The Promise of Jesse Woods (14 page)

I rolled down the driveway in neutral, starting the car as I coasted onto the road. I had to have a clear plan of action but my brain was foggy. Returning to the Dogwood Food and Drug and catching Jesse before she went to work seemed best. I could have called or gone to her house, but I wasn’t sure who I might encounter.
I wanted our conversation to be face-to-face and without interruption.

The store opened at seven, but I knew if Jesse worked the early shift, she would arrive before that. It was a little after six when I rolled into the Morning Dove to get gas and coffee. I paid inside and noticed a group of men gathered around coffee and pancakes and sausage biscuits served in Styrofoam containers.

“Is that Matt Plumley?” one of the men said from across the room.

“In the flesh,” I said, smiling and trying to remember the man’s name.

I approached and he stood, stretching out a big hand. “Jennings Caldwell,” he said. “I remember when you were this high and this wide.”

“It’s good to see you, Mr. Caldwell.”

He introduced me to the other men around the table, all retired—from the glass plant, Union Carbide, driving a bus, and Jennings was retired from the sheriff’s department. He had attended our church before we arrived in Dogwood and then left for reasons unknown. I could, of course, imagine several reasons, all of which were tied to Basil Blackwood.

“How’s your family?” Jennings said, taking his seat.

“Mom and Dad are good. Still busy with the church.”

“How’s Chicago? Treating you all right?”

I wondered how he knew where I had wound up, but small-town news travels. Before I could answer, the talk turned to the Cubs since Jennings had mentioned Chicago
and that led to the Reds and their disappointing season and who they might trade for in the off-season.

“Baseball’s not what it used to be,” the retired glassblower said. “When I was a kid, there was team loyalty. You played in one place and rooted for that team no matter what. Now, with free agency, it’s all about the money. And you can root for the Cardinals or the Yankees from anywhere in the country.”

“The Yankees,” Jennings said like he was cursing.

“It’s always been about the money,” the Carbide man said. “The only question is who’s going to keep it.” The man’s words and tone reminded me of Dickie.

Jennings turned toward me. “What brings you back, Matt?”

“Just in for a visit.” The look on his face gave me the impression he didn’t believe me.

“That girl. Woods. You still keep in touch?”

“My parents do.”

He shook his head. “She sure had a tough start, didn’t she?”

I nodded. “The whole family had a tough time.”

“You got that right. I got called over there a few times through the years.”

“My dad mentioned your name at one point. The night that . . .” I didn’t finish my sentence, and by the look on the man’s face, I didn’t have to.

“I got the call. When I pulled up, your daddy was talking to her.” He took a big swig of coffee. “I’ll never forget how sad that girl looked up there.”

A wave of guilt swept over me and I wished I hadn’t set foot in the restaurant.

“What are you two talking about?” Bus Driver said.

Before Jennings could answer, I told them I had to get going. “It’s nice seeing you again, Mr. Caldwell.”

When I made it to the door, Jennings had launched into the story of that night. I didn’t want to relive it, so I drove back to the grocery parking lot and drank my coffee, watching the clouds roll through the sky as it lightened from black to dark blue. Wind blew leaves that wouldn’t give up their losing battle.

Twenty minutes later a car pulled up by the Dumpsters. I didn’t recognize the man who got out, but a ring of keys pulled his belt low. He disappeared inside. Still hoping to see Jesse, I rehearsed my lines to a script that hadn’t been written.

A Dodge Omni, a square car that didn’t fit her personality, pulled into the lot and she rolled down the window. She stuck out a hand and opened the door using the outside handle, then rolled the window up again and slammed it without locking it.

She wore jeans and work shoes and a heavy cotton T-shirt with a pocket over the left breast. Her hair was cut short, just below her ears. She still had the same lithe build I remembered, like a dancer, and that same Jesse saunter, like she could conquer the world, even though she was going to grind beef or cut chicken all day.

I opened my door and she glanced back and stopped.

“Jesse,” I said.

She squinted like she didn’t believe what she was seeing. “Well, look what the cat drug in. Hey, PB.” She crossed her arms and put one work boot in front of the other. “I heard you were in town.”

“Who’d you hear that from?”

“People.”

She stared at me with those blue eyes. I wanted to see her smile, to feel the warmth of being close, but she seemed like a chicken looking for a hawk. I had to admit I felt just as awkward and nervous.

“That’s a creative way to get out of a car.”

“Handle snapped last winter. I do what I gotta do, you know?” She bit her cheek. “So you heard the news?”

I nodded.

“Who told you?”

“Wasn’t my parents, I can tell you that.”

Her eyes had a deep sadness to them. “And you drove all the way down here for what?”

With a deadpan face, I said, “Jesse, you can’t get married on the thirteenth. It’s bad luck.”

“Saturday the thirteenth is not bad. Besides, I don’t believe in luck anymore.”

“What do you believe in?”

“I believe you’re going to get yourself into a bunch of trouble—and me, too—if you don’t leave.”

“Trouble never bothered you before. You thrived on it.”

“Matt, don’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“What you’re fixing to do.”

“And what is that?”

She didn’t answer, just looked at cracks in the asphalt and the grass poking through. “I saw you yesterday. In the store.”

“Why didn’t you come out and talk?”

“Because there’s nothing to say.”

“I think there’s a lot to say. I have a lot of questions.”

She shook her head. “No. Talking time is over. It was over a long while ago.”

Her face had changed a little. There’d been a hardness to her eyes from the moment I had met her, but it seemed something in the intervening years had softened her. Her hair hung past her eyes like a shadow and she made no attempt to brush it away like she wanted to hide. But she was the same girl I had fallen in love with, the same girl who had cast a spell I wasn’t sure I would ever escape.

