Wisp of a Thing

5

The Pair-A-Dice was a rectangular cinder block building, windowless and with only one visible door, set back from the highway in the center of a dirt parking lot. Only the two enormous cutouts of dice on the roof, visible as Doyle’s truck topped the hill, implied that it was anything other than someone’s old work shed.

Rob spent the whole ten-minute ride jammed against the passenger door, as it seemed prudent not to press himself too closely against his new friend’s wife. Now, as his tennis shoes hit the gravel, he heard banjo, fiddle, and guitar mingle in a swirling bluegrass spiral metered by enthusiastic clapping. This moment just before entering a new music venue always gave him goose bumps, and the fact that he couldn’t immediately name the song sent extra adrenaline rushing through him. Maybe this band played songs he’d never heard before. Maybe—he couldn’t help but hope—Tufa songs. Maybe even the song. Could “carved in stone,” as the man told him, have meant inside a concrete building?

Cars and trucks formed an irregular circle around the place. The air smelled clean and fresh, helped by the wind’s faint autumn bite. When he looked up, Rob saw a pinpoint ocean of stars, with the crescent moon waiting like a cup to catch any that fell its way.

The moon had risen behind a distant, incredibly tall tree. “What kind of tree is that?” Rob asked, pointing.

“That’s the Widow’s Tree,” Berklee said.

“What does that mean?”

“Widows carve their husband’s name on it. It helps them get over the loss.”

“Really?”

“They say. Don’t have any experience with it myself.”

“And I’m glad to hear that,” Doyle said. He indicated the full parking lot. “Looks like a good crowd.”

“Rockhouse brings ’em out of the woodwork,” Berklee added, forcing her gaze to the ground. “Both sides come out to hear him.”

“Both sides of what?” Rob asked. When no one answered, he added, “So, I take it they play bluegrass?”

“Bluegrass is what they call it in Nashville,” Berklee said disdainfully. “Everything needs a label there.”

“If we’re real lucky, Bliss Overbay’ll sit in with ’em,” Doyle said. Immediately, he regretted it.

Berklee jabbed him with her elbow in a gesture that appeared playful, but was a bit too emphatic to be a joke. “If she does, you better be as far away from her as that room allows, my friend. I shit you not.”

“You’d have to eat me first,” Doyle said. He grabbed Berklee’s hand and held it tight. Like her drinking, her jealousy had grown much worse lately, and Doyle prayed she wouldn’t make another scene if Bliss did show up. The last time, he’d had to carry her out like a child having a tantrum.

The music surged out when Doyle opened the door. Not only was the band loud, but everyone in the packed room seemed to be clapping along and stomping in unison as well. To Rob, it was both a cliché and a wonder. “Wow,” he said. It was the only appropriate word he could think of.

A young, giddy couple on their way outside pushed awkwardly past them. “’Scuse us!” the boy called back over his shoulder. The girl kissed him and, without letting go, practically yanked him around the corner of the building. Both had jet-black hair and Tufa features.

“Is this a rowdy bunch?” Rob asked Doyle over the music.

“It’s a golden retriever, on a dog scale.”

“On a what?”

“Dog scale. Worst is a Rottweiler, best is a collie. A golden retriever is pretty easygoing until you get out of line. These folks are like that.”

“You’re big on animal metaphors, aren’t you?”

Doyle laughed.

The crowd was so thick near the entrance that they could barely close the door behind them. Other than the eager young lovers, people weren’t trying to leave, though; rather, they had backed up to clear the small dance floor. Beyond them, Rob saw the bobbing heads of the actual dancers.

Berklee stood on tiptoe and looked around almost frantically. At last she sighed, settled back to her feet, and sagged with disappointment.

“Hey!” a short, round woman called to Doyle and Berklee. “Y’all lookin’ mighty fancy tonight!”

Since the woman appeared to be wearing every cosmetic known to man, Rob thought this quite a statement. She wedged through the people standing near the door and hugged Doyle around the waist. Then Berklee bent to receive her embrace.

She looked up expectantly at Rob, then realized she didn’t know him. Her too-small dress buttoned up the front, but just barely, and she apparently wore nothing under it. “And just who’s this handsome blade of grass here?” she asked.

“Rob Quillen,” he said, and shook her hand.

She brushed his hair back from his face and scrutinized him. “Hm. I figured he was from another ridge somewhere, but he don’t talk like us. One of them people comin’ through lookin’ for your roots?”

“No, ma’am, I’m pretty sure I know my roots.”

The woman’s eyes shone from alcohol. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, anyway. I’ll save a dance for you.” Then she bulldozed past them to hug someone else.

Doyle responded to Rob’s quizzical look with a shrug. “That’s Opal Duncan. She’s always here.”

“She work here?”

“No. She’s just… always here.”

“She fell out of the ugly tree,” Berklee added, “and hit every branch on the way down.”

“Be nice,” Doyle said. “We can’t all be pretty as you.”

Rob followed Doyle and Berklee to the bar, where they all ordered beer. Doyle and Berklee both drank healthy swallows, but Rob put his tongue over the bottle’s mouth so it only looked like he was drinking. He liked to stay mostly sober in strange bars.

