Once again silence seemed judicious.
Carly broke it. “Of course I could be all wrong and you’re from the government out here taking the county census but I seriously doubt that.” She pretended to think. “Maybe you’re going to repossess my car.”
I smiled. “Are you telling me you’re behind in your payments ma’am?”
She held up her hands in mock protest. “Oh no. Not me, Mister Repo Man.”
“Maybe I’m just the postman.”
“The word you’re looking for is mailman. Sweet Jesus fuck, you’re actually English.”
“I’m Scottish.”
“Well. Pardon me.” But she didn’t sound all that apologetic.
My car was parked on a piece of dirt road that terminated outside her barn of a place. The yard was bare grass and sprawling, close enough to a half-acre, sloped down and away behind the wood frame construction to a slow flowing creek and a tangled copse of mangled brush and weeds on the far side. The creek was mostly narrow until a large stone dam effectively corked the water. There was a peeling wood bench and a low table at the edge of the water. An outbuilding door stood open with a late model Subaru Forester skulking inside. The house had a faded porch in front where we were standing, with a small dog bed and a single chair. I assumed the former belonged to Wallace, her dog, who had barked once to augment the doorbell.
Carly Williamson was still looking at me, her features wedged agreeably between pained resignation and mild amusement.
Her hair was much shorter than any of the web pictures of her I had found. She was also older than her website would have you believe—my guess was somewhere comfortably settled in her early forties.
“I’m getting to see more of you with each year. Gotta blame that on the Internet. Mostly I call them the pilgrims, or the Kind Kids, or the Kind Faithful. Like I say, they tend to be young. Just so many earnest kids who want to know about Logan.”
“Did you know him well?” I asked her.
“He was here in town for about a year. I only lived three doors away but the houses are spread out. His house, this one, was a whole lot nicer than mine. Can I ask you a question?”
“It would be hard for me to refuse.”
“Other than just being older, and I assume from that new-looking Subie out front that you have more money, are you still just the same as all the others? Are you heading on down to New Orleans? Are you following his trail?”
I neglected to favor her with my poker face. Instead I must have looked a little deflated. There was nothing to do but smile and nod.
Carly smiled back at me. “Don’t feel bad. I’m making a little fun of you I know. Hey, at least you didn’t have a guitar with you. Sometimes they want to sit on the porch and play me one of his songs. And I have to say they usually suck pretty bad when they do.”
It was definitely not the time to mention the Guild in the car.
“I’m that obvious?”
“Yeah. Pretty much. Don’t feel bad. He’s a cult on the rise. It’s kind of interesting to watch it happen. Anyway, I’ve just put all the groceries away. I like to talk and I like new people to talk to. So you go right ahead. Ask me some stuff. Do you want to sit down?”
She offered me the one outdoor chair, which I declined. So she took it instead and I sat down on her porch step.
“You live here now?”
She nodded. “The place belongs to an Ole Miss professor. She’s on some kind of a permanent sabbatical someplace in Europe. When Logan moved on, I moved in. Been here ever since. I’d like to buy the place from her someday, if she’s willing and we can agree on a fair price.”
“Is that possible?”
“I guess. We’ll have to see about that.” She folded her arms challengingly.
There was a long silence.
She broke it first. “So ask me the one question that’s burning you up inside. I’m bringing my dog out here if it’s okay with you. He’s old and slow, so you have a while to think about what you might want to ask. I always try to answer at least one question for the faithful.”
“What should I ask?”
“Well. That’s gonna be up to you, isn’t it?”
“What’s the usual one you get asked?”
“If I tell you, is that gonna be the one you want to use?”
I considered for a moment.
“Probably not,” I finally allowed.
“Well since you did ask. The number-one all-time question is what was he really like?”
“Do you get asked about the Deltatones song?” I wanted to know.
“Oh. You mean the one about whether me and the Deltatones shamelessly ripped off Logan’s “Pittenweem Girl” when we recorded “Like It Never Rained? That one?”
“That one.”
She barked out a laugh.
“Nope. Never have heard that one.”
Carly went to get her old dog and I was left on the step all alone.
She came back much sooner than I expected and had a question for me.
“So. Did we rip Logan off?”
I considered for a moment. “I don’t think you did. But there’s maybe something there. In the background.”
Carly nodded slowly. “That’s a good answer. We actually wrote that song before I got to know him and before I ever got to hear one of his songs. I used to see him around at first. We talked on the street sometimes then, about my dog and some other small stuff. We had Wallace in common. Logan liked to walk everywhere and my dog was still a puppy then. They both had way too much energy, so they took to hanging out together, most every day, as a matter of fact. I’d get calls from folk miles away, saying that a man and my dog were seen out walking a creek path or way out in the woods. Used to be they’d be gone off for half the day, and the poor pup was all tuckered out and happy as shit when he got back. I don’t think I saw Wallace wide awake the whole time Logan was around. They’d go and swim too, out at Sardis Lake, which is a good ten miles from here. Logan didn’t have himself a car to drive to anyplace.”
