How Sweet the Sound

by Amy Sorrells

  “Gade! Ou se yon je wè. Y’all are a sight to behold!” Ernestine laughed and offered us wet paper towels for our sticky mouths and hands. I felt different, kissed for the first time, and wondered if Ernestine could tell. If I looked any different, she kept silent about it.

  “Sold many pies?” I plucked a piece from the samples laid out on a glass cake stand on the makeshift checkout counter, which consisted of several wooden shipping crates stacked on top of each other.

  “Piti piti. Sold a few. Better than none.” Ernestine waved a festival brochure, folded like a fan, in front of her neck. “He, on the other hand, can’t make ’em fast enough.” She nodded toward the booth across from her, where a man used a machine to cut people’s names into key chains and signs and great big belt buckles.

  “That’s not right.”

  “What’s not right is you two lollygagging around this old woman instead of getting on with yourselves and having a good time. Ale gen plezi!”

  After getting a lemon shake-up for Ernestine and one for each of us, we rode every ride we could and then rode them again. We stuck our feet in the sand at the public beach, finished off our taffy, and ran to the end of the pier, where we sat and watched the sun set over the bay. The first couple of bands had already played, but we were happy to let fish nibble at us as we twirled water with our toes.

  “You know, they’re selling oyster skiffs over near Apalachicola, over in Florida. Couple hundred bucks. Some less. But I could fix one up.” Jed stared out at an oysterman tonging along the shallow edge of the bay. “Word is, they need more tongers. Cullers, too. I could start out culling until I get my boat fixed up—”

  “You leaving Bay Spring?” Surely not. Surely he didn’t come back in my life to leave again.

  “I’m sixteen. I can do anything I want now.” He skipped a shell across the water. It bounced seven times. “I’ve been reading in the papers—there’s thousands of acres of oyster bars over in Apalachicola, on account of the river meeting the ocean there. Winter bars open October first. I could even catch the tail end of some of the summer bars before they close ’em up end of September.”

  He caught a wisp of my hair and tucked it behind my ear. He left his hand on the side of my neck and looked right through me with his eyes, a whole mix of browns, greens, and golds. “I don’t want to leave you, Anni.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “It’s not that simple. All my life, I been put places I don’t belong. Places I’m not a part of. Places that stick to parts of me, whether I want ’em to or not. Been told I’m not good enough, not smart enough, not wanted enough. Been told I’m too expensive, too much a bother, too much a mess to ever matter. Hettie and John, they don’t want me, either. I’m just their little sidekick who makes money for his booze and gambling and her cigarettes.”

  I didn’t like where this conversation was headed.

  “If something comes up that gives me the chance to make a life of my own, I gotta take it.”

  A hot tear rolled down my face, down the side of my neck, all the way down to my heart. “I suppose you do.”

  We sat there a while longer, watching the green and red lights of incoming and outgoing boats as the sun set on the far side of the bay. Across the way, the announcer introduced another featured band as the last sliver fell under the water, and while I didn’t want to miss Solly playing, I didn’t want to miss out on this night with Jed, either. I grabbed his hand, and we raced back to the rides. We rode all of them again—the Skymaster and the Looper, the Rok ’n’ Rol and the Ramba Zamba, the Scat and the Hustler. Around and around we flew, up and down. Gravity yanked at our souls. Lights in our eyes rivaled those on the sides of the rides that held us in, straps and bars keeping our bodies and hearts from swinging away, out of control, into the night.

  Dizzy and alive, so fully alive, we soaked it all in, every last bit of the day, like it was the last one of our lives.

  Gratitid frè pa gen anyen.

  “Thanks costs nothing.”

  CHAPTER 44

  Comfort

  Chartreuse husks, pregnant with the fruit of summer months, don’t let on that eventually they’ll pull away from the pecans, their hard, brown inner shells clicking in the wind, eager to catch a first glimpse of the world. A John Denver song plays on the radio as I pick at a hangnail. Blood seeps around the half-moon of white at the base of my fingernail, and I wrap it in my T-shirt to make it stop.

