Driftless (38 page)

A half-hour later Olivia asked the waitress at the truck stop, “Do you have any meat scraps for our dog?”

“Sure, how many you want?”

Olivia poured some of the tan and green powder on top of the scraps and Wade carried them outside. Then he returned and they sipped coffee and waited for their meals to arrive.

“I hope you got a place to take that dog, ’cause I can’t take her home with me,” said Wade. “My parents get one look at that animal and I’m in real trouble. They’ll call the police.”

“Your own parents would call the police?”

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“It’s hard to explain. Mostly it’s because they’re so beaten down. Dad’s losing the farm and Mom’s given up. They keep thinking if they do what they think everyone expects of them, everything will work out.”

“They think convention will protect them,” said Olivia.

“Yes, like all their troubles come from having overlooked some rule. They think being extra-good citizens will make something miraculous happen, save them from each other and losing the farm. It’s bullshit.”

“Why do you stay with them?”

“Dad couldn’t get all the work done alone, and Mom—I don’t want to talk about them. So, did you have an okay time so far tonight?”

“I’ve never had such a night as this, so I can’t compare it to anything. It’s been both lamentable and outstanding.”

“Good,” said Wade. “I liked it too.”

“Wade,” said Olivia, blushing, “can you help me get to the bathroom? It’s that coffee. This is embarrassing, but my sister will kill me if I don’t come home dry.”

“Hell, Ma’am, that ain’t anything. And you should know that nothing about you could ever embarrass me. Shit, the more I see of you, the better you get. I’m not kidding. Come on.” He lifted her out of the booth and carried her in his arms. On the way to the women’s bathroom, a middle-aged couple at the counter stared at them.

“Get used to it, motherfuckers,” Wade snapped.

“Wade!” said Olivia sternly, then burst into laughter, losing control of her bladder.

 

The living room lights were on when Olivia returned to her home in Words. Violet sat in the middle of the couch watching television and stood up when they came in.

“Hello, Vio,” said Olivia. “We took your advice—what you told us to do—and rescued one of the dogs. Will you please go out to the truck with Wade and help carry her inside? I’ll get some newspapers to put down on the carpet. Hurry, because Wade has to get home soon, and I have so much to tell you.”

THE THIEF

A
FTER SEVERAL MONTHS, THE LAST PIECE OF GAIL SHOTWELL’S song fell into place. She connected a microphone to a tape recorder and sang into it, then played it back. Several words didn’t sound right, so she tried again. Then the bass was so loud that it drowned out her voice.

When she finally had a satisfactory recording, she drove it over to July Montgomery’s small farm, ran an extension cord from the milk house into the main part of the barn, and played it for him as he milked his Jersey cows.

“Play it again,” he said. “And turn up the volume.”

July closed his eyes, nodded his head, and said he thought it was the best song he had ever heard.

“You’re just saying that,” said Gail. “It’s not that good.”

“It is,” said July, his arms, clothes, and boots splotched with dried dirt, lime, and antiseptic. “When I listen to it I see pictures in my head, and that means it’s very good.”

Gail unplugged her tape recorder and drove home.

For the next two weeks she took as much work as she could get at the plastic factory, paid most of her overdue bills, and thought about asking Barbara Jean to listen to her song.

Gail had driven past her summer home several times, just to look. Each time she had been disappointed because the house sat so far off the road that almost nothing could be seen or even imagined about the way the popular musician spent her time. At the entrance gate, two stone pillars stood on either side of a concrete drive, with globe lights suspended from iron chains. The tall, four-board fences had been painted chalky white, something people with expensive horses often liked to do. Once, Gail had seen someone in the front
yard—a dark speck in a patch of green—but could not even tell if it was a man or a woman.

Barbara Jean had invited her to practice with her band some afternoon, but did that mean she could just show up on any afternoon? Did “some” mean “any”? It had been a long time since last October—half a year. Had the offer expired?

She thought about calling, but that seemed like a bad idea.

Finally an especially bright, warm day arrived and Gail—after working a night shift and spending the morning in a tavern—felt her confidence soaring somewhere between feeling invincible and feeling lucky. She drank another beer and drove out of town.

