Songs for Dark Seasons

by Lisa Hannett

  A good stretch of silence, Sperritt reckons, is a blessed gift. A goddamned jackpot for young mammas like this one.

  At this time of night, ain’t no-one else roaming the neighbourhood. No-one to spot Sperritt’s pewter-hued hands popping the gal’s screen out corner by corner, then guiding the glass pane quietly along its track. No-one to see how easily she floats up and over the sill. No-one to out-cry the baby.

  “Shhhhhh,” Sperritt coos, tiptoeing to the bedside. Her shoulders ratchet up with the child’s unhappy pitch. From neck to nethers, her muscles tense as the bub gets a good howl going. Guts roiling, she hunkers beside the new mamma. You don’t want this, she thinks. Cringing, she stares into the basket, mesmerised by that gaping maw. Tiny but terrifying, she reckons. That toothless devourer. That dream-destroyer.

  Believe you me, honey. No right-minded soul wants this.

  The mattress groans as the snoring gal stirs. Charms on her ankle bracelet jingle as she hauls her legs up, relaxes into a slightly more comfortable position. With her neck kinked like that, Sperritt reckons that young mamma will be aching soon. All the same, when a body’s that tuckered there ain’t no fighting sleep.

  Shhhhhh, Sperritt says again. Wrapping her arms round the straw basinet, she drops to her knees, thin face sinking lower and lower. Leaning in, she resists touching the squirming bundle inside, only inhales its talcum powder and damp jumpsuit stink. Its milk and pabulum screeches.

  Leave her alone now, y’hear?

  Whisker-close, Sperritt sucks in every note of the child’s uproar. She takes in its sniffles, its grizzles, its quavering breaths. She cramps her hollow belly with its unwanted noise. Swallowing tears, she draws in another deep lungful. Clamps down. Gulps the babe perfectly quiet.

  * * *

  Do folks a favour, them retired songbirds had told her: commit. Give it yer all. Rock their worlds hard and fast.

  Fuchsia gloss bleeding round wrinkled lips, the old biddies parked their bony butts on barroom stools, smoked their own voices to ash, and spat advice through tobacco-grimed teeth. Hit ’em hard, they said, then git yerself gone. You want to make yer audience reel with a single song, y’hear? Just one. You want ’em crying into their bourbons once yer done. You want ’em to holler after you. You want ’em to yearn. You want to leave ’em bereft.

  Even now, it still sticks in Sperritt’s craw, so many folk telling her what she should have accomplished on this here earth. What God made her for and what He didn’t. What she wants.

  Lately, all Sperritt hears is crying.

  Lately, all her time is spent doling out favours.

  What she wanted sure as hell ain’t this.

  * * *

  The broom whisks gentle across the wood-littered floor. Wil leans into the sweep’s slow-soft rhythm; each tired push whips up a comforting, hypnotic sound. A rake combing through dry autumn leaves. Wheat fields rustling in a moonlit breeze. A kind mamma shooshing her restless bub.

  Behind him, a ballad croons low on the radio, a song Wil ain’t heard since his sweet Sperritt first took the stage. She couldn’t of been more’n fifteen at the time and a pint-sized creature to boot, but her figure were already full-womanly. Lord, how his brothers had dog-howled at the sight of her! Lord, how he’d wanted to join in. But the gal’s sashay had stole all the wind from his whistle. The flick of her gaze had bullwhipped him silent. The smoulder in that too-brief glance of hers had left him full-parched, chugging ale like it were fresh air. Didn’t bother him none that she could hardly carry a tune in a bucket. She had gumption, getting up there like that, with God and sun-reddened men like him looking on. Wooing the crowd with that one single number. Robbing hearts, stealing breath with hips and lips and pure grit.

  Good Lord, his gal had such spirit.

  Wil crouches to fill the dustpan, fills it again and again, then fills the trashcan with sap-spiced scrapings and shavings. That’s pretty much all I’m good for, he thinks, joints creaking as he stands. Whittling things down, filling things up. Making a goddamn mess in between.

