“Give it a try.”
He leaned on it, but the piano tuner was not a muscular man, and the instrument didn’t budge. “I see what you mean.” He looked down the hall to the open rear door. “I thought you said this would fall through the back steps?”
“They need to be replaced anyway. Mr. Arcement said he would cart away the mess next week.” She ran the cable under the keyboard and around the back through the handholds, completing a loop and setting the hook. When she passed by the piano tuner he smelled gasoline in her clothes, and he walked to the back door to see what she would hook the cable to. Idling away in the yard was a John Deere 720, a big two-cylinder tractor blowing smoke rings.
“God almighty, Michelle, that tractor’s the size of a locomotive.”
“It’s the only one out in the barn that would start,” she said, tossing the cable into the yard.
He looked out at the rust-roofed outbuildings, their gray cypress darkening in the drizzle. She began picking her way down the porous steps, which didn’t look like they’d support his weight, so he went out the front door and walked around to the back. He watched Michelle set the cable hook to the tractor’s drawbar and then climb up on the right rear axle housing. She faced backward, looking at the piano in the hall while the machine’s exhausts thudded like a bass drum. He recalled that older John Deeres have a long clutch lever instead of a foot pedal, and she was easing this out to take up slack in the cable when a front tire strayed onto the septic tank lid, causing the tractor to veer sharply. Claude didn’t know exactly what she was trying to do, but he offered to help.
“I’ve planned this through. You just stand there and watch.” She sat in the seat, found reverse gear, backed the tractor off the lid, snugged the steering wheel with a rubber tie-down so it wouldn’t wander again, then eased forward in lowest gear until the cable was taut. Then she put the lever all the way forward, and the machine began to growl and crawl. Claude walked way out in the yard, stood on tiptoe, and saw George skidding down the hall, shifting from side to side, but looking as though it would indeed bump out of the house and onto the back porch. However, about three feet from the door, the piano rolled off the rug and started to turn broadside to the entryway. Michelle stopped the tractor and yelled something he couldn’t understand over the engine noise, but she might have been asking him to go inside and straighten the piano. She stepped out onto the axle again, leaned forward to jump to the ground, and the piano tuner held his breath because there was something wrong with the way she was getting off. Her rain slicker caught on the long lever and he heard the clutch pop as it engaged. Michelle fell flat on her stomach, the enormous tractor moving above her. Claude ran over and when she came out untouched from under the drawbar, he grabbed her arm to pull her up. Meanwhile, the tractor had drawn the piano’s soundboard flat against the entryway to the house, where it jammed for about half a second. The big machine gasped as its governor opened up, dumping gas into the engine, and chak-chak, the exhaust exploded, the big tires squatted and bit into the lawn, and George came out with the entire back wall of the house, three rows of brick piers collapsing like stacks of dominoes, the kitchen, rear bedroom, and back porch disintegrating in a tornado of plaster dust and cracking, wailing boards. A musical waterfall of slate shingles rattled down from the roof, the whole house trembled, nearly every windowpane tinkled out, and just when Claude thought things had stopped collapsing, the hall tumbled apart all the way to the front door, which swung closed with a bang.
The tractor kept puttering away toward the north at around four miles an hour, and the piano tuner wondered if he should run after it, but Michelle began to make a whining noise deep down in her throat and hung onto his arm as if she was about to pass out. He couldn’t think of a word to say, and they stared at the wreck of a house as though hoping to put it back together with airplane glue, when a big yellow jet of gas flamed up about where the stove would be in all the rubble.
“A fire,” she said breathlessly, tears welling up in her eyes.
“Where’s the closest neighbor?” he asked, feeling at least now he could do something.
“The Arcements. About a mile off.” Her voice was tiny and broken as she pointed a thin white arm to the east, so he gathered her up and walked her to the front, putting her in his van and tearing out down the blacktop toward the nearest working telephone.
