Wisp of a Thing

6

Inside, Doyle and Berklee huddled together. Their expressions and gestures told Rob they were arguing. Not wanting to intrude, he detoured around the wall, until he tripped over the feet of the six-fingered banjo player.

The old man sat by himself on a wall bench, sipping coffee from a faded, stained mug. Even in the crowded, noisy room, he radiated a kind of earthy calm, and everyone seemed to respect his personal space. He looked up sharply as Rob nearly fell over him, and swung the cup away so it wouldn’t splash on his lap. “Careful, son. This is hot.”

“Sorry,” Rob said. When he realized who this was, he added, “Wow, you guys were great. I really enjoyed your set.”

The man had the same sparkly eyes as Bliss Overbay, only the skin around them was drawn tight and deeply lined with crow’s-feet, giving him the gaze of a Spaghetti Western cowboy. When he turned his head a certain way he reminded Rob of someone, but it faded before he could place it. “Thank you, son,” the old man said. “You a musician, too, I see.”

“How could you tell?”

“Only place you got work muscles is from the elbow down. If you just had ’em in one arm, I’d reckon you spent a little too much time in your room, pluckin’ your own banjo. But since you got ’em in both, I figure it’s from playing the gee-tar or something.”

“Good eye.”

“I been around a long time.”

Rob nodded at the empty space on the bench beside him. “May I join you?”

“Reckon not. I figure you’ll want to talk about music and all, and I just ain’t interested. Talking about music is for the folks who can’t play it.”

Rob paused, startled by the blatant rejection. Did the guy secretly recognize him from the TV show? “Well… I play, and I talk about it. What does that make me?”

“You must not do either one of them too well, I reckon.” Then the old man turned to watch the people across the room, and Rob knew he’d been dismissed.

Annoyed, he worked his way back to the bar, where Doyle now stood alone, scowling into his beer.

“Where’s Berklee?” he asked.

“Pissed off,” Doyle answered with no apparent malice. “Apparently, I didn’t blink enough while Bliss was singing, so she thought I was staring.”

“Hard not to,” Rob acknowledged.

“Yeah,” he agreed with weary admiration. “But you’d think after damn near twenty years of knowing that me and Bliss ain’t never going to be nothing but friends, Berklee would be over this. I mean, we all grew up together, it’s a little bitty town, and if I ain’t hooked up with Bliss before now, I ain’t likely to, you know?”

“Women are funny.”

“True enough.”

“So what’s this Bliss girl’s story? She live around here?”

“Other end of the valley, up the mountain.” He pointed with his beer. “Her family used to own a lot of land around here, and she managed to hang on to some of it, including that big ole house.”

“What does her husband do?”

He smiled. “Bliss ain’t the kind to let a man have too much influence, you know?”

“She’s gay?”

“Naw, she ain’t gay, or at least I don’t think she is. She’s just… comfortable being alone. She’s a big deal in the Tufa. What they call a ‘First Daughter.’”

Berklee pushed through the crowd and stood before them, arms folded. “I’m sorry,” she barked, in the same way another woman might’ve said, “Go to hell.”

“Ah, me, too, honey,” Doyle said magnanimously. He stepped aside and gallantly gestured at the empty space against the wall. She slid into it, still glaring. “That’s how she apologizes,” he explained to Rob as he handed his wife a fresh beer.

“My whole life, every guy in this goddam town has wanted to get in Bliss Overbay’s blue jeans, and it’s just getting old.” Berklee said sulkily. “It ain’t solid gold down there, you know? It just ain’t.”

“I don’t want in anybody’s blue jeans but yours,” Doyle said patiently.

Rob took a long drink of his beer, unable to get the image of Bliss out of his mind. As the band began to play again, he found himself picturing her standing at the front of the stage, swaying to the music, dancing alone like a pagan priestess in her circle.

Doyle and Berklee dropped Rob off at the Catamount Corner just before midnight. He had to use the buzzer to get Mrs. Goins to let him in. He was a little drunk, and as he undressed, he felt the usual pangs of loneliness begin. He thought about shutting the window, but the slight chill made the prospect of the thick blankets even more inviting.

