The Hum and the Shiver

25

Susie Swayback looked across the plate of blueberry pancakes at her husband. It wasn’t her imagination: there really was something different about him, a change that made him somehow more attractive and at the same time disconcerted her. She couldn’t define it exactly, but his amorous attentions had certainly improved and she wasn’t about to complain about that. She said playfully, “What are you thinking so hard about?”

Don blinked back to the moment. He’d been staring past his own reflection in the window, out into the twilight. He watched the treetops wave in the wind, and the sight mesmerized him. It was almost like a song he couldn’t quite recall, hovering just beyond his consciousness. He’d experienced that a lot lately. He smiled and said, “Sorry. Just zoning out.”

“Because of work?”

He shrugged. “Nah. Work was just work.” In truth, the day had flown by, and even Sam seemed impressed with the column inches Don produced. It wasn’t easy for two men and a handful of stringers to fill a weekly newspaper, and usually they ran more filler than any respectable journalist could stomach. But tomorrow’s edition would be filled with real if not terribly exciting news stories, most of them rustled up and written by Don. From higher electrical rates to the construction of a new bridge on County Road K, he’d called his contacts until he got results. It was the way he’d been as a young reporter fresh out of college.

Sam hadn’t even bugged him about missing the deadline for the Hyatt interview. He seemed to accept that Don was working on it, building trust in the Tufa community as he went.

Now Don and Susie sat at the Waffle House outside Unicorn. Their first date as freshmen had been to a Waffle House after a movie, and they considered any of these restaurants “their” special place. Susie was off work for the whole weekend, so it seemed an appropriate way to celebrate a free Friday night. They were overdressed for the place, but that also echoed their first date.

“Well, you certainly seem to be in a better mood lately,” Susie said.

He scowled. “Wow. Was it that bad before?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t mind working extra shifts. But now I’m actually looking forward to seeing you again.” She waggled her eyebrows for emphasis.

He smiled and winked. “I’ve been feeling the same way about you.”

She reached across the booth table and squeezed his hand. Her wedding ring caught the light. “If I’d known getting your guitar out would’ve done this, you’d have been picking and grinning years ago. Think I could come with you the next time you go play somewhere?”

Don was about to reply when suddenly the front door opened with a slam. A tall young man with black hair and a cowboy hat strode inside with a loud, “Don’t nobody drop your pancakes!”

He laughed at the sound of silverware and crockery. People turned to glare at him, then quickly looked away. Intimidation radiated from him with no discernible effort. He took a french fry from a man’s plate, ate it, and went behind the counter where he pressed himself against the waitress. “Hey, sweet thang, I drove all the way out here just to stare at them fine titties. You glad to see me?”

The lone waitress, whose name tag read ALSIE, did not look at him. She continued to refill the ketchup bottles, although her hands now shook. “Dwayne Gitterman, you’re drunk and you’re behaving like an ass. I think we’d all appreciate it if you’d just leave.”

He blatantly ground his hips against her behind. “Aw, Alsie, don’t be that way. You know you’re the prettiest girl in the Waffle House. Take the rest of the night off and let me show you what this big ass of yours can do.” He slapped one buttock for emphasis.

Alsie squirmed away, her face red. She had blond hair with artificial streaks piled into a bun on top of her head, and her eyes shone with tears of humiliation. “Dwayne, leave. Please. I don’t want any trouble.”

Don looked at the half dozen other patrons, all men, none of whom seemed inclined to stand up for the waitress. Not even the cook, a stout Mexican with a wispy mustache, looked up from his grill. Alsie was clearly terrified, and just as clearly Dwayne was enjoying her fear.

Softly Don said, “Hey, Sue? Got your cell phone with you?”

“Yes,” Susie replied quietly. “Why?”

“Get ready to call 911, will you?”

Her eyes opened wide. “What are you going to do?”

He shrugged. “Ask him to leave.”

He stood, avoiding Susie’s grab at his arm, and walked to the counter. He was no fighter, and there was no way he could intimidate the younger, larger, no doubt stronger man. But something in him just couldn’t let this happen. He leaned across the battered Formica and tugged on Dwayne’s sleeve. When he looked around, Don said, “’Scuse me, son, I think I heard the lady ask you to leave? Might be the best thing to do.”

Dwayne’s eyes took a moment to focus on him. “Who the fuck are you, her daddy?”

Don smiled. “No, just a guy who’d like to finish his dinner in peace. I’m not trying to start anything.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” Dwayne said. With a sudden explosive move, he shoved Alsie aside and grabbed Don’s shirt. He yanked Don up onto the edge of the counter, holding him there so that Don’s feet almost left the floor. “’Cause it looks you have started something, big man. I don’t imagine your ass can cash the check your mouth just wrote, now, can it?”

The other men stopped eating and sat still and silent. Amazingly, Don was completely calm. He had no idea where the words came from, but he said softly, so that only Dwayne could hear: “I know your dirge, pal. Want me to sing it for you?”

Dwayne laughed, but it was thin, and the amusement drained from his face.

Don began to hum. Out of nowhere the words, “The arms that hold you are not those of love, you cannot see down nor anything above….” came to him, bursting out in a tune he neither knew nor recognized.

Dwayne turned pale, shoved Don away, and banged his way out the door. In a moment his truck started and roared off into the dusk.

Don stared after him, then looked at Susie. She was speechless, and shook her head in both wonder and confusion. He shrugged.

“That’s it!” Alsie screeched, and slapped the counter for emphasis. “Y’all get out of here, right now! I mean it!”

It took Don a moment to realize she was referring to him. “Me?”

“Yes, you and your dang gook wife over there! Get your trailer-trash Tufa asses out of here or I’ll call the cops.”

