Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

by Sharyn McCrumb

  “I reckon you do have the Sight, Sheriff,” I told him. “Your man won’t know we’re watching him with these babies.”

  “I wonder if they’re legal for hunting,” said a Unicoi County man. “This sure beats spotlighting deer.”

  “They’re illegal for deer,” Spencer told him. “But they’re perfect for catching sheep killers.” He smiled over at me. “Now that we’ve tested the equipment, y’all split up. I’ve given you your patrol areas. Don’t use your walkie-talkies unless it’s absolutely necessary. Rattler, you just go where you please, but try not to let the suspect catch you at it. Are you going to do your stuff?”

  “I’m going to try to let it happen,” I said. It’s a gift. I don’t control it. I just receive.

  We went our separate ways. I walked awhile, enjoying the new magic of seeing the night woods same as a possum would, but when I tried to clear my mind and summon up that other kind of seeing, I found I couldn’t do it. So, instead of helping, the Night Mariners were blinding me. I slipped the fancy goggles into the pocket of my jacket, and stood there under an oak tree for a minute or two, trying to open my heart for guidance. I whispered a verse from Psalm 27: Teach me thy way, O Lord, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. Then I looked up at the stars and tried to think of nothing. After a while I started walking, trying to keep my mind clear and go where I was led.

  Maybe five minutes later, maybe an hour, I was walking across an abandoned field overgrown with scrub cedars. The moonlight glowed in the long grass, and the cold air made my ears and fingers tingle. When I touched a post of the broken split-rail fence, it happened. I saw the field in daylight. I saw brown grass, drying up in the summer heat, and flies making lazy circles around my head. When I looked down at the fence rail at my feet, I saw her. She was wearing a watermelon-colored T-shirt and jean shorts. Her brown hair spilled across her shoulders and twined with the chicory weeds. Her eyes were closed. I could see a smear of blood at one corner of her mouth, and I knew. I looked up at the moon, and when I looked back, the grass was dead, and the darkness had closed in again. I crouched behind a cedar tree before I heard the footsteps.

  They weren’t footsteps, really. Just the swish sound of boots and trouser legs brushing against tall, dry grass. I could see his shape in the moonlight, and he wasn’t one of the searchers. He was here to keep his secrets. He stepped over the fence rail, and walked toward the one big tree in the clearing-a twisted old maple, big around as two men. He knelt down beside that tree, and I saw him moving his hands on the ground, picking up a dead branch, and brushing leaves away. He looked, rocked back on his heels, leaned forward, and started pushing the leaves back again.

  They hadn’t given me a walkie-talkie, and I didn’t hold with guns, though I knew he might have one. I wasn’t really part of the posse. Old Rattler with his Twinkies and his root tea and his prophecies. I was just bait. But I couldn’t risk letting the sheep killer slip away. Finding the grave might catch him; might not. None of my visions would help Spencer in a court of law, which is why I mostly stick to dispensing tonics and leave evil alone.

  I cupped my hands to my mouth and gave an owl cry, loud as I could. Just one. The dark shape jumped up, took a couple of steps up and back, moving its head from side to side.

  Far off in the woods, I heard an owl reply. I pulled out the Night Mariners then, and started scanning the hillsides around that meadow, and in less than a minute I could make out the sheriff, with that badge pinned to his coat, standing at the edge of the trees with his field glasses on, scanning the clearing. I started waving and pointing.

  The sheep killer was hurrying away now, but he was headed in my direction, and I thought, Risk it. What called your name, Rattler, wasn’t an owl. So just as he’s about to pass by, I stepped out at him, and said, “Hush now. You’ll scare the deer.”

  He was startled into screaming, and he swung out at me with something that flashed silver in the moonlight. As I went down, he broke into a run, crashing through weeds, noisy enough to scare the deer across the state line-but the moonlight wasn’t bright enough for him to get far. He covered maybe twenty yards before his foot caught on a fieldstone, and he went down. I saw the sheriff closing distance, and I went to help, but I felt lightheaded all of a sudden, and my shirt was wet. I was glad it wasn’t light enough to see colors in that field. Red was never my favorite.

