Songbird

by Lisa Samson

  And I’m not all that germ conscious!

  My final recording session, laying down some finishing touches and an a cappella version of “Blessed Redeemer,” went well today at BrooksTone.

  Carl, of course, is gone. And all his artwork, good riddance. The walls aren’t gray, they’re taupe.

  I’m tired but I call home anyway. “Harlan?”

  “Hey, Shug. How’d it go?”

  “Good.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Not one. The staff actually gave me a standing ovation when I walked in. Even the Kinglee people.”

  I hear him clapping. “I think that’s fine.”

  “I kind of doubted that Carl was well liked, but you never know.”

  “That’s the truth, Shug.”

  “Anything new, Harlan?”

  “Grace called.”

  “She did? Did she say where she is?”

  “She’s in Atlanta.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. I was surprised she admitted where she was.”

  “When’s she coming back? Did she say?”

  “No. She asked about Leo and I told her he was in second grade and doing well.”

  “Did you tell her he’s a real whiz with numbers?”

  “I did. Again.”

  I’m sure he rolls his eyes just then.

  “What did she say, Harlan?”

  “Nothing much. Something like ‘That’s nice to hear’ or something like that.”

  “How did she sound?”

  “Crazy. You know Grace.”

  The room blurs as he answers and I picture Grace tying her arm with a tourniquet and then sticking a needle about eighteen inches long into it. I picture it going straight through her arm, lodging into the table and pinning her there for life. “Did you ask her if she’s still using?”

  “Yep, I asked her and she said ‘yes.’”

  “Well, at least she’s honest.”

  “Not that it’s getting her anywhere.”

  “We need to get her some help, Harlan. What about your old friend from college? That nice fellow we had lunch with all that time ago?”

  “Tony Sanchez?”

  “That’s him. He lives down that way, doesn’t he? Can’t he check things out?”

  “I’ll give him a call.”

  “How’re the kids?”

  “Fine. Hope took a road map in for show and tell and pointed out all the states she’s already been to.”

  “Oh, that’s cute.”

  “Leo’s been assigned the funniest book report. They have to take a pumpkin and make a character from their book out of it.”

  “That’s cute, too.”

  “Your grandmother said she’d help with it.”

  “When’s it due?”

  “Next month, when you’ll be singing for that big concert in Louisville.”

  “I’ll try and get as much done as possible with him beforehand.”

  He chuckles. “Yeah. But you know how those school projects can creep up on you.”

  Isla never once helped me with a project.

  “I promise I’ll help him some, Harlan. I just have to.”

  His smiled wafts over the wires and he says, “You are a real peach, Charmaine.”

  I’m glad now that I told Harlan about Mrs. Evans and how she called me “Peach.” Now he sometimes does, too. Harlan’s so sweet.

  Some people think peaches just grow on a tree. But I know they are carefully tended and the sweetest ones are shown the most care.

  I want Leo and Hope to be peaches. I really do.

  8

  I am experimenting with the hair painting kit I bought at the IGA. The girl on the box wears the cutest cap of curly hair. I’m tired of red, red, red, and nothing but red. They give you this little plastic brush with black bristles and you mix up this white goop and just paint stripes on your hair. I figure I need real pizzazz so I’m painting on really big stripes. Grandma is doing it for me because my arm still hurts too much to lift it high. The cast is off though and I say, “Hallelujah!” You can’t know how annoying casts are until you’ve been in one for eight weeks.

  “Shug! Come in here and look at Jesus Alive! with me.”

  Jesus Alive! is one of those television shows that have a bunch of popular Christian guests and the hosts, Peter and Vinca Love, sit and chat, and pray and prophesy and all. I know their last name seems fake or at best contrived, but I had a Sunday school teacher named Sue Ellen Love so I know it’s an actual last name. Whether or not it’s their actual last name, I can’t say.

  I even met them when I sang at Forger’s Creek, their multimillion dollar conference center, resort, and golf club in the Shenandoah Valley.

