Backland Graces; Four Short Novels

by Hal Zina Bennett

  “What the hell you talking about?”

  “My old man,” Sarah said.

  Kelly turned to her, “Oh, shit, Honey! I’d forgot.” She stopped what she was doing, looked over at the piano player. “He don’t look like you, Sarah. He don’t.”

  “Like you said, sometimes they don’t.” Sarah settled the used glasses into the tub so they wouldn’t shift and rattle too much, then lifted it out and turned toward the kitchen. “I like his playing…got a good voice.”

  “He’s okay,” Kelly said. “He’s damn okay.”

  Washing dishes back in the kitchen, Sarah opened the pass-through a crack and watched the piano player. He was something else. He played like he was gone to the world, not from drugs or booze or anything but like the preacher when he caught the calling. This man sure didn’t sing about God but about women he’d known and broken hearts and how tough life was for everyone. When he sang, “Ain’t no place to rest my weary head tonight,” Sarah’s eyes teared up. She watched his wrinkled face and listened to the sadness in his voice and thought of him out on the road, maybe sleeping in his flea infested sleeping bag, all rumpled up in the back of his RV, his mind wandering back to what might have been or reaching out to something he already suspected he would never have or be. “Boy, do I know that one!” she whispered, her hands gloved to the elbows, working fast in the warm soapy water. Still, life hadn’t been half so mean for her as it had been for a lot of people she knew. There were good days, there were bad days. She kept things on a more or less level plane by mostly staying sober and staying connected with a handful of friends. She wondered about the piano player’s life. A guy like that, traveling as he did, his whole life wrapped up tight in his music, needed a good anchor, something more than just his music. Of course, that was her own opinion, she told herself, not knowing a damn thing about music except what she liked and what she didn’t.

  She finished a rack of glasses, carried them back out to the bar and started back to the kitchen with the pitchers. The music stopped and after a muttering of voices up on the little stage, the piano player cut across the room, heading for the bar. He was smaller than he looked at the piano, maybe not much over 5 foot 8, even with the high heels of his western style boots. Skinny as a rail, he looked about as cowboy as you could get, with well-worn jeans, denim dress jacket, white, snap button shirt and a shiny string tie with what looked like a silver cougar or some sort of cat head for the clasp.

  “Must’ve been one hell of a lady killer in his day,” Kelly whispered in Sarah’s ear, coming up close and turning her back to the bar. “You think that’s him?”

  Sarah watched him out of the corner of her eye, pretending to busy herself with stacking the glassware. She looked up just once and their eyes met, hers and the piano player’s. Her cheeks burned for a moment and she hoisted the tub of pitchers as if that simple act was requiring all her concentration.

  “Beer,” he said, his voice flat, like the voice of a man who was nearing exhaustion. He didn’t sound like the piano player now.

  Sarah tipped her head toward Kelly, who was drawing mugs for a young couple at the other end of the bar. “Kelly?” Sarah called. “Man wants a beer when you’re free.” She turned away from the piano player and took herself back to the kitchen.

  Sarah looked through the pass-through and watched the piano player sitting at the bar. As she started in on the pitchers, she got up the courage to talk to him, talking above the juke box that someone had started up. “Where you from?” she asked. “Never seen you around before.” She didn’t have the courage to ask him outright what she wanted to know. She would lead up to it, she told herself.

  The piano player shrugged. When he spoke he barely made himself heard about the singer on the juke box. “We’re just coming through…knew your boss some years back.” He paused, looked down at the bar. He held a large coin, maybe a silver dollar, between his thumb and index finger, tapping out a short rhythm on the polished wood. He stopped abruptly and looked up. “Nice little place here. Good people, too.” Small talk.

  “We like it,” Sarah said. She felt her chin tremble and hoped he didn’t hear the nervousness in her voice. The piano player kept his head bowed, waiting for Kelly and his beer. Sarah slipped on the long gloves and filled the sink with fresh soapy water again. It soothed her to plunge her hands into the warmth. There was something about the heat through the thick rubber gloves that always made her hands relax and then her arms began to tingle, carrying the relaxed feelings up to her tight shoulders.