“Did you like him?”
“Mostly. Can’t say that I knew him all that well. He was just a quiet guy who loved walking and swimming and dogs. Eventually I got to hear his music, but that was after he left. It was just unbelievable to finally hear him play.”
“Did he play for you?”
“Not once. I never once heard Logan play in person.”
“Did he play in town?”
She shook her head. “No. I would have heard about it if he had. I remember the first kids who showed up at this house early one afternoon. It wasn’t long after he left town that I moved in here. I was working in the house on a hot day. It had rained and then it stopped all of a sudden and they were at the door soaking wet and steaming in the heat. Did I know Logan Kind? They asked me that with their eager faces all shiny and bright. I told them that I surely did. What is he like? Of course they wanted to know that. One boy had his record under his arm. He showed it to me. Did I know about his songs?”
I had to ask. “And did you?”
She shook her head as she spoke. “Seeing that record was the first I knew anything about Crofter.”
She continued. “They wanted to know where he had gone and I couldn’t rightly answer that because I didn’t know. Then things got a ways weirder and they started to ask all about my dog and whether my dog liked Logan. I had to tell them that Wallace probably liked Logan better than I did. They had some weed with them and they wanted to share with me. I politely told them no. Oh I like weed just fine, but they made me feel old and cranky. When they left, they waited outside the house for a good while and they took a bunch of pictures. Then they were gone. It wasn’t too long before more showed up with the same doe-eyed look, same ditch weed, and mostly the same questions. I should put together a tour and sell tickets. Right after the first ones lef
t I bought Crofter and got my first ever listen to his songs.”
I asked her, “Tell me about ‘Like It Never Rained.’”
“Like I said, that song was already written, before me or any of the Deltatones ever heard any of Logan’s songs.”
“So why does it sound . . . ”
“Kinda like him?”
“In a weird way.”
“Let me try to answer. Mostly we all wrote the songs together in the Deltatones. This song was like that. It was close to complete but we were still playing with it. Fine tuning it some. The chord chart was on my kitchen table. I was playing around with it. My old acoustic was there. A piece of cheap laminated shit in standard tuning. I was still in my early twenties and that was pretty much all I could afford to have. I was showering upstairs one day. Logan came in and got Wallace for their walk.”
“Logan had a key?”
She shook her head. “Door was always open round here back then. I came downstairs later. Wallace and him were long gone. Guitar had been moved. I did notice that. I picked it up and played a chord. Holy shit, I thought. It was retuned completely. Sounded weirder than fuck when I open strummed it. I tried a few standard chords. They sounded interesting. Then I played ‘Rain’ . . . ”
“And . . . ”
“It was still mostly ‘Rain’ but . . . ”
“But . . . ”
“It was ‘Rain’ but it now had some kind of hidden counterharmony that the song had never possessed before. I called Mark James, who’s the guitar player. He came on over later. We tuned his old Tele the exact same way as my piece of shit. Broke two of the high strings before we got it to work just right. We recorded some that same night with one electric guitar part in Logan’s tuning and the other using standard tuning. It sounded out of this fucking world. Mark played the Logan-tuned chords. Later he got good and high like he always did with his dipshit girlfriend at the time, and the stupid-ass bitch must have got up during the night to stuff her face and then she went and retuned his guitar for him. No doubt she thought she was being all super cute and helpful. Logan came by my house the next evening. Maybe he knew I was out, or maybe not, but he retuned my guitar back to standard. I asked him about it a few days later and he just smiled at me. He asked me if I liked the other tuning. I told him I did. I asked him if he would play some, maybe teach me some of his tunings. I just got more smiles. I asked him about his playing. He just kept on smiling and shook his head. He asked me if our song sounded any good. I told him it did now and he grinned even bigger like he had a great big ol’ secret. And we never said shit about it ever again. Mark tried to remember the tuning. He got close but he never got it totally right. The album version is the only one we played that way. When we performed live we played all the guitar parts in standard. It sounded okay. It was never a favorite. We didn’t play it often and no one much cared. I didn’t know anything about Crofter until these first kids showed up with it. I’ve listened to Logan’s music a lot over the years since he left here. Each song has a different tuning. None of them are standard. The way he tuned my guitar I’m certain is the exact same way he tuned his for “Pittenweem Girl.” I’ve met way better players than me who all agree with that. I think he must have figured that tuning that way was going to be the best way for our song. What’s amazing is that he came to that conclusion without hearing our song.”
She gave me a measured look. “I just bet you like his song way better.”
I hesitated and considered a fast lie. “I do. I’m sorry.”
Her laugh was bitter. “You don’t have to be. Logan Kind was light years better than us. The Deltatones made a few bucks and sold a few albums, and we can fill a decent-sized bar within a hundred-mile radius of here, but that’s about as far as we’re ever going to get. Using his tuning was about the best thing we ever did by an ass-length country mile.”
“You’ve left the band.”
