Then after the dinner, when all the greasy fried food, tepid warm beer from a keg, and thickly iced wedding cake baked by Aunt Evelyn lay in their guts like a slab of lead, they would have their dance. All the female relatives would take their uncomfortable high heels off, put on thick white socks over their hose, and dance to a scratchy version of the Chicken Dance and the Hokey Pokey played by Uncle Herman because their Germanic frugality would not allow them to hire a real disc jockey.
Allison didn’t want a disc jockey, not even a real one. She wanted a first-rate, class act band that could do justice to all types of dance music, from Big Band to disco. She didn’t have the band yet but she did have the place, and it wasn’t the church basement either. It was in the Gold Room of Lamasco’s River Inn, the nicest hotel in Lamasco.
Her parents had voiced their disapproval so Allison and Kent would have to pay for most of the wedding themselves. The money she planned on saving to go toward her and Kent’s dream house was now going toward the wedding. This had triggered some arguments between the couple about starting off their marriage in debt. But Allison just had to have something looming ahead in the horizon to look toward; like the castle on the hill in the distance. So this dream of a beautiful wedding with all the plans that went into it was what would keep her going when the sadness of fall and bleakness of winter set in. She didn’t want to think beyond the wedding day. Visions all faded to black after she and Kent ran to the limousine (which she intended to hire without her parent’s or Kent’s knowledge) amidst a shower of rose petals and excited cries from the mirthful wedding guests. There were no visions in her mind after that day, only a vague fall-like feeling which she managed to squelch by going back to thoughts of the day.
*****
Allison turned her car into the entrance of Camelot and drove slowly down the long lane to the last building on the right. As the parking lot in the front of the building came into view, she was all at once surprised and infuriated to see motorcycles, about eight or ten of them, cluttering up the parking lot. The owners of these big bikes obviously didn’t care that some of these parking spaces were clearly marked and numbered for the residents only, because there in her space, sat a motorcycle. A U-haul parked with the back-end facing the door, took up two spaces. There wasn’t a single place to park on the front side of the building. Exasperated, she turned her car around and drove to the back of the building. Then she remembered Sally mentioning that a new tenant was finally moving into the vacant apartment downstairs, the cursed apartment where the previous tenant committed suicide. It had been vacant nearly nine months now. Sally tried to squeeze information out of Louise the landlady, but all she could get was the new tenant’s gender and name. It was a woman by the name of Vicky.
Allison had been glad to hear it was another woman, and hoped maybe she could be friends with this one, but now that she’d seen the motorcycles out front she began to have her doubts. She parked her car in back and walked around to the front entrance of the building. As she approached, the blaring sound of hard rock music became louder and louder. Whoever the new tenant is, she wasted no time in setting up her stereo, Allison thought. It certainly wasn’t her type of music yet it struck a familiar cord: Steppenwolf. Her oldest brother had owned one of their albums when he went through his drug-dabbling, hippie wanna-be days back in the early seventies.
The front door to the building was propped open allowing the deafening din, along with boisterous laughter, clouds of cigarette smoke, and the scuffling noise of people moving about to spill out into the autumn air. As she crossed the threshold, Allison’s hope that this new tenant might be someone she could befriend grew dimmer and dimmer.
She was struck with a sudden homesickness for Chicago, Paris, and Bloomington. She had friends there, friends with whom she was rapidly losing touch. Would life in Lamasco always be like this for her? Would it always mean living with those who couldn’t understand her, those with whom she merely shared a roof – even her own husband?
She thought she’d found a friend in Frank, but the attraction got in the way. Ever since the party last summer he’d been cold to her. Oh, he was friendly and polite enough, but it was a guarded friendliness, held in check by a deliberate aloofness and calculated distance.
Her throat grew tight again. Allison recognized this as a signal that she needed to cry. She hung her head. She needed to rush upstairs as quickly as possible, throw herself on her bed, and let it all out in one great gush of tears. Not that Allison was prone to self-pity; she despised it in others as well as herself. Either her remedies for depression weren’t working or weren’t available to her.
Her first urge when depression struck was to stuff some carbohydrate in her mouth, preferably a sweet and sugary one. She couldn’t do that because she couldn’t let herself get fat before the wedding. Her other remedy was exercise. Aerobics was out because now she lived in an upstairs apartment, and all that jumping around disturbed her neighbors beneath her. She couldn’t afford to join a gym and it had been too rainy to jog.
The other remedy was positive thinking. And that just didn’t work lately. She kept having the thought that maybe all this positive thinking was merely self-delusion, like Peter Pan with his happy thoughts and pixie dust—all he claimed one needed to defy gravity and fly. Or was that just another negative thought? A negative thought she would try to stave off with another positive thought. It became an exhausting mental exercise.
To hell with it, she thought fighting back the tears. She would look neither to the right nor to the left. She would run upstairs and have a good cry, then she would put on her sweats, go for a long jog, and think some more about the wedding.
