Follow Me (26 page)

She was middle-aged, maybe forty-five or fifty, with a mass of black curls, thick lips painted a gleaming purple, a huge bosom,
and bands of gold bracelets spiraling from her wrists to her elbows. But it was her voice that fascinated Sally. It was a
throaty voice, coarse at its core, yet with a delicacy around the edges, as though it were encased in a sheet of glass so
thin it would have cracked with the wrong sound. There were no wrong sounds. Every note that came from Dara Bliss’s mouth
was right, whether she sang deep into an alto rumble or way up the scale, and Sally listened transfixed, wondering how a voice
could be so seductive and confident, so clear, so singular, and yet seemingly boundless.

Dara Bliss was the first singer Sally had ever heard in live performance outside of church and school. Her husband, a fat,
bald man with a thick beard carpeting his chin, played the electric keyboard, and between sets he hawked Dara’s latest album
at the stand beside the Airstream they traveled in. This LP, he announced, was the first of ten that were under contract to
be professionally recorded in a studio in Savannah, Georgia. Sally bought the album after the show, and when her husband called
her, Dara Bliss came back out from the Airstream and autographed the cover, drawing a flat line from a wild
D
and another line from the
B
right across her photograph on the front. The crackling of the fireworks display drowned out Sally’s thank-you.

Sally listened to the record when she got home that night. She kept the music playing while she was cleaning the kitchen,
taking dishes from the dish rack and stacking them in cabinets. She played the record again the next morning, while she was
making biscuits with Penelope. And she played it again that evening after work, over and over.

Before she went to sleep that night, she’d memorized all the songs on Dara Bliss’s album, from the bluesy “Turn Around, Lou”
to a gospel hymn called “Alleluia Grace.” She’d go on to sing them more often than any other songs she knew, sometimes with
Penny accompanying, but mostly when she was alone. She roughed her voice in an attempt to mimic Dara Bliss and catch that
raspy transition between notes, easing down to a low growl, breathing out the melody until she had to gasp. When she failed
to do an adequate imitation, she sang in her own voice, as expressively as she could, to honor her.

The next week, while Penelope was napping and Penny Campbell was at the grocery store, Sally paged through the newspaper and
stumbled upon a picture of Dara Bliss above the notice of her death. From the obituary, Sally learned that Dara Bliss had
fallen asleep smoking a cigarette, and the lit cigarette had dropped onto the mattress and set the parked Airstream on fire.
Her husband, who’d gone to the store, came back to find smoke seeping from the trailer, but by then it was too late. Dara
Bliss was already dead.

She was fifty-two years old at the time of her death, according to the newspaper. She’d been born Dorothea Burton in Omaha,
and she’d run away when she was sixteen to join a traveling vaudeville show. She had performed live on local radio stations
hundreds of times, but she’d recorded only one album. She had crisscrossed the country several times in her touring, but her
favorite venue was Icy’s Lounge on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. She’d performed there every summer for the past thirty
years.

Rereading the obituary, Sally didn’t miss the similarities between herself and Dara Bliss. Hadn’t she run away when she was
sixteen? And hadn’t she nearly died when Mole’s car went off the road? But she’d been spared, unlike Dara Bliss. And so she
had to ask herself, listening to Dara Bliss sing,
I got you good, don’t make a sound, turn around, Lou, oh turn around,
shouldn’t she do more than just go on living? Alone in the apartment, with only the music for company, Sally studied the
picture of the singer on the album cover, the lines of her flat signature crossing the face, dividing it along the bridge
of her nose. In the photograph her hair had been teased into two puffy mounds on either side of her ears, and the way she
glared through fake lashes, with her lips pursed almost angrily and two round dollops of rouge on her cheeks, she looked as
though she were offended by her own ridiculousness, like a queen dressed up in a clown suit.

On stage at the Jubilee, she had seemed larger than life — big in body, big in voice. In Sally’s memory, she seemed as invulnerable
to the physical hazards of the world as she was to the opinions of her audience, the kind of woman who should have lived forever.

