Wild at Whiskey Creek

by Julie Anne Long

  She aimed her guitar case carefully, like the prow on a ship, and began to weave through the tables toward the stage, when a voice hailed her from a dark corner.

  “Glory. Join me for a minute?”

  She turned.

  Franco Francone was ensconced at a table, his feet up on one chair, his arms spread across the back of another. He looked like a lounging pasha, which was very difficult to do in the Misty Cat given that the tables were all at least thirty years old, needed to be de-gummed with a spackling knife at least once a month (whoever lost the coin toss did that, Sherrie had explained), and were carved with almost as many initials as the Eternity Oak. That ancient, dangerous tree up by Full Moon Falls. Dangerous because legend had it if you carved your initials and your sweetheart’s in it, you were bound for life, for better or worse.

  She smiled and cautiously sat down at a table next to him. Not committing to sitting with him, necessarily. And studied him again, with something like quiet amazement.

  It wasn’t Franco Francone’s fault that he looked the way he looked. Devastating and so forth. But she wasn’t born yesterday. This was a guy who was probably used to getting whatever he wanted, at least when it came to women. She’d taken that napkin containing those ten magic numbers and tucked it into her nightstand drawer and she still wasn’t sure she’d use them.

  She didn’t particularly care for his nonchalance. But maybe it was because she was accustomed to men stammering or blustering to get her attention, and she knew how to work with that. He was something else altogether.

  “I have to be on in five minutes. You often drink alone, Mr. Francone?”

  “Call me Franco. And I’m not alone anymore, am I?” He raised the beer in a toast to her. “I considered asking you whether it hurt when you fell from heaven, but I decided that I didn’t think you were an angel. Though a devil might have taken advantage of my phone number.”

  “You guessed correctly, but you really should diversify your come-ons. The whole falling from heaven thing is so 1995. From what I understand. I think I was in second or third grade.”

  He grinned lopsidedly. “Ouch,” he said mildly, not sounding the least bit offended. “You probably won’t believe me, but I’m not always this smooth when it comes to talking to women I like.”

  “You don’t know me well enough to like me.”

  “I know you’re not intimidated by me. And I like that as well as at least a dozen other things about you. Hence, I feel the word like is appropriate here.”

  He wasn’t completely correct about the first part. He didn’t know that Glory often used sass when things scared her a little. And she cranked sass to eleven when things scared her a lot.

  “A dozen, huh? Most men single out just the two.”

  No one but Eli fully understood that she did indeed get scared. That she just powered through it.

  Francone laughed. “Okay. I like what you just said. I like your laugh. I like your sass. I love your blue eyes, so that’s two more things. I like your swagger. I like that you’re a surprise and a little out of context in a town like this. I like that I suspect you’re nobody’s fool. I kind of like that you’re either hard to get or playing it.”

  He stopped.

  It was, indeed, a flattering list. But a lot of it was just what she chose to show the world. Not who she really was.

  “I might not have gotten ‘A’s’ in math, Franco, but even I know that wasn’t twelve things.”

  She was a little uneasy now, because she was starting to believe Franco Francone—the Franco Francone—wasn’t just flirting. He actually genuinely wanted something from her. Even if it was just to do her while he was on location.

  On the one hand, it was like a window had suddenly opened between her life here and the one she wanted, and in he’d flown, like an exotic bird. The way sailors long at sea knew they were close to land when shore birds started visiting their ships. That longed-for sign of land.

  And given that she hadn’t done anyone for going on a year, she suspected burning off a little steam in the sack wouldn’t kill her.

  So tremendously odd, then, that someone like him should at the moment feel more like a consolation prize. A TV dinner, when she wanted Thanksgiving.

  Or like a substitute. For something real.

  Someone laughed from over in the adult area. Coincidentally, it sounded like Bethany. Glory’s spine stiffened.

  “Substitute.” Now, that was a killer song by The Who. Maybe she should consider adding it to her set.

