by Rose Tremain
Lester was a roofer. He’d started small and poor, working out of a garage in East Nashville. Now, he was halfway to being rich. Halfway exactly was how he thought of it, when he drove down Belle Meade Boulevard and past the Country Club and saw and understood what rich was. And at fifty-two, he’d begun to wonder whether he’d get there, or whether this was how he’d remain – stuck at the halfway point.
‘Lester, you know, he’s tiring,’ said Amy to her friends at the Green Hills Women’s Yoga Group. ‘I see it plain as death. It’s like he’s up against a wall and he just don’t have the go in him to climb it. It’s like gettin’ this far took all the vim he had.’
‘Well, Amy,’ the friends would reply, ‘let him tire, honey. You got a good house an’ your kids both in college. What more d’you want?’
‘Ain’t a question of want,’ said Amy. ‘It’s a question of dream. ’Cos one thing you can’t stop Lester doing, you can stop him doing ‘most anything ‘cept having these dreams a’ his. He’s the type he’ll die dreaming. He’s descended from a Viking, see? Got this conqueror still goin’ round in his veins.’
On that July morning at six, as more of Willa’s regular customers stumbled into Mr Pie’s and she wiped the counter for them, taking care not to look at her elbow’s reflection, Lester Pickering climbed into his pick-up and drove south toward Franklin. He’d been asked to tender for a job on a Baptist church, to replace tin with slates. ‘Git out here early, Lester,’ the Minister had advised, ‘’for the ole tin git too hot to touch.’ And now he was doing sixty-five in the pick-up and his light-weight ladders were rattling like a hailstorm above his head. But his mind wasn’t on his destination. He was driving fast to drive away the thoughts he was having, to jolt them out of his damn brain before they took hold and he did something stupid. Thoughts about Amy and the fruit seller. Thoughts about this guy who comes from nowhere and calls Amy up, knows her number an’ all, and says meet me at such-and-such parking lot and I’ll sell you raspberries from the mountains. And so she goes and she meets him and for two days she’s bottling and freezing fruit and making jelly with a smile on her face.
‘Who is he?’ asks Lester.
‘I dunno,’ says Amy. ‘Name of Tom. That’s all I know.’
‘An’ how’s he got all them berries? Where they come from?’
‘From the hills.’
‘What hills?’
‘He said it’s a secret where they precisely come from, Lester.’
‘Why’s it a darn secret?’
‘I dunno. That’s it about a secret, uhn? You often don’t know why it is one.’
Lester was driving so fast, he missed the turn-off to the church. He braked and saw in the rear mirror a livestock truck come hissing up right behind him. Ready to ram me, thought Lester, because the thing of it is, people don’t care any more. They don’t care what they do.
While Willa worked at Mr Pie’s, Vee slept on in the trailer. The sun got up high. Sweat ran down Vee’s thighs and down his neck. He was on the verge of waking, it was so hot and airless in the trailer, but he kept himself asleep and dreaming. In his dreams, he was no longer Vee Easton, cleaner and dogsbody at Opryland; he was Vee La Rivière (he pronounced it ‘Veeler Riveer’), songwriter to the stars of the whole darn world of Country Music. He was certain this future would come. He was so certain about it, he wasn’t really dreaming it any more, he was thinking it up.
‘What’s the diffunce between dreamin’ an’ thinkin’, Vee?’ asked Willa.
‘I’ll tell ya, sweetheart. What the diffunce is, is between fairytales and actuality. What them things are now is actual.’
‘You mean “real”, doncha? You mean re-ality, Vee. That’s the word you were meanin’.’
‘If I’d’ve meant real, I’d’ve said real. What I mean is, things actually happening, or, like they say in the Bible, Coming to Pass. Vee La Rivière is gonna Come to Pass.’
And when Vee woke, around eleven, he remembered what day it was. It was the day of the night of his meeting with Herman Berry. The Herman Berry, known nationwide, but with his heart and his house still in Nashville and a set of his fingernail clippings in a glass case in the Country Music Hall of Fame, right slap next to Jim Reeves’s shoes.
