How Sweet the Sound

by Amy Sorrells

  “Jed, you can tell me.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Yes, I do. I’m your friend!”

  “No. You don’t need to know about such things.”

  “Are you kidding me? My uncle shot my daddy to death in front of my own eyes. And my aunt is on the verge of withering away to nothing because that same uncle raped her. What do you think I can’t handle?”

  He pulled his shirt over his head, the muscles in his back and shoulders tensed and wiry.

  Then he turned around.

  Bloody red spots, all the same size, and a bunch of others scabbed or healed over, covered his chest. “This is why there won’t be no party for me. Never has been. Never will be.”

  “Are those—are they from cigarettes?”

  “What else? In the middle of the night when John thinks I’m sleeping …” A single, fat tear, full of so much pain I thought it might explode, splashed into the creek. Tears always fell fatter for someone hurt like that. “He gets his jollies off of surprising me, off the screaming or something. If I don’t bring back enough money from my job, he burns me. If he finds out I keep some for myself, he burns me some more. Handle that.” He walked back toward the orchards.

  “Jed, stop. You can’t stay there. You can’t go back. We’ve got to tell someone. I’ll tell Solly. Or Mama. They can help. Maybe you can come and live with us.”

  “Anni.” He turned back toward me and set his hand on my shoulder. The knot inside me ignited into something hot and sweet. “Look, you’re real nice and all, but maybe we shouldn’t be friends. Shouldn’t have ever been friends. Back at the dance, your grandmother was right. I ain’t good enough for you.”

  “She’s wrong! That’s not true!”

  “It is.” He climbed up on the mower.

  “But—wait, I made you this.” I pulled the string out of my pocket and handed it to him. “It’s a friendship bracelet. For your birthday. I made one like it for me. See?” I held my wrist up toward him. “Blue for the bay, green for the orchards, and yellow for the sun.”

  The hard line of his jaw relaxed some as he took the bracelet from me. But it hardened up again real quick. “Go home, Anni. Go back to work at the salon. And don’t think about me anymore.”

  I bawled, right then and there, as he drove away from me on that mower. I couldn’t help it. And I didn’t care if he saw. The tears came and came, harder than at Daddy’s funeral. Maybe because of Daddy’s funeral. Maybe the losing felt near the same.

  “Wait!” I cried. “Wait!” I hollered again.

  But the mower kept moving farther and farther away, cutting everything down to the silty, red dirt.

  And I sank to my knees into the crimson clover.

  Lè lapli a ap rive, wawaron nan chante.

  “When the rain is coming, the bullfrog sings.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Anniston

  Over a week passed with no sight of Jed. Not even when I walked Molly through the orchards. I tried to fill the empty places burning up inside me with extra work at the Curly Q, and on this particular afternoon, I was surprised, after bending down to tie my shoes, to see Mandy Appleton across the counter from me. Not that it was strange to see her at the Curly Q. But I hadn’t even heard the gold jingle bells ring when she came in the salon.

  “Hi, Mandy. Do you have an appointment?”

  “Yes. Hi. Sandra should be expecting me.” Mandy had no clue what my name was, let alone that my grandmother wanted me to be exactly like her.

  Sandra, finishing up on a highlight, hollered from halfway down the row of chairs. “Hey, Mandy! A few more minutes, and I’ll be ready to do you up right, girl!”

  Mandy smiled, then studied her nails and popped her gum several times on the way to taking a seat in the high-back, overstuffed, pink-velvet chair in the waiting area. She bypassed the June issue of Seventeen for the May issue, which featured Diane Lane and a story on summer romances. Figured.

  “Are you ready for the pageant, Mandy?” Tiffany Allen, the second nail artist, asked as Comfort glanced up from working on Gerty Matthews’s eighty-three-year-old nails.

  Mandy peered over the top of the magazine. “With Sandra’s help I will be.”

  “How could the judges not pick you again this year? You’ve got everything Bay Spring could ask for in a county fair queen. Looks. Smarts.”

