Wisp of a Thing

3

As he drove, Rob noticed something in the yard of an old shack ahead on the right. At first he thought it was one of those elaborate homemade mailboxes, fashioned into the shape of a tractor or a gas pump. Then it stepped into the road and blocked his way.

He had plenty of time to stop. The emu, an ostrichlike bird six feet tall and brownish green in color, stared at Rob’s vehicle with mildly stupid curiosity. Rob knew some people raised these birds for their meat, but this one appeared to be roaming loose, and in no hurry to get out of the road. Rob used his phone to snap a quick picture.

A wiry, dark-haired man in jeans and a denim jacket ran out of the shack. He had the distinctive Cloud County look, just like the boy. “Hey, hey! Git outta here!” An aluminum baseball bat flashed in the sun.

Rob’s muscles tensed in anticipation of a fight, but the man’s rage was directed at the emu, which took off and disappeared into the woods across the road. The man shook the baseball bat menacingly after the bird, then skulked off the way he’d come. He never even glanced at Rob.

Rob let out his breath in a long, heavy rush. Welcome to the land of the Tufa.

The road rose and fell several times before it topped a final hill and descended into the valley where, at the center, awaited Needsville, Tennessee.

Needsville’s “main street” was simply a wider stretch of the highway with buildings along either side. A lone traffic light flashed yellow to control access to a road winding up into the forested hills. Beneath the sign that identified the city limits, a smaller homemade placard advertised the Catamount Corner Motel, half a mile ahead on the left.

He found it easily enough and parked out front. The steps up to the porch sagged a little, but otherwise it seemed in excellent condition, with all the wood recently painted. He’d been afraid of some run-down fleapit used by truckers and fugitives.

The staggering reality of the scenery hit him anew. The horizon in Kansas was impossibly distant and flat; here it loomed over him. The rounded mountaintops were daubed with spots of yellow and orange as the trees began to turn. Beyond them, the far peaks rose ponderously, clothed in somber hues of spruce. Where the forest had been cleared from the slopes, the hills swelled with lush grass. Tiny dwellings perched here and there, some visibly new, most as old and gray as the rocks beneath them. Cell phone towers poked into the sky along the ridges; they reminded him of hairy moles on an old woman’s chin.

He immediately tried to find metaphors for the beauty, words that captured the overwhelming sense of massiveness and antiquity. He imagined the first European settlers reaching the top of one of these ridges and seeing the valley in which he now stood. Whether they’d been English, Scotch-Irish, or German, they would have been overwhelmed by the vista before them: all this untouched virgin land just waiting to be cleared, built on, and developed.

And when those first settlers arrived, they found the Tufa already here.

The wind shifted direction, and he shivered. His guidebook said the temperature change could be extreme in late summer and early fall, from the high seventies during the day to the thirties at night. He grabbed his bags and quickly went inside.

The lobby smelled like potpourri and fresh flowers; lace-edged country knickknacks covered every surface, and one corner was set up with displays of the same items for sale. He stepped up to the desk, carefully propped his guitar case against it, and less carefully dropped his duffel bag to the floor. “Hello?” he called.

A woman in her fifties, with dark skin and ebony hair touched with gray, appeared from the office. She wore a T-shirt decorated with appliqué hearts. “Hello, young man. Can I help you?”

“I’ve got a reservation. Robert Quillen. Hope I’m not too early to check in.”

Peggy Goins looked him over with the practiced evaluation of a woman who had never lost touch with her inner horny teenager, the one who’d spent a single glorious summer in the 1960s traveling and fucking all along the eastern seaboard. This Robert Quillen was slender, with a thick head of black hair, an easy smile, and dark, piercing eyes. She’d seen eyes like that before; they spoke of the capacity for furious anger, and other furies far more intimate. He carried a single bag, which meant he traveled alone, and a guitar, which said he was musical.

Although he looked like one of them, she knew immediately there was no Tufa blood in him. It happened occasionally; people ran across the “Tufa mystery” on the Internet or in a book and imagined they, too, were somehow connected. But there was more to it than just physical resemblance. After all, the Tufa weren’t the only ones in the world with straight black hair and a swarthy complexion. But this boy sure did look the part, and folks in Needsville with less of the true in them might easily assume he was, especially since he was a guest at the Catamount Corner. Peggy’s establishment survived on the desire of anyone with even a drop of Tufa blood to return to Needsville. It was similar to the call of Mecca, or a bird’s urge to migrate, except that it was more subtle, usually unconscious, and could be resisted without too much effort. Those who answered it, however, often learned things about themselves they’d never imagined.

She flipped through a recipe box and pulled out a three-by-five index card. “Here you are, Mr. Quillen. And how long will you be staying with us?”

“Probably three nights, but maybe more. Is that too vague? I mean, if I need to stay on longer, will that be a problem?”

“Not at all. We only have one other couple coming in this weekend. Now, next month, when the leaves really start to turn, then it’ll be a madhouse here. Nothing but Canadians and Texans until Thanksgiving.” She handed him the guest registration card. “Fill this out for me, if you would.”

