Twang (19 page)

“I didn’t have any friends.”

“What? You’re teasing, aren’t you, honey? Your mother didn’t invite little friends over for you to play with?”

Jennifer sighed. “Mother had no lady friends, and I guess it just never occurred to her I’d be any different.”

“You didn’t have friends at school or church?”

“No. To be honest, I was scared to death of all those girls who danced through life worrying about what color polish to put on their fingernails or who was currently going with who. Probably didn’t help that I didn’t have the cute haircut or the nice clothes.”

Tonilynn sighed. “Poor baby. Life’s hard enough as it is without a friend to discuss your problems with.”

“We all need friends,” I said, reaching out for Bobby Lee’s hand. “ ’Course, most men have friends where they work.”

Tonilynn looked at me with those knife-eyes she makes, just itching to come back, but Jennifer piped up, and as they say, saved the day.

“Well, I didn’t need a friend to tell me that what my father did—the kind of man he was, is—wasn’t okay.”

“What’d he do?” I asked, which just kind of naturally spouted out of my mouth. Tonilynn kicked me underneath the table, but Jennifer must not have thought it was all that awful of a thing to ask because she piped right up without hardly taking a breath.

“Basically, he’s a drunk who has no respect for women.”

“Is that right?” I asked.

“I used to beg Mother to take me with her and leave him. She’d say, ‘Jennifer, I’m praying, and I know he’ll change. In his heart, deep down, he’s a good man.’ She honestly believed that baloney.”

Tears dribbled out of her eyes at that point, and I was touched when Bobby Lee took his napkin and passed it to her.

“Well, we all have hard things to bear, don’t we?” I didn’t really mean it as a question, but Jennifer started in again, and I was amazed at the vinegar came pouring out of that little gal.

“Like I said, she didn’t
have
to bear it! For years, my daydreams, besides singing, were of me and mother leaving him. And when I finally realized she was never going to leave him, I prayed he’d die, maybe get drunk and fall down some stairs and break his neck or run off the road and hit a tree.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said, “you don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do. If you knew the things he did when he took drunk, or the things he said, you’d want him dead too. It wouldn’t mean you weren’t a good Christian.”

Jennifer looked right at me and I could tell she was wanting me to agree with her. I’ve been going to church for eighty-six years now, read my Bible from cover to cover more times than I can count, but I was having a heap of trouble pulling up a nugget of wisdom to offer. Feeling flustered, I said, “Jennifer, you come on with me to church this Sunday for the Easter service. Just like you prayed for your father to die, you can pray for his redemption. God loves everybody, and God can save even the worst of us.”

I could tell Tonilynn was put out with me, and I hadn’t even mentioned Holt Cantrell. All of a sudden I remembered the pound cake. “Let me get our dessert.”

Before I could even get to my feet, Bobby Lee shocked me by saying, “Keep your seat, Aunt Gomer, I’ll get it.”

Easter Sunday 2010 fell on April fourth, and I felt like a kid playing hooky as I drove down Old Hickory. Even though Mike’s one of those obsessive-compulsive types of businessmen, I was fairly certain he was spending the day with his wife and stepkids, so I wasn’t letting myself think about the business end of anything. Easter’s like Thanksgiving and Christmas and the Fourth of July. You’re
supposed
to shut off thoughts about work.

The reason I felt guilty was that Aunt Gomer called me the day before. I was startled to hear her old voice coming out of my cell phone, but I guess she got my number from Tonilynn. “Good evening, child!” she said. “My offer to carry you to the Lord’s house with me tomorrow to celebrate the Resurrection still stands. I’ll come fetch you before the rooster crows and we’ll hit the sunrise service at Bethel, followed by breakfast on the grounds. They do ham biscuits that are out of this world. Sound good?”

I told her I was sorry, that I already had plans. When I hung up, I felt a little shaky. My excuse wasn’t an actual lie. My plan was a cinnamon crunch bagel and espresso so strong it would have me shaking.

The streets were still fairly empty at eight a.m., and I drove along, thinking about how bright and clean-washed everything looked outside. The sun shone in a cloudless sky and everywhere were shameless bursts of forsythia and all these silly, optimistic daffodils with trumpets that reminded me of the hoopskirts of Southern belles. Perfect weather for Easter.

