“You been M.I.A.,” she said. Her voice was exactly what Blue expected, the kind that belonged to a woman named Marge. “Folks started to think you pulled a runner. Again.”
Tish laughed. “Not likely. I got nowhere to run to, not anymore.”
The woman waved her hand. “Whatever. The girls are waiting in back.”
Tish kept moving, drink in her free hand. Blue tagged after, trying hard not to knock anyone in the head with her guitar.
The back turned out to be a little room off a low platform set up as a stage. A guitar waited in a stand, and a bass and three mics lined up in the front. The girls were all women at least as old as Tish.
“JFC, Tish, cutting it a little close, aren’t ya?” The speaker had long blond hair pulled back with a large turquoise clip, and bangs that rested neatly across her forehead.
“Sharlene, abbreviating the words doesn’t cancel out the fact that you’re swearing. Women, this is Blue. Blue, these are Pour Me Another.”
“You always did have the manners of a ranch hand, Tish.” The blonde approached Blue. “Hon, I’m Sharlene. Tish and I go way back.”
“As in, they used to hate each other’s guts in high school.” The new speaker had gray hair cut in a bob, and a mole above her upper lip. “Louise.”
She held out her hand. Blue shook it, conscious of the doughy weight of it and the tang of the woman’s perfume.
“And that’s Lana. She don’t talk much, but she knows her way around a mandolin.”
The last woman—lean and dark-skinned, with fingers covered in silver rings—shook her head. “No reason to talk to y’all. Not if I expect anything resembling common sense.”
The others laughed. All but Tish, who was busy warming up her fiddle. The bartender poked her head in, and Sharlene nodded. “We’re coming, we’re coming. Just give the Gypsy here a chance to get herself organized.”
Just like that they were headed out on stage, leaving Blue on her own. She walked out, still carrying her guitar, and leaned against the corner of the bar. Someone had always made a nest for her in a backstage corner whenever Dry Gully had played—a little swirl of blankets somewhere people wouldn’t trip over her.
Tish stood to one side on stage, fiddle in hand. To see her there, so different from how she used to be, and so much the same—it hurt in Blue’s throat, made her eyes sting. Had Mama been there, she would have been different, too, in ways no one would ever know now.
There were hoots from the crowd as the band launched into its first tune, one Blue recognized from the songs Tish had taught her. Sharlene belted it out with Tish and Lana on backup. The creek ain’t dry / Just climb a little higher / The wood looks bad / But beneath there’s a fire.
The bartender came over, offered her a water bottle.
“I know you’re not legal, so don’t try to convince me otherwise.”
Blue held up one hand. The woman eyed her as if Blue were making a play for her job. “How come you’re with Tish?”
She put down the guitar, fumbled for her notebook. The woman watched, one elbow down on the bar, while she scribbled out an answer.
“Niece, huh? Not by blood, you’re not. Tish hasn’t got any siblings.”
Sometimes it doesn’t matter if it’s blood.
The woman shrugged. “Fair enough. What do you think of your aunt?”
She’s always been the best.
There was an intermission eventually. Blue went back into the little room with them, listened to their private jokes, stood awkward and alone. Tish looked happy. Not the way she had after a Dry Gully concert, fever-flushed and a little dangerous.
This was her life. She’d had Dry Gully, she’d loved Mama, and then she’d moved on. Life did that, moved on. Cass, wherever she was, she’d be different now, too.
Mama shouldn’t have changed, couldn’t, but it felt as if she had. She’d become thoughtless, cruel, even. All those memories, every one now lit by an unfriendly light. Mama hadn’t considered anything but her own regrets when she decided to leave Tish and take them to Maine. How could she have done that, never giving any of them a choice?
Then the band was going back out, and Blue was following again, this time leaving the guitar behind. She didn’t know why Tish had made her bring it, didn’t know how any of this fit with her threat of calling for help. No one in the bar looked like a psychiatrist waiting for a patient.
