I gave money to Mama but I couldn’t see what she did with it. More and more I couldn’t stand going back to Maple Creek, I couldn’t stand how sad and tired she looked, and I plain couldn’t abide my uncles. I asked Hank to go see Mama and talk to her and he told me as gentle as he could that Mama gave my uncles the money and they used it for women and drink. Hank offered to help her get away from my uncles but she wouldn’t go. Now there won’t be any money coming from me anymore, but I guess it won’t make that much difference to Mama anyway.
After the Grand Ole Opry Hank and me traveled all over doing concerts and I lived in the nicest hotels with whoever I liked at the time. I couldn’t make Hank understand about that, and it was the beginning of bad times between us. Some men I met really wanted me, I could always tell, but Hank got mad as a hornet when I said they loved me because the man was always gone in a few weeks, and Hank claimed I didn’t know what love really was. He was right about that but how could I know it? I hadn’t met Jaimie yet, I didn’t know any better.
One time Hank saw Harlan, I think that was his name, he was taking the ring Polly gave me when I turned sixteen. Hank grabbed the ring away and then he yanked Harlan right up off the floor and threw him out into the hotel hallway. Then Hank hollered at me why didn’t I pick one good man and let that be the end of it. I hollered back he was the same way with his girlfriends and he yelled it wasn’t the same, he was a man.
I really did try to do what he said but I could tell after a while the new man’s feeling for me wasn’t the same at all and I didn’t want any man around doing things to me when all the good feeling was gone.
It was Birmingham where I met Jaimie, she was a backup guitar player for my show at the Fiddler Theater. She hung around my dressing room a lot, she was quiet and real shy, but I could tell she loved me—I knew it keen as knives. I’d heard about things between women but never for a second did I think it could happen to me or I’d want it if it did. But I understood pretty quick that I did, because I couldn’t take my eyes off her somehow. I couldn’t help but admire the free and easy way she had with herself; she seemed the freest of any woman I ever knew. I asked would she like to go on down to Mobile where I’d be singing next and she said yes right off, not even taking time to think on it.
Next to Hank she was the gentlest person, even more loving than him. No man who loved me before her understood how I was after my singing, how emptied out I was inside. She’d take me to bed and hold me and rock me like a little baby and say sweet words till I fell asleep all warm from her, and then in the morning she’d love me with even sweeter words. Her loving always seemed like it was more for me than her, she’d make me feel everything about myself, she’d love me in different ways again and again till I was emptied out in a whole other way.
At first Hank thought Jaimie and me were just friends, and he was glad because we got on so well and we’d always be working on my music together, and besides there weren’t any men with Jaimie around. But when I couldn’t do enough for her, wanting to buy her everything I could think of even though she wouldn’t take most of it, when we stayed in my hotel room late most mornings and wouldn’t be apart the rest of the time, Hank pretty soon figured things out.
Even so he didn’t say much except warn me to be extra careful because the people wouldn’t pay to see me if they found out about Jaimie, and the newspaper reporters who thought I was the sweetest voice in country music, they’d turn on me and tear me apart. He figured too that Jaimie was like my men, she wouldn’t be around all that long. But how she felt about me didn’t change at all, she was all the time loving me, and living with her was just like being in the loveliest warm bath water that never gets the least bit cool.
It was five months after she was with me, the last night of my shows in Louisville, I came into my dressing room all worn out and expecting to find Jaimie, but there was only some yellow roses and a letter from her. She wrote that she didn’t want to ruin me or my singing; she could see if she stayed any longer the papers and such would be bound to start noticing. She loved me and always would but she didn’t see any good or right thing to do except move on.
Right away I figured her leaving to be Hank’s doing. I’d seen a week or so before that Jaimie was upset, but she wouldn’t say what was troubling her. Hank knew it wouldn’t do one bit of good to try and talk me into leaving Jaimie, so he’d worked on her; he could see Jaimie was the kind of person who’d give herself up not to hurt me.
