THE MAN WAS STANDING OUTSIDE my crumbled stone wall when we pulled up. The car was steaming and shuddering and a most miserable sight for we’d rode her hard the whole way back and the man just had to stare at us to see if we’d fall apart ourselves as we rolled up to a chortling stop in that heap. He just touched the waxed ends of his mustache, before shaking his big ten gallon hat, waving away the steam and smoke as he slapped a silly little smile upon his face and watched as we stepped out into the early evening dusk.
You’re late, he said.
We’re what? A.D. was spying this old boy pretty hard by then and stood slumped against the steaming hood trying not to look like he was sweating too much from the effort for looking so calm.
Just what I said is what I mean. You’re late. And here they’ve called all over the state for you two, and Mr. Tabeshaw from the Mercantile has done set up the stage right there on State Street, and called in the few entrepreneurs from over Bristol, Tennessee of the concessioning kind, and then some of the canvassing sort out of Richmond. And of course the local newspaper hacks—the ones writing up a puff piece for a dollar a shot—and he’s even got three other acts to go on before you and one to follow. But all they say is the Hardy Family, the Hardy Family, who’s gonna find the Hardy Family? So I says, I am. Benjamin Marks is my name.
Isaiah, I said and shook his hand. He was short. Smaller than me but with a belly as big as I’d seen on anyone, so I guess that’s why he looked like he was always riding side saddle on a mule or something when he walked. His legs and belly kind of wobbled all over the place as he moved—with one foot and then the next rounding out like a bowlegged cowboy—I had to laugh to see him like that, but didn’t say nothing. A.D. had already got him cooked in the center of his mad blue eyes, so I thought that was enough for the little fellow. That was all that old boy needed. To be centered and fixed in A.D.’s mad gaze, which kind of turned inward then. I’m certain he was wishing he was at that very moment still perfecting the song we’d just gotten from old Burlhead, instead of having to watch or even acknowledge this Benjamin Marks as he stepped closer and smiled, speaking as if he must have wanted something from us—or for us. On that point, I’m still unsure.
He was trying to say something about the set up and general outlay of offered monies. Then he twitched the mustache beneath his wide red nose as he sneezed to scent the wild azaleas blowing just then from some lost farmland tilled under years ago. O he sneezed and sneezed as he watched us, but just wiped his chin clean of snot when he was done, wiping with a red handkerchief before talking on in his slow nasally way about royalties and contracts and such and such legal concerns that I suppose A.D. finally did start to listen, for I seen him nod once and rub his chin. But I certainly wasn’t listening. The only thing I could focus on were his hands. He had the smallest red-hued hands I’d ever seen and as he waved them at the end of his stumpy little arms he kind of shooed us on backwards then, back to the car as if we were to follow him out. For he kept checking his brass pocket watch on the end of its long rusty chain, dangling as it did from his vest pocket to see if we could still make it. If we had time.
Time for what? I said.
Well, they’re gonna play the show regardless, Benjamin said. But they still want you there.
But what will we play? I finally heard A.D. ask. We had climbed back in and Benjamin was waving us on, smiling that thin-lipped smile of his that I never could read clear enough, for it was as dark and murky as a mud puddle with how it always hid any intention he had cordoned off in the depths of him.
Play? Play? and he looked at us queer then as he slammed his car door. Well, there’s only the one song they want to hear. What the hell else you gonna play?
THE STAGE WAS STREWN WITH CORDS and microphones and a drum set from the previous band, though I couldn’t rightly say for sure what was out there. It was as dark as could be as some clouds had since commenced thrashing in their spasms of lightening high above the ridge and would flare up now and then over the spotlights that shone down from the top of the nearby granary. O it was a tangled mess for sure, being the first of its kind in a while of the outdoor entertainment. So that as the lights flashed and intensified with the lightening, and a great buzzing sound filled the air, I watched as the crowd billowed out toward the front awnings and store windows before leaking back up to the line of pallets set up like teepees all in a row to keep space in front of the stage so we could walk to the steps unmolested.
