Rhythm and Bluegrass

by Molly Harper

  This was going to be a good day, I promised myself. I loved my job. I loved helping people learn about the state in which they lived. I loved making history come alive for kids, that moment when they actually lost interest in their handheld video games and started connecting with the exhibits around them. And frankly, I had to start somewhere. Getting a better idea of what I faced on the inside of the music hall seemed like the best way to begin my day.

  I scanned the wasted powder-gray lot. I remembered some tidbit I’d read in an oral history about McBride’s. George McBride tried to run a clean place out of respect for his strictly religious wife. The music hall didn’t actually sell liquor. He built a hamburger-and-hot-dog counter just inside the door, but the only drinks it sold were sodas. There were two stalls in the parking lot; one sold fruit and the other sold whiskey. Customers would bring the whiskey into the club with them and add it to their sodas. George didn’t like it, but he didn’t “see” it because he didn’t want to lose customers. As long as they didn’t cause trouble, he didn’t kick them out.

  And when locals protested that George was encouraging delinquency in young people and (gasp) race mixing by allowing interracial dancing, George practiced diplomacy. He sponsored a Little League team. He joined the Chamber of Commerce and raised money for the March of Dimes. He became a beloved local institution. George McBride had left a legacy worth preserving.

  I slipped the key into the lock, holding my breath at the prospect of getting my hands dirty, historically speaking. What might I uncover beneath all those years of neglect? An original program? Elvis’s autograph? One turn of the key, and I’d find out.

  It stuck.

  The stupid lock was stuck. It hadn’t been used in such a long time that it had frozen up. And if I pushed the key too hard, it would snap off. Grunting, I yanked the key back out of the door and went to search Joe Bob’s trunk for a can of WD-40. Every problem in life can be fixed with either duct tape or a can of WD-40.

  It took half the can and a good amount of sweet-talking, but I finally got the dead bolt moving. When the door finally popped, it felt like releasing the pressure on a particularly dusty can of soda, a loud sucking noise followed by an explosive fit of coughing from me. As I stepped into the building, early-morning sunlight filtered in through the door behind me, making those dust motes dance and glimmer.

  I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the difference in light. Getting the electricity up and running would be job one. Besides my desire to avoid tripping over any stationary object within a mile radius, I was going to need power for my computer. Also, air-conditioning would be nice as July approached. I waved my hand in front of my face and tried to remember where in my kit I’d put the dust masks. Dropping my plastic fishing tackle box full of supplies on the floor, I dug out a mask and shimmied into an oversize denim work shirt to protect my clothes.

  I spun around, taking in the intact tables and chairs, the scuffed dance floor, the balcony that would have been teeming with teenagers once upon a time. I didn’t know where to start, like an extremely geeky kid on Christmas morning.

  A picture of Louis Gray playing on the McBride’s stage hung on the wall near the bar. Most of the posters were fraying at the edges but could be saved and framed. There were a handful of framed photos, but all except one were oxidized and fading. I stepped closer to the still-crisp black-and-white eight-by-ten on the wall. Louis Gray sat plucking his guitar, his shoulders slumped. Gray scored an immortal hit song with “Lurlene, Lurlene,” a sad ode to lost love and a woman who didn’t have courage or faith in her man. Before Taylor Swift and Adele cornered the breakup-anthem market, many a heart wallowed in the song’s lush, sorrowful notes. Even today, manly men would admit they’d cried into their beers to that song over lost girlfriends and love that would never be.

  “Lurlene, Lurlene” was Louis’s first big hit. More than that, Louis’s guitar skills, which had previously been mediocre, suddenly improved as that song was recorded. The rumor was that he had sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for a guitar that would only play good songs. He went on to record a handful of number-one hits before he died in a tour bus accident. Between the crossroads stories and the lost-love angle, there was a wealth of tales about his ghost wandering the abandoned highway, searching for his Lurlene. He looked so heartsick in this photo, so broken and sad, that despite his distance from the camera I could practically see the tears coursing down his cheeks.