Vee thumped his leg and sat up. He got out of his bunk and snatched up a towel and dried the sweat on him, then opened wide the four windows of the trailer and the daytime world of the trailer park came in, like homely music. He put on some blue stretch swimming trunks and made coffee. He didn’t give one single thought to Willa or to anything in his life except this big meeting with Herman Berry, when he would play him three songs he’d written. ‘Keep it to three, boy,’ Herman had said. ‘Keep it to a trinity and I’ll listen good. More ‘an that and my mind starts walking away.’
But which three would he offer? Veritably speaking, Vee admitted to himself, as he turned the pages of his music note book, there’s only one of Herman’s calibre and that’s my new one.
He got his guitar and tuned it a bit. He felt suddenly chilly in his torso, so he put one of Willa’s thin old counterpanes round his shoulders. Then he flipped the pages to his new song, called Do Not Disturb, and played the intro chords. Then he made like he was talking to Herman Berry and explaining the song to him:
‘. . . them ther’s just the introductory bars, Herman. Key of C minor. Little reprise here before the first verse. A moody reprise, I call it. Let every person know this is a sad song. Tragic song, in all absolute truth. OK? So here we go with the first verse:
I went up to my hotel room
And got some whiskey from the mini-bar . . .
‘In parenthetics, Herman, I didn’t never stay in no hotel room with a mini-bar, but Willa put me straight on that detail. She said, you can’t say “got some whiskey from the bar” just, ’cos what hotel rooms have now is mini-bars, OK? Means adding coupla quavers to the line, but then I keep it scanning in the fourth, like this:
I set my pills out on the table,
And wondered how it all had got this far.
‘You get “it all”, Herm? “It all”, that’s his life and the way it’s turning out.
‘So now, another reprise of the opening chords. Still quietish. Still keeping the tragic mood. Then we’re into the second verse, like this:
I thought of you in Ole Kentucky,
And the singing of the sweet blue grass.
For a year we’d been together,
Now you told me, Jim, all things must pass.
‘We could change Jim, right? It could be Chuck or Bill, right? Or Herm. It all depends on how you want to personalise it an’ make it a true Herman Berry number.
‘Anyway, it’s the chorus now. Modulation. Big, swoopy modulation to C major here. As we go into the big chorus that all America’s gonna be singing soon:
Believe me, girl, my heart was breaking!
Breaking tho’ I couldn’t say a word,
It was my life I was intent on taking,
So then I hung the sign out,
The sign that stopped them finding out,
The little sign that said Do Not Disturb!
‘That’s the thing I’m pleased with – the chorus. Whatcha say, Herm? You don’t think they’re gonna be humming that from Louisiana to Ohio? Before I go to the third verse, tell me how you feel about that big, sad chorus. You don’t gotta speak. Just stick your thumbs up.’
Amy Pickering knelt down on her Yoga mat in her living room and folded her large-boned body into a small, coiled position called the Child Position. She shut her eyes. She tried to have vacant, childlike thoughts, but these didn’t seem easy to come by, because what was in her mind was Lester.
Why did you lie to him, Amy Pickering? she asked herself. Why did you make out there was a secret about the raspberries? When all that guy was, was some friend of Betty Bushel’s that likes to bypass retail and sell direct to housewives?
She didn’t know the answer. All she knew was she had liked to do it. Lying about th
e raspberries had made her feel beautiful. It had. She had stood in her kitchen, smelling all that scented fruit, and feeling like Greta Garbo.
Amy lifted her head. She stretched her neck and smoothed her graying hair that she wore in a French pleat. Beyond the sunlit sills of her room, she could hear the peaceful neighbourhood sounds – lawn mowers and birds and Betty Bushel’s dog yapping at shadows.
Then, in her mind, she saw Lester, years ago, wearing his old hunting jacket, standing in his father’s yard with his father’s dog, Jackson, sniffing at his boots. He’d built the kennel for that dog. He’d put on a neat little shingled roof and that was what got him started on the idea of roofs. ‘It had a twenty-six year life, that kennel,’ Amy liked to boast fondly. ‘Two dogs, both named Jackson one after another, lived to thirteen in it. That’s how good made it was. But then, Lester’s dad, he said to me: “Dogs is heartbreak, Amy. I jes’ can’t stick to have another Jackson leave me for the Lord!” So I dunno what he did with that kennel then. ‘Less he kept it somewhere to remind him of his son . . .’
