The Very Best of Charles De Lint

by Charles de Lint

  “Well, what?” I wanted to know when she didn’t go on right away.

  She fixed that dark gaze of hers on me. “I guess all I wanted to tell you, Darlene, is if you believe in what you’re doing, then go at it and be willing to pay the price you have to pay.”

  I knew what she was trying to tell me. Playing a honkytonk in Newford was a big deal for a girl from the hills like me, but it wasn’t what I was aiming for. It was just the first step and the rest of the road could be long and hard. I never knew just how long and hard. I was young and full of confidence, back then at the beginning of the sixties; invulnerable, like we all think we are when we’re just on the other side of still being kids.

  “But I want you to promise me one thing,” Hickory added. “Don’t you never do something that’ll make you feel ashamed when you look back on it later.”

  “Why do you think I’m leaving now?” I asked her.

  Hickory’s eyes went hard. “I’m going to kill that Daddy of yours.”

  “He’s never tried to touch me again,” I told her. “Not like he tried that one time, not like that. Just to give me a licking.”

  “Seems to me a man who likes to give out lickings so much ought to have the taste of one himself.”

  I don’t know if Hickory was meaning to do it her own self, or if she was planning to put one of her cousins from the rez up to it, but I knew it’d cause her more trouble than it was worth.

  “Leave ’im be,” I told her. “I don’t want Mama getting any more upset.”

  Hickory looked like she had words for Mama as well, but she bit them back. “You’ll do better shut of the lot of them,” was what she finally said. “But don’t you forget your Aunt Hickory.”

  “I could never forget you.”

  “Yeah, that’s what they all say. But then the time always comes when they get up and go and the next you know you never do hear from them again.”

  “I’ll write.”

  “I’m gonna hold you to that, Darlene Johnston.”

  “I’m changing my name,” I told her. “I’m gonna call myself Darlene Flatt.”

  I figured she’d like that, seeing how Flatt & Scruggs were pretty well her favourite pickers from the radio, but she just gave my chest a considering look and laughed.

  “You hang on to that sense of humour,” she told me. “Lord knows you’re gonna need it in the city.”

  I hadn’t thought about my new name like that, but I guess it shows you just how stubborn I can be, because I stuck with it.

  5

  I don’t know how I make it through the rest of the set. Greg Timmins who’s playing dobro for me that night says except for that one glitch coming into the last verse of “In the Pines,” he’d never heard me sing so well, but I don’t remember it like that. I don’t remember much about it at all except that I change my mind about not doing “I Will Always Love You” and use it to finish off the set.

  I sing the choruses to my Aunt Hickory, sitting there in the third row of the Standish, fifteen years after she up and died.

  I can’t leave, because I still have my duet with Lonesome George coming up, and besides, I can’t very well go busting down into the theatre itself, chasing after a ghost. So I slip into the washroom and soak some paper towels in cold water before holding them against the back of my neck. After a while I start to feel…if not better, at least more like myself. I go back to stand in the wings, watching Lonesome George and the boys play, checking the seats in the third row, one by one, but of course she’s not there. There’s some skinny old guy in a rumpled suit sitting where I saw her.

  But the buzz is still there, humming away between my ears, sounding like a hundred flies chasing each other up and down a windowpane, and I wonder what’s coming up next?

  6

  I never did get out of Newford, though it wasn’t from want of trying. I just went from playing with housebands in the honkytonks to other kinds of bands, sometimes fronting them with my Dolly show, sometimes being myself, playing guitar and singing backup. I didn’t go back to Piney Woods to see my family, but I wrote Aunt Hickory faithfully, every two weeks, until the last letter came back marked, “Occupant deceased.”

  I went home then, but I was too late. The funeral was long over. I asked the pastor about it and he said there was just him and some folks from the rez at the service. I had a lot more I wanted to ask, but I soon figured out that the pastor didn’t have the answers I was looking for, and they weren’t to be found staring at the fresh-turned sod of the churchyard, so I thanked the pastor for his time and drove my rented car down Dirt Creek Road.

  Nothing looked the same, but nothing seemed to have changed either. I guess the change was in me, at least that’s how it felt until I got to the cabin. Hickory had been squatting on government land, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to find the cabin in the state it was, the door kicked in, the windows all broke, anything that could be carried away long gone, everything else vandalized.

  I stood in there on the those old worn pine floorboards for a long time, looking for some trace of Hickory I could maybe take away with me, waiting for some sign, but nothing happened. There was nothing left of her, not even that long-necked old Gibson banjo of hers. Her ghost didn’t come walking up to me out of the pine woods. I guess it was about then that it sunk in she was really gone and I was never going to see her again, never going to get another one of those cranky letters of hers, never going to hear her sing another one of those old mountain songs or listen to her pick “Cotton-Eyed Joe” on the banjo.

  I went outside and sat down on the step and I cried, not caring if my makeup ran, not caring who could hear or see me. But nobody was there anyway and nobody came. I looked out at those lonesome pines after a while, then I got into my rented car again and drove back to the city, pulling off to the side of the road every once in a while because my eyes got blurry and it was hard to stay on my own side of the dividing line.