I went plain crazy over that letter, I was mad enough to kill. Hank claimed Jaimie’d left on her own, but when he saw how really bad I was over this, he put ads in the papers all over the South asking her to come back. I paid a detective to go out looking for her, thinking he’d find her through her music, but it seemed she’d given that up too. Somebody like Jaimie who didn’t have any family to speak of because they’d kicked her out, and drifting all over the countryside as the spirit moved her, she was real hard to find. I couldn’t sing at all, and Hank worried over me like never before, saying I should take some time and go off someplace. But I didn’t want anything but to find Jaimie and have her with me again.
It was a month ago I decided I’d go back to singing, maybe it could help make the pain about Jaimie ease up a little. So I went off to Memphis, to the brand new Circle Club there.
I remember going into the place to rehearse, so the new lighting and stage hands could learn what they needed to do. I always liked going into the places where I was to sing. I liked to watch everybody getting things ready. There was always the same kind of smell, a theater smell, and I liked it better than any other. And every time it was as if the people were already in their seats, I could feel them sitting there. Each time I sang it seemed like I could tell deeper and deeper how they loved me, it was like whispers way deep in my head, and I could even hear them if I just tried hard enough.
Time and again I told Jaimie how it was about the whispering deep in my head but she’d always just smile and say it was the special feeling between me and my audience and it was why my singing was so special; I was like Judy Garland used to be in her concerts. I couldn’t make Jaimie understand how I was different, that I really could hear the whispering.
You won’t understand what happened to me in Memphis either, because it hasn’t happened to anybody on this earth that I know of. I wouldn’t have to be hiding, I wouldn’t have to be telling this if it had, if anybody else was like me. I’ve got to tell it and hope somebody believes me.
The Circle Club was a brand new place and it felt strange to me, it had no theater smell, just paint and cloth smells from the new seats and the stage curtain. For the first time in a long while I didn’t want to go out on stage. Hank talked to me gentle like he used to, but I was real stubborn and so when the house lights went down he plain pushed me out there.
Standing on that big stage all by myself in the pitch dark, I could feel the people out there. Nice and quiet like always, but I could hear their clothes, the sound clothes make when a lot of people sit together, and I could hear their breathing.
I strummed the opening chord on my guitar and just as I opened my mouth to start “Shenandoah” that spotlight came on and hit me. It was too early, the lighting man had got it wrong, he was supposed to wait till I got to “Far away you rollin’ river.”
I plain froze, I just stood there. I could make out the shadows of people in their seats, and I could hear all the people out there, their thoughts about me. And I couldn’t move, I stood rooted into that stage lighted up bright as day and it was like I was naked. I’m telling you I could hear in their minds that I was skinny, that I was uglier than sin. That I was such a dumb looking hillbilly I probably didn’t even shave under my arms. How the men’d like a chance to put themselves between my legs and in my mouth and turn me over and do it vicious like I was some of kind of dirty dog.
There were some thoughts about me looking nice and sweet as a child but anything warm and good got swept away in a flood of horrible mud li
ke I can’t even tell you and it all flowed right over me, over my eyes and down my throat.
I tore off that stage with my hands over my ears, and that no more stopped all the thoughts than paper stops fire.
Hank ran after me scared to death, I could hear that in his mind. And I could hear how much he loved me and he really did want to be between my legs no matter what Polly said about it, and he felt awful for wanting that because I was mixed up in his head with his own children he wasn’t able to have. I could hear in his mind how it was all the working and traveling and everything that happened when I was growing up and nobody loving me proper and it was Jaimie too and I was all tired out and my mind was broken and I’d have to go to a loony bin. So I really was like Betty Lou after she jumped off of that barn, after all.
