The crowd went wild welcoming the Conklins. Three bottle blondes who packed enough whammy in their satin shirts to start their own dairy, they were good-looking in spite of a genetic tendency toward wall-eyes that made every man in the audience think he was being serenaded directly, no matter where he sat. The ladies from Ochre Water went right for the heart of the crowd.
Oh, it was a rule that no one would cover Francie June in the talent show, imbedded as she was in the collective subconscious of the Park’s residents. But who could question Mandy Conklin’s right to sing Francie June’s songs? She had the same honesty in her voice. In addition, Mandy possessed some of that pug-dog ferocity; that grab-life-by-the-scruff-and-shake-it spirit. She angled her cropped blonde head to the mike, set her square jaw, and belted it out.
Do what you like, now
I’ll pretend I don’t see
Sleep where you want to, now
Just not beside me
Judge me for what I do
Since it’s not done with you
Ride your high horse down the low road
And get the hell away from me.
Despite a fiddle solo, a banjo solo, and a little bit of crowd-teasing improvisation, the song was too short. The crowd hooted and hollered in appreciation for the Conklins, for their three part harmonies and the straining snaps on their shirts.
Melveena was actually starting to smile.
Up on the stage, Beau had the microphone. “Now, I have the great pleasure of introducing a man I’ve had the honor of getting to know over the last week. He’s not regular, or local, but he’s one smart fella. And I hear he sings a little something like Gordon Lightfoot. Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome… Isaac Mesher!”
“Hey Mom!” hollered Annie Leigh across the bar. “Ain’t that your BOYFRIEND?!”
Raven LaCour sat there with her jaw clenched.
Two tall men took the stage. The blonde man settled his imposing presence on a tall stool and took his guitar out of the case. Out of shyness, he let his hair fall in his face. His huge child’s hands stroked the neck, tuning.
Behind him stood a tall man in his sheriff’s uniform, holding his fiddle and bow with familiar, sensual ease. In fact, those four large, masculine hands traveling up and down strings, necks, cords and frets as they tuned caused a wave of sighing among the female part of the audience. Calls of encouragement flew to the stage. “Sing us something pretty, pretty man!” “Wanna tune me up?” Isaac smiled, blushed, looked over his shoulder. Memphis settled his violin under his chin, signaling his readiness. So it would be violin, not fiddling, thought Raven, who’d recovered her composure and looked forward to hearing her uncle play.
If she’d known what was to follow, she would have stood up and walked out right then.
Isaac leaned to the microphone. “I just want you all to forgive me for this in advance.” Everyone laughed. He strummed, hitting the body of his guitar with a gentle thump between strums. It was a tune she’d heard before, but not like this. She couldn’t place it. He was taking something pop and playing something country.
And then, in his sweet, growly, honest voice, he sang. His words were muffled, his emotion distinct. And such words of love they were, the song of a man offering love in the face of coldness, rejection. Gasps, whispers, sighs, and shaking heads. Every woman in that bar turned to Raven with accusing eyes that said, I’d take this man. I’d love him and feed him and let him leave the toilet seat up, any day.
Raven ignored their angry gazes and listened to her uncle’s playing. He looked so fine up there, standing thin and taut, looping with his bow work, choosing just the right notes to pick out and carry along, adding a tone of further heartbreak to the general pathos of this song. He had a gift, there was no denying it.
“That man,” growled Melveena. “What a man.”
He hit the final refrain. One last time of hearing it. That’s all that she, or any of the other women in there, could take of this song. Memphis used his voice and his instrument to add harmony to the growly mumble of Isaac’s voice. Raven thought about how pretty and harmonious her uncle sounded up there, how adeptly he blended, then soared, knowing when to feature himself and when to recede. She wished like a little girl that she could have just once heard her father and her uncle play together.
“All these years,” muttered Minah. “Do you know how many years Beau’s been trying to get your uncle up there? I wonder how that young man got him to do it.”
Raven shook her head. “He probably just asked politely and said please and thank you and crap like that.”