  And you should see that place at Christmastime.

  Now Vinca is flamboyant in a very odd way. If I’m Las Vegas, she’s Montana. Cowboy boots and huge skirts with as much material as you’d find in a bedsheet. And yet she wears her long brown hair pulled back in a tidy bun at the nape of her neck. She was nice to us Gospelganza folks, make no mistake about it, but she seemed hardened in a way. Not a bad hardened, more of an imperviousness. She’s also had diabetes since childhood, which has probably done more to build her into a woman of God, a woman who knows what’s important, than anything else. She’s from high society Richmond, I think I heard.

  Peter is one of those rugged cowboy poets. Grew up on a ranch in Wyoming, traveled the rodeo circuit for quite a while, and even starred in a few westerns back in the sixties. He wears the ranch garb and looks mighty fine in those jeans and boots and hats.

  Mighty fine, ma’am.

  But Harlan will have to accept the fact that those two can keep while I see to my hair. Shoot, they’re on that network of theirs at least four times a day anyway.

  “Oh, Harlan! I’m in the middle of something.”

  “Well, your loss. God must really be blessing these people. The studio is completely full and they just took a camera outside and showed the line going around the building for the next show’s shooting in a couple of hours!”

  “We’re almost done painting my hair. I’ll come in while it sets.” I turn to Grandma, “What do you think about those people?”

  She shrugs. “I think it’s a little goofy. Not like the Lutheran people I’m used to! Although she’s close. But I mean, ‘Ropin’in souls’? What’s that supposed to mean and don’t you think it’s a tad odd?”

  I shrug. “I guess. But they seem to really love the Lord.”

  “I still think they’re odd.”

  We finish up and tidy the bathroom. I’m very attentive with my home and rightly so. And Grandma’s right with me. I figure I must have inherited that gene from her.

  Harlan’s got a space heater near the couch as the furnace went up last week. Doesn’t that figure? Thank goodness we’re in the South and it’s only November. He pulls back the quilt he’s under and I slip down next to him. “Watch the hair Harlan, that’s bleach. You’ll ruin that shirt for sure if it gets on it.”

  I turn toward Jesus Alivel, trying to keep my hair from touching anything. “Oh, I love that old Cowboy George guy on there.”

  “Did you meet him when you were up there, Shug?”

  “Yes. And he’s the cutest thing! Seems like he really loves the Lord.”

  We watch awhile as they sit there and laugh and joke. Vinca is her normal hilarious, sarcastic self, lambasting Peter like she always does. All in fun, of course. Peter sits back and admires her and he’s always telling how much he loves her. They really do seem like lovebirds.

  I fold my legs up underneath me. “They’re just so much fun, aren’t they?”

  “Yep. And think of how many people they must reach for Christ, Shug.”

  “That sure is the truth. And all over the world.”

  “Now me, I’d just be happy reaching the South in general.”

  I am not about to ask what that means because I don’t want to know. If that man thinks I’m leaving Mount Oak so he can
go back to evangelizing every man, woman, child, dog, and cat, he can think again.

  I got Grandma Min to tell me everything she knew about my father. It’s funny, as in odd funny, what happened to me after I found out he had a true identity. For so long I’ve listed the possibilities in my mind. But for so long, I wittingly turned my back on him. It was my choice.

  Then the choice flew away from me.

  But that’s not right. The choice was never really there to begin with. No wings. No bird. Nothing.

  All I could do was grieve.

  And I did. I grieved through the opening of school. I grieved through the first turn of the leaves all the way through Halloween at which time I allowed the kids to trick-or-treat for the first time all the while wearing a ghost costume myself so no one would recognize me as the preacher’s wife over at Port of Peace. (Although how many ghosts have their arms in a sling?) Leo went as a ghost, too, because he wanted to be just like me. Hope wore a clown outfit with makeup thicker than Ronald McDonald.

  And the grieving settled into acceptance eventually.

