Wisp of a Thing: A Novel of the Tufa (Tufa Novels)

by Alex Bledsoe

  I’ve got the music blasting off the ridges

  So I don’t have to think

  I hear the wind in the pines moan low under the beat

  For the price of my heart, I’d trade these wheels for wings,

  But I dance in the dying daylight as I sing

  The song that reminds me of you.

  The guitar kept the rhythm, while the banjo plucked a metronomic counterpoint. The fiddler wailed softly beneath the woman’s full voice.

  * * *

  The crowd was absolutely rapt. Even Berklee and Doyle kept their eyes on Bliss. Rob had never seen anyone so thoroughly command a crowd’s attention. Even the packed audiences at the TV show tapings had not been this riveted. The cliché said that at a good concert, each audience member felt as if the performer sang directly to him or her; here, that was no cliché at all.

  * * *

  Bliss closed her eyes and bent her head back, letting her long braid sway with the music. She knew that, when she sang right and truly embodied the music, she was beautiful, that all the empty superlatives slathered on her were, at that moment, entirely true. If the song was graceful, so was she; if the words were biting and yet playful, her smile shone the same way. The twinkle in her eye gleamed like the notes flying from the banjo, and she swayed like the fiddler’s bow. The clunky, flesh-bound bulk of her life was made bearable by these freed-spirit moments when she became what the Tufa ultimately were: a song. Then she slowly twirled, the skirt flaring around her, and timed it perfectly so that her hand slid back around the microphone as she began to sing again.

  Tell me what’s remembered or forgotten

  When my heart hits the ground

  There’s things I can’t get out of my mind

  And they’re pulling me down.

  She threw her free hand into the air, and the band stopped instantly, except for the plinking beat carried on the banjo.

  I tried to run for the hills

  But they were here and I was already theirs

  I wanted to crawl into my grave

  Give up my time to the things I can’t bear

  But your voice called me from the edge

  As I looked down into the comforting dark

  And now I huddle at your feet

  Bruised and bursting the seams of my heart.

  Then the band thundered back, or at least as much as a bluegrass trio could thunder, carrying the melody as Bliss sang wordlessly in a style half yodel, half blues wail.

  When they finished a measure later, the place went nuts.

  * * *

  Rob applauded and whistled through his teeth, as impressed by her presence as by her song. He’d just encountered a whole new genre; it was fucking Goth bluegrass.

  And for a brief moment, the pain and loneliness no longer enveloped him.

  * * *

  The appreciative noise fell over Bliss like an old, comfortable blanket until a sharp whistle stood out from the rest. Her eyes flitted among the familiar faces until, this time, she spotted the new one. He had black hair and Tufa-dark skin, although like Peggy Goins, she instantly knew he had no Tufa blood in him. He watched her with the inadvertently blatant look she knew so well. She didn’t know him, though; how had she missed him earlier? His presence recalled the previous night’s dream, and that connection sent a rush of panic through her. Suddenly the room felt small, hot, and dangerous. Hiding it as best she could, she made for the exit.

  * * *

  Rob leaned close to Doyle and shouted over the noise, “Who is that again?”

  “Bliss Overbay,” he said with real admiration. “Something, ain’t she?”

  “Yeah, she’s something, all right,” Berklee said, “and it rhymes with ‘rich.’” She finished her beer in one long drink, belched, and waved to the bartender for another.

  “She just does one song and then leaves?” Rob asked.

  “It is a weeknight, and she lives pretty far out of town,” Doyle said.

  “Good thing, too,” Berklee added as she took a drink of her fresh beer. “Much closer, and I don’t think you boys could stand it.”

  “I have to meet her, man,” Rob said. “I have to tell her how good she was.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Berklee sighed.

  “You better hurry, then,” Doyle said. “She’s probably already gone.”

  * * *

  Bliss saw the stranger break away from Doyle and Berklee Collins and move toward her, hindered by the crowd. It panicked her even more. She moved her fingers in a certain way, taught to her by her mother and stretching back in her family to a time when the rolling mountains grew jagged and tall into the ancient sky. It had the desired effect of hiding her from non-Tufa eyes, and she made her escape.

