Just Shelby

by Brooklyn James

  Fingerpicking “Dreams,” I close my eyes and there they are. Shadows dancing on the wall in the glow of the handmade fireplace Pop built for her. He couldn’t dance for shit. But that didn’t stop him from trying…to make her happy. I thought she was. They were everything to me.

  Stevie Nicks is my favorite female vocalist of all time, ever. But that’s enough Stevie. That’s enough nostalgia.

  Patti Smith, nah. Kitty Wells, not tonight. My fingers shift from picking strings to flipping through vinyl. There’s gotta be some dudes in the mix. Ah, yeah, here we go. Coltrane, Davis, Ellington, nah. Maybe 8-tracks—Dylan, Cash, Zeppelin. Nope. On to cassettes—Nirvana, Radiohead, Pink Floyd. Not tonight. Maybe CD’s—Zeppelin and Pink Floyd again, Kenny Rogers, Kenny G, Clapton “Unplugged.” Maybe. Undecided, I flip one more.

  Bootleg. Never noticed this one before. Definitely indie, judging from the simple insert. No booklet with lyrics. Is the band name a play on alcohol or music—Bootleg? Produced at Bootleg Studios, Poke County, Kentucky. A play on both, then.

  Two good-looking dudes, wearing white t-shirts and jeans tucked into beat-up black boots with don’t-give-a-shit laces, give the camera their best James Dean stares. The showstopper stands between them. Second-skin leather pants and a black half shirt bare a glimpse of svelte midriff. Her white heeled boots separate themselves from the dudes’ boots. If not for her edgy persona, she could pass for the girl next door.

  I open the case and read the credits on the backside of the insert.

  Mason Lynn: Vocals, Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, Drums.

  Shelby’s dad. He was a multi-instrumentalist? I can barely recall what he looked like. But, yeah, that’s him.

  Maisy Walker: Vocals, Bass Guitar.

  And her mom. Her maiden name. She was the girl next door. Damn, what happened to her?

  Johnny Allman: Vocals, Guitar, Drums.

  Nope, don’t know that one.

  I reach for my phone before remembering where I am. The damn signal’s lucky to squeak out a patchy call. Forget about searching the Web.

  So I pop the disc in the boombox, sit back on the couch, and fumble along as best I can. They’re decent. Reminiscent of early Mumford & Sons, minus a son and plus a daughter. Not really rock. Not really roots. A rough marriage of the two makes them hard to define. Clobbering and clanking, but captivating.

  And that voice. Her mother’s voice is as raw as the music. A quivering contralto that occasionally takes flight. Bet the critics would say the same about her as they did Stevie—distinctive and mystical, sure, but lacking in technique. Shelby’s parents had to be on the edge of seventeen when they recorded this.

  I keep going back to track 3, “No Tomorrow”:

  I’ve seen people worry about things, never lift their eyes off the ground. What does it really matter, chasing the other half around. Children wear it well, my friends, you see it in the way that they play. Living in the moment, no tomorrow, only today…

  The jingle of Pop’s keys hit the counter. His miner’s boots heavy with weight but spry with dance, he cuts a wood floor all the way into the living room.

  “Now there’s a tune I haven’t heard in years,” Pop says while high-stepping.

  “How come you never told me about Bootleg?” I shout over the CD and over my own playing.

  “What’s to tell? They were a popular local band. Your mom and I went to high school with ’em. They were a few grades under us, teenyboppers. But they weren’t no New Kids on the Block.” He winks—a tribute to Bootleg for not selling out—as he makes a few more do-si-dos around the living room before collapsing on the couch beside me.

  “Take it easy, Pop.” I turn down the music and turn my attention to his coughing and shortness of breath.

  “I’m fine, son.” He rests his elbows on his knees, leaning forward on the couch, black lung taking root in his chest. “Even my lungs are addicted to that mine.” He makes light of the burdensome condition. “They don’t know what to do without the dust.”

  “They make masks for that.” Respirators—Mom has sent me every model, and extras for him. With his symptoms worsening, you’d think he could get over the “inconvenience” of them.

  “They should’ve got out while they had the chance,” Pop diverts his attention back to Bootleg. “This holler would’ve been better for it.”

