Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  Rereading the obituary, Sally didn’t miss the similarities between herself and Dara Bliss. Hadn’t she run away when she was sixteen? And hadn’t she nearly died when Mole’s car went off the road? But she’d been spared, unlike Dara Bliss. And so she had to ask herself, listening to Dara Bliss sing, I got you good, don’t make a sound, turn around, Lou, oh turn around, shouldn’t she do more than just go on living? Alone in the apartment, with only the music for company, Sally studied the picture of the singer on the album cover, the lines of her flat signature crossing the face, dividing it along the bridge of her nose. In the photograph her hair had been teased into two puffy mounds on either side of her ears, and the way she glared through fake lashes, with her lips pursed almost angrily and two round dollops of rouge on her cheeks, she looked as though she were offended by her own ridiculousness, like a queen dressed up in a clown suit.

  On stage at the Jubilee, she had seemed larger than life — big in body, big in voice. In Sally’s memory, she seemed as invulnerable to the physical hazards of the world as she was to the opinions of her audience, the kind of woman who should have lived forever.

  Yet she was dead. According to her obituary, she was survived by her husband, her mother, two sisters, three nephews, and one niece. Donations in her memory, the newspaper noted, could be sent to the Dara Bliss Scholarship Fund at St. Mary’s School for Girls in Omaha.

  Dara Bliss. Sally pictured the singer dead in her coffin, her face bronzed from the thick makeup, her hands folded across her puffy pink blouse, resting on the mound of her bosom. Of the ten albums her husband had said were under contract, only one had been produced. What would happen to the other nine? Why, the other nine would never exist, along with everything else that was lost when this death or any other cheated the world of something beautiful that hadn’t yet been made.

  Sally thought of her seventh-grade teacher, Miss Krumbaldorf, who had tried to teach her students how to make use of their God-given talents. Wasn’t Sally’s singing voice a talent God had given her? And didn’t she, therefore, have an obligation to make use of it?

  Her initial response to the death of Dara Bliss was a new determination. Though she didn’t have a clear plan in mind, she recognized that there were steps she could take to develop her voice. She practiced more often on her own, sang with new concentration. She discovered that Penny had been right when she said it would help to drop her lower jaw, raise her arms, and sway to the rhythm. She tried to sing each note just the way Dara Bliss had sung it. But even as she worked to improve, she decided that she didn’t need to make a decision about her ultimate capabilities. Her limits would reveal themselves over time. As long as she didn’t identify precisely what she couldn’t do, she wouldn’t worry about being disappointed.

  By the end of November 1955, Sally was happily experiencing a potent combination of satisfaction and anticipation. She was proud of managing on her own. She had a steady job, good friends, and a daughter whose features were starting to align themselves in an attractive symmetry. She could indulge in secret dreams of success. And she was the owner, by default, of a very fat cat.

  The only real inconvenience in her life was the lack of a car. Tuskee’s transit schedule was erratic, and she’d lost track of the number of times she’d walked home in the snow because the bus never came. After reviewing her finances and visiting all the dealerships in town, she decided to purchase a used Mercury sedan, her third and final addition of the year, as a Christmas present to herself. It was a fine blue car with a beige cloth interior, and even with seventy thousand miles on it, it didn’t show much rust. Sally bought it on loan, at a rate discounted to a manageable two percent by the friendly dealer, who threw in the snow tires for free.

  On New Year’s Eve 1955, Sally left Penelope with the Campbells, and she sang before a crowd at the Rotary Club, with Penny accompanying on an out-of-tune upright piano at the back of the stage, playing in such a muted fashion that Sally heard her own voice overlie the music more confidently than ever. She had never sounded so accomplished to herself, so effortlessly fine. Yet still she was surprised when, after their finale of “Turn Around, Lou,” a man in the audience called for Sally to sing the same song again.

  Sing for us, Sally!

  The spotlight held her in place; the mike was tipped on its pole; music rose magically from the shadows where Penny sat on a stool, an irresistible melody that Sally matched with words.

