Driftless

by David Rhodes

  In the middle of the sun-soaked kitchen, a woman with a complexion resembling lacquered porcelain sat at the counter on a tall stool, drinking a glass of orange juice. Her eyes were pale, pale blue, her hair curly white-blond, and she wore loosing-fitting white capris and a white top. Her bare feet leaned together at the soles, embracing at the toes.

  Both women appeared to be about ten years older than Gail, and she at once began building a psychic bridge over the Age Ravine that separated them, trying to seem older. Then as soon as she noticed she was doing it, she stopped.

  “This is Monica,” said Yesha. “Monica, this is Gail.”

  “You play percussion,” said Gail, and Monica smiled wearily.

  “I hope you like strong coffee,” said Yesha, pouring Gail a cup of what looked like pure India ink. She put it on a saucer beside Monica’s orange juice.

  Gail sat on one of the four tall stools and wished she had thought more carefully about what to wear, though this was an old problem for her. She never liked what she wore, and, well, blue jeans with a red button-up blouse ought to be good enough. It’s what she wore to work. Her sneakers were a little ragged, however, and she wrapped her feet around the wooden legs of the stool.

  “Whoa,” she said, and without intentionally meaning to she made a face. “That’s strong.”

  Monica laughed. “People ingest Yesha’s coffee at their own risk.”

  “I like it,” said Gail.

  Sounds from deeper in the house announced the movements of the owner. From some unknown place, Barbara Jean, wearing a pair of green silk coveralls, walked into the kitchen. Her green eyes focused on Gail, and after a long, uncomfortable moment her face registered recognition.

  “I’m Gail Shotwell. We met last fall.”

  Barbara Jean nodded and Gail felt a new tension in the air. Her presence, even after just waking up, was immense.

  “Bee Jay, you want something to eat?” asked Yesha, handing her a cup of coffee. The black- haired woman shook her head, carried the cup of coffee over to the table, and sat next to the vase of flowers.

  “You should eat something, Bee Jay,” said Yesha. “Let me fix you an egg.”

  “No eggs,” whispered Barbara Jean, sipping from her coffee, and Gail marveled at how mysteriously ambiguous the words seemed. “No eggs” could mean there were no eggs in the house, or that she was hungry for something but didn’t want an egg, or that eggs in general were not good for you, or that she was allergic to eggs, or that she wasn’t hungry and didn’t want an egg or anything else. And the way she whispered the two words—to someone familiar with her whispering—could also mean that she wanted an egg.

  Gail began to wish she hadn’t come. She could feel her earlier confidence draining away, leaving in its place an anxious emptiness. She’d never even been to the Cities and they were only four hours away. Her life was small, limited, and of little consequence. She also had no experience—outside of immediate family members and occasional overnight lovers—with situations involving people who had just climbed out of bed and were waking up together. It seemed bold to live in such an open manner, and she felt both attracted to the communal informality and unsettled by it.

  Yesha opened the refrigerator, took out a bottle of soy milk, and carried it along with a box of cereal, a bowl, and a spoon over to the table. Before she could pour the cereal, Barbara Jean waved her away. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Gail says she likes Yesha’s coffee,” said Monica.

  “She’s a polite girl,” said Barbara Jean, and from the tone of the comment Gail knew she was being made fun of.

  “I like any kind of coffee,” said Gail.

  “Are you still playing with that same band?” asked Barbara Jean.

  “I guess so,” she answered, hoping the fun-making wasn’t extending into more personal areas.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How’s it going with the band?”

  “It’s going okay. Look, I’m sorry to just barge in on you like this.”

  “If I remember, I think I invited you to come,” said Barbara Jean.

  “Yes, I mean you did, yes, but it’s still hard to know when to come, but, well, I have a song and I’m wondering if you could listen to it.”

  “What kind of song?”

  “One I wrote,” she said, taking the cassette out of her pocket. “It’s called ‘Along the Side of the Road.’ ”

  A space of frozen silence opened like a doorway into a hollowed-out glacier. Then just as suddenly, it closed. “Sure,” said Barbara Jean and took another drink of coffee. “Let’s hear it.”

