The Woefield Poultry Collective (34 page)

I put a hand on each of their arms and managed to swing them around so they were facing Merle’s gray motor home with the blacked-out windows.

“You’ll both want to duck in there and relax and have a visit before the show.”

Earl and Merle allowed me to steer them but they still weren’t speaking.

“Merle, if you have any good concert clothes you could lend Earl, that would be fantastic.”

Earl stopped up short. “I ain’t wearing no special outfit.”

Merle shook his head. “You never did want to get with the act.”

“That is SO interesting!” I said loudly enough to distract them. “I bet you two have a lot of old memories to talk about.”

Grudgingly, Earl allowed me to get him moving again.

“Goddamn it,” he muttered.

I stopped at the steps of the bus and slowly Merle climbed up. He went inside and disappeared.

Earl looked at me, his small eyes bright and shiny.

“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for doing this for us.” Earl grunted and said he goddamn hoped so.

Then he stepped inside and the screen door slammed shut behind them.

When I got back to the performing area, the first band was up onstage, playing a song. Brady was acting as MC and doing a fine job. In addition to his pornographic writing abilities, he really does bring a wide array of skills to the table.

The band consisted of two men in bolo ties and muttonchops and a woman in a full-length denim skirt. They played and people in front of the bandstand danced in the afternoon sun. That high thin music sounded amazing drifting down to the flat rocky ground like it belonged. Every so often the three musicians would crowd around the big microphone, singing harmonies and solos about leaving and loving and taking a load off their minds.

In the crowd hippies twirled and some country-looking older people, locals, maybe, danced in pairs, turning in tight circles together. At the edges of the crowd people had pulled up lawn chairs with umbrellas stuck in them. There were old people and kids.

I stood back and marveled at the scene. I had a feeling this was just the beginning.

When the song ended I felt the hand on my shoulder. I knew whose it was.

“You aren’t ever going to apologize, are you?” he said.

I put my hand over his and patted it.

“No. It’s just not my thing.”

“You’re a woman of great certainty,” he said. “And you grow a nice, if small, radish.”

“Thank you.”

“Can you dance?”

“Of course,” I said, even though I can’t really. I think enthusiasm counts for a lot in dancing and in life.

The band moved into a slower song. The music journalists who weren’t hanging around outside the bus trying to overhear Earl and Merle’s conversation snapped pictures of the crowd, which was expanding around us, everyone giving everyone else just a little elbow room.

Eustace wasn’t a very good dancer either.

I think for me the best part was when Merle and his band got up on that little bandstand and the crowd went wild and I thought, fuck, this is really something here and it’s kind of cool that I’m actually seeing it. I wondered how much I’d missed up to this point, which they say is something that happens to people who are newly sober. You know, you start to wake up and find that life’s not complete shit. Most of it is, but not all.

I was standing there watching, waiting for Earl and Merle to go onstage, and wondering how it felt to grow up with rhyming names, when my mom walked up to me. She was back in the Bedazzled jean pantsuit.

“You look good, honey,” she said.

“Thanks. I feel okay.”

“I’m glad I made the right decision.”

“What do you mean?”

She took a deep pull on her smoke and the tip flared.

“Had to get you out of the house, babe. That shit with the drama teacher wasn’t worth throwing away your whole life.”

“Nothing happened with the drama teacher,” I said.

“Bullshit,” she said, and then went into a coughing jag. “Okay. I got to go meet Bobby in the beer garden.”

“Okay, Ma,” I said.

Then my buddy Corey came up.

“Hey man,” he said.

And I thanked him for hooking us up with the toilets.

“Just glad you’re out and about. Hey, you still doing your websites?”

“I don’t know. I’m not as into blogging right now.”

“Really? I thought Raging Metal was pretty good.”

“You went on there?”

“All the time, dude. I’m Red Bull. I commented and everything.”

“That was you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were doing your recluse thing. Anyway, glad you’re out. You want to hit the beer garden?”

“Nah. I’m not doing that right now.”

“Just like Steve Tyler. Right on,” he said and stayed standing beside me.