Don looked at the others for some kind of help, but met their cold, suspicious stares. Alsie had out her cell phone and said, “I mean it, I’ve already dialed the nine and the one.”

Don tossed a twenty on the table and pulled Susie out the door after him. When they were in the car she said, “That little skank called me a gook, did you hear that?”

“I did.”

“And they called you a Tufa. What was that about?”

“Guess that’s what we look like to them.”

“Well, we won’t be coming back here again, that’s for sure.” She glared through the windshield at the restaurant. “And their corporate headquarters will be getting one nasty e-mail.”

Don put the car in gear and backed out of the lot. He turned toward Needsville, then caught himself and headed instead toward home. After a few moments of silence Susie said, “Okay, now that I’m past the whole ‘gook’ thing, I have to ask. If I was seeing things correctly, you sang a song to that boy and he freaked out.”

“Yeah. It just popped into my head. Weird, huh?”

“Weird, huh,” she agreed. She watched him drive for a while and said, “It’s like you’re turning into a different person.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“In a bad way?”

“I don’t know. Not yet. I guess it depends on where it stops.” She reached over and took his hand. “I’m proud of you for standing up to that guy, though. There was a time you wouldn’t have done that.”

“You could still make a case that it wasn’t terribly smart.”

“Oh, it was completely idiotic. He could’ve mopped the floor with you, and dusted the shelves with what was left over. But it was still a brave thing to do.”

He smiled and squeezed her hand back. But inside he felt a little jolt of fear. Who was he turning into? Or what?

The Pair-A-Dice roadhouse was, and always had been, neutral territory. Tufa from either side could eat, drink, and play with no fear of reprisal or confrontation. It allowed musicians to jam who never played together anywhere else. Those rare outsiders who stumbled onto the place swore it was the best music they’d ever heard, played by beat-up old men who looked like they’d just walked in out of the fields.

Kell Hyatt desperately wanted a drink, a song, and some time away from the drama at home. The tension between Bronwyn and their mother made the air around them crackle, and their father certainly wasn’t going to intercede. Most of the time Kell admired Deacon, but on days like this he really wondered what the old man considered important. He seemed blithely unconcerned with Chloe’s impending death or Bronwyn’s shifting personality, content to attribute both to the will of the night wind.

“Well, if it ain’t the prodigal Hyatt,” the bartender said. “I guess you didn’t get a parade like your sister, did you?”

Kell knew there was no harm intended in the joke, but it annoyed him just the same. “Parades ain’t for the people on the floats, they’re for the ones watching it go by.”

The bartender whistled, mock impressed. He was one of Rockhouse’s people, but at the Pair-A-Dice he usually he didn’t go out of his way to be obnoxious. “I should write that one down.”

“Write it on my ass while you’re kissing it,” Kell said, took his beer, and moved away. The bartender laughed behind him.

He sipped his beer and looked for a place to sit. Benches ran along three of the big room’s four sides, leaving gaps for the bandstand and bar. The walls were lined with wood paneling that should have ruined the acoustics but somehow didn’t. The tables and chairs were an eclectic mismatched lot, as were the glasses and utensils. Torn, stained posters and faded photos lined the walls; they depicted the greats and also-rans of Southern music. Some of the posters went back more than sixty years, to a time when giants like Hank Williams walked the earth in a haze of whiskey-drenched loneliness.

He sat on one of the benches that ran along the bar. He drank half his beer in one swallow, then leaned back and closed his eyes. Not for the first time, he was glad he wasn’t a Tufa woman. Being a full-blooded Tufa male had its own baggage, but it involved contests and hierarchies that were simple, if intense. Tufa women always seemed to be nursing secrets and deciding who was worthy to know them. To Kell, that sounded exhausting.

When he opened eyes, Terry-Joe Gitterman stood before him.

“Hey,” Kell said guardedly. “What’s up?”

Terry-Joe nervously stuck his hands in his pockets, then pulled them back out. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Nope.”

Terry-Joe took a chair from a nearby table and straddled it, his arms across the back. “Can I ask you a question and have it just be between you and me?”

Kell frowned. “I don’t know. Is this about Bronwyn?”

Terry-Joe nodded.

“I reckon, then.”

Terry-Joe paused to muster the words. “Do you think… Is Bronwyn still hung up on my brother?”

“Dwayne?” Kell almost barked out the name. He laughed and shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t think Bronwyn would piss on him if he was on fire. It took her a while, but she finally sees him for what he is. No offense.”

“None taken; I know what he is, too.”

Kell was about to ask why Terry-Joe wanted to know, when suddenly he comprehended. Unrequited love was written in the lines of emotional anguish on the younger man’s face. Kell had seen it before, on nice boys who thought they could win Bronwyn away from her own hell-bent desires. None of them had fared well at all.

He chose his words carefully. “Terry-Joe, I should tell you, her leg may be a lot better, but Bronwyn ain’t exactly all there yet. I don’t know if you read about what happened to her—”

“Sure I did.”

“Well, you don’t come back from that in a hurry, no matter how much the music helps. Sometimes you don’t come all the way back at all.”

“She will,” Terry-Joe said with certainty. “I’ve heard her play.”

“I hope you’re right,” Kell said. “But even if she does—”

They both jumped as the front door slammed against the wall. Dwayne Gitterman strode through with a loud, high shout of arrival. He was flushed red with drink and possibly more, and nearly stumbled over someone who couldn’t step aside fast enough. He yelled, “Goddamn, you old fart, can’t you see me comin’?” and slapped the man with his cowboy hat. He looked around and spotted Terry-Joe and Kell; a slow, mean smile split his face.

“Shit,” Terry-Joe said.

“Pretty much,” Kell agreed.