She navigated between the stone pillars at the road and two long rows of white fence. In back of the house was a garage and parking area with two sports cars parked haphazardly next to each other, as if they had been randomly dropped from the air. Further back were several small painted buildings, a horse barn, and a John Deere tractor with several bales of hay in the loader. A miniature donkey stood on its hind legs, drinking water from a stock tank. Gail parked beside the sports cars and took small satisfaction in the fact that although her coupe was sixteen years old, dented and rusting around the fenders, at least it was a convertible.

The clay-red house seemed modestly-sized—larger than her own but smaller than many modern houses—and she pushed the door-bell. It made no sound that she could hear. The door opened and a woman of about thirty-five said hello. She was tall and as slender as a wand, her skin blacker than night. Her shaved head shone like oiled gunmetal. She wore sandals, khaki pants with many pockets, and a blouse with every color of the visible light spectrum.

“I’m Gail Shotwell. Barbara Jean said I should come over some afternoon, and, well, here I am.”

“Bee Jay isn’t up yet,” said the woman, looking at the bass case resting on the concrete step. “But come in. We played in the Cities last night and things are a little slow around here. I’m Yesha. You want a cup of coffee?”

On the inside, the house seemed enormous, or at least the kitchen did. A long wall of crank-out windows spilled sunlight onto hanging
pans, polished marble, and a glossy, brown-tiled floor. A large vase of garden flowers sat on the table in the corner.

In the middle of the sun-soaked kitchen, a woman with a complexion resembling lacquered porcelain sat at the counter on a tall stool, drinking a glass of orange juice. Her eyes were pale, pale blue, her hair curly white-blond, and she wore loosing-fitting white capris and a white top. Her bare feet leaned together at the soles, embracing at the toes.

Both women appeared to be about ten years older than Gail, and she at once began building a psychic bridge over the Age Ravine that separated them, trying to seem older. Then as soon as she noticed she was doing it, she stopped.

“This is Monica,” said Yesha. “Monica, this is Gail.”

“You play percussion,” said Gail, and Monica smiled wearily.

“I hope you like strong coffee,” said Yesha, pouring Gail a cup of what looked like pure India ink. She put it on a saucer beside Monica’s orange juice.

Gail sat on one of the four tall stools and wished she had thought more carefully about what to wear, though this was an old problem for her. She never liked what she wore, and, well, blue jeans with a red button-up blouse ought to be good enough. It’s what she wore to work. Her sneakers were a little ragged, however, and she wrapped her feet around the wooden legs of the stool.

“Whoa,” she said, and without intentionally meaning to she made a face. “That’s strong.”

Monica laughed. “People ingest Yesha’s coffee at their own risk.”

“I like it,” said Gail.

Sounds from deeper in the house announced the movements of the owner. From some unknown place, Barbara Jean, wearing a pair of green silk coveralls, walked into the kitchen. Her green eyes focused on Gail, and after a long, uncomfortable moment her face registered recognition.

“I’m Gail Shotwell. We met last fall.”

Barbara Jean nodded and Gail felt a new tension in the air. Her presence, even after just waking up, was immense.

“Bee Jay, you want something to eat?” asked Yesha, handing her a
cup of coffee. The black- haired woman shook her head, carried the cup of coffee over to the table, and sat next to the vase of flowers.

“You should eat something, Bee Jay,” said Yesha. “Let me fix you an egg.”

“No eggs,” whispered Barbara Jean, sipping from her coffee, and Gail marveled at how mysteriously ambiguous the words seemed. “No eggs” could mean there were no eggs in the house, or that she was hungry for something but didn’t want an egg, or that eggs in general were not good for you, or that she was allergic to eggs, or that she wasn’t hungry and didn’t want an egg or anything else. And the way she whispered the two words—to someone familiar with her whispering—could also mean that she wanted an egg.

Gail began to wish she hadn’t come. She could feel her earlier confidence draining away, leaving in its place an anxious emptiness. She’d never even been to the Cities and they were only four hours away. Her life was small, limited, and of little consequence. She also had no experience—outside of immediate family members and occasional overnight lovers—with situations involving people who had just climbed out of bed and were waking up together. It seemed bold to live in such an open manner, and she felt both attracted to the communal informality and unsettled by it.

