Bo stands up so quick his head spins. His pulse races and he feels a prickle behind his eyes as he snatches his knapsack from where it slumps on the desk.
“Let’s go, Char,” he says, holding the bag close.
Mamma looks at the clock, at Charlie. She avoids Bo’s gaze. “Guess it’s about that time.”
An alarm clock underscores her sigh as she drops her feet back into their sneakers; a reminder to both of them that Pa’s evening breakfast needs cooking. Bo edges closer to the door. Mamma stays put.
“You know,” she says, clearing her throat. “I really miss—”
Songs bursting from a raw, cracked voice; the silken slide of a steel guitar wailing chords of first love, first heartbreak; conversations shared over a meal eaten together, instead of twelve hours apart; the patter of a soft kiss showing she’s noticed, needed; the rumble of a man’s gentle snores lulling her to sleep; spending the whole night together . . .
Bo stops, his hand on the doorknob. Don’t say his name. . . .
“I really miss HeeHaw,” Mamma finishes.
Two of his knuckles crack as Bo turns the handle, opens the door. It would be so easy to run down and smuggle the dog upstairs, or to bring Mamma down for a quick cuddle before she gets back to work. But his bandages are shifting, his tentacles squirming. Tears are burning the back of his throat.
“Bring me that picture of him, next time you come.” She starts across the room. “Okay?”
“Fine,” he replies. He knows she means the dog’s portrait, but as she speaks he sees Pa superimposed over the words, Jethro’s smug face not far behind. Bo hears a plane screaming to the earth; crops thrashing beneath wings and propellers; a cello note of regret. And, at the same time, an orchestra of relief. The tones tumble out, crepitate, shatter.
“C’mon, Charlie,” he repeats, as if she wasn’t already standing beside him. Then they slip out, into the stale piss smell of the stairwell, and close the door before Mamma can hug him goodbye. Before she can feel how much he’s changed since she left.
HeeHaw laps salt from Bo’s face. The boy snuffles and wipes tears on his dog’s mottled fur. Shadows lengthen across the motel’s parking lot while the pair sit at the foot of the fire escape, two bikes leaning against the brick wall behind them. Charlie positions herself so that her body blocks the sun from Bo’s eyes. Her hands lift in a gesture of consolation, but fall short of touching him.
“What happened in there? What’s going on?”
The simplest questions are the hardest to answer. But the white noise behind her questions reassures him. He weeps openly, shamelessly. And between hiccups, between tears, he tells her.
About Mamma leaving.
About the voices.
About the five thick cords protruding from his chest.
When he’s finished, his legs feel like jelly. Too weak yet for riding, he tells Charlie to go home without him. Three of his appendages now dangle out his shirt front; the brightest one grown so long it trails in the dirt at his feet. He’s not sure if she’s seen them, doesn’t feel like being gawked at if she has. Tears spent, he suddenly feels shy.
“Tomorrow?” he asks. “Same time, same place?” He tries to smile, only half succeeds.
“Sure,” Charlie says. Her grin isn’t much stronger than Bo’s. “I’ll meet you here after school.” Then she goes, leaving Bo to collect himself. Unclasping the safety pins from his useless bandages, he tries to work out a different way to bundle the strands out of sight. Focused on this task, his breathing evens out. As he twists the tentacles into rubbery skeins and knots them in place, Bo can almost forget about Mamma and Jethro. Almost.
HeeHaw barks until the growths are hidden.
By then, the sun is less than a hand’s width above the horizon. On the other side of the highway, running as far as Bo can see from one direction to the other, rows of cornstalks are gilded the deep yellow of suppertime. If he doesn’t leave immediately, his father will wake to find his breakfast table empty. And it’s up to him to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
“C’mon, boy,” he says. One last time, HeeHaw flicks his rough tongue across Bo’s cheek. The boy transfers the dog’s leash from railing to bike handle. In one fluid movement, he kicks his leg over the seat, nudges HeeHaw’s rump into action, and launches the bicycle onto the road’s gravel shoulder.
