A Century of Great Suspense Stories

Among My Souvenirs Sharyn McCrumb

Sharyn McCrumb, who holds degrees from the University of North Carolina and Virginia Tech, lives in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains but travels the United States and the world lecturing on her work, most recently leading a writers’ workshop in Paris in the summer of 2001.

McCrumb’s Ballad series, beginning with If I Ever Return, Pretty Peggy-O (1990), has won her numerous honors, including the Appalachian Writers Association’s Award for Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature and several listings as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times notable books. In the introduction to her short-story collection Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories (1997), she details the family history in North Carolina and Tennessee that contributed to her Appalachian fiction. One of the continuing characters, Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, takes his surname from ancestors on her father’s side, while Frankie Silver (“the first woman hanged for murder in the state of North Carolina”), whose story McCrumb would incorporate in The Ballad of Frankie Silver (1998), was a distant cousin. “My books are like Appalachian quilts,” she writes. “I take brightly colored scraps of legends, ballads, fragments of rural life, and local tragedy, and I place them together into a complex whole that tells not only a story, but also a deeper truth about the nature of the mountain south.” The sixth and most recent title in the series, The Song-catcher, appeared in the summer of 2001.

The face was a little blurry, but she was used to seeing it that way. She must have looked at it a thousand times in old magazines — grainy black-and-white shots, snapped by a magazine photographer at a nightclub; amateurish candid photos on the back of record albums; misty publicity stills that erased even the pores of his skin. She knew that face. A poster-size version of it had stared down at her from beneath the high school banner on her bedroom wall — twenty-odd years ago. God, had it been that long? Now the face was blurry with booze, fatigue, and the sagging of a jawline that was no longer boyish. But it was still him, sitting in the bar, big as life.

Maggie used to wonder what she would do if she met him in the flesh. In the tenth grade she and Kathy Ryan used to philosophize about such things at slumber parties: “Why don’t you fix your hair like Connie Stevens’?” — “Which Man From U.N.C.L.E. do you like best?” — “What would you do if you met Devlin Robey?” Then they’d collapse in giggles, unable even to fantasize meeting a real, live rock ‘n’ roll singer. He lived a glamorous life of limousines and penthouse suites while they suffered through gym class, and algebra with Mrs. Cady. Growing up seemed a hundred years away.

When Maggie was a senior, she did get to see Devlin Robey — when you live on Long Island, sooner or later your prince will come. Everybody comes to the Big Apple. But the encounter was as distant and unreal as the airbrushed poster on her closet door. Devlin Robey was a shining blur glimpsed on a distant stage, and Maggie was a tiny speck in a sea of screaming adolescents. She and Kathy squealed and cried and threw paper roses at the stage, but it didn’t really feel like seeing him. He was a lot clearer on the television screen when she watched American Bandstand. After the concert, they had fought their way through a horde of fans to reach the stage door, only to be driven off by three thugs in overcoats — Mr. Robey’s “handlers,” while Devlin himself plowed his way through the throng to a waiting limousine, oblivious to the screams of protest in his wake.

They cried all the way home.

Maggie was so disillusioned by her idol’s callous behavior that she wrote him a letter, in care of his record company, complaining about how he let his fans be treated. She enclosed her ticket stub from the concert, and one of her wallet-size class pictures. A few weeks later, she received an autographed eight by ten of Devlin Robey, a copy of his latest album, and a handwritten apology on Epic Records notepaper. He said he was sorry to rush past them like that, but that he’d had to hurry back to the hotel to call his mother, who had been ill that night. He hoped that Maggie would forgive him for his thoughtlessness, and he promised to visit with his fans after concerts whenever he possibly could.

That letter was enough magic to keep Maggie going for weeks, and she played the album until it was scarred from wear, but eventually the wonder of it faded, and the memory, like the albums and fan magazines, was packed away in tissue paper in the closet of her youth, while Maggie got on with her life.

She took business courses, and made mostly B’s. She thought she’d probably end up as a secretary somewhere after high school. It was no use thinking about college: her parents didn’t have that kind of money, and if they had, they wouldn’t have spent it sending her off to get more educated. Since she’d just end up getting married anyway, her father reasoned, wasting her time and their savings on a fancy education made no sense. Maggie wished she could have taken shop or auto mechanics like the guys did, but the guidance counselor had smiled and vetoed the suggestion. Home economics and typing: that’s what girls took. He was sure that Maggie would be happier in one of those courses, where she belonged. Now, sometimes, when the plumbing needed fixing or the toaster wouldn’t work, Maggie wished she had insisted on being allowed to take practical courses, so that she wouldn’t have to use the grocery money to pay repair bills, but it was no use looking back, she figured. What’s done was done.

