Traveling Light

by Lynne Branard

  It never seemed to matter to me that it was cancer that left me motherless. There was no comfort in that. I was still ashamed of it, still somehow defined not by my grief but by her abandonment, as if she had made the same choice as Blossom’s mother, only took off not with a packed suitcase to hitchhike on the interstate but rather by getting sick and not overcoming her terrible illness. It had always seemed like a choice to me, her choice, and I have always felt somehow responsible.

  “Wells,” Blossom says, pulling me away from those old thoughts that I imagined I had put away but which still manage to haunt me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Wells,” she repeats. “Your last name.”

  I nod.

  “Alissa Kate Wells.” She calls it out all together.

  “That’s me,” I answer.

  “Deep,” she adds. “Deep and remembered like a friend,” she says. I guess she thinks she’s summed up the essence of my name.

  “What’s your last name?” I ask, thinking it’s only fair that she gives as good as she gets.

  “Winters,” she answers.

  “Snowmen and hot chocolate.”

  “That works,” she replies, nodding, as if she’s measuring how our names balance each other. “Wells and Winters,” she notes. “Sounds like something on the Nature Channel.”

  This makes me smile. “Whales in Winter. Yeah, it kind of does.” And then I hit the gas.

  chapter nine

  “I know a place,” Blossom tells me as we exit off the interstate and head into Nashville.

  She started driving after we stopped for gas outside of Knoxville. I was standing by the pump and writing down the mileage and adding the receipt to my zippered pouch when she jumped behind the wheel. I have to admit I was nervous about a seventeen-year-old taking over, and I was about to tell her I would drive for the rest of the day; but then I figured it was best to know as soon as possible whether or not she could manage the highway.

  It turns out that Blossom is a very good driver and I make a mental note to ask her when she was behind the wheel last, since she talked about walking to work in recent months.

  She slows down as we make our way off the ramp and stop at a light.

  “When have you been in Nashville?”

  “I came at Christmas,” she replies. “Grandma and Tony brought me along when they took their honeymoon.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “I know, it sounds weird,” she admits, “but he’d been living with us anyway and it wasn’t like this was some young virgin with her lover. Besides, Grandma said she wanted to do something nice for me since I lost the baby and still managed to get back into school.”

  Makes sense, I think.

  “Grandma thought Tony was taking us to the Opryland hotel, but he said it wasn’t the best place for country music anymore and we ended up getting rooms at this little boutique hotel that used to be a train station. From there we could walk to the bars and to Ryman and to the restaurants. It was cool. And I met a guy who plays guitar, trying to make it big, I suppose.”

  Blossom makes a turn, slows down, looks in both directions, and heads down a street. Next thing I know we’re in downtown. There are bars and restaurants and lots of people standing on the sidewalks.

  “He wrote a song for me,” she adds, but I am so interested in the sites we’re passing I have forgotten what she was talking about. I’ve even forgotten that I had planned to drive to Memphis tonight.

  “How long were you here?” I ask, partly because she seems to know where she’s going and because it just dawned on me that a boy wrote her a song.

  She shrugs as she checks the rearview mirror. “A week.”

  “You met a boy and he wrote you a song in one week?” I shake my head. “I’ve never had a boy write me a song,” I confess.

  “It wasn’t so great,” she says. “He kept rhyming Blossom with awesome.”

  “That doesn’t really rhyme,” I note, stating the obvious.

  “Right?” she responds, still driving as if she knows exactly where she’s going.

  I sit back and enjoy the ride. I figure I don’t know any better; and besides, staying in Nashville seems like it will be fun. Of course, I’ve read lots of reviews of Music City. We’ve posted stories for the travel section and Jasper spent a weekend here a couple of years ago, wrote a few columns about the Country Music Awards show. He’s always trying to get Daddy to spring for him to travel.

  He’s been scheming all year to go to California and I’ve read all the proposals he’s made, including a wine country trip and driving the coastal highway. I heard Daddy tell him that in Clayton there’d be more interest in the bluegrass festival held every year in Roxboro than there would be in some California trip and suggest he buy a tent and a banjo if he really wanted to reach the readers.

  I somehow don’t think that reaching the readers is really Jasper’s intent; but I’m pretty sure Daddy has enough sense to know that too. For a brief moment, as we’re driving down Broadway, I think about calling Daddy, see if he got the futures calendar done for the summer and if he hired that college kid who came around last week wanting to do an internship. I want to tell him where I am and ask if he wants a souvenir or a copy of the Nashville paper; but then I decide I’ll just wait until I’m ready for bed, make it a late-night call. I check the clock on the dashboard and realize he’s probably still at the office, putting the finishing touches on the final edition.

  “You hungry?” Blossom asks and I pull my attention back to the things at hand.

  I think about it. “Sure,” I answer, wondering if she was planning a stop when she took the exit from the interstate.

  “You like ribs?”

  I shrug. “I guess.”