“Do you ever think of me, Jesse?” I said, my voice soft, almost a whisper. I said it with affect, with the dramatic flair of a line I had practiced but never truly gotten right.

She turned her head like the question touched some open wound. “You need to leave me alone.”

“I’ve thought of you a lot. And this choice you’re making doesn’t feel right to me.”

She slung her purse over her shoulder—I could see a brown bag sticking out with her lunch in it—and shoved her hands in her back pockets. “I appreciate your concern.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

She dipped her head and spoke without looking at me. “I’m grateful for everything you tried to do.”

“You don’t love him, Jesse.”

She cocked her head. “How would you know who I love? You always thought you knew more. That you were better than me.”

“I never thought that.”

“You always thought because you knew big words and did well in school that you were on a high branch looking down.”

I studied her face. Was the anger real or an act? “You know better than that. You and Dickie were my best friends.”

She shook her head like a dog will shake water from its back and glanced toward the hills where we spent our childhood. “It’s not safe, you being here. Go back and live your life. Make us proud.”

“I don’t want to make anybody proud. I want you to come to your senses. I’m not leaving until you do. I don’t care if I have to sit in the baptistery and wait for you to walk down the aisle.”

More shaking of the head. “Don’t do this, Matt.”

“You would.”

“What?”

“If something was right to do, you’d do it. Like taking care of Daisy.”

Just the mention of the name brought her eyes to mine. And there we were in the parking lot of Dogwood Food and Drug staring at each other and remembering, the salty and sweet of our past close enough to taste.

Another car pulled into the lot and we were no longer alone.

“I need to go. I’m sorry you came here for nothing.”

She turned and walked past another employee, who looked back at me and tossed away a half-smoked cigarette. I got back in my car and started the engine. Nothing about this was going to be easy.

JUNE–JULY 1972

June in West Virginia is a cruel month to subdue any child, but it is unusually cruel to subdue him with piano practice and lessons. I had seen the effect of my playing on my mother’s depression. I was like David to King Saul, soothing the demons with my music. Under her tutelage, I had progressed and was ready for another level. I promised if she found a different teacher, I would apply myself to anything the G. Schirmer publishing company could come up with and practice on my grandmother’s out-of-tune Baldwin. From Beethoven to Mozart I would learn the classics, though I was more interested in playing Elton John.

Enter stage right Mrs. Clara Ann McCormick. She
taught sixth grade at Dogwood Elementary and gave piano lessons to students of varying abilities. She was a short, stocky woman with hair much darker than her age and skin under her arms that nearly hung to the piano bench. She looked at the world through pin-size pupils and cat-eye glasses. Their edges turned up and had a fascinating silver design.

Mrs. McCormick talked and laughed with a raspy cackle like she had a perpetual frog in her throat, and she would clear it every few seconds, half in a cough and half in a clearing sound that made you think she needed an open window. It was unnerving to be in the middle of some complicated piece she was trying to teach and hear that “uh-hmm-hmm” sound. We settled on Wednesday afternoons and kept the weekly regimen into the school year. I was expected to practice an hour each day and be prepared for my lessons.

“These are the hands of a surgeon,” she said the first time I met her. She held up my palms and studied them as if she were a psychic reading the rivers and tributaries of my life. I think she was just glad to have a student whose fingernails were somewhat trimmed and weren’t black underneath.

My mother had dropped me at her home near the high school and we sat in the woman’s living room, a sparsely decorated apartment on the second floor of a small, four-apartment building. She owned an upright Kimball that filled the room with a rich sound, but the keys were heavy and you had to really mean it when you played. I wondered
about the apartments beside and beneath hers—I hoped they were occupied by older people with hearing problems.

Mrs. McCormick was not the warmest person on the planet. Her life was sketchy—a husband and children who were on the wall over the piano but never present. Why did she live alone? Where were her children? Music was her only connection with the world, it seemed. When she played, she got lost, closing her eyes as if some internal conductor were working her hands to bring forth the songs.

“Let’s see what you can do,” she said. “Play something.”

I chose “The Spinning Song,” one of my father’s favorites because it was happy and jaunty. I played the piece, not flawlessly, but with only minor mistakes. Mrs. McCormick watched me and then put a simple song in front of me. I tried to play but struggled through. She removed it and crossed her arms.

“Matt, we need to come to an understanding. Your mother has hired me to teach you. But
you
have to want this. Why do you want to play?”

“I don’t know.”

“Not a good answer. Try again.”

There were a thousand reasons to learn music. There were a thousand ways a life was enriched—that’s what my mother had said. I could think of only one and it slipped out.

“It helps her,” I said.

“It helps who?”

“My mother. My playing makes her feel better, I think.”

“You’ve watched her play and mimicked her.”

I nodded. “I’ve never seen any use in reading the notes if I can play them by hearing them.”

She looked at me with a mixture of fascination and concern. Then she pulled a silver flask out of a suitcase-size purse and took a quick nip. “Well, I’ve never had a student like you. But if what your mother says is true about your acting ability, and how you can mimic others and remember dialogue, it only makes sense the good Lord made you this way for a reason.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, hearing for the first time that my mother thought I had a talent for acting and remembering things.

“Helping your mother with whatever she’s going through is laudable. I think she probably knows you don’t read the notes. But I’m going to take on faith that you’ll at some point come to the end of your ability to remember and repeat. One day you’ll connect what your hands are doing and what’s on the page. In other words, I’ll teach your fingers and ears first and then your eyes. We’ll go from your heart to your head rather than the other way around. Does that make sense?”