  The few extant photos of Gray were well-known images seen frequently in magazines and on posters in college dorm rooms. I’d never seen this photo anywhere. Maybe it had been taken by a local? If I could track down the photographer, we could work out a deal for the image rights and use it in promotional materials.

  The day was looking up already!

  Grinning, I skipped forward onto the stage, surveying the room. I imagined all of the music legends that had stood in this very spot when they were still new to the music business, when they were still unsure of themselves. I wasn’t even one of those people who worshipped music like it was lifeblood, and the sheer melodic mojo of this spot still gave me goose pimples. I could imagine the people packed between these walls, keyed up, wearing their best clothes and their dancing shoes.

  Rock and roll, the blues, country and western—those were the first forms of truly American music, not something that we’d picked up from somewhere else and stylized for our tastes. You had to respect that.

  I couldn’t write the Great American Novel. I’d never wanted to sing or dance. Hell, doing presentations for adults intimidated me so badly, I considered taking Xanax during my first few months on the job. But I could tell stories. I could make the history of this place come alive.

  I took a step back for a better view and felt the board under my foot snap like a stalk of celery. I shrieked as my foot dropped through the broken space. For a horrible moment, it felt like my ankle had cracked right along with the boards. But it was just the impact of the splintered wood scraping against my skin. I hissed in pain as I drew my foot out. It was covered in blood and dust and who knew what else. I hobbled over to my bag and retrieved my first-aid kit to clean and dress it.

  Okay, so cleaning and looking for weak spots in the floor would be task one.

  Disinfected and bandaged, I hobbled around the room, taking notes and marking spots that merited careful investigation—the dressing rooms, the prep area behind the stage, Mr. McBride’s office. A good portion of the wood in the room was dry-rotted. The floor desperately needed replacing. And there were way more birds’ nests than one would prefer in a ballroom.

  But in my head, I was already organizing the space into displays, moving and removing exhibits as I tried to decide between arranging the information by date or by musical genre. It was too bad this place wasn’t going to be a museum. It would have made a fantastic space for active, engaged learning. But I would just have to be grateful that the McBrides were letting me inside to salvage what I could. It was sad that the building would be torn down, but there was always a bright side.

  I tried not to touch anything—I wasn’t quite ready to start preserving artifacts, which required a much larger kit involving the proper gloves and acid-free storage. Leaving them where they were was better than exposing precious old papers to the oils on my hands or changes in moisture levels.

  After finishing my catalogue of the room, I turned toward the “dessert” portion of my tour. I’d been saving the dressing rooms for last. Split by gender on either side of the hall, they were located in a small wooden shack that George had tacked onto the Quonset hut in the interest of saving interior space for the venue. I pushed open the heavy oak door marked LADIES and found a glorified closet dimly lit by a frosted glass window. George had tried to do right by the ladies, putting up one of those large square makeup mirrors surrounded by round highlighting bulbs. An old pink country-and-western shirt hung in the corner, its red embroid
ery and silver spangles still bright. A pair of shimmery pale gray tights hung wrinkled and forlorn over the dressing bar. Someone had left a bright red lipstick behind, and a large powder puff. I could almost smell the oversweet floral perfume lingering on its fluffy pink fibers.

  I wished I could save it, just like this. I would keep the room exactly as it was, as if some female performer had just dashed away from the makeup table to the stage, leaving her lipstick and a cloud of perfume in her wake. People would be able to approach the dressing room, but not walk all the way in. They would get to see the room as it was.

  I stayed in the music hall until it became too dark to work. I made lists of calls I needed to make, of materials I would need. I planned out the restoring, framing, and building display supports for the artifacts in a timeline that—if all went according to plan—would get me out of here by early August, just in time for the school tours to begin. And, because I was on a roll, I took out some brown craft paper, spread it across the floor, and wrote a twelve-foot-wide to-do list.