  I opened my eyes and shut them again, because the flashing orange light of the rescue squad van was too bright for the ache in my head. When I looked away, I saw cold and dark, and knew I was still on Locust Ridge. “Where’s Spencer Arrowood?” I asked a blue jacket bending near me.

  “Sheriff! He’s coming around.”

  Spencer Arrowood was bending over me then, with that worried look he used to have when a big one hit his fishing line. “We got him,” he said. “You’ve got a puncture in your lung that will need more than herbal tea to fix, but you’re going to be all right, Rattler.”

  “Since when did you get the Sight?” I asked him. But he was right. I needed to get off that mountain and get well, because the last thing I saw before I went down was the same scene that came to me when I first saw her get out of her car and walk toward my cabin. I saw what Evelyn Albright was going to do at the trial, with that flash of silver half hidden in her hand, and I didn’t want it to end that way.

  AMONG MY SOUVENIRS

  THE FACE WAS a little blurry, but she was used to seeing it that way. She must have looked at it a thousand times in old magazines-grainy black-and-white shots, snapped by a magazine photographer at a nightclub; amateurish candid photos on the back of record albums; misty publicity stills that erased even the pores of his skin. She knew that face. A poster-sized version of it had stared down at her from beneath the high school banner on her bedroom wall, twenty-odd years ago. God, had it been that long? Now the face was blurry with booze, fatigue, and the sagging of a jawline that was no longer boyish. But it was still him, sitting in the bar, big as life.

  Maggie used to wonder what she would do if she met him in the flesh. In the tenth grade she and Kathy Ryan used to philosophize about such things at slumber parties: “Why don’t you fix your hair like Connie Stevens’s?” “Which Man from U.N.C.L.E. do you like best?” “What would you do if you met Devlin Robey?” Then they’d collapse in giggles, unable even to fantasize meeting a real, live rock ’n’ roll singer. He lived a glamorous life of limousines and penthouse suites while they suffered through gym class, and algebra with Mrs. Cady. Growing up seemed a hundred years away.

  When Maggie was a senior, she did get to see Devlin Robey. When you live on Long Island, sooner or later your prince will come. Everybody comes to the Big Apple. But the encounter was as distant and unreal as the airbrushed poster on her closet door. Devlin Robey was a shining blur glimpsed on a distant stage, and Maggie was a tiny speck in a sea of screaming adolescents. She and Kathy squealed and cried and threw paper roses at the stage, but it didn’t really feel like seeing him. He was a lot clearer on the television screen when she watched American Bandstand. After the concert, they had fought their way through a horde of fans to reach the stage door, only to be driven off by three thugs in overcoats-Mr. Robey’s handlers-while Devlin himself plowed his way through the throng to a waiting limousine, oblivious to the screams of protest in his wake.

  They cried all the way home.

  Maggie was so disillusioned by her idol’s callous behavior that she wrote him a letter, in care of his record company, complaining about how he let his fans be treated. She enclosed her ticket stub from the concert, and one of her wallet-size class pictures. A few weeks later, she received an autographed eight-by-ten of Devlin Robey, a copy of his latest album, and a handwritten apology on Epic Records notepaper. He said he was sorry to rush past them like that, but that he’d had to hurry back to the hotel to call his mother, who had been ill that night. He hoped that Maggie would forgive him for his thoughtlessness, and he promised to visit with his fans after concerts
whenever he possibly could.

  That letter was enough magic to keep Maggie going for weeks, and she played the album until it was scarred from wear. But eventually the wonder of it faded, and the memory, like the albums and the fan magazines, was packed away in tissue paper in the closet of her youth, while Maggie got on with her life.

  She took business courses, and made mostly B’s. She thought she’d probably end up as a secretary somewhere after high school. It was no use thinking about college. Her parents didn’t have that kind of money, and if they had, they wouldn’t have spent it sending her off to get more educated. Since she’d just end up getting married anyway, her father reasoned, wasting her time and their savings on fancy schooling made no sense. Maggie wished she could have taken shop or auto mechanics like the guys did, but the guidance counselor had smiled and vetoed the suggestion. Home economics and typing-that’s what girls took. He was sure that Maggie would be happier in one of those courses, where she belonged. Now, sometimes, when the plumbing needed fixing or the toaster wouldn’t work, Maggie wished she had insisted on being allowed to take practical courses, so that she wouldn’t have to use the grocery money to pay repair bills. But it was no use looking back, she figured. What’s done is done.