  And all at once it occurred to her she could create a whole story arc using songs, the way Eli and Franco had sniped at each other with song titles.

  And suddenly she was thinking of that, instead of Franco.

  If Franco Francone was serious, he could damn well do a little more work to prove it, she decided.

  “Franco, I’ll leave you here to think up the rest of those reasons. I have to get up on stage. Glenn runs a tight ship.”

  “I hope you’re good, Glory Greenleaf.”

  She stood. “I’m never good,” she assured him over her shoulder. “But I am always amazing.”

  She put a little more swing into her hips on her way toward the stage. Because ambivalence about a guy had never stopped her from enjoying his admiration.

  She gave a start when a guy slumped over a table sat bolt upright like a jack-in-the-box.

  It proved to be Mick.

  “I bought a kajoo.” He brandished it. “At the mushic store. Gonna play it.”

  Boy, was he hammered.

  “Good for you, Mick. Music is very healing. And it’s called a kazoo. With a ‘Z.’”

  She crossed the floor away from him, past Marvin Wade, who was poised at the edge of his seat, tense as a harp string. He would start doing his languid swirly dance the minute the music started unless she ordered him to sit.

  She pulled her guitar out of its case, buckled her capo on, draped the strap around her neck, and settled it against her rib cage.

  And now she felt complete. It was her version of a space suit. The guitar was what she wore into orbit.

  Right on schedule, Glenn swooped over and twisted the mic stand up to his height.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the chamber of commerce, please feel free to stick around for open mic night. I know many of you know how talented our own Glory Greenleaf is, and some of you are about to find out. Give it up for Glooooory Greenleaf!”

  The applause sounded sincere, and surprisingly polite. Glory peered out into the dark. There were about fifty people all told still present, which constituted a downright remarkable crowd for an open mic night. No one drunkenly shouted “Show us your tits!” which was a refreshing change of pace.

  Glory re-adjusted the mic, mulling on the fly what her set might be. And then she knew just how she was going to do it.

  “Now, I know my little friend Annelise Harwood has to get home to bed, so these first two are for her.”

  “That’s me! They’re for me!”

  Annelise hopped up and down in excitement next to her grandma Sherrie.

  And then Glory plucked out and bent those first funky, bluesy notes of “Son of a Preacher Man.” She gave the strum a little extra chop, a little more funk, shaping the song into something with a little more edge. She moved her hips and shoulders with the rhythm, and it was infectious: it got heads bobbing and shoulders moving. The audience knew they were about to get rocked.

  That moment when the mic picked up the first note she sang and filled the room with it, immersing her in her own sinuous, smoky-edged voice: it never lost its thrill. She’d heard comparisons to Dusty Springfield, but her tone was grittier and bigger; she could do Janis Joplin justice, but her voice was more velvet than gravel. Above all, it was absolutely her plaything. She could caress notes, flirt with them, send them wailing into the stratosphere, and pull them right back down again.

  The applause was protracted and sincere and loud, maybe a little surprised, when she brought th
e song to an end. And then she segued effortlessly into another classic, “Me and Bobby McGee,” and delivered it with soul and yearning. There were quite a few Wooooos when she’d finished it. Not all of them drunken.

  So far, two songs about men. About ache, nostalgia, loss. She was building a mood, and she could feel the audience surrendering to it without realizing it.

  She was going to take them deeper still.

  Down, down to a hush with those first deceptively simple, softly plucked, notes of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe.” Just like she’d told Franco Francone earlier today.

  The audience was almost entirely motionless. Like children being told a spooky bedtime story.

  When she’d first heard that song as a little girl, it had almost frightened her; its offhand mystery seemed very adult and oblique, but beautiful and transfixing in its simplicity. It was the kind of song that got under your skin.