I didn’t say one word to Hank. He took me back to our hotel and I could hear the thoughts of people everywhere around me and was about crazy from it, and that night I grabbed any money I had and lit out hitchhiking, and that’s why I’m back here near Maple Creek, out in the woods where I know it’s safe and there aren’t any people around for me to have their thoughts come into my head.
I’ve been most of my time in this cabin thinking about Jaimie and wanting her here like I never wanted anything in my life. But it can’t be, I couldn’t stand hearing the thoughts in her head, I’d be taking away from her the only private thing anybody really has. I couldn’t do that to her and live.
I got Hank’s gun with me, the little pistol he had in case there was trouble he couldn’t take care of any other way, and I left him a letter saying mostly what I’m saying on this tape and telling him not to find me and not to have Jaimie try either, if she comes back looking for me. I told Hank I loved him and Polly more than anybody in my whole life and I owed them and Jaimie every happy time I ever had. I don’t know that Hank’ll show that letter to anybody; he might think it could hurt me if I turned up and wanted to do my singing again.
I couldn’t tell him at all where I was heading for because I can’t trust him or anybody, not even Jaimie, not to put me in a crazy house like they did to Betty Lou. I can’t even think what it’d be like having to listen to the thoughts of people in a crazy house.
I’m staying in these woods, it’s all I know to do. This old hunting cabin will do fine for a while, I got some clothes and a supply of food and my ring Polly gave me. And Hank’s gun. I figure if I stay here for a time away from everything but the birds and trees and just wait, maybe the voices will go away. It’s getting pretty cold, but I figure I can stay here till hunting season starts. I’ll go near people when my food runs out and if I still hear the voices I’ll leave this tape inside the cabin, and I got Hank’s gun to do the rest.
The one thing I don’t understand is, I know you all liked my singing. You came out to see me because I was special, because I put something special inside your lives you couldn’t put there by yourselves. Other people like me who sing and paint and what all to make you happy—if they knew how you really think about them, they’d stop forever, they wouldn’t give you one more thing of themselves.
I’ve stopped the singing. If the birds in the trees could know about you, they’d stop their singing, too. Whatever happens, I won’t ever sing again.
SURVIVOR
She awakened to silence and peace, and whiteness. Blissfully, she floated off again into unconsciousness.
When she awakened once more, the whiteness drifted into focus. The walls were an uneven whitewashed brick. Odd, she thought: no windows. The nightstand was a simple metallic cube, barren of all but an empty glass. The gown and sheet covering her were muslin, wrinkled and musty. The room smelled of cold and dampness and disinfectant.
She lifted her hands from her sides and turned them front and back, examining them with curiosity. They seemed a stranger’s hands, dark, puffed up, dry and numb, the fingers hard to bend.
She lay quietly, in profound contemplation of her body. She was very warm—perhaps feverish. But unhurt, she judged.
She struggled to sit up, grimacing at the lassitude of her limbs. Unfamiliar feet dangled beneath her gown, the same dark red color as her hands, possessed of the same puffiness.
Very slowly, she eased herself off the bed. Rocking back and forth, she analyzed the sensations in her feet. They felt, she decided, as if hot water bottles were strapped to them.
Gliding over the floor on her liquid feet, she peered out into a long corridor made of the same coarse brick as her room, a white tunnel extending in both directions into infinity. There was a low murmuring to her left, and she stepped out of her room toward the sound.
Intersecting invisibly only a few feet away was another corridor; and around its corner, seated at a small metal desk, a woman clad in a zippered white jumpsuit and close-fitting white cap spoke into a headset, her head bent over a clipboard she held in gloved hands. Her nose and mouth were covered by a tight mesh mask.
“Six thousand, sir.” Her voice was slightly muffled by the mask. “Estimation thirteen hundred viable. Our last test readings at nine hundred hours, safety range down to oh point one three—Sir?” The woman had looked up. “Excuse me, sir. One of the casualties is here with me. Over and Out.”
