Rhythm and Bluegrass (14 page)

“Not often, no.”

“We’ve been getting along pretty well lately,” he said. “Is it weird that I sort of miss arguing with you?”

“Not nearly as weird as the rumors that we’re engaged to be engaged. I thought you said you would have Fred’s wife do damage control.”

“She has,” he swore.

“And yet every time I go to the grocery store, Livvy Macon looks like she’s about to come after me with a box cutter.”

“You can’t control what people flap their gums over. It’s just gossip. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Well, I’m more sorry for you. It must be very frustrating to have those things being said about you with someone you don’t even like.”

He nudged me away a bit so I would be sure to see his face. “I never said that.”

“I am reasonably sure that you’ve said you don’t like me in several different ways.”

“No, I said that you’re frustrating and bossy and a complete pain in the ass to whoever is unfortunate enough to be on the wrong end of an argument with you,” he said. “I get you, I do. You see the world as this big museum and you’re runnin’ around tryin’ to make sure everybody can see it the way you do, to recognize that something was important or used to be beautiful. It’s nice that you try so hard to make sure everybody gets a little glimpse of that. But not everything is meant to be saved.”

“I have no idea how to respond to that,” I told him.

The corner of his mouth lifted. After another long silent moment, he added, “Now is the time most people would say something along the lines of ‘I like you, too’ or ‘I don’t dislike you, either.’”

“I’m not most people.”

“Trust me, I know that,” he muttered. “Come on, we have to find some common ground. There has to be something you like about me.”

“You have very nice teeth,” I offered, making his smile spread even farther.

“My teeth?”

“Good dental hygiene is very important to me.”

“Well, that’s something, at least,” he added, his optimistic tone a little off-putting.

I opened my mouth to attempt to say something witty and gracious, but all that came out was a squeak as Joe Bob snuck up behind me and declared that Will was hogging me and he was cutting in. As Joe Bob swept me across the floor, Will gave a hapless little wave.

And then, an elderly lady from the quilting society asked Will to dance. I took a few turns around the floor with the local fellas, Joe Bob, Fred, and Jordan Tompkins, an eight-year-old who thought I looked like Snow White. Eventually, Will and I lost track of each other as the dance floor filled up. I was about to plead blisters when an older African-American man with a broad white smile claimed a two-step.

“So I hear you’ve been spending a lot of time at the library with my sister,” he said as he led me in a wide circle.

“Mayor McGlory! I’m so glad you’re feeling better,” I said.

“Ah, former Mayor McGlory, thank you very much. The dang doctor just now took me off house arrest,” he muttered. “And don’t tell Will I said this, but I am glad he took the job over. I was getting too old for it.”

“You don’t look a day over forty,” I promised him.

He chuckled, shaking his salt-and-pepper head. “Oh, I like you. You’re a terrible liar, but I like you anyway.”

I amended, “Maybe forty-five.”

“Now you’re just being a smart aleck,” he chided. “So, I hear the library is getting some check the size of a barn door that’s going to pay for renovations?”

“She’s going to pick up the novelty check in Frankfort next week.” I nodded, thinking of the none-too-subtle check presentation Sadie had arranged with the people at Bothwell the previous morning. Bothwell was giving Miss Earlene three hundred thousand dollars, starting with a one-hundred-thousand-dollar initial payment. Miss Earlene was going to wear her good pink church suit and let Fred drive her all the way to the state capital for her photo op. Since a good number of my prefabbed exhibit structures were being delivered that morning, I wasn’t able to go with her.

“I know she appreciates your help with the paperwork.”

“Miss Earlene has been a big help to me, so I wanted to repay her by helping her with the application process.”

“Well, that would mean a lot to Lurlene, seeing it all fixed up before she retires.”

I nodded. “I hope it works out— Wait, what did you call her?”

“Lurlene. Lil’ Earlene,” he said, his eyebrows arched at my sharp tone. “It’s been a pet name for her, ever since I was little.”

“She was
Lurlene
?” I asked, dumbfounded, as we slid to a halt in the middle of the dance floor.