Within seconds, they’re speeding along next to the highway. The going is bumpy but the street is too narrow in most places to allow him to ride safely on the asphalt. So he stays near the edge, gives HeeHaw free rein. After a day being cooped under the bleachers and tied outside a cheap motel, the kelpie must feel so good now; stretching his muscles and the leash as he pulls Bo’s bike, his black mouth lolling open, tongue flapping up and down.
Bo catches the dog’s mood. He stands on the pedals, fair hair streaming away from his brow as he cycles. The wind whistles over, around, beneath him, whisking away all trace of tears. In the distance comes a familiar, welcome sound: a biplane’s motor sputtering to life with a pure, clear drone.
“C’mon, HeeHaw!”
The dog picks up the pace. Small stones ping off the bike chain and fenders, ricochet into the fields. Bo’s wheels are a blur of exhilarating motion, the ground a victim of his speed. Dodging intermittent telephone poles, he pedals so quick he can only hear a faint murmur from the wires. Right now, he’s got no time for other people’s woes or delights. He pumps the pedals until lactic acid sears his thigh and calf muscles; until his lungs sponge in greedy gulps of air; until the crop duster, its vibrant yellow wings twice as long as the plane’s cab, comes streaking up beside him.
“C’mon, boy!”
Out of all the old planes local farmers hire, Bo loves racing the Piper Cubs best. Their pilots are the most daring, he reckons. They fly so low their landing gear grazes the crops; chemicals plume behind them like superheroes’ capes. With the wind at his back and a good head start, Bo sometimes reaches the end of the road in tandem with the little aircrafts. And when he does, he imagines he’s the pilot, not the scrawny kid on the bike down below. In the cockpit, he’s brave and bold and strong—worry is a cargo he refuses to carry. Once the crops are tended to, and just before the sun dips south, he flies higher and higher; rockets upwards until the boy, the dog, the motel, the trailer park and the telephone poles with their strangling wires are all smaller than specks of dust. And then he scrawls messages people have paid him to write—things like I surrender or Be mine or Roses half price—across the heavens. Each letter taller than a skyscraper, louder than pre-dawn confessions.
As Bo rides, his tentacles uncoil from their hastily-tied sling and bring him back down to earth. He doesn’t want to stop, doesn’t want to lose the race. But he’s afraid they’ll get tangled in the spokes if he lets them hang loose. Hunching his back awkwardly, he reaches down his shirt’s neck and grabs the feelers. Pulls them up and out until all five hang from his collar like a shredded bib.
It doesn’t help: they’re still in the way. Keeping track of the Piper Cub’s progress, Bo takes the long strands in one hand and loops them around his neck like a gauze scarf. His legs pump, up and down, up and down, propelling him forward. Sweat drips into his eyes. HeeHaw pants, swallows gobbets of spit, pants some more. Still, they lose ground. The plane gains an acre’s advantage, then the span of a whole field—and with a final burst of pesticide it accelerates, shoots into the lead, and snatches victory out of Bo’s reach.
The boy stops pedalling.
Fluorescent lights flicker around Kaintuck Estate’s welcome sign by the time he drags himself home. As he passes through the gate, the last few hints of day are withdrawing between rows of aluminium structures. Exhausted sunbeams clock out, give dusk a passing nod as the factory whistle signals a shift change; then crawl up trailer steps, settling in for the night inside bulbs that illuminate windows. All across the park, tired yellow sq
uares hover in the gloom, barely bright enough to reveal bedrooms and lounges and kitchens inside.
Bright enough, though, to show that Pa is already up.
HeeHaw barks at the sight of him.
“Shhhhhhhhh!” Bo hisses, heart pounding. He claws at his tentacles, yanks them away from his flushed neck and starts hauling them back down his shirt. Why won’t they stop growing? He stuffs their curved ends down his pant legs. Panic churns in his belly as he tightens his belt a notch. I’ll tell him. He looks up to check if his father has heard the dog. It doesn’t seem so: Pa sits in the kitchen, his hands clasped around a coffee mug, staring vacantly at a flowered vinyl chair on the opposite side of the table. Eyes still puffy, despite a full day’s sleep. I’ll tell him.