  “You ever…” Sarah began, wanting to ask if he’d ever been around here before. Kelly swept by to place a napkin and a glass of beer in front of the piano player. Sarah heard Kelly tell him that the beer was on the house. And then, did he want a sandwich? That would be on the house, too. Kelly wrote something on a ticket and handed it to Sarah. Sarah was in charge of making sandwiches. She read the ticket. The piano player wanted a corned beef on rye, mustard, lettuce, no cheese. She caught the piano player’s eye and gave him a nod, indicating she understood the order and was onto it. He nodded back, a barely perceptible movement of his head that was nevertheless an acknowledgement.

  Back in the kitchen, Sarah got the meat tray and condiments out of the refrigerator and carefully selected two slices of rye bread from the center of a new loaf. The biggest and freshest slices were always in the middle. She buttered each slice and selected the fancy mustard, spreading it evenly over the butter. She lifted the top leaves of lettuce from the veggie tray and found two extra crisp pieces underneath, which she placed carefully on the bread. She unwrapped a double helping of meat and closed up the sandwich. She cut it carefully in half and reached for a paper plate. Thinking better of this, she went over to the china shelves. She took down a dinner plate, rinsed it off in the sink, dried it and brought it back to the prep table.

  The sandwich looked small, all alone in the middle of the big plate. She opened the refrigerator, grabbed the tub of potato salad and scooped out a generous helping. She put down a leaf of lettuce first, and then placed the potato salad on top of that. Next came a large dill from the pickle jar and then it was done. As she finished, she pictured herself setting the plate down on the bar in front of the piano player and then asking him if he needed anything more. Their eyes would meet and he’d thank her, maybe recognizing something in her face from long ago.

  As she turned toward the kitchen door the music started again, the fender at first, starting the rhythm, then the piano and after that the guitar. Sarah’s heart sank. It meant the piano player would not see her put the plate down in front of him at the bar. She’d wanted that moment with him, just him and her and the sandwich she’d specially made for him. She looked down at the plate, stopped in her tracks, and considered waiting for the next break to serve it to him. But no, he had asked for it now and she’d deliver it.

  She left the kitchen, crossed the room and headed for the piano. Six men she’d never seen before were sitting at the long table in the middle of the room, keeping mugs filled from two large pitchers of beer. They were loud, disrespectful of the piano player. Over at the bar, Kelly was signing for a delivery that would be coming in the back door any minute. Sarah would have to be back there to receive it. She approached the piano player and held the plate out for him to see but his eyes were glued on a spot somewhere above the piano, on the back wall, and he did not see her. She glanced at the guitar player uncertainly and he nodded. She figured he meant for her to put the plate down on the small round table a few feet from the piano. A glass of half-drunk beer was there and she figured it was probably his, the piano player’s.

  Back in the kitchen, she unlocked the door to let in the delivery guy. He wheeled in seven cases and put them back in the walk-in cooler. His name was Pat. She’d dated him once and he liked her. He jabbered on about looking forward to having his kids over for the weekend at the end of the month and something about a birthday party for one of them. He had nice kids, two boys. He brought them in
and introduced them one time. They’d be older now, maybe eight and ten, she guessed. As she left she locked the back door behind him. That’s when her disappointment about the piano player’s sandwich caught up with her.

  Goddamn! She felt like a ton of horse stuff had been dumped on her from the second story. What the hell was that about? She didn’t even know if the piano player was the guy who’d written her the note, and even if he was that guy, it was no proof that he was anything to her. “Forget all this gloom and moon stuff,” she chastised herself. “Let it go, for crissake.”

  The piano player was singing again in the next room. “Long long road running under me, roll on, roll on, takin’ me back to where I left off, too young to be wise, too old to be drivin’ so long tonight…” She’d never heard that song before, wondered if he’d written it. She could barely make sense of his words. They didn’t string together just right. The song now turned to a woman he’d once loved. He’d been foolish, hardened his heart and drove her away. He’d been his own fool, he sang, and now he paid the price.