Yesha opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of soy milk, and carried it along with a box of cereal, a bowl, and a spoon over to the table. Before she could pour the cereal, Barbara Jean waved her away. “I’m not hungry.”

“Gail says she likes Yesha’s coffee,” said Monica.

“She’s a polite girl,” said Barbara Jean, and from the tone of the comment Gail knew she was being made fun of.

“I like any kind of coffee,” said Gail.

“Are you still playing with that same band?” asked Barbara Jean.

“I guess so,” she answered, hoping the fun-making wasn’t extending into more personal areas.

“How’s it going?”

“Excuse me?”

“How’s it going with the band?”

“It’s going okay. Look, I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this.”

“If I remember, I think I invited you to come,” said Barbara Jean.

“Yes, I mean you did, yes, but it’s still hard to know when to come, but, well, I have a song and I’m wondering if you could listen to it.”

“What kind of song?”

“One I wrote,” she said, taking the cassette out of her pocket. “It’s called ‘Along the Side of the Road.’ ”

A space of frozen silence opened like a doorway into a hollowed-out glacier. Then just as suddenly, it closed. “Sure,” said Barbara Jean and took another drink of coffee. “Let’s hear it.”

Yesha and Monica followed her out of the kitchen and down a wooden staircase. Gail picked up her bass and followed.

In the center of a large basement room with polished maple floors sat a baby grand, surrounded by an assortment of chairs, microphone stands, amplifiers, musical instruments, and a bar.

Gail handed her cassette to Yesha, and she poked it into a rack-mounted tape player. Within seconds, her song was playing through two black- faced speaker cabinets, and each scratchy imperfection could be perfectly heard.

The young women listened, and before the song finished Monica climbed into the set of drums to play along softly. Yesha hung an f-hole jazz guitar over her shoulder and Barbara Jean stood at the piano, searching for an accompanying key.

“This is a good song,” said Yesha.

A private joy rose up inside Gail.

“Play it again,” said Barbara Jean, switching to an electric piano.

A woman in a white T-shirt and faded jeans walked out of the stairwell and into the basement room. She was short and younger than the other three, almost as young as Gail, with black hair, black eyes, wide face, prominent cheekbones, and a smooth, copper-brown complection. Gail didn’t know if she had come from another room in the house or from outside. Without introduction, she took a fiddle from a case, tightened the bow, and joined in as though she had been playing Gail’s song her whole life.

When the tape ended, Barbara Jean told Gail to sing her song into one of the four microphones.

“I’ll get my bass,” she said.

“Forget the bass for now,” said Monica. “Just sing.”

She did, and soon experienced something resembling driving a car for the first time. Her voice was no longer just her voice. Its power was enhanced, augmented through a nimble accompaniment that responded instantaneously to her very thoughts. And unlike the Straight Flush, these musicians were wildly inventive, creating ever-new ways of complementing her singing. New rhythms danced in and out of old rhythms. And the lyrical phrases expanded with meaning in the context of the exploring drama of the music.

She’d never sounded so good.

“Let’s try it again,” said Barbara Jean. “Monica, you sing with her on the chorus.”

“It’s a little wobbly in the middle,” said Yesha, sitting on a wicker chair and plugging her guitar into a tube amplifier.

“There’re too many measures in the bridge,” said the woman on the violin. “Drop the middle. And that minor doesn’t come off the F-chord in the right way. Use the ninth instead.”

“Monica, go deep on the end of the chorus—the last line needs to darken. This can work for us very well. It has a huge sentimental core.”

“Rita, take a full line solo before the last verse and don’t pull off that faraway melancholy. When the ‘Leave me along the road,’ comes up, use a hammered string.

Gail sang her song again and was again lifted up by the accompaniment, borne away to a place where plastic factories, unpaid bills, human cruelty, flat tires, and leaking hot water heaters did not exist. She was part of a better, more brilliantly imagined world.