  Yesha and Monica followed her out of the kitchen and down a wooden staircase. Gail picked up her bass and followed.

  In the center of a large basement room with polished maple floors sat a baby grand, surrounded by an assortment of chairs, microphone stands, amplifiers, musical instruments, and a bar.

  Gail handed her cassette to Yesha, and she poked it into a rack-mounted tape player. Within seconds, her song was playing through two black- faced speaker cabinets, and each scratchy imperfection could be perfectly heard.

  The young women listened, and before the song finished Monica climbed into the set of drums to play along softly. Yesha hung an f-hole jazz guitar over her shoulder and Barbara Jean stood at the piano, searching for an accompanying key.

  “This is a good song,” said Yesha.

  A private joy rose up inside Gail.

  “Play it again,” said Barbara Jean, switching to an electric piano.

  A woman in a white T-shirt and faded jeans walked out of the stairwell and into the basement room. She was short and younger than the other three, almost as young as Gail, with black hair, black eyes, wide face, prominent cheekbones, and a smooth, copper-brown complection. Gail didn’t know if she had come from another room in the house or from outside. Without introduction, she took a fiddle from a case, tightened the bow, and joined in as though she had been playing Gail’s song her whole life.

  When the tape ended, Barbara Jean told Gail to sing her song into one of the four microphones.

  “I’ll get my bass,” she said.

  “Forget the bass for now,” said Monica. “Just sing.”

  She did, and soon experienced something resembling driving a car for the first time. Her voice was no longer just her voice. Its power was enhanced, augmented through a nimble accompaniment that responded instantaneously to her very thoughts. And unlike the Straight Flush, these musicians were wildly inventive, creating ever-new ways of complementing her singing. New rhythms danced in and out of old rhythms. And the lyrical phrases expanded with meaning in the context of the exploring drama of the music.

  She’d never sounded so good.

  “Let’s try it again,” said Barbara Jean. “Monica, you sing with her on the chorus.”

  “It’s a little wobbly in the middle,” said Yesha, sitting on a wicker chair and plugging her guitar into a tube amplifier.

  “There’re too many measures in the bridge,” said the woman on the violin. “Drop the middle. And that minor doesn’t come off the F-chord in the right way. Use the ninth instead.”

  “Monica, go deep on the end of the chorus—the last line needs to darken. This can work for us very well. It has a huge sentimental core.”

  “Rita, take a full line solo before the last verse and don’t pull off that faraway melancholy. When the ‘Leave me along the road,’ comes up, use a hammered string.

  Gail sang her song again and was again lifted up by the accompaniment, borne away to a place where plastic factories, unpaid bills, human cruelty, flat tires, and leaking hot water heaters did not exist. She was part of a better, more brilliantly imagined world.

  She wasn’t exactly sure when it happened, but sometime around the second chorus—when Monica’s voice found a lower, haunting harmony with her own—something changed. As she sang, Gail listened to the resonant sounds, harmonics, and rhythms, and a bad feeling crept
like a thief into her mind.

  This new world wasn’t hers.

  Her song now sounded like a Barbara Jean song.

  She leaned into the microphone and kept singing, reassuring herself that the new sound was much better than her own; it was also her big chance.

  But it wasn’t her song anymore.

  The character and mood of the original feeling- idea had been made into something brighter and easy to find. Fleeting images of her mother’s face and her childhood friend no longer rose out of the chord changes in the second verse. The hard edge of the song had been softened and its outcry had been nuanced. The smoldering sorrow was now almost pretty, and the spirit beyond wonder and beyond love had been lost.

  Gail stopped singing, closed her bass case, took the tape out of the player, and walked toward the staircase.

  “Where are you going?” asked Barbara Jean, almost angrily.

  Gail stopped and looked into her resplendent green eyes and tried to think of something to say. Nothing seemed right. She could not tell what was happening to her. Trying to smile, she felt a wall of tears building up behind her eyes and she walked up the stairs, through the kitchen, and outdoors.