Yet she was dead. According to her obituary, she was survived by her husband, her mother, two sisters, three nephews, and
one niece. Donations in her memory, the newspaper noted, could be sent to the Dara Bliss Scholarship Fund at St. Mary’s School
for Girls in Omaha.

Dara Bliss. Sally pictured the singer dead in her coffin, her face bronzed from the thick makeup, her hands folded across
her puffy pink blouse, resting on the mound of her bosom. Of the ten albums her husband had said were under contract, only
one had been produced. What would happen to the other nine? Why, the other nine would never exist, along with everything else
that was lost when this death or any other cheated the world of something beautiful that hadn’t yet been made.

Sally thought of her seventh-grade teacher, Miss Krumbaldorf, who had tried to teach her students how to make use of their
God-given talents. Wasn’t Sally’s singing voice a talent God had given her? And didn’t she, therefore, have an obligation
to make use of it?

Her initial response to the death of Dara Bliss was a new determination. Though she didn’t have a clear plan in mind, she
recognized that there were steps she could take to develop her voice. She practiced more often on her own, sang with new concentration.
She discovered that Penny had been right when she said it would help to drop her lower jaw, raise her arms, and sway to the
rhythm. She tried to sing each note just the way Dara Bliss had sung it. But even as she worked to improve, she decided that
she didn’t need to make a decision about her ultimate capabilities. Her limits would reveal themselves over time. As long
as she didn’t identify precisely what she couldn’t do, she wouldn’t worry about being disappointed.

By the end of November 1955, Sally was happily experiencing a potent combination of satisfaction and anticipation. She was
proud of managing on her own. She had a steady job, good friends, and a daughter whose features were starting to align themselves
in an attractive symmetry. She could indulge in secret dreams of success. And she was the owner, by default, of a very fat
cat.

The only real inconvenience in her life was the lack of a car. Tuskee’s transit schedule was erratic, and she’d lost track
of the number of times she’d walked home in the snow because the bus never came. After reviewing her finances and visiting
all the dealerships in town, she decided to purchase a used Mercury sedan, her third and final addition of the year, as a
Christmas present to herself. It was a fine blue car with a beige cloth interior, and even with seventy thousand miles on
it, it didn’t show much rust. Sally bought it on loan, at a rate discounted to a manageable two percent by the friendly dealer,
who threw in the snow tires for free.

On New Year’s Eve 1955, Sally left Penelope with the Campbells, and she sang before a crowd at the Rotary Club, with Penny
accompanying on an out-of-tune upright piano at the back of the stage, playing in such a muted fashion that Sally heard her
own voice overlie the music more confidently than ever. She had never sounded so accomplished to herself, so effortlessly
fine. Yet still she was surprised when, after their finale of “Turn Around, Lou,” a man in the audience called for Sally to
sing the same song again.

Sing for us, Sally!

The spotlight held her in place; the mike was tipped on its pole; music rose magically from the shadows where Penny sat on
a stool, an irresistible melody that Sally matched with words.

I got you good, don’t make a sound…

She felt the sweet perfection of sound on her tongue and gave up her resistance to vanity, let herself indulge without humility
in the certainty that she was breaking through to a new dimension flooded with dazzling light. Why, she was dazzling.

Sally Mole, Sally Mole, Sally Mole!

… a source of light dazzling the members of the Rotary Club, who as soon as she had finished her encore rose to their feet
and applauded. She could have kept on singing for the rest of the night. But before she could begin a new song, the man serving
as the MC stepped forward toward the mike. He thanked the lovely girls for their performance and then waved them away, launching
right into a list of names, the results, as he explained, of the club’s annual elections.

During the five years Sally lived in Tuskee, a new elementary school was built, the main library was renovated, the Dockery
Bar and Grill opened for business, the abandoned Pinecrest Hotel on the outskirts of the city burned to the ground, the fencing
team at the high school won the state championship, a new mayor was elected, Adlai Stevenson gave a stump speech on the porch
of city hall, the river rose and shrank with the seasons, ice thickened and thawed, sycamores shed bark, road crews filled
potholes, gardeners pulled weeds, dogs barked, cats fought, hammers hammered, engines sputtered, money was made, saved, spent,
and borrowed, and Sally managed to pay off the loan for her Mercury sedan.

