Backland Graces; Four Short Novels

by Hal Zina Bennett

  “Well, yeah,” the piano player said. “I still appreciate your kindness. Know you went the extra mile...made it all a little better.”

  She could tell he was as uncomfortable as she was, both of them trying to skirt around the obvious. “I like your music,” she said. “We don't often have live music except a couple locals who really aren't that great.”

  “So I hear.”

  He put his hands together like he was praying except that he started working his fingers like he was practicing chords on the piano. He rocked back and forth on his heels.

  “You're moving on then,” she said.

  He nodded. “I got something for you, for your troubles.”

  She didn't know what to say. She shrugged. “You didn't have to.”

  He stepped forward and took her hand, pulling it away from the edge of the sink. “Come on out here,” he said. When she hesitated, he reached for her other hand. With both hands in his he looked long and deep into her eyes. He looked sad and happy all at once. She couldn't figure out which it was but he felt too embarrassingly close to her.

  “Come on,” he said. He grasped her right hand and lead her out into the barroom and over to the piano. He held the chair for her and she sat down at the little table.

  Seconds later he was settling down on the bench and putting his hands on the keys.

  “Please don't do this to me,” she said. Her voice was too low. He didn't hear her. She started to repeat herself, wanted to get up and disappear but she couldn't make herself do it.

  “What'd ya say?” He looked back over his shoulder, raising his eyebrows and leaning toward her as if he really wanted to know.

  “Why're you doing this?” she asked, softly, feeling the strength go out of her as her shoulders drooped. “You're going to sing to me, aren't you?” She glanced across the room, looking for Kelly's support. Kelly stood behind the bar, staring back at her, grinning like a damn idiot. Sarah shook her head slowly and closed her eyes.

  “You aright?” the piano player asked. He tapped her forearm and she opened her eyes to look. He was holding something out for her to take. It was a piece of paper with some words scrawled on it. Some words had been scribbled out and new words had been written above them. There were only a half dozen lines.

  “It's a song.”

  She nodded. “I know.” Tears flooded her eyes so that everything in the room went fuzzy. Then her face was soaking wet and she was wishing for a way out. Crying was so embarrassing. It made her mad. With everyone looking at her, there’d be so much to explain. She wished he would stop. She wished the piano player would just get up and go out of the room and out the door and never come back.

  She felt other people around her now, the bass player and the guitar player, and they were moving into the cramped little niche where the musicians played. The bass player strummed something, a note that vibrated down deep into her belly. She felt it in her chest, spreading down into her private spots. He set up a rhythm, back and forth between two deep bass notes, a rocking rhythm, one that reminded her more of church than anything else. Then the piano player turned away from her and his hands filled the keys, up and down the entire keyboard. And then the guitar came in, real bluesy now, the high notes like a sad lyric.

  She could barely read the words on the piece of paper the piano player had given her but she saw her name there. The room began to swirl around her like when she was really bad drunk, and the music became a roar in her ears. She heard the piano player’s voice but it did not make sense. His words did not make sense. His music did not make sense. She turned toward the bar. “Please!” she cried. “Please! Kelly, please!” She could not have known that her words came out barely a whisper. But then Kelly was there, kneeling down in front of her, hugging her clumsily around the waist.

  The rest was a blur. The piano player had stopped. The guitarist and the bass player disappeared, and the room was silent and dark except for the light up at the bar.

  “I only wanted you to know,” the piano player was saying. “I carry this with me wherever I go, always have.” He held out a yellowed photo of a woman with a tiny baby in her lap. The child was looking out at the camera, squinting against the sun. Its face was all shadowy and the photo had faded badly. She pushed it away.

  “Take this back,” Sarah said, handing him the paper he had given her with his song for her written on it. He took it from her gingerly.

  “I’m so sorry…I mean about the song. You didn’t like it.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand.”

  “Well, still, Sarah, I’m sorry, I most truly am.”

  She nodded, not daring to look at him as he stood there directly in front of her, not hardly a foot or two away, looking down sort of hangdog and sad. He still smelled of sweat and sex from the night before.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She reached out and took his hand, held it for a brief moment between her own, and for just a second knew who he was.

  “Piano player,” she said, her voice much clearer now. “This is okay. It is. It really is.”

  She let go of his hand and for a moment he lifted it to his face, hesitated, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it, and finally just stroked his chin.

  Then the piano player and his two sidemen packed up and filed out the door. Sarah sat alone at the little round table and wondered what the words of the piano player’s song might have said.~

  The Rapture

  Truman killed the engine of the chainsaw, walked up the hill to where the gas can was setting and laid the saw down in the grass beside it. He started unscrewing the filler cap, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder at Loman who was splitting logs with the fifteen-pound maul. Truman left the filler cap unscrewed, walked down to Loman and gripped the handle of the maul just as Loman was raising it for the next swing. In size, Truman was the proverbial David to Loman’s Goliath but he easily caught the handle of the maul in mid-swing and directed it gently to the ground.

  “Take a break,” Truman said.

  Loman squinted down at the smaller man with an expression somewhere between incredulity and chagrin. For a moment, it looked as if there might be words between them but then Loman’s face relaxed and he nodded one short fast nod and relinquished his grip on the maul.