  Because Mason wouldn’t be in the ground and Maisy wouldn’t be headed there, slowly killing herself with drugs. Or would Pop have been better for it too?

  He removes the CD from the player, presses it back in its case, and lobs it into the fireplace.

  There is no fire. Thank God! I practically dive off the couch to retrieve it.

  “You keep it in your Jeep,” he says. “I don’t want it in here. The whole lot oughta go.” He stares at the Koronette, wanting to but not ready to let go of the only connection he has left to Mom.

  I tuck the CD away in my dungarees. What is it about this one that sets him off?

  “Go ahead, keep it, listen to it. Let it be a lesson to ya. For every one of those musicians who made it, thousands, maybe millions didn’t. You think mining’s hard. Being a ‘rock star,’ that’s nearly impossible.”

  Oh, now I see. One more way to ensure that I take after him, that my dreams don’t stray from Cooper tradition. It’d be a shame if one of us escaped this place, escaped the mine, with our lungs intact.

  “And the ones who do make it, how many people do they step over in the process. You don’t believe me, ask Mason Lynn. If you could. It’s a shame what happened to him. He got nailed as the father of that girl and Johnny Allman got outta dodge. He ‘made it,’ but at what cost.”

  “‘Nailed?’” Mason wasn’t Shelby’s father?

  “Hell, I don’t know. Maisy did run with both of ’em. Probably just holler gossip. Had folks speculating about who the father was.”

  It sounds like another Stevie parallel—the supposed love triangle between her, Buckingham, and Fleetwood.

  “Speaking of…” Pop narrows in on his point “…the holler has it you’ve been running with the Lynn girl.” He glances at me, a cautionary glint.

  “Yeah, I occasionally run, literally, with Shelby.” He knows her name.

  “You better be wrapping one on, boy. Each and every time. These young girls around here, they have ‘dreams’ too. Trapping a miner is at the top of that list.”

  Career advice or “the talk,” which is it. “It’s not like that. She’s not like that.”

  “Just be careful, son. Trouble has a way of finding that family.”

  Shelby doesn’t dream of me. “She dreams of college. City life.” Just like Mom. “She can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “All the more reason for you to stay clear of her.” He leans back against the couch, his lungs letting him be for now. Heart taking over where his lungs left off, he clutches it through his dungarees, still aching for Mom. “I reckon you’re headed to the fights tonight. Sure wish you’d find a different outlet for your emotions.” He knows that I ache for her too.

  “More hours at the mine might do it.” I glance at him, a clever glint.

  “Mine’s rule—and your mom’s—school comes first. You get that diploma in your hand, you’ll be too tired to fight and begging for time off.” He shivers. Autumn comes early in the mountains. “Now that you’ve rescued that precious CD, why don’t you start your old man a fire.”

  “‘I never could start a fire for shit,’” I mouth his words, my back to him and stacking kindling with enough space between to feed the fire with oxygen. He never gets that part right. He just throws it on and wonders why it only smolders and never takes off. “Just like your dancing, huh, Pop.” I stand and mimic his uncoordinated moves, attempting to lighten the mood. No stranger to the placater role, I took it over when Mom left.

  He gives me a halfhearted laugh. “Get enough bourbon in me, I’ll be ready for Dancing with the Stars. Go see if you can find some dark chocolate in the cupboard. And whil
e you’re at it, fill out that application,” he calls after me.

  School of Music—UK College of Fine Arts—the packet dares me every time I walk past it lying on the kitchen counter. Mom sent it last spring, knowing I would need time to warm up to the idea. If I warm up at all. At least she tried to make it appealing, linking it to my interest.

  But I play everything by ear. Sheet music looks to me like a bunch of inked-on polliwogs. I have no interest in reading it. I don’t play in the school band, or any band for that matter. I have nothing on paper that qualifies me for entry into any music program, let alone a “fine” one.

  Could I get in? Why would I want to get in when I’ve waited eighteen years to get out.

  “I thought it’d make you happy…proud…me following in your footsteps,” I call back to him, rummaging through cupboards for dark chocolate.

