Heartbreak Town

by Marsha Moyer

  When my alarm went off at six-thirty the next morning, Ash's truck was gone, and Hardy Knox was sound asleep, curled in a fetal position on the backseat of his beat-up Corolla. I stood in my robe and watched him through the rolled-down window, his mouth hanging open, his hair over his eyes. His glasses were folded neatly and resting on their earpieces on the console between the front seats, and I noticed he'd taken the time to put his guitar in its case before he'd gone to sleep; it stood at attention, neck up in the passenger seat, like a sentry. For half a second I thought of waking him up and asking him if he wanted some coffee, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, waffles with blueberries and scrambled eggs, maybe a few slices of buttered toast on the side. Then I remembered what had happened the last time I'd let myself get undone by a man sleeping in the backseat of a motor vehicle. I turned around and went back inside to wake up my son.

  chapter seventeen

  It would stand to reason that, since Jude had been late to school for nearly two-thirds of his kindergarten career, he'd be late to his own graduation. Luckily, Miss Kimble was so frantic trying to get a dozen five- and six-year-olds into their shiny blue caps and gowns that she barely noticed us slinking in just minutes before the ceremony. I'd had the foresight to wrangle Jude into his costume out in the parking lot, so he was able to sneak into the writhing mass of kids behind the auditorium curtain without attracting his teacher's notice. The last thing I wanted was him getting a yellow square on his very first diploma.

  I found my way down a side aisle of the auditorium, excusing myself as I stepped over several pairs of feet to get to the empty seat Dove and Geneva were saving for me. The middle and high schools in Mooney had been rebuilt in recent years, shiny, sprawling buildings full of modern conveniences and technology, but Mooney Elementary was still the old, low-slung brick building my brothers and Geneva and I had attended back in the dark ages, smelling of chalk dust and disinfectant and boiled greens and some other, unidentifiable smell I associated with the fear and exhilaration of childhood. The auditorium was dark and old-fashioned, with rows of attached theater-style seats and a dusty red curtain across the high wooden stage, a stage where I'd watched plays and magic shows and, in sixth grade, the dreaded girls' health lecture.

  "Wow," I said as I settled into the seat next to Geneva. "This brings back memories, doesn't it?"

  "Now guhls," Geneva said, in perfect imitation of Mrs. Fisk, the longtime school hygiene teacher, who was from Alabama and had an accent even we Texans found exotic, "fuhst you take the belt lahk so." She held her hands a few inches apart, pinching her thumbs and forefingers together. "Then you slahd the napkin into the tab, secuhin' it with a little tug." A man in the row in front of us turned around and stared. "Ah know it maht seem lahk a strange and frahtening thang to you now, guhls, but ah assure you, it is only a natchrul paht of the infinite mystuhry of becomin' a wo-man."

  "Where's Bailey?" I asked, scanning the dimly-lit auditorium.

  "Down front, with the rest of the paparazzi." I finally succeeded in picking out my brother from the gaggle of daddies in front of the stage, loaded down with camcorders and digital cameras with telescoping lenses. I was about to ask if she'd seen Ash when the houselights dimmed and Miss Kimble stepped out from between the curtains in her baggy flowered dress and hippie sandals to invite us all to witness this important occasion in the lives of our precious progenies.

  The curtains parted to reveal the graduating class in their caps and gowns, giggling and elbowing one another, waving to their daddies down front. Of the whole group, only Lily seemed to be taking this seriously; her mouth was set in a thin line and she gazed straight ahead, focused on some point at the back of the room, ignoring the high jinks going on around her.

  Miss Kimble led the class and audience in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, after which we were treated to a lively choreographed rendition of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head," complete with hand gestures and dance steps. Not surprisingly, Jude was the star of this performance, the only one, except Lily, who didn't goof off or ham it up, who never missed a word or a beat, the whole time keeping his eyes trained on the cameras down front. Lily's expression was aloof and long-suffering, like she was the only child up there who understood the indignity of being forced to jump through hoops like a circus animal. The kids paraded across the stage as, one by one, Miss Kimble called their names and presented them with little bow-tied diplomas. For the closing number, they all bunched up again at center stage for a rousing version of "When You Wish Upon A Star."