He was still alive, the old man. The idea of him dying seemed to hurt Lester in his chest. When he thought about his father dying, he’d knead the area of his heart. And this is what he’d done when Amy had told him her lie about the raspberry seller: he’d stood looking at her and kneading his heart through his draylon shirt.
‘Oh my . . .’ sighed Amy. ‘Oh my, my . . .’
‘Git through m’ shift at two, be home at three,’ Willa had told Vee in the night. ‘Then what I’ll do, darlin’, I’ll press your shirt and tie and steam out the fringes on your coat, so they fall good. And that way, Herman Berry’s not solely gonna ‘preciate your songs, he’s gonna see yore an upright person.’
‘Upright?’ Vee had burst out. ‘What’s upright got to have to do with song writing? You could be a mean, wastrelling bum, an’ still make it big in this business, honey. You could be an orang-utan. It wouldn’t matter. ’Cos no one’s looking at ya. They only listening. They only saying to theirselves, Is this gonna catch on? If I record this Do Not Disturb, will it make it to number one in Anusville, Milwaukee?’
Now, as Willa took off her lace cap and changed out of her gingham frock, she told her friend, Ileene: ‘You could be an orang-utan an’ still make it in Nashville, Ileene. ’Cos the point is, all anyone’s got is their eyes closed.’
‘Oh yeh?’ said Ileene. ‘What about here, then? I swear some pairs of eyes go up your ass, Willa, when yore wipin’ tables.’
‘Well, that,’ said Willa, ‘but then I ain’t singin’.’
Ileene shook her head and smiled as she pulled on her lace cap. ‘Darn cap!’ She grinned. ‘Look like a friggin’ French maid in that, don’ I?’
‘I dunno,’ said Willa dreamily. ‘Bein’ as how I never saw no French maid in my whole existence.’
As soon as she got off her bus at the trailer park, Willa knew that Vee wasn’t there, because his car was gone.
‘Drove off about half an hour ago with his guitar,’ Mr Zwebner said. On hot days, Mr Zwebner sat on a plastic chair in the narrow band of shade made by his trailer, reading some old, mutilated book. Willa could not imagine any mortal life so monotonous as his.
‘Thank you, Mr Zwebner,’ she said. Then she added: ‘Got an appointment with Herman Berry tonight. ‘Fore the Opry starts.’
‘He famous, then? He someone I should know of?’
‘Who? Herman Berry?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You never done heard of Herman Berry, Mr Zwebner?’
‘No.’
‘You kiddin’ me?’
‘No.’
‘Shoot! I jes’ don’t believe what yore sayin’! I don’t believe my eardrums, Mr Zwebner!’
‘OK. You don’t believe.’
‘Herman Berry? Why, he’s so darn famous, he can’t go anywhere without people want to touch him and git bits of him.’
‘Why they want to do that, Willa?’
‘Why? Well, ’cos that’s what they wanna do. They wanna touch his fame and have it touch them.’
Mr Zwebner smiled and closed his leatherbound book.
‘Have it touch them, eh? Like it’s catching?’
‘It is catchin’. Fame is. I swear. Vee had this friend he used to visit with, who somehow stole a dry-cleanin’ ticket offa Dolly Parton’s manager or secretary or someone. One Pair Ladies’ Pants, Silver. Got it framed an’ all in a silver frame. And then fame came to him in the form of he began his own dry-cleanin’ outlet in Hollywood, an’ now he’s doin’ shirts for Mel Gibson and so forth.’
Mr Zwebner shook his head. Old folks like him, thought Willa, they never believe one word you tell ’em. Like as if reality ended ‘fore you was born. So she told him, have a nice afternoon, Mr Zwebner, and went into her trailer and stood in the dark of it, looking at the two bunks, hers and Vee’s, and deciding then and there she’d like Vee in her life for ever. She sat down on his bunk that was still damp from his sleep and smoothed his pillow.
Then, in her quiet voice that had this kind of crack in it, ever since she was a kid and sang Jesus Loves Me, This I Know with her head lying on her grandma’s lap, she began to sing Vee’s new song:
I thought of you in Ole Kentucky,
And the singing of the sweet blue grass,
For a year we’d been together,
Now you told me, Jim, all things must pass.