  Truman lay the tool down by the pile of split logs, leaving the smooth hardwood handle pointing skyward. He walked up the hill thirty steps and sat down on the freshly cut oak stump. When they felled the tree yesterday he’d deliberately made the cut knee-high, leaving a comfortable place to sit. This morning he’d torn up handfuls of grass and laid them over the top of the still bleeding stump to keep his clothes dry and clean.

  Loman was over at the truck, just a little way down the hill from the clearing where they were cutting. The big man was digging in the toolbox behind the cab for his lunch bag and a drink of water. He returned with half a bologna sandwich and a thermos of coffee, handing the latter to Truman.

  “Set a moment,” Truman said.

  “I’m good as is.” Loman lifted the half-slice of bread off the top of his sandwich, licked off what Truman figured was mayonnaise and mustard, then flicked the bread off into the brush. Loman carefully rolled up the two slices of bologna, wrapped the remaining half-slice of bread around them like a tortilla and took a bite.

  Truman watched him. Four times a day for the past six months that they’d been cutting firewood together, he had watched Loman perform the same ritual. The big man always brought two sandwiches, always ate half at a time, always licked off the mayonnaise and mustard, always threw away the top slice, always rolled the bologna and wrapped it with the remaining slice of bread. Truman had never asked why Loman did this though he always wondered about it. He wondered even now if maybe there was a way to make a sandwich different so that Loman didn’t waste two slices of good bread every day.

  “What you figure we done today?” Loman’s thick red beard worked up and down with his jaw as he chewed, his lips
pursing out in a grotesque kiss as he brought his gums together. Though he was only thirty-three, he was toothless. He’d told Truman he’d been toothless since he was a small boy because after his first teeth fell out his second growth never came in properly and had to be pulled at the health clinic in the town where he grew up. His bearded face moved in an exaggerated, pumping rhythm when he ate or talked. Truman had to look away when the big man talked because that face made him think of Punch in a Punch and Judy puppet show he’d seen when he was a child.

  “Maybe two cord, um, possibly more,” Truman answered. “We’d be good to finish another one, stack it…” He unscrewed the top of his thermos and poured a cup of the steaming beige liquid into the plastic cup. He performed this ritual with great care, scooting back on the stump so he could place the cup safely between his thighs while he screwed the stopper back in place. Then he lay the thermos down beside the stump, took the cup in both hands and sipped the hot, creamy, sugary brew.

  Loman sat down in the grass nearby, stretched out easily and leaned over on one elbow, focusing rather proudly on the pile of split logs. He had split at least a hundred logs since 5:30 that morning, when they came out to work. His right shoulder hurt and he rubbed it.

  “Can I ast you something?” Truman said. He lifted the cup, blew into it. Steam rose up and stung his eyes for a moment.

  Loman shrugged his free shoulder but didn’t look away from the pile of splittings, figuring Truman was going to rag on him again. Every day there was something. Yesterday, it was about being twenty minutes late and missing his ride up the hill, when Truman knew damn well he had to drop Della off at daycare. Sometimes, getting the kid ready for school took a little more time than usual. It was pretty obvious Truman had never been a father, had never had to raise a kid all by his self, without no woman to help him out.

  “Don’t sound so enthusiastic.” Truman forced a smile, sipped his coffee noisily. “If you don’t wanna talk, um, just speak out.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It ain’t exactly about you.” Truman let this thought hang in the air for a moment. “I’ve just been pondering. It’s, um, a curiosity to me.”

  “Yeah?” Loman glanced over at Truman, genuinely interested now but dreading what Loman might say.

  “Let’s put it this way,” Truman said, carefully considering his next words. “Are you, um, are you, um, a believer?”

  Loman snorted, taken aback by the question. “Shit.” He shifted uneasily. “That’s a man’s own business.” You didn’t ask people about their religion nor politics nor family neither. He knew Truman had joined the Holy Gospel Assembly a few years back, and had turned over a new leaf. He’d been dry for years, and seldom fought or even argued much with people. Nor had he ever brought up religion before so Loman was on his guard.

  “You gotta wonder,” Truman said. “Bad luck, um, all you been through…um…I was just wondering if that’s a message there… Find your Salvation maybe your luck would change.”

  “My luck is my luck,” Loman said.

  “A man takes the Lord for his personal Savior or not, it’s no business of mine, you’re right,” Truman said. “Still, if things are going bad for a fellow…you have to question some...um…where it’s maybe coming from.”

  “My salvation ain’t your concern,” Loman said. He glanced back at the pile of splittings. “You leave it be.”

  Truman ignored this. “The place where Della goes to school, that was a church, you know that?”

  “Nah, just a church building. That’s all. Judy Kelly, at Della’s daycare, rents from a man bought the place. Della bein’ there ain’t about no church.”

  “You know what went on there before?”

  “Before what?”

  “You know about Satan’s work there? You know about that?”

  “Satan? Ain’t nothing about Satan around there, I’m telling you. It’s not nothing. It’s just a building, just a building.”