  Every bad joke Sarah had ever heard about country western songs—pickup trucks and wailing train whistles, dogs named Shep and achy breaky hearts—came back to her and she smiled. Was he just making everything up? Did a song really mean anything at all? As the piano player sang in the next room, she plunged her hands into the hot, soapy water. The sweet, soothing heat spread up her arms, over her shoulders and neck. Something the words brought up caught in her throat. She reached up and slid the little door on the pass-through closed so nobody would see her crying and so she couldn’t see him. Her sobs rose up from some place way down inside, down in a place she’d never known before, and she began to hate the piano player.

  “He ought never to have come back.” She spoke to the warmth and comfort of the water.

  That night she slept badly. “If he really is my old man,” she told herself, “why don’t he come out and say something about it?” After all, his letter said he was coming through and that he wanted time with her to sit down and talk. She’d like to know what he’d done to make her life miserable, or what he thought he’d done. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to her. How could be have made her miserable when, number one, she wasn’t miserable?

  And number two, how could someone you never even knew existed make you feel that way?

  As she lay in her bed staring at the ceiling, she thought about what she was going to tell him if and when they ever did sit down and talk. “I’d like you to explain to me,” she said aloud, her voice startling her in the quiet room, “how you get off thinking you’re so goddamned important to me or to anyone else! I never knew you or nothing about you.

  I’ve gotten on pretty damn well without you, I’d say, all things considered.”

  If he really was my old man, she thought, why didn’t he open his goddamned mouth and say so instead of singing his songs and pretending his little girl wasn’t there? If he wanted to come in at this point in her life, when everything was going pretty much her way, you could be pretty damn sure it wasn’t for a good reason. At least, it wasn’t a good reason for her.

  On Monday, Kelly called and asked if Sarah could come in early. When she got there mid-afternoon Kelly bubbled over about the crowd they’d brought in yesterday. Elaine's, the bar out at Lake Purdy had closed down around midnight when the air conditioner went out, so everyone moved over to the Eagle’s Nest.

  “He set the place afire last night,” Kelly said. “I wish’t you’d a been here. He had ‘em dancing.”

  For a second, Sarah didn’t know what Kelly was talking about. When she suddenly did, she felt jealous that Kelly had been there and she hadn’t. "Ain’t nothing to me,” she said gloomily. “It’s jest songs.”

  “Well, well, well. Aren’t we Little Miss Congeniality today!”

  Sarah ignored her friend’s remark, if she ever even heard it in the first part. “He say anything to you last night about what brought him here?”

  “So that’s it,” Kelly said. “What I’d say is, if he really was your old man he’d a said something by now. He’d a let on what’s what.”

  “He keeps eyeing me. Like maybe he’s got something to say.”

  “How many men do you get that from? They all got something to say. Or think they do. Question is, it’s not usually worth bothering to listen. What are you lookin’ for, anyhow? You got everything you need.”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “Maybe nothin’. Maybe that’s the problem. Why would a man I’d never even once heard of come up with something like that?”

  Kelly sprayed the bar with cleanser and wiped it down with a big yellow sponge. “My old man used to show up couple times a year with a big box of chocolates for Mom and us. Only, he’d bring a bottle, too, and before long him and my old lady was into it and pretty soon he was just a screech of tires disappearing down the road.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “My old man? Sure. You know him, too.”

  Sarah shook her head. “Not him. The piano player.”

  “Blue Moon Risin’,” Kelly said. “I told ‘em it sounded real fifties. Remember?” She broke into a mock, crooning sort of voice, singing, “Blue moon, you saw me standing alone…” Kelly had a good voice. She liked to sing Karaoke out at Elaine's. “…without a song in my heart, without a love of my own…”

  “When’s he coming in?” Sarah interrupted. She didn’t want to hear the song.

  “Late is my guess. For sure,” Kelly said. “Him and Laurel…he left with her.”