At Lyleswood, Lester was up on his ladders, measuring the tin roof and the tin-capped belfry of the Baptist church. The Minister stood on the ground and stared up.
‘Tin warped a bit, Lester?’ he called.
‘Yeh. It’s warped, John.’
‘Gonna look a whole lot finer in gray slate!’
‘Cost y’all a whole lot more ‘an the tin did, too.’
‘’S OK. We been fund raisin’, like I tell you. Auctions. That’s the way to do it. Hog auctions. Needlework auctions. Jelly auctions, we even had.’
‘Little by little you did it, then?’
‘You got it, Lester. Little by little.’
‘Same way as I built my business up.’
He was about to smile down at the Reverend, but then and there as he said these words, Lester felt himself falter, like old age had climbed up the ladder and put its hands on his shoulders. He held on to the guttering. Little by little, small contract by small contract, he’d made it to halfway. Halfway between East Nashville and Belle Meade. Halfway to the antebellum-style house he dreamed of with white colonnades and a fruit garden in back, where he’d grow raspberries. But how in hell could he find the strength to make it through the second half? I won’t, was his thought. Amy knows I won’t, which is why, I guess, she keeps going with that Yoga of hers. Believing, if she can stand on her head, her hopes gonna fall out.
‘You OK up there, Lester?’ called the Minister.
‘Yeh. Coming down now, John.’
Slowly, taking care to feel each rung of the ladder under his shoe before putting his weight on it, Lester descended. He could feel the sun burning down on his bald spot, but his belly was cold.
‘Don’t it scare you never, bein’ up on a roof, Les?’
‘No.’
‘Guess up there yore nearer to God.’
‘Day I’m scared, that’s the day I’ll quit.’
‘How much it’s gonna be, then, for the slate roof?’
‘I ain’t worked it out yet.’
‘’Proximately how much?’
‘I ain’t done the sums, John.’
‘We got four thousand raised. Keep it near to that, an’ you’ll get the tender. We don’t want no big firm comin’ in and takin’ our money. That’s the people’s roof, Lester. That’s a roof built of crochet and jelly and pies.’
Lester nodded. ‘Amy makes a lotta jelly,’ he said, ‘outta all the summer fruit.’
Willa sat on Vee’s bunk a long time, singing. Then she lay down and pulled the damp sheet over her head and went right to sleep.
Whe
n she woke, she knew something had changed inside the trailer, so she sat up and stared around and then she got what it was: the hot sun had gone and at the open windows the little thin curtains were flapping about like crazy and the whole air was cold, not like the air of a summer storm, but like the air of winter.
Willa got up and put on one of Vee’s sweaters, then closed the windows, snatching the curtains in. She took one look at the sky and swore she’d never seen anything made her more afraid, because the sky was cut in half, half hazy and bright and the other half pitch inky black, and the black half was coming nearer and nearer, like the end of the world was just sliding in over Tennessee.
She wanted to call to someone. She would have even called to Mr Zwebner, but he wasn’t outside on his chair. He’d taken his chair in and locked his door, and Willa had the feeling that in the whole trailer park no one was moving.
So she turned on the radio, hoping for some bulletin telling her if the end of the world was coming or not, but all she could get clear enough to hear through the static was the Grand Ole Opry, live, and who was up there singing but Herman Berry. Hearing Herman, she thought, now, soon, I’m gonna feel less scared to my teeth, ’cos Vee’s gonna drive home an’ be with me.
She sat on her hands on Vee’s bunk, listening to Herman Berry sing a Johnny Cash number and hoping Vee wasn’t there, at the side of the stage where he liked to be, but in the car already, coming towards her. She didn’t care one speck whether Herman Berry had liked Do Not Disturb; all she minded was whether Vee was going to get to her before the sky fell down on her head.
‘Come on!’ she called aloud. ‘Come on, Vee!’
She turned the radio down and started listening for a car. But all she could hear was the wind. The wind was getting so bad, she felt the trailer move. She felt it rock, or lean or something, like there was an earth tremor under it.
‘Willa,’ she said to herself, ‘yore thirty years old and yore about to die!’ And the weirdest thing was, old Herman Berry just went on singing the song and at the end of it the audience clapped and shouted, like the Opry was far away in another state, where the sky was normal and the sun was going down in a normal way.