She took his Visa card and ran her fingers over the signature on the back. She sensed only vague things from it, but they made her frown nonetheless. She was right about his temper; it would burst out soon, and affect a lot of people in town. She also saw disturbing flashes of blood, and the ghastly image of a pale hand clawing up from a grave. But mixed in were smiles, strains of music, and the sighs of lovers. She remembered her own omens at sunrise and wondered how this newcomer would figure into them.

Rob quickly filled in the other information, but paused at “emergency contact.” Normally, it would be Anna. Now, he had no idea whom to put down. He left it blank.

As she waited for the card’s authorization, Peggy asked, “Here to trace your family?”

“People keep asking me that. Do I really look that much like a Tufa?”

She waved her hand. “Oh, honey, looks got nothing to do with it. Tufa’s like Cherokee, you can be blond and blue-eyed and still have enough in you to count. It’s just that we get people in here, prowling the cemeteries, looking for ancestors. They take pictures and videos and rubbings and such.”

“Well, not me. I’m a musician.”

She nodded, and then her eyes widened. “Oh, my goodness, you’re Rob from the TV show!”

His cheeks burned. This never got easy. “Yep, that’s me.”

“I am so sorry, I didn’t recognize your name at first. Oh, you poor thing, bless your heart.”

“Thank you. Do you mind if we keep this just between ourselves for now?”

“Of course, whatever you need.” She patted his hand. “But if you want to talk, I promise you, I can listen with the best of them, and I keep secrets like a beehive keeps honey from a bear.”

“Thank you,” he repeated.

She returned his credit card, but when he reached for it, she said, “Would you mind if I had a look at your palm?”

“Are you going to tell my future?”

“Oh, no, nothing so silly. No one can predict the future. Every blink of every eye changes it. I can just sometimes tell what your next few days might be like.”

“Well… I suppose.” He put his card back in his wallet, then let her hold his hand, palm up.

Most of her evaluation was empirical. Rob’s hand was small, but by its weight, she knew the muscles were built up the way only prolonged musical practice would develop them. His nails were short and neat. One knuckle felt larger than normal, probably a healed injury from the temper she’d already sensed. But then came observations and impressions that had no material source, but that she trusted as much as any physical sign. After a moment, she released his hand and nodded.

“Did I pass?” he asked, amused despite himself.

“Of course. It looked to me like your time here will do you a world of good. Everything will be different when you leave.”

“That’s a tall order.”

She patted his hand. “You just wait and see. But I’ve got to warn you: Not everyone you meet will be as honest as me.”

“I’ve worked with TV producers. I’m ready for anything.”

He followed Peggy across the lobby. He stopped at a framed newspaper clipping on the wall that showed a dark-haired young woman in an army uniform gazing sternly into the camera. He recognized her at once. “Bronwyn Hyatt is from here?”

“Oh, yes. She grew up here. She lives out at her family’s farm.”

“Huh. Imagine that.” He remembered the media circus surrounding her rescue in Iraq and her return to the States in the spring, and the way that she completely dropped out of the public consciousness since. Maybe he should look her up and ask her how she did that.

Upstairs, Peggy unlocked room 17B with a simple key, not one of those ID cards used in chain motels. Then she stepped aside so he could enter.

The room brought him up short. Lace edged everything, from the writing desk to the telephone receiver. Little painted animals in overalls and straw hats ran along the baseboard, and the bed sported an enormous canopy and a huge, thick mattress. When Rob tossed his guitar on the bed, it bounced a foot into the air.

“That looks comfortable,” he observed.

“We don’t get many single young men coming through,” she said. “Usually couples.”

“I bet they appreciate that.”

She handed him the key. “I hope you enjoy your stay with us and manage to get some rest. There’s a café menu on your desk. Local calls are free, although Lord knows who you’d call around here. But you’ve probably got one of those fancy picture-taking cell phones anyway.” As she went out, she added cheerily, “If you need anything, just holler. I’m usually in the office behind the desk during the day, and my husband and I live out back.”

“Thanks. I should be fine for tonight.” As she turned away, he added, “Did you know you have wild emus around here?”

“Yes,” she said with disgust. “They used to belong to old Sim Denham. He bought a whole gaggle of the nasty things. Thought he’d make a fortune with them. Then the bottom dropped out of the market and he just let ’em go. Now the darn things are everywhere.”

“I nearly ran over one today. Are they dangerous?”

“No, but they give me the whim-whams the way they just stare at you.” She shivered. “Well, if you need anything, you just let me know.”

Rob closed the door after her, and noticed an odd wooden device mounted to it. It looked like the neckless body of a tiny mandolin or guitar, with four strings stretched across the hole. Small wooden balls hung so that they’d strike these strings whenever the door closed. It made a soft, comforting sound.

He cleared the complimentary stationery and postcards from the desk and placed his laptop on it. As he waited for it to find the network, he took in more details, like the small fireplace in the corner and the lack of a television. On the wall over the desk hung a framed cross-stitched quote attributed to William Blake:

It was stuffy in the room, so he opened the window. His view looked out at the woods, which grew thick on the slope of a rising hillside, giving him only a limited view of the sky. A small piece of irregular blue glass lay discarded on the sill. He tossed it in the trash can by the desk, then sat down to check his e-mail.

