Wisp of a Thing

22

On his way to downtown Unicorn, Rob passed the Waffle House were he’d plotted with Doyle. He wished he had time to stop for lunch, but as it was, he’d just barely make his appointment. When he’d called from outside the library, the editor said he’d only be in the office until three.

The Weekly Horn was between a State Farm Insurance agency and an antique store. As soon as he entered, a man with a gray crew cut, clad in a button-down shirt that barely contained the bulky muscles of his shoulders and arms, stepped from an office to greet him. He spoke with the nasal accent of the Upper Midwest. “You must be Mr. Rob Quillen.”

“Yes, sir,” Rob said, and shook the man’s hand.

“I’ve seen you on TV. I’m very sorry for your recent loss.”

“Thank you. Are you Mr. Howell?”

“Call me Sam, please. Mr. Howell’s my dad. What happened to your eye?”

“Pulled out in front of a fist.”

“Well, I went ahead and found the articles you asked about when you called. It’s a shame when a young person takes their own life. So was the girl who died a friend of yours?”

“A friend of a friend,” Rob said evasively. He’d told Howell only that he was passing through the area and would like to see the news articles associated with Jillie Rae Keene’s death. “I just wanted to see what the official version of the story was, since we only heard the broad strokes.”

“Not much but broad strokes to it,” Howell said as he led him to the back. The place smelled of ink, sweat, and cigarettes. A stack of back-issue volumes bound in heavy faux-leather card stock rested on a table. “You know, we don’t get many celebrities through here. We’re pretty far from any beaten path.”

“What about Bronwyn Hyatt?”

“She had her fifteen minutes, true enough, but she went back up in the hills with her family and, as far as I know, hasn’t come out.”

“I can understand that. I’m ready for my fifteen minutes to be over, too.”

“That reminds me: Before you leave, would it be too much trouble if we took a picture together? Just for a ‘look who stopped by’ thing, I won’t mention why you’re here.”

“Promise to Photoshop out my shiner?”

“It’s a deal.”

Rob looked around. The newspaper’s equipment, except for the laptop computers, looked like it came from another era. “You run this place by yourself?”

“Mostly me. Got one full-time writer on staff, and some folks in the little towns around here who write up the high school sports and community news.” He patted the stack of bound volumes. “One of these days, I’ll get these all scanned and posted on the Internet, but until then, folks have to go through ’em by hand. And as you can tell from the dust, that doesn’t happen very often.”

“So where should I start?” Rob asked.

Yellow Post-it notes marked specific pages. As Howell opened the first book, he said, “I found the main ones for you. Here’s the original news story.”

Dated 2009, the indicated headline on the yellowed paper read, NEEDSVILLE TEEN SUICIDE BLAMED ON ROMANCE.

“That’s it?” Rob asked. “That doesn’t really tell me much.”

“That’s because there wasn’t much to tell. But your question kind of jogged my memory. Look at this one.”

He opened another book, to a page dated 2010. This headline read, LARK VALLEY TEEN FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE.

“Other than going to the same church, what’s the connection?” Rob asked.

“They were both dating the same boy.”

“How do you know?”

“Because who’s dating who is all the women around here talk about, and I’ve got a wife. See this?” He held up an old photograph, covered with blue cropping lines indicating it had once run in the newspaper. A middle-aged couple, dressed for a funeral, descended the steps of a church. Next to them stood a tall, distinguished man in a white suit with a bolo tie. “That fancy fellow in the white suit is State Representative Sandy Stang, which is why this funeral was news. He was campaigning, and made sure we knew he’d be visiting the bereaved of his district so we could get a picture. But look in back of him.”

Behind the grieving parents stood Stoney Hicks, looking uncomfortable in a suit and tie. Next to him, as faintly amused as ever, was his uncle Rockhouse. Except that Rockhouse sported an enormous walrus mustache instead of a full beard, both looked exactly the same as they did now.

“There’s your Romeo,” Howell said.

Rob got a chill. “So both these girls dated Stoney Hicks?”

“Yep.”

“Was he ever implicated in their deaths?”

“Oh, hell no. They were suicides, no doubt. After the fourth or fifth one, though, people started to whisper.”

“Five different girls killed themselves over this guy?”

“Yep.”

“Did anybody ever date him and live?”