The band took their positions and there was this pause and some instrument tuning and then some respectful head bowing when Merle climbed onstage, followed by Earl. Earl looked like he wished he was anywhere else. I recognized the signs. It nearly killed me that he hadn’t even changed his clothes. I’m talking summer long johns poking out from green pants, grizzled old whiskers, his small selection of head hairs not even combed. The difference between him and that band was almost painful, you know, but it was real. Have you ever seen in magazines a regular person getting an autograph from one of the Bigs, a Pitt-Jolie or maybe a Depp? How you get this clear visual proof that life isn’t fair? It’s harsh but it’s also invigorating or something. The reality of it. I can’t explain it, except to say that when Earl got up onstage I felt kind of torn up for him.

But then something happened. He walked over and picked up his banjo and he looked a little better. I’d seen the man handle a hammer. He was no natural with the implements, I can assure you. But he looked good with that banjo. It added a whole other dimension to him. People started to clap. Even the ones who didn’t know the family history. They sensed something going down. And they clapped more and more and they all stood and that applause rolled over everything.

Merle waited until people quieted down, paused, then said, “I’d like to introduce my brother, Earl. He lives in these parts.”

Every local in the crowd went mental, yelling their heads off.

Then the music started.

I’d liked the first few bands okay. And I walked past some of the bluegrass workshops and they were cool, too. Some of the people could play and some couldn’t. That music has a way of growing on you. But the truth is that nothing prepared me for Earl and his brother.

Earl kicked it off. He stood stock still a little way apart from the rest of the band. I swear to god, if Corey hadn’t been standing beside me when I heard the first notes, I might have fallen over. Earl played like a demon. Seriously. He was like some old style music version of Joe Satriani. His fingers flew and he was using that special technique all the music journalists kept talking about. After a few bars Merle leaned into the microphone and started to sing. Dude had a voice. You know. Hairs rising on the back of the neck kind of voice that was raw and sweet at the same time. Earl moved up to his microphone and started to sing along and his voice put the whole thing into the stratosphere. Magic. The rest of the band joined in, tight like they’d been playing three shows a day for twenty years. And one of them was this youngish girl, like maybe my age, and they gave her a little space and she did this fiddle solo. I swear to Christ she was the most rock and roll thing I ever saw. The music journalist near us from the Japanese bluegrass magazine kept saying, “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit,” only because of his accent it sounded like a prayer. The writer from the
Newgrass Review
was literally crying. And Reporter Travis was sort of crying and laughing and doing this compulsive thing with his hand, like he was conducting. And when the song was over, so was I, sort of. And I wanted that fiddle girl’s number.

I’m telling you, it was worth sobering up just to have not missed that.

It didn’t feel half bad to get up there and play. I was just glad I didn’t make a damned fool of myself. But I can also tell you I never got the same charge out of being onstage that Merle and Pride got. I don’t give a shit if people like me or not and that’s the truth.

After the set and the encore and once we got through the whole damned herd of people, reporters and bluegrass fans and young folks in old-timey outfits, Merle asked me to come back to what he called his office, which was the living room in the big motor home. With the sliders out, the damned thing was bigger than my cabin.

Once we were seated and I turned down a drink, ‘cause I never did drink after Pride, Merle asked me if I felt it too, when we played.

I thought about playing dumb, but you know, we was getting to be old and there’s only so many goddamn games you can play before you run out of time. I told him it was good to get up onstage with him and his band. He asked if I wanted to do a reunion tour around some of the bigger festivals. Maybe go to Nashville. He said his manager had been getting offers from promoters and organizers ever since word got out about the Woefield festival.

He said it was like I never left the band and that a person could hear the family connection when we played. I said that was true in some ways, even though it wasn’t. Not really.

Then he asked again if I wanted to come on the road with them.