Bo pauses. For a minute or two, he just stands there watching Pa watch nothing. He waits for his pulse to slow, for Pa to change position. Listens to the ache in his chest. Decides that now isn’t the best time for bad news.
“Don’t say a word,” Bo tells HeeHaw, as he finally creeps up the stairs.
“Not a word,” he repeats, gently easing the door open.
“You get home okay last night?”
“Yeah,” Bo says. Holding back the sheers with one hand, he keeps an eye out the window for Charlie. She wasn’t at school today, and now she’s late meeting him here. It isn’t like her to bail on him at the last minute.
No, he thinks. It’s more like her. He passes his mother a saucer to catch the long caterpillar of ash drooping from the end of her cigarette. Mr. Dewinter loaned her this “no smoking” room (single bed, single chair, single Formica table, single kitchenette, single TV/VCR unit); and though the carpet is already littered with circular burns, Bo doesn’t see why they should add to its destruction.
“It’s just—” She inhales, then grinds out her smoke. “I was doing the downstairs rooms after you left, and I swear I saw you and Charlie crouched out in the parking lot. With HeeHaw.” Her voice lifts after HeeHaw, inflecting the words with an invisible question mark. Bo ignores the uncertain, little girl tone punctuating Mamma’s comment; ignores how it makes his feelers quiver from their roots all the way down to his socks.
“Nope,” he says. “Wasn’t us.”
He can’t explain the lie. Or that, as soon as he’d gone, he’d wanted to turn back. Or that when he’d gotten home Pa wasn’t mad about breakfast. He was blank. He had served his own cereal, and eaten it. A deep well of blackness threaded through the greeting he’d grunted at Bo. His few short instructions, “Do your homework; change the dog’s water,” had been blanketed beneath television snow. The fridge motor had whirred on, clicked off. Pa had emptied his bowl; drained his cup; washed them.
When Bo passed him a bologna sandwich to take for lunch, Pa’s thanks had echoed with loneliness.
Bo’s tentacles had stretched over four inches trying to absorb the sound.
Mamma sighs, readjusts the pillows propped behind her on the bed. “Pass me the remote. I hate this part.”
As she fast-forwards a love scene they’ve both seen a least a dozen times, a rusted blue station wagon pulls up outside. Bo shifts in the uncomfortable plastic seat, tries to get a better view.
“Speaking of HeeHaw.” He reaches into his bag, tosses a picture frame onto the bed. “Here.”
A tall, blond man is sitting in the driver’s seat. He’s looking up at Mamma’s window.
Mamma takes the silver picture frame, looks down at the dog’s pointed face. “Hey, pooch,” she coos. Pressing “mute” on the TV, she stares quietly at the romantic comedy colours reflecting across the cracked glass in her hands.
“Mamma?” Bo’s voice is barely louder than a whisper. “What does Jethro look like?”
She blinks. Her gasp explodes with the sound of metal propellers thwapping into dirt. “Who?”
“Jethro,” he repeats.
“Why do you want to know about him?” Once more, the ghost man trickles from Mamma’s lips. Only, this time, the vision flickers like an old film across her t-shirt, across her heart. The shot is close, cropped. Posed for a photograph, he wears an aviator jacket and sunglasses. A pilot’s license thrust towards the camera lens half-obscures the cheeky grin on his face.
Bo looks for traces of Jethro’s features in the driver’s face below. The man is talking now, to someone in the back. He reaches to the passenger’s side, takes something off the seat.
“I reckon,” Mamma begins, turning the picture over and placing it face down on the bed. “There’s something—”
The afterimage of Jethro is insubstantial, made of memory and vapour and half-spoken truths. Bo studies it, then the man outside, as Mamma dismantles the frame, and slips not one but two photos from its skewed casing.
The car’s back door opens.
Charlie steps out.
What’s she doing with Jethro? Bo’s chest-strands all strain to get loose. He clutches his knapsack hard to stifle their wriggling, crosses his legs to pin them down. As Mamma hands Bo the picture, Jethro’s spectre transforms. Disappears. Outside, the Reverend gets out of his station wagon, dons his cowboy hat.
Everything goes still, silent.