The woman flipped two switches, removed the headset, strode out from behind the desk. She was tall and burly; a few dark hairs straggled from beneath her tight white cap. The eyes above the mask were dark brown, compassionate. “You need to get back to bed.”
On a silver nameplate above one breast was the word CAPTAIN; the rest of the name swam and blurred. She reached out for the gray metal desk to steady herself. She could not feel the desk under her hand. “Are you ... a doctor?” She was shocked by the reedy rasp that was her voice.
“No. Military. Special Forces. I need to get you back into bed.” Firmly, the captain took her arm.
“Where am I?”
“The outskirts. Two hundred feet down.”
As she walked along the corridor on her warm feet, the captain’s guiding hand on her arm, she remembered. The high-low two-note shriek of sirens. The apocalyptic rumble. The sidewalk lurching under her feet. The edges of the building she was running to becoming a shimmer. Then great clouds obscuring everything, and being picked up and slammed down ...
“Should I talk?” she rasped. “Is it okay to use my voice?”
“Yes,” the captain replied softly, “it’s okay.” Touching her very gently with her gloved hands, the captain helped her into bed, pulled the sheet up.
“I didn’t know we had facilities like this.”
“You were picked up on our final helicopter reconnaissance.”
Sitting on the side of the bed, the captain gazed down at her with moist dark eyes. “We can only tell you the truth. You’ve been here a few hours. You were wandering in a daze when we found you. You have second and third degree burns over your entire body—”
“But I feel fine!” she uttered.
“Touch your hair.”
“What?”
“Do as I say. Touch your hair.”
She raised her puffy hands and managed to feel with her fingertips a few bristly patches of hair. “What, what—”
“Burnt off. It’s a miracle you have your sight. Most don’t. You don’t feel anything because your nerve ends are tranquilized by shock. But soon they won’t be. And burn pain is the pain of hell-fire. Nitric acid has burned into your lungs, that’s why your voice is like it is. Soon the sickness will begin. Vomiting, diarrhea, internal bleeding.”
The captain reached for her hands, took them into her gloved ones. “Supplies are limited. We have priorities. Broken limbs, reparable injuries. A committee is deciding now on allocation, and difficult decisions will have to be made. You’ll require quantities of plasma, antibiotics, sedatives, painkillers. Even with all that, at best estimation you have only a few days to live.”
The captain’s calm, unpitying eyes stared steadily into hers. She finally said, more to herself than the captain, “I’m eigh
teen.”
“My brother was your age. Davey was in New York.” The voice was dispassionate. “Eileen was in New York, too. My lover. We were together thirteen years.”
The captain unzipped a pocket of her jumpsuit, removed a plastic vial, shook a pill into her palm. “This is all we can offer. Supplies of this are the most limited of all. But allocation for you has already been made. Unless, of course, you object on religious grounds.”
She extended a cupped hand to the captain. She did not feel the pill that dropped onto her palm.
The captain opened the door of the nightstand, poured a measure of water, barely a mouthful, from a plastic bottle. “Our water supplies are also critical.”
“My mother and father, my brothers ...”
The captain shook her head. “It’s been six hours since it all began. All we really know is our major cities are gone.”
“A cigarette, could I possibly have a cigarette?”
From another zippered pocket came a pack of Marlboros, a book of matches.
“I’d like to be alone now but ... I don’t want to start a fire.”
“Don’t worry about that. There’s not too much damage to be done down here. Just try your best to put the cigarette in the glass.”
“Thank you.”
The captain rose, went to the door, turned. She said in her muffled voice, “I suppose you think we’re the lucky ones.”
The door shuddered, then closed slowly on its air brakes.
There was no sensation of swallowing, only a slight awareness of liquid sliding down her throat.
She lighted the cigarette, took a deep drag, felt something flutter in her lungs. Her head swimming, she dropped the cigarette into the glass where it hissed into extinction.
She lay back and looked at the white walls until they began to waver, then she closed her eyes.
Dreams and Swords Page 9