  But it wasn’t a regular, goal-oriented to-do list. It was what I wanted to accomplish with the exhibits, ideas I wanted to express, feelings I wanted to inspire. A feeling of connection to the period, as if visitors had stepped back into the heyday of McBride’s. A feeling of connection with the artists whose artifacts and music they come into contact with. A need to explore the music of this region on their own. A desire to play their own music. For locals, pride in their community for playing host to a hotspot of musical destiny.

  I rolled the list across the floor and completed my usual prerestoration project ritual: talking to the space. “Okay,” I said to the building. “This is my wish list for you. As you can see, I only want what’s best for you. And I’m approaching this with the utmost respect for you. So, if you would help the process along for me, I would really appreciate it . . . I’ll see you in the morning.”

  5

  In Which I Survive the Library Apocalypse

  I came home to my trailer, bags of groceries in hand, to find His Honor the mayor sitting on my front stoop, drinking what looked to be my “welcome to the neighborhood” beer . . . since my front door seemed to be propped open behind him.

  “Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s rude to let yourself into other people’s homes and drink their alcohol?”

  Will’s smile tilted as he peered at me over those darned sunglasses. “Well, I seem to recall a story about bears and porridge, but Mama never brought up alcohol in particular.”

  “You didn’t eat all my porridge and sleep in my bed, did you?” I asked, eyeing my open door.

  “I’ve never been much on porridge,” he told me, shaking his head. “I did, however, bring ya some of my mama’s chicken-and-rice casserole, which I put in your fridge.”

  “How did you get inside my trailer, again?”

  “Ya didn’t lock your door all the way. The bolt only slid halfway home. You’ll get used to it after a few days. But as it was, anybody with a decent set of tools could just jimmy it open. Fortunately for you, this is a small town full of nice people.”

  When I raised my eyebrows, he added, “Okay, that came out creepier than it sounded in my head. But, honestly, ya didn’t want that casserole sitting out in the sun all afternoon. That would be a waste!”

  “I don’t know how to feel about the breaking and entering . . . plus that unresolved ‘sleeping in my bed’ question, which I noticed you didn’t answer,” I told him as he took my grocery bags from me and hauled them inside.

  “Would my mama’s special secret-recipe pecan pie help ya feel better?” he asked, nodding toward the foil-wrapped disk on my tiny counter. “She doesn’t make that for just anybody, ya know.”

  “A little better,” I conceded, leaning against the counter. Will was barely able to wedge himself into the kitchen, looming over me with an amused quirk to his lips. “So what brings you here, besides minor felonies and homemade pie?”

  “Just wanted to check in with our newest citizen,” he said nonchalantly.

  “Is this a service the mayor’s office provides to all new residents of Mud Creek?”

  He shook his head. “Only the pretty ones.”

  I chuckled as he leaned just a fraction closer. “Oh, you would be dangerous if you were half as charming as you think you are.”

  He scoffed. “I am just as charmin’ as I think I am.”

  He bent his head and had almost kissed my mouth when I panicked and suddenly moved my head forward. His kiss landed on the tip of my nose, making him laugh. I groaned and dropped my head, thunking it against his collarbone. He took this as an opportunity to wind a lock of my hair around his fingers and tug gently. “Okay, maybe I’m moving a little fast, here. Let’s start over.”

  He backed away, handing me a beer from the fridge. “How was your day, dear?”

  “It was good,” I said, as he cut me a wedge of pie and plated it on a dish I didn’t even know I had. He slid the plate onto the little kitchenette table and then cut another piece for himself. He sat at the tiny table with me, the scene very cozy and domestic, if a bit cramped. “I spent some time at the music hall.”

  Will frowned, pushing his pie away with sudden disinterest.

  “What?” I asked. “Why do you make that face whenever I talk about the music hall?”

