His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee)

by Theodora Taylor

  With that threat, he grabbed me by the arm and said, “C’mon. I’ve got beer in my room. Some pot, too.”

  “You go to school around here?” Colin asked me, like Mike hadn’t even said anything.

  “No, she’s over in Beaumont,” Mike answered.

  My cheeks heated with Mike’s confirmation that I was indeed from the wrong side of the tracks. Beaumont was a small neighborhood in Birmingham that managed to earn a spot on the news for violent outbreaks at least once a week. But the rent was cheap, and living there gave my mother more to spend after the monthly check came in from my father.

  “How about you?” I asked Colin, rushing away from the subject. “Do you go to school with Mike?”

  “Yes, Mike and I attend the same school,” Colin answered, as if he and Mike were little more than far flung associates, even though they apparently lived in the same house.

  “He’s our housekeeper’s son, so technically, he’s in the district.” Mike all but sneered.

  The way Mike referred to him as “our housekeeper’s son,” as if that made him too low to attend the same school as him, made my blood crawl. Another feeling I remember clearly from That Night.

  And it must have done something to Colin’s inside, too, because his fist bunched at his sides, even as he flashed another charming smile my way.

  “You should come back with your guitar sometime,” he said to me, like Mike wasn’t even there. “We could try our hand at some Mark O’Connor.”

  “You play guitar?” Mike asked me. Like this was some kind of state secret I’d kept from him on purpose, as opposed to one of the many things we’d never gotten around to talking about since he never seemed all that interested in actually talking to me.

  “I do,” I admitted to Mike. “But I’ve never heard of Mark O’Connor,” I confessed to Colin.

  “You should look him up. He’s mostly known for his fiddle work, but he plays guitar, too—”

  In a sudden burst of violence Mike yanked the violin case off the ground and flipped open its latches.

  “No!” I yelled, instinctively knowing what he planned to do.

  But Mike already had the violin case open. I only got a small glimpse of the frail instrument, its smooth wood gleaming underneath the back stairs light, before Mike took it by the neck and flung it with all his might against the side of the house.

  The next thing I heard was it hitting the house with a sickening crack.

  “Oops,” Mike said to Colin, his face shining with smug triumph. “I guess you should have gotten out of my way when I told you to the first time, huh, Fairgood?”

  “You son of a bitch!” Colin ran over to where the violin had fallen to the ground.

  “How could you do that?” I asked Mike.

  Mike sneered again and shook his head. “That kid’s gotten uppity lately, forgetting about who employs who around here. Now he knows not to cross me.”

  I had no idea how to answer that seriously fucked up explanation for ruining somebody’s instrument. So I didn’t. Instead I went over to Colin and bent down next to him over his broken violin. Colin was looking it over like a doctor trying to decide what to do next. But even I with my limited knowledge of violins could tell it was too late. The instrument was lying there in two pieces, its stringed neck hanging at a crooked angle from the rest of its wooden body.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my heart breaking for both Colin and the beautiful instrument.

  Colin didn’t answer. But I could actually see his thin chest heaving in and out with rage and sorrow as he looked over his poor, broken instrument. And when he got to his feet, I knew what he was fixing to do even before he started toward Mike.

  “Colin, don’t!” I yelled, getting to my own feet in order to run after him.

  But it was too late. By the time I caught up with Colin, he and Mike were full out brawling. Their fighting styles were almost comically different. Mike, bulky football player that he was, threw punch after punch while Colin feinted and dodged, using his elbows and knees to occasionally land a good blow on Mike.

  For a few moments, I watched them go at it in horror-struck fascination. Colin looked exactly like what he was. A violinist/fiddler who knew he couldn’t hurt his hands, but was determined to take on the asshole who’d destroyed his instrument.

  I thought of what Colin had said before about having a spot in the Youth Symphony, and what would happen if he lost his ability to play because of this fight, and my heart seized with panic for him.

  “Stop!” I yelled at them as loudly as I could without attracting attention.

  They didn’t even pause.