  “What the hell’s that about, as if I had to ask?”

  “She bought beers for him all night.”

  “She’s a whore.”

  Kelly laughed. “Far as I know, she still gives it away.”

  Sarah turned away, lifted the tub of dirty glasses from its shelf under the bar and carried it out into the kitchen, setting them on the drain board, balanced there precariously, like she really didn't care. For a long time she leaned back against the door of the cooler, staring off across the room until her focus blurred, wondering what she was doing, worrying about a stranger who played the damn piano. What the hell did she care who he was? What did it matter even if he was her old man? He was nothing to her, had never given her a damn thing…except maybe planted the seed in her mother’s womb and then fled the scene. Not that this took a lot of effort on his part. What did it matter? That was the thing…what did he matter if he never showed up, not even once? She didn't even know his name. What they said about blood being thicker than water…what the hell did that mean?

  Voices in the next room told her that maybe he’d returned. Someone had put a quarter in the juke box and she heard the voice of a singer whose name she did not even know. “Cry me a river, cry me a river…” It was an old song. The guy who serviced the juke box was in his sixties if he was a day. He liked to sneak in what he called the classics, people who she had never even heard of. Usually they were good, though, and the older patrons loved some of that stuff. Probably the piano player or maybe one of the guys in his band had selected that Cry Me a River tune.

  She went back to the sink, started drawing water and as the steam rose up from the cool sink she slid open the door of the pass-through so she could see into the bar. There he was, the piano player, his skinny self out there at the little table by the piano, alone now, bent over a piece of paper and writing something down on it. Probably a new song, Sarah speculated. Probably got a new song in his head anytime he got laid. She tried to imagine what it would be like to have a song written for her. What would a guy say about spending the night with her? Then again, what would it be like to have your old man write you a song, even if he was like the piano player passing through town? She closed the pass-through so she could concentrate on washing the glasses. There was nothing to look at out there, nothing that mattered a damn.

  The music started up about 9:00 p.m. And it was a hard swinging, down and dirty tune about a man who loved a woman who wasn't true.
Christ, Sara thought, if that ain't the pot calling the skillet black, or however you say that! She'd never met a man who didn't cheat. You just took it for granted with a guy. That's what you were going to get into. Even Bear, ugly as he was, had his little flings once or twice a year. Only thing about him, he didn't promise anything more in the first place. She knew where he was at. So, in truth, she had nothing to complain about. They'd fight over it, nevertheless, and then make up the same night, settling the whole thing with sex. It was always pretty good after a fight. He seemed to care more about her then, take time to make sure she was satisfied. Once he even told her she was the best of any woman he'd ever had.

  “That's something every woman is just dying' to hear,” she had told him and he'd believed she meant it.

  The music stopped just as Sarah was finishing the rack of glasses. Someone rapped on the pass-through door and she slid it open. Kelly's face leaned toward her. “You want company in there?”

  “Sure. Who's here?”

  Kelly stepped aside. The piano player was standing at the bar, his hands resting on the elbow rest like it was holding him up. He smiled, looked right into Sarah's eyes and nodded. She plunged her hands into the warm water, partly as an excuse to avoid his gaze, partly to calm her down. The warm water felt good.

  “Come on around then,” she said, nodding curtly to him, not letting him catches her eyes again.

  She was still rinsing out the last half-dozen glasses when he came around. She was wishing there'd been more to do. It would have been easier having him there if she had something to do, something to keep her hands busy.

  “Kelly told me your name,” the piano player said. “I had’ a talk with you.”

  “Yeah?” she said, trying to sound bored and disinterested.

  “It's been a pleasure stopping by here for a few days. Wanted to thank you for watching' after me as it were...”

  “My job,” Sarah said. “What I do. Wash glasses, make sandwiches, keep the customers happy. We don't get many sandwich orders, so it's not a big deal.” She turned now, pulled off her long gloves and laid them on the drain board next to the drying rack. She leaned back against the sink, holding onto the edge of it like she was clinging to a railing at the edge of a cliff.