  I got you good, don’t make a sound…

  She felt the sweet perfection of sound on her tongue and gave up her resistance to vanity, let herself indulge without humility in the certainty that she was breaking through to a new dimension flooded with dazzling light. Why, she was dazzling.

  Sally Mole, Sally Mole, Sally Mole!

  … a source of light dazzling the members of the Rotary Club, who as soon as she had finished her encore rose to their feet and applauded. She could have kept on singing for the rest of the night. But before she could begin a new song, the man serving as the MC stepped forward toward the mike. He thanked the lovely girls for their performance and then waved them away, launching right into a list of names, the results, as he explained, of the club’s annual elections.

  During the five years Sally lived in Tuskee, a new elementary school was built, the main library was renovated, the Dockery Bar and Grill opened for business, the abandoned Pinecrest Hotel on the outskirts of the city burned to the ground, the fencing team at the high school won the state championship, a new mayor was elected, Adlai Stevenson gave a stump speech on the porch of city hall, the river rose and shrank with the seasons, ice thickened and thawed, sycamores shed bark, road crews filled potholes, gardeners pulled weeds, dogs barked, cats fought, hammers hammered, engines sputtered, money was made, saved, spent, and borrowed, and Sally managed to pay off the loan for her Mercury sedan.

  In that time, Penelope Mole grew from a funny-looking baby into such a lovely little girl, blue-eyed, with creamy skin sprayed lightly with freckles and her thick auburn hair bundled in a ponytail, that Buddy Potter featured her on his flyers advertising sales. And as the “Potter Girl,” she came to be associated with the jubilant mix of charm and trade that drew customers to the store.

  What Penelope would remember of her early years in Tuskee, though, was a more raucous experience — hours and hours filled with the clamor of everyday life. She remembered that the noise used to bother her, for she was always longing to hear her mother singing, and as much as Sally loved to sing, she couldn’t do it often enough to satisfy her daughter. And so Penelope learned how to hear what she wanted to hear, though not in the ordinary sense of choosing ignorance. Rather, she devoted such effort to listening that she could discern music even in some of the dullest chatter around her, hearing in odd shreds of noise the hint of a tune. She was sure that there was music hidden in almost everything she heard.

  If, for instance, an empty jar fell from a shelf and bounced on the wooden floor of the hardware store without shattering, Penelope heard it as a thud thud thudding, reminding her of an elephant knocking on the door with its trunk. Thud, thud, thud, she stomped on the floor in echo, in delight.

  She listened to the ceiling fan whirring and heard a song about rabbits. She listened to the phone ringing and heard a song about bees. When she heard the radiator pipes knocking at night, she heard a drummer setting the beat. And sometimes she listened so carefully to the endless chatter of grown-ups that she heard the steady hum of time rushing by.

  TUSKEE, NEW YORK. October 23, 1957.

  It was because Mr. Campbell asked Buddy Potter to help him with a rush job installing a new water heater at the Dockery, making it necessary for Buddy to ask Sally to stay late at the store to lock up, that Penny Campbell offered to take Penelope, who was growing cranky with late-afternoon hunger pangs, back to the apartment to prepare supper for her. It was because the gumbo was attracting crowds from around the county that the Dockery’s owner had bought a new water heater to support the second industrial
dishwasher that had been installed. It was because the Dockery’s cook, Walter Stackhouse, had been born and raised in New Orleans that the food was so good. It was because employment was scarce in New Orleans for a black man who had lost a leg to melanoma that Walter Stackhouse moved north to Tuskee, where his wife’s cousin lived. It was because this cousin had studied horticulture with a botanist from Tuskee that he’d landed a job with the city park service way back in 1932. And it was because the residents recognized the value of their open spaces that the park service had a sufficient budget and the cousin of Walter Stackhouse’s wife never had to worry about the prospect of being laid off.

  Even if Sally wasn’t fully aware of this trajectory, she would conclude, in retrospect, that she had the residents of Tuskee to thank for giving Penny Campbell a reason to bring Penelope back to the apartment, leaving Sally free to attend to last-minute duties at the store.

  So it goes, she would hum to herself when she thought of this day, for it was the song she was singing quietly as she tabulated supplies in Buddy Potter’s ledger.