Sam chuckled. “That wouldn’t make the news.”

“People had to have noticed the pattern. Especially in a little town like Needsville.”

Howell looked him over as if just noticing him. “You do look like you’ve got some Tufa in you. That why you’re in the area? You got family there?”

“No Tufa in me at all, I promise you. I’m part Filipino, and the rest is all Kansas.”

He narrowed his eyes, as if he didn’t quite believe it, then shrugged it off. “Needsville’s a funny place. You notice there aren’t any churches there?”

“Yeah, actually, I did. Do you know why?”

“What I heard was… Ah, never mind. I was always told it’s best not to talk too much about the Tufa. They’ve got a way, especially the true bloods, of finding out if you’ve spoken out of turn. Then bad things can start to happen to you.”

“Like fairies?”

Howell’s frown deepened. “Why would you say that?”

“It’s what they say about fairies over in England. They call them ‘the Good People’ so they won’t get mad.”

“You sure know a lot. You positive you’re not part Tufa?”

“Swear on a Bible if you got one.”

He chewed his lip. “Son, let me speak to you like a father here. I’m an outsider, too, even though I’ve lived here over thirty years. I’ve seen a lot of weird things happen around Needsville. You take any one of ’em, there’s always a rational reason for it. Add them all up, though, and it makes a different picture.” Then he pointed to the newspaper. “And speaking of pictures, look here. Recognize the guy next to your young Bluebeard? That is the legendary Rockhouse Hicks.”

“‘Legendary’?”

“You bet. I’ve got all three of his albums. Actual vinyl albums. Far as I know, it’s the only way you can get ’em.”

Rob smiled skeptically. “I’m a musician, Mr. Howell, and I’ve done a ton of research on the music of this area. I never heard of him before I met him.”

“To be fair, he wasn’t ever really famous. But he almost was, and he probably should be.” He went to the shelf filled with the other bound volumes and pulled out another of the big books, much older than the rest. He opened it unerringly to the spot he wanted, as he’d no doubt done many times. “I wasn’t living here then, but the paper covered it.”

The headline proclaimed, CLOUD COUNTY NATIVE’S STAR RISES, FALLS.

“You do know who Bill Monroe was, don’t you?” Howell asked.

“Might’ve heard the name,” Rob said dryly. He skimmed the details of Hicks’s brief career, looking for the point things went wrong.

After three albums, and three years with Monroe, Rockhouse finally had a solo hit with “Love Flew Away” and began his only tour as a headliner. But at his third show, he was caught backstage in a compromising position with an underage black girl. The racial attitudes of the times resulted in him being blacklisted, and the girl’s age led to the end of his friendship with Monroe. Although he attempted a comeback on the coattails of the ’60s folk revival, his difficult personality ended whatever chances he had of joining the likes of the Carter Family, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie as icons for the new generation.

“That sounds like the guy I met, all right,” Rob admitted.

Howell said, “I’ve found out some more stuff since then, though. Turns out that story isn’t exactly accurate.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wasn’t caught with a black girl. I mean, that would’ve been bad at the time, but the truth was actually kind of worse. Probably the only thing that could’ve been worse. I’ve got it on good authority, from more than one local source, that he was actually caught with his pants down… with his own daughter.”

Rob stared at him. His first thought, naturally enough, was Curnen, but that was absurd. This happened fifty years ago, after all. No telling how many kids the old shithead had scattered through the area. “Wow. Did he go to jail?”

“No, nobody pressed any charges—you just didn’t do that to family back then. But it pretty much finished him up as a working musician. He got blacklisted everywhere. And the girl’s boyfriend threatened to kill him, right before he disappeared. That is, the boyfriend disappeared, not Rockhouse. He never came back from Nashville, and no one’s found a trace of him to this day. Everyone figured Rockhouse and the Tufas had something to do with it, but nobody ever got arrested. No body, no crime.” He shook his head. “The Tufa are still like that. They take care of their own problems.”

“Wow.”

“Now, here’s something you’ll get a real kick out of,” Howell said, and handed Rob a yellowed, fragile sheet of paper and three flat pieces of cardboard.

The paper atop the pile was a handbill that read:

Carefully Rob placed the ancient advertisement on the table and examined what lay beneath it. They were album sleeves: all showed Rockhouse Hicks dressed in the exaggerated cowboy gear of the time, grinning and clutching a banjo.