The summer after high school, Maggie married Leon Holtz, who wasn’t as handsome as Devlin Robey, but he was real. He said he loved her, and he rented a sky-blue tux and bought her a white gardenia corsage when he took her to the senior prom. There wasn’t any reason not to get married, that Maggie could see. Leon had a construction job in his uncle’s business, and she was a clerk at the Ford dealership, which meant nearly six hundred a month in take-home pay after taxes. They could afford a small apartment, and some furniture from Sofa City, so why wait? If Maggie had any flashes of prewedding jitters about happily-ever-after with Leon, or any lingering regrets at relinquishing dreams of some other existence, where one could actually know people like Devlin Robey — if she had misgivings about any of it, she gave no sign.

Richie was born fourteen months later. The marriage lasted until he was two. He was a round-faced, solemn child with his mother’s brown eyes, but he had scoliosis — which is doctor talk for a crook-back — so there were medical bills on top of everything else, and finally, Leon, fed up with the confinement of wedded poverty, took off. Maggie moved to Manhattan, because she figured the pay would be better, especially if she forgot about being a clerk. She was just twenty-one, then, and her looks were still okay.

After a couple of false starts, she got a job as a cocktail waitress in the Red Lion Lounge. She didn’t like the red velvet uniform that came to the top of her thighs, or the black net stockings she had to wear with it, but the tips were good, and Maggie supposed that the outfit had a lot to do with that. She was twenty-seven now. Sometimes, when her feet throbbed from spending six hours in spike heels and her face ached from smiling at jerks who like to put the make on waitresses, she’d think about the high school shop classes, wondering what life would have been like if she’d learned how to fix cars.

“You want to bring me a drink?” He smiled up at her lazily. The ladies man who is sure of his magnetism. You want to bring me a drink? Like he was conferring a privilege on her. Well, maybe he was. Maggie looked down at Devlin Robey’s blurring middle-aged features, and thought with surprise that once she would have been honored to serve this man. Would have fought for the chance to do it. But that was half a lifetime ago. Now she was just tired, trying to get through the shift with enough money to pay the phone bill. She’d been up most of the night before with one of Richie’s back aches, and now she felt as if she were sleepwalking. She stared at the graying curls of chest hair at the top of his purple shirt, the pouches under his eyes that were darker than his fading tan, and the plastic smile. What the hell.

“Sure,” she said with no more than her customary brightness, “A drink. What do you want?”

When she brought back the Dewar’s-rocks, he was reading the racing news, but as she approached, he set the page aside and smiled up at her. “Thanks,” he said, and then after a beat: “You know who I am?”

It struck her as kind of sad the way he asked it. Hesitant, like he had heard “no” too many times lately, as if each denial of his fame cut the lines deeper into his face. She felt sorry for him. Wished it were twenty years ago. But it wasn’t. “Yeah,” said Maggie, smoothing out the napkin as she set down his drink. “Yeah, I remember. You’re Devlin Robey. I seen you sing once.”

The lines smoothed out and his eyes widened: you could just see the teen idol somewhere in there. “No kiddin’!” he said, with a laugh that sounded like sheer relief. “Well, here...” That ought to be good for a twenty, Maggie was thinking, but as she watched, Devlin Robey pulled the cocktail napkin out from under his drink and signed his name with a flourish.

“Thanks,” said Maggie, slipping the napkin into her pocket with the tips. Maybe the twenty would come later. At least it would be something to tell Kathy Ryan if she ever saw her again. She started to move away to another table, but he touched her arm. “Don’t leave yet. So, you heard me sing, huh? At Paradise Alley?”

She told him where the concert had been, and for a moment she thought of mentioning her letter to him, but the two suits at table nine were waving like their tongues might shrivel up, so she eased out of his grasp. “I’ll check on you in a few,” she promised, summoning her smile for the thirsting suits.