  * * *

  Rob pushed through the crowd as politely as he could. Outside, he saw no sign of Bliss, or dust from any recently departed vehicle. He rushed around the building, surprising the giddy young couple in the bed of a truck. But he saw no trace of the elusive dark-haired girl.

  He walked to the highway and looked for taillights topping any of the hills in the distance. Gradually the excitement dissolved, and he realized how uncharacteristically he’d behaved. It was too soon after Anna, he reminded himself. Sure, he’d noticed how hot Berklee Collins was, but that was normal and he could handle it. He’d never seriously pursue a married woman, and he wasn’t the kind of man to inspire thoughts of infidelity in them anyway. But Bliss Overbay was something else entirely, and he couldn’t even identify what about her attracted him so strongly: her voice, her smile, her eyes, or her song. It was as if she’d simply sent out some kind of emotional tentacle and wrapped it around him as she sang.

  But as his breathing slowed and he felt the cool night air on his sweaty skin, that intense hold faded. He turned and walked back to the Pair-A-Dice, his footsteps loud on the gravel.

  6

  Inside, Doyle and Berklee huddled together. Their expressions and gestures told Rob they were arguing. Not wanting to intrude, he detoured around the wall, until he tripped over the feet of the six-fingered banjo player.

  The old man sat by himself on a wall bench, sipping coffee from a faded, stained mug. Even in the crowded, noisy room, he radiated a kind of earthy calm, and everyone seemed to respect his personal space. He looked up sharply as Rob nearly fell over him, and swung the cup away so it wouldn’t splash on his lap. “Careful, son. This is hot.”

  “Sorry,” Rob said. When he realized who this was, he added, “Wow, you guys were great. I really enjoyed your set.”

  The man had the same sparkly eyes as Bliss Overbay, only the skin around them was drawn tight and deeply lined with crow’s-feet, giving him the gaze of a Spaghetti Western cowboy. When he turned his head a certain way he reminded Rob of someone, but it faded before he could place it. “Thank you, son,” the old man said. “You a musician, too, I see.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “Only place you got work muscles is from the elbow down. If you just had ’em in one arm, I’d reckon you spent a little too much time in your room, pluckin’ your own banjo. But since you got ’em in both, I figure it’s from playing the gee-tar or something.”

  “Good eye.”

  “I been around a long time.”

  Rob nodded at the empty space on the bench beside him. “May I join you?”

  “Reckon not. I figure you’ll want to talk about music and all, and I just ain’t interested. Talking about music is for the folks who can’t play it.”

  Rob paused, startled by the blatant rejection. Did the guy secretly recognize him from the TV show? “Well … I play, and I talk about it. What does that make me?”

  “You must not do either one of them too well, I reckon.” Then the old man turned to watch the people across the room, and Rob knew he’d been dismissed.

  Annoyed, he worked his way back to the bar, where Doyle now stood alone, scowling into his beer.

  “Where’s Berklee?” he asked.

&nb
sp; “Pissed off,” Doyle answered with no apparent malice. “Apparently, I didn’t blink enough while Bliss was singing, so she thought I was staring.”

  “Hard not to,” Rob acknowledged.

  “Yeah,” he agreed with weary admiration. “But you’d think after damn near twenty years of knowing that me and Bliss ain’t never going to be nothing but friends, Berklee would be over this. I mean, we all grew up together, it’s a little bitty town, and if I ain’t hooked up with Bliss before now, I ain’t likely to, you know?”

  “Women are funny.”

  “True enough.”

  “So what’s this Bliss girl’s story? She live around here?”

  “Other end of the valley, up the mountain.” He pointed with his beer. “Her family used to own a lot of land around here, and she managed to hang on to some of it, including that big ole house.”

  “What does her husband do?”

  He smiled. “Bliss ain’t the kind to let a man have too much influence, you know?”

  “She’s gay?”