She smirked at that. “I have. They truly are good guys but I can do much better on my own. They’re okay musicians but they lack drive. We made all of three okay albums in fifteen years. They’re happy making enough for weed and getting to run up a bar tab at the end of the night. We traveled to all our gigs in a bus, and I swear they must’ve saved up their best farts all day for that fucking bus ride. I can pretty much fill the same places they’re too lazy to play at most of the time, and I keep a lot more of the door doing it on my own. I’m playing out tonight. Larry’s Firehouse is in town and I like it there. The cover is only fifteen. My cut is a third. It’s a tiny place with a few tables but the tips are all mine. You can come see me if you want. Are you a big tipper?”
I grinned. “They call me Mister Moneybags.”
She gave an unladylike snort at that.
“All right then Mister Moneybags. Now you get to tell me something you know about Logan.”
I hesitated.
Then I told Carly Williamson all about Stephen Park and his last moments in a coffee shop south of Chicago.
When I had finished, Carly and I walked around the side of her house and down the steep hill to the creek water. We walked slowly, an unspoken pact, so that Wallace could walk with us. He allowed me to pat him on his flat old head.
“You’re entitled to another story,” she said simply.
“Tell me something you’ve not told any of the other pilgrims this year.”
She thought for a moment. “So, this creek in back of the house, this pool, Logan dammed up the water himself. Went door to door for the rocks because there are none worth using on this property. Once he got it to be deep enough, he sat in the pool most days. In his raggedy-ass undershorts. He did it year-round. Wallace would go in too. The water isn’t ever warm, even in the height of summer. Colder than owlshit in the winter months when Oxford can get all unexpectedly cold and northern on you when you aren’t expecting. Logan used to claim he never missed a day. Sat in there for an hour at a time. I saw him on occasion. Eyes almost shut and smiling himself a proud fool’s secret smile the whole time. Wallace won’t venture in the water now. Too cold for him, and too hard for him to climb in and back out.”
We stood in silence at the edge of the water.
Then Carly and I walked back to her front porch and talked for a while longer. Wallace came with us and we were formally introduced. He was an old and mostly deaf dog, so that when Carly talked to him she did it loudly and slowly, which made a strange kind of sense at the time. He circled his bed for an eternity before he finally dropped down with a bone-rattling thud.
Carly told me she worked during the day as a freelance translator. She spoke and read Russian well, and the university regularly sent textbooks and poetry collections her way. The textbooks were boring but paid much better. She enjoyed the poetry more. She enjoyed playing even more.
She asked a question then. “Why would you want to kill yourself? And why was it all because of Logan?”
“What makes you think Park wanted to?”
“Because he went ahead and did it.”
“Maybe that just means he thought he had to do it.”
“We don’t know why.”
“No,” I answered her, “we don’t.”
“You said it was the anniversary of Logan’s death.”
“That gave him a special day to do it. It doesn’t make Logan the sole explanation for why he did it.”
“Do you know why?”
I told her again that I didn’t.
“Do you want to know why?” she asked.
And I told her that I did.
Then I asked her about something else.
“Park mentioned another song of Logan’s that he thought someone stole.”
“Which one?”
“‘The Town Where She Loved Me.’”
“That’s a very pretty song.”
“The song he mentioned is called ‘Circumstance.’�
�
“Have you found that one yet?”
I told her I hadn’t.
“You probably thought it was one of ours.”
I smiled. “It did cross my mind.”
“Well it isn’t.” Her tone was defensive.
“I know that.”
“So whose is it?”
“That I don’t know. Do you know what happened to Logan after he left here?” I asked her.
“He died in New Orleans months after the flood.”
“He played his guitar in a club at least once. And on the streets too.”
“I did hear tell of him doing that.”
I asked her, “Does that surprise you?”
She told me that it did.
I asked her another question. “Do you know where he lived?”
“I heard that for a time he lived off Esplanade, near City Park. But he moved out after Katrina and I don’t know where he went to then.”
We shook hands when I left her.
Old Wallace slept right through the last of the pleasantries.
* * *
I had assumed when Carly Williamson said she’d be at Larry’s Firehouse it would be a bar. This was wrong. Larry had been a volunteer fireman and a compulsive drunk who had retired from the local force blessedly still alive and deeply grateful for that undeserved blessing. In recompense, he opened a coffeehouse without a liquor license. He promptly up and died of a stroke within a month of its opening. His two daughters now ran the place and tended to feature female performers, either singers or poets or artists or authors, often some singular hybrid combination of the four.
Carly played simple, angular pre-recorded guitar loops through an old Echoplex while she sat and sang and fiddled up a storm over the cascading pattern of chords. She sounded nothing like the Deltatones. The room was tiny and packed. I did some quick math. About a hundred of us at a five spot a head meant five hundred bucks for a little less than two hours of music in two sets separated by a large cup of black coffee that I had to assume was offered to her gratis. She sipped at bottled water between the songs and said little to her rapt audience. The tip jar was delicately alluded to once near the end of the first set and it got well fed during the break.
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