The walls were lined with wood paneling that should have ruined the acoustics but somehow didn’t. Torn, stained posters and faded photos lined the walls; some went back more than sixty years, to a time when giants like Hank Williams walked the earth in a haze of whiskey-drenched loneliness. Rob felt a, tangible connection to this history, and imagined the way Bill Monroe’s cowboy boots must’ve sounded as they walked across this floor, or the snap as Earl Scruggs opened his banjo case. Back then, no one knew they were creating a whole new form of music; hell, people barely grasped the true scope of it now.

The room buzzed with energy, and it surprised him how many kids he saw, many of them too young to even be in a bar. He wondered if they came for the social aspects, the lack of alternatives, or if they, too, were drawn by the music.

Rob stood on tiptoes to see the band on the riser in the corner. Two old Peavey amplifiers were stacked on either side of the stage, and a single dim spotlight hung from a bracket on the low ceiling. He saw no mixing board anywhere, or any sign of monitors. He wondered how they heard themselves over the crowd.

Three men and a woman were onstage. All looked to be in their fifties, although he’d read that age could be deceptive among the mountain folk due to their hard lives. Two of the men, the fiddler and the guitarist, were dressed in Western-style finery, with big cowboy hats and pearl-snap shirts.

The lone woman stood facing the fiddler, her back to the room. She wore a long denim skirt and her black hair pulled up into a bun atop her head. She held two knitting needles, and hammered out a rhythm on the fiddle strings while the fiddler played the melody. Rob had never seen anything like that before.

The third man played banjo. He wore overalls and a baseball cap turned backwards, and sported a thick white beard. The banjo’s skin face cover was stained dark in the center from years of use.

“I got you now, you old rascal!” the guitarist called out.

“You got it goin’ on, I tell ya!” the fiddler yelled back.

Something about the banjo player drew Rob’s eye, but he couldn’t identify it. Had he seen the man’s picture somewhere? No, there was something different about the way he played. Not how he held the instrument, not the way he picked, it was—

He had six fingers on each hand.

Rob stared as the bearded man ran them up and down the banjo’s neck and plucked expertly at the strings. He’d never seen anyone with extra digits before, and the fact that they all seemed to work added to his surprise. With a flourish, the band finished their current number, and the banjo picker threw his hands up in mock supplication, as if his skill was a gift from heaven. The sight of the twelve fingers spread wide was even stranger.

The crowd applauded, laughed, whistled, and stomped their approval.

“Thankee, thankee,” the guitarist said as the applause faded to an excited murmur. The woman took her knitting needles, picked up the canvas bag at her feet, and left the stage. She sat nearby in an old folding chair and began to work on one end of a sweater sleeve.

The banjo player stage-muttered, “Boy, I tell you what, I’m gonna kick the ass of the fella that thought up mountin’ a set of strings on a damn drumhead.”

“’Cause he made you love it,” the guitarist fired back. To the crowd, he said, “We’re about to bring a special guest up here now to join us on this next song. Y’all all know her, so let’s have a big round of applause for Miss Bliss Overbay.”

This time the response, if possible, was even louder. The banjo picker scooted his stool to one side, but not very far, as if he resented sharing the center spot.

A slender woman stepped onto the stage. She had long jet-black hair in a single braid that fell down her back almost to her waist. Her dark face had deep smile lines bracketing her wide mouth, which made guessing her age difficult; she could’ve been anywhere between twenty and forty. Her eyes were dark, but Rob swore they actually twinkled like they were illuminated from within. She wore a long, dark skirt and a simple sleeveless blouse that hinted at the same tough, exquisite shape so many rural women possessed in their girlhood: broad shoulders, narrow waist, wide hips, and strong legs. A snake tattoo ran around her upper arm and disappeared under her clothing. Through a momentary gap in the crowd, he glimpsed her bare feet.

“Well, if it ain’t Miss La-Dee-Da,” Berklee sniffed.

“Stop it,” Doyle said patiently, as if he’d said it a million times before.

Bliss faced the packed room. Her decision to sit in with the boys had been sudden and inexplicable, one of those urges sourced somewhere deep inside, beneath her veneer of civilization. She’d taken a change of clothes with her to work, something she almost never did, and headed straight to the Pair-A-Dice instead of home. One song, she told herself; one song to honor the night wind and the eternal truce between her people and the others, and then back home, straight into the shower and then to bed.

She smiled as the applause, and the energy it generated, rippled over her like a thousand caresses. Not all these people liked her, and some rightly feared her, but they all appreciated her musical skill; the songs were the common ground where all the Tufa met. She let her eyes drift over the crowd, observing the faces that had changed and the ones that hadn’t.

“Wow, thank you,” Bliss said. “Before we get started, just wanted to mention that there’s a yellow Chevy Nova outside with its lights on. Also, the kitchen’s closing in about ten minutes, so if you’re hungry, you better make up your mind now.” She looked down, and her demeanor shifted from casual to something more serious. She exchanged a long, enigmatic look with the six-fingered banjo player, then spoke. “This is one of my own, which y’all have been nice enough to ask us to play before. Hope you like it this time, too.”