  And now she sang that haunted little Southern Gothic story like she’d lived it, the supple, husked velvet of her voice delivering those potent lines almost matter-of-factly. She saw the audience leaning forward, into her voice, into the song. Listening to every word as if for the first time, because she made it sound and feel new. She hoped it was new for some of them.

  It ended. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  And the applause was even louder now, and someone whistled. Feet were stomping.

  And now she was going to take them deeper still.

  Because tonight’s theme, she’d decided, was going to be love and pain, in all their infinitely subtle gradations, because frankly she needed it. The audience might not be big but she wanted to break each and every one of their hearts and make most of them cry. She could do it, too.

  So she picked out the first notes of Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird.”

  There was no freaking way a warm-blooded human could hear that song sung competently and not get a little wet-eyed. Or at least battle a throat lump.

  But Glory’s voice slid into it, caressed each separate note as if they were treasures she’d collected, and turned it into a sensual, aching hymn, a sort of thanksgiving born of sorrow.

  And she knew by the absolute lush stillness in the room that she was killing all of them. They were all sincerely suffering in the best possible way.

  It was artful sadism.

  It was bliss.

  She was, for this half hour at least, in her milieu, and it was freedom.

  She’d played that song the night they’d taken Eli’s dad’s ashes down to Whiskey Creek. He’d wanted to be cast there at sunset, to join the Hellcat River and be taken out to the Pacific Ocean, so that’s what they did. Then they’d built a bonfire. And then she’d played that song and sung.

  Eli had sat on the opposite side of the fire, arms wrapped around his legs, his cheek resting on his knees, flickering in and out of her vision. His girlfriend’s arms wrapped around him from behind.

  Tonight she was conscious of Franco Francone out there listening to her in his dark corner.

  And Eli out there in his cruiser, catching the bad guys, laying his life on the line, a job that could be dull as hell or whimsical and then, ten minutes later, him dead on the verge of the highway, like his dad.

  She didn’t know how anyone got that brave.

  Maybe he was making his first foray into attempting a peaceful future that didn’t include any Greenleafs, what with Bethany Walker and all.

  Eli deserved peace.

  Did he deserve it at the cost of hers?

  She was going to run over her allotted time by about a minute, but she was going to sweetly torture this audience with one last song tonight, one of her own, and she’d tenderized them so thoroughly that she knew it would sink into their bones.

  She tuned her low E down to D. And then she thumbed out a soft heartbeat on that string. She kept it going for a bit. Lulling them.

  “This one is new,” she said into the mic. “And it’s mine. It’s called ‘Permanently Blue.’”

  Remember when you said

  Every star overhead

  Reminded you of me

  Because their light was always shining

  Even when we couldn’t see

  Now your summer sweetness

  Tastes like ashes in my mouth

  Every now and then the truth will out

  I could stand with my arms out

  And never quite reach you

  Color my skies

  Permanently blue

  It was a softly shimmering dirge, interesting and pretty and a little unnerving. The verse was about innocence, then betrayal and loss; the chorus rose in weary, futile yearning. Very nearly a muffled wail.

  It was, of course, about Eli.

  Writing that song, structuring it, was one way she’d kept sane between the time he’d kissed her and after, when he’d hauled one of the people she—and he—loved best in the world off in handcuffs.

  A really effing great song, if she did say so herself.

  And while she sang it, the audience gave her the tribute of their stillness—no reflexive cell phone checking, no throat clearing, no fidgeting. They were in it with her. In thrall.

  Marvin Wade, who had taken a few too many of the wrong drugs—or the right ones, depending upon how one viewed it—in the seventies drifted out of his chair and began gently twirling around the floor like an unleashed balloon caught in a draft. She didn’t tell him to stop this time. Because Marvin was kind of lost in the forest, going around and around and around and around, and it kind of seemed right.

  That familiar rise and fall

  The rhythm of each day

  Cauterized and frozen

  Gently held at bay

  Now your summer sweetness

  Tastes like ashes in my mouth

  Every now and then the truth will out

  She held the last note delicately, letting it trail off into a wisp of crystal-pure sound.