  Her convertible started on the second try and she drove away.

  THE UNIVERSAL ACORN

  TO PREPARE FOR HER SUNDAY SERMON, WINNIE DROVE TO THE Grange Public Library. The little brick building often exerted a calming influence over her; it possessed an almost monastic quality,a free from telephone calls, the smell of food, and visitors. On occafree from telephone calls, the smell of food, and visitors. On occasion, it also served as a place of meditation and prayer.

  Inside, she sat at the large, spartan desk in the reading room, surrounded by her favorite books of biblical annotation and reference, and wrote notes on a legal pad. Except for Leslie Weedle, the librarian, and Maxine Smith, a volunteer, the building was as deserted and as still as old age. The late-afternoon sun drove through the windows, illuminating shafts of paper motes and creating a bright, pleasant pattern on the worn wooden floor.

  By 8:30 p.m. Winnie had outlined a sermon based on passages in Revelation—passages of dreamlike imagery, illuminating the paths that Spirit often rode through the mind. She closed her notebook, shut her eyes, and entered deeply into a private thought just before Maxine placed her hand on her shoulder in an unexpectedly friendly manner and told her in a practiced, lowered voice that the library would be closing soon.

  Winnie collected her things and went to her yellow car.

  The damp evening air chilled her to the bone, and she was famished. It seemed an eternity before the heater began pouring warmth onto her feet. She took a shortcut past the cemetery on the hill, driving faster than normal. Then she noticed the long drive heading back into the dark woods, stopped, backed up, and drove down it.

  Jacob opened the door, wearing a gray sweatshirt and dark green sweatpants, his feet bare, his hair wet and uncombed. He was clearly surprised to see her, and during his halting greeting Winnie decided he had forgotten her name.

  “I hope I’m not bothering you,” she said. “Perhaps you don’t remember me. I’m Winifred Smith.”

  Jacob looked beyond her to the car. “Is anything wrong?”

  “No, nothing’s wrong. I was on my way home from the library and wanted to stop and apologize for several days ago. I behaved unconscionably and I ask your forgiveness.”

  “Come in,” said Jacob, swinging the door open.

  “I can’t stay,” she said, but stepped inside and stood on a small oval woven mat.

  Jacob closed the door.

  Winnie felt the warm, humid air surrounding her in such a sudden, ambient embrace that she wondered how anyone could afford to have the heat turned up so high. It seemed like bad stewardship, wasteful, irresponsible, and self-indulgent. It also felt wonderful. The woody interior of the house and the smell of burning wood made it seem as though she had just stepped inside a roasting chestnut.

  “You’d better take off your coat,” said Jacob. “I’m afraid I forgot to close the door on the stove before I took a shower and, well, it’s pretty warm in here.”

  “I can’t stay,” said Winnie. “I just wanted to apologize.”

  “What for?”

  “I was angry with you. I don’t know why. Well, I do know why but I know I shouldn’t have felt that way. It was small-minded of me. And when I said that eating meat wasn’t the point, well, it was very much the point—or at least a contributing factor—and I guess I wanted to look the other way so I could remain on my tiny blessed island of self-delusion. So I snapped at you and I’m sorry. I just wanted you to know that I’ve thought a lot about it and will never again eat meat, at least not meat from cattle. And I’m sorry.”

  “You were upset, and understandably so. Take off your coat and sit down. I’ll make some tea.”

  “You forgot my name.”

  “I didn’t know whether to call you Winnie, Winifred, or Reverend, but I didn’t forget.”

  “It’s no matter. My, is it ever warm in here!”

  “Here, let me take your coat. Sit down.”

  “It’s late and I think I’ve said all I need to. I really can’t stay.”

  She watched him put her coat in the closet, noticing his bare feet, again.

  “How about a cup of tea?”

  “I don’t drink anything with caffeine.”

  “Then I have the just right kind. Are you hungry?”

  “No,” she said and scowled because it was untrue.

  “You haven’t eaten,” said Jacob, as though he had momentarily peered into her mind. “Let me get you something. I was just about to eat myself. I have soup, made yesterday. It’s ready.”