  The summer after high school, Maggie married Leon Holtz, who wasn’t as handsome as Devlin Robey, but he was real. He said he loved her, and he rented a sky blue tux and bought her a white gardenia corsage when he took her to the senior prom. There wasn’t any reason not to get married, that Maggie could see. Leon had a construction job in his uncle’s business, and she was a clerk at the Ford dealership, which meant nearly six hundred a month in take-home pay. They could afford a small apartment, and some furniture from Sofa City, so why wait? If Maggie had any flashes of pre-wedding jitters about happily-ever-after with Leon, or any lingering regrets at relinquishing dreams of some other existence, where one could actually know people like Devlin Robey-if she had misgivings about any of it, she gave no sign.

  Richie was born fourteen months later. The marriage lasted until he was two. He was a round-faced, solemn child with his mother’s brown eyes, but he had scoliosis-which is doctor talk for crookback-so there were medical bills on top of everything else, and finally Leon, fed up with the confinement of wedded poverty, took off. Maggie moved to Manhattan, because she figured the pay would be better, especially if she forgot about being a clerk. She was just twenty-one then, and her looks were still okay.

  After a couple of false starts, she got a job as a cocktail waitress in the Red Lion Lounge. She didn’t like the red velvet uniform that came to the top of her thighs, or the black net stockings she had to wear with it, but the tips were good, and Maggie supposed that the outfit had a lot to do with that. She was twenty-seven now. Sometimes, when her feet throbbed from spending six hours in spike heels and her face ached from smiling at jerks who like to put the make on waitresses, she’d think about the high school shop classes, wondering what life would have been like if she’d learned how to fix cars.

  “You want to bring me a drink?” He smiled up at her lazily. The ladies’ man who is sure of his magnetism. You want to bring me a drink? Like he was conferring a privilege on her. Well, maybe he was. Maggie looked down at Devlin Robey’s blurring middle-aged features and thought with surprise that once she would have been honored to serve this man. Would have fought for the chance to do it. But that was half a lifetime ago. Now she was just tired, trying to get through the shift with enough money to pay the phone bill. She’d been up most of the night before with one of Richie’s backaches, and now she felt as if she were sleepwalking. She stared at the graying curls of chest hair at the top of his purple shirt, the pouches under his eyes that were darker than his fading tan, and the plastic smile. What the hell. “Sure,” she said with no more than her customary brightness. “A drink. What do you want?”

  When she brought back the Dewar’s-rocks, he was reading the racing news, but as she approached, he set the page aside and smiled up at her. “Thanks,” he said, and then after a beat: “You know who I am?”

  It struck her as kind of sad the way he asked it. Hesitant, like he had heard no too many times lately, as if each denial of his fame cut the lines deeper into his face. She felt sorry for him. Wished it were twenty years ago. But it wasn’t. “Yeah,” said Maggie, smoothing out the napkin as she set down his drink. “Yeah, I remember. You’re Devlin Robey. I seen you sing once.”

  The lines smoothed out and his eyes widened: you could just see the teen idol somewhere in there. “No kiddin’!” he said, with a laugh that sounded like sheer relief. “Well, here…” That ought to be good for a twenty, Maggie was thinking, but as she watched, Devlin Robey pulled the cocktail napkin out from under his drink and signed his name with a flourish.

  “Thanks,” said Maggie, slipping the napkin into her pocket with the tips. Maybe the twenty would come later. At least it would be something to tell Kathy Ryan if she ever saw her again. She started to move away to another table, but he touched her arm. “Don’t leave yet. So, you heard me sing, huh? At Paradise Alley?”

  She told him where the concert had been, and for a moment she thought of mentioning her letter to him, but the two suits at table nine were waving like their tongues might shrivel up, so she eased out of his grasp. “I’ll check on you in a few,” she promised, summoning her smile for the thirsting suits.

  For the rest of her shift, Maggie alternated between real customers and the wistful face of Devlin Robey, who ordered drinks just for the small talk that came with them. “Which one of my songs did you like best?”