Mercifully, it was over. Isaac actually had to reach up and wipe away a tear. He was not alone. Many a woman sniffed a bit. Raven looked over at Melveena. Melveena was, yes, she was glowering at Raven. Raven made a disgusted noise through her nose. “Oh not you too.”
“Well, he seems like such a fine young man.”
“I’ve had it with all you happy-ending Francie June fans in this park.”
Memphis and Isaac returned to the bar amid appreciative applause. Annie clambered up on and threw her skinny arms around her uncle’s neck. “I never knew you were gonna be in the show!” she hollered in his ear.
“Oh, little one, there was someone else I didn’t want to win. So with some urging from Beau, I agreed to help out Isaac, here.”
Annie shook her head. “You’re not gonna win, though. You gotta get the folks rocking if you wanna win. And you gotta wear a hat.” With a defiant thrust of her skinned-up chin and a quick flick of her black ponytail, she hopped down and back behind the bar.
It was time for another act.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen. I have a very special treat you might remember from years past.” Behind Beau, a man set down a long board on which sat a glass symphony. Beau gestured back to the man and his bottles, exhorting, “I’d like to hear you welcome Luther Thurber!”
Luther smiled out gratefully at the applause. A living testament to creative recycling, he was all decked out for the show in a vest made from bent pull-tabs from old pop cans, worn over baby blue tuxedo pants. What’s more, he had crafted his instrument himself from Mickey’s BigMouth bottles using his Popiel Goblet Cutter set.
Luther took a few moments to tune up his instrument by tapping, listening, sipping. No one could take smaller sips than Luther Thurber, except maybe a hummingbird. Such a simple thing, the combination of glass, water and percussion. But the sound Luther produced rang clearer than any metal bell. He began to play something that perhaps only Melveena Strange would have recognized as Pachelbel’s Canon.
Tap, ting, ting. Tap, ting, ting. Halting and ethereal, inherently majestic, the melody repeated itself. The notes sang and rang and lingered. But this song was meant to echo among stained glass and lilies, not stubbed-out Camels and bottles of Bud. Luther’s music was better suited to a cathedral than the smoky interior of the Blue Moon Tap Room.
Luther finished his act to polite applause. He looked discouraged. He sighed and absent-mindedly began to drink his instrument.
“Where did Annie get to?” asked Raven, as Luther left the stage. “Have you seen her?” Melveena looked around through the smoke, Minah shook her head, and both women looked over at the pool tables. The Rollins boys sat atop them, pitching cue balls back and forth. Occasionally one would fail to catch, and let the ball hit him in the arm on purpose. Then he’d look down at the forming bruise and smile.
Raven finally located Annie behind the bar, watching Beau introduce the next act. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, its my pleasure to introduce a little gal we all know from the Daisy Diner, where this little gal serves up a fine cup of coffee with the sweetest smile most of us have ever seen. Let’s welcome Ranita Pusher!”
Ranita sat on a stool and closed her eyes.
Sweet Jesus, I need me a good factory man
works three to eleven, with a good pension plan
no more’n two exes, with a Dodge pick up truck
might mow the ya
rd, and is ready to… (pause) . . . pluck
me from this oblivion
that I am living in.
Who would have known that Ranita, so happily married to a fry cook, had such private and painful desires? She sang on.
I’d pop out more babies, whip up microwave dinners
for one certifiable wage-earning sinner
with earplugs a dangling
from his rearview mirror.
Oh, she wasn’t showy, and she wasn’t loud, but she had a kind face, an acoustic guitar and a haunting, low voice. Ranita had tapped into the soft-hearted, secret longings of almost every female resident of the Park.
Take the kids up to momma’s, I’m teasing my hair
and squeezing my ass into red underwear.
Don’t need me some Waffle House sausage link slinger
I crave me a man who is missing some fingers.
I got wanton desire, I would deep-fry his tater
get faux-stone underpinning for this Barcraft trailer
I want me a rat-tailed
metal press fabricator.