  He shrugged. “I watched my dad throw away night after night there. He worked himself to death, bussin’ tables, washin’ glasses, liftin’ cases. And when he wasn’t at the music hall, he was thinkin’ about the music hall. We never had time with him. I never had the things that other kids had, because Dad sank every extra dime into that place. We were McBrides, and that means something in this town. But to me, it meant rarely havin’ dinner with the whole family in one place. It meant havin’ only one person there on parent-teacher night. He was so sentimental about a stupid buildin’. He should have shut it down a long time before, but he didn’t want to admit it was beyond savin’. He didn’t want to be the one to drop the family legacy.”

  “And he was doing that for you.”

  He frowned. “He was doin’ it for him. I never asked for it.”

  “Well, something good has to come out of it, right?” I insisted. “The property, if not the building, is going to provide the jobs the town needs to survive. What about your negotiations with ComfyCheeks? Any new developments?”

  “More of the same,” he said, picking at his pie. “Goin’ round and round preliminary information, makin’ sure all of the ducks are in a row before anybody admits what they really want to do. But give me a few more weeks and I think we’ll be ready to make an announcement.”

  “That’s great!” I exclaimed.

  “It’s a start,” he hedged, though I could see the pleased smile curving his mouth. “So, tell me about your plans for the stuff at the music hall.”

  “Well, step one is learning how to lock my own front door.”

  I’d been putting off my first visit to the Mud Creek Public Library as a sort of weekend treat. I wasn’t much of a churchgoer, so Sunday morning seemed like the perfect time for my visit. I couldn’t find the operating hours online, because, much like the Mud Creek city Web site, the library’s homepage consisted of a stick figure wearing a hard hat and holding an “under construction” sign. Kelsey informed me that her beloved pack of programming experts-slash-social misfits researched the page and it had looked that way since 2002. But I took a chance that the building was open on a Sunday, timing my visit so that most of my neighbors would be sitting in pews while I searched through the special collections room. Sunday-morning crowds were far more likely to stop for lunch on the way home from services than to bother with the library.

  The library building must have been a wonder when it was built. It was in the classical revival style, involving a lot of pale marble and tall columns. I could see that there was a landmark corners
tone near the entrance, but the gray-veined stone was so eroded I could barely make out the date of completion, 1923. Now, the paint on the white columns dominating the facade was peeling like birch bark and falling to the ground in strips. The windows were dirty, if not cracked. And the l was missing from Public on the entrance sign. I noticed as I walked through the entrance that the wooden sign actually hung over the building’s facade like a loose tooth. Just behind it, I could see a motto etched in the marble: Let there be light.

  Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew that should mean something to me beyond God’s first known line of dialogue. But I couldn’t make the connection. It would come to me, I promised myself . . . or it would keep me awake at night, making crazy Venn diagrams until I collapsed in a frustrated heap.

  You know those movies where the hero wakes up from a coma and wanders down a trashed, corpse-ridden hospital hallway and realizes, “Oh crap, I slept through the zombie apocalypse”? Well, at least there were no corpses in sight in the Mud Creek Public Library. But this place was trashed. The carpet was filthy and patched over with duct tape in places. Books stacked on the circulation desk seemed to be surrounded by a thick layer of dust, so they’d clearly been there for a while. I didn’t see a single person, not one patron or staffer. The computers were at least ten years out of date. I knew better than to even ask about wireless access. The card catalogue was a filing cabinet filled with actual cards, which appealed to the history geek in me.

  I scanned the titles on the shelves, impressed by the collection of leather-bound reference materials near the circulation desk. Those books, though slightly outdated, were well cared for and neatly organized. Unfortunately, the stairs to the special collections room were boarded over, which complicated things.

  “Hello?” I called, unsure whether I really wanted someone to answer me. What if no one was here? What if I wasn’t supposed to be here? I mean, the lights were on and the door was unlocked, but from what I’d seen, that could have been an error on the staff’s part. I doubted Sadie would be amused if I got busted for breaking and entering a municipal building. Kelsey, sure, but Sadie, no. I turned on my heel, determined to make tracks out the front entrance and find some other way to get my local information, and nearly mowed down a trim little woman with thick steely-gray hair and skin like faded sepia parchment.