In that time, Penelope Mole grew from a funny-looking baby into such a lovely little girl, blue-eyed, with creamy skin sprayed
lightly with freckles and her thick auburn hair bundled in a ponytail, that Buddy Potter featured her on his flyers advertising
sales. And as the “Potter Girl,” she came to be associated with the jubilant mix of charm and trade that drew customers to
the store.

What Penelope would remember of her early years in Tuskee, though, was a more raucous experience — hours and hours filled
with the clamor of everyday life. She remembered that the noise used to bother her, for she was always longing to hear her
mother singing, and as much as Sally loved to sing, she couldn’t do it often enough to satisfy her daughter. And so Penelope
learned how to hear what she wanted to hear, though not in the ordinary sense of choosing ignorance. Rather, she devoted such
effort to listening that she could discern music even in some of the dullest chatter around her, hearing in odd shreds of
noise the hint of a tune. She was sure that there was music hidden in almost everything she heard.

If, for instance, an empty jar fell from a shelf and bounced on the wooden floor of the hardware store without shattering,
Penelope heard it as a
thud thud thudding,
reminding her of an elephant knocking on the door with its trunk. Thud, thud, thud, she stomped on the floor in echo, in
delight.

She listened to the ceiling fan whirring and heard a song about rabbits. She listened to the phone ringing and heard a song
about bees. When she heard the radiator pipes knocking at night, she heard a drummer setting the beat. And sometimes she listened
so carefully to the endless chatter of grown-ups that she heard the steady hum of time rushing by.

TUSKEE, NEW YORK
.
October 23, 1957.

It was because Mr. Campbell asked Buddy Potter to help him with a rush job installing a new water heater at the Dockery, making
it necessary for Buddy to ask Sally to stay late at the store to lock up, that Penny Campbell offered to take Penelope, who
was growing cranky with late-afternoon hunger pangs, back to the apartment to prepare supper for her. It was because the gumbo
was attracting crowds from around the county that the Dockery’s owner had bought a new water heater to support the second
industrial dishwasher that had been installed. It was because the Dockery’s cook, Walter Stackhouse, had been born and raised
in New Orleans that the food was so good. It was because employment was scarce in New Orleans for a black man who had lost
a leg to melanoma that Walter Stackhouse moved north to Tuskee, where his wife’s cousin lived. It was because this cousin
had studied horticulture with a botanist from Tuskee that he’d landed a job with the city park service way back in 1932. And
it was because the residents recognized the value of their open spaces that the park service had a sufficient budget and the
cousin of Walter Stackhouse’s wife never had to worry about the prospect of being laid off.

Even if Sally wasn’t fully aware of this trajectory, she would conclude, in retrospect, that she had the residents of Tuskee
to thank for giving Penny Campbell a reason to bring Penelope back to the apartment, leaving Sally free to attend to last-minute
duties at the store.

So it goes,
she would hum to herself when she thought of this day, for it was the song she was singing quietly as she tabulated supplies
in Buddy Potter’s ledger.

So it goes, so it goes,

So I found you,

So I lost you…
It was one of Dara Bliss’s songs — not one of Sally’s favorites off the album, but with its easy tune and lyrics she could
keep singing it while she was concentrating on something else, at that particular moment on the surprising fact that they’d
sold one hundred and seventeen brass transom window hooks so far that month. Why was everybody in Tuskee buying brass transom
window hooks, she was wondering, even while she murmured the song, the sound of her voice barely audible even to her own ears
—
So it goes, so it goes —
when who should be standing there, casting a shadow over the page of the ledger…

But she wasn’t wondering about
who
. In Sally’s experience of that moment, she wasn’t asking any questions in her mind. She knew immediately, between one blink
and the next, before she could even ask the question —
who are you? —
that the man standing across the counter was Benny Patterson. He had a rounder girth and thicker neck, without the bristle
on his chin but with bushier sideburns, an odd scab on his right temple, the crust of it almost black, as though it had been
there for months, and his hair hidden by a cap advertising motor oil. But still, without a doubt, it was Benny Patterson.