But it wasn’t the clothes that caused Rob’s chest to tighten so much that he struggled for breath. “Holy fuck,” he choked out.

“Something, isn’t it?” Howell agreed. Then he added with concern, “You all right? You’re white as a ghost.”

“I think I’ve seen one,” Rob said. He turned the album cover over and looked at the copyright date: 1959. It certainly didn’t appear to be fake.

“Would you like to sit down?” Howell asked.

“No, I’m… sorry, it just reminded me of something. About my girlfriend,” he added, figuring the lie was infinitely more believable than the truth.

Howell nodded. “Stuff slips up on you. I was in the service in Vietnam. Still happens to me sometimes, too.”

Rob forced himself to smile and sound casual. He held up his phone. “Do you mind if I take some pictures? I’d love to have copies of these album covers.”

“Sure,” Howell said.

As Rob photographed the covers, he tried to calm his thundering heart and put aside the truth of what he’d just learned. It was, by any stretch of the imagination, totally impossible; therefore, it could damn well wait a few minutes for him to think about it in detail. It took all his concentration to keep the phone steady in his hands.

“Too bad my main reporter Don’s not here,” Howell said. “He’s part Tufa. He told me his dad was actually over in Needsville the day the old notions store got Rockhouse’s first record in stock. Said old Rockhouse himself came in, to see everyone buy his new record. The lady working in the store was new in town and didn’t know him, so he asked her, ‘You got that new record by that fella Rockhouse Hicks?’ ‘Sure do,’ she said. And she went and got one, and put it on this old turntable they had up front. They all stood there listening, and when it was over, the lady said, ‘That boy sure can play the banjo.’ Rockhouse kinda snorts and says, ‘Heck, he ain’t so hot. If I had my old banjo here, I could play as good as that.’ She looks him over and says, ‘You can’t play the banjo.’ ‘Yes, I can, I just ain’t got mine here with me.’ So she goes in the back and comes out with this banjo somebody’d ordered from Nashville. She hands it to him, he makes a big production of tuning it, then jumps into ‘Love Flew Away,’ which was his first 45 single. You remember those?”

Rob managed a wry grin. “I’ve seen them in my parents’ attic. What’d the woman say then?”

“She said, ‘How’d you learn that record, it just came out?’”

They both laughed, although Rob’s was mere politeness. He turned the top album over and read the brief liner notes. “A new down-home sound for the uptown crowd,” they proclaimed. “Rockhouse Hicks turns his banjo inside out, with a freewheeling style not seen since Bill Monroe.” A quote from Roy Acuff, in large italic print, claimed Rockhouse was “the best hillbilly picker runnin’ around loose.”

The black-and-white photo in the bottom left corner showed elaborately stitched cowboy boots propped next to an open door. The song titles blended standards such as “Your Cheatin’ Heart” with odd-titled originals like “Rain of Toads,” “My Roots Are Here,” and “Chained to This Spot.”

Suddenly Rob felt a fresh new chill. How weird could this get?

The very last song on his last album was titled “The Fate of the Tyrant.” The poem from the Cricket library was “The Fate of the Tyrant Fae.” Could it be—?

Howell tapped the song title. “That last song isn’t on the album. As I heard the story, he was supposed to record it, and some folks say he did, but somehow between the time the cover was printed and the actual album was pressed, it got taken off.”

“You ever heard him play?”

“No. Needsville is Don’s beat. Tell you the truth, those real pure-blood Tufas like Rockhouse Hicks give me the willies. They have this air about them, like they’re… different, sort of. You’d have to experience it to know what I mean.” He chuckled at his own words. “But I guess you’ve probably run across that.”

“Yeah,” Rob agreed. “They can be very different.”

As he walked to his car, Rob was numb with the shock of the information he’d found. Missing songs, mysterious albums, incestuous scandals: those were interesting—compelling, even—but at least they made sense in the material universe he used to believe existed. A track could be left off an album, an album could fade from popular memory, and of course, a father could molest his daughter. But none of those explained the realization that had turned him pale and breathless in Howell’s office.

The face on the album cover…

…the face of young Rockhouse Hicks…

…was the face of the man who’d told him about the heartache-curing Tufa song, backstage in Atlanta.