  “My acceptance letter arrived from Mississippi State this week. I’ll be studying English literature.”

  Whoop-dee-do. You and every other debutante.

  I focused on rearranging the nail polish in the glass case from lightest to darkest and polished the glass for the fourth time that morning. What happened between me and Jed burned inside, and sitting still made it worse.

  The golden bells jingled, and in walked Lorraine Doyle, one of Cole’s old girlfriends who he’d probably dated the longest of anyone.

  “Can I help you, ma’am?”

  “I need my nails done. They’re way past due.”

  “Comfort’s about to finish up with Mrs. Matthews. Ain’t that right?”

  “Be about ten minutes,” Comfort said.

  Lorraine cleared her throat. “How long for Tiffany?”

  I shivered, though half the air-conditioning had left the salon when Lorraine walked in. “Um, well, Tiffany just got started.”

  “I’ll wait.” She spun around on her heel and sat next to Mandy on a pink, leopard-print painted ladder-back chair. She chose the June Vogue with Kim Alexis on the front. She tried to be sneaky about it, hiding behind that magazine, but I watched as she stared at Comfort.

  Gerty Matthews hobbled over to the counter, leaning on her cane as if it kept her alive. “Thank you, honey.” She patted ten extra dollars into the palm of my hand. “See that Comfort gets this tip, hear?”

  “Sure thing, Mrs. Matthews, ma’am.” I wondered why I couldn’t have had more of a storybook granny like Mrs. Matthews. I bet she made actual Toll House chocolate chip cookies and talked kindly to her grandbabies, sitting with them for hours working puzzles and loving them no matter what their hair looked like.

  Lorraine still stared—even sneered now—at Comfort.

  “Take a picture. It lasts longer.” I covered my mouth with my hand as soon as I said it, not believing myself. But I couldn’t help it. All the sad and mad and unfairness of Jed, added to the way this lady treated Comfort for what she thought she knew happened way back last Thanksgiving, mixed all up and came spilling out.

  “What did you say, young lady?” Lorraine directed her sneer at me.

  “If you don’t mind, ma’am, please quit staring at Comfort.”

  “What business is it of yours who I look at? And how dare you talk to an elder that way.”

  Qarla walked to the front of the store as Comfort bowed her head with shame. “What’s going on up here, ladies? Anniston, do you need some help?”

  “Anniston?” Lorraine snickered. “Oh, I see. Anniston Harlan, right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I pressed myself as far as I could into the back of the swiveling counter chair.

  “Is there a problem, Ms. Doyle? Comfort can do your nails now, if you’re not wanting to wait.”

  I wished Qarla wouldn’t have asked.

  “I won’t have that whore touching my hands.”

  “Excuse me?” Qarla took a step forward.

  “You heard me.” Lorraine set the magazine on her lap.

  “And I’ll not have that kind of talk in my shop.”

  “Are you asking me to leave?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You, lady, just lost yourself a client.”

  Lorraine flew out of the salon, taking the magazine with her.

  “Have a good day, Ms. Doyle!” Qarla called after her.

  Mandy set her magazine down by this time
, too, and I was surprised to see she looked as stunned and sorry for Comfort as anyone.

  “I’m sorry, darlin’.” Qarla went around the nail table and put her arms around Comfort, who raised her eyes toward me. They overflowed with tears.

  “I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.”

  “Stay, honey. Qarla’s got your back.”

  “Me, too,” said Tiffany.

  “Me, too,” said Sandra, who’d come up to the front to call Mandy back to the chair.

  Mandy got up and walked over to Comfort’s table, and I braced myself for what she might say. “Miss Comfort?”

  “Yes?” Comfort said through a wad of tissues.

  “May I say—well—this might not be the right time to tell you this, but—well—I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful woman in Bay Spring. I mean, the whole reason I do pageants and all that is because I’ve always wanted to be the next Bay Spring sweetheart, like you.”