  "That kid of yours got some lungs on him," one of the daddies said to me as the lights came up and we began filing down front to claim our graduates. I was trying to decide whether this was a compliment or not when I saw Ash on the other side of the room, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest. As I met his eyes, he gave his chin a jerk. I pointed toward the stage and our son. Ash shook his head and jabbed his finger at me.

  "Would you mind collecting Jude?" I said to Geneva. "Ash seems to have something on his mind."

  "Meet you in the parking lot," she said, and I turned and made my way against the tide of parents surging in the other direction. Not a muscle twitched as Ash watched me work my way toward him, tracking me only with his eyes.

  "What's up?" I asked, unable to read anything into his body language, the crossed arms and hard stare.

  "You told that little pissant where I lived?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Hardy Knox."

  "I guess you forgot to tell me you joined the Witness Protection Program," I said. "Anyway, he found the house on his own. He acted like he knew you. I never heard of the guy before last night."

  "I wish to God I hadn't. He's been driving me nuts for two, three years now. Following me all over the countryside, trying to get me to listen to this damn tape of his. I thought once I left Nashville I'd be shed of him. Now I come to find out you're letting him camp out in the front yard."

  "I didn't know he was planning on sleeping in his car. He acted like he had business with you."

  Suddenly Ash laughed and uncrossed his arms, pushing himself off the wall with one heel. "Hardy Knox, Junior PI. I can't believe he fucking found me. This must be punishment for something I did in a past life."

  "Or maybe this one."

  "You gotta help me get rid of him, Luce. Tell him I—I got called away on urgent business or something."

  "No way. I'm not responsible for covering your butt anymore. Maybe you ought to ask…" I caught myself just in time, before I spoke the name I swore would never again cross my lips. "Maybe you ought to listen to his tape, Ash. Hear what he's got to say."

  "Forget it. I'll deal with it. Meantime, you watch yourself around him," Ash said.

  "Why? He's not dangerous, is he?"

  "Nah. But he's got this, this way about him."

  "What way is that?"

  "Just that he can be really—what's the word? Ingratiating. Acts all innocent and charming, sliding sideways into your life. Then, next thing you know, he's eating breakfast at your kitchen table."

  "Like anybody else I could name?" I smiled, and to my surprise, Ash smiled back. "Listen," I said, "Dove's fixing lunch for everybody back at the house. But if you're too busy entertaining your fan club…"

  "It just so happens I'm free as a bird." Ash made a sweeping motion with his arm, and fell into step alongside me.

  I was on a stool behind the counter at Faye's late that afternoon, tallying up the day's profits on the register, when the doorbells chimed and Hardy Knox walked in, gazing around him with an expression on his face like he'd never seen anything so wondrous as a flower shop before. He was wearing the exact same T-shirt and jeans he'd had on the night before, hanks of brown hair falling over the smudged lenses of his glasses. Behind them, his eyes were a pale, milky blue that reminded me of the old folks at Golden Years. I pushed back my stool and placed my hands, businesslike, on the counter.

  "Hardy," I said. "What a surprise."

&nbs
p; "Wow," he said. "It smells like Edam in here."

  I frowned, confused. "Cheese?"

  "Eden," he repeated. "You know—paradise."

  I watched him walk around the store, pausing to sniff a pot of hydrangeas, stroking the leaves on a ficus plant, riffling through the greeting cards. "I like this one," he said, holding it up to read aloud:" 'The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment, wisely and earnestly.' Buddha said that," he added, like I'd never seen the card myself, like I hadn't been the one to order it. "You know, I'm kind of a Buddhist myself."

  "How can you be 'kind of a Buddhist?"

  "I just like the guy's philosophies: 'Be here now,' you know? Sure beats hellfire and brimstone, like I grew up."

  "You ought to meet my aunt Dove," I said. I meant it in an offhand way, but Hardy's eyes lit up.

  "Yeah? She a Buddhist?"

