Guests on Earth (28 page)

“Wake up, Jesse,” Bucky hollered as he opened the door on the driver’s side, and to my immense surprise, yet another man sat up in the smaller backseat and blinked at me through his long black hair.

“This here is Evalina,” Bucky said.

“That I was telling you about,” Ella Jean added. “The Cajun girl.”

“I’m not Cajun.” I turned to look at her in surprise.

“Well, I’m not really Cherokee either.” Ella Jean was laughing.

“Honey, in this business everybody has got to be somebody.” Bucky helped me up into the cab and handed me over to Jesse with gentlemanly finesse.

“How do,” Jesse said, taking my hand as if it were something precious. He had fine, thin hands with long fingers, hands that looked as if they had never done one day’s manual labor in his life. In fact, Jesse’s features were aristocratic, too—prominent nose and chin, long thin nose and heavy dark brows. “You sure do mean a lot to that one,” he nodded toward Ella Jean up in the front seat, “and she sure does mean a lot to us. It is a privilege to meet you.”

Most people picked up off the street in front of a mental institution do not receive such treatment. I smiled and settled back on the sheep’s-wool rug that covered the cracked leather seat as we drove down the mountain into town. The floor of the cab was crammed with boxes, boots, bottles, parcels, and sacks of every sort.

“Are you from the South, too?” I asked him. Somehow I didn’t think so.

“Very acute,” Jesse said, smiling at me. His eyes were a sort of dark violet color, with shadows around them. “No, I grew up in a number of different places around the world. My father was based in Washington. Then I went to school in Boston.”

“Where in Boston?”

“Harvard University,” he said. “Believe it or not that’s where I got interested in music, this kind of music. I came to the mountains to collect it, and started playing myself, and just never left. Never went back up there.”

“What did your family have to say about that?”

“This is my family now,” Jesse said, looking out the window.

We were pulling into the parking lot of Fat Daddy’s Bar-B-Q, where Ella Jean had taken me years before. Bucky finally found a space along the fence that would accommodate us. The ramshackle restaurant meandered along a hilltop north of town, with a giant wooden pig out front and smoke rising from the long cookers out back. Not a single thing had changed, that I could see—not the heavy wooden booths with the red cushions and red-checked linoleum tablecloths, or the wooden floor with sawdust on it, or the neon beer signs along the mirrored bar. The raised dance floor, empty now, shone behind a brass railing. Autographed pictures of country music stars covered the walls. “See, looky here.” Ella Jean pulled Jesse over, pointing at a skinny, grinning Jimmie Rodgers, the “Singing Brakeman.” “He used to live right here in Asheville,” she said. A photograph of Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys hung next to Uncle Dave Macon, the “Dixie Dewdrop,” in his double-breasted waistcoat, high wing collar, black felt hat and bright red tie. I guess it was true what Bucky had said, that everybody had to be somebody in country music.

“Can I start you off with some beer, hon?” The waitress wore a short red dress and a white ruffled apron, her plump breasts peeking over the top. Her ponytail swung side to side as she sashayed off to get the pitcher of beer Bucky ordered, along with a Coca-Cola for me and a “couple of shots” for Jesse, which turned out to be little glasses filled with—what? “Bourbon,” Jesse told me, downing one while sipping his beer more slowly. Ella Jean had ordered pork barbecue plates for everybody, along with slaw and rolls and hushpuppies and five or six vegetables and sides.

A silence descended as they all chowed down. “Appetite must be catching,” I remarked, eating ravenously myself. “I told you, didn’t I?” Ella Jean said, sitting back. “Lord that corn pudding was good. My Aunt Roe used to make corn pudding.” Before I could have imagined it, all the plates were empty. Bucky got up and played the jukebox: Bob Wills’s “San Antonio Rose,” Ernest Tubb’s “Walking the Floor Over You,” which even I knew was very popular, and some Roy Acuff. I finished my Coca-Cola and started drinking beer myself. It tasted pretty good, too. Almost empty when we came in, the restaurant was filling up now with big solid mountain families, couples out on the town, groups of both men and women. The waitresses swished back and forth with platters of food. The noise level rose. Bucky ordered another pitcher of beer and a pan of banana pudding which I was sure I could not eat a single bite of. It was gone within minutes.

I felt like I was in another world, a secret world filled with delicious food and wonderful smells and vibrant colors and catchy music that existed deep inside the Asheville I knew. I felt like Alice, fallen down another rabbit hole.