  “As long as they’re not touching your cole slaw, right?” And she grins.

  She whips down one street, makes a right, then a left. I’m shocked that she’s so comfortable driving in a city she’s only been in once. She signals, pulls into a parking lot, and stops, turns off the engine.

  It’s a saloon, just a few streets over from what looks like the main drag.

  “How did you remember how to find this place?” I ask, unbuckling my seat belt. I pull down the visor and check my face and hair. With the windows down for the past three hours, I’m pretty much a mess.

  “Tyrone,” she says, like I’ll know who she’s talking about.

  I wait. I don’t know a Tyrone.

  “The boy who plays the guitar. I came here every day after we met to see him.”

  “You think he’s still here?” And I’m beginning to think Blossom had this planned the whole time. And as soon as I have that thought I feel that old feeling I had for much of my adolescence, the familiar one of being used, of being taken advantage of by my sister. I can’t believe I let myself fall for this again.

  Sandra used to do this kind of thing to me all the time when we were teenagers. She’d say she wanted to go somewhere and then pretend she was surprised when we happened to be at the same spot as some boy she was interested in. She’d flirt and then head off with him, a different guy every time, leaving me to drive home by myself and lie to Daddy about where she was.

  I check my face in the mirror and see the red splotches starting to form on my neck and cheeks. This is not what I want from my trip. Bringing this seventeen-year-old along was a terrible idea.

  I’m just about to say something to Blossom, just about to tell her this is not going to work and we need to get back on the interstate and go to Memphis like I had planned; but she’s already out of the car and stretching beside the door. Her arms are raised above her head and she’s leaning from side to side.

  “You want me to walk Casserole while you go get us a table?”

  I take in a deep breath. I’d rather just get this over with now. I look in the back. Casserole is wai
ting to be let out. He doesn’t care about Tyrone or why we’ve stopped; he would just like to be released.

  “Is he still here?” I ask, my eyes facing the front door of the restaurant.

  “Who?”

  Oh, she’s good, all right, I think. But not to worry, I have been with the best.

  “The boy,” I answer, since I don’t even want to say his name.

  “What boy?”

  I wait. Blossom’s smart enough to figure that one out and she’s also about to figure out this is not going to play well with me. I put my hands on my hips. Why did I say yes to this girl?

  “Oh, Tyrone,” she finally answers. She shakes her head. “I doubt it.” She places her hands on the bottom of her spine and leans back, exposing her belly. I see a long scar running beneath her navel and for some reason it makes me look away.

  “He wrote me after I left, said he had moved to Hollywood, going to try and make it as an actor.” And she laughs like it’s true. She laughs this easy, wholesome, pure laugh. “Maybe he’s better at that than writing songs. Besides, I didn’t come here every night to see him.” She smooths down her hair on both sides, tightens the rubber band around her long, full ponytail. “They’ve got killer ribs.”

  And she walks around to the passenger’s side where I am standing, opens the door, puts the leash on my dog, and lets him out. I watch as the two of them head to a grassy area beside the parking lot. I shake my head, glance around at the restaurant, and still have a hard time believing she’s not got something else planned besides dinner.

  chapter ten

  “SO, why did you turn so red back there?” She slides into the booth across from me.

  I look behind me through the glass door at the car. I see Casserole’s face from the backseat staring in our direction. I notice that Blossom has left the car windows rolled down. It’s not too hot since the sun has set and I take in a breath and turn back around.

  I shake my head. I’m ashamed to answer her question. “Just the heat,” I say, and I turn my attention to the menu that a waitress, not a boy named Tyrone, gave me before Blossom came in.

  She doesn’t reply and I glance up. She has apparently taken me at my word. She’s reading her menu and the server appears.

  “Something to drink?” she asks Blossom as she places the tall glass of iced tea I have ordered in front of me.

  “Can I get a Mountain Dew?”

  “Small or large?”

  “Large,” Blossom answers, as if that’s the only way soda should be served. The waitress walks away.

  “So the ribs come with two sides and if I remember correctly the baked beans and the sweet potato fries are the best.”

  I have already decided on a Cobb salad. I did not plan to take a road trip in order to gain ten pounds. I’m still trying to work off the extra weight I put on when Daddy and I went crazy with the free food during the restaurant reviews.

  “It’s not hot,” Blossom says and I’m wondering if she’s talking about the ribs or one of the side dishes.

  “What?”

  “Outside.”

  I’m confused.

  “You said that you turned red because of the heat; but it’s not hot out there. Even Casserole wasn’t panting. It’s cool.”

  “Here’s your soda.” The waitress has arrived and saves me. “What’ll it be?”

  “Cobb salad,” I say, closing the menu and sliding it over.

  “Ribs, baked beans, and corn,” Blossom responds.

  “Muffins or corn bread?”

  Blossom turns to me as if I get to make the decision.

  I shrug.

  “How about one of both?” She certainly knows how to work her way in a restaurant.