Then I started thinking about the reason Aunt Gomer invited me to church with her. If I were honest with myself, thoughts of my father’s demise still lived like bright glowing mushrooms in the dung of my dark fantasies. I viewed them from a sideways glance, like when Sarah Bean, a disabled girl, was sent to our regular classroom in middle school for something called “mainstreaming.” You were
aware
of Sarah Bean at all times, even though you knew it was rude to stare at her.

Though the hate-filled words spewed out of my mouth easily up there on Cagle Mountain, I definitely didn’t like to look at my death wishes for my father head-on. Even then I knew that they were not what nice little girls, good daughters, thought. Definitely, I did not have the “joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart” we used to sing about at vacation Bible school. But then again, I remembered thinking so long ago, being absolutely positive, that God would understand that it was precisely
because
of that absence of joy that I fantasized my father’s demise.

I knew better than to stay on that train of thought, and so I summoned another image from Cagle Mountain: Bobby Lee going outside with me.

“Looks like it’s finally clearing off?” Bobby Lee said just as we reached the Pontiac. “I bet Aunt Gomer’s going to be out here dancing a jig.”

I looked up. The moon was high and full and a luminous white, and when I looked back down I saw it reflected on the surface of a hundred little puddles of rainwater in the road and also in the chrome on Bobby Lee’s wheelchair. I couldn’t help noticing a Mason jar with two very tall purplish-white irises situated between his thighs. He saw me looking and nodded his head down and said, “These are for you.” His long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and when he bent his head I could see a jagged scar on his neck, running from behind his right earlobe and disappearing into the neck of his T-shirt. I was so surprised I didn’t say anything for a minute. Then I said, “They’re beautiful. Thank you.”

He nodded, smiled, and patted Erastus’s shoulder. “Thank
you
,” he said. “Wanna know something? One of the things I admire most about you, Jennifer, is that you’re famous but you don’t go around with your nose stuck up in the air. You’ll stoop to hang out with regular old folks like us.”

I liked hearing him say that, but I didn’t know what to answer, so for a while I just leaned against the door of the Pontiac, looking at the shape of the giant pecan tree to the side of the house, and then I leaned forward to scratch behind Erastus’s soft, warm ears. “Thank you,” I murmured. “That’s so sweet.”

“We’re turning into the Mutual Thank-You Club, now aren’t we?” Bobby Lee grinned as he wheeled forward and reached for the door handle to the backseat. He wedged the jar of irises between some shoes and boxes on the floorboard. “Speaking of thank-yous, after I got your
Blue Mountain Blues
CD, I must’ve listened to “Walking the Wildwood” a hundred times, and every single time, I fell into it. It’s a beautiful experience. I know it hasn’t been easy for you, judging from the story you told tonight, but there’s no doubt you have
an awesome gift of touching folks through your music. So, thank you.”

Hearing that thrilled my soul. Being able to supply someone with joy, well, that was
almost
reason enough to keep pursuing the dream and braving the heartbreak of it all. Wasn’t it? I rode along, hugging that memory of Bobby Lee beside me in the front yard on Cagle Mountain, the moon shining down and the smell of rain in the air.

Here was the dilemma: I knew music was my gift, and I loved knowing it brought happiness to people besides myself, but my whole goal in getting away from Blue Ridge was to forget everything, to NEVER resurrect it, no matter what, and the past was starting to blindside me even when I wasn’t in that vulnerable place of falling asleep. It would hit at the craziest times. Just when I’d get to feeling fairly safe, something would prompt an earthquake that sliced that red Georgia clay wide open, and boy, was I a mess for a while. Thankfully, that episode between my sophomore and junior year was still safely in the grave.

All of a sudden, the idea of sitting in Panera with just my thoughts made me cringe. Wasn’t Easter supposed to be about pretty baskets full of eggs, fluffy yellow chicks, bunnies, and little girls in frilly dresses? Having a childhood rocked by emotional ambushes certainly wasn’t the proverbial “warm coat to wear when you’re older.”

I stomped on the brake, made a U-turn, and went speeding back toward Harmony Hill, telling myself the cops wouldn’t ticket on Easter. Right before I reached my drive, I stomped the brake again, skidding to a stop on the side of the road. Inside my enormous house it would be as silent as the grave. Another U-turn and I felt like Mario Andretti, speeding toward Cagle Mountain.

I turned on the radio because whenever I felt myself drowning in fears, listening to music helped me kick back up to the surface where I could at least dog paddle for a while. Kenny Rogers was singing “Coward of the County,” and then I was singing along to Dolly Parton’s rollicking “9 to 5,” and then really belting it out with George Jones on “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” I was tempted to close my eyes as I sang along to “The Dance” with Garth Brooks, and also “Forever and Ever, Amen,” with Randy Travis, but I managed to keep my eyes on the quiet roads.

When Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” finished, I figured I had to be about halfway to Tonilynn’s, but then, wouldn’t you know it, Tammy Wynette started singing “Stand by Your Man.” I love Tammy, but those lyrics, particularly after my scene with Holt, were salt on a wound. For some dumb reason, I didn’t turn it off, and the deejay came on when it finished, crowing something about how some singers do live out their songs. “Take Tammy Wynette and ‘Stand By Your Man,’ ” he said. “This song was very successful, reaching the top spot on the Country charts in 1968, and then crossing over to the Top 20, peaking at No. 19 on the Billboard pop charts.”

I drove along with the deejay’s words echoing in my head, almost running off the road as the astonishing parallels of “Stand by Your Man” and “Honky-Tonk Tomcat” dawned on me. Both were about turning a blind eye to your man’s faults and both had been number one on the Country charts and both had “crossed over” to pop. I didn’t know if Tammy Wynette actually lived out her lyrics, but mine were 100 percent blood-bought.

When I burst into the kitchen on Cagle Mountain. Tonilynn was standing at the table, dyeing eggs in bowls of colored water, watching a little bitty television atop the refrigerator,
where a preacher in a shiny black suit stood behind a row of Easter lilies. She looked over at me, surprised, and went to turn down the volume.

“Well, ain’t this a nice surprise!” she said. “Aunt Gomer told me you had other plans, and she’s gone to the sunrise service, followed by breakfast on the grounds.”

I glanced up at the preacher banging his fist into his palm to bring home a point I couldn’t hear. The camera panned the crowd and they were nodding, crying, and smiling. “I don’t feel good,” I said, an excuse that wasn’t totally untrue.

Tonilynn held the back of her hand to my forehead. “You’re not hot. What doesn’t feel good? Want me to fix you some tea?”

“I just need some peace,” the words tumbled out of my mouth. “I’d give anything for some peace. Is that too much to ask?” I dropped onto one of the oak chairs at the table.

“ ’Course not,” Tonilynn knelt beside me, held my hand. “We all want personal peace. It’s a . . . what do you call it? A universal desire!”

“Well, I can’t even listen to the radio safely anymore, Tonilynn. I just heard a song that took me back to a bad place.”

“Yeah,” she sighed, “Certain songs are like a time machine for me, too. Whenever I hear Styx singing ‘Lady,’ I’m fourteen, and I’m at the high school dance, standing outside in the parking lot with Justin Predmore. I’m wearing this Pepto-Bismol–pink dress with a push-up bra, my heart going a mile a minute, and Justin’s in this baby-blue tux, and we’re smoking a joint and then . . .”

I was glad she trailed off. Though Tonilynn’s confessionals about her former life were interesting in that way soap operas can be, I sure didn’t want her expecting some give-and-take about our pasts. I glanced up at the congregation on television, eyes closed, faces lifted beatifically, and for one fleeting
moment I felt a little bit jealous as I looked at those people communicating with some higher benevolent power. But just as quick, I returned to my usual fantasy about having a gigantic lever I could pull that would totally erase my past.

Tonilynn put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m praying the Lord will rip the veil off your eyes, Jennifer, and reveal to you just how much he loves you, how he wants to redeem those ugly things in your past and use them for your good and his glory.”

I stomped my foot. “I don’t
want
anybody to redeem those ugly things back there!”

She knelt beside my chair. “Are you still having issues about old Holt?” She asked after a spell.

I nodded.

“Time will shine the light on his evil ways,” she said. “He likes to act like some refined country gentleman, but I don’t even need my sacred gift to see what’s inside of him! He’ll get his comeuppance.”

I liked hearing this. “Yeah.”

“He’s one of those ‘bad boys’ who’s never gonna grow up.” Tonilynn made a face like she smelled something nasty. “I remember, we were in Arkansas once, all the road crew was staying at this La Quinta Inn, and one night Holt came to hang out with us. Well, he got loaded and went down to the corner convenience store and bought himself some X-rated magazines. Then he came back and paid for one of those X-rated channels on the hotel television, and I’ll tell you something I learned, hon, classical music does
not
make porn classy! It was vulgar! And
Holt
got so vulgar I had to give him a piece of my mind. Right there in front of God and everybody. Nothing but white trash!”