  “ ‘I’m Afraid to Go Home,’ ” said Maggie instantly. When he looked puzzled, she reminded him, “It was the B side to ‘Tiger Lily.’ ”

  “Yeah! Yeah! I almost got an award for that one.” His eyes crinkled with pleasure.

  Another round he wanted to know if she’d seen him in the beach movie he made for Buena Vista. She remembered the movie and didn’t say that she couldn’t place him in it. It had been a bit part, leading nowhere. After that he went back to singing, mostly in Vegas. Now in Atlantic City. “They love me in the casinos,” he told her. “The folks from the ’burbs go wild over me-makes ’em remember the good times, they tell me.”

  Maggie tried to remember some good times, but all she found was stills of her and Kathy Ryan listening to records and talking about the future. She was going to be a fashion model and live in Paris. Kathy would be a vet in an African wildlife preserve. They would spend holidays together in the Bahamas. “You want some peanuts to go with that drink?” Maggie asked.

  At two o’clock the Red Lion was closing, but Devlin Robey had not budged. He kept nursing a Dewar’s that was more water than scotch, hunched down like a stray dog who didn’t want to be thrown out in the street. Maggie wondered what was wrong with the guy. He was rich and famous, right?

  “Are you about finished with that drink? Boss says it’s quittin’ time.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m a night owl, I guess. All those years of doing casino shows at eleven. Seems like the shank of the evening to me.” He glanced at his watch, and then at her: the red velvet tunic, the black fishnet stockings, the cleavage. “You’re getting off work now?”

  The smile never wavered, but inside she groaned. Tonight had seemed about two days long, and all that kept her going was the thought of a hot bubble bath to soak her feet and the softness of clean sheets to sink into before she passed out from sheer weariness. So now-ten years too late to be an answer to prayer-Devlin Robey wants to take her out. Where was he when it would have mattered?

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Thanks anyway, but not tonight.” Maybe ten years ago, but not tonight.

  The one answer she wouldn’t have made back when she was Devlin Robey’s vestal virgin turned out to be the only one that worked the charm. Suddenly his halfhearted invitation became urgent. “I’ll be straight with you,” he said, with eyes like stained glass. “I’m feeling kind of down tonight, and I thought it
might help to spend some time with an old friend.”

  Is that what we were? Maggie thought. I was twenty-five rows back at the concert; I was on the other side of the speakers when WABC’s Cousin Brucie played your records, and while you were airbrushed and glossy, I was wearing Clearasil and holding the fan magazine. We were friends? She didn’t say it, though. If Maggie had learned anything in seven years as a cocktail waitress, it was not to reply to outrageous statements. She shrugged. “I’m sorry,” she said, thinking that would be the end of it. Wondering if she’d even bother to tell anybody about it. It wouldn’t be any fun to talk about if you had to explain to the other waitresses, bunch of kids, who Devlin Robey was.

  “At least give me your phone number-uh-Maggie.” Her name was signed with a flourish on his check: Thank you! Maggie. “I get to the city every so often. Maybe I could call you, give you more notice. We could set something up. You’re all right. You ever think about the business?”

  No. Show business offered the same hours as nightclub waitressing, and besides she couldn’t sing or dance. But Lana Turner had been discovered in a drug store, so maybe… After all, who was Maggie Holtz to slap the hand of fate? She tore off the business expense tab from the Red Lion check and scribbled her name and phone number across it. “Sure. Why not,” she said. “Call me sometime.”

  She patted the autographed cocktail napkin folded in the pocket with her tips, wondering if Richie would like to have it for his scrapbook. Or maybe she should put it in his baby book: the guy I was pretending to make it with the night you were conceived. Two scraps of paper; one for each of them to toss. She figured that would be the end of it.

  It wasn’t, though. Four nights later-four A.M.-the Advil had finally kicked in, allowing her to plunge into sleep, when the phone screamed, dragging her back. She’d forgotten to turn on the damned answering machine. She grabbed for the receiver, only to reinstate the silence, but his voice came through to her, a little swacked, crooning “I’m Afraid to Go Home,” and she knew it was him.