  “Naw, she ain’t gay, or at least I don’t think she is. She’s just … comfortable being alone. She’s a big deal in the Tufa. What they call a ‘First Daughter.’”

  Berklee pushed through the crowd and stood before them, arms folded. “I’m sorry,” she barked, in the same way another woman might’ve said, “Go to hell.”

  “Ah, me, too, honey,” Doyle said magnanimously. He stepped aside and gallantly gestured at the empty space against the wall. She slid into it, still glaring. “That’s how she apologizes,” he explained to Rob as he handed his wife a fresh beer.

  “My whole life, every guy in this goddam town has wanted to get in Bliss Overbay’s blue jeans, and it’s just getting old.” Berklee said sulkily. “It ain’t solid gold down there, you know? It just ain’t.”

  “I don’t want in anybody’s blue jeans but yours,” Doyle said patiently.

  Rob took a long drink of his beer, unable to get the image of Bliss out of his mind. As the band began to play again, he found himself picturing her standing at the front of the stage, swaying to the music, dancing alone like a pagan priestess in her circle.

  * * *

  Doyle and Berklee dropped Rob off at the Catamount Corner just before midnight. He had to use the buzzer to get Mrs. Goins to let him in. He was a little drunk, and as he undressed, he felt the usual pangs of loneliness begin. He thought about shutting the window, but the slight chill made the prospect of the thick blankets even more inviting.

  So, as he had done so many times in the past three months, he carefully turned off all the lights, crawled into bed alone, and cried himself to sleep.

  * * *

  Bliss sat on the short, age-warped dock that extended out over the lake behind her house. Her bare feet dangled in the cold water, and she held her guitar across her lap. She idly picked notes as she watched the ripple patterns, losing herself in the rings of reflected moonlight. The sky blazed with stars occasionally blocked as small clouds scudded along with the night wind. Insects and frogs provided a steady accompaniment, and the owl that lived across the water called out to its mate. Mosquitoes swarmed about her, but none landed to feed. They knew better.

  Suddenly she realized she was playing the song that had been stuck in her head all week, “Wrought Iron Fences” by the Mississippi singer-songwriter Kate Campbell. Her tentative picking grew stronger, and she sang:

  Tangled vines cover the lattice

  They creep and crawl around the house

  Nobody lives there

  Only ghosts hang around

  She reviewed the night’s events as she played. She’d gone to the Pair-A-Dice on a whim, wanting only to sing and feel the musical blood rushing through her. Nothing ever replaced performing in front of people, especially her people, who knew just how crucial music could be. She’d seen Doyle and Berklee, and noted again the woman’s deteriorating condition. The hateful glares Berklee directed at her held no threat; Bliss understood their source. She wished Doyle did, and would admit it, and take the only action possible. She’d known Doyle all his life, knew both his goodness and weakness, and hated to see the former suffer due to the latter. But there was nothing she or anyone else could do. Some things were irreversible.

  Doyle’s heartbreak hadn’t brought her to the water this night, though. The boy with them, the stranger, obsessed her. He looked vaguely, distantly familiar. Who was he? He had Tufa hair and Tufa skin, but he wasn’t Tufa; of that, she was sure. Why had he stared at her with such intensity? She was attractive, sure, but no great beauty and certainly not worthy of that sort of attention. She knew after one song that she had to get out before he approached her, but now she couldn’t get him out of her head. What would he have said to her?

  She finished “Wrought Iron Fences” and closed her eyes as the music changed, grew softer and more sensual. She was a First Daughter, and more than that, she was the regent for her people until Mandalay reached her majority. She was resigned to the solitude those roles demanded, and any feelings that arose and made her reconsider it were, she knew by now, mere fleeting hormones. The feel of the cold water on her toes was all she needed to endure it. She’d never see the boy again, and the urgent thoughts would fade, and Needsville would return to its routine.

  But on this night, under the moon, she could almost howl with frustration.

  As if reading her mind, a distant cry echoed through her little wooded hollow. She stopped playing immediately and listened for any subsequent sound. She thought she heard one, but it was much farther away and may have just been the wind. Sometimes even she couldn’t be certain.