  “Of course it does, son. Five generations strong, Coopers have been mining. Just fill that thing out, get her off my back, and…”

  “‘Make her happy,’” I mock his routine sentiment, resentful that she doesn’t return the mutual concern.

  Searching hands stumble upon their mark. Baker’s chocolate, not the good stuff. Not the stuff Mom stocked the cupboards with when she cared about his happiness. After a few shots of bourbon, he won’t taste it anyway.

  I unwrap it and put it on a silver serving tray, the way she used to. Slapping some cold cuts and mayo between two slices of bread alongside the dark chocolate, my menu is a far cry from hers.

  It reminds me of Shelby and the scene of this morning. The same way their place could use a father’s touch, our place hungers for my mother’s.

  Shortly after the needle drop on a revolving 33, I hear the cork release on the bourbon bottle in the living room. Bourbon neat—no ice. So much for healthy emotional outlets. Drown them in bourbon and bluegrass, Pop.

  Alongside coffee grounds and remnants of watered-down dark chocolate, into the trash goes UK’s application packet.

  I give Destiny a few dollars of my tip money for fuel, a ‘thank you’ for the ride home that saved me the hour’s walk.

  “You better turn up when I come by tonight!” She calls from her truck window, encouraging my attendance at the river bash, before peeling away.

  “Don’t count on it!” I shout after her with a laugh, although I am considering it.

  The extrovert in her pulls at the introvert in me—come out of your shell. An afternoon spent with Destiny allowed me to see beyond my mother’s drama. Until my house comes into view. The frayed gray wood of home bows and leans and bulges as if constructed by grade-schoolers playing Jenga, everything and everyone in it susceptible to toppling at the slightest movement.

  Grandpa sits on a tree stump on the front porch, as usual, waiting to greet me. Another tree stump sits in front of him, upon which a book is splayed. In his hands, he holds a piece of wood and a knife. In his jaw, he holds tobacco, the juices intermittently and accurately spit into a Folgers coffee can that sits at his feet.

  He reads and whittles and spits.

  Doing three things at once, he says, at least makes him feel like he’s doing something.

  Accustomed to work being hard to come by, Grandpa adapted by adopting the seasonal trade of logging. It was enough to float him—and his family—through the scarce seasons. Until his body, ironically, dried up before the work did. In his mid-50s, life expectancy here is poor too.

  But Grandpa is rich in books. His lazy diction far from proper, his spelling atrocious, his formal education stopped at the eighth grade. Still, he is the most well-read person I know.

  “Ain’t nowhere ya can’t go with a book, Shelby Lynn, honey,” he said to me often, until the seed for my love of books was firmly planted.

  “Didja encounter any big tippers today, Shelby Lynn, honey?” he says to me now, habitually, with a gummy smile.

  “Actually, I did,” happy to have the answer he seeks for once. “The Keenes from Lexington.”

  “Mm hmm.” His tight-lipped upward inflection communicates both that his tobacco is working and that he recognizes the familial name. After all, he is the one who gave me the book about the historical family.

  “I don’t know that they were those Keenes. But their son is a Wildcat.”

  “Mm hmm.” He, too, knows Wildcat to be synonymous with UK, the university of my dreams. Spitting into the coffee can, his tongue is free to form words. “You’ll git there. Shore ’nuf, honey.”

  “How is she?” I get to the heart of most all our conversations, as I sit down on the front porch step in front of him.

  “They patched ’er up. Social Services stopped by the ER. Said they’d put ’er up in rehab.”

  “How long do you think she’ll stay this time?”

  “Long’s she wants to, I reckon.” With the option of signing herself out, she does so regularly. “You ’member our promise, now. Don’t go allowin’ yerself to feel stigmatized. Lotsa people got addictions. Just ’cause they’re legal don’t make ’em any better.”

  Sugar. Caffeine. Alcohol. Nicotine. For emphasis, he spits more of the habit-forming substance into the coffee can.

  “Whatcha got planned fer this evenin’?” he asks, hopeful.

  I do not mention the back-to-school bash. My Saturday night steady, I say, “I have a date with a book.”