—
By the time the Grand Crapaud Volunteer Fire Department got out to Michelle Placervent’s place, the house was one big orange star, burning so hot it made little smoke. The firemen ran up to the fence but lost heart right there. They began watering the camellias at the roadside and the live oaks farther in. Claude had rescued Michelle’s Lincoln before the paint blistered off, and she sat in it looking like a World War Two refugee he’d seen on the History Channel. Minos LeBlanc, the fire chief, talked to her for a while and asked if she had insurance.
She nodded. “The only good thing the house ever had was insurance.” She put her face in her hands then, and Claude and Minos looked away, expecting the crying to come.
But it didn’t. In a minute she asked for a cup of water, and the piano tuner watched her wash down a pill. After a while, she locked her Lincoln and asked Claude to take her into town. “I have an acquaintance I can stay with, but she won’t come home from work until five-thirty.”
She ran her eyes up a bare chimney rising out of the great fire. “All these years and only one person who’ll put me up.”
“Come on home and eat supper with us,” he said.
“No.” She inspected her dirty slacks. “I wouldn’t want your wife to see me like this.” She seemed almost frightened and looked around him at the firemen.
“Don’t worry about that. She’d be glad to loan you some clothes to get you through the night.” He placed himself between her and the fire.
She ran her fingers through her curls and nodded. “All right,” but she watched him out of the corner of her eye all the way into town. About a block before Claude turned down his street, she let out a giggle, and he figured her chemicals were starting to take effect.
Evette showed her the phone, and she called several people, then came into the living room, where Claude was watching TV. “I can go to my friend Miriam’s after six-thirty,” she said, settling slowly into the sofa, her head toward the television.
“I’ll take you over right after we eat.” He shook his head and looked at the rust and mud on her knees. “Gosh, I’m sorry for you.”
She kept watching the screen. “Look at me. I’m homeless.” But she wasn’t even frowning.
The six o’clock local news began on channel 10, and the fifth story was about a large green tractor that had just emerged out of a cane field at the edge of Billeaudville, dragging the muddy hulk of a piano on a long cable. The announcer explained how the tractor had plowed through a woman’s yard and proceeded up Lamonica Street toward downtown, where it climbed a curb and began to struggle up the steps of St. Martin’s Catholic Church, until Rosalie Landry, a member of the Ladies’ Altar Society who was sweeping out the vestibule, stopped the machine by knocking off the tractor’s spark plug wires with the handle of her broom. As of five-thirty, Vermilion Parish sheriff’s deputies did not know where the tractor had come from or who owned it and the battered piano.
Claude stood straight up. “I can’t believe it didn’t stall out somewhere. Billeaudville’s at least four miles from your house.”
Michelle began to chuckle, her shoulders jiggling as she tried to hold it in. Then she opened her mouth and let out a big, sailing laugh, and kept it going, soaring up into shrieks and gales, some kind of tears rolling down her face.
Evette came to the door holding a big spoon, looked at her husband, and shook her head.
He reached over and grabbed Michelle’s arm. “Are you all right?”
She tried to talk between seizures of laughter. “Can’t you see?” she keened. “It escaped too.” On the television a priest was shaking his hea
d at the steaming tractor. She started laughing again, and this time Claude could see halfway down her throat.
—
A year later, he was called out for four tunings in Lafayette on one day.
September was like that for him, with the start of school and piano lessons. On top of it all, Sid wanted him to fish a bottle of bar nuts out of the lounge piano. He got there around five-thirty, and Sid bought him supper in the restaurant before he started work.
The manager wore his usual dark-gray suit, and his black hair was combed straight back. “Your friend,” he said, as if the word friend held a particularly rich meaning for them, “is still working here, you know.”
“Yeah, I was over at her apartment last month tuning her new Steinway console,” Claude said, shoveling up pieces of hamburger steak.
“You know, there’s even some strange folks that come in as regulars just to hear her.”
Claude looked up at him. “She’s a good musician, a nice woman,” he said between chews.
Sid took another slow drink, setting the glass down carefully. “She looks nice,” he said.