Gonna scoot these white-tasseled Ropers flat,
gonna play me some foosball, drink house beer on tap
’til I’m smack
on my back
and holding back screams
with the second-shift
metal-fab man of my dreams.
There was a hush, then thunderous applause. The seven wives of Gator Rollins sat in the corner, wiping away tears.
Of course, that was nearly an impossible act to follow. But there was one act left, one act that they had all waited for, the one act that brought them here, year after year, to hear how something so beautiful could come from a place so hard. The Men from Bone Pile had not yet played for them, and everyone in that bar knew it was time.
But who would front them? The Bone Pilers had no born leaders. That very lack left them open for men like the Right Reverend Henry Heaven, thought Minah. And as far as tonight, well, the Bone Pilers needed a lead man, and their lead man was dead.
They filed up behind Beau as he took the microphone. “Now, Ladies and Gents, I have a real treat for you. A real treat. These five Boys from Bone Pile are here.” Beau went on. “I’m honored to tell you that they have a special guest to lend them a hand, or lend a voice, I guess. I’d like you all to give a warm welcome to Miss Annie Leigh LaCour!”
The silence was complete.
Annie walked out from behind the bar, carrying a scratched-up black guitar that only stayed tuned in her little hands. She stood below Beau, looking up. He smiled, then reached down and swung her up on that stage like she and that guitar weighed nothing.
Raven went stiff. Rhondalee sat in the corner looking as if she’d just been beaned with a cast-iron skillet. Memphis frowned, looking at both women. But neither seemed to have a thing to do with it.
No, decided Memphis, Rhondalee was not in on this one.
Where had the girl gotten the entry fee?
Only one person knew, and that person was Beau.
He smiled, remembering how on the first day the posters went up about the talent show, she’d entered the darkness of the bar. Beau? And he’d looked at that little girl with her stick arms, her oil-slick hair pulled up high on the back of her neck, dust all over her skinny legs and bony feet. What might I do for you, Miss LaCour?
I have some questions. And he’d served her a glass of seltzer and listened to her questions about the talent show. No, there was no age limit, as far as who could enter. Yes, there was a talent scout from a record label scheduled to attend. Yes, solo acts were welcome to enter. And yes, there was an entry fee. How much? I heard it was a hundred dollars.
And he’d looked at those eyes, just like her mother’s, only a darker grey. God had never made a plainer child, he decided. Oh, that’s for the adults, Annie Leigh. Kids only have to pay ten dollars to get in.
So Raven hadn’t known of her daughter combing the roadside for bottles to return, how she clipped two thousand coupons and redeemed them for a dollar at the Hoot Owl, how she polished boots for Gramps and cleaned all Melveena’s copper-bottomed pots and took old Beau for walks, all for dimes and nickels and quarters and dollars. She’d worked her narrow little bottom off to earn that entry fee.
And that was how Annie Leigh came to be standing on the stage of the Blue Moon Tap Room, her knees quaking and her mouth dry. She clutched the old black guitar she found in her mother’s closet and rode like an angel to save herself from death on the highway.
She was a just a skinny girl made up of awkward parts: a pair of black tooled boots, two scabby knees, some dirty piece of denim, that pointed little cleft chin with the scabs on it, and a sassy pair of grey eyes over a gap-toothed smile. At least she’d combed her hair. That sleek rope of black hair snaked over one shoulder like something living. Raven bet ten to one that Annie needed to change her underwear and brush her teeth.
She was so proud of that girl that it hurt.
Annie had a time gripping that guitar. A big knot in the back of the strap helped. Since no one had ever taught the girl to play, she’d devised an open tuning of her own, and she listened, plucked, her arms as taut and thin and full of vibration as the strings of the instrument she held.
Raven recognized the notes. It was the tuning she’d come up with when she taught herself to play. My God, thought Raven. She’s seven years old. Who the hell taught her any of this? I was only five, she reminded herself. I taught myself at age five.
Annie Leigh cocked her head and listened. The guitar liked this tuning. So did she. She smiled. She wiped her nose on her shoulder.