“Thank you so much for bringing me here,” I told them.

“Oh, we’ve got an ulterior motive,” Jesse said.

“What does that mean?” asked Ella Jean.

“It means you’re up to something.” I smiled at her and she smiled back.

This was Bucky’s cue. He leaned forward, blue eyes bright as buttons. “You got it, Sugar,” he said. “You know Ella Jean and me have been together ever since we met up with each other two years ago on a National Barn dance show out in Tulsa, Oklahoma.”

“Love at first sight,” Ella Jean said.

“Joined at the hip,” Bucky said.

“Where’d you get him, then?” I pointed to Jesse, who grinned.

“San Antonio. I’m a yodeling fool,” he said. “Just wait till you hear me.”

“So now we’re the ‘Kissin’ Cousins,’ ” Bucky announced, “and we’re headed over to Kentucky where we’ve got a great job waiting on us at John Lair’s Renfro Valley Show in Mount Vernon, about sixty miles from Lexington.”

“John Lair knows more about folk music than anybody in America,” Jesse put in.

“ ’Cept maybe you,” added Bucky, chewing on a toothpick. I could see why Ella Jean loved him—he exuded good will and confidence. Son of a piano man, he’d grown up in southwest Virginia, playing every instrument there was.

“But we’ve got one big problem,” Bucky went on. “We’re doing the show this coming Saturday night and we need us a keyboard player. Bad.”

It was already Thursday.

“What happened to the keyboard player you had?” I asked.

“Pregnant. We just got done delivering her back home to Danville, Virginia, where her mama wasn’t none too happy to see her.”

I looked from Bucky to Jesse, who held up both hands. “Not me,” he said. “Act of God.”

“I see.” Now I looked at Ella Jean. “Whatever makes you think I could actually do that? Play keyboards for a country band, I mean? I went to Peabody,” I said to Jesse, who nodded.

But Ella Jean said, “Evalina can play anything. All she has to do is hear it one time.” I knew she was right. I could do it. And then I could sleep in a truck and eat in places like this one, with people like these, and travel all over the country, playing music every night. My palm itched furiously as I thought about it.

“Come on and go,” Ella Jean said. “You know you want to.”

“I do,” I said. “But I can’t. I just can’t. I’ve got some things here to take care of. Some things to finish up right now.”

“You’re going to regret it,” Jesse said, looking at me. I thought of Matilda Bloom telling me I’d better grab that brass ring, that it ain’t gonna come around again. And I had a feeling this might be my last chance.

But I also knew I had no choice. I couldn’t leave them now, my people, my kind.

“Cousins, I thank you,” I said, standing up. “Thanks for a wonderful, wonderful evening. But I guess you’d better take me on back now.”

Which they did, though I still dream of what might have happened had I gone with them, all the highways we would have traveled, and all the things I would have seen. Jesse became famous, of course, while Bucky and Ella Jean got married and stayed on in Renfro Valley and had five children. I own several of Jesse’s albums, and I have saved that copy of Life magazine with his picture on the front of it.

“Where you been?” Jinx slit her green eyes at me as I slipped quietly back into Graystone.

“Just out with some old friends.” I hoisted my book bag.

“Who?”

I didn’t answer, but followed her over to the window as she peered out between the venetian blinds at the messy, empty street.

B
Y REHEARSAL TIME
t
he next afternoon, I could hardly believe that Ella Jean’s visit had really happened—it seemed like a dream, disappearing more and more throughout the day. I didn’t mention it to anyone.

This was an important rehearsal. Satisfied that the hours had finally “got” the first part of the dance, which was quick, fanciful, and even humorous—as keyed by the spritely music—now Mrs. Fitzgerald was leading them into the slower middle section, where the mood turns to doubt. The movements she showed them were somber and slower; I played softly. A beseeching tone crept into the music as each group searched a different section of the stage, peeping and bending, then extending their arms in an attitude of loss.

Ruth stopped right in the middle of it. “So what’s going on already?” she said in her most aggravating voice. “I hate this! The first part was fun, but this is making me nervous. We don’t have to do this. I’m not going to do it if it makes me nervous, if it’s not fun.”

“Me neither,” Amanda said. “This is stupid. It’s depressing.”