She’d gone all the way to the back this time, near the door, when she heard her name. “Sapphire Blue, where’s Sadie?”
Like an arrow, straight through her and out the other side. Sadie, Mama’s name for the guitar. Blue shrugged, trying to look nonchalant as everyone turned toward her.
Tish gave her a no-arguments look. “Go get her and come up here.”
Up there? No frigging way. This wasn’t Barn Magic, this wasn’t trying to get warm and being thankful for a few lanterns and some chili. They were getting paid for their music, and she didn’t know most of it, and they already had a guitar.
But Tish stared her down, one finger tapping ever so lightly on the body of her fiddle. This wasn’t a fight Blue would win.
And maybe she didn’t want to win.
Guitar in hand, she stepped onstage. The other three women moved back, leaving her alone with Tish. “Plug in,” Tish said. Hands shaking a little, Blue took the cord Lana handed her and plugged it into the bottom of the guitar.
“This, dear barflies, is Blue. She’s underage and harder than a railroad tie, and she’s got me looking out for her, so none of you even think of trying to buy her a drink later on.”
Laughter from all sides, the sound buffeting her as she stood mute.
“This is also her first time onstage, even on a pissant stage like this one, so you’ll forgive her if she stands here like a statue instead of tuning her guitar like a real musician.”
More laughter. Blue played a few chords, conscious of everyone watching her.
“‘Avenue A,’” Tish said out of the corner of her mouth before returning to the patter. “We’re going to play something from my past,” she told the audience. “Something about the roads love travels when it ends.”
The guitar led in “Avenue A.” The song was Blue’s to start, and everyone was waiting. She began to play.
It was as if time were an accordion, the pleats of it—lengthened by years—suddenly pulled close. Mama’s guitar, her own hands, Tish’s fiddle crying, then Tish’s voice taking its place, rough and lonely. It was who she had been, who she was now. In that moment, she knew what it meant to tell your life to strangers in three-minute bites of music. She knew why people did it, no matter what it cost them.
Then it was over, and the applause poured through and around her. Tish whispered something to her, too soft to hear, like a feather stroking her ear, and kissed her cheek. The other women patted her on the shoulder, and Sharlene helped her unplug the guitar. She watched the rest of the show feeling as though the music were a river flowing through them all.
When the music ended, Blue went outside. She wanted the fresh air. The stars stretched forever across the sky, the land as flat and open as the ocean. She tilted her head back and breathed deep.
The smell reached her at the same time as the voice. It wasn’t quite the same: sweeter, softer, fresher, a wood fire with cider brewing on top, just a touch of rot thrown in.
“Bluebird, you’ve been hiding.” Like silk, like skin. Not one single voice she knew, but more familiar than any.
How could I be hiding? Can’t you see me everywhere?
She was wearing the red dress again. Her long black hair blew loose around her shoulders. Her black coat was open in the front, her feet shod in high black boots. The night wrapped around her like folds of velvet.
“Interesting question.” It didn’t sound interesting. It sounded more like puzzlement, like uncertainty. “Sometimes life puddles, Bluebird. Sometimes you throw a stick into the water upstream and wait and wait, and it doesn’t come, because it’s
lost in an eddy somewhere.”
So I’m a stick?
She could feel the amusement ripple toward her.
Wait. Now that you’ve found me, promise me that you won’t hurt Tish.
She had been hiding, and now she was being pulled from her burrow by a creature with teeth and claws, and she couldn’t let the same happen to Tish.
“Tish.” The woman drew it out, like the slip of water over sand. “Tell me—does she know you? Does she know you as well as I know you? Does she know all your secrets?”
Does it make a difference what she knows? She knows me. She took care of me. She’s—
“She’s what? Tell me what she is to you and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do.”
The rattle of a door came from behind them, the sound of voices spilling from the open door. Tish and Sharlene paused there, Tish laughing as Sharlene touched her cheek, kissed her. Then Tish walked across the lot toward them.