The piano tuner recognized that this is how Sid talked, not explaining, just using his voice to hint at the unexplainable. The manager leaned into him. “But sometimes she starts speaking right in the middle of a song. Saying strange things.” He looked at his watch. “She’s starting early tonight, for a convention crowd—a bunch of four-eyed English teachers.”
“What time?”
“About eight.” Sid took a drink and looked at the piano tuner. “Every night I hold my breath.”
—
The room was cool and polished. A new little dance floor had been laid down near the piano, and Michelle showed up wearing round metal-frame glasses and an expensive black dress. The grand piano was turned broadside to the room, so everyone could watch her hands. She started playing immediately, a nice old fox-trot Claude had forgotten the name of. Then she played a hymn, then a ragtime number. He sat a couple of tables away, enjoying the bell quality of his own tuning job. Between songs, she spotted him, and her eyes ballooned. She threw her long arms up and yelled into the microphone, “Hey, everybody, I see Claude from Grand Crapaud, the best piano tuner in the business. Let’s give him a round of applause.” A spatter of clapping came from the bar. Claude gave her a worried glance, and she made herself calm, put her hands in her lap, and waited for the applause to stop. Then she set a heavy book of music on the rack. Her fingers uncurled into their ivory arches, and she began a slow Scott Joplin number with a hidden tango beat, playing it in a way that made the sad notes bloom like flowers. Claude remembered the title—“Solace.”
“Did you know,” she asked the room during the music, “that Scott Joplin played piano in a whorehouse for a little while?”
Claude looked out at all the assembled English teachers, at the glint of eyeglasses and nametags and upturned, surprised faces. He understood that Michelle could never adjust to being an entertainer. But at least she was brave.
“Yes,” she continued, “they say he died crazy with syphilis, on April Fools’ Day, 1917.” She nodded toward the thick music book, all rags, marches, and waltzes. “One penicillin shot might have bought us another hundred melodies,” she told the room. “That’s kind of funny and sad at the same time, isn’t it?”
She pulled back from the microphone and polished the troubling notes. Claude listened, feeling the hair rise on his arms, and when she finished, he waved at her, got up, and walked toward the lobby, where he stood for a moment watching the ordinary people. He heard her start up a show tune, and he turned and looked back into the lounge as three couples rose in unison to dance.
The Review
An afternoon thunderstorm dropped a bolt into Sidney Landry’s backyard, incinerating a pine sapling against the rear fence, but Sidney didn’t blink, even though he was at the window where he could have seen the smoldering stub. He was checking Amazon for reviews about his new novel. A handful of three-star reviews had appeared and one four-star written by his brother. He personally knew everyone who’d written the summaries, had even solicited a couple, but the comments still pleased him. He told himself that he was a small fish in a small bowl, but still, here he was on Amazon at last. Twice a day he checked for a new review, hoping for his first five-star fan. But today, along with the lightning and thunder, came a dreaded one-star review from someone who gave a first name, Zeno, and his hometown, Stamp, Indiana.
At the age of fifty-one, after many years of fantasizing about being a published novelist, Sidney had written about a kidnapping, a topic he figured was a surefire investment of time. The book was set in south Louisiana and was about a farmer whose son had been taken and then rescued by family members—not an ambitious or unusual story, Sidney realized. Many novels on Amazon he found to be neither ambitious nor unusual, so he figured he was in good company. He was a big, balding, obsessive man, occasionally sour-tempered and always unable to forget perceived slights. His thin skin was indeed like a dermatological condition, a case of emotional shingles, not at all his fault. Writing fiction relaxed and distracted him from his job as a low-level accountant. But the writing and columns of numbers never blended well. His office manager often complained that Sidney’s reports were both literary and lengthy, even containing an occasional disdainful metaphor about a client’s expense account.