  "No. Never mind. Are you here to buy some flowers?"

  "Sure. What's the cheapest thing you got?"

  "Well, you're in luck. It's Friday, and those carnations won't last the weekend. I can let you have them for fifty cents a stem."

  I opened the cooler for him and he rummaged through the tub of mixed carnations, finally extracting a red one that looked relatively fresh. He placed it along with two quarters on the counter, and I rang him up and wrapped the stem in a sheet of green tissue, tying it with a strand of raffia, just as I would have if it had been a dozen roses. I probably lost more money on the paper and string than I made on the flower, but, like Peggy always said, presentation was everything.

  "Here you go," I said, handing him the tissue-wrapped bloom, which he pushed back across the counter at me. "You changed your mind?"

  "No. It's for you."

  I laughed.

  "What?" Hardy said.

  "Ash warned me about you."

  "He did?" This seemed to please him.

  "What do you want, Hardy? I mean, really. Because I'm telling you right now, I don't think I can help you."

  "What makes you think I want anything?"

  "I know you think I can put you on some kind of an inside track with Ash. But he won't listen to me any more than he'll listen to you."

  "See, here's the thing," Hardy said. "I think he will."

  I shook my head. "What you're asking—I'm sorry, but I just can't do it."

  "Look,MizFarrell—"

  "It's Lucy. Please. You make me feel…" I started to say like your mama, before I realized that I could, in fact, be his mama. "How old are you, anyway? If you don't mind my asking."

  "Twenty. In August."

  "I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but what makes you think a twenty-year-old nobody showing up out of nowhere can do anything for Ash's career?"

  "I'm not nobody."

  "So you say. But I don't know you from Adam, and now all of a sudden here you are, sniffing around, trying to find out I-don't-know-what-all about my husband—"

  "Relax. I'm not here to pick your brain. Anyway, I've already found out most everything I need to know."

  "You have?"

  "Sure. He's trying to stay off the sauce, building a house across the road from you. Nice place—I saw it. Water, trees, a regular little sanctuary."

  "You've been out to Ash's place?" Hardy shrugged. "How did you find it?"

  "I grew up in a small town, too, Miz—Lucy. All you have to do is sit in the DQ for an hour or so, you'll hear everybody's secrets."

  "No offense, Hardy, but you're starting to scare me."

  "Oh God. I'm sorry," he said, sounding like he meant it. I reminded myself that part of a sociopath's technique is a knack for conning his way into people's lives by making them think he's just as regular as they are. "Listen. Let me ask you something."

  "Okay." I wished I hadn't let Audrey go home early. I reminded myself that there were scissors under the counter, the small knife I used to trim stems.

  "You're not a musician yourself, right?" he asked.

  "I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket."

  "But you know music. I mean, you know the real deal when you hear it."

  "I guess."

  "So you know Ash is it, right? I bet you knew it the first time you heard him sing."

  I thought about the first time I'd seen Ash onstage at the Round-Up, and the night he'd driven out to my old rent house to serenade me from the tailgate of his pickup. I thought about the first time I'd heard "The Place Love Calls Home" on the radio, how I'd had to pull over onto the shoulder of the highway and lay my head on the steering wheel as Ash's voice filled the car, a song he'd written on the back-porch steps of the first house we shared, a song about me.

  "That's what I thought," Hardy said. "Well, I'm the real deal, too."

  "Oh Lord, Hardy. Don't you know that's what everybody in Nashville says? They ought to hand out T-shirts at the city limits sign."

  He reached into his back pocket and laid a plain white cassette tape on the counter. "Ask Denny, if you don't believe me."

  "You know Denny?"

  He turned and started for the door. "Pop that tape in and give it a listen. You'll see what I'm talking about."

  "Hardy, wait," I said. He paused with his hand on the knob. "I can't—I'm not promising anything. Understand?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "And you can't go on sleeping in my front yard."

  "That's okay. I found a place."

  "You mean you're staying? Here in town?"

  He smiled and raised his hand. "See you around."