“Y’all need to shut up,” Jinx spoke flatly. “You just shut up and do it. Or maybe Dr. Schwartz needs to give everybody another pill.” Some of the hours laughed, but Pauletta, the new girl, covered her face with her hands and started to cry. Mrs. Morris’s daughter looked confused.

“Now, girls.” Mrs. Fitzgerald appeared entirely unperturbed as she turned gracefully to address them. “I am impressed by your sensitivity to the music and your understanding of this dance. Yes, the mood has changed. We are entering the middle phase of life where one often gets lost in a dark wood. We must go through the darkness to find the light. Of course you would understand this, you of all people. For this is art, and you are born artists, ballerinas every one of you! And now you must become frantic, running in a circle, just so—” She nodded to me, and I played spiky arpeggios while she led them to form the great circular clock again. Miraculously, not a one had dropped out. “And now the clock strikes six.” Again she nodded to me as I struck the slow, sonorous minor chords. “And now you all must run off the stage—you four to stage right, you four to stage left. Yes, run off! Quickly! Run, run, run! That’s it.”

The hours stood in the wings, panting hard, exhausted though proud of themselves.

“We shall leave the stage bare for four full measures before the grand finale, which will be fun, I assure you! And you shall have earned it, you see? For this is art—no light without the darkness!”

“So what’s the grand finale?” Ruth asked, her trademark sarcasm gone for once.

Mrs. Fitzgerald stood tall and gave them her most radiant smile. “It is—the cancan!” she promised. “Next time! Now once more, back into those dark woods again, girls, before we leave . . .”

I began to play the slow middle movement as they scattered obediently into their tentative search across the stage with Mrs. Fitzgerald watching them, nodding, pleased.

“Hellfire! That ain’t dancing, that’s just running around. Anybody can do that, that’s got legs! I can dance better’n that with my eyes closed!” A piercing country voice cut into the ballet.

Mrs. Fitzgerald walked forward to center stage and held up her hand like a traffic cop, stopping the dancers, and I ceased playing, too, which was a good thing as my hand had begun to itch furiously. “Who is that? Who is there?” Shielding her eyes with one hand, Mrs. Fitzgerald pointed imperiously past Dr. Schwartz and Phoebe Dean, sitting in the front row. They turned around in their seats to look up the center aisle, too.

“No spectators, please. This is a closed rehearsal.” Mrs. Fitzgerald spoke firmly.

“Well, I can dance, too.” The voice rang out in the dark auditorium. “I can dance better’n any of y’all. Ask anybody. And I have been on the stage, too, you might say, over in Knoxville, Tennessee, which none of these others has, I can tell you for a fact. Not a one of them. I’m the best dancer that ever was, and I’d be glad to help y’all out, iffen you was to ask me.”

“Oh, thank you so much for volunteering,” Dr. Schwartz began quickly, “but actually—”

“I ain’t asking you, ma’am. I’m asking her, that one up there on the stage,” came the voice.

“Now, Flossie.” I stood up at my piano but could see only her yellow hair in the dim recesses of the auditorium. “Of course you’re a great dancer, but you must have misunderstood. This program is just for—”

“You shut up! You just shut up, Miss Priss, I know all about you. All about you, don’t think I don’t—haven’t even got enough sense to get on the bus!”

“That’s enough.” Mrs. Fitzgerald had come forward to the footlights now, hands on her hips, wearing her Cherokee face. She sounded very definite and even mean. “You—must—go—now!” She spaced out the words for emphasis. “Auditions are closed.”

“They wasn’t no auditions. This ain’t nothing but a exercise for crazy people—”

Karen Quinn moved forward to stand on one side of Mrs. Fitzgerald, with Jinx already on the other.

But Mrs. Fitzgerald didn’t need any help. “Go now!” She looked terrifying, like one of her own paintings.

“Bitch!” we heard, followed by the slamming, echoing door. Some of the hours giggled.

“My goodness,” Mrs. Fitzgerald said mildly. “Now, girls, one more time—”

I couldn’t believe they’d do it, but I started playing, and the hours started dancing again. Suddenly it was all over—both the unsettling incident and Mrs. Fitzgerald’s change in mood. She was pleasant and professional as she told them good-bye and let them go, chattering and excited, back into their own afternoons, Flossie’s outburst already forgotten.

“This is not the first time I have wondered about that kitchen girl,” Dr. Schwartz told the rest of us, “though of course one rarely sees her . . . but there’s something, something . . .”