  Comfort packed her purse, stood, and put a hand on Mandy’s arm. “You don’t want to be me, darlin’. Trust me. I’m the last person you’d ever want to be.”

  Qarla and I began to clean up for the afternoon after Comfort left.

  “Shoot. Comfort left her Bible,” Qarla said. “Never comes here without it these days.”

  “I can drop it off when Mama takes me home.”

  Clouds hung low as I walked toward Comfort’s house late that evening. Bullfrogs sang in a crescendo, like the plucking of guitar strings. First one lingering hum, then another one, then another, until a whole chorus of the brainless amphibians sang in harmony.

  Too bad humans don’t listen to each other so close.

  Must be the frogs’ survival depended on listening to each other.

  Solly’s truck sat parked in front of Comfort’s house, and I cut through her side yard past the open living room window. Lace curtains curled back and forth.

  “—listen to me. You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself.” Solly’s voice, usually calm and soft, was insistent, almost raised.

  “And what exactly am I doing that needs to stop? That I can stop? Can you tell me that?”

  Solly paced past the window, and I quick hunched down and walked catawampus toward the house and crouched under the window so I could hear. I knew eavesdropping was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Comfort, you can be well. You deserve to be well. These past few weeks, I’ve seen you start to live again, and I’m so grateful, but there’s still a part of you that’s unreachable. As long as that part of you stays hidden and locked up, he still hurts you even from his grave. I’ve respected your need for solitude for months now, but since I’ve seen you can be better, I can’t stand to see the hand of fear still holding you by the throat, threatening to suck you back in. I lost you once, and I’m not about to lose you again. We can still have a life together—”

  “Stop right there. Don’t—don’t say that.”

  “Why not? Tell me, why not? Give me one good reason. I’m not him, Comfort. I’m not Cole. I’d never, ever hurt you.”

  “I know you’re not, Solly, and that’s why I can’t be with you.”

  I heard her cross the floor toward the window I was crouched under, and I tried to tuck myself in closer to the foundation of the house so she wouldn’t see me.

  “You’re not making any sense, Comfort. You’re none of those things! You’re beautiful. You’re—”

  “Stop, Solly, stop. I’m not—”

  I heard him walk closer to Comfort.

  “Stop. Don’t touch me, Solly …” Comfort’s voice cracked. No amount of harmony in the world could’ve covered the sharps and flats of her tone.

  “Shhhh, darlin’. It’s okay. It’s okay.” Solly spoke to her like a daddy singing a lullaby—like Daddy sang to me—and I felt tears puddle on my eyelids. “Comfort, look at me. Hon, look at me … He might’ve wrecked you for a while, but he didn’t destroy you, the you God made in His image. Maybe the mirror you’re facing is cracked, and you can’t see the truth of you past the messed-up, skewed, and crooked shards of glass. But you’re still there, Comfort. You are. He mighta stolen an awful lot, but he didn’t kill you.”

  I’d heard more than I could stand. Tears trickled down my face as I got up, tiptoed to the front porch, and set Comfort’s Bible on one of her rocking chairs. As I did, a tattered bookmark fell out with a picture of a horse running across a pasture on it and the poem, “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it was never meant to be.”

  I tiptoed off the porch and crouched low until I reached the driveway. As I walked, the clicking songs of the crickets whispered all around me and a moth, white and gleaming in the moonlight, darted back and forth in front of me.

  I remembered what Ernestine always said: “Yon papiyon blan pote bon nouvèl.”—A white butterfly brings good news.

  Lord, I need some good news. We all do.

  But it seemed the days of good news were gone forever.

  Yon chat boule nèt jwèt pou boule nan dife.

  “A burnt cat dreads the fire.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Comfort

  scattered and chafed

  by wind

  blown days

  forgotten

  swaying softly gently

  by ominous

  pain

  *

  thunderhead horizons

  a striped scarf holding

  in chaos

  summoning

  confusion desperate

  separations

  of

  hope

  Who can

  after all distinguish

  the storm from the raging sea

  It’s the evening after Solly and I fight, and I set my pen in the scratched-up Ball jar with half a dozen others and watch the sky grow leaden outside my window.

