An Everyday Hero

by Laura Trentham

  Her heart galloped like a fear-crazed racehorse. A clammy sweat broke over her neck and back, and her hands shook. Panic. The same reaction she’d experienced onstage at the Bluebird.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Ally’s voice came from a long tunnel.

  Greer met the girl’s huge eyes. She looked freaked out. Greer’s own words circled her mind. It was just the two of them and nothing she did would go beyond the four walls. If Ally could be vulnerable in front of Greer, could she not attempt the same?

  With a shaking finger, she plucked the low E string. Without having to think, her ear registered the tone as flat. She adjusted the tuning knob and plucked it again. The sweet tone counteracted her bitter panic. She repeated the task for all five strings.

  Muscle memory was a beautiful thing. Her fingers created a G chord, and she strummed. Then C and back to G. She repeated the three chords, this time humming the familiar melody of “Amazing Grace.” On the third line, she closed her eyes and sang, “I once was lost, but now I’m found.”

  She sang through the chorus once and let the last note ring out. Silence overtook the room, and Greer opened her eyes. Ally’s eyes were wide and unblinking and her mouth was parted. She looked hypnotized.

  A new melody weaved into Greer’s head, as if playing “Amazing Grace” had thrown open a locked door. It happened that way sometimes. As if some higher authority gifted her music. Why it was happening now after a dry spell of months, she wasn’t sure.

  Greer strummed the chords straight. The addition of a minor chord gave the tune a haunting feel. She glanced down at Ally’s lyrics and started a rhythm, giving the old-timey melody a modern feel. Then she added Ally’s lyrics, modifying her rhythm to fit the syllables.

  It was rough and needed massaging, but it was a song.

  She strummed the last chord, then grabbed a blank sheet of music and jotted down the chords and rhythms before she lost them.

  “How’d you do that?” Ally scanned over her paper of song lyrics as if she’d missed something.

  Greer laughed, feeling as if the darkness inside of her had finally lightened to gray with the promise of a new day. “I don’t really know. It just came to me. How’d you like it?”

  “For a second, I didn’t even realize you were singing my words. It was great.”

  “Because your lyrics are great.”

  Ally picked at her fingernails and the compliment squatted between them, unaccepted. At Ally’s age, Greer had been full of optimism and bravado. Life had been a cushioned ride with seat belts. It wasn’t until later that life had removed the gloves and knocked her around. Ally had already experienced enough hard knocks for a lifetime.

  Richard would be arriving any minute to take their room. Greer stacked Ally’s music on the books. “How’s school? Any more trouble?”

  Ally gave a less-than-enthusiastic one-shouldered shrug. “It’s fine.”

  “Yeah, sounds like everything is fabulous.” Greer didn’t bother to mask her sarcasm and was rewarded when Ally quit staring at the table.

  “It’s nothing you can help with so let it go.”

  “I can’t fix the fact your dad is gone, but I can listen if you want to talk instead of keeping everything bottled up inside.”

  Ally made a scoffing sound and performed an epic eye roll. “You sound like a therapist.”

  “Are you seeing a therapist?”

  “I have better things to do.”

  “Like shoplifting and getting put in this program?” As soon as the words popped out, Greer bit her lip. She’d pushed too hard. “Ally, I’m sorry. That was harsh.”

  Ally shoved papers and books into her backpack and stalked out of the room.

  Had Greer burned all the progress they’d made to the ground? She stood and gathered her things. Ally had taken her stack of lyrics and the guitar manuals, but in her snit, she’d left Greer’s old guitar. Sensing an opening, Greer packed the guitar in its case and took off at a run, but Ally had performed her typical vanishing act.

  Returning to Amelia’s office, she knocked. “I need a favor.”

  Amelia swiveled in her chair to face Greer. “What?”

  “I want to drop my old guitar off at Ally’s place as a surprise. Could you jot down her address?” Greer attempted to inject innocence into her smile, but her lips trembled from the weight of fakeness.

  Amelia narrowed her eyes. “It’s not my practice to give out personal information.”