  “Listen, Mr. Helm,” began Winnie.

  “Call me Jacob. Besides, you fed me a couple days ago.”

  “I’m afraid Violet brought most of the food. She’s both a cooking expert and a cooking machine.”

  Winnie followed him into the kitchen, and with surprising efficiency, for a man, he set out a meal of soup, salad, bread, and cheese on the table next to the computer. “Here, sit down,” he said, seating her and returning to the refrigerator for salad dressing. “I apologize for the computer. I don’t have another place to put it. Do you take cream or sugar with tea?”

  “No thank you. Is this squash soup?”

  “I’m afraid so—you don’t like it?”

  “Yes, very much. I haven’t had squash soup for many years and the smell is laden with pleasant memories.”

  “I hope it won’t be too spicy for you.”

  “That would be impossible,” said Winnie.

  “Will you ask a blessing before we eat?” asked Jacob, seating himself across from her.

  She looked at him suspiciously, but he had already closed his eyes and lowered his head.

  “Precious Lord, we ask that it may please You to bless this food to our bodies so our lives may be in the service of Your Kingdom. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Jacob.

  Winnie tasted the soup, then set the spoon down and frowned.

  “You don’t like it?” asked Jacob.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Helm, but I was under the impression that you were not a believer and I don’t understand why you would say ‘amen’ to something you could not in all honesty affirm. I suppose you are just trying in your own way to be nice but there is something terribly offensive in pretending something you do not believe—as though it were an empty formality.”

  “I apologize if I offended you,” said Jacob. “It’s not exactly true that I do not believe in God, but it always seems more truthful to deny it rather than allow someone to think I agree with whatever their religious position might be.”

  “I don’t have a ‘position,’ ” said Winnie.

  “Then I apologize again,” said Jacob. “I’m afraid talking about these things makes me uncomfortable. I only wanted to affirm your request.”

  “For whom?”

  “For you.”


  “By saying ‘amen,’ Mr. Helm, you gave the impression you had committed yourself to the service of the Kingdom as well.”

  Jacob put down his own spoon. “I don’t know you well enough to understand what you mean by that, Winifred. I have only a vague notion, so the best I can do is give my consent to your own wishes—for yourself—whatever they are.”

  “In that case I accept your apology,” said Winnie and resumed eating. “I’m overly sensitive about being mocked. It’s a weakness of mine, I’m afraid. This soup is quite good. It so much reminds me of my mother. She made this every fall. What joy those memories of her bring to me.”

  “I have something I’d like to ask of you,” said Jacob.

  “What?”

  “Perhaps we can talk about it after we’ve finished.”

  “I really must not stay long. Do you always keep your house this warm?”

  “I told you, it was an oversight. Should I open the door?”

  “No. It feels so good to be warm. I’m not used to it.”

  “I suppose you have many people who talk to you about personal things,” said Jacob.

  “It’s not unusual,” said Winnie. “It’s my ‘position.’ ”

  Jacob laughed.

  When they had finished eating, he carried their remaining tea into the living room and Winnie seated herself on the edge of the straight-backed chair nearest the door, pulling aside her long hair to avoid sitting on it. Once again, she noticed his bare feet.

  “Here,” Jacob said and handed her a framed picture of a young woman wearing white shorts and standing in a garden.

  “That’s Angela,” he said. “I mean that was Angela. We were married for about five years and she died of pancreatic cancer a while ago—quite a while ago, actually.”

  “I’m very sorry,” said Winnie, feeling the same confusion she always felt when she was given a photograph of a stranger. Was it expected that a human connection could be achieved through the picture alone? It seemed so self-evident that nothing important could be communicated in this way, when all the living parts were missing. Better to show a button from a dress, share a memory, a grocery list—anything but a picture. Pictures were for people to whom the frozen physical outline had some resemblance. Pictures of pure strangers evoked stereotypes. It was a desperate act, like prying a faded photo out of a wallet on the eve of battle and showing it to someone next to you. It made her sad.