So, as he had done so many times in the past three months, he carefully turned off all the lights, crawled into bed alone, and cried himself to sleep.

Bliss sat on the short, age-warped dock that extended out over the lake behind her house. Her bare feet dangled in the cold water, and she held her guitar across her lap. She idly picked notes as she watched the ripple patterns, losing herself in the rings of reflected moonlight. The sky blazed with stars occasionally blocked as small clouds scudded along with the night wind. Insects and frogs provided a steady accompaniment, and the owl that lived across the water called out to its mate. Mosquitoes swarmed about her, but none landed to feed. They knew better.

Suddenly she realized she was playing the song that had been stuck in her head all week, “Wrought Iron Fences” by the Mississippi singer-songwriter Kate Campbell. Her tentative picking grew stronger, and she sang:

She reviewed the night’s events as she played. She’d gone to the Pair-A-Dice on a whim, wanting only to sing and feel the musical blood rushing through her. Nothing ever replaced performing in front of people, especially her people, who knew just how crucial music could be. She’d seen Doyle and Berklee, and noted again the woman’s deteriorating condition. The hateful glares Berklee directed at her held no threat; Bliss understood their source. She wished Doyle did, and would admit it, and take the only action possible. She’d known Doyle all his life, knew both his goodness and weakness, and hated to see the former suffer due to the latter. But there was nothing she or anyone else could do. Some things were irreversible.

Doyle’s heartbreak hadn’t brought her to the water this night, though. The boy with them, the stranger, obsessed her. He looked vaguely, distantly familiar. Who was he? He had Tufa hair and Tufa skin, but he wasn’t Tufa; of that, she was sure. Why had he stared at her with such intensity? She was attractive, sure, but no great beauty and certainly not worthy of that sort of attention. She knew after one song that she had to get out before he approached her, but now she couldn’t get him out of her head. What would he have said to her?

She finished “Wrought Iron Fences” and closed her eyes as the music changed, grew softer and more sensual. She was a First Daughter, and more than that, she was the regent for her people until Mandalay reached her majority. She was resigned to the solitude those roles demanded, and any feelings that arose and made her reconsider it were, she knew by now, mere fleeting hormones. The feel of the cold water on her toes was all she needed to endure it. She’d never see the boy again, and the urgent thoughts would fade, and Needsville would return to its routine.

But on this night, under the moon, she could almost howl with frustration.

As if reading her mind, a distant cry echoed through her little wooded hollow. She stopped playing immediately and listened for any subsequent sound. She thought she heard one, but it was much farther away and may have just been the wind. Sometimes even she couldn’t be certain.

It broke the moment. She went inside, leaving the night to its creatures, and the night wind to its riders.

Rob snapped awake.

Every muscle tight with anticipation, he listened again, unable to clearly recall what awoke him. An echo seemed to hover in the room, but it faded before he could identify it.

In the distance, a screech owl cried. Somewhere a car crunched gravel. But these were normal sounds, and too faint to rouse him out of his exhausted sleep. What had he heard?

Somewhere a coyote faintly yipped. It sounded amused.

It must have been a dream. Maybe the airplane nightmare again. Or just noise in the building, another guest or something. Or someone outside in the street, although at this time of night, Needsville seemed abandoned to its ghosts.

He took several deep, regular breaths and closed his eyes.

Then the sound came again, and he sat straight up in bed.

It was a cry similar to the coyote’s, with the same rhythm and timbre. But it was in a somewhat higher range, and had an unmistakable human quality. Somewhere outside, fairly close, someone was howling back at the night.

Then the sound turned into a long, despondent wail, a new sound not native to the wild. It was the sound of a human being in true pain, of someone demanding answers from a God who refused to reply.

The cry faded into the night. After a few moments, the crickets and other insects resumed their music, and the real coyote yelped once, as if to acknowledge the human crier’s superior torment. Rob lay awake for a long time, but the noise never came again.