It was considerable loud, too, with them calling and hooting at us. Some of the younger folks in front had even started serenading us with the lyrics of our own song and I never knew such things could happen to a man who’d only ever worked his whole life and didn’t know how to take it. So I just watched A.D. for any cue, because he sure was under the influence of some greater angel than I was. He seemed even taller somehow and stretched out with each step, so that the long legs came out of the center of him like he was dancing on polished tile, he glided so soft and easy along the stage’s floorboards. That before I knew it, he had his guitar slung around in front of him and was bending down to the microphone with a smile creased across his long thin face.
Howdy, was all he said and a great cry went out that would a drowned your deepest thoughts if you hadn’t sense enough to cup your ears to block out the furious noise of it all. He had them all in something of a frenzy just by smiling and being as tall and smooth as he was, and then he turned to me as if we were both in on something and nodded in that cool way to me, and so I knew what that meant and started in straight away on the introductory notes, running along them as easy as could be. And I never once looked up because I knew that would a been it for me, because this wasn’t no Mr. Ralph Peer no more in the quiet room of the hat factory. This was the world—the new one we’d been thrust into—and it scared me to death to stand there and feel the rush of all that energy as it surged up toward me as if strung on chords sent straight from their eyes and minds. Even though I knew it was just really A.D. that most of them were watching. For I knew then that none of my worry would have amounted to anything if I’d froze up there or played the wrong note or chord, or even a whole different song.
Shoot, that crowd was just as happy as could be and started singing along as A.D. struck the first word like you wouldn’t have imagined a group so large and energized could do. But they continued sing-along style through the whole thing and did it nice enough I can say now that A.D. was even dumbfounded to hear them and to know they’d hung on every last word. He just smiled and said thank you and bowed gentlemanly-like at the end of his song as he called it, and then waved his hand to the crowd that cried and applauded and stomped for more. I was dumbfounded myself to hear A.D. say his song with me standing right there, even though I knew it was old Jessico’s anyway. I had a mind to mumble something about it, but that was when Benjamin Marks deemed it necessary to rush up and grab our arms in his small little hands and lead us offstage, because I guess he thought all them newspaper boys wanted him in the picture too. The flashes were innumerable and blinded us, and sure enough, the next day there we were—on the front page of at least three of them—with Benjamin Marks right in the middle and the caption reading Manager beside his name. Lord, lord, he was a one like that, too, to get his grubby little face in everywhere and grab every little bit of attention he could get.
But in that moment, I didn’t have to worry about that foolishness yet, for there weren’t nobody asking after me once we reached the street and stood outside the local saloon. I was just the colored accompaniment after all, and I liked that well enough myself. But when I looked at A.D. there must a been thirty gals as pretty as could be lined up for his autograph. Autograph? I said as Benjamin Marks reached for the bevy of pens he must of kept squirreled away in the bottom of his drawers for just such an occasion, for he huffed and puffed to keep up with the general commotion of our being in the midst of all them like that.
Sure, he said. Autographs. Don’t you know what that is?
He smiled and patted my back before he was sucked off into the current. It was like a maelstrom on the ground. Something that swirled around A.D. who was the tall beanpole center of it. The girls giggling and screaming and talking and hushed, too, watching every last thing he did. Signing away with his big loping initials and posing ever once in a while as a flashbulb burst up and another girl scurried off as another took her place. They all might not have realized how close they resembled the storm racing down from the ridge. As I looked back up as the general excitement for the last act started to build, I seen another flash crackle far off but getting closer. Then I heard the first loud booming thunder in the heated clouds rushing down to flutter the hair and hemlines of the girls lined around A.D., before lifting the errant sandwich wrapper and newspaper that fluttered up and danced off as if on strings in the air.