  “I realize that, but she can’t carry her backpack plus a case all the way to her house. This will be easier.”

  Amelia rifled through folders and wrote something on a sticky note. “Here.”

  “Thanks.” Greer took the note and tried to place the street name in her mental map of Nashville, but couldn’t.

  “Do you want me to sign your sheet while you’re here?”

  “What? Oh, sure.” Greer fished it out of her satchel. She’d forgotten all about it.

  “Three more weeks and you’ll have your hours.” Amelia handed it back.

  “What? No, that can’t be right.” She ran her finger over the hours and did a mental tally. Amelia was right.

  “I’d love to have you stay on as an actual volunteer. Your forthrightness seems to work with certain personalities.”

  “You don’t have to sound so shocked about it.” Greer shot her stepcousin a smile before backing out of her office, impatient to find Ally. “I’ll think about it.”

  In her car, she entered the address in her phone. A digital tack pinpointed an area of Nashville that wrestled with crime but was on the cusp of gentrification.

  Winding her way through the streets, she kept her eyes peeled for Ally but didn’t spot her. She most likely took the city bus. Greer’s GPS led her to one of four duplexes squeezed together on a corner. Sparse grass poked through dirt and gravel to form a front yard. A rusting kid’s bike leaned against the brick front of one porch while a container of flowers added life and color to the duplex next door to Ally’s, whose house number was peeled halfway off.

  Greer climbed out and pulled the guitar case with her, nerves making the handle slip in her palm. She knocked and waited, noting the tear in the screen and the long scratch in the paint of the door.

  She knocked again. This time the door opened. The woman standing in the crack bore enough resemblance to Ally to tag her as her mother, but she was fairer-skinned with straight dirty-blond hair in need of a wash hanging to her shoulders.

  “What do you want?” The lack of welcome in her manner set Greer back a step.

  “My name is Greer Hadley. I’m working with Ally at the Music Tree Foundation. Has she mentioned me?”

  “No.” Ally’s mother sent her gaze down Greer’s body and back up as if checking for threats. A sigh framed her next words. “What’s she done now?”

  “Nothing.” Greer tempered her shock at the cynical question with a smile and added, “Nothing bad, I mean. She’s actually demonstrated enormous talent.”

  “What?”

  “That’s why I’m here.” She held up the guitar case. “I wanted to drop a guitar off for her to practice on. If you don’t mind, that is.”

  The woman’s shoulders relaxed. “She’s doing well?”

  “Very well.” Greer nodded and waited.

  “All right then, you’d better come on in.” She swung the door open wider, and Greer stepped into a small entry that opened straight into a cozy den. “I’m Karen, by the way.”

  It was no different than the apartments Greer had rented her years in Nashville. Nondescript with no personality. At first, Greer had done her best to make them a home, but she’d learned the futility of that after her third move into progressively smaller places. Eventually, they became only a place to sleep.

  Karen had tried to liven up the beige walls and carpet. A color-blocked rug in reds and blues gave life to the worn, stained carpet and a houseplant that had seen better days sagged next to a small flat-screen TV on top of a wooden bureau that was
of good quality but had suffered scars.

  A picture hanging slightly askew on the wall drew Greer closer. Karen joined her and straightened it. A wedding photo featuring a handsome dark-skinned Latino man in an army dress uniform and a younger, less worn version of the woman at Greer’s shoulder radiating happiness and hope.

  Karen had been a kid when she married. She probably wasn’t more than half a dozen years older than Greer, yet those years represented a gulf of experience and grief Greer didn’t know how to bridge.

  “My husband was killed in action,” Karen said softly.

  “Ally told me.”

  “Did she?” Karen’s voice reflected her unsettled expression, as if speaking of his death aloud gave pieces of their memories away. She reached out and touched his face. Numerous smudge marks on the glass indicated the picture was a talisman of sorts.

  “All I can offer are my sympathies, which never seem like enough. I guess that’s why people feel the need to bring food to the bereaved.”