  Solly grips the wheel of his truck with one hand and changes the station with the other as he steers us toward the festival along the highway that parallels Mobile Bay. He settles on Waylon Jennings as we drive by the golden, dappled water of the bay. Pelicans tuck their beaks under their wings and hunker down on barren pilings, remnants of docks blown away by Hurricane Frederic. Cars park bumper to bumper on both sides of the highway as we get closer to town, and I feel a knot pull tight inside my gut. Doing nails at the Curly Q’s one thing. Why did I ever agree to this?

  As if reading my mind, Solly reassures me. “I’ll find us a spot to park away from this mess of traffic.”

  The sun hangs above the sea, reluctant to meet the imminent kiss of the horizon, and I am grateful we can hide ourselves in the protection of twilight. The truck shudders to a stop in the lot behind the Methodist church, three blocks away from the center of all the festivities. Only a half a dozen other cars are parked there. Solly opens my door, and side by side, our steps crunch along the crushed cover of oyster shells. Guy McGovern, one of the church ushers, comes toward us across the lot.

  “Hey, Guy, how’s the festival?”

  “Oh, same old, same old,” Guy replies. His eyes move up and down my body, real slow, like he’s checking out jewelry beneath the glass cases at the Walmart. His lip turns up in a sneer when he meets my stare, but Solly doesn’t notice.

  I drop my head.

  This, Solly notices, and he grabs my hand as Guy passes us by. “You okay? We don’t have to do this.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “He say something to you?” Solly cranes his neck to watch Guy get in his car and tear out of the lot, spewing the dust of broken oyster shells up behind him.

  “No, nothin’. Let’s keep goin’.”

  I focus on the distant music of one of the folk bands and wonder if Solly’s as nervous as I am—him with reason to be, and me just a mess. The soothing, familiar chorus of “Smokey Mountain Rain” by Ronnie Milsap spills over the crowd and helps calm my thumping heart. I can do this.

  Yes, with My help, you can.

  Solly and I walk around to the back of the stage, where various bands sort instruments, amplifiers, cords, and microphones. Roadies stack and unstack black trunks trimmed in steel, covered in stickers of venues, political statements, and destination cities.

  “You can stay back here and listen if you’d like,” Solly encourages me.

  “Sure. I’ll be fine.” My voice sounds braver, more upbeat, than I feel, and I am glad thoughts are invisible things. A throng of people gather around the guys from the band Alabama, from Fort Payne, who’ve been getting airtime on national radio stations. I hover close to the shadows in back of the stage and am relieved I do not see any locals I recognize.

  “It’s almost time.” Solly takes a deep breath, trying to inhale confidence, and puts his arm around my shoulder. I am relieved by his touch.

  “You’ll do great.” I smile up at him, and his blue eyes overwhelm me with their unbridled adoration.

  The audience looks to be at least a couple hundred people, many of them moving the folding chairs to the side of the streets to make room for dancing. They clap and holler as the band onstage finishes an original song that sounds a lot like Don McClean. Solly tunes his guitar for at least the tenth time, pick in his mouth as he concentrates on the chords and makes final turns to the tuning pegs.

  The announcer, Frank Streeter, edi
tor in chief of the Bay Spring Banner Sentinel, croons Solly’s name into the microphone, welcoming him to the stage. Solly kisses me, then runs on stage, plugging in his acoustic guitar and sitting on a high stool.

  “Thanks for having me, y’all. I’m Solly Daniels.”

  Several in the audience applaud.

  “I hope to treat y’all with some songs you know, and a couple you don’t that I wrote myself. But I’ll teach ya the chorus, so together we can all have a good time with this.”

  I sit on the edge of an unused riser backstage and smile at the way Solly brings even a crowd of people so easily under his wing. I close my eyes and let his voice and the movement of his fingers upon the strings of his beloved guitar soothe my frayed and fragile nerves. Folks sing along to the familiar chords of some of his favorite James Taylor, Jim Croce, and Cat Stevens songs, and they do join in on a couple of the songs he wrote himself. Emotion overwhelms me as I ache to delight easily in these moments with him again someday. And as he comes offstage, I reach for him first, embracing him, feeling the soft curls of hair on the back of his neck, taking in the solid scent of him. He rests his guitar against the risers and holds me back, until a whole slew of dance troupes crowd us off.