I sat for a minute or two and looked out the window at the dark. I could see fires burning at the campsites along the field and headlights
sliding by from cars leaving. There was another act playing. I know we should have gone last so we could have kept people around drinking beer for longer, but I told Prudence I wasn’t going to play in the goddamn dark and I wasn’t missing my bedtime or I’d be dragging around here for a week. Truth is, I wasn’t going to sleep worth a damn after all the excitement and I knew it as well as anyone. That got me thinking of Merle on the road all these years. Never going to bed on time. He might have a big RV bus instead of the Oldsmobile, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t on the road all the same. Only person I ever saw who loved being on the road all the time was Pride and that’s cause he liked to leave a town behind once he’d been there, especially if he got to drinking in it.

I told Merle I didn’t think I’d be leaving, unless Prudence sold the farm. He asked what was keeping me here and I said it was what I was used to. Then he pulled a check out of his pocket and slid it across the table to me. He said it was proceeds from our folks’ old place. He’d sold the property a few years back when times were tight and nobody was listening to bluegrass much, but he held onto my share for me because he knew I’d surface sooner or later. I felt a sting in my heart then, thinking about where we grew up. And then it was gone. I can only give a good goddamn about one place at a time and might as well give a shit about one with some young people on it, even if they are pains in the ass worse than I’ve ever known, except little Sara, who’s bossy but a good girl no matter how you look on it.

Merle got a funny look on his face when I told him I had to stay around to make sure things didn’t fall apart. But he didn’t say nothing, either. I told him Prudence has a hell of a lot of energy. Kind of reminds me of our old mother. A real domino, if you want to know. I told him Prudence would make a go of it, if anyone would give her half a chance. I figured with the money from the concert and if I bought a bigger share in the place, she just might have a shot.

So that’s it really. The big reunion between the remaining Clemente brothers. My oldest sister died nearly ten years ago and Luanne a year
after that, so me and Merle was the remaining Clementes, period. For all his fooling around, Merle never had no kids of his own.

All said and done, it wasn’t something I regret. I just wish Pride’d been with us.

The rest of the night was extremely fun. Bethany’s parents wanted to leave when the music started, but she really liked it and sort of started dancing, which I’d never seen before. Bethany has a lot of rhythm, at least that’s what Seth said when he saw her. Her parents started smiling even though you could tell they didn’t want to and her mom said to her dad that she must get her moves from him and he squeezed her mom’s bottom and she giggled and it was really nice. Bethany’s pretty lucky in some ways.

There were a lot of people who got sort of frisky because of the music. I saw Dr. Eustace and Prudence in his truck, but I didn’t want to look too close and get a bad opinion of them. It’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt even if they don’t deserve it.

It was also very fun when I saw Seth dance with one of the girl musicians. Seth has almost as much rhythm as Bethany!

Later, after she got out of the truck with Eustace, I heard Prudence tell the bank lady that the concert and a new investor meant she was going to be able to get “up to date.” I don’t know what that means. Then they started talking about “intensive grass farming,” which I know about from a lecture we had from a visiting 4-H speaker because it involves chickens. Chickens have a role to play in many kinds of farming, including grass. That’s something a lot of people don’t know.

I was very surprised when the mean girl who comes for writing lessons with her mom came over and told me she was sorry about
her friends and they were sort of douche bags and I shouldn’t take it personally. I don’t know what a douche bag is, but it was nice of her to say. Those writing lessons really seem to be helping her with her personality.

All in all, I heard a lot of things and enjoyed myself. I even remembered to take my phone call with my mom and she said she’s going to stay in Winnipeg with her sister and won’t be coming home until the end of the summer. She said she talked it over with Prudence, and me and my chickens will be staying at the farm for the time being. Then she cried, but only for about half the time she normally does. Maybe she’s feeling better.

My dad showed up at the concert. Prudence hired him to drive impaired people home and he seemed to like having something to do. Maybe he will become a taxi driver, like Prudence’s friend Hugh. My dad told me he was sorry about all the yelling and throwing things and inappropriate behavior. He said he’s left his construction job and is going to look for a new job and that he was sorry I had to be a “witness to his personal breakdown.” I said that was okay, that everybody gets mad sometimes. I didn’t say that most people don’t stay mad for most of another person’s life. He asked what my plans were, like I was an adult. That made me kind of sad.