She’s . . . she’s . . . just her. That’s all. I’m going to leave, once things are set. I just haven’t yet.
The woman in the red dress smoothed her coat, tied the sash. “Nice evening,” she said as Tish neared.
“So it is. You ready?” Tish asked, one hand on Blue’s shoulder. Blue nodded. Together they turned, left the woman behind them.
She fought the urge to turn back to see whether they were being pursued. Instead, she walked close to Tish, their arms touching, until Tish put one arm around her.
“Good job, kid. You made me proud tonight.”
Blue walked down the drive, now keeping track of the time with a watch swiped from Tish’s desk. Five minutes, ten, fifteen, twenty, and there was still no end in sight. After the first five minutes, the house looked no farther away, the road no closer.
She used to cover the two miles through the woods to Teena’s house in a half hour. When they’d driven out last night, it had taken no time at all. Blue took one last look, and turned back.
A puddle. Somehow in the middle of Nowhere, Wyoming, a puddle had formed around Tish. Stay in the puddle, she was safe. But the thing about puddles was that they could dry up, or come undammed, and then there would be nothing to protect her anymore. Or Tish.
Tish was in her office with the door closed when Blue came in. She found her notebook, wrote quickly, and knocked at Tish’s door.
Tish scanned the note. “Leave. Blue? You still haven’t told me what’s going on, and it’s winter. There’s no way I’m just going to put you on the road somewhere.”
You have to.
She paused, thought.
It’s life or death.
Wrong thing. She should have known better. Tish pointed to the rocking chair in the corner of the room. “Sit. Tell me what’s going on. All of it.”
If Tish wouldn’t take her, maybe she could leave another way. Hike out the way she’d come, through the snow, with no idea where she was going. Maybe her boots would tell her. Then again, maybe the puddle was the reason they hadn’t known where to go.
“I’m serious. You’ve told me a collection of events, but not why they happened. Not why you won’t talk.”
I CAN’T TALK!!!
She thumped the table with her fist. More than that, opened her mouth, tried to yell, strained until her throat seemed to be tearing open. Silence. Air, moving without vibration.
Tish held up both hands. “Okay, you can’t talk. Tell me why. Healthy young women don’t suddenly lose their voices. What happened at Lynne’s?”
Sometimes distance made it easier to see. She touched her throat.
Last spring, I broke up with my BF, and then Teena, my BFF, dumped me.
That wasn’t right. She tried again.
Cassie left. It was just me and Lynne, and
Further back still. Didn’t her story really need to begin Mama was dying and I could see it coming and couldn’t stand it. Wasn’t that the place where everything else started?
Loss grows like poisoned brambles. It takes the good spaces and the bad, it creeps into everything, until you look down and realize that every step is surrounded.
It all poured off Blue’s pencil tip onto the paper. What happened before, what happened at the crossroads, the woman and the kiss and the feel of her voice being sucked away. Amy and the man in the blue shirt; the church, the driver’s license, Andrea and Lacey and the police coming to Beyond. Everything.
When Tish finished reading, she set down the paper and touched Blue’s cheek.
“Baby girl, you’ve had it tough.”
She had to write, couldn’t wait any longer.
I’m crazy, right?
Tish pulled away, looked at her own hand as if something might be waiting in it. “Crazy’s a mean word. People use it to hurt themselves, hurt others. Not all that many years ago, I would have been called crazy for being who I am. So let’s set that word aside.
“This world, we see it through all kinds of peepholes. Microscopes, telescopes, binoculars turned backward.” Laughter echoed in Blue’s head, a memory of all four of them playing with a pair of binoculars. “Sometimes we see things one way, sometimes another; some of them are never recognizable again. It’s the magic of being alive.”
You’re not answering.
“I believe you made a deal in November, Blue. I believe that deal has driven you away from home, into some god-awful places as well as some incredible ones. I believe that trip isn’t done yet.”