  7

  After I finish my duet with Lonesome George, I just grab my bag and my guitar and I leave the theatre. I don’t even bother to change out of my stage gear, so it’s Dolly stepping out into the snowy alley behind the Standish, Dolly turning up the collar of her coat and feeling the sting of the wind-driven snow on her rouged cheeks, Dolly fighting that winter storm to get back to her little one-bedroom apartment that she shares with a cat named Earle and a goldfish named Maybelle.

  I get to my building and unlock the front door. The warm air makes the chill I got walking home feel worse and a shiver goes right up my spine. All I’m thinking is to get upstairs, have myself a shot of Jack Daniels, then crawl into my bed and hope that by the time I wake up the buzzing in my head’ll be gone and things’ll be back to normal.

  I don’t lead an exciting life, but I’m partial to a lack of excitement. Gets to a point where excitement’s more trouble than it’s worth and that includes men. Maybe especially men. I never had any luck with them. Oh they come buzzing around, quick and fast as the bees I got humming in my head right now, but they just want a taste of the honey and then they’re gone. I think it’s better when they go. The ones that stay make for the kind of excitement that’ll eventually have you wearing long sleeves and high collars and pants instead of skirts because you want to hide the bruises.

  There’s a light out on the stairs going up to my apartment but I can’t even find the energy to curse the landlord about it. I just feel my way to the next landing and head on up the last flight of stairs and there’s the door to my apartment. I set my guitar down long enough to work the three locks on this door, then shove the case in with my knee and close the door behind me. Home again.

  I wait for Earle to come running up and complain that I left him alone all night—that’s the nice thing about Maybelle; she just goes round and round in her bowl and doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t try to make me feel guilty. Only reason she comes to the side of the glass is to see if I’m going to drop some food into the water.

  “
Hey, Earle,” I call. “You all playing hidey-cat on me?”

  Oh that buzz in my head’s rattling around something fierce now. I shuck my coat and let it fall on top of the guitar case and pull off my cowboy boots, one after the other, using my toes for a bootjack. I leave everything in the hall and walk into my living room, reaching behind me for the zipper of my rhinestone dress so that I can shuck it, too.

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see Hickory sitting there on my sofa. What does surprise me is that she’s got Earle up on her lap, lying there content as can be, purring up a storm as she scratches his ears. But Hickory always did have a way with animals; dying didn’t seem to have changed that much. I let my hand fall back to my side, zipper still done up.

  “That really you, Aunt Hickory?” I say after a long moment of only being able to stand there and stare at her.

  “Pretty much,” she says. “At least what’s left of me.” She gives me that considering look of hers, eyes as dark as ever. “You don’t seem much surprised to see me.”

  “I think I wore out being surprised ’round about now,” I say.

  It’s true. You could’ve blown me over with a sneeze, back there in the Standish when I first saw her, but I find I’m adjusting to it real well. And the buzz is finally upped and gone. I think I’m feeling more relieved about that than anything else.

  “You’re looking a bit strollopy,” she says.

  Strollops. That’s what they used to call the trashy women back around Piney Woods, strumpets and trollops. I haven’t heard that word in years.

  “And you’re looking pretty healthy for a woman dead fifteen years.”

  Maybe the surprise of seeing her is gone, but I find I still need to sit me down because my legs are trembling something fierce right about now.

  “What’re you doing here, Aunt Hickory?” I ask from the other end of the sofa where I’ve sat me down.

  Hickory, she shrugs. “Don’t rightly know. I can’t seem to move on. I guess I’ve been waiting for you to settle down first.”

  “I’m about as settled down as I’m ever going to be.”

  “Maybe so.” She gives Earle some attention, buying time, I figure, because when she finally looks back at me it’s to ask, “You remember what I told you back when you first left the hills—about never doing something you’d be ashamed to look back on?”

  “Sure I do. And I haven’t never done anything like that neither.”

  “Well, maybe I put it wrong,” Hickory says. “Maybe what I should have said was, make sure that you can be proud of what you’ve done when you look back.”

  I don’t get it and I tell her so.

  “Now don’t you get me wrong, Darlene. I know you’re doing the best you can. But there comes a point, I’m thinking, when you got to take stock of how far your dreams can take you. I’m not saying you made a mistake, doing what you do, but lord, girl, you’ve been at this singing for twenty years now and where’s it got you?”

  It was like she was my conscience, coming round and talking like this, because that’s something I’ve had to ask myself a whole pile of times and way too often since I first got here to the city.

  “Not too damn far,” I say.

  “There’s nothing wrong with admitting you made a mistake and moving on.”

  “You think I made a mistake, Aunt Hickory?”

  She hesitates. “Not at first. But now…well, I don’t rightly know. Seems to me you’ve put so much into this dream of yours that if it’s not payback time yet, then maybe it is time to move on.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “I don’t know anything else—’cept maybe waiting tables and the like.”

  “I see that could be a problem,” Hickory says.

  I look at her for a long time. Those dark eyes look back, but she can’t hold my gaze for long and she finally turns away. I’m thinking to myself, this looks like my Aunt Hickory, and the voice sounds like my Aunt Hickory, but the words I’m hearing aren’t what the Hickory I know would be saying. That Hickory, she’d never back down, not for nobody, never call it quits on somebody else’s say-so, and she’d never expect anybody else to be any different.