  And here I am now knowing more and wishing I could know yet more. Wishing I could know the man himself. The man who never knew he had fathered anything, much less Isla Whitehead’s illegitimate brat.

  From what Grandma says and judging by the one snapshot she has of him, I think he would have done right by me. I never once thought of the real scenario. In all my musings I never once thought my father was a factory worker who was crazy about my mother and would have laid down across the railroad tracks only Isla just used him and when she got caught bearing his child she chose to get the heck out of town rather than give him the privilege of fatherhood.

  And doesn’t that beat all?

  Isla the user.

  Makes me not so mad at all those men that used her. Maybe she deserved a little payback for what she did to David Potter.

  The picture of him rests on my bedside table now in one of Grandma’s antique silver frames. He is wearing jeans rolled up at the cuffs, loafers, a leather belt, and a plaid shirt. His hair is blond and is combed to the side and Grandma said I have his mouth. I think so, too. It’s unmistakable. That alone is enough for me to claim him as my own. With Mamas reputation he might not have been my father. But I’m choosing differently.

  She said he loved to sing. In fact that was how he and Isla met, in the school play. Arsenic and Old Lace. He played the guy who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt and the next year he won the starring role in Oklahoma!

  I wonder how many guys Isla used before poor David?

  Grandma Min said, “I tried to tell her that David was a nice boy. That he really loved her. That he didn’t deserve to be treated like that.”

  “How did she really treat him?”

  “Oh, she’d go out with him when it suited her. But she stood him up all the time. She’d go out with her girlfriends or she’d pretend she had a headache. He’d buy her the sweetest little presents, too. I’m sure he spent half his paycheck on her.”

  At least. How much did young men in peanut factories make?

  “I never once accepted a gift from a young man,” Grandma said. We sat outside in lawn chairs, watching the kids on the swing set.

  “Me, neither, Grandma.” Unless I count the winter boots from Richard Lewellyn. But they were a necessity, so I don’t think they count quite as much.

  She turned to me then and she smiled. “You know, Charmaine, somehow, you managed to take after me.”

  “And thank the Lord for that!”

  Amen. I do thank the Lord for that.

  I stare at the mailbox in my front yard and I wonder if Isla has a mailbox now or if she has a pine box.

  I wonder about a lot of things now that the last leaf has fallen and life still feels swollen and expectant. Come to think of it, maybe I am pregnant. Maybe I’m pregnant with a missing mother, a dead father, and a black hate. And what’s that mess gonna look like when it’s finally born?

  The purple Fantasia dragon?

  Oh, my lands. Get a grip, Charmaine.

  9

  A million and a half lights you said?” I can hardly believe my eyes.

  Grandma Min shuffles through the glossy brochure. “Yes, that’s what it says.”

  Harlan’s eyes are popping out of his head. “Look at this place, Shug!”

  Forger’s Creek.

  Forger’s Crickkkk!

  Of course, I sang here in the summer and heard about the Christmas display, but now I am seeing it for myself and all I can say is, “My lands!” We ooh and aah our way down the main thoroughfare called Damascus Road.

  Is that cute or what?

  Grandma thinks it’s corny.

  The buildings are camplike but sturdy. Lots of logs and stone and glass and the heads of the streetlights look like they’re wearing cowboy hats.

  I have a feeling I may get sick of this Western theme before the weekend’s out.

  “Can you imagine it, Shug? Can you imagine building an empire for the Lord like this?”

  No, I can’t begin to imagine, but I just say, “God has different callings for different people, Harlan.”

  See, now that is a good answer. Spiritual, but filled with hidden meaning! I am proud of myself.

  He gets silent, which means the message sunk in.

  Well, good.

  Tanzel agreed to keep the kids for us while we take a couple of days here in Roanoke. Tomorrow we’re going to watch a taping of Jesus Alive! Now people have told me that I am Harlan’s Vinca Love. Isn’t that cute? I tell you one thing, I wish I had nice teeth like she does. And I take too much off people. With Vinca, it seems like she’ll give you the shirt off her back, but if you push her too far in other ways, watch out! I know this because when we taped the Gospelganza show here at the resort, I saw her slam out of their home, yelling, “This time you have gone too far!” before shutting the door.