Bo’s eyes blur. He tries to focus on the snapshot, and on Charlie and the Reverend. What is she doing with him? Charlie points at the window, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. The Reverend follows her gesture. His eyes meet Bo’s.
This can’t be right. There is no floppy-haired lookalike, no cheeky grin. The Reverend’s black curls have adopted the shape of his hat. His skin is dark, his face cragged with age. There’s no plane here, no pilot’s license, no glasses. Bo gapes as Charlie tells the Reverend his secrets. His mind whirls. Looking down, the collection of tints and shadows clutched in his hands resolve into a snapshot of Mamma and a younger, much happier Pa.
“Jethro looked a lot like your dad,” she says.
His father has hair. And it’s blond, just like Bo’s. Slicked with so much grease it doesn’t move, even though he’s doing a back flip in the photo’s foreground. He’s wearing a white jersey with a school letter sewn on it, just like the guys in Mamma’s favourite movies. Caught in mid-jump, Pa’s shirt has slid up to reveal a few inches of taut stomach. There are other girls in the background, but Bo can tell Pa is showing off for only one of them.
What is Charlie doing?
Mamma’s hair is waist-length, stick-straight, parted perfectly down the middle. Her cheerleader skirt is so short it’s nearly invisible beneath her oversized v-neck sweater; her long, bare legs shimmer in the sunlight. Though her body is turned toward the girl beside her, Mamma’s eyes are trained on this handsome, playful version of Pa. A smile quirks the corner of her glossy lips. Two pompoms droop from her hands, their purpose temporarily forgotten.
“But? What?” Bo feels the whinge pierce his ribcage and slide down his wires. He looks outside. Charlie’s heading for the motel door. The Reverend’s back in his car, reversing.
Charlie called the Reverends, he thinks. “Why? Where’s Jethro?”
Mamma’s response is stilted. “Same place he’s been for thirteen years, I reckon. Planted in Cobb’s field. Right next to your Nan.” Her eyes linger on the photo.
“I think Jeth might’ve taken that shot, back when me and your dad was courting.” A bluegrass symphony accompanies courting; a twang of banjos, mouth organs, accordions, fiddles reverberating with strains of love Mamma can’t let out. “Never seen closer brothers, I reckon. We named you after him, sort of. Did I ever tell you that?”
Bo nods, then shakes his head.
“Used to tease him about how much he loved that plane.” This time her laugh is laced with synthesized happiness. “Called her his Tinny Titty.” She takes a tissue from the bedside table, dabs at her eyes until her giggles subside.
Suddenly serious, she says, “Pa won’t like it if he hears we’ve been talking about J
eth, you know.”
Looking out the window, Bo hears all the things Mamma can’t say. Rick’s lost all his zing—leaves me to raise Bo by myself—never takes a holiday—thinks he ain’t got no family, without Jeth. He hears it all, but sees Charlie’s betrayal heading toward the highway.
“Mamma?”
She holds up a hand to stop Bo from speaking. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
If I don’t leave once in a while, her harmonica wails, he’ll forget to notice I was ever there.
The Reverend’s taillights glow devil-red as he waits to pull out of the parking lot. His indicator points the way to Kaintuck Estate. Flick, flick, flicking away the time it will take him to reach Pa. Counting down the seconds until he can preach about corruption in this community. About Mamma’s immoral behaviour.
Except, Bo thinks, there ain’t been no cheating.
His heart pounds.
There ain’t been no cheating.
His tentacles yearn to break loose. They threaten to strangle him; to keep him forever quiet; to keep him always listening.
Charlie knocks at the door. “Bo? Mrs. Stearman?”
“I got to go,” he says, standing up and shouldering his bag. He has to get home before the Reverend gets there. Has to fix his mistake.
“And Charlie?”
“I don’t care.”
Mamma points at the picture. “Bring this to your dad for me, okay? Ask him—”
“I got to go,” he repeats, clutching the photo so hard its corner wrinkles. “Ask him yourself.”
He runs for the door. Pushes past Charlie, ignores her shouts as he flies down the stairs. Without her bike, she can’t follow. Didn’t matter if she could; he’ll ride faster, harder than her. He’ll lose her on the homestretch.
Bluegrass Symphony Page 23