He was startled to see, not his Gmail account, but the Tufa Mysteries Web site. He forgot he’d made it his home page just before he left Kansas. The splash page featured the classic vintage picture of these enigmatic people, the one in every book, article, or blog. It was black-and-white, scratched and faded with age, but sharp with the detail those old huge cameras captured. Three women held their babies and stood grim-faced before a rough-edged mountain cabin. In front of them, three men sat in straight-backed chairs; they clutched a rifle, a guitar, and a windup phonograph, respectively. They looked like European Gypsies: dark skin, straight black hair and eyes haunted by mistrust. Yet the caption read, “Gorvens family, Cloud County, TN, 1898.”

This picture—the original was held in the Museum of Appalachia archives—was the touchstone for anyone interested in the Tufa mystery. Rob had seen the same photo in many other books, often with conflicting information about its origin. About the only thing the different sources agreed on was the family’s surname, Gorvens, and that the clan had vanished into the mountains shortly after they’d been convinced to sit for the photo, never to be seen again by the outside world.

The guitar in the photo had first caught his attention as he surfed Web sites on music history late one sleepless night. Most sources insisted guitars weren’t generally used by the mountain folk until after 1910, yet here was one, in a blatantly musical context, at least twenty years earlier. The picture tangentially confirmed part of the sequined man’s story, enough to convince Rob he should make the pilgrimage.

After reading about the Tufa into the wee hours, the idea that he might just throw things in a car and head south struck him as he stared at the ceiling. Why the hell not? He had money, and time. If the tale of heart-healing magical music turned out to be bullshit, which Rob knew had to be the case, he’d at least get a change of scenery, which God knew he needed. And if it were true…

He glanced at his reflection in a small mirror across the room and compared it to the faces in the photograph. There was a general resemblance, but these Gorvens had something in their eyes entirely missing from Rob’s. It was too vague and insubstantial for him to name, but its reality was unmistakable, like seeing a shadow but not the thing casting it.

He logged on to Facebook and updated his status. This was his personal page, with fewer than two hundred friends. His “Like” page had more than twenty-five million. He never even looked at it now; twenty-five million messages of sympathy and condolences just left him numb.

Arrived in Needsville today, he typed.

Then he posted the photo of the emu.

He closed the computer and took out his guitar. Seated on the edge of the bed, he softly played one of the tunes he’d written after passing through Erwin, a town noted for a bizarre incident in which a killer circus elephant was hanged with a railroad crane. It was his latest attempt at a true folkish story-song, and although it was awful (he rhymed “elephant” with “the hell it can’t”), he understood that it was a step on the road to competence.

But, as with everything he wrote these days, that song morphed into another, one of many he’d written about Anna. He sang softly, feeling the rhythm of the words link inextricably with the melody.

He yawned, and realized he was thoroughly exhausted even though it was barely lunchtime. He’d left the Cookville motel before dawn, and now could not keep his eyes open. He leaned back on the bed, intending to just shut his eyes for an instant, and didn’t even put his guitar away. He was asleep in moments.

Peggy’s husband, Marshall, came in from the back carrying a box of disposable coffee filters. “You ain’t never gonna guess who’s upstairs right now,” his wife said.

He put down the box on the front desk and looked at her. “That’s likely.”

“Well, go ahead, guess.”

“You said I ain’t never gonna be able to.”

“That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”

“I don’t know. Kevin Sorbo.”

“Kevin Sorbo? Where’d that come from?”

“Can you just tell me? I have a bunch of stuff to unload.”

“Rob Quillen.”

“You’re right, I never would’ve guessed that. Who’s Rob Quillen?”

“That poor boy from So You Think You Can Sing? His girlfriend was flying out to surprise him at the final show, and her plane crashed?”

“Oh, yeah. There’s some tough luck for you. Why is he here?”

“I don’t know. Remember how we all thought he looked like one of us? Well, he ain’t got a drop of Tufa in him, I can tell that for sure. But he does have the look.”

“That could be trouble. Not everyone can tell the difference.”

“Oh, he’s harmless. He probably just wants to get away from all the publicity, like Bronwyn. Can you blame him?”

“Reckon not. He picked the right place to do it.”

Marshall carried the box into the kitchen. Peggy tapped her finger on the desk. Marshall had reiterated something she’d thought earlier: Not every Tufa, even some of the true bloods, could tell if someone else was one of them. If a person had the look, like Rob, then he could stumble into things he was never meant to know.

She picked up the phone and dialed Bliss Overbay, then hung up before it rang. Bliss was fine for most things, but she was merely the regent, not the leader. For something like this, Peggy needed someone with a direct line to the night winds.

She dialed again. A moment later she said, “Leshell? May I please speak to Mandalay? Oh, that’s right, school did start last week. Well, could you tell her to call Peggy Goins when she gets home? Thanks.”