  It’s late. Near midnight Wil reckons, now the radio’s upbeat pop-country selection has gone and slipped into golden oldies. Carter and Cash. Hank Williams. Sammi Smith’s Help Me Through the Night. Sad songs written for after-dark hours, a perfect fit for his black bourbon mood. Overhead, a fluorescent bulb shines harsh white on the room, its sheer brightness almost too much to bear. The light buzzes, bleaches the almost clean floor, chases shadows under workbench, toolbox, and stool. Merciless, it reveals how useless the place is now. How empty. How bare and lonely.

  Of course, even with the curtains drawn and the lamps switched off, it ain’t much better down the hall. Everything in the living room’s arranged just so on account of it not really being lived in no more. The kitchen’s a storehouse for formula and sterilized bottles and tiny jars of food what won’t never get ate. And then there’s their room. His room. The chill in there just gets worse with each passing night. The silence just gets heavier.

  Wil sweeps ’til his palms blister.

  If only she’d come in and say, Tools down, as she used to, ages before he were ready for bed. Even if she did it to spite him. Even if she wanted to cut his work short, the same way--she accused, when she were in a snit--he’d done with hers. Time to focus on family, she’d say, shoving whatever fiddle he’d half-crafted aside. Distracting with an honest twang, a straightforward tongue. There’ll still be music tomorrow.

  Wait, he’d say. Just as she’d said when first he’d broached the topic. Babies, and lots of ’em. A family tradition he were keen to continue.

  Just wait, she’d said, again and again. Can’t it just wait awhiles?

  Only, they’d made such a good start together, Wil reckoned. They’d practised so much and neither one of ’em wanted to stop. His instruments swelled her performance. Her act swelled his business. For a time, pleasure and love swelled ’em both.

  Then she’d swelled even bigger soon after they’d wed--and beside her, Wil’s pride were huge.

  Man, he’d been so goddamned proud.

  Of them.

  Of himself.

  Mostly of her.

  Lord, she’d had such grit. Such strength. Every day, she gave up her song. In the end, she gave him her everything.

  Lord Almighty, how he wishes he could give it all back.

  * * *

  Sperritt flits.

  From the pink-haired lass’s trailer to a second floor apartment across town. Twins await her in a rickety crib there--one boy, one girl--but at least the parents had the sense to put ’em in their own room. The air reeks of chamomile, diaper-cream, desperation. Both bubs are colicky, both crimson-cheeked, but only the little guy bellows for Sperritt’s attention. His screams are ragged, erratic; the pauses between cries are just long enough to keep his folks abed, hoping against hope that this one, this one will be his last shout.

  There, there, Sperritt murmurs, lifting the boy from the cot. Shooshing him good.

  Next she’s called to a ranch up Butchers Holler way. By car it’s a twenty minute drive, but even on foot Sperritt gets there in jig time. At the sight of it, she whistles long and low. Prettiest double-gable farmhouse she ever did see. No less than a dream home plucked from her wildest fancies, built right there by the highway for some other, luckier family to live in. Bright white siding with green trim, lantern-shaped porch lights attracting moths and June-bugs, windows shuttered and doors barred against the night. Passing a red-flagged mailbox at the end of the drive, she tilts her head and follows a woeful sound-trail around back.

  There, hulking beside a field of summer corn, a weathered barn harbours fifteen prize heifers, two handsome ponies, and a quartet of vagabonds up in the hayloft. Gentle as a lullaby Sperritt climbs the barn’s ladder, palms and soles barely touching worn rungs as she rises. There’s a rustling of straw overhead, rat-like scritching, air squeaking from snot-noses and rank arses. The loft is no more’n twenty feet deep. Plenty of space for two guitars,
a fiddle, a squeezebox, not to mention the folks curled beside these instruments, their coats and cases striped with what moonlight’s slipped in through the boards. Lying in a snug row, a travellin’ man and his three girls steal a few winks of shut-eye. All but the tiny one is dead to the world.

  The baby’s wide-open eyes roll this way and that, searching for relief, glinting with tears. Nestled tight between her sisters, the child ain’t got much wriggle-room. Winding up, she arches and flops, thumps her swaddled legs, but can’t quite muster a good thrash. Frustrated and hungry, the chick’s miserable squawk turns shrill.