For the rest of her shift, Maggie alternated between real customers and the wistful face of Devlin Robey, who ordered drinks just for the small talk that came with them. “Which one of my songs did you like best?”

“ ‘I’m Afraid to Go Home,’ ” said Maggie instantly, and when he looked puzzled, she reminded him, “It was the B side to ‘Tiger Lily.’ ”

“Yeah! Yeah! I almost got an award for that one.” His eyes crinkled with pleasure.

Another round he wanted to know if she’d seen him in the beach movie he made for Buena Vista. She remembered the movie, and didn’t say that she couldn’t place him in it. It had been a bit part, leading nowhere. After that he went back to singing, mostly in Vegas. Now in Atlantic City. “They love me in the casinos,” he told her. “The folks from the ’burbs go wild over me — makes ’em remember the good times, they tell me.”

Maggie tried to remember some good times, but all she found was stills of her and Kathy Ryan listening to records and talking about the future. She was going to be a fashion model and live in Paris. Kathy would be a vet in an African Wildlife Preserve. They would spend holidays together in the Bahamas. “You want some peanuts to go with that drink?” Maggie asked.

At two o’clock the Red Lion was closing, but Devlin Robey had not budged. He kept nursing a Dewar’s that was more water than Scotch, hunched down like a stray dog who didn’t want to be thrown out in the street. Maggie wondered what was wrong with the guy. He was rich and famous, right?

“Are you about finished with that drink? Boss says it’s quittin’ time.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m a night owl, I guess. All those years of doing casino shows at eleven. Seems like the shank of the evening to me.” He glanced at his watch, and then at her: the red velvet tunic, the black fishnet stockings, the cleavage. “You’re getting off work now?”

The smile never wavered but inside she groaned. Tonight had seemed about two days long, and all that kept her going was the thought of a hot bubble bath to soak her feet and the softness of clean sheets to sink into before she passed out from sheer weariness. So now — twenty years too late to be an answer to prayer — Devlin Robey wants to take her out. Where was he when it would have mattered?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Thanks anyway, but not tonight.” Maybe ten years ago, but not tonight.

The one answer she wouldn’t have made back when she was Devlin Robey’s vestal virgin turned out to be the only one that worked the charm. Suddenly his halfhearted invitation became urgent. “I’ll be straight with you,” he said, with eyes like stained glass. “I’m feeling kind of down tonight, and I thought it might help to spend some time with an old friend.”

Is that what we were? Maggie thought. I was twenty-five rows back at the concert; I was on the other side of the speakers when WABC’s Cousin Brucie played your records; and while you were airbrushed and glossy, I was wearing Clearasil and holding the fan magazine. We were friends? She didn’t say it, though. If Maggie had learned anything in seven years as a cocktail waitress, it was not to reply to outrageous statements. She shrugged. “I’m sorry,” thinking that would be the end of it. Wondering if she’d even bother to tell anybody about it. It wouldn’t be any fun to talk about if you had to explain to the other waitresses, bunch of kids, who Devlin Robey was.

“At least give me your phone number... uh... Maggie.” Her name was signed with a flourish on his check: Thank you! Maggie. “I get to the city every so often. Maybe I could call you, give you more notice. We could set something up. You’re all right. You ever think about the business?”

No. Show business offered the same hours as nightclub waitressing, and besides she couldn’t sing or dance. But Lana Turner had been discovered in a drugstore, so maybe... After all, who was Maggie Holtz to slap the hand of fate? She tore off the business expense tab from the Red Lion check, and scribbled her name and phone number across it. “Sure. Why not,” she said. “Call me sometime.”

She patted the autographed cocktail napkin folded in the pocket with her tips, wondering if Richie would like to have it for his scrapbook. Or maybe she should put it in his baby book: the guy I was pretending to make it with the night you were conceived. Two scraps of paper; one for each of them to toss. She figured that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t, though. Four nights later — four a.m. — the Advil had finally kicked in, allowing her to plunge into sleep, when the phone screamed, dragging her back. She’d forgotten to turn on the damned answering machine. She grabbed for the receiver, only to reinstate the silence, but his voice came through to her, a little swacked, crooning, “I’m Afraid to Go Home,” and she knew it was him.

“Devlin Robey,” she said, wondering why wishes got granted only when you no longer wanted them.

“Maggie doll.” He slurred her name. “I just wanted a friendly voice. I got the blues so bad.”