  “I guess the one thing I never asked you,” I say, “is why did you live up in that old cabin all on your ownsome for so many years?”

  “I loved those pine woods.”

  “I know you did. But you didn’t always live in ’em. You went away a time, didn’t you?”

  She nods. “That was before you was born.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Nowhere special. I was just travelling. I…” She looks up and there’s something in those dark eyes of hers that I’ve never seen before. “I had the same dream you did, Darlene. I wanted to be a singer so bad. I wanted to hear my voice coming back at me from the radio. I wanted to be up on that big stage at the Opry and see the crowd looking back at me, calling my name and loving me. But it never happened. I never got no further than playing the jukejoints and the honkytonks and the road bars where the people are more interested in getting drunk and sticking their hands up your dress than they are in listening to you sing.”

  She sighed. “I got all used up, Darlene. I got to where I’d be playing on those dinky little stages and I didn’t even care what I was singing about anymore. So finally I just took myself home. I was only thirty years old, but I was all used up. I didn’t tell nobody where I’d been or what I’d done or how I’d failed. I didn’t want to talk to any of them about any of that, didn’t want to talk to them at all because I’d look at those Piney Woods people and I’d see the same damn faces that looked up at me when I was playing out my heart in the honkytonks and they didn’t care any more now than they did then.

  “So I moved me up into the hills. Built that cabin of mine. Listened to the wind in the pines until I could finally start to sing and play and love the music again.”

  “You never told me any of this,” I say.

  “No, I didn’t. Why should I? Was it going to make any difference to your dreams?”

  I shook my head. “I guess not.”

  “When you took to that old guitar of mine the way you did, my heart near’ broke. I was so happy for you, but I was scared—oh, I was scared bad. But then I thought, maybe it’ll be different for her. Maybe when she leaves the hills and starts singing, people are gonna listen. I wanted to spare you the hurt, I’ll tell you that, Darlene, but I didn’t want to risk stealing your chance at joy neither. But now…”

  Her voice trails off.

  “But now,” I say, finishing what she left unsaid, “here I am anyway and I don’t even have those pines to keep my company.”

  Hickory nods. “It ain’t fair. I hear the music they play on the radio now and they don’t have half the heart of the old mountain songs you and me sing. Why don’t people want to hear them anymore?”

  “Well, you know what Dolly says: ‘Life ain’t all a dance.’”

  “Isn’t that the sorry truth.”

  “But there’s still people who want to hear the old songs,” I say. “There’s just not so many of them. I get worn out some days, trying like I’ve done all these years, but then I’ll play a gig somewhere and the people are really listening and I think maybe it’s not so important to be really big and popular and all. Maybe there’s something to be said for pleasing just a few folks, if it means you get to stay true to what you want to do. I don’t mean a body should stop aiming high, but maybe we shouldn’t feel so bad when things don’t work out the way we want ’em to. Maybe we should be grateful for what we got, for what we had.”

  “Like all those afternoons we spent playing music with only the pines to hear us.”

  I smile. “Those were the best times I ever had. I wouldn’t change ’em for anything.”

  “Me, neither.”

  “And you know,” I say. “There’s people with a whole lot less. I’d like to be doing better than I am, but hell, at least I’m
still making a living. Got me an album and I’m working on another, even if I do have to pay for it all myself.”

  Hickory gives me a long look and then just shakes her head. “You’re really something, aren’t you just?”

  “Nothing you didn’t teach me to be.”

  “I been a damn fool,” Hickory says. She sets Earle aside and stands up. “I can see that now.”

  “What’re you doing?” I ask. But I know and I’m already standing myself.

  “Come give your old aunt a hug,” Hickory says.

  There’s a moment when I can feel her in my arms, solid as one of those pines growing up in the hills where she first taught me to sing and play. I can smell woodsmoke and cigarette smoke on her, something like apple blossoms and the scent of those pines.

  “You do me proud, girl,” she whispers in my ear.

  And then I’m holding only air. Standing there alone, all strolloped up in my wig and rhinestone dress, holding nothing but air.

  8

  I know I won’t be able to sleep and there’s no point in trying. I’m feeling so damn restless and sorry—not for myself, but for all the broken dreams that wear people down until there’s nothing left of ’em but ashes and smoke. I’m not going to let that happen to me.

  I end up sitting back on the sofa with my guitar on my lap—the same small-bodied Martin guitar my Aunt Hickory gave a dreamy-eyed girl all those years ago. I start to pick a few old tunes. “Over the Waterfall.” “The Arkansas Traveler.” Then the music drifts into something I never heard before and I realize I’m making up a melody. About as soon as I realize that, the words start slipping and sliding through my head and before I know it, I’ve got me a new song.

  I look out the window of my little apartment. The wind’s died down, but the snow’s still coming, laying a soft blanket that takes the sharp edge off everything I can see. It’s so quiet. Late night quiet. Drifting snow quiet. I get a pencil from the kitchen and I write out the words to that new song, write the chords in. I reread the last lines of the chorus: