Heartbreak Town

by Marsha Moyer

  I couldn't help but feel a pang for all the time I'd wasted, the ground I'd covered trying to escape that. I tried to think what some older, wiser person would advise me—Punch Laughlin, maybe, or Dove. Or Lily, old soul that she was. Punch would tell me to hand it over to God. Dove would rub my back and feed me cold chicken and draw me a hot bath and sit with me while I slept, the same things she'd been doing for forty years. Lily would urge me to eat more chocolate. But I couldn't ignore the sinking suspicion that it was too late, that I'd let something crucial sail right by me while I was busy trying to shield myself from a thing I was too foolish to see I couldn't shake. I'd been running so hard, for so long, that I'd almost missed the point, which is that you can't make any headway with arrows in your heart. They're there for a reason, to slow you down, get your attention, to remind you with every step you take that love has left its mark.

  I let out some of the bathwater and refilled the tub, then lay back with a rolled-up towel under my neck and shut my eyes, which had burned for days, like they'd been steadily blasted by fine, blowing sand.

  Down the hall, the phone rang. Six times, eight, ten. Dove had never gotten herself a machine, couldn't be bothered. "If folks want me, they'll catch up with me," she liked to say. "If they can't, then whatever they needed weren't that important in the first place."

  The ringing stopped, then recommenced. This time I counted fourteen rings before it quieted. A few seconds passed, and it started up again. This time it didn't stop; it seemed to grow increasingly louder and insistent as I hauled myself out of the tub, wrapped a towel around me, and hurried barefoot into the hall. By the time I reached the phone I'd managed to work up two dozen scenarios in my head, all of them ending in doom. Another thing I'd learned from Ash—to brace myself everlastingly for disaster.

  "Lucy Bird." It was Dove.

  "What's the matter?"

  "I'm at your mama's. I reckon you oughta get yourself over here directly."

  "Why? What happened?"

  "Just throw somethin' on and hustle yourself on over. Don't bother with the front door. Just come straight on around back." She hung up.

  Dear Lord, I thought, blotting myself dry, scooping up my clothes. Not this, not now. My mama had been failing for some months, and I'd known it, and had told myself I'd patch things up somehow, make it right with her once my troubles with Ash were settled. As usual, I started praying in earnest for something that was already a lost cause, casting out my pleas and shoddy promises the way you'd cast a fishing line into an unfamiliar river, not knowing what lurks below the surface, what, if anything, you'll snag.

  It took maybe three and a half minutes for me to get dressed and out to my car, to drive the six blocks from Dove's house to Mama's. The sun had dropped below the rooflines, the sky ablaze in the gaudy hues of a dime-store postcard, tangerine and violet and magenta.

  I ran around the side of the house, past periwinkles and nasturtiums wilting in their dusty beds. For a second I lost my nerve, hesitating with my hand on the gate latch. Why was the house dark? Why had Dove called me instead of 911? The place should have been lit up like Vegas, sirens wailing, trained professionals in uniforms taking charge. Unless, of course, it was too late for all that.

  I opened the gate and let myself into the backyard, inhaling lemon balm and fresh-cut grass. On the patio, a citronella candle burned in a little galvanized bucket, though the summer had been so long and dry, even the mosquitoes had given up and moved elsewhere. Music drifted softly toward me, a tune I knew like the back of my hand:

  @

  Along the Red River where the sweet waters flow Where the stars burn bright and the soft wind does blow There lives a fair maiden, the one I adore And I'll court my dear maiden on the Red River shore.

  "That you, Lucy Bird?" Dove's voice called.

  "Here she is," my mama said as I walked toward the figures grouped in lawn chairs on the patio, their faces flickering in the long shadows thrown up by the candle. "Be a good boy, Ash, and set her up a chair."

  He set down the guitar, the strings pinging as he propped it against the patio table, stood and unfolded another lawn chair. I sank onto it, perched expectantly at the edge of the seat, my hands on my knees. At that point nothing would have surprised me, not a chorus of Ziegfeld showgirls bursting out the back door in sequins and feathers, not Jesus Himself descending on a fiery cloud, surrounded by cherubim and seraphim. My mama poured me a glass of tea from a pitcher and stuck it in my hand. I sipped, registering the taste of sugar and mint. Locusts chirred in the hedges. The candle's flame guttered in a passing breeze and then steadied itself as Ash and I watched each other across it.

  "Patsy," Dove said, "how 'bout you and me head on inside?"

  "But it's so nice out," Mama protested. "I feel like I've been cooped up in that house for a week."

  "We need to let these two have 'em some alone time. They got a few things to talk over, I reckon."

  "I guess you're right." Mama stood slowly, stiffly, and began to shuffle off toward the house. As Dove got up to follow, she pinched the back of Ash's arm, hard enough to make him flinch.

  "Don't y'all go makin' me call up Marjo Malone," she said. "I done already had enough excitement for one evenin'. Findin' you here dang near stopped my heart."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said.

  Quiet settled over the backyard as the screen door sighed shut behind Mama and Dove. Out on the street, a car cruised by, a scrambled snatch of song drifting to us from the radio. Ash cleared his throat, scratched at something behind his ear.

  "So, do you want to go first?" he asked.

  "I wouldn't know where to start."

  "Yeah, me, neither."

  "Well, hell's bells, Ash. You must have something to say for yourself. How in the world did you end up at my mama's? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you're in? How many people have been looking for you?"

  "Could you maybe scoot on over this way a little?" he said. "I can hardly see you all the way over there."

  "I'm fine right here. For the time being." I studied him in the candlelight. "Your face looks funny."

  "It's the beard. I shaved it." The newly exposed skin was pale and unfinished-looking in contrast to his tanned cheeks and forehead, and he sported a Band-Aid under one eyebrow.

  "I don't get it," I said. "What happened to make you lose it like that the other night? So a record-company guy from Nashville showed up. It could've been another shot for you, a second chance."

  "Hardy and I had a deal," Ash said. "I should have known better than to trust that little weasel, but I let myself get sucked into letting myself hear what I wanted to hear."

  "What kind of deal?"

  "He said we were outlaws. That we could set up a studio and make our own records. He said we didn't need Nashville, that we could do it our way. When I realized he'd sold me out…"

  "Maybe he didn't," I said. "Maybe this A&R guy showed up uninvited. Maybe he was planning on helping you. Did it ever occur to you to hear them out before you decided to start busting up the place?"

  "Oh, so now you're on Hardy's side."

  "I was never on Hardy's side. And maybe he did screw you over. What I don't understand is why you couldn't just deal with it man-to-man. Why you had to break his jaw and tear up Dub's bar to the tune of ten thousand dollars."

  "Jesus! Ten thousand?" I knew I could tell him about Dub's offer, about the check locked in the safe in Candy's office, but I wanted to hold on to it, to make him sweat awhile. "I don't know what to tell you, Lucy. I feel like I've been walking around with this dark cloud over my head. The longer I stay under it, the harder it gets to come out."

  "But things were getting better. Everything was heading in the right direction till Saturday night."

  "Yeah, and then I let Hardy Knox get under my skin, knock me backward, take a whole mess of folks with me. That was wrong, and I don't know how to make it right, I just can't figure out where to start."

  "You could say you're sorry. Did
that ever in a million years occur to you?"

  "Yeah. And I am. Sorry. But I'm also not dumb enough to think that it's enough."

  Out front, Dove's Lincoln started up and drove away. A light came on in Mama's kitchen, and her face appeared at the window, shaded with her hand as she peered out into the yard.

  "Ash, I swear," I said, "of all the folks in the world you could run to, why in the world would you pick my mama?"

  "I didn't set out to. I just kind of found myself in the neighborhood, and I figured I'd sleep off my drunk in her shed. What I didn't count on was her coming out at seven on Sunday morning looking for something to spray yellow jackets with. I woke up with her jabbing me in the leg with the Weedwacker. I don't think she even recognized me at first. She thought I was just some bum wandered over from the bus station. Lord knows, I looked it. Smelled like it, too."

  "So she just took you in, fed you, and sheltered you, out of the Christian goodness of her heart?"

  "Not that fast. First she read me the riot act. Quoted scripture at me until I thought she'd turn blue in the face. Then she started working in her own personal philosophy of life. I admit I got a little confused at times, which was Jesus talking and which was Patsy Hatch." I had to smile at that. "I don't know how long she kept me there, but I do know that more than once I wished I'd gone ahead and turned myself in to the law, or just laid up in some ditch and let the coyotes and the fire ants have me."

  "I know the feeling."

  "Once she figured I'd suffered enough, she drug me in the house. Stuck me in the shower, fed me coffee and eggs and aspirin and Bible verses till I could barely hold my head up.

  Finally, I guess she either figured she'd made her point or she decided to take pity on me, because she took me down the hall to your old room and told me to lie down. Then she covered me up with this ugly old green-and-orange afghan."

  "My great-great-aunt Francie made that," I said. "We called it the sick blanket. If we stayed home from school with a stomachache or the flu or whatever, Mama tucked us in with Aunt Francie's afghan."

  "When I woke up, my head felt like it weighed two tons, and I had the most godawful taste in my mouth. I sat up and looked around and thought I'd died and got sent to the wrong room in heaven—all those yellow ruffles and cheerleader's pompoms and old Tiger Beat posters on the walls… Jesus, Lucy, Peter Frampton I can halfway understand, but Shaun Cassidy?"

  "I was never a cheerleader," I interrupted. "I was on the pep squad."

  "Here's the weird thing. Even before I remembered how I'd come to be there, I could feel you in that room. I don't know if I can explain it in plain English. It was like I was lying there on your old bed, with all your stuff around me, and you were there, too, the girl you'd been, with your ruffles and your pompoms, and at the same time the girl you grew up into, the one I fell in love with… In the back of my mind was everything that happened the night before, trying to fight its way up toward the surface, but for a minute I felt like I'd been blessed, just to be in that room, getting filled up with the, the heart and soul of you. I thought maybe if I could hang on to that long enough I might be able to see my way out of the dark. Oh, hell. Does this make any kind of sense at all?"

  He scooted his chair closer to mine and reached for my hand, and I let him take it.

  "I know I should've showed my face right then, that day. But [ was ashamed of myself, and scared shitless. Not of Marjo or

  Dub or any of that business. I've been in enough scrapes in my lifetime; I'm not afraid of paying for what I did. It was knowing how I'd let you down. All these years now, I've been getting your hopes up and then dropping them again. I don't know how you stood it as long as you did. I don't know why you're sitting here right now. Listening to an old fool run on." He stroked my palm with his thumb.

  "Where'd the guitar come from?" I asked.

  "It was your daddy's."

  "What?"

  "That's what your mama said. She pulled it out of the attic. The strings were shot to hell, but there were a couple of new sets still in the packages."

  "I didn't know he played guitar."

  "He wasn't all that good, it seems. She said he only ever learned one song: 'On Top of Old Smokey'"

  "I don't remember him. Just a shape, sort of, in the back of my head. And Mama never told us anything."

  "He had red hair—rusty, like your brothers', like Jude's—and he wouldn't go out of the house, not even to pick up the paper, unless his pants were creased and his shirt was ironed and he'd thrown on a splash of bay rum. She loved to stand in the kitchen and iron his shirts, listening to the Louisiana Hayride on the radio."

  "Mama told you all that?"

  "She said she didn't iron a thing for a year, maybe two, after he left. To this day, the sight of the ironing board makes her sad."

  "She never even told us she missed him. I mean, we knew at first, when she sat around in her nightgown, drinking and crying. But later on, after Dove took over and Mama straightened herself out and got all cozy with Jesus, we weren't allowed to talk about it. I remember Bailey one time at the supper table—he was mad, Mama wouldn't let him do something he wanted, and he said something ugly like, 'No wonder our daddy left'—and Mama slapped his face. 'You're not to mention his name under this roof,' she said. And that's the last time anybody's tried in, I guess, twenty-five years."

  "Well, maybe it's time to try again."

  "I don't want to get my face slapped."

  "You ought to try cutting your mama a little slack. Maybe she'll surprise you."

  "I've had enough surprises for the time being, thank you very much."

  "Well, hold on to your hat," he said. "I'm not done yet."

  The screen door opened and Mama stuck out her head. "Lucy? Could you come in here a minute?"

  "Can't it wait a little bit, Mama?" I called.

  "I don't believe it can."

  I sighed and got to my feet. "Don't you move," I said to Ash. "I spent the last four days tracking you down, I don't know how much more staying power I've got."

  In the kitchen, I found my mama laying out an assortment of cookies, shortbread and chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin, on a lacy-rimmed glass plate. "Carry these out back, will you?" she said. "That boy has a sweet tooth like you wouldn't believe." For the first time I noticed she was dressed in a new dark blue pants outfit, and her hair was neatly styled. More to the point, her mouth was slicked with Fire and Ice. Nothing like having a man around the house to bring Patsy back to her old self.

  "Mama, honestly," I said, "Ash and I are trying to have a serious conversation. I don't think either one of us is thinking about cookies."

  "Just take them," she said, thrusting the plate at me, forcing me to reach for it. "You might be surprised what a little bit of sugar can do."

  "All right. Thank you."

  "Do y'all need more tea? I've got a pitcher made fresh."

  "We're just fine, thanks," I said, and turned to the door.

  "Lucy."

  I had to bite my lip from snapping, What? "Yes, ma'am?"

  "I'd like to have a word with you, if you'll hold your pretty horses a second."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  She took her time, wiping down the drain board with a sponge, rinsing it out, drying her hands on a terrycloth towel.

  "I suppose you've been hearing all kinds of stories about your daddy," she said at last as she shook out the towel and draped it over a hook next to the sink.

  "A few."

  "I didn't plan—that is, it just sort of came out of nowhere. It started with the guitar and I couldn't seem to stop." She laughed a high, soft laugh. "Believe me, nobody could've been more surprised than me to hear those old tales dragged out after all this time." I wanted to say that I could name one person, easy, but I kept my mouth shut. "I've just got one more thing to say, and then I'll let you get back to your business," she said. "There's something about your daddy Raymond Hatch that I've never told a soul, not Ash Farrell, not Reverend Honeywell, nobod
y in the world but Jesus.

  "Your daddy took off and left us, it's true. Me and you and the boys. His family. He had his reasons. I know what they were, and if it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon keep that between him and me and the Lord."

  "For heaven's sake, Mama—what's your point?"

  "My point, Miss Twitchy Britches, is that he wanted to come back. And I wouldn't let him."

  I set the plate of cookies on the table.

  "A few months after he left, he called up out of the clear blue and begged me to see him. Said he'd had a chance to think things through, and that he wanted to come home and try to work things out. Go ahead, call me what you will—proud or stubborn or just plain stupid. But I said no. I couldn't find it in my heart to forgive him.

  "For the longest time after, I swore to myself I'd done the right thing. But the older you get, the more the past starts to shift on you—like you're seeing things through a one-way glass, and no matter how bad you want to, you can't reach what's on the other side.

  "What I'm trying to tell you, Lucy, is, whether you take Ash back or not, don't make the mistake I did. Don't keep your heart closed up against him out of nothing but pure spite. You might find out somewhere down the road you want to open it up again, and by then it'll be too late." She leaned forward and pushed the cookies toward me. "Now go."

  I carried the plate out the screen door and across the yard and set it on the table. Ash glanced at it and lifted an eyebrow. "That's what was so all-fired important?"

  "She said you have a wicked sweet tooth. How come in seven years I never knew that about you?"

  "It's coming off the booze," he said. "Makes you crave sugar like crazy." He reached for an oatmeal cookie and bit it in two.

  "So what's this surprise you were fixing to tell me about?"

  He finished his cookie and reached for another before he answered. "Saturday afternoon this guy came out to the new house. City slicker in a big Ford Excursion, wearing brand-new jeans and a polo shirt and fancy-dan boots. Wanted to know if he could have a look around. Said he'd been hunting for a weekend spot for him and his wife, that somebody in town had told him about the place I was building. So I gave him a tour, thinking he was looking for ideas, you know? He asks about a million questions, admires the work, the layout, the view. I'm busy thinking about the Round-Up later on, hardly paying him any mind, when out of the blue he asks how much I'd sell the place for."