  Frank Streeter introduces them—The Pecanettes—a conglomeration of high school dancers from across the region, dressed in black-and-gold lamé-skirted dance costumes. In the front row, the twelve-and-under version of the Pecanettes, called the Pralines, mimic the cheers.

  Muddy and the Flaps, preparing to go onstage next, pass us and congratulate Solly as he puts his guitar away.

  “Great job there, Daniels,” says the lead singer.

  “Thanks, man!”

  “Anytime you wanna join us, you let us know. We could use an extra guitar whenever you can spare the time.”

  “Will do. Thanks a lot!”

  Solly and I stroll through and follow the crowd, much of which dissipates back into the temporary community of white-tented craft booths and the screaming lights of the carnival. We share a funnel cake. We listen to the lore of artisans in tents glowing golden against the cloud-laden twilight sky.

  “I think the crowd really liked you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  He pulls me close, and I don’t shy away.

  I spy her first, the tiny girl wandering in the empty, cockeyed rows of tents and folding chairs. She cannot see over the tops of them, and I hear her wimpering, “Mama!” She stops and sits, defeated, on the concrete curb. Her hair, in ringlets and tied with a pink, grosgrain ribbon, falls around her perfectly round face, still chubby with the remnants of toddlerhood.

  “Jenny? Jenny Davies?” I call to her.

  “Where you goin’, Comfort?” Solly stops talking to the stranger next to him he befriended in the craft booth where we’re stopped.

  “It’s Minnie Davies’s girl. I think she’s lost. So busy with all those others, she probably doesn’t even know Jenny’s missing yet.” Wasn’t two weeks ago little Jenny sat on the floor of the Curly Q playing with curlers and clips while her mama got her hair done.

  I crouch down so I’m eye to eye with her. “Are you lost, Miss Jenny?”

  Well, that’s more than Jenny can stand. She bursts into tears and wails, rivers of tears pouring down her cheeks. I pick her up and hold her close, hot tears and snot soaking through my shirt.

  “Let’s go find your mama, darlin’.” Solly pats her on the back, and she presses her face harder into my shoulder. We push through the craft tents toward the booth the state police have set up for precisely such an emergency.

  “Comfort! Solly! Vin isit la!” I see Ernestine waving to us from her booth.

  “Minnie Davies’s girl, Jenny. She’s lost,” I explain.

  “Ain’t never lost.” Ernestine pulls out a handkerchief and wipes Jenny’s wet face. “You is found, always found, if you have Jesus.”

  Jenny stops crying as Mandy Appleton, Bay Spring County Fair Queen, and a few girls from her court, whir by on the back of a golf cart. Mandy sees us and Jenny with her tear-stained face and asks the driver to stop. Jenny regards her like she’s Cinderella, especially when Mandy places a plastic tiara on her head. Mandy and I make eye contact for a knowing moment, and Jenny’s rosebud lips turn up in a shy smile, and she reaches up to touch the tiara with both of her pudgy-knuckled hands, even as Minnie Davies arrives, frantic, on another golf cart driven by a sheriff. Minnie pulls Jenny from my arms, holds her close, and mouths the words Thank you to me through tears.

  “Let’s head back, Solly.”

  He takes my hand, and we work our way back toward the stage, where a country-western band performs, and the church beyond, where his truck is parked. The gentle twang of the tail end of Willie Nelson’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night” floats through the amps.

  “Care to dance?” Solly asks, kissing my hand.

  “I’d love to,” I say, as truthfully as I’ve ever been able to since the tragedy. He interlocks his fingers with mine and rests his other hand on the small of my back as the female lead singer begins the next song.