She began to sway, her skirt waving against her body; then she counted four. The band came in behind her with practiced precision. Their tightness impressed Rob; they clearly played together often. He imagined them as young boys on a mountain cabin porch making music for barefoot girls in long summer dresses, who swayed to the music with their eyes closed just as Bliss Overbay now did.

Then Bliss stepped to the microphone and let out a long, deep wail, a counterpoint melody to the banjo and guitar. The fiddle came in as harmony, soaring over the woman’s smoky voice. The sound quieted errant conversations and stilled the dancers as everyone turned their attention toward the stage. Rob got chills that had nothing to do with the weather.

She wrapped one hand lightly around the microphone on its stand and began to sing.

The guitar kept the rhythm, while the banjo plucked a metronomic counterpoint. The fiddler wailed softly beneath the woman’s full voice.

The crowd was absolutely rapt. Even Berklee and Doyle kept their eyes on Bliss. Rob had never seen anyone so thoroughly command a crowd’s attention. Even the packed audiences at the TV show tapings had not been this riveted. The cliché said that at a good concert, each audience member felt as if the performer sang directly to him or her; here, that was no cliché at all.

Bliss closed her eyes and bent her head back, letting her long braid sway with the music. She knew that, when she sang right and truly embodied the music, she was beautiful, that all the empty superlatives slathered on her were, at that moment, entirely true. If the song was graceful, so was she; if the words were biting and yet playful, her smile shone the same way. The twinkle in her eye gleamed like the notes flying from the banjo, and she swayed like the fiddler’s bow. The clunky, flesh-bound bulk of her life was made bearable by these freed-spirit moments when she became what the Tufa ultimately were: a song. Then she slowly twirled, the skirt flaring around her, and timed it perfectly so that her hand slid back around the microphone as she began to sing again.

She threw her free hand into the air, and the band stopped instantly, except for the plinking beat carried on the banjo.

Then the band thundered back, or at least as much as a bluegrass trio could thunder, carrying the melody as Bliss sang wordlessly in a style half yodel, half blues wail.

When they finished a measure later, the place went nuts.

Rob applauded and whistled through his teeth, as impressed by her presence as by her song. He’d just encountered a whole new genre; it was fucking Goth bluegrass.

And for a brief moment, the pain and loneliness no longer enveloped him.

The appreciative noise fell over Bliss like an old, comfortable blanket until a sharp whistle stood out from the rest. Her eyes flitted among the familiar faces until, this time, she spotted the new one. He had black hair and Tufa-dark skin, although like Peggy Goins, she instantly knew he had no Tufa blood in him. He watched her with the inadvertently blatant look she knew so well. She didn’t know him, though; how had she missed him earlier? His presence recalled the previous night’s dream, and that connection sent a rush of panic through her. Suddenly the room felt small, hot, and dangerous. Hiding it as best she could, she made for the exit.

Rob leaned close to Doyle and shouted over the noise, “Who is that again?”

“Bliss Overbay,” he said with real admiration. “Something, ain’t she?”

“Yeah, she’s something, all right,” Berklee said, “and it rhymes with ‘rich.’” She finished her beer in one long drink, belched, and waved to the bartender for another.

“She just does one song and then leaves?” Rob asked.

“It is a weeknight, and she lives pretty far out of town,” Doyle said.

“Good thing, too,” Berklee added as she took a drink of her fresh beer. “Much closer, and I don’t think you boys could stand it.”

“I have to meet her, man,” Rob said. “I have to tell her how good she was.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Berklee sighed.

“You better hurry, then,” Doyle said. “She’s probably already gone.”

Bliss saw the stranger break away from Doyle and Berklee Collins and move toward her, hindered by the crowd. It panicked her even more. She moved her fingers in a certain way, taught to her by her mother and stretching back in her family to a time when the rolling mountains grew jagged and tall into the ancient sky. It had the desired effect of hiding her from non-Tufa eyes, and she made her escape.

Rob pushed through the crowd as politely as he could. Outside, he saw no sign of Bliss, or dust from any recently departed vehicle. He rushed around the building, surprising the giddy young couple in the bed of a truck. But he saw no trace of the elusive dark-haired girl.

He walked to the highway and looked for taillights topping any of the hills in the distance. Gradually the excitement dissolved, and he realized how uncharacteristically he’d behaved. It was too soon after Anna, he reminded himself. Sure, he’d noticed how hot Berklee Collins was, but that was normal and he could handle it. He’d never seriously pursue a married woman, and he wasn’t the kind of man to inspire thoughts of infidelity in them anyway. But Bliss Overbay was something else entirely, and he couldn’t even identify what about her attracted him so strongly: her voice, her smile, her eyes, or her song. It was as if she’d simply sent out some kind of emotional tentacle and wrapped it around him as she sang.

But as his breathing slowed and he felt the cool night air on his sweaty skin, that intense hold faded. He turned and walked back to the Pair-A-Dice, his footsteps loud on the gravel.