  So I did my best impression of the small boxing referees I’d seen on TV and got between them, shoving them apart as I did.

  Colin stopped fighting immediately. But then he yelled, “Get out the way!” at me.

  “No!”

  “I’d listen to him if I were you, girl,” Mike growled on the other side of me.

  He took several menacing steps forward, and I knew I only had a matter of seconds before he mowed me down in order to get to Colin. Both the guys didn’t just look angry—they looked murderous. Whatever this was between them, it wasn’t about me, or even the violin, really. It was about class, privilege, and entitlement, and it went deep.

  But I stood my ground against Mike anyway.

  “Well, you’re not me, boy,” I let him know. “And if you don’t want me screamin’ so everybody comes running, then I suggest you turn your butt around and head on up to your room. Otherwise, a whole bunch of folks are about to find out you’ve been clocking time with a black girl.”

  The way Mike’s face blanched told me nearly more than anything proceeding that moment that I’d been nothing less than a stone cold idiot to ever let this boy touch me.

  “Go’on, Mike,” I said. “Just go’on now.” I could barely stand to look at him.

  For a moment, Mike looked cowed. But only for a moment.

  Eventually he straightened up, a nasty smile coming over his face, as he looked around me at Colin.

  “What is it with you and the black girls?” he asked. “You know what? I think I’m going to go over to Beau’s now and tell him I just discovered your special wimp power. Getting black girls to save you from ass kickings.”

  I had no idea what Mike was talking about, but my entire chest split open at the mention of Beau. Beautiful Beau Prescott, who I’d never had the guts to talk to myself. The boy whose football buddy I’d settled for. Thinking of Beau, I watched Mike walk away, out of the yard, and through the white picket gate. All casual, as if leaving was exactly what he’d been fixing to do all along.

  When he was out of eyeshot, I relaxed and turned to Colin. “You alright?” I asked him.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  Not quite the answer I’d been expecting after saving his bacon, and I stared at him, blinking, I was so taken aback.

  Another thing I remember clearly about that night: the way his eyes glittered in the moonlight as he snarled, “You shouldn’t have interfered.”

  I took a step back, but just like with Mike, I stood my ground. “I was only trying to help.”

  “What makes you think I needed some idiot girl’s help?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I guess you being maybe a buck forty soaking wet up against a state champion football player made me think that?”

  “I weigh a lot more than that,” Colin shot back as he went to pick his Urkel glasses up out of the grass. They were, like the violin, bent at an awkward angle, but he jammed them back on his face anyway.

  And that made me feel sorry for him all over again.

  Because the truth was, if I hadn’t intervened, Mike would have kicked his ass. Probably would have broken a few fingers, too, just because.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, letting some apology creep into my voice. “I thought I was helping.”

  “You didn’t help me,” Colin spat out. “You j
ust gave him something else to lord over me. So thank you for that, Beaumont girl.”

  “Colin, I was only trying to—”

  “Get out of here,” he said, voice vicious as a thunderstorm. “I’m sick of looking at your idiot face.”

  As insults went, it wasn’t the worst I’d had flung at me. I had been playing guitar in mostly white establishments since the age of eight, after all. But something about his dismissal cut me deep, digging into old wounds that had never properly healed. At that point, I’d been getting dismissed all my life. By my father, by club owners, by my mother, by school teachers who’d told me I’d never amount to anything because I was more interested in coming up with new song lyrics than learning what they had to teach. Hell, this whole summer with Mike had felt like a dismissal.

  But at that moment, I just couldn’t take getting dismissed by Colin, too.

  “I’m not your servant,” I informed him. “You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

  “Get out of here,” he said, advancing on me.

  I tried to shove him back, and was shocked to find he’d been telling the truth. He wasn’t nearly as skinny as he appeared. He didn’t even stumble.

  He, on the other hand, had no problem getting me to move. He pushed me toward the white picket fence. “Get out of here!”

  I stumbled, but came back with a “No!” and stood strong.

  Another push toward the fence. “I said get out of here, Beaumont girl!”