Blue felt as though her body had laces running through it, just like a pair of boots, and they’d been tied so tight for so long that she’d forgotten about them, and now, suddenly, they were cut free and there was nothing to bind her breath, to hold her in. Free, too free, no longer knowing how to be.
“The thing is, Blue, I don’t know if you really know who you made your deal with.”
A sucker punch, knocking her flat.
What do you mean?
“The rules may be different than you think. You’ve been running so hard that you have no idea where you’re going, what’s driving you.”
Trying to keep everyone.
Tish took the paper from her.
“No, listen. You believe you’re trying to save people from you. You believe this woman has your voice and she chooses when to give it back. You’ve given up every bit of power you have; and Jesus, Blue, you have a lot. I understand you feel you need to move on, and I’ll help you with that. But you need to think about where you’re going, not just what you’re running from.”
The deal the made was for her to stay until the weather turned toward spring. In the meantime, Tish bought her a sleeping bag and a new pack and clothes to fill it. Together they looked over maps and talked about where musicians traveled and where runaways did, and how those places overlapped. Cities where Cass might be, things she might be doing.
Blue kept returning to the idea of the puddle. If the puddle kept the woman in the red dress from finding her, couldn’t it also keep her from finding Cass? It wasn’t that Cass was dead, it was that the boots were stranded. Once she stepped into the current again, she would know where to go.
Only, she had been so sure she knew where to go when she first set out.
I thought it was the Gully. You know how you and Mama found each other.
Tish nodded. “That’s the thing about journeys. Sometimes you have to reach past everything you know. My journey and your mom’s aren’t yours. Or Cass’s.”
“Songwriting’s not for the meek.” They were sitting at the table, Blue’s words laid out before them. “It means putting a piece of yourself out there, in front of people. Your words, your music, no filter. Not that everyone does it that way. There’s plenty of crap out there written by people who spent more time worrying about rhyme than they did about what their song actually said. I don’t think that’s what you’re aiming for. Not if I go by what you’ve written here.”
Tish ran an index finger down each page in turn. Finally, she stopped, tapping one verse.
I got a dollar in
my pocket,
Fifty cents of that is yours,
I got a sleeping bag in my pack,
With room for just one more,
I got miles of road I’ve traveled
And miles more to roam,
And the only thing I know for sure
Is as long as I’m with you, I’m home.
“First of all, that’s where it actually starts to sound like you. Not like me or Clary. Just you.”
Blue ducked her head a bit. Tish was right. It was like letting someone peek inside her.
“Second, the last line loses it completely. Did you try to sing it to yourself?”
She pointed at her throat. Tish rolled her eyes.
“In your head. Jesus, Beethoven was deaf and still managed to write music that made sense.”
Tish pushed away from the table a bit and began to clap, slow and steady. Instead of singing, she spoke the words to the rhythm of her clap. When she came to the last line, it all fell apart.
Blue studied her words while her cheeks burned flame-hot.
“Kid, that’s the way it goes. No one stands up for the first time and goes out to do a world-record dash. I had notebooks of crap before I found the first few lines that worked.”
Blue rubbed the eraser of the pencil against her lips for a moment. Then, heart fluttering as if she were cutting with a scalpel instead of drawing a line, she crossed out the problem words.
Now Tish sang, using the music they’d been toying with for weeks: “And the only thing I know for sure / Is with you I’m home. Closer.”
It felt good. More than good, like sunshine, like a warm bed, like laughing. Like Barn Magic.
She found the phone number online and copied it into her notebook carefully, then set it on the table in front of Tish.
Tish’s half of the conversation gave little away. “My niece,” she said, and “sometime in November,” and “hospital.” She nodded, doodled on the page. “I understand, and if she could talk for herself, she would. Since she can’t, I’m acting as intermediary.”
Devil and the Bluebird Page 22