His publisher was the Nutria Press, formed the previous year at a local printer’s office. His book drew a pair of lukewarm reviews in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans papers, and two regional bookstores invited him to read from The Farmer’s Stolen Son and sign copies. About a month after the novel came out, Amazon listed it, and, according to the publisher, sold about four copies a week. Sidney was satisfied with his success and dropped back to part-time status on his job to begin working on a second novel and a group of short stories. His wife, who was a nurse, a small woman with a long-suffering face, made enough to keep the family afloat, and his daughters, who never came around much, made more money as realtors than he did.
When Sidney noticed the single-star Amazon review, every part of his body seemed to turn to stone. Only his eyes moved as they scanned the first sentence, which was, “Oh boy, what tree died for this book?” He looked down the long, wide column of print and began to sweat. He labored through half of the review, each word like a thrown knife, down to the sentence that began, “The author has invented a world based on ignorance of his subject. I can tell he has never suffered through any type of kidnapping, because the characters show no sign of such trauma and go about their business not as if a member of the family has been stolen away, maybe never to return, but as if their brick ranch house has been wrapped in toilet paper by neighborhood children. And the prose reads like an owner’s manual for a 1951 Studebaker. The choppy sentences, chapter after chapter after chapter, made me seasick. I didn’t care about any of the characters, especially the decidedly unreal kidnapped boy, who seemed like a sitcom prig, too snotty even to be afraid of his insane captors. The author hails from the Bayou State, and his story line meanders at an oozy pace, lost in a swamp of details about the father’s employment history, about how the mother applies her makeup, but nothing about their agony of losing a child—yawn! These people are as tedious as a Kansas interstate. I’ve never returned a book in my life, but tomorrow I’ll make a special trip into town to mail this turkey back. From now on I’ll stick with my local bookstore in the mall. The scenes on the father’s farm were painful to read. The author knows nothing about farm animals, and judging from his novel, knows little about humans and how they feel. Overall, the story’s emotional load is that of a dollar greeting card. Why a publisher would waste ink on this word-junk is disorienting to the point of mystery.”
Sidney sat immobile, his face white, his fingers gradually closing into fists. He feared that everyone he knew was going to see the review: his wife, his daughters, his friends in accounting, his boss, his mother, half the people he knew in Louisiana. He t
ried to tell himself it didn’t matter, that idiots were writing reviews 24/7 all over the Internet. He remembered that another reviewer had once given Milton’s Paradise Lost two stars. Said it was too damned long.
At supper that night, his wife seemed to sense that something was wrong. She asked him if he had a fever, and he said he didn’t think so, being indefinite so she’d walk over and feel his forehead. He thought her caress would help, for he loved his wife, but it didn’t work this time. Lately, when she touched him, her hands were cold and felt as though she were testing for dust. And sooner or later she would find out what the folks in Stamp, Indiana, thought of him. He hoped she wouldn’t agree. Sidney pushed his green beans around his plate and looked out into the backyard, wishing the reviewer were trapped inside his cedar fence while he approached him with a golf club. His instinct was to lash back, as he once had when an eBay dealer sold him a wristwatch that didn’t work. After trading a series of snarky e-mails with the man, he’d driven two hundred miles to a southern Texas town to berate the seller, who stood shirtless on his front steps and glared at him, incredulous, refusing to refund a penny.
The next day at work, Gilman Raider, who had a talent for saying the wrong things, caught Sidney’s arm as he came into the office. “Sid. I guess you checked Amazon last night?”
Sidney’s jaw clenched. So this is what he would have to face for a few very long days. “Yep.”
“The guy’s a real cutie, right? Though you got to admit, the first sentence was funny.”
Sidney slid through his door and began to close it. “Yeah, he’s a riot,” he said. “Got to work.”
He avoided his fellow accountants all day. At supper he could tell that his wife had checked Amazon by the look she gave him, an expression he couldn’t figure out, something like, Why do you want to write stuff if you don’t make any money to speak of and some nobody in the Midwest comes after you with three nails and a hammer? At least that’s what he thought the expression meant. Over the years he could figure her out less and less while he sometimes got the feeling she could see through him like an X-ray machine.
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