She slammed into it.
Those thin fingers danced over the strings with confidence and command. There was power in her playing, power to call what she needed. She took her time, set the rhythm like a march. Playing it all alone.
First, a banjo joined her. A banjo, and then a standup bass, and a mandolin. The uncanny zither joined, and finally, over them all, a heart-tearing fiddle sang out. The Five Boys from Bone Pile had joined in the song.
Her guitar thrummed and droned. The crowd waited.
She stepped to the microphone and her voice, so husky and loud in speaking, soared out. Some notes cut like a band saw. Others rang too clear to bear. Her voice took turns at light and darkness, like animals wrestling angels. The crowd roared in approval.
Another child might have smiled, might have winked or responded or let on that she wasn’t alone in the room. But not Annie Leigh. She was in a different place.
She stood back from the microphone. She did something with her jaw, unhinged or unlocked it, and found within herself a chamber that we all might have but don’t know how to reach. It’s a chamber where we echo, a chamber where our souls live, a chamber where the ancient longings of the human heart find an answer in the purest notes of grace.
From this chamber climbs a tone of impossible clarity.
She lifted her chin and made that sound.
It was too much, too much; the beauty of it hurt. Every hard face softened, every knotted heart untied, every sore foot tapped, every arthritic hand clapped. The song rose. So did the audience. They went to their feet. They moved together.
Women fell to their knees. Men burst into tears.
The six instruments were governed by the seventh, the unearthly and unbearable song of this child. Her voice, the call and reply, the scale-tripping beauty, the madness of cacophony. Together, the seven sounds filled the bar. They joined with the sound of the crowd, the sound of all those hands and hoots and tears and cheers, and this wild din joined the howl that had colored the air of the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park.
Yes, the howl was there, filling it, completing it, the howl of beauty and wrath. The women of Bone Pile sang in the parking lot, dancing in their bare feet. The howl was theirs.
It was all the same, then. For the first time, everyone could hear it.
It was the song that every tenant had been wai
ting for. Through their hours of meetings at the clubhouse, night shifts at minimum wage, raking gravel and mowing grass and making hot dishes, washing trucks and washing babies, loving and fighting and trying and failing, they had waited for this song, this one song, this beautiful song of a black-haired child.
It was here. Salvation.
They were set free.
IN THE DESERT, Tender rose from the pile of blankets he’d inhabited for days and nights of agony. The song called him.
He made his way out of the lonely chill of the desert night. He walked barefoot past an old wooden boat on blocks full of yellow dust and Hefty garbage bags of boot-smashed Budweiser cans. He walked past a rusted out soap-box derby car with a faded “I found it!” sticker on the bumper. He didn’t even see an arrangement of avocado green appliances sitting in a perfect work triangle in the dirt, as if someone would come start a meal with their aid, and soon.
He walked past these small monuments to abandonment, neglect, disregard and oblivion. He walked out of the desert, following the call.
He’d only been a hundred feet from the bar, after all.
He entered the Blue Moon Tap Room and sat down at the piano, his hands over the keys, his bare feet on the pedals. He lifted his hands, lifted his voice, and highest of all, he lifted his heart. He joined his song with that of his granddaughter.
Behind the bar, Memphis raised his fiddle to his chin.
THE WINDS GATHERED over Asa Strug’s trailer. There was the storm of the music, and the storm of the winds. Perhaps they were one and the same. Perhaps not. He stood in his kitchen, his soiled feet squarely planted in righteousness. The storm concentrated above his head, mobbing and howling like a pack of dogs, worrying at the tarp, the tires, the rickety attempts to mend and patch.
Finally, with a screech of tin and a crumbling of asbestos, the roof pulled away. The interior lay exposed. Front to back, top to bottom, years and years of magazines, like a maze for a rat to run, eternal and damned. At first, it was quite delicate, the manner in which all those untouched pages stirred, teasing, lifting, giving a glimpse of the hidden.
Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem Page 27
