Wisp of a Thing

4

After lunchtime, Doyle went into the convenience store beside the garage. His father sat on a stool at the register, chin in his hand, elbow on the counter. He was snoring. Behind him, Gretchen Wilson reclined suggestively in a poster thumbtacked to the wall.

Doyle picked up the phone, dialed the bank, and asked Bella Mae for Berklee’s extension. “Thanks for calling the Bank of Needsville,” his wife said when she picked up, “where interest rates are—”

He interrupted the mandatory spiel. “It’s me.”

“Hi.” There was no feeling of any sort in the word.

“Met an interesting fella today. Guitar player from Kansas, staying down at Peggy Goins’s motel. Thought I might take him down to hear Rockhouse and the boys tonight.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

He had to lick his suddenly dry lips before speaking again. “Thought you might want to come along.”

There was a long pause. Doyle heard the noise of the pneumatic tubes at the bank’s drive-through window, and he knew exactly what his wife was thinking: He might be there. Finally Berklee said in a small voice, “Okay. That’d be nice.”

He felt a tingle in his chest, but wasn’t sure if it was relief or apprehension. “’Kay. See you at home, then.”

“’Kay. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

He hung up. Gretchen’s slightly stoned, slightly horny expression hadn’t changed. He turned so he wouldn’t have to look at her, and watched through the connecting door as a squirrel poked its head into the garage, sniffed the fume-laden air, and scampered away. It was a nice symbol for how he felt whenever he approached Berklee these days. Something inside her was dying, decaying, and she tried to cover the stench with alcohol and bluster. Unlike the squirrel, though, he couldn’t wrinkle his nose and just scurry away. He loved her.

Doyle parked his truck beside Rob’s car in front of the Catamount Corner. The sun had just crept behind the mountains, and darkness would, as always, fall like a thick shroud thrown over everything. Berklee sat beside him, her eyes scanning the street outside the way they always did in town. She looked fantastic: tight jeans, a blouse unbuttoned just enough to display her cleavage, her long hair loose and combed to shiny perfection. And, as some sort of concession to the evening, she’d consumed only three beers during the time she spent getting dressed. He knew if he mentioned it, she’d mock him and turn it into an argument, so he simply filed it away. These scraps of effort, meager as they were, made him recall the girl he loved, and kept the spark inside him alive.

Peggy Goins glanced up at them as they entered, then smiled. “Well, the happy Collinses. And how are the night winds treatin’ the two of you this evening?”

“Fine as always,” Doyle said. Berklee said nothing, her eyes continually drawn to the windows that looked out on Main Street. “We’re here to pick up one of your guests.”

“Must be Mr. Quillen, he’s the only one I’ve got right now,” Peggy said. “I’ll ring his room for you.” She picked up the phone, punched the numbers, and waited for an answer. “You have company, Mr. Quillen. Doyle and Berklee Collins. Okay, I’ll tell them.” She hung up. “He said he’ll be right down.”

Berklee took a seat in one of the padded high-backed chairs, elegantly crossed her legs, rested her hands in her lap, and resumed staring out the window.

Peggy took Doyle’s arm. “Come along, then, we’ll go hurry him up.” She pulled him toward the door that led to the stairs.

“But he said—”

“Come along,” she repeated, and cut her eyes at Berklee. Doyle wearily nodded and allowed her to lead him into the stairwell.

Once the door closed behind them and they were halfway between the two floors, Peggy stopped. “She’s getting worse, Doyle.”

“Everybody drinks a little,” he said with a weak shrug.

“I don’t mean the drinking, and you know it. She hasn’t taken her eyes off the street since you got here. I bet she hasn’t let the two of you have marital relations in months.”

“That’s kinda personal, Mrs. Goins,” he said, annoyed. He respected Peggy as both an elder and because of her status in the Needsville community. But some lines no one was allowed to cross.

“You need to cut bait, Doyle,” Peggy said seriously. “There’s nothing you or anyone can do. It’s got its hooks in her, and they won’t pull out. They just work their way in deeper.”

“She don’t drink that much.”

“Stop trying to make this about her drinking,” Peggy said. “I’d drink all the time, too, in her shoes. I can’t believe she’s lasted as long as this. But, son, you have to know where this’ll end up. No matter how much you love her, it’ll never be enough. You should start letting go of her now, before she pulls you down with her.”

“You give everyone such good advice?”

“Doyle Collins, don’t you take that tone with me. I knew you before you could wipe your own behind. Same with Berklee in there. You think it doesn’t break my heart to see her like that? I’m giving you the advantage of my… Oh, what do you call it when you look at something different from everyone else?”

“Perspective?”

“Yes. The advantage of my perspective. I wouldn’t be able to close my eyes at night if I knew I didn’t try.”

“Then you should sleep like a baby.”

