Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels) Page 4

  “Then you should sleep like a baby.”

  He said it flatly, with no blatant malice, but his irritation was plain. Peggy scowled again, then decided to change the subject. “How did you meet that boy upstairs, anyway?”

  “His car broke down. Dad and I helped him out.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “Said his name was Rob Quillen.”

  “Yes, but do you know who he is?”

  Doyle shook his head.

  Peggy opened her mouth, then remembered her promise. Her almost biological need to gossip warred with her sense of honor, until finally the latter won. “I reckon he’ll have to tell you. I promised I wouldn’t.”

  “Is he famous or something?”

  “Closer to ‘something.’”

  Doyle shrugged. “Whatever. I can find my way from here.”

  * * *

  When the phone woke Rob, it was dark. He knees ached from dangling off the side of the bed. He lay half-curled around his guitar, the same way he used to spoon with Anna. After talking to Mrs. Goins, he stood, stretched, and felt his back and shoulders pop. Then he went to the still-open window.

  Darkness thicker than any city night had fallen, and he heard nothing but wind, crickets, and the occasional owl. A brief, spooky shudder rippled through him as he realized how cut off he was from real civilization.

  As if to emphasize this, a coyote chose that exact moment to howl its shrill, vaguely mocking cry. That made him smile, and his paranoia retreated. It was, after all, the twenty-first century, and even here, he had wireless access. How isolated could he really be?

  He adjusted the window to block most of the chilly night breeze. His solitude enveloped him anew, a pressure that seemed to leave him weightless and insubstantial. Would anyone care if he vanished from this room? Would he inspire more than a knowing “tsk” from anyone who knew him? At best, he’d become the answer to a trivia question, a footnote in pop-culture history.

  He was so engrossed in these self-pitying thoughts that he jumped at the knock on his door. “Come in,” he said when he got his breath.

  Doyle opened the door. He’d changed from his gas station clothes and now wore jeans and a University of Tennessee T-shirt. “Hi, you about ready?”

  “Yeah. Fell asleep. Sorry.”

  “There’s some local boys got a pickup bluegrass band playin’ down at the Pair-A-Dice tonight. My wife and I generally go for a while, so I thought I’d see if you might want to tag along.”

  “Definitely, thanks.” He splashed some water on his face, combed his hair, and touched up his deodorant. Then he carefully wiped his guitar’s strings and put the instrument back in its case. He wished he could spend just five minutes alone with his music; playing always grounded him.

  Rob followed Doyle downstairs. In the lobby, a young woman rose from one of the overstuffed high-backed chairs as they entered. Tall, willowy, with jet-black hair and dark skin, she reminded Rob of the cliché image of an Indian princess from one of the souvenir plates his mother collected.

  “Hi,” she said, and snuggled into Doyle’s embrace when he put his arm around her shoulders. To Rob she said, “You must be the fella with the bad starter.”

  My starter’s working just fine, Rob wanted to say as he surreptitiously admired her, but instead replied, “Yeah. Quite a handy husband you got there.”

  “He’ll do.” She was almost as tall as Doyle, and jabbed him playfully. “So are you going to introduce us, or should I just call him ‘Yankee guitar boy,’ like you do?”

  Doyle had noticed Rob’s reaction to Berklee; every man had the same one when they first met her. As always, he let it slide. “Rob Quillen, this is my wife, Berklee.”

  Rob shook her hand; it was small and strong, with elegant nails. He wondered what she did for a living. “Berklee like the music school?”

  “No, Berklee as in my daddy, Berk, really wanted a son and had to make do with me. But it’s spelled like the school.” Her eyes narrowed. “Excuse my rudeness, but … do I know you?”

  “I don’t see how.” He smelled beer on her breath.

  “It’s probably just that black hair. You look like you could be a Tufa.”

  “’Fraid not,” he said.

  “So are you going to sit in with the boys at the Pair-A-Dice tonight?” she asked.