  “Sure,” the waitress answers, swiping up both menus from the table. She smiles and heads off.

  I hope Blossom has forgotten the question she just asked, the point she just made.

  “So?”

  She has not.

  “So, I don’t know,” I reply.

  “Okay.” And she drops it just like that. She removes the paper from her straw and places the straw in her drink. She takes a sip and raises her eyebrows at me while she smiles. In this light she looks like a child.

  “I’m not usually surprised by people,” I tell her. I’m trying to answer her question without really answering it. It’s something I’ve learned how to do since I started interviewing politicians.

  “Well, that’s where we’re different because people surprise me all the time,” she responds. “You think you know how much a person is going to tip, and the one you think will leave you a five will be the very one who stiffs you, and the one you think may not even have enough money to cover the bill will sometimes leave you thirty percent.” She slides down in her seat. “I quit trying to figure folks out a long time ago. Now I just try to enjoy them.”

  This makes me smile. It’s a fine way to live.

  “Who surprised you?” comes the question.

  “You,” is the truth.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  And she doesn’t even push for more. Blossom would make a terrible reporter, but probably a very good friend. But I don’t have many of those so I’m not sure even what that means.

  “I think it’s nice, by the way,” she says.

  “You think what’s nice?”

  “That you’re taking that man’s ashes back to his hometown.”

  Before I can even open my mouth to respond to this, our food arrives and is placed in front of us. We both agree there’s nothing more we need and the waitress leaves again.

  That’s when I try to respond to her comment. “I don’t know if it’s nice or not,” I say, spreading the vinaigrette dressing around my salad and poking at the lettuce with my fork. I glance over at Blossom’s plate of ribs and the beans and I wish I had just ordered what I want.

  “Yeah, it is. Not many people would do what you’re doing. The most some folks would do is put the box in a mailer and send it to the funeral home. You’re taking this all the way.”

  I stab at my salad. I suppose Blossom is right. And hearing her talk makes me realize that I’m not sure why I’m doing this. I have no idea what I’m going to do with the ashes when I get to New Mexico.

  “How do you think they ended up in North Carolina?”

  I shrug as I chew. “Some family member, I guess, took them with plans for a burial or spreading and then just forgot about them. I tried to find out the name of the person who rented the unit, but I couldn’t get any answers from anyone.”

  “That’s cold, right?”

  “That’s something,” I say, not sure how I feel about the ashes being left in a storage building, not sure why I feel responsible for somebody else’s remains.

  “It’s one of those surprising human things,” she says.

  I poke around my salad a little more, trying to find something other than the long pieces of lettuce.

  “See, folks are weird.” Blossom is working on her ribs. She sucks the meat off the bone. Her face is a mess and it makes me laugh.

  “What?” She grins. I think she knows. She picks up the napkin from her lap and wipes off the sauce. “How’s the salad?” she asks, taking another bite of a rib.

  “It’s a salad,” I answer.

  Blossom takes the bread off the plate and places half of her dinner on it. She spoons on beans, corn, and at least two ribs and she slides the plate over to me. “Eat a meal,” she says and takes a drink from her Mountain Dew.

  And I push aside my bowl of lettuce and dig into the gift she’s given me. Like everything today, it is a pleasant surprise.

  chapter eleven

  “I want to buy a nightshirt. I left my Willie Nelson one at home. Actually, I think it’s time to end that relationship and sleep with someone else.”
>
  Blossom has convinced me to stay the night in Nashville. She says I really need to see Printers Alley and the bars on Broadway; so we found a pet-friendly hotel near the interstate and checked in. I suspect Casserole is already making himself at home, lying on the bed watching doggie porn and ordering room service. We’re in a souvenir shop nearby, browsing through the offerings on a rack.

  “Keith Urban?” I ask as she holds up a long pink T-shirt and grins.

  “Australian country dude. I believe this demonstrates I’m moving on, exploring my options.” She tucks the hanger under her arm and keeps searching the racks.

  “You and Willie breaking up, are you?”

  “He’s never around anymore, chose Texas over Tennessee. Plus I think he has a drug problem.”

  “Well, that and he is eighty years old,” I say.

  She pulls out another shirt, Blake Shelton, holds it up and wrinkles her nose, puts it back. “His age never bothered me,” she says, in all seriousness. “Willie is timeless.”

  This girl makes me laugh.

  I step away from the nightshirts to investigate what else this store has to offer. There are bandannas and cowboy hats, jewelry for boots, rhinestone-studded plastic purses, and big shiny belt buckles: Nashville at its finest. Even though I’m usually not snooty about souvenirs—I have, after all, an entire collection of shot glasses from around the country, all given to me, since I have never gone anywhere—there is nothing that interests me in this store, so I walk outside to hear the music coming from next door.

  The street is filled with folks walking in and out of the bars and shops—couples, families, groups of young people. I can see why tourists like this town. It’s teeming with life, music everywhere you turn, people celebrating the art of guitar picking and all the stories people tell in songs.