Twang (7 page)

“That’s not weird,” he said. “That’s beautiful.”

After I finished my meal and Roy’d cleaned up the trash, he looked intently at me. “Sing for me, would you? Can you sing on a full stomach?”

I looked at his greasy lips curved into a smile. “What do you want me to sing?”

“Sing your favorite. You and Dolly.”

I got to my feet, closed my eyes, and sang the first two verses and the chorus of “Spooky Moon.”

When I finished, Roy hopped off his stool, stood not three feet away, staring at me for the longest time, then began clapping and nodding so hard his forelock came loose from the rest of his hair. I saw tears shimmering in those blue eyes. “You’ve got real, honest-to-goodness natural-born talent, Jennifer,” he said, “and I’m gonna tell you something you can take to the bank. You’re gonna do well here! Trust me. I’ve been in this town for a long, long time, and some things I know.”

Warmth flooded my body. “Thank you.”

“I’m the one should be saying thanks. That was what I call a holy experience.” Roy lowered his voice to an excited whisper. “Care for some dessert?”

“Maybe,” I whispered back.

“Don’t let anybody around here hear me, but The Hermitage Hotel makes a milk chocolate crème brûlée I’d kill for. It’s this perfect custard, topped with caramelized sugar and fresh strawberries . . .”

Roy’s delight was so disarming, it was tempting to say yes, but something in me needed to give back. “Let me treat. Would you like half a package of Hostess Zingers out of the vending machine? They’re my favorite.”

“Certainly,” Roy said, a twinkle in those blue eyes. “I love Zingers.”

At last Monday dawned. I made coffee in my room, gulped it, splashed water on my face and went downstairs for breakfast. Sitting in the carpeted dining area with a cup of milk, a boiled egg, and two sausage patties, I looked at the stage across from the bar. I rested my elbows on the table, sunk my chin in my hands, willing the hours, the minutes to pass speedily.

Time passed the way it always did, and at five o-clock sharp I walked out to wait on the curb, guitar case in hand. Right on the dot this ancient white Cadillac pulled to a stop. It seemed just the sort of car Roy Durden would drive, and I didn’t even check to see if it was him behind the wheel before opening the back door to slide the Washburn in, then climbing into the passenger seat.

“Afternoon, Madam. Where to?” Roy asked in a fake British voice, his nostrils widened on purpose.

I had to smile. “The Bluebird Cafe,” I commanded in a snobbish voice. Trying to find a spot on the floorboard that wasn’t littered with fast-food cartons and soda cans was almost impossible, but I nudged a Hardee’s cup and a Dunkin’ Donuts bag over and settled my feet. From the corner of my eye I could see the white swoop of Roy’s pompadour, his big pink-knuckled fingers on the steering wheel, his enormous belly perched on his thighs.

“You ready?” Roy asked as we paused at the first stoplight.

“Mm-hm.”

“Well, I’ve told you once, and I’ll tell you again, I’m not going to fret about you one little bit, missy. You’re going to do fine.”

I nodded and we rode along in a comfortable silence, me thinking how great it was to have a friend who knew his way around Nashville. Roy seemed happy too. He fiddled with a radar detector on the dash, rustled around in a bag of potato chips on the seat between us, and slurped from a huge
Styrofoam cup between his legs. “Alrighty. Here we are,” he said at last, nodding at a nondescript shopping center.

Heart thumping fast, I turned to look at a strip of businesses, and at last spied The Bluebird Café, next to a place called Helen’s Children’s Shop.

“Now wait just a minute here,” Roy said when he’d pulled into the parking lot, idling not more than twenty feet from the Bluebird’s door. He put a beefy hand on my arm and I didn’t even flinch. “You knock ’em dead, okay, Jennifer?”

“I will, Roy,” I said. “And thank you.” He could not have known all that my ‘Thank you’ encompassed.

There was no cover charge at The Bluebird Café, and I walked right in, surprised at how tiny the place was! I counted twenty small tables set so close together I wondered how waitresses could move between them. To the left was a bar beneath a Jack Daniels guitar-shaped clock, to the right a stage with spotlights. Christmas lights and a row of framed photos circling the walls made it feel cheerful.

It was 5:20 p.m., and there were a good number of folks there. Roy told me you signed up at 5:30 for a chance to perform, and then the Bluebird picked about twenty-four people per night. I had no doubt I’d be selected, and I wasn’t surprised when a woman touched my arm. “You’re here for open mic?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m Jennifer Anne Clodfelter.”

“Barbara,” she said. “Let’s go ahead and put your name in the hat.”

“Great.” My fingers were crossed behind my back. I didn’t want to go first, but I also didn’t want to be last.

“Lineup’s announced and show starts at six. If you’re picked, you’re allowed two original songs. We don’t provide
an accompanist, and no tracks are permitted, but we do have a Kawai keyboard you’re welcome to use.”

“Thanks. But it’s just me and my Washburn, and I’m only going to do one song.”

Despite nothing since breakfast, I wasn’t hungry, so I leaned against the wall, watching the clock over the bar, which ticked along annoyingly slowly. A little before six Barbara climbed onstage. “Welcome to open mic night here at the Bluebird, one of the world’s preeminent listening rooms. Remember our policy.” She held an index finger to her pursed lips and hissed out, “Shhhhhhh! Please keep your background conversation to a minimum. Our ‘Shhhh’ policy is designed to support a listening environment where the audience can concentrate on the song. Speaking of that, we’ve got a wonderful lineup for you tonight—”

Her voice faded to distant background noise as soon as I heard I got the number-four slot. I ran over the words to “Spooky Moon,” vaguely aware of the first performer: a huge, hulking bear of a man in tight faded jeans and a sleeveless flannel shirt and with a long Charlie Daniels beard. He surprised me with a high-tenor voice accompanied by a saucy guitar line. He whined and wailed and twanged his way through a song called “Gimme Back My Catfish.” There was a smattering of polite applause and a few soft whistles. Then up came a plump, peroxided blonde with a very low-cut spangled top that got some subdued catcalls before she even opened her mouth.