A veritable road block stopped Allison as she crossed the threshold into the foyer of the building. It felt like she’d run into a wall, not a brick wall, but rather a padded wall which caused her to bounce back upon impact. Staring back at her was an endomorphic creature whose face stuck out from amidst sparsely strewn tufts of unkempt hair. Aw shit! One of the big bike owners, no doubt, Allison thought as she backed off enough to observe the long scraggly beard and hair. A hairy gut protruded out from under the owner’s black Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. He resembled one of her childhood troll dolls.
“Excuse me,” Allison said instinctively.
“Hey baby, you can bump into me any time.” He laughed, and the smell of beer blasted forth from his mouth into Allison’s face. She studied the image of a green naked lady tattooed on his arm.
Don’t show your teeth when you laugh at him, Allison thought. He’ll think you’re genuinely amused. She pinched her lips together tight and let go a mocking little chuckle through her nose. Clearly he was on his way out and would require most of the door space in order to get out, so Allison scooted out of his way and backed into the corner of the wall.
“Beer break’s over, you lazy sons-a-bitches,” the fat little biker yelled into the open door of the apartment on his left. “Time to get back to work.”
Before Allison had a chance to run up the stairs into the safety of her apartment, a flurry of uneven beards, dark sunglasses, leather jackets, thick boots, and colorful tattoos poured into the hallway. She stood in the corner with a look of disdain hidden beneath a taut unnatural smile. It was an expression that gave her confidence against these noisy and uncouth intruders. Who are you kidding, Al? They know you’re scared of them. You’re clinging to the wall like a stupid vine. Allison struck a big city tough girl pose as she wedged her way tighter into the corner. She felt in the pocket of her jacket for her keys. She made a fist around all of her keys except one, the work washroom key, because it was the oldest and rustiest and could probably do the most damage if used as a weapon. She maneuvered the key around in her hand until it was pointing outward, between her index and middle finger. She prepared herself to thrust it into the face of any biker who might mess with her. Then she noticed the chains sticking out of their jean pockets and prepared to scream instead.
Who the hell is movin
g in here? Allison thought as she waited for the derogatory remarks to pelt her like hailstones during a spring storm. Surprisingly, however, the bikers scarcely noticed her as they hurried outside like a football team charging their way out to the field. They had a job to do and they were on their way to do it.
They returned just as quickly as they left carrying boxes, furniture, and other odds and ends. In came a biker with a pile of unfolded clothes up to his nose: sweaters, jackets, old slacks, and blue jeans haphazardly stacked one on top of the other as if it was laundry day. Two more bikers came in carrying an old beat up sofa, one on either side. And finally the fat little troll biker came in carrying a rocking chair.
“Hey Eddie, careful! That’s my most prized possession. Don’t go bangin’ it against the wall.” The deep, raspy, but distinctively female voice hollered out the door to the troll biker.
The accent was southern, but not the genteel southern accent of the deep south that one might expect from a Louisiana belle at a cotillion. This was a southern accent that twanged more than drawled. It was back woodsy, rough, and completely without pretense. It went perfectly with the deep husky voice she’d heard holler out the door. Allison recognized the tones and inflections of that voice. She knew at once where it came from. Kentucky. Pure Kentucky. The river and a mile long bridge separated western Kentucky from southern Indiana, but to cross that bridge was to enter another world. To cross the bridge was to leave the Midwest behind and enter the South with all its’ battle scars, ghosts, romance, and prejudice.
Allison’s curiosity became stronger than her fear, as she edged her way out of the security of the corner where she’d been clinging. She wedged her way between the bikers, who were too busy coming and going to take much notice of her. She stuck her head in the door, tentatively at first. She saw her. There in the middle of the front room sat the woman on one of the boxes.
The first thing Allison noticed about her was her auburn hair, which fell just below her shoulders in a wild thick mass of tangled up curls. She was darker than the average red head, with skin more bronze than ivory, and Allison guessed that her eyes were probably brown. Judging from the voice she expected to see a rough, leathery, worldly worn face. Instead she gazed upon the profile of a flawless work of art: high prominent cheekbones, long straight nose, symmetrical heart shaped lips, and clearly defined jaw. Allison called to mind all the artists she’d studied while in Europe. The face of this strange woman embodied the beauty that they’d all tried so hard to depict. By the woman’s tough masculine manner and the self-conscious way the thick mess of hair draped her face it was as if she was uncomfortable with her beauty and was trying to hide it.
She wore a black leather jacket, tight blue jeans and pointed toe boots. She was long and thin, the kind of thin that never had to work at it. This was a woman who not only took the stairs instead of the elevator, but she took them two at a time.
Allison felt a twinge of envy. She’d read the fashion magazines all her life and had made herself literally sick trying to be beautiful. She’d poured over books and articles on how to present herself and improve herself, and here sat this woman, on a box, in an old pair of jeans, who had all the right raw material for class, beauty, and elegance. She probably didn’t even know it, and even if she did, she probably didn’t care. She was completely oblivious, as she sat there like a queen on her throne while all these tough men buzzed around her doing her bidding, mere drones flitting about the queen bee.