“Yeah, she was Lurlene. I was Tom-Tom,” he said, pulling away from me slightly, as if my crazy was catching.

“She was Lurlene?”
I repeated.

The elderly former mayor froze as I threw my arms around him and squealed like I’d just won the lottery. “Thankyouthankyouthankyou!”

As I scampered away in search of Miss Earlene, I heard Mr. McGlory mutter, “Strange girl.”

How could one little old woman give me the slip so easily when she didn’t even know I was looking for her? Heck, Miss Earlene was supposed to drive me home, but everyone I talked to had a different story. She was at the root beer booth. She was calling numbers at bingo. She was organizing the raffle slips, which, for some reason, the committee didn’t want me to see. I guessed because I was still an outsider and I shouldn’t see which families wanted to use the food bank services.

In my search of every nook and cranny of the town square, I could not pin down my wily geriatric prey. I was sitting in the parking lot of the Dinner Bell, doubting my own sleuthing skills, when Will pulled up in his truck and yelled out the window, “Hey, Miss Earlene asked me to give you a ride.”

I jogged toward the truck, mildly amused when Will reached across the cab to shove the door open for me. Chivalry was alive and well in Mud Creek.

“Congratulations on tracking her down,” I grumbled. “I haven’t seen her in hours.”

He turned toward Miss Martha’s house, carefully weaving his truck through the post-party traffic. “She’s been a busy little bee. She and Miss Martha are overwhelmed with those little info slips. They’re already holed up at the library creating spreadsheets.”

“The library!” I cried, like a recently thwarted Seinfeld. Will shot me an incredulous look. “I had something I needed to talk to her about.”

“Does she owe you money? A kidney?”

“Information,” I said.

“You’d think she would know by now how seriously you take your information.”

“You’d think so.” I sighed, leaning my head against the window.

“You did good tonight,” he told me.

I nodded, closing my eyes as he reached across the seat and lightly patted my hand. I smiled, knowing that if I opened my eyes, I would see him grinning at me through the milky green light from his dashboard. We rode the rest of the short drive in pleasant silence, and I’d almost drifted off by the time Will pulled to a stop in front of Miss Martha’s.

I blinked blearily up at the old house, shaking myself awake. Will squeezed my hand. “You know, I could just keep driving, take you to my place. Have a beer.”

My eyebrow quirked. “I think we both know that more than beer would be involved.”

Will gave me his most boyish and winsome smile. “If you insist.”

I rolled my eyes, leaning forward to give Will a peck on the cheek. He turned his head at the last minute and caught my lips with his. He made a soft growling noise into my mouth as I threaded my fingers through his short sandy hair. It bordered on a purr when I gave his scalp a tickling scratch. Somehow I ended up straddling his lap, butt pressed up against the steering wheel.

I will not have sex in Will’s truck. I will not have sex in Will’s truck. I will not have sex in Will’s truck.

If someone didn’t stop me, I was going to have sex in Will’s truck.

Easing back from him, I gave Will one last kiss on the tip of his nose. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he said with a sigh, eyes still closed. I climbed off his lap and scooted across the bench seat. “Wait, what— Good night?”

“Good night,” I said again, waving as I opened the truck door and slammed it behind me. “See you around.”

“You’re a cold woman, Bonnie Turkle,” he called after me.

“But you’ll respect me a lot more in the morning,” I called back.

“I’ll be taking cold showers till morning!”

13

In Which I Confront a Previously Unknown Musical Icon

Miss Earlene stood at the circulation desk, arms crossed, staring at the blueprints for the planned renovations and the giant cardboard Bothwell Foundation check for one hundred thousand dollars.

“You know, I always thought that those overblown novelty checks were tacky,” she said, pursing her lips. “But I’m thinking about taking this one home with me and snuggling up with it at night like a security blanket.”

I stared at Miss Earlene, this woman I’d spent weeks with, and tried to imagine her as a young, carefree girl spending her nights at McBride’s in the arms of a passionate young musician. I tried to imagine her without wrinkles or worry lines, the gray in her hair, or the bifocals that hung from her neck on a long silver chain. Miss Earlene in a pretty pink dancing dress and matching shoes.