“Hangover?”

“No. That’ll be after I wake up — if I ever get to sleep, that is. Thought I might get sleepy talking about old times, you know?”

“Old times.”

“I lost big tonight at the tables. I played seventeen in roulette a dozen times and it wouldn’t come up for me. Seventeen — my number!”

She caught herself nodding forward, and forced the number seventeen to roll around in her memories. Oh, yeah. “ ‘Seventeen, My Heaven Teen,’ ” she murmured. “That was your big hit, wasn’t it?”

“I got a Cashbox Award for that one. S’in the den at my place in Vegas. Maybe I’ll show it to you some time.”

“Wouldn’t your wife object?”

She heard him sigh. “Jeez, Trina. What a cow. She was a showgirl when I married her. Ninety-five pounds of blonde. Now she acts like giving me a blow job is a major act of charity, and she’s in the tanning salon so much she looks like a leather Barbie doll. Not that I’m home much. I’m on the road a lot.”

“Yeah. It’s a tough life.” She pictured him in a suite the size of her apartment. Maybe one of those sunken tubs in a black marble bathroom.

“It’s not like I’m too keen to go home, you know? I have a daughter, Claudia, but jeez it breaks my heart to see her. She was born premature. Probably ’cause Trina was always trying to barf up her dinner to stay skinny. She’s never been right, Claudia hasn’t. Brain damage at birth. But she always smiles so big when she sees me, and throws her little arms out.”

“How old is she?”

“Twelve, I guess. I always picture her when she was little. She was beautiful when she was three all over. Now she’s just three inside. Her birthday is the seventeenth of June. My lucky number. Seventeen.”

“Not tonight, though, huh?”

“No. Tonight it cost me plenty. I shouldn’t bet when I’m loaded. Loaded drunk, I mean; the other kind is never an issue. I like to be with people, though. I’d like to be with you. You don’t have an ax to grind. You’re not like these glitter tarts here, running around in feathers, can’t remember past nineteen-seventy-five. You’re good people, Maggie. Look, can I come over some time?”

“I bet you get lotsa offers,” said Maggie, hoping somebody else would take the heat.

“I like you,” he said. “You’re real. Like my kid. Not just some hardass in the chorus line with a Pepsodent smile and an angle. I’ve had a bellyful of them.”

She shouldn’t have let him tell her about his kid. It made her think of Richie, and made her think that maybe Devlin Robey hadn’t had it all his way like she’d figured. All of a sudden, he wasn’t just some glossy poster that she could toss when she tired of it. He was a regular guy with feelings. And maybe she owed him. After all, she had used him as her fantasy all those years ago. Maybe it was time to pay up.

“Okay, like Tuesday? That’s when I’m off.” She could send Richie to her folks in Rockaway. They kept talking until his voice slurred into unconsciousness.

“Your monogamous john is here,” said Cap the bartender, nodding toward table seven.

“Yeah,” said Maggie. She’d already seen Devlin Robey come in, trying to look casual. He came three days a month now, whenever he could get away from his casino gig. Sometimes it was her night off, and if it wasn’t, he’d sit at number seven until closing time, nursing a Dewar’s-water, and trying to keep a conversation going as Maggie edged her way past to wait on the paying customers.

On her nights off, they’d eat Italian, which meant mostly vino for Devlin Robey, and then go back to her place for sex. Robey was only good for once a night, so he liked to prolong it with kinky stuff, strip shows, and listening to Maggie talk dirty, which she found she could do while her mind focused on planning her grocery list for the coming week, and thinking what she needed to take to the cleaners. She felt sorry for Robey, because he had been famous once, and the coddling he received as a star had crippled him for life. He couldn’t get used to people not being kind anymore; to being ignored by all the regular folks who used to envy him. Whereas she’d had a lifetime of getting used to the world’s indifference. But he had been her idol, and he had once stooped down to be kind to her, a nobody, with a beautiful, sincere handwritten letter. So now he needed somebody, so it was Payback. And Payback is a Mother. She thought about how famous he was while he grunted and strained on top of her. She pictured that airbrushed poster on her wall.

“Maybe you should charge him,” said Cap, as she was about to walk away.

“I ain’t on the game,” said Maggie.

“Didn’t say you were. But you’re providing a service. Shrinks charge, don’t they? And they got more money than you, Maggie dearest.”