A.D.? I said. A.D.? But he didn’t hear. I’d wanted to get him going out of there, but was caught dead by the name of the next act. A man was already introducing him and saying because of the inclement weather they only had time for one song and that sent a loud groan of disappointment through the crowd, but once the loud flashy music started I turned and seen him. I blinked once just to make sure, then shook my head to know it was true. O I knew at once what it might do to A.D., and wanted to tell him about it, and it was easier now, for as I turned the rush of girls had ceased to a trickle and then only to one. The music of the last act had taken away all the attention A.D. had reveled in, and that he’d probably wanted in the depths of him for all time, turning as he did in it like a little rowboat in the rush of all that excitement.
Runnymede, I said, and another white-heated bolt sizzled above the rooftops of the granary and a shriek rose from the crows nesting there. It’s Runnymede, I said. It’s Runnymede. But he hadn’t heard. He was looking at the last lone girl standing before him, the one reaching up with her hand to trail along his long smooth face. And lord, lord, lord if I hadn’t seen her, I wouldn’t have believed it with my own eyes. As it was I had to blink again and then once more to make sure of it and to think to myself for a moment that maybe there was a god after all (though I’d still like to hold off judgment on a thing like that). But there she was: Ms. Clara May Staunton. In the flesh. She stood before A.D. and had so transfixed his gaze that he couldn’t see me nor hear any other thing for that matter. He was already reaching up with his shaky right hand to trace along the back of her neck. To touch with his icy fingertips a glassy wrinkle of skin where she’d stood stock still and been burnt in the fire at the Peabody when we’d left her—when we’d thought she’d been burned up to a crisp—and the tears streamed down A.D.’s face as he watched her.
XIV
Its unrelenting gyre ~ A witch’s brew of drumbeats ~ A short quick bird laugh ~ A dozen glowing sparks ~ That singular omission ~ Of what befell old John Hill Carter and the marks therein contained
THEY STOOD THERE AS IF IN AN UNAPPROACHABLE cloud. The air continued to whip and swirl about them in its unrelenting gyre, as the scraps and ticket stubs and popcorn boxes that littered the sidewalk scuttled to and fro at their feet. But they were beyond all that, buoyed up by everything else and their own remembrances. Hell, by the sheer sight of each other and the circumstance of our fame that had brought us here, and mostly, by her name, Clara May, which was raised as if from the air by our song, and all I could do was watch as they stared at each other and then swayed to the sound of their own bodily murmurings.
A.D. was speechless and limp but soon found the strength to lean down so he could speak to her. But he could not speak. And he knew it. She did too, and just smiled to see him so affected by her appearance that she kept her hand to his cheek even as Runnymede played and the lightning struck bright pinpricks overhead. The crowd oohed and ahhed as if Runnymede himself had called out for the lightshow of the heavens to accompany his latest and greatest song—which had played nonstop on the radio that last week. O he strutted and preened as if to a witch’s brew of drumbeats as each subtle movement was taken in and absorbed by that crowd as if a divining rod of pure merriment had struck their souls. As they listened, they seemed to spirit up their laughter and amazement evermore, and even as they did, a tightness in hearing and seeing him act the fool constricted my chest. I could not take much more for sure, and made then as if to point to Runnymede, to point out the obviousness of his ridiculous antics (as I’d never liked him much to begin with), but it weren’t no good. A.D. was so intent with touching the glassy skin where the fire had licked her that night, licking almost to her head, that he did not see me, nor pretend to care. So instead, I just watched them. I watched and listened, for when he finally did muster up enough strength to speak, she had to smile at the depth of his repentance. I’m sorry, he said.
For what?
For leaving you. I should have never left you.
You were scared and I could not move, she said. I know it. I should have moved when you reached for me, but I couldn’t, and she blinked looking at him and shook her head as if still seeing that moment. I couldn’t leave my birds. But I understand. I understand why you left. You were broke and scared and had to run, and as she said it her voice rose quickly, snapping like the awnings in the wind whipping faster above the street.
I just couldn’t see you with him no more, A.D. said. Not for all those months and days and it just tore me up to know it. That you were with him.