  Karen’s laugh was full of the same resentment and irony as Ally projected. Was it inherited or a learned behavior? “We had to throw out garbage bags of food afterward. The other wives in his company—the ones whose husbands survived—meant well, but I could smell the relief on them like cheap perfume. Not that I blame them. I’d been in their shoes—cooking casseroles and counting my blessings. I pray to God none of them end up in mine.”

  “Things have been hard?” Even though Greer posed it as a question, the answer was in the way Karen’s shoulders rolled forward and the lack of care she took with herself.

  “Javier and I were young when we married. He had already joined up, and I stayed at home. We wanted more kids but I guess it’s a blessing we only had Ally.”

  Greer stepped farther into the apartment. The shelf of a pass-through window to the kitchen was stocked like a small bar. An economy-size bottle of Jack was bookended by a bottle of Bacardi and the familiar amber of tequila. Smaller, airplane-size bottles were lined up like foot soldiers in front.

  “Are you working?” Although Greer was not here to judge another woman’s rock bottom, Karen’s raggedy old concert T-shirt and faded yoga pants didn’t qualify as business-casual attire, and a faint hint of whiskey tickled Greer’s nose.

  “I was working down at the Country Kitchen restaurant, but”—she cleared her throat—“things didn’t work out. You know how it is. So we’re stuck in this crappy place for now.”

  “Doesn’t the army provide some sort of benefits for you?” It felt crass to be discussing money as a benefit of her husband’s death. An inadequate, ignoble trade-off.

  “Javier arranged a trust for Ally for the majority of his benefits. He wanted her to go to college so bad. Neither one of us had the opportunity.”

  “Does she know about the trust?” Greer asked.

  “Yes, and she’s insisting she’s not going to college so we might as well break the trust and spend the money.” A hint of Ally’s stubbornness tightened Karen’s mouth even as her chin wobbled slightly. “I should be able to take care of us until I can get her off to college.”

  Karen was a mother doing her best in unimaginable circumstances. “You’re doing the best you can.”

  “Am I? I wonder sometimes.” Karen gestured toward a cozy den. “Come on in. Want something to drink?”

  “Water’s fine. Or iced tea if you’ve got it,” Greer said, mainly to have something to do with her hands. They wanted to form chords and strum as if the session with Ally had woken them from an enchanted sleep.

  While Karen was in the kitchen filling glasses with ice, Greer picked up a picture of Ally sitting in her father’s lap. She was ten or eleven but dwarfed by her father, who wasn’t looking at the camera but adoringly at Ally, grinning for whoever was taking the picture, presumably Karen. The innocent happiness made Greer’s chest ache with might-have-beens.

  “Javier loved her so much. They got along better than Ally and I ever did. The one thing we can agree on was how awesome her daddy was.”

  “She’s a tough kid.” Greer meant it in every possible way. Strong, but also hard to handle.

  “She’s secretive and distant and I have no idea what’s going on in her head.”

  “Isn’t that all teenagers?”

  Karen huffed a laugh and looked toward the window even though the curtains were drawn. “She’s changed schools enough, I assumed it would be an easy transition for her, but she’s gotten into trouble since almost the first day.”

  How much to tell her mother without betraying the tenuous trust Greer had built with Ally? She was saved from making a decision by the creak of the front door opening and the thud of Ally’s backpack hitting the floor.

  “I’m home.” Ally’s voice was monotone and didn’t invite questions.

  Karen rose. “Your friend Greer stopped by with a surprise for you. A guitar. I didn’t know you wanted to learn to play. You should have told me and I could have—”

  “There’s nothing left to pawn, Mom.” Ally turned to Greer with a face of stone. “You shouldn’t have come here.” Unfortunately, she didn’t say it in the Southern way of you shouldn’t have, but …

  “Well, I did.” Greer settled herself back on the couch and took a sip of tea. “A perfect amount of sugar in the tea, Karen.”

  “Javier grew up in Georgia and was particular about his sweet tea.” Karen aimed a melancholy smile at the glass.

  Greer recognized that Ally’s lyrics were inspired by her mother’s endless well of grief. A new melody meandered through Greer’s subconscious, flitting like a lightning bug showing itself in flashes too ephemeral to catch.