She shrugged. “Some things aren’t about money.”

“Well, if money is no object with you, you can leave early tonight. You might as well. It’s dead in here.”

He said it too loud. Devlin Robey heard him, and she saw his face light up. No use telling him she was stuck here now. Thanks a heap, Cap. At least Richie was gone — sleeping over at Kevin’s tonight. Devlin Robey was already putting his coat on by the time she reached his table. “Boy, am I glad we can get outta here! I’m afraid I might have company tonight.”

His face was even more like a fish belly than usual, and his eyes sagged into dark pouches. “What do you mean, company?” asked Maggie, glancing toward the door.

“Tell you later.”

They went to a different Italian restaurant, but it had the same oilcloth table covers, and the same vino, which he drank in equal quantities to the usual stuff, and she had the angel hair pasta, less rubbery than that of the old place. He wouldn’t talk about company, while they were eating, but he kept looking around, and he whispered, even when he was just talking to her. She had to get him back to her place — in a cab, because he was scared to walk — and get two cups of black decaf down him, before he’d open up.

“Tell me,” she said, and she wasn’t being Fantasy Girl this time.

“It’s okay.” He took a thick brown envelope out of the breast pocket of his suit, and laid it on top of the stack of Redbook and Enquirers. “I got it covered, see? Most of it anyhow. I think it’s enough to call the dogs off.”

“You’ve been gambling again,” she said.

“Hey, sooner or later ‘Seventeen’ will sing for me again, right?”

“So you owe some pretty heavy people, I guess.”

He shrugged, palms up. “It’s Atlantic City. They’re not Boy Scouts. I was supposed to meet them tonight with the cash, but I was a little short. Had to come up here, hock some things. Borrow what I could from a home boy, and hope I got it together before they came looking for me. Now I’m okay. I can take the meeting. It’s not all there, but it’s enough to keep me going. I wrote a note with it, promising more next week. I got record royalties coming.”

Maggie’s eyes narrowed. “Why’d you want to see me?”

“Not for money!” He laughed a little. “Maggie, this is way out of your league, doll. You just keep your stash in that cookie jar of yours, and let me worry about these gentlemen. I just came to see you ’cause I love you.”

He probably does, Maggie thought sadly as she led him to the bedroom. He can see the reflection of the record album poster in my eyes.

It was past two when she got up to take a leak. Robey had been asleep for hours, sated with sweat and swear words. She saw the envelope lying on the coffee table, and scooped it up as she passed. Might as well see how deep he’s in, she thought. Was saving a fallen idol part of the deal? Maybe she could talk him into getting counseling. Gamblers Anonymous, or something. She wondered why dead and famous were the only two choices some people seemed to want.

She didn’t go back to bed. When Robey woke up at nine, she gave him aspirin and Bloody Mary Mix for his hangover, and a plastic cup of decaf for the road, but no kiss. He was headed back to Atlantic City, still too sleepy and hung over for pleasantries. Devlin Robey was not a morning person. Neither was Maggie Holtz, but this morning she was wide awake. She sat in front of the television, listening to the game shows, but watching the phone. It rang at five past noon. The answering machine kicked in, and after it said its piece, she heard Devlin Robey’s famous, not-so-velvet voice, now shrill in the speaker. “Maggie! Are you there? Pick up! It’s me. Listen, you know that envelope I told you about? The one with the cash in it. Listen, I must have left it at your place. There are some gentlemen here who need to know I had it. Could you just pick up, Maggie? Could you tell them about the cash in the envelope, please? It’s important.”

She heard another voice say, “Real important.”

Maggie picked up the phone. “I never saw any envelope, Devlin,” she said. “Can’t you just stall those guys like you said you would? Till you get some money?”

She heard him cry out as she was replacing the receiver. She set the brown envelope back on the table. There were a lot of hundreds inside it, but that wasn’t the point. Some things aren’t about money. It was the letter that mattered, the one he wrote to the gamblers asking for more time to pay in full. That wasn’t anything like the handwriting she’d seen on his other letter, the one she’d received so long ago containing an apology from “Devlin Robey.” So she really didn’t owe him anything. She owed herself a lot of years. She wondered how much it would cost to go to trade school, and if the bills in the brown envelope would cover it. Maggie wanted to learn to fix things.