  “Nah, I’m just going to listen.” Rob had learned the hard way that showing up with his guitar did not automatically gain him entrance to a local music scene. If anything, his TV fame often just pissed them off. They felt, quite correctly, that it was only dumb luck that he’d been chosen over them, and probably resented the tragedy that had overtaken him and made the spotlight even brighter.

  “Well, if we want a decent leanin’ spot on the wall, we better get on down there,” Doyle said.

  Rob nodded, followed them out the door, and after an inadvertent glance at her gracefully swaying rear, made an inner vow to stop thinking of Berklee as a human woman right then and there.

  * * *

  Peggy rested her chin in her hands and watched the night through the window. She felt guilty for almost breaking Rob’s confidence, but also a heartrending sympathy for him. It was the biggest Tufa weakness: the ability to empathize all out of proportion to the relationship. She barely knew the boy, but his plight caused her almost physical pain.

  Had he been even part Tufa, she would’ve known what to do. But he had no blood in him, despite his appearance. So she was at a loss.

  Then she had an idea. She reached for the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.

  “Chloe? It’s Peggy. Is Bronwyn there?”

  5

  The Pair-A-Dice was a rectangular cinder block building, windowless and with only one visible door, set back from the highway in the center of a dirt parking lot. Only the two enormous cutouts of dice on the roof, visible as Doyle’s truck topped the hill, implied that it was anything other than someone’s old work shed.

  Rob spent the whole ten-minute ride jammed against the passenger door, as it seemed prudent not to press himself too closely against his new friend’s wife. Now, as his tennis shoes hit the gravel, he heard banjo, fiddle, and guitar mingle in a swirling bluegrass spiral metered by enthusiastic clapping. This moment just before entering a new music venue always gave him goose bumps, and the fact that he couldn’t immediately name the song sent extra adrenaline rushing through him. Maybe this band played songs he’d never heard before. Maybe—he couldn’t help but hope—Tufa songs. Maybe even the song. Could “carved in stone,” as the man told him, have meant inside a concrete building?

  Cars and trucks formed an irregular circle around the place. The air smelled clean and fresh, helped by the wind’s faint autumn bite. When he looked up, Rob saw a pinpoint ocean of stars, with the crescent moon waiting like a cup to catch any that fell its way.

  The moon had risen behind a distant, incredibly tall tree. “What kind of tree is that?” Rob asked, pointing.

  “That’s the Widow’s Tree,” Berklee said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Widows carve their husband’s name on it. It helps them get over the loss.”

  “Really?”

  “They say. Don’t have any experience with it myself.”

  “And I’m glad to hear that,” Doyle said. He indicated the full parking lot. “Looks like a good crowd.”

  “Rockhouse brings ’em out of the woodwork,” Berklee added, forcing her gaze to the ground. “Both sides come out to hear him.”

  “Both sides of what?” Rob asked. When no one answered, he added, “So, I take it they play bluegrass?”

  “Bluegrass is what they call it in Nashville,” Berklee said disdainfully. “Everything needs a label there.”

  “If we’re real lucky, Bliss Overbay’ll sit in with ’em,” Doyle said. Immediately, he regretted it.

  Berklee jabbed him with her elbow in a gesture that appeared playful, but was a bit too emphatic to be a joke. “If she does, you
better be as far away from her as that room allows, my friend. I shit you not.”

  “You’d have to eat me first,” Doyle said. He grabbed Berklee’s hand and held it tight. Like her drinking, her jealousy had grown much worse lately, and Doyle prayed she wouldn’t make another scene if Bliss did show up. The last time, he’d had to carry her out like a child having a tantrum.

  The music surged out when Doyle opened the door. Not only was the band loud, but everyone in the packed room seemed to be clapping along and stomping in unison as well. To Rob, it was both a cliché and a wonder. “Wow,” he said. It was the only appropriate word he could think of.

  A young, giddy couple on their way outside pushed awkwardly past them. “’Scuse us!” the boy called back over his shoulder. The girl kissed him and, without letting go, practically yanked him around the corner of the building. Both had jet-black hair and Tufa features.

  “Is this a rowdy bunch?” Rob asked Doyle over the music.

  “It’s a golden retriever, on a dog scale.”