  The insult of him referring to me once again by the name of my neighborhood made me erupt like a volcano. The next thing I knew, I was kicking at him and shoving him away from me, yelling, “No! No! Get your hands off of me!”

  My endgame? I had no idea. Still don’t. In that moment, I just knew I wasn’t going to let him push me away or throw me off the Lancers’ property like a bag of trash.

  At first he just kept on trying to corral me toward the gate. But for every little push he gave me, I shoved him, as hard as I could. Putting all my body weight into it, and swiping at him like a cat when he tried to advance on me again.

  “I said git, Beaumont!” he yelled at me.

  “And I said no!” I yelled right back.

  He let out a low growl, and the next thing I knew, my back slammed into the wall beside the stairs, a hand manacling around my wrists, pinning them above my head before I could fight back, much less shove him away.

  I tried to move, but he was stronger than he looked. He easily kept me pinned against the side of the Lancers’ mansion, his thin chest pressed into my soft one… and something else that wasn’t so thin pressed into my stomach.

  That was when things got weird.

  We’d just fought. Like, physically fought. And now he had my back to the wall, with what felt like a raging hard on inside his jeans.

  I was scared. I’d only really gone through puberty that year, and despite what my newly big chest and wide hips might have led others to believe, I didn’t have much experience with boys yet. Mostly with Mike, I’d just lain there and taken it.

  But there was no mistaking what was happening to me in this position. I could feel heat pooling between my legs as my breasts became incredibly tight, their nipples pebbling behind my thin cotton bra.

  “It’s time for you to go.” His voice was barely above a feral whisper at that point.

  He was right. I should go. I should run. But something inside of me still couldn’t give in.

  “No!” I practically spat back at him. “You can’t make me.”

  Something flashed across his face then, a look so mean, it made my heart go into free fall, and my mouth open to take back what I’d just said.

  But then he kissed me. And the kiss was somehow scarier than him pinning me against the wall or the mean look that came before it.

  It felt like I’d been unexpectedly pushed into a boiling kettle, and my whole body was instantly consumed by heat. I could feel him. Not just his lips, and hands, and thin body, but the stuff on the inside, too. All his rage and anger. All his sadness, as he dragged his lips over mine.

  I could also feel his long length pulsating at my core, despite the layers separating our actual flesh. Feel it and want it like I’d never wanted any other boy’s thing inside of me before.

  I suddenly found myself wishing my hands were free. I wanted to feel it for real. Wanted to feel him for real. I rolled my hips underneath his kiss, trying to get to the part of him I wanted inside of me. My new body had gotten so hot, so fast I couldn’t even remember to play it cool like you’re supposed to when it comes to boys.

  I just wanted to. I just wanted him. I just wanted to with him…

  “Dammit, Beaumont,” Colin said, his hand squeezing my wrists where he still had them pinned above my head. “This is crazy. We’ve got to stop.”

  I tried to ignore him. Tried to catch his lips again. He wanted me. I knew he did, knew this couldn’t possibly be a one-sided thing.

  But he ripped his lips away from mine.

  “You’re one of Mike’s girls,” he reminded me. “And you’re from Beaumont. You don’t have any business being here, doing what you’ve been doing with Mike—what you almost did with me.”

  “My mom needs this job, so this house is my prison.” He shook his head, and it was hard to tell if he was still talking to me or himself when he said, “But I’ve only got a year left on my sentence before I can go away to college. It ain’t worth it.”

  Colin released my hands and drew back, looking at me like I was a pile of trash that had just walked out of a dumpster and tried to convince him to do it with her.

  “You ain’t worth it.”

  Those words, more than any he’d said before, cut me bad. So bad, I couldn’t answer. Couldn’t think of anything to say in my defense.

  Then he drove the knife in even deeper, pointing at me, as he said, “You need to git.”

  This time, he didn’t wait for me to say no again. Just wiped his hands on his threadbare jeans and headed up the stairs. Leaving me to stand there on that wall, still shaken to my very core by our kiss, still cut raw by his words, as I watched his stork-like body disappear.