She introduced her song called “Mayhem Mama.” She wiggled and jiggled around up there a while, strumming and singing way off-pitch on the very first line, but sounded okay in a hillbilly way once she got going. Seemed the audience was more focused on her chest than her music, however, and I was glad for my modest blouse with only the top snap left undone.

Next came a man in a white suit who reminded me of Colonel Sanders. He sang a song called “Walking the Railroad Blues” with a gravelly Johnny Cash sound. He got a good reception from the crowd.

When it was my turn, I climbed up onstage wrapped in that magical preperformance euphoria I always got. I leaned in to kiss the microphone, feeling the little electric buzz on my lips that I love. I adjusted the Washburn and moved my brain into that small-town dialect I’d sure heard enough of and that audiences loved, smiling at each face I could see.

“Good evenin’. My name’s Jennifer Anne Clodfelter, and I’m gonna sing a song I wrote called ‘Spooky Moon.’ I wrote the chorus of this song one summer night when I was eight years old as I lay on my pallet out on the screen porch, which incidentally was my bedroom. I was watching the moon from underneath a little burrow I made out of my covers. Mainly, I wrote the chorus to calm myself down. You know, as a sort of good-luck charm, because my mother was constantly warning me not to sin, not to walk down that wide, easy road that leads to hell, and many a evening she’d grab my hand and look up at the sky and say this little poem that went, ‘I see the moon, the moon sees me, please old moon, don’t tell on me.’ And of course, being a kid, the first thing I thought of when I did somethin’ bad was that the moon was gonna tell on me.” I paused as laughter rippled through the crowd.

“Well,” I continued, “now I know the moon ain’t gonna tell on me.” I paused again, waited for the knowing smiles, the encouraging nods among the hundred or so people in the audience. “And so I wrote the rest of this song around that comforting chorus. A chorus I credit for getting me through many a long, scary night.”

My guitar pick was like a part of my hand that found the right strings instinctively. My voice soared on the first note as I
strummed a mournful A minor on account of the song started out sweet and melancholy:

When I was a little, wide-eyed gal

I hated for darkness to fall

I hid in the covers and hugged myself

Squinched up in a tight little ball

Singin’ ‘Oh, spooky moon, you taken the

sunshine and you hid her away.

But I guess it’s your turn to shine.

I know I done wrong, but if you’ll keep your mouth shut,

I promise to be better next time.’

The melody moved into something more lively and playful, and I switched to a D minor, and then after a few stanzas right back to the tearful part, playing around with a sad bluesy line about night falling way too quickly when you’re little.

Everything felt smooth and natural, and when I reached the chorus for the third time, I really poured my heart into the lyrics, going back to the screen porch in Blue Ridge, Georgia, where I did have lots and lots of fears, but not particularly about the moon. I could sense that the crowd was totally with me as I heard my own clear, high notes boomeranging off the ceiling.

As I moved along to the final verse, I could see the people’s faces changing. I could feel every single person in that room straining to hear what the adult me had discovered about that scary moon, wanting me to overcome my terror. I saw tears glistening in a few of the eyes on the front row when I got to the part about how children believe whatever adults say to them and how it affects them, for good or for bad. I knew I was doing it right because I felt that surge of joy, a
velvety-petaled rose of knowing that bloomed inside me whenever I sang something the listeners connected to so strongly, when I literally felt myself merging with a song. Those final twanging notes rose and dipped and threaded themselves in and through the crowd, alive, by some miracle, lingering like a dream.

I finished, and there was a stunned silence of maybe three seconds, which felt like the calm before the storm, and then a thunderous burst of applause and boot stomps and whistles and “Yeah! Way to sing!” I knew without a doubt it was louder and longer and more heartfelt than the previous three performers put together. I bowed humbly from the waist, and said, “Thank you very much,” just like Elvis, and then there was another sweet round of applause as people got up out of their seats and cheered with fists in the air.

Waves of love from the crowd rolled and crashed over me as I stepped off the stage, threading through the tables toward the back wall. I wasn’t surprised by the lineup of hands patting my shoulder, my arm, touching my hair, or the voices saying more nice things to me. I wasn’t surprised that I wanted to stop time and just revel in that moment a spell—like I always did after I sang. When the euphoria did pass, as the next performer was talking into the mike, I had such a letdown I felt trembly. But I kept a smile plastered on my face as I watched the skinny young girl in a Minnie Pearl getup warble a song about pickled okra, which was really funny and quite good. Before she finished, a man appeared at my elbow, tapping my forearm insistently, as though I should have been ready to acknowledge him. When my eyes met his, a feeling of awe washed through me, and I knew:
This man’s a big shot, somebody I ought to know
. I held my breath, waiting for him to speak. “Mike Flint,” he said, nodding without smiling, only he didn’t look mean or grumpy
as he held out a hand. I put mine in his and it was huge, warm and so solid.

“Jennifer Anne Clodfelter.”

“I know,” he said, “wonderful name, but I’m thinking we oughtta shorten it to Jenny Cloud.” His voice was deep and very Southern, with a drawl that was soothing like a river can be.