  It broke the moment. She went inside, leaving the night to its creatures, and the night wind to its riders.

  * * *

  Rob snapped awake.

  Every muscle tight with anticipation, he listened again, unable to clearly recall what awoke him. An echo seemed to hover in the room, but it faded before he could identify it.

  In the distance, a screech owl cried. Somewhere a car crunched gravel. But these were normal sounds, and too faint to rouse him out of his exhausted sleep. What had he heard?

  Somewhere a coyote faintly yipped. It sounded amused.

  It must have been a dream. Maybe the airplane nightmare again. Or just noise in the building, another guest or something. Or someone outside in the street, although at this time of night, Needsville seemed abandoned to its ghosts.

  He took several deep, regular breaths and closed his eyes.

  Then the sound came again, and he sat straight up in bed.

  It was a cry similar to the coyote’s, with the same rhythm and timbre. But it was in a somewhat higher range, and had an unmistakable human quality. Somewhere outside, fairly close, someone was howling back at the night.

  Then the sound turned into a long, despondent wail, a new sound not native to the wild. It was the sound of a human being in true pain, of someone demanding answers from a God who refused to reply.

  The cry faded into the night. After a few moments, the crickets and other insects resumed their music, and the real coyote yelped once, as if to acknowledge the human crier’s superior torment. Rob lay awake for a long time, but the noise never came again.

  7

  “Yeah, I’m on my way,” Bliss Overbay said into the phone. She watched dust float in the sun blazing through the window over her sink. “Just wanted to warn you I’ll be a few minutes late, I have to run through town and pick up some things. Okay. Bye.”

  She hung up the ancient rotary phone and leaned against the kitchen wall beside it. She remembered that same phone from when she’d been a child in this house, ringing with the good and bad news that marked transitions in her life. She yawned, then padded across the hardwood floor, leaving wet footprints from the shower. She’d lied to her boss: She had nothing to pick up in town. She did, however, have a major sense that something important required her presence there, and she knew better than to ignore it.

  In the bathroo
m, she undid the towel from her hair and let the water-heavy black strands fall down her bare shoulders and back. The unadorned face she seldom showed to the world looked out from her mirror. To her, she looked as old as the hills around her, and far less graceful.

  As she brushed her hair, the snake tattoo coiled around her biceps seemed to move independently of her arm. Its one visible eye watched her in the mirror.

  She yawned again, this time so hard, her ears popped. She’d slept only in fits, and in between had endured the entirely inappropriate desire she’d felt since making eye contact with that strange boy at the Pair-A-Dice. At last, just before dawn, it faded enough for her to get a bit of deep, dreamless sleep. Then her alarm clock yanked her back to the mundane world.

  Now she slowly braided her hair, her movements as lethargic as her thoughts. She needed coffee, and clear air, and a song to get her connected back to this existence. The coffee was brewing, and she opened the window to allow the cool morning breeze to caress her still-damp skin. And as for the song, there was only one that would do.

  Her voice, the one she used only for occasions when the song meant life or death, rang through the empty old house. The air trembled the way it always did, and she felt the presence of those the song summoned, praised, and kept in their proper places.

  Oh, time makes men grow sad

  And rivers change their ways

  But the night wind and her riders

  Will ever stay the same.…

  * * *

  “Oh, God,” Berklee said, her arm draped across her eyes. “There ought to be some exercise to thicken your eyelids so the sun can’t get through. Do you think every time you blink, you wear them down a little?”

  She lay in bed, naked except for her bra and one sock. Doyle stood at the closet holding a clean shirt. He’d slept on the couch once he saw that Berklee was going to toss and mutter all night, and even in the other room, with the door shut and the air conditioner running, his wife’s drunken snoring kept him awake until nearly dawn.

  “I can put some tinfoil over the windows if you want,” he said.

  She sat up, blinking. “No, that’s just stupid. Besides, I have to go to work. Is there coffee?”