  I’ll always remember the song they were playin’

  The first time we danced and I knew

  Raindrops, first a few, then many, plunk around us, catching the light like falling stars.

  As we swayed to the music and held to each other

  I fell in love with you

  A story from the Bible comes to mind, when God asked Hosea to love his wife even though she was wild and wicked and ruined. “Love her as the Lord loves …” At least I think that’s how the scripture reads. I kick off my flip-flops and feel the now-puddles of rainwater splash up onto my legs, baptizing me again into the love of this man, this moment, this life.

  Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?

  Would you be my partner every night?

  When we’re together, it feels so right.

  Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?

  Solly, locks of curls soaked and sticking to the sides of his face, pulls away from me and reaches into his back pocket. He places the engagement ring I sent back to him on my finger.

  “How’d you know—”

  “Shhhh.” He presses a calloused finger to my lips, then holds my face, like Ernestine held Jenny’s, in his hands.

  “I’ll never give up on you. Never did. Never will.”

  I shake my head in disagreement.

  “Don’t you argue now. You’re my girl. Can’t no one or no thing ever take you away from me.”

  He puts his lips to mine, and they are soft and sweet like the funnel cake we devoured.

  Rain pours over us now, heavier than any rain I can remember.

  The band plays on.

  And still we dance.

  We dance.

  We dance.

  We dance.

  Si bòt a twò sere pou ou, mache pye atè.

  “If your boot is too tight, walk barefoot.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Anniston

  Happens when folks are least expecting it, a jubilee.

  The rain passed, leaving the empty, festival-lined streets of Bay Spring glazed with glory under the moon. A soft, eastern breeze helped dry our drizzle-laden hair.

  We’d all hidden in artist tents and storefronts until the downpour let up, and so we hardly believed the bell ringing and can-banging had to do with anything besides some of the usual, late-night, midway riffraff living it up before the dazzling lights shut down their fun for the night.

  That’s when we realized the hollering came from every direction.

  “Jubilee!”

  “Jubilee!”

  “Jubilee!”

  Pickup trucks rumbled toward the bay. People ran from every direction carrying old tin buckets and washtubs. And Homer Ch
astain hurried to reopen his bait shop so he could pass out gigs, spears, nets, and ropes.

  “What the heck is going on?” Jed stared, giddy and confused, at the craziness.

  I pulled him out from under the lemonade shake-up stand. “C’mon! You’ll see! It’s a jubilee!”

  The moon shone over the slick water of Mobile Bay, which looked smooth enough to skate on. All along the shore, folks waded in with their equipment. Three shirtless men in old army hats hauled washtubs full of crabs into the beds of their pickups, which they’d backed up to the edge of the incoming tide, now lapping at their tires. A weathered group of black women, skirts tucked up between their legs to make shorts, pulled in a net full of groggy-looking flounder and shrimp. A toothless man, in overalls, and his wife, dressed in her nightgown and curlers, had already gigged and strung up a six-foot line of flounder, flapping in the wind like a bunch of wet laundry.

  “I ain’t never seen anything like it,” said Jed. Next to him, a bunch of blue crabs scrambled up a tree stump.

  “Only happens a couple of times a year. Here in Bay Spring, up toward Fairhope and Daphne, these parts are the only place in the world this ever happens. Eddie Prince, who thinks he’s Einstein, says it happens over in Pakistan or someplace like that, but even if he’s right, that’s the only other place.”

  We stood ankle-deep in the water along the shore and watched as folks sang and cheered, flashed their lanterns and flashlights across the water, rang bells, and clanged their gigs and spears on the bottoms of buckets to celebrate.

  Jed bent down and picked up a flounder with his bare hands. “What’s wrong with them? They ain’t moving or trying to get away.” Dozens more floated in the water around us, barely bothering to move.

  “Maybe they’re drunk on moonshine.” I picked up a crab that didn’t even lift a claw to protest. “The creatures always act this way during a jubilee. That’s why it’s so easy to catch trucks full of seafood. They swarm the beaches and act all out of their minds, practically swimming right into the buckets and nets.”