  Truman stared back at Loman. “You know Satan’s power, don’t you, Loman?”

  “Stop talking like this. This is crazy talk.”

  “So you and her or you and Della…um…you’re not members or nothing? You weren’t followers of him who was there before, when there was the curse, who in the name of the Lord committed…”

  “Ain’t nothing to talk about there.” Loman tipped his head to the side, studied the pile of logs yet to be split. After a long silence he asked, “What’re you getting at, Truman?”

  “Just askin’, that’s all, since Della’s in there.”

  “I mean the part you ast me about my salvation.”

  Truman studied Loman’s face, noticed flecks of bread in his beard, halfway considered telling him to flick them away, decided against it, sensing the big man’s edginess. “It’s just that a man like you, with so many responsibilities and no woman…raising a child…ought to take caution, you might say…stay on the right side of the Lord. Take care for your Salvation and hers.”

  “Ain’t none of your fucking business. Don’t matter if you are my boss or not, ain’t none of your fucking business. Nor is how Kate died or me a single father raising our little girl.” He got up, walked over to the pile of splittings and grabbed the handle of the maul.

  “I didn’t mean to meddle,” Truman said. “But I never told you this story, did I, about the truck when I was a kid, um, about missing … um … that hard turn up by Confusion Hill, coming up over from Round Valley.”

  “You never.” Loman lifted the maul, set a log on the stump he was using for a block, and swung. The log split into three pieces. He smiled. He took great pride in his ability to know exactly where to hit the wood so that it split just right. He did not know where he’d learned this. He had never been taught. He’d just always known, it seemed, but over the years he’d gotten even better at it, could look at the end grain of any log and know where to hit it that it would split it in threes and sometimes fours. It was a gift. It was what made him different from other woodcutters he’d known. As aware as he was of this gift he never boasted or sought prideful recognition for it. It was enough to have it. His wife Kate had called him humble to a fault for all of that, for things he did that others could not do. He had never heard the word humble before she came along, and still didn’t know exactly what it meant, but he knew it was something she’d admired in him. He wondered if the heaviness of her absence would ever go away.

  “Set a moment longer,” Truman said. He eyed the log Loman had just split, split in three parts, a Trinity. It troubled him. There was something not right about it, something too easy and too lucky.

  “I got rent to pay,” Loman argued. “And a kid to feed,” he added. Except for his interest in nearly three cords of wood, he was tempted to walk away. He’d spotted his part of what they would have cut by the end of the day at more than three hundred dollars.

  “It was all wrong,” Truman said, going on with his story. “I’d been stupid as red mud, driving when I should’ve been, um, in bed sleeping it off, and high on crystal meth instead. Stupid. Convinced I was indestructible.”

  “Yeah, I’d say.”

  “I’m coming up over the hill there, above the river, just after Cow Gulch, with a load of logs for the mill down at Palace Ranch, when something happens. I don’t know what. Maybe I blacked out for a second, missed a turn, and next thing, like you might’ve guessed, I’ve taken out a half dozen of them scrawny trees along the edge of the road there, and the trailer is broke loose and following me over the edge. I’m looking at air and praying for a soft landing, which I know ain’t there.

  “The right side of the cab hits first and it skids for a while down the slope, then goes end for end once or twice before it stops. I’m looking at the logs coming down the side of the cliff, along with dirt and rocks the size of Volkswagen cars. I’m thinkin’, this is it, Truman, you’re about to die. But I hear this voice, I swear it, like someone was right there in the cab with me. You are not going to die, Truman, it say
s. You are not going to die. Just like that, maybe a little annoyed with me for thinking dark thoughts about death, but calm, you know, real calm and real loud, just like it was somebody talking to me, right there while the cab is skidding and rolling, with the jarring and crashing about rattling my teeth out. But the voice isn’t affected by it at all.

  “Twice more I hear the voice before the tractor gets nudged by a big rock it’s broke loose, rolls hard, gives one more long bounce, lands on its axles and what’s left of the drive wheels, then rolls down fast, stopping just short of the river where we ram into a rock. Well, then, I start checking myself out, amazed I’m not dead and still not sure how bad I’m hurt. I don’t feel much at all, just bruises. I check out my legs, my chest, my arms. No blood, not so’s you’d say.

  “I unclip my seat harness and climb out through the broken windshield since the door’s jammed shut. When I hit the ground I let out a yelp ‘cause my back, it sends a lightnin’ bolt of electricity through me. I just stand there helpless as a baby for a moment, then drop to my knees. And you know, in that instant I cry out, ‘Thank you Jesus, thank you God the Father for sparing the life of this sinner!’”

  Loman set another log on the stump. “You sure this happened around Cow Gulch, ‘cause nobody’s going to survive that fall. That’s sheer cliffs out there.”

  “Check it out. The trailer is still down there, what’s left of it. They’d towed the tractor back up for spare parts. Engine wasn’t hurt much, nor the tranny and drive axle. But that’s not my point, see?”

  Loman turned slowly and faced Truman. “I know the point, Truman. I know your point.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t know,” Truman said. “It’s about God and un-Godliness, but not, um, not what you think.”