to it than just physical resemblance. After all, the Tufa weren’t the only ones in the world with straight black hair and a swarthy complexion. But this boy sure did look the part, and folks in Needsville with less of the true in them might easily assume he was, especially since he was a guest at the Catamount Corner. Peggy’s establishment survived on the desire of anyone with even a drop of Tufa blood to return to Needsville. It was similar to the call of Mecca, or a bird’s urge to migrate, except that it was more subtle, usually unconscious, and could be resisted without too much effort. Those who answered it, however, often learned things about themselves they’d never imagined.

  She flipped through a recipe box and pulled out a three-by-five index card. “Here you are, Mr. Quillen. And how long will you be staying with us?”

  “Probably three nights, but maybe more. Is that too vague? I mean, if I need to stay on longer, will that be a problem?”

  “Not at all. We only have one other couple coming in this weekend. Now, next month, when the leaves really start to turn, then it’ll be a madhouse here. Nothing but Canadians and Texans until Thanksgiving.” She handed him the guest registration card. “Fill this out for me, if you would.”