  “On a what?”

  “Dog scale. Worst is a Rottweiler, best is a collie. A golden retriever is pretty easygoing until you get out of line. These folks are like that.”

  “You’re big on animal metaphors, aren’t you?”

  Doyle laughed.

  The crowd was so thick near the entrance that they could barely close the door behind them. Other than the eager young lovers, people weren’t trying to leave, though; rather, they had backed up to clear the small dance floor. Beyond them, Rob saw the bobbing heads of the actual dancers.

  Berklee stood on tiptoe and looked around almost frantically. At last she sighed, settled back to her feet, and sagged with disappointment.

  “Hey!” a short, round woman called to Doyle and Berklee. “Y’all lookin’ mighty fancy tonight!”

  Since the woman appeared to be wearing every cosmetic known to man, Rob thought this quite a statement. She wedged through the people standing near the door and hugged Doyle around the waist. Then Berklee bent to receive her embrace.

  She looked up expectantly at Rob, then realized she didn’t know him. Her too-small dress buttoned up the front, but just barely, and she apparently wore nothing under it. “And just who’s this handsome blade of grass here?” she asked.

  “Rob Quillen,” he said, and shook her hand.

  She brushed his hair back from his face and scrutinized him. “Hm. I figured he was from another ridge somewhere, but he don’t talk like us. One of them people comin’ through lookin’ for your roots?”

  “No, ma’am, I’m pretty sure I know my roots.”

  The woman’s eyes shone from alcohol. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, anyway. I’ll save a dance for you.” Then she bulldozed past them to hug someone else.

  Doyle responded to Rob’s quizzical look with a shrug. “That’s Opal Duncan. She’s always here.”

  “She work here?”

  “No. She’s just … always here.”

  “She fell out of the ugly tree,” Berklee added, “and hit every branch on the way down.”

  “Be nice,” Doyle said. “We can’t all be pretty as you.”

  Rob followed Doyle and Berklee to the bar, where they all ordered beer. Doyle and Berklee both drank healthy swallows, but Rob put his tongue over the bottle’s mouth so it only looked like he was drinking. He liked to stay mostly sober in strange bars.

  The walls were lined with wood paneling that should have ruined the acoustics but somehow didn’t. Torn, stained posters and faded photos lined the walls; some went back more than sixty years, to a time when giants like Hank Williams walked the earth in a haze of whiskey-drenched loneliness. Rob felt a, tangible connection to this history, and imagined the way Bill Monroe’s cowboy boots must’ve sounded as they walked across this floor, or the snap as Earl Scruggs opened his banjo case. Back then, no one knew they were creating a whole new form of music; hell, people barely grasped the true scope of it now.

  The room buzzed with energy, and it surprised him how many kids he saw, many of them too young to even be in a bar. He wondered if they came for the social aspects, the lack of alternatives, or if they, too, were drawn by the music.

  Rob stood on tiptoes to see the band on the riser in the corner. Two old Peavey amplifiers were stacked on either side of the stage, and a single dim spotlight hung from a bracket on the low ceiling. He saw no mixing board anywhere, or any sign of monitors. He wondered how they heard themselves over the crowd.

  Three men and a woman were onstage. All looked to be in their fifties, although he’d read that age could be deceptive among the mountain folk due to their hard lives. Two of the men, the fiddler and the guitarist, were dressed in Western-style finery, with big cowboy hats and pearl-snap shirts.

  The lone woman stood facing the fiddler, her back to the room. She wore a long denim skirt and her black hair pulled up into a bun atop her head. She held two knitting needles, and hammered out a rhythm on the fiddle strings while the fiddler played the melody. Rob had never seen anything like that before.

  The third man played banjo. He wore overalls and a baseball cap turned backwards, and sported a thick white beard. The banjo’s skin face cover was stained dark in the center from years of use.

  “I got you now, you old rascal!” the guitarist called out.

  “You got it goin’ on, I tell ya!” the fiddler yelled back.