  Bruise-colored storms roil on the horizon, and I can’t get it out of my head that Mandy Appleton thinks she wants to be like me. Before anything happened with Lorraine Doyle, I watched Mandy devour page after page of tanned, twiggy bodies and stories about getting and keeping boyfriends in the magazine, as if she could not and would not compare to anyone on those pages. Funny thing is, if she really knew those girls, she probably wouldn’t want to be like them, either.

  Folks—and not only folks around these parts—have in their minds the dirt-encrusted, tin-roof-covered, handout-seeking crop pickers when they think about who does things like Cole did to me. Worse, they think folks like me who get that sort of abuse either did something to deserve it—or they treat ’em like they did.

  Homecoming queens have it easy, folks think. The darlin’ of the football team has a free ride to everything good and beautiful and popular and perfect.

  If Mandy only knew.

  Lorraine had a right to treat me the way she did. I probably did do something to deserve night after night under the weight of my big brother’s breathy steals of innocence. Maybe I wore the wrong sort of sundresses as a toddler. Maybe if I’d had brown or red hair instead of blonde. Maybe if I hadn’t been in tumbling. Or gymnastics. Or cheerleading. Or dancing. Maybe if I’d have been nothing.

  Maybe if I’d never been born.

  That last thought crosses my mind, and I soak it in like a truffle, the sweet shell of truth melting into a paroxysmal ecstasy of yes.

  This is what I’ve been searching for. Death will set me free.

  I try to push the thought away. Taking my own life, that would be as wrong as Cole taking Rey’s, wouldn’t it?

  But then, maybe it would be a gift. A gift to my mother, certainly. A gift to Solly—sweet, stubborn Solly, who refuses to leave me for someone new. A gift to this whole rotten town. Leaving the aftermath of this life would be like Hurricane Frederic fleeing the coast last
fall. Sure, it was hard on everyone at first. But now, survivors are starting over. Broken homes are being rebuilt. Communities have a chance to make things new.

  I search my medicine cabinets for leftover prescriptions. Sleeping pills. Pain relievers. Anything I can mix to keep from facing another day. Anything to keep another sunrise—yellow, then pink, then blazing red—from searing my soul.

  Death twists the last trickles of hope out of me, like Ernestine wringing the sudsy water out of a sponge. Near dancing inside with the chance to end this pain, I pour bottle after bottle of pills into one big, plastic bag. A box of razor blades catches my eye, and for a moment, I consider using them instead. Might be easier with a razor, pain floating along with the blood right outta me. Death holds me in its strong, icy arms, and I feel weightless at last. Abba tries to break in, asking to have His dance with me back, but the broad shoulders and chiseled jawbones of doom woo me. Twirl me. Make me feel like a princess—

  “Comfort?”

  Go away. The eyes of my new lover hold me, and I am glad to let him.

  “Comfort, are you home?”

  The phantasmal suitor evaporates as the knocking keeps on at my front door. I stuff the bag of pills, empty bottles, and the box of razors into my pillowcase and shove it all under my bed.

  Another day, Abba. Let Death take me home, please, another day, soon.

  Lè yo vle touye yon chen, yo di li nan fou.

  “When they want to kill a dog, they say it’s crazy.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Anniston

  “Hope this pizza tastes good to her. She needs something to cheer her up after that nonsense at the salon yesterday,” Mama said.

  Ernestine wiped the sweat off her brow. Over eighty degrees still, even at almost eight o’clock.

  “Pizza. Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters and The Love Boat. Saturday night like old times.” I needed something to cheer me up too.

  Rap-rap-rap.

  No response.

  “I told her we were coming. And her car’s here.” Ernestine fished for Comfort’s house key in her giant pockets and inserted it in the lock. “Comfort? It’s us. You in there, child?”