He said it flatly, with no blatant malice, but his irritation was plain. Peggy scowled again, then decided to change the subject. “How did you meet that boy upstairs, anyway?”

“His car broke down. Dad and I helped him out.”

“Do you know who he is?”

“Said his name was Rob Quillen.”

“Yes, but do you know who he is?”

Doyle shook his head.

Peggy opened her mouth, then remembered her promise. Her almost biological need to gossip warred with her sense of honor, until finally the latter won. “I reckon he’ll have to tell you. I promised I wouldn’t.”

“Is he famous or something?”

“Closer to ‘something.’”

Doyle shrugged. “Whatever. I can find my way from here.”

When the phone woke Rob, it was dark. He knees ached from dangling off the side of the bed. He lay half-curled around his guitar, the same way he used to spoon with Anna. After talking to Mrs. Goins, he stood, stretched, and felt his back and shoulders pop. Then he went to the still-open window.

Darkness thicker than any city night had fallen, and he heard nothing but wind, crickets, and the occasional owl. A brief, spooky shudder rippled through him as he realized how cut off he was from real civilization.

As if to emphasize this, a coyote chose that exact moment to howl its shrill, vaguely mocking cry. That made him smile, and his paranoia retreated. It was, after all, the twenty-first century, and even here, he had wireless access. How isolated could he really be?

He adjusted the window to block most of the chilly night breeze. His solitude enveloped him anew, a pressure that seemed to leave him weightless and insubstantial. Would anyone care if he vanished from this room? Would he inspire more than a knowing “tsk” from anyone who knew him? At best, he’d become the answer to a trivia question, a footnote in pop-culture history.

He was so engrossed in these self-pitying thoughts that he jumped at the knock on his door. “Come in,” he said when he got his breath.

Doyle opened the door. He’d changed from his gas station clothes and now wore jeans and a University of Tennessee T-shirt. “Hi, you about ready?”

“Yeah. Fell asleep. Sorry.”

“There’s some local boys got a pickup bluegrass band playin’ down at the Pair-A-Dice tonight. My wife and I generally go for a while, so I thought I’d see if you might want to tag along.”

“Definitely, thanks.” He splashed some water on his face, combed his hair, and touched up his deodorant. Then he carefully wiped his guitar’s strings and put the instrument back in its case. He wished he could spend just five minutes alone with his music; playing always grounded him.

Rob followed Doyle downstairs. In the lobby, a young woman rose from one of the overstuffed high-backed chairs as they entered. Tall, willowy, with jet-black hair and dark skin, she reminded Rob of the cliché image of an Indian princess from one of the souvenir plates his mother collected.

“Hi,” she said, and snuggled into Doyle’s embrace when he put his arm around her shoulders. To Rob she said, “You must be the fella with the bad starter.”

My starter’s working just fine, Rob wanted to say as he surreptitiously admired her, but instead replied, “Yeah. Quite a handy husband you got there.”

“He’ll do.” She was almost as tall as Doyle, and jabbed him playfully. “So are you going to introduce us, or should I just call him ‘Yankee guitar boy,’ like you do?”

Doyle had noticed Rob’s reaction to Berklee; every man had the same one when they first met her. As always, he let it slide. “Rob Quillen, this is my wife, Berklee.”

Rob shook her hand; it was small and strong, with elegant nails. He wondered what she did for a living. “Berklee like the music school?”

“No, Berklee as in my daddy, Berk, really wanted a son and had to make do with me. But it’s spelled like the school.” Her eyes narrowed. “Excuse my rudeness, but… do I know you?”

“I don’t see how.” He smelled beer on her breath.

“It’s probably just that black hair. You look like you could be a Tufa.”

“’Fraid not,” he said.

“So are you going to sit in with the boys at the Pair-A-Dice tonight?” she asked.

“Nah, I’m just going to listen.” Rob had learned the hard way that showing up with his guitar did not automatically gain him entrance to a local music scene. If anything, his TV fame often just pissed them off. They felt, quite correctly, that it was only dumb luck that he’d been chosen over them, and probably resented the tragedy that had overtaken him and made the spotlight even brighter.

“Well, if we want a decent leanin’ spot on the wall, we better get on down there,” Doyle said.

Rob nodded, followed them out the door, and after an inadvertent glance at her gracefully swaying rear, made an inner vow to stop thinking of Berklee as a human woman right then and there.

Peggy rested her chin in her hands and watched the night through the window. She felt guilty for almost breaking Rob’s confidence, but also a heartrending sympathy for him. It was the biggest Tufa weakness: the ability to empathize all out of proportion to the relationship. She barely knew the boy, but his plight caused her almost physical pain.

Had he been even part Tufa, she would’ve known what to do. But he had no blood in him, despite his appearance. So she was at a loss.

Then she had an idea. She reached for the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.

“Chloe? It’s Peggy. Is Bronwyn there?”