  “What about extended family? Do you have any close?”

  “A few cousins I haven’t talked to in years. I came from what might qualify as a white trash upbringing. Not that I realized it at the time. Everyone else was just as poor,” Karen said.

  “How did you and Javier meet?”

  Ally slunk farther into the den but didn’t sit. Greer did her best not to acknowledge her existence, sensing her interest in a story she must have heard before but perhaps not for a long while.

  “I dropped out and followed my high school boyfriend to Atlanta. When the relationship ended, I got a job waitressing at a bar the boys from Fort Benning frequented. I was young, and it was fun.” Her smile turned inward. “One night, I met Javier.”

  “He was fun too?” Ally asked.

  “He was more than fun. He lit up my world. I was a goner and so was he. We got married three weeks later.”

  “Three weeks? Mom! You were barely eighteen. You won’t even let me date.” Ally stepped forward and crossed her arms over her chest as if she were the parent and Karen the child. “I can’t believe you’ve never told me this before.”

  Karen’s laugh lightened the shadows and revealed a beauty sadness had veiled. “You weren’t old enough to handle the truth. Anyway, you’re smarter than I am. Smart enough to put your college money to good use.”

  “Why are you telling me now?”

  “Because you can handle the truth. You can handle anything life throws at you.”

  Ally made a dismissive noise but it came from a tear-clogged throat. “What else haven’t you told me?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.” Karen’s eyes said differently, but some memories between a man and a woman weren’t meant to be shared. “Aren’t you going to thank Greer for stopping by with the guitar, Ally?”

  Greer took the change in subject as a dismissal, put her glass on the side table, and stood. Karen followed suit.

  “Thanks,” Ally mumbled.

  “I had an idea to bounce off you. Walk me to the car?” After saying her good-byes to Karen, Greer waited until Ally reluctantly followed her outside.

  Ally kept her gaze aimed toward the ground and scuffed her shoes through the weeds growing along the cracks of the sidewalk. “What’s your idea?”

  “I don’t actually have one.” When Ally still didn’t look up,
Greer said, “I wanted to apologize for overstepping and coming here without asking you.”

  “Oh. It’s okay.”

  Unable to leave it at that, Greer tried again. “Your mom seems nice.”

  Ally shrugged. “Are we done? I have homework.”

  When Ally turned, Greer caught her wrist. “Can I do anything for you guys? You mentioned a pawnshop and—”

  “Yeah, you can mind your own damn business.” Ally shook loose of Greer and stalked back inside, letting the door slam behind her.

  “That went well,” Greer muttered as she climbed behind the wheel, wondering if she’d seen the last of Ally.

  Chapter 15

  Emmett lobbed off another low limb of the crepe myrtle and tossed it into the pile of trimmings. The hydrangea bushes no longer threatened to swallow the cabin and the tree looked neat again. Next up was clearing leaves out of the gutters. The last hard rain had revealed clogs.

  Wiping his forehead with the hem of his T-shirt, he made his way to the shed in the back of the cabin. He’d found yard tools hanging along the wall at the front along with a row of grass and pest killers that lent a chemical smell to the hot box-like space. Venturing farther into the dimness, he squinted toward the corners but saw nothing resembling a ladder. He would have to borrow one from the farm.

  Although it was inevitable, he wasn’t sure he was ready to head back to the Lawson homeplace. He’d text his mom and have her toss a ladder into the truck. Along with a casserole. His appetite had grown to monstrous proportions and a frozen pizza wasn’t going to satisfy him.

  The sound of a vehicle echoed through the pine trees. A buzz of anticipation burned through him like he’d injected whiskey straight into his jugular. Greer. But it wasn’t Greer’s vanilla sedan. An unknown truck, and a big one, pulled up toward the cabin. His anticipation faded into curiosity and caution.

  He made his way around the side of the cabin, lurking at the corner to scope out the possible enemy. While the truck was unfamiliar, the muscular black man who slid out was not. His shaved head reflected the sun.