  So it goes, so it goes,

  So I found you,

  So I lost you… It was one of Dara Bliss’s songs — not one of Sally’s favorites off the album, but with its easy tune and lyrics she could keep singing it while she was concentrating on something else, at that particular moment on the surprising fact that they’d sold one hundred and seventeen brass transom window hooks so far that month. Why was everybody in Tuskee buying brass transom window hooks, she was wondering, even while she murmured the song, the sound of her voice barely audible even to her own ears — So it goes, so it goes — when who should be standing there, casting a shadow over the page of the ledger…

  But she wasn’t wondering about who. In Sally’s experience of that moment, she wasn’t asking any questions in her mind. She knew immediately, between one blink and the next, before she could even ask the question — who are you? — that the man standing across the counter was Benny Patterson. He had a rounder girth and thicker neck, without the bristle on his chin but with bushier sideburns, an odd scab on his right temple, the crust of it almost black, as though it had been there for months, and his hair hidden by a cap advertising motor oil. But still, without a doubt, it was Benny Patterson.

  The cream-cheese prince of the Amity environs.

  How ridiculous — Sally didn’t even know the word environs. But even after five years, she would have been able to pick Benny Patterson out of a lineup.

  “Can I help you?”

  Can, she said. Not may. So what. Her ability to utter the offer aloud at that moment would continue to amaze her for the rest of her life, for it implied that she was engaging in complex calculations in her mind, judging his manner, estimating his potential for recognizing her as easily as she recognized him, looking for any sign that he knew what he’d found, either on purpose or by accident, it didn’t matter which. The key was whether after five years he recognized her.

  She’d cut her hair, and now that she no longer dyed it blond, the reddish streaks in it were visible again through the brunette cast. Her skin tone had changed, darkening slightly through the course of her pregnancy. She was at least ten pounds heavier than she’d been when she’d met Benny Patterson at the Barge in Helena. She wore overalls and heavy boots, and she was suddenly conscious that her fingernails were rimmed with grease from a repair she’d done that morning for an elderly woman who’d brought in a broken Hoosier hinge.

  All this was somehow conceived and processed in an instant, stirring in her the judgment, if hesitant, that those milky blue eyes belonging to Benny Patterson weren’t manifesting any visible sign of recognition, making it possible for her at least to try to follow the most natural routine, to offer help in a congenial tone, clerk to customer.

  There was a short delay in his response, a barely measurable pause, perhaps insignificant or, more worrisome, Sally considered, maybe an indication of his suspicion. She blinked and looked at the floorboards beside the edge of the counter, noticing for what felt like the first time that the grain was outlined with embedded grime. But the smell of the dirty wood, damp from shoes trekking in the light rain that had been falling for the last hour, was pleasant in its familiarity. It was a fragrance peculiar to a hardware store with a wooden floor, and it would comfort her later, when she entered other hardware stores in other towns.

  “Sure you can help me,” he said with an easy jocularity. She wanted to feel relieved. He seemed oblivious, too absorbed by his self-importance to remember that he’d ever known her.

  But was his tone appropriate for the circumstances, or was there something unnatural about it, a hint of the kind of tension that usually accompanies subterfuge? Had he come here seeking her out? Did he know her? Did he guess that she knew him?

  While in her mind she pleaded with him to go away and leave her alone, with her manner she presented a bland docility combined with a hint of impatience, which she indicated by tilting her head slightly while she waited for him to tell her what he was looking for. She cast an obvious glance at the clock on the wall — five minutes to six, and while she was pleased to be of service, she hoped her customer understood that, though she wouldn’t have been so impolite to put it this bluntly, closing time was closing time.

  “You can help me,” Benny Patterson said, stringing out each word in a drawl, “sharpen a butcher’s knife I got here.”

  She guessed that he was drunk, that he’d started drinking at lunchtime and had gone through a six-pack since then. But this didn’t match the scrubbed, polished quality to his skin. He wasn’t unkempt enough to be drunk, and he smelled of mouthwash and aftershave rather than of stale beer.

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” She emphasized the apology by shaking her head for a moment, then stopped, thinking that he’d judge the gesture histrionic. “We only offer that service on weekends. If you want to come back…”

  “I can’t come back.”