  The bells jangled as he pushed his way out onto the sidewalk, leaving the cassette on the counter next to the wilting carnation, like offerings at a shrine.

  But hardy knox knew me better than I knew myself. By the time I'd locked up the shop and climbed into the Blazer that evening, I could hardly wait to pop his cassette into the deck.

  The sound was rich and full-bodied, obviously professionally done. There was only a guitar, a bass, drums, and Hardy's voice. At least I assumed it was Hardy; in contrast to his speaking voice, so thin and reedy, his singing voice was as pure and clear as rainwater. The first song was a sad, slow ballad about growing up in a small town where your choices were, according to the lyrics, to "get out, or stay and die."

  I cranked up the volume, trying to match up the yearning in the singer's voice, the poignancy of the lyrics, with the gangly, floppy-haired kid who'd presented me with a red carnation, who I'd watched sleeping in the back of his little Corolla. That tune was followed by a funny, swing-style number about a guy in a dance hall watching his dream girl two-stepping with another guy, starting out all pissed-off and righteous but getting bluer and bluer as the night wore on and the drinks added up, until by closing time the one who'd got away had turned into "the best thing I never had." Then it was just Hardy again, his voice accompanied by a soft, plaintive guitar as he sang about the pain of having to choose between two loves, a girl and his music.

  I let the Blazer idle in the parking lot as the song played out. I felt the way I had years before, listening to Ash's voice float in my kitchen window in the dark, like I was being fed a message encrypted in some secret language, and if I just listened hard enough I might be able to figure it out. I wondered now if I'd been paying careful enough attention, or if I'd allowed my mind to wander just enough to let something rare and precious drift out of my reach.

  I ejected the cassette as Ash's truck came around the corner, Jude sitting beside him on the front passenger seat. Ash pulled in beside me and opened his door, and Jude scrambled out after him, as brown as an Indian, his hair curling behind his ears.

  "Backseat, baby," I said automatically as Jude opened the passenger door and started to climb in beside me.

  "Aw, Ma," Jude said. The sound of his voice brought me up short, suddenly so grown-up sounding, so much like Denny's.

  "Don't Aw, Ma' me. It's the law," I said, giving Ash a pointed look.

  "Better
listen to your mama, bud," he said. "If anybody knows about laying down the law, it's her." He glanced at the carnation drooping on the seat beside me. "Where'd you get the flower?"

  "I work in a flower shop, remember?"

  "Huh. Thought maybe you had a secret admirer."

  "Maybe I do. If it's a secret, I wouldn't know about it, would I?"

  He smiled. "I've got to get on back," he said. "Got a few more hours of daylight left. But maybe Jude can come over this weekend, if it suits you. Now that school's out and Little League's through."

  "Sure."

  "I'll see you later on then, okay, bud? Give me a hug." He leaned into the backseat and gave Jude a squeeze.

  "Pretty soon I'll be too big to hug," Jude said. "Pretty soon I'll be as big as you!"

  "Little boys are never too big to get hugged by their daddies," Ash said. "You remember that before you go getting too big for them britches." He pinched the waist of Jude's shorts, and Jude squealed with laughter.

  "Ash?" I said as he stepped away and closed the rear door.

  "Yeah?" He paused to look at me through the open window. His silver beard was fully grown in now, his arms tan and roped with muscle. I wanted to tell him about Hardy Knox's music; I wanted to hand him the tape, to say, "Here. This is what you're all about. It was once, and it can be again." But I didn't. Ash was the one with the words, the music. My only gift was knowing the real deal when I saw it—not that it had ever done me a lick of good.

  "Nothing. See you," I said, putting the Blazer in reverse, backing slowly out of my parking space and heading for home.

  "Are you kidding me?" Denny said when she called that evening from a motel room in Bakersfield. "Everybody in Nashville knows Hardy Knox. Hey, guess what?" she said to somebody on her end. "Hardy Knox is in Texas. He followed Daddy down there or something."

  "So, what is it that everybody knows about him, exactly?" I asked.

  "Oh, there's all sorts of stories. He's a genius. He's a maniac. He's an irritating little prick. Take your pick."