Well, you don’t have to worry about that now, do you? And she touched his lips, leaving her finger lingering there a moment. I always felt you back then, looking at me, feeling me with your heart, and John Hill’s nothing to me anymore. Nothing. That’s all he was anyway, but I forced myself not to see it, with all the gifts he gave me. With all the attention. But of course when it came right down to it, he was the first one to leave me in that room and the first one to accuse you of lighting it. Well—and she laughed a short quick bird laugh then, something that twittered and jumped from her throat—I put a stop to that right away, when I stepped out of that smoke. You should have seen me. I scared him half to death in the process. Dr. Alpionaire too.
She smiled and that short wan face of hers grew warm in the telling and the laughter buzzed from A.D. as surely the spotlights buzzed now too with the great electricity of the ridge surging closer and closer until . . . FZZZT . . . one bright burst sent a dozen glowing sparks dancing in a shower of glass to their feet. Another round of cheers went up because Runnymede had just then pointed to the air on the final drumbeat and bowed as if the whole world could now come to an end for he was finished and off to Nashville where he had his next pressing engagement. You could listen to it by dialing up the WSM. He said it just like that and thanked the other bands before him—all ’cept us of course—and that was the one thing I remember most. That slight, that singular omission (and it was what I would later tell A.D. that would move him finally against Runnymede from then on), though at the time, I held my tongue. For A.D. had no earthly idea what universe he was in to hear this last satisfaction from Ms. Clara May’s own lips, about what had befallen old John Hill Carter after her miraculous reappearance.
What? What happened to him?
What should have happened long before, but it just took his final cowardice to bring it all out in me. My wrath, and she raised her hand in front of A.D. shaking her perfect white fist. I held up the bird cage to him then. I still had it, you know. I had walked through the smoldering hallways after the two of you tried to help. I don’t know why, but I had to wait for the birds to die. I had to know they were in a better world than what I was and at peace after the smoke had robbed them of their last little breath. Their perfect voices. I was lucky to wait as long as I did. A timber fell then in front of me and sort of cleared the way of that burning rug. I stepped right across the glowing beam and made it to the hallway, and then out into the courtyard, and still I hadn’t been able to unclench my fists but I’d felt the heat on my neck, rising, rising all the while as it burned.
You still had the cag
e? A.D. said as the wind whipped harder and the crowd cried out, dispersing.
There was just something about those birds, she said, and she finally unclenched her fist to look at her hand, twirling her short white fingers in the rain. They were this perfect thing that he couldn’t see. That he could never see. The birds. They were all I had. Their voices. Their music. It all came down to the birds and I couldn’t let them go, even as I watched them wither and drop from their perches. Even as their bright yellow wings smoldered on the edges, browned by the flames. She became quiet then, remote, saddened by the thought of her birds, of their perfection. Because I thought it would be like that forever at the Peabody. That there would be nothing else in my life but looking at the birds and listening to them sing and singing myself. I don’t know. I guess I thought it was my right, of walking through the courtyard each day in the brilliant sunlight, of sitting with my friends on the benches, of having nothing else to do the whole day but sing, and I couldn’t leave them. I couldn’t. Don’t you see? Leaning up, she scoured his face then, looking into his now rain-soaked eyes, imploring him to listen, to hear her, which he could only do. Because that would have taken it all away from me, A.D., that world, it would have collapsed it. For I kept thinking, if I’d only realized early on what John Hill was, it would have been different. It would have ruined the illusion and dream of it all: of going to the Peabody and meeting a rich boy, of singing for all I was worth and having everything laid out perfect for me so far from Norfolk where Sissy and Clement needed everything I could give just to exist. Just to get by. So when the fire started, I couldn’t see it anymore. I couldn’t see my dream turn out so wrong. But of course it did, and I know now I can never get it back, the essence of it, that spirit, and so I still see John Hill to this day, looking at you and lighting that goddamn lighter. Then turning and running from me. That was when he vanished forever from my life. When I stepped out onto that smoke-billowed street, he shot bolt upright from a bench and pointed speechless with his big fat mouth drooping open, his lit cigarette falling to the street.
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