  His words were too deliberate for their simple meaning. What else was he trying to say? He stood there expecting her to respond, but she was at a loss, unable to formulate a sentence that would seem nothing less than perfectly appropriate. He’d said he couldn’t come back. Should she ask why not? Should she commiserate? That’s a shame…? No, she mustn’t say the word shame, not to Benny Patterson and not in Tuskee. Beautiful Tuskee. She felt oddly nostalgic all of a sudden, as though her fondness for the city were born of loss, though not because she was remembering a place where she’d been happy, where her daughter had been born and she’d made good friends; it was more like the tingly longing that followed a pleasant dream.

  “I’m on my way to Chicago.”

  “Chicago?” She repeated the word as though it were unfamiliar to her and immediately regretted this demonstration of confusion. What was there to be confused about? The customer could not return on the weekend because he was on his way to Chicago.

  “Oh.”

  “My sister is getting married.”

  Why did he tell her this? Why was he telling her more than she needed or wanted to know? He was testing her, wasn’t he? Playing with her, nudging, needling, trying to unnerve her.

  “That’s nice.”

  “Not really. The guy’s a dope.”

  “A dope?”

  “Her fiancé. But you girls, you don’t know heads from tails.” Now that was funny, so funny he erupted with a series of grunts, forced laughter, a put-on, Sally suspected, though she couldn’t be sure because she couldn’t recall the sound of Benny’s true laughter; she couldn’t recall ever hearing him laugh.

  When she heard the bell over the door jingle, she was relieved. She could attend to another customer and turn her back on Benny Patterson. But when the bulky stranger elbowed Benny in the back, Sally’s relief evaporated.

  “What the hell,” Benny said, his tone more wry than surprised.

  “Let’s go.”

  “Slow down.”

  “Store’s closed, it says on the sign.
Aren’t you supposed to be closed?” the man asked Sally. His seersucker suit was so wrong for the season that Sally wondered if even this outfit was planned as part of an intricate deception contrived to trap her.

  “We’re about to close.”

  “Let’s go. You gotta excuse him, ma’am. He goes gaga in the presence of a pretty girl. Come on, Benny.”

  “I was just saying that girls, they don’t know heads from tails.”

  “Shut up, Benny. My friend here,” he said to Sally, “they named the Dumpster after him. A bin full of garbage, that’s Benny. Benny Dumpster.” The smirk on the stranger’s face signaled complicity with Sally, didn’t it? He was trying to convey to her that he shared her revulsion of this fool. Or else he was secretly amused by Sally’s foolishness. Did he think she didn’t recognize Benny Patterson?

  “I was hoping to get my knife sharpened.” Benny moved his hand to slice the air with his knife. But he didn’t have a knife; he’d only been pretending — a ruse to draw Sally into conversation.

  “We’ll get your knife sharpened, oh yeah, sure, you can count on it. We’ll get your knife sharpened, Benny. Now say good-bye to the pretty lady.”

  “Good-bye, pretty lady.”

  For an instant, Benny’s face was a mirror. He was squinting with the hatred that she felt for him, reflecting back to her the evidence of her revulsion. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, she hated him, but she did, and he knew it right then. And he hated her because she hated him.

  The two men shoved each other as they turned to leave, their laughter swallowing the jingle of the bell as the door eased shut behind them, one of them — she couldn’t tell who — interrupting his laughter to call out distinctly, if inexplicably, “Fly in the ointment!” and then joining the other in laughter again.

  Sally recognized the car, Benny’s own fancy green stub-finned Cadillac, a dingy old car after all these years. She stood to the side of the window and watched the men get into the car, the stranger into the driver’s seat, and Benny into the passenger side. He was probably too drunk to drive, Sally thought — if he was drunk at all. She couldn’t be sure if anything she’d just witnessed had been authentic, or if Benny and his friend had planned and rehearsed the whole scene just to humiliate her. Well, if that was their intention, they’d failed mightily. Those two idiots had no idea how impervious she was, how strong and confident she’d grown in her years in Tuskee.