  Now, now, Sperritt says (Keep a light tempo!) balancing on the balls of her feet. Reaching out, she strokes the child’s fevered brow. Cups the small sweaty skull. Steadying herself, she draws a deep-bellied breath and starts spooling the bub’s awful ruckus onto her tongue. Though she chokes wad after wad of it down, the young’un keeps reeling more and more of it out. Sperritt gags, swallows.

  Calm yerself--

  “Who’s there?” comes a frightened voice to her left. High and sweet, despite being sleep-gummed (Oh, what a singer she’d make!) it calls out, “Mamma?”

  No, Sperritt thinks, gone painful rigid.

  Propped on one elbow, the girl knuckles her lids. Shadows under her wispy bangs bend to a scowl as she peers into the gloom. “That you, Mamma?”

  No no no.

  “Roll over, Bee,” another lass mumbles, face buried in a makeshift pillow. “Yer dreaming.”

  Shaking from toe to tip Sperritt clenches, everywhere. Gaze locked on the mute bundle in her hands. Willing its sister to shut up, goddammit, and go back to sleep. She feels the girl concentrating beside her, reckoning; hears each click of the child’s lashes as she blinks, thinks, blinks. Shhhhhh, Sperritt wants to urge, but she can’t. All the unhappiness she’s already stomached is wreaking havoc on her innards; if she cracks so much as a lip, she’ll spew it out, all that chaos she sucked in; she’ll shit all that blubbering muck stuck within her.

  This is all yer fault, she thinks, staring, staring, seeing--

  “Mamma?”

  No no no--

  Sperritt wants to run now, now she wants to run, but she’s stiff-squatting, she’s aching, now it’s too late to go back, now heat’s tinkling between her thighs, again, now her nightgown’s sodden, again, now she’s grunting, now the still baby drops, it slops, it flops, it’s too late now, it’s out of her grip, out of her reach.

  It’s gone before she ever got the chance to take care of it.

  It lies there still and quiet.

  Not again, she thinks. Not again.

  “Will you still be here in the morning?” Bee asks, a yawn burring the words.

  No no no.

  Jamming both fists against her trembling blue lips, Sperritt recoils from the mess she’s made. She retreats down the ladder. Flits.

  * * *

  Alone in the woods, she opens her mouth and wails.

  As always, Sperritt were near-bursting before she’d quite made the county line. Her lungs burnt with pent notes, belly desperate to wring itself into a bellow. Veering off the main drag, she’d dived into the forest. Star-spangled leaves had clapped overhead, lariat branches thrashed along the trail’s edge, none grazing her as she’d ran. Flying, ever-quick, ever-certain, she aimed for the same copse night after night, the same sheltered grove. The one with the very best wood.

  Wil had took her there hisself, more’n once--when? Sperritt can’t rightly say; it was a lifetime ago, now. Time and again, they’d gone to this grove to picnic and plan and, in between, make love. Time and again, they’d picked a few chords, sang Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine. Wil had turned to her, time and again, he’d turned to her and said Darlin, stick with me, he’d said, This ain’t but the beginning, and he’d hacked through maple and spruce and pine, and he’d promised that these here trees would supply her the best backup music a man could fashion. The most haunting resonance.

  He’d split trunk after trunk, rubbed callused fingers over that beautiful blond pith, and grinned. See? Smooth as the horizon, he’d said. Nary a knot. Nary a hitch.

  Now the grove’s studded with stumps, a flat chorus of all the fiddles Wil’s harvested here. All the woods Sperritt’s soaked in the sweetest, saddest songs.

  Maple drinks in a dirge better’n any other lumber. Pine grows powerful sharp with keening. Right down to its core, rosewood absorbs a good howl. Cedar leaches every last quaver from her voice, while spruce clings closest to moaning despair. Wil ain’t fond of birch--too flighty he calls it--but time and again she woe-betides whole stands of the skinny saplings anyway. Just in case.

  Wait ’til you hear the wail in them woods, she thinks, wishing he’d accompany her here one last time, wishing he’d listen. Wishing he’d hear.

  The final notes of her night-song rise full mournful, then slowly dip into the softness of dawn. Around her the copse warms from silver to rose-gold. Owls quit their hoo-hooting, bats their click-chittering. Moths whirr after the retreating darkness. While buntings and cowbirds burble daybreak melodies, Sperritt’s loud sorrow bleeds into dull disappointment. Bleeds into the trees. Bleeds out.