  “Imogen, bless her soul, took me by the liberry on the way back in. I picked out some good ’uns for ya. Even gotcha some a them books on tape you like so much fer the elocution.” He continues whittling, his voice taking over a careful paternal tone. “I worry ’bout ya, Shelby Lynn, honey.” He is the only one who makes my double name sound tolerable. “A young lady yer age oughta be out havin’ fun on a Saturdey night. Dontcha think?”

  “Reading is fun.” I shrug.

  “If it’s one thing I pride myself on instillin’ in you, it’s readin’.” Ting! The coffee can sounds with more tobacco juice. “But some social in’eraction might be good for ya too.”

  “Well…” I hesitate, “there is this party tonight at the river. The big back-to-school bash.” I do not tell him that it will mostly be a bunch of kids drinking and getting high.

  “You should go.” His next statement, a testament that somehow he knows there will be temptations. “Yer a good girl. I trust ya.” Ting!

  Heart in my mouth, I am the deer…running toward the headlights even though instinct tells me to turn tail.

  The rough idle of Destiny’s compact pickup—a model that she complains to me about her father’s annoyance with finding replacement parts that haven’t been manufactured in twenty years—is symbolic of the crowd upon which I am ambivalently about to descend.

  I don’t want to disappoint Destiny…or Grandpa. But what I really want is to stay home with the book I just started. A safe bet, I have found neither a book that was disappointed in me nor a book that disappointed me. Underwhelmed me maybe, but there is always something to take away from a book if you look deep enough.

  Nevertheless, here I am unfashionably late, scampering through the forest and straight into the headlights.

  Destiny lays on the horn, adding to my trepidation and to her own amusement.

  Like any twist of fate, it happens in slow motion. The truck door creaks as I close myself inside. Gravel clinks, thrown by the turning wheels. I know this road by heart. Why, then, do I feel its every sinking slope and coarse curve. Even the shadows of the familiar hardwoods silhouetted against the headlights move cinematically through my field of perception—a dramatic opening of a home movie entitled No Road For You.

  By the time we get to the river, I feel my father’s presence. This happens occasionally when I am in the thick of a poor decision. Like the time I took turkey and bacon from Hot Brown when the fridge was bare at home. It feels like he is holding my hand. If I can even remember what it feels like to hold his hand. I wipe my sweaty palms against my jeans. When it comes to bad decisions, what is he doing holding my hand?

  H
is presence is overcome by an actual being. Destiny pulls the deer by the hoof and out of the passenger seat, straight into the lion’s mouth—the circle. A bonfire around which partygoers conglomerate and cavort, the circle is where it happens.

  A blast to some, it looks to me like grounds for a college admissions denial.

  I recognize many of the faces. In Poke County, it’s hard not to. As out of place as I feel, my fish-out-of-water attendance is greeted with an uncomfortable silence. Are they surprised by me or sorry for me? Word about my mother has spread.

  This means nothing to the redhead from Hot Brown. She treats me equally, neither surprised nor sorry. She simply thinks I have no business being here.

  For once, I agree with Red.

  I know her name. Almost a double name, it is Raelynn. I would just as soon think of her as Red, the descriptor as impersonal as she is.

  A Mason jar is being passed around the circle. Its everclear contents slosh up and down the sides of the glass like storm-tossed ocean waves on rocks. In the glow of the orange firelight, its nickname “firewater” doesn’t seem so much an oxymoron.

  The jar threatens my periphery. I inch further behind Destiny. Any chance my lack of participation will be insignificant as usual?

  Destiny helps me out, eagerly accepting the Mason jar and takes a gulp. “Mooother truuucker!” she squeals. Passing it to her right, she wriggles and jiggles as the fire inside her mouth disperses to her limbs.

  The circle erupts with hoots and hollers—actual hollers—and pantomimed wriggles and jiggles. How does she do that?

  By my calculation, I have a full circle to decide whether I will accept the jar. If only it was like geometry and I knew the radius, I could come up with the area. But then there is the volume of the glass! Is it too much to hope that it will be empty by the time it is passed to me.

  Evidently so.

  The jar makes a quarter turn to Red. She hands it off to her date, whispering in his ear and pushing him in my direction. It did not escape her attention that I missed my turn.