Liberty Street (39 page)

Authors: Dianne Warren

BOOK: Liberty Street

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We throw Hank Williams and Buck Owens into the mix. Bobby Bare, the album I won at the drugstore.

Sometime before dawn, I fall asleep and tip over sideways onto the arm of the couch. When I wake up in the early morning, the record player is silent and Dooley has gone to bed. I peek in the door at himâstretched out, sound asleep, still in his clothes as though he's not completely sure he's in the right houseâand decide to leave before he gets up, no goodbye. I collect the tea caddy and the jar of pesos from the countertop, and make my exit.

I'm just about to step into the car when, in the distance, I hear the rumble of a train approaching. A sudden memory of Uncle Vince and the flattened penny comes to me. Could I possibly execute the old trick without losing a hand? I set the tea caddy on the front passenger seat and fish a few Mexican
coins out of the glass jar before carefully tucking it into the folds of a sweater in the back seat. I walk behind the house and toward the tracks, dodging puddles that teem with mosquito larvae, trying to beat the train.

The tall grass has been levelled in large patches by the hailstorm, and a rusty shape I had not before noticed is now visibleâan abandoned vehicle, a car, halfway between the house and the tracks. I stop, not quite believing that it could be my mother's. Forgetting about the coins, I make my way though the grass and patches of scrubby bush to look more closely at the car, and it is indeed a 1956 Ford Fairlane. My mother's old pride and joy, although the body is so rusty you can barely tell that this had once been the most stylish set of wheels in the countryside. The whitewalls are gone, the windows smashed out, and the passenger door is missing. The hood is popped up, as though looters have been salvaging parts. The front bench seat is still there, the springs showing through a deflated covering of ripped and cracked leather. I look into the back seat, grass poking up through rust-ragged holes in the floor, and remember Tobias Sullivan lying there, never to wake up again, just like Hank Williams.

I lower myself into the front passenger seat, hoping my weight won't send it, and me, through the floorboard, and it holds. A horsefly the size of a bat persistently buzzes around my head and some kind of striped fuzzy caterpillar makes its way across the hood. I try to picture my mother beside me with a scarf in her hair, her sunglasses on, enjoying that car as much as anything else in her life, but I can't. Too much time has passed; it's all too far gone. The train draws near and I hear its familiar mournful whistle.

The car radio is still in its nook in the dashboard, although
minus its turquoise on/off knob. I reach over and attempt to turn the stem, as though I might be able to switch the radio on, turn up the volume on a Hank Williams song, a staticky rendition of “I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry” orâbecause I'm not lonesome and don't feel like cryingâ“Hey, Good Lookin'.” Ha ha. But of course the stem is corroded, impossible to move one way or the other.

The train rumbles louder and louder, and then passes by, blowing a cloud of diesel and noise behind it, sucking Hank's words, the sad and the happy, along the steel rails. When it's gone, the morning is mostly quiet again. I sit for a long time in the peaceful remains of my mother's car, not yet able to will myself away from this place. The grass hums with the buzzing of insects. I can almost feel it, a fine and soothing vibration in the air around me.

Soothing, that is, until I am discovered by a swarm of mosquitoes. I lift myself out of the seat, waving my arms like a dancer, and make my way, feeling strangely satisfied, back through the lot, past the house and the sleeping Dooley Sullivan.

Toward my own car with an old mahogany box on the passenger seat.

An urn sheltering tea dust.

The car waiting to take me somewhere.

Acknowledgments

I
WOULD LIKE
to thank the following people for reading drafts or answering questions: Malcolm Aldred, Pat Aldred, Ramses Calderon, Connie Gault, Lynda Oliver, Jordyn Warnez, and Marlis Wesseler. Thanks to my agent, Dean Cooke, and my editors, Jennifer Lambert and Marian Wood. Thanks also to Janice Weaver and Sarah Wight. The poem quoted by Dooley in that hotel room in YucatÃ¡n is from “Love Sonnet XVII” by Pablo Neruda as translated by Stephen Tapscott. The title of the last chapter, “The Car Hank Died In,” is taken from a song written by Mike Licht and performed by The Austin Lounge Lizards, used with permission.

The Playlist

H
ERE ARE THE
titles of the songs referred to in
Liberty Street
, along with the names of the songwriters: “Cold, Cold Heart,” Hank Williams; “Kaw-Liga,” Hank Williams and Fred Rose; “It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels,” J. D. Miller; “Heartaches by the Number,” Harlan Howard; “The Times They Are a-Changin',” Bob Dylan; “In the Ghetto,” Mac Davis; “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” Burt Bacharach and Hal David; “My Elusive Dreams,” Billy Sherrill and Curly Putnam; “He Called Me Baby,” Harlan Howard; “Hernando's Hideaway,” Jerry Ross and Richard Adler; “Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys,” Ed Bruce and Patsy Bruce; “The Car Hank Died In,” Mike Licht; “Orange Blossom Special,” Ervin T. Rouse; “Crazy,” Willie Nelson; “I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry,” Hank Williams; “Hey, Good Lookin',” Hank Williams.

Also by Dianne Warren

Cool Water

A Reckless Moon

Bad Luck Dog

The Wednesday Flower Man

Copyright

LIBERTY STREET

All rights reserved under all applicable International Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

EPub Edition: August 2015 ISBN: 9781443444590

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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FIRST EDITION

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ISBN
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