  * * *

  Come morning Sperritt’s awful ragged, flimsy from the night’s efforts. Retracing her steps, she scraggles past that rich homestead, spies the farmer cutting tracks through the dew as he tramps over to the barn. From inside the house, a woman’s sifted-flour voice wafts out behind him--them green shutters now thrown wide, welcoming the sun--her wordless tune soft as churned butter. Flit, girl, Sperritt tells herself, but she’s too goddamn weary. Time has caught her like a loose thread and it’s pulling, pulling. Bedraggled, she skirts round the twins’ apartment building, shrinks into the hedge across the road as a familiar red-cross van signals and turns into the drive. No sirens, no lights flashing.

  No point now, Sperritt knows, for urgency.

  It’s too late once the spirit has flown.

  Onward, she scuds along gravel and asphalt, her steps unraveling over the miles. Bits of lace and terrycloth tumbleweed in her wake as she climbs the crick’s dried banks. The bathrobe she uses to hide the muss of her nightie is hardly worth wearing no more, yet she still can’t take it off. She can’t. It clings, Sperritt reckons. Even as it falls apart.

  At the edge of the trailer park, she pauses. Closes her eyes. Listens.

  Now there’s a chart-topping heartache, she reckons, drifting over to that same double-wide in the overgrown lot at the end of the street.

  “But he were just fine last night, I swear,” cries a tear-snotted voice. “Just fine! I don’t get it, Ma. I just don’t get it ... ”

  Oh, the anguish in that whine! The gal’s lament is pure agony, Sperritt thinks. Pure soul-stirring gold. Imagine a fiddle wrought from that grief-struck timber! The young mamma’s holler has ten times the vigor that bub of hers did, a hundred times more inspiration. Despite the morning’s weak hour, Sperritt finds herself tempted even closer. Suddenly she’s hovering at the trailer’s window. Now she’s clawing at the screen--

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways, darlin. Thank Him for what time y’all had together, precious short though it were, and take comfort in knowing that yer little lad’s in a far better place now than we are. Hush, child. Hush. Wailing ain’t never done no-one a lick of good.”

  Sperritt recoils at the older ma’am’s calm, her know-it-all advice. The very wrongness of it spurs her on down the road, back home. After all, where would she be without doleful tones? Where would she be without the pluck of loss, the screech of horsehair on gut-strings, the music she and Wil first noised together, and what they now wrought apart? Where else would she be without that sorrow?

  Where else could she be?

  Where?

  * * *

  The house is still when she gets back.

  In the entrance, a frosted glass lamp dangles dark from the ceiling. Wil’s muddy boots slump on sheets of newsprint she’d thrown down months ago,
the paper now browned with age more than dirt. Photos hang crooked on their nails--no amount of fixing ever rights ’em--and the narrow hall carpet is bunnied with dust. No steam or shower-songs sneak out under the bathroom door. The wicker-framed mirror on the wall is shrouded--with black lace or cobwebs, she can’t tell which--so’s she can’t see her reflection. There’s a swamp whiff to the air, damp and stale with a hint of mothballs. It’s a smell of old folks and emptiness. Of quiet but certain surrender.

  Nowadays, it’s almost like she’d never been there, Sperritt thinks. Almost like she’d never been there at all.

  Wil? she calls, but of course there’s no answer.

  Quickly, she drifts past the workshop. Stops. Turns back. The door is flung open, the lights cold, the blinds hitched all the way up. Though it was always his habit to get working long before she herself rolled out of bed, Wil ain’t at the sawhorse. He ain’t straddling his favourite stool. He ain’t firmly twisting no vise. The floor’s been swept and cleared of all clutter. It’s so clean, in fact, she could very well bob a curtsey, thread-the-needle, and swing-yer-partner round and round it without brushing up against a single thing.

  Wil? she calls again, worried now. It ain’t like him, she thinks, to be so tidy. When she’d left, the place was a pigsty--fiddles mid-warp, scrolls half-traced, scraps of wood strewn all over hell’s half-acre--but now the tabletop’s free of sheet music, diagrams, designs. There ain’t a single purchase order thumbtacked on the board. The radio’s been unplugged.