Allison got a good look at the man with whom the woman was speaking. He was squatting before her, causing him to look slightly up in order to be face to face with her. The man was dark skinned, smooth faced, with a long braid down his back. He wore a red T-shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots, and was adorned with Native American jewelry of silver and turquoise, and what the jewelry didn’t cover, tattoos did. They were oblivious to all the activity going on around them, intent in conversation, and there seemed to be some type of connection between them but they didn’t appear to be lovers.
Allison, confident and self-assured, decided to walk right into the apartment and introduce herself. She stepped across the threshold of the apartment, clearing her throat all the while, partly to get the woman’s attention and partly so she could project her voice over the loud music. The man with the long black braid was the first to notice her. He tapped the woman on the knee with the back of his hand and motioned toward Allison. The woman looked over at Allison and gave her a quick apathetic appraisal, then gestured to the man with the long braid who went over to the stereo and turned the volume way down. The woman didn’t budge from her box as she took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her jacket pocket. She ignored Allison as she nonchalantly went about the business of lighting her cigarette.
There was no turning back for Allison. She had been seen already, so there was nothing to do but walk right up to the woman and proceed with her usual greeting, a greeting she’d learned from observing top sales people, a greeting designed to show interest and put the other at ease.
“Hello.” Allison beamed with confidence and vivacity as she held out her hand to the woman. “I’m Allison Brinkmeyer. I live upstairs.” The woman remained seated, but condescended to shake her hand. As expected, her grip was firm. The woman looked her in the eye as she squeezed her hand. Allison was right about the eye color. They were a fiery hazel brown, and like real fire, they seemed to have the capacity to either warm or burn. Slowly the corners of the woman’s mouth formed the slightest trace of a smile. It took Allison a moment to size up the smile. It seemed to be one of amusement mixed with a little admiration that this stranger should march right into her apartment unannounced. It may have been just a gutsy enough gesture to win the woman over. Her face relaxed and her smile broadened, exposing a somewhat crooked set of teeth, grown too close together with one overlapping another. Instead of detracting from her appearance, however, her imperfect smile only served to enhance her strange and exotic beauty.
“Vicky Dooley’s the name,” the woman said flipping her hair back from her face. Allison noticed at once the woman’s long swan-like neck. Then she noticed a jagged scar about three inches in length on the woman’s left cheek, just under the cheekbone and cutting back to the temple. All the more reason for her hair to drape her face, Allison thought. The scar stuck out like a glaring reminder to the world that in the midst of all this beauty, her life had not been an easy one. She took a long draw off her cigarette, inhaled deeply, and breathed out a perfect stream of smoke.
“This here’s Chief Bobby.” Vicky motioned to the man with the long braid who eyed Allison suspiciously.
“Nice to meet you, uh, Chief,” said Allison shaking the man’s enormous hand.
“Call me Bobby,” he said smiling only slightly.
“Bobby’s my kin. We’re cousins.”
“Second cousins.” Chief Bobby spoke in a deep bass voice that commanded authority.
“Once it gets past first cousins I’m completely lost. I never could keep all that once and twice removed business straight,” Allison twittered in her nervous cocktail party voice. They looked at her without laughing, though the woman’s eyes laughed a little as she smiled her amused smile. “I mean I admire anyone who can,” Allison said looking at Chief Bobby.
“My grandma on my mama’s side, grandma Miner, was Shawnee. Now what kin was she to you again, Bobby?”
“My aunt.”
“Just a couple wild injuns looking for our silver mine, ain’t we Bobby?” Vicky said smiling her peculiar and crooked smile through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“We’ll find it yet,” the Chief said smiling that slight smile which Allison guessed was as broad of a smile as his face would allow.
“Silver mines?” Allison was too intrigued not to ask what this meant.
“See, there was this group of Shawnee that come back to their original stomping grounds in Kentucky from the reservation out west around the late 1800’s.”
“Back in the 17
60’s,” Bobby took over telling the story, “an Englishman by the name of Jonathan Swift is said to have worked some silver mines somewhere around Mud Lick Creek in Johnson County–that’s Eastern Kentucky. Nobody knows for sure the exact location of these mines and so far nobody’s found them. The legend goes that Swift used Shawnee laborers. A group of them led by a descendant of Chief Cornstalk returned to the area from the reservation out in Oklahoma to search for the mines in the 1870’s. Eventually they migrated to western Kentucky. Only instead of silver mines it was coal mines. Vicky and I are descended from that group of Shawnee that came back.”
“So we always talk about findin’ our silver mine… you know, our fortune,” Vicky said.
“Wow, great legacy,” Allison said. “My background isn’t nearly so colorful–just poor German farmers who came to the New World and ended up in Southern Indiana with all the other poor German farmers.”
“The Shawnees are only on my mama’s side. You’d think my Daddy’s side would be the more interesting, but they’re just a bunch of backwoods hillbillies.” Allison laughed at Vicky’s remark and her unpretentious way. It seemed her new neighbor was warming to her a little.
Since Allison first noticed Vicky, the bikers had been busily coming and going, transporting Vicky’s belongings from the U-haul into her new home. Now they appeared to be wrapping up the job as one of them, covered with sweat and breathless, carried in a huge box.
“This here’s the last of your stuff, Vick,” the biker announced. The rest of them had gathered in the hall just outside the door.
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