  Something about the banjo player drew Rob’s eye, but he couldn’t identify it. Had he seen the man’s picture somewhere? No, there was something different about the way he played. Not how he held the instrument, not the way he picked, it was—

  He had six fingers on each hand.

  Rob stared as the bearded man ran them up and down the banjo’s neck and plucked expertly at the strings. He’d never seen anyone with extra digits before, and the fact that they all seemed to work added to his surprise. With a flourish, the band finished their current number, and the banjo picker threw his hands up in mock supplication, as if his skill was a gift from heaven. The sight of the twelve fingers spread wide was even stranger.

  The crowd applauded, laughed, whistled, and stomped their approval.

  “Thankee, thankee,” the guitarist said as the applause faded to an excited murmur. The woman took her knitting needles, picked up the canvas bag at her feet, and left the stage. She sat nearby in an old folding chair and began to work on one end of a sweater sleeve.

  The banjo player stage-muttered, “Boy, I tell you what, I’m gonna kick the ass of the fella that thought up mountin’ a set of strings on a damn drumhead.”

  “’Cause he made you love it,” the guitarist fired back. To the crowd, he said, “We’re about to bring a special guest up here now to join us on this next song. Y’all all know her, so let’s have a big round of applause for Miss Bliss Overbay.”

  This time the response, if possible, was even louder. The banjo picker scooted his stool to one side, but not very far, as if he resented sharing the center spot.

  A slender woman stepped onto the stage. She had long jet-black hair in a single braid that fell down her back almost to her waist. Her dark face had deep smile lines bracketing her wide mouth, which made guessing her age difficult; she could’ve been anywhere between twenty and forty. Her eyes were dark, but Rob swore they actually twinkled like they were illuminated from within. She wore a long, dark skirt and a simple sleeveless blouse that hinted at the same tough, exquisite shape so many rural women possessed in their girlhood: broad shoulders, narrow waist, wide hips, and strong legs. A snake tattoo ran around her upper arm and disappeared under her clothing. Through a momentary gap in the crowd, he glimpsed her bare feet.

  “Well, if it ain’t Miss La-Dee-Da,” Berklee sniffed.

  “Stop it,” Doyle said patiently, as if he’d said it a million times before.

  * * *

  Bliss faced the packed room. Her decision to sit in with the boys had been sudden and inexplicable, one of those urges sourced somewhere deep inside, ben
eath her veneer of civilization. She’d taken a change of clothes with her to work, something she almost never did, and headed straight to the Pair-A-Dice instead of home. One song, she told herself; one song to honor the night wind and the eternal truce between her people and the others, and then back home, straight into the shower and then to bed.

  She smiled as the applause, and the energy it generated, rippled over her like a thousand caresses. Not all these people liked her, and some rightly feared her, but they all appreciated her musical skill; the songs were the common ground where all the Tufa met. She let her eyes drift over the crowd, observing the faces that had changed and the ones that hadn’t.

  “Wow, thank you,” Bliss said. “Before we get started, just wanted to mention that there’s a yellow Chevy Nova outside with its lights on. Also, the kitchen’s closing in about ten minutes, so if you’re hungry, you better make up your mind now.” She looked down, and her demeanor shifted from casual to something more serious. She exchanged a long, enigmatic look with the six-fingered banjo player, then spoke. “This is one of my own, which y’all have been nice enough to ask us to play before. Hope you like it this time, too.”

  She began to sway, her skirt waving against her body; then she counted four. The band came in behind her with practiced precision. Their tightness impressed Rob; they clearly played together often. He imagined them as young boys on a mountain cabin porch making music for barefoot girls in long summer dresses, who swayed to the music with their eyes closed just as Bliss Overbay now did.

  Then Bliss stepped to the microphone and let out a long, deep wail, a counterpoint melody to the banjo and guitar. The fiddle came in as harmony, soaring over the woman’s smoky voice. The sound quieted errant conversations and stilled the dancers as everyone turned their attention toward the stage. Rob got chills that had nothing to do with the weather.

  She wrapped one hand lightly around the microphone on its stand and began to sing.

  I’m driving down the mountain

  As the sun begins to sink