  Well, you know the media types. They were probably interviewing her or something and asked an inappropriate, nervy question.

  Harlan pulls the station wagon up to the Grand Lodge entrance. Now after staying in nice hotels with my singing and recording, I’ve gotten used to seeing luxury cars lined up for the valet to whisk away to some unknown lot. But here it’s different. I see another station wagon like ours, an old one with the fake wood on the side. Rickety Buick sedans and Econoline vans populate the parking lot. Yes, I see a Mercedes or two, but regular old, everyday cars fill the lot.

  As we make our way to the front desk, around one of those long cars with long horns on the hood, I say to Harlan, “This is a nice place for regular folks to come. You can give to a ministry, feel good about the tithe, and then have a nice vacation every year to boot.”

  They’ve jumped onto the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker time-share wagon.

  “See Shug? It is a good ministry.”

  “I never said it wasn’t, Harlan.”

  “Well, you’ve just never been sold on this sort of thing.”

  “TV preaching?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I shrug. “I’ve just never thought much about it, that’s all. I mean, we couldn’t even watch much TV until recently.”

  I’m desperately trying to steer this conversation in another direction, pretending I have no idea what he is getting at. I don’t want my husband to get up there behind people’s household television screens, his long, tender face watching the world as they suffer, work, and play.

  Truth is, TV preaching seems like an easy way to fulfill the great commission of going ye into all the world, and that’s where I choke. Is there an easy way to fulfill such a calling direct from the lips of Jesus? Should it be easy?

  I just don’t know.

  When Jesus said, “The harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few,” did He have empires like this in mind? This doesn’t seem much like labor to me. How can it be? And I’m trying not to be critical, just inquisitive. I have more questions than ever after looking around me here in this place,
after looking through Harlan’s eyes, and I feel bad. But Mrs. Evans and Grandma Sara always told me that questions are almost always a good thing.

  I look about at the lobby. Now this is one classy joint. In a Western sort of way, naturally. Chains suspend dozens of chandeliers made of deer antlers (poor things!) above our heads. Give me faith, Lord! Let’s hope whoever ordered those chains didn’t cut corners.

  A stone wall, bigger than a church, houses a fireplace I could walk into. I can see into two other rooms through that square inferno: the main restaurant calling Wyoming’s, which, I hate to say, is way out of our budget, and the library for Mountaintop Members of the Forger’s Creek Founder’s Club.

  Oh, it’s all cushy in there, like something an English lord would have if he was a cowboy.

  So much for that verse, “Neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, but we have all been made to drink in one body.” I guess money counts around here.

  Now that snake Carl Bofa would just love it in here. In fact, over by the entrance to the family-style restaurant called Cowpokes, two of his paintings hang. I turn my back on them.

  “I’m just going to walk around here in the lobby while you check in,” I say to Harlan.

  “Go ahead, Shug. I’ll meet up with you in a minute.”

  “Grandma?”

  “I’m right with you.”

  But I can tell Grandma is still quite skeptical. She doesn’t want to say anything because she’s a Williamsburg, Virginia, brass-sconce type. I know she finds this decor gimmicky at best. I love it, though. It’s warm and friendly.

  Must have cost a mint! But as these two are always saying, “Christians deserve the best, too! Why should we accept second-class blessings from a first-class God?!”

  “Look here.” I point down to a discreetly placed plaque on a leather sofa and I read, “Given by Joseph and Delia Waters. Isn’t that nice, Grandma? People just put this stuff in here so the ministry itself didn’t have to pay for it.”

  “Good tax write-off, too.”

  I bap her on the arm. “Oh, Grandma, you tickle me to no end.”

  Harlan’s arm slides around my waist. “Hey, y’all. Isn’t this something?”