  And she was still.

  Someone sighed audibly, and she could swear a few beer coasters were being used to dab eyes.

  “Thank you,” she said simply. “That’s it for now.”

  The audience erupted in joyous noise, including some foot stomping and Wooooing, and a few people managed those two-finger whistles that Glory always wished she could do but never could, no matter how Jonah and Eli tried to teach her.

  Glenn swooped in for the mic and she do-si-do’d him as she went to put her guitar back in its case. “Just brilliant,” he murmured to her in passing. To the audience he said, “Glory Greenleaf, everybody! Wasn’t she wonderful? Thank you, Glory! You are a gift to us all. Next up . . . um . . . Mick Macklemore, apparently?” Glenn shot a worried glance at Glory.

  She shrugged.

  Some polite yet skeptical pattering of hands ensued. They were still in a lovely haze of musical goodwill and had high hopes that the fine entertainment would continue.

  Mick staggered from his table, dodged the still-twirling Marvin—the music never really ended in Marvin’s head—walked toward the stage, and crashed shins first into it. It was pretty clear he wanted to take that step up onto it, but he was much too drunk and he was clearly puzzled about how to go about it. He tried it again with the same result. Finally, he sat carefully down on the edge of the stage, tipped over onto his side, pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, then used the microphone stand to haul himself upright, as though he was climbing a rope. The mic protested with a few squeals of feedback.

  Drunk musicians. Nothing everyone here hadn’t seen before.

  He swayed like a dandelion in a gentle breeze.

  “Okay, quiet everyone. Quiet,” he ordered. Even though everyone was staring in mute fascination. “Thish ish important.”

  He belched softly into his fist. Then he gave an inaugural toot on the kazoo. Honk. As if tuning it up or testing to see if it still worked.

  “Great chops, man!” some wit hollered.

  “Okay. Okay,” Mick said into the mic. “This is c
alled ‘She’sh Wrong.’ Anna one anna two anna three anna four!”

  He blew out a blues riff on the kazoo: BA DA DA DA DUN!

  “Booooo!” someone assessed correctly.

  Glory hovered next to the stage, riveted in a “look at that train wreck” sort of way.

  Foreboding was prickling her scalp.

  Mick tooted the blues riff again: BA DA DA DAA DA DUN!

  And then he growled boozily into the microphone while thumping his foot against the stage.

  Lemme tell you a story

  (BA DA DA DAA DA DUN)

  About a girl named Glory

  (BA DA DA DAA DA DUN)

  She says I’m a dud in bed

  (BA DA DA DAA DA DUN)

  But she’s GREAT AT GIVING HEA—

  Glory dove for the microphone like she was sliding into home and yanked it away from him, and Glenn seized it from her and ferried it way out of Mick’s reach like a burning torch.

  Deprived of the microphone, Mick performed a rude illustrative gesture using the kazoo as a prop instead.

  “YUCK, dude!” a discerning person hollered.

  Glory was actually amazed Mick had managed a rhyme.

  “Oooooooooh, man!” Someone in the audience was clearly gleefully horrorstruck.

  “YOU SUCK, MICK!” someone else yelled. Either in support of Glory or by way of editorial review. Both were fine with her.

  “YOU SUCK!” Mick predictably snarled by way of reply to the invisible critic.

  He staggered off the stage toward the voice and collided with the still gently whirling Marvin Wade, sending him spiraling precariously out of his orbit and crashing into a guy gingerly balancing two half pints of beer in his hands. They both went down hard in an explosion of glass, beer raining down after them, just as Mick threw a wild punch toward his insulter, so wild that it spun him about 180 degrees and the punch landed on the wrong guy, who toppled flailing backward in his chair into the guy next to him, who shoved him upward into the guy Mick meant to punch, who shot to his feet and shoved him roughly off, got hit in the face for his effort, and in seconds all was pandemonium.