  The sound of his receding footsteps was soon followed by the slam of the back door. And I was left with no doubt whatsoever in my mind that I wouldn’t ever see the housekeeper’s son again.

  But I was wrong about that.

  I did see him again. Just a couple of years later, on my grandma’s 35” TV.

  Turned on CMT one day, and there he was. At least, I was halfway sure it was him. The guy singing on my grandma’s TV looked like a suped up version of the one who’d kissed me on that hot Alabama summer night. His hair was no longer stringy, but fell in gorgeous waves that shone like spun gold underneath the studio lights. He’d put on quite a bit of muscle. I mean, he wasn’t muscle bound like Beau Prescott, but he definitely wasn’t a bag of sticks anymore either. I could see how well defined his body was under the long-sleeved Charlie Daniels Band varsity t-shirt he wore. He also still had those pretty blue eyes, and that good ol’ southern boy smile, both of which he unleashed on the audience as he sang.

  Colin, the housekeeper’s son, was, I realized as I watched him singing on my grandma’s TV, drop dead gorgeous. The nerdy air he’d carried with him had completely disappeared, right along with his glasses.

  And the song he was singing wasn’t bad either.

  His voice, I figured, was just a little better than okay, but I had to give it to him for his lyrics. They were excellent. And for somebody who used to be in the Alabama Youth Symphony, he knew how to play one hell of a country guitar. But apparently he hadn’t completely abandoned his violin. Halfway through the song, he put down the guitar and performed the fiddle solo himself, which was not something a lot of country singers did. In fact, that’s what made Charlie Daniels a legend.

  But Colin did it, and I watched him do it, my mouth hanging open because I could barely believe it was really him. Really Colin Fairgood. Maybe I was mistaken…?
But no, after he was finished, the host confirmed we’d just heard the first song off of Colin Fairgood’s debut album. Then he chatted with Colin for a little bit before inviting him to play another tune, which he did—though he didn’t bother with the fiddle on the next one. Guess he didn’t want the world to think he was a one-trick pony.

  But fiddle or no fiddle, it was definitely him. I watched him play and I knew… true as if God had come down and told me himself: Colin Fairgood was no longer the Housekeeper’s Son. He’d done his time and gotten out of Alabama. And now he’d never have to worry about rich white boys like Mike Lancer again.

  1

  I can’t help but think about Colin Fairgood a whole lot of years later as I’m driving to my new job. Not just because it’s in Brentwood, an affluent suburb of Nashville, the country music capital of the world. But also because his song comes on the radio, just as my BMW’s nav system tells me I’ve reached my destination… right in front of a gas station.

  I curse, knowing I’m going to be late on my first day, working for my new client, a multiple stroke victim in her late sixties. Which is stupid because I’ve been wanting a job in Nashville for a good long while now. Even going so far as to turn down live-in gigs in Memphis so I could leave myself available in case something opened up near where I really wanted to live—Nashville, a city where I’d finally have a chance to make my songwriting dream come true.

  But Nashville isn’t Memphis. I know Memphis like the back of my hand, which means I’d never really have to depend on the nav system, which I’m sure was considered top-of-the-line back in 2001 when the car was first made. But now it’s telling me this gas station is for sure the place I want to be, while Colin Fairgood and the now-retired pop singer, Roxxy RoxX, sing about a kid who goes to bed hungry, with “a ghost in his belly” every night.

  That song was supposed to be a country charity single, but it went on to become Colin’s first number one mainstream song, rocketing up the pop charts and introducing him to a much larger group of fans—all of who seemed just fine to roll along with him when he made the switch from thoughtful singer-songwriter songs that won music industry awards, to raucous country club thumpers that actually moved albums. I preferred his thoughtful singer-songwriter period a little better, but the last thing I needed to hear on my first day at the new job I was already late for was a song about not having enough to eat. I switch off the radio, cursing myself for agreeing to share a phone plan with my grandma.