I couldn’t see it.

“Bonnie, honey. You’re staring at me,” she said, swiping at her cheeks. “Do I have something on my face?”

“You were Lurlene.” It was both a question and a statement. An expression of the bewilderment I’d felt since Tommy McGlory dropped his clue-bomb on my head.

Miss Earlene hesitated, as if she was going to play it off as a silly nickname or deny it altogether. I looked her right in the eyes and squinted really hard. Because that’s about as threatening as my expressions got.

She sighed. “Technically, I was Earlene McGlory Jr. My mama was Big Earlene. I was Little Earlene.”

I gestured impatiently for her to continue.

“My mother, she wasn’t well,” Earlene said carefully. “Now we know that she was mentally ill, probably something like manic depression or bipolar disorder. Back then, if we ever talked about it, we just said she was high-strung or ‘not quite right.’ She would go months where she was fine. She had steady work, cleaning for some families in town. And then she’d have spells where I couldn’t get her out of bed for days. When she had those spells, it was up to me to take care of Tommy, to keep the bills paid up and the house running.

“When it got really bad, I was only ten or so myself, but I understood what had to be done and I did it. I wasn’t a normal girl. I was never frivolous or silly, because I didn’t have the time. For years, I was constantly juggling—the house, school, Tommy, trying to earn whatever I could sewing or tutoring the other kids from school—and if I let one of those balls drop, everything would fall apart. On her good days, my mother used to tease me about being her serious little bookworm, and it made me want to scream. Why did she think I was so serious? Why did she think I worked so hard? Because I couldn’t trust her to take care of us. The first time I really did anything just for myself was going to McBride’s on Teen Night. I didn’t even have any friends to sit with. The girls at school had given up on me a long time before. But I could sit up there in the balcony with the rest of the black folks and listen to the music. I could watch the couples dancing and feel like I was a part of it all. I went every two weeks, leaving Tommy with a neighbor lady. It was my time to myself, my time to be a normal girl. And one night when I was seventeen, Louis Gray came to play at McBride’s. You know those old movies, when two people spot each other across a crowded room and everything stands still? That was what it was like for us. He saw me from the stage and everything just seemed to grind to a halt. I couldn’t help but fall head over heels for him.

“Louis was a Yankee. He never could understand Southern accents, the way we strung all our words together. When we said ‘Lil’ Earlene,’ he heard ‘Lurlene.’ So it became a sort of pet name between the two of us. Tommy heard him use it once. We weren’t very careful one afternoon and Tommy saw us together. I introduced Louis as a friend from town. He was so sweet to my baby brother. I still had stars in my eyes and I thought that meant he’d be a good daddy when we started having kids of our own. Of course, that didn’t work out like I’d hoped. Anyway, Tommy picked up on the nickname and used it after Louis left.”

Miss Earlene plunked down in one of the reading chairs. “Louis wasn’t a big draw back then. He was really green. His band could keep a hell of a beat, but Louis couldn’t play to save his life. The label asked George to let Louis train up for a while, opening for other acts. He sulked about it, but he got a little better. And when he was sulking, a certain young lady used to bring him a Coke and tell him, ever so gently, to get over it.” She grinned triumphantly and pulled a photo out of the album.

“Get over it?” I laughed, looking down at a picture of a young Louis grinning at the camera, a pretty young girl pressed to his side.

“In more proper sixties language,” she assured me.

“Do you ever wish you’d gone with him?”

“I couldn’t leave Tommy alone with Mama,” she said. “I knew I did the right thing when I heard him sing that song. I’d broken his heart, but I gave him his voice. Somehow, he became a better musician because of what we had. How many people can say they were somebody’s muse? You know, I’ve never talked to anyone about this. I’m glad it was you who figured it out.”

I grinned at her, trying to wipe away the moisture gathering at the corners of my eyes. She patted my hand. “And who knows what could have happened? Maybe he never would have had the success he had without that silly song. Maybe we would have slowed down, gotten married, had a few kids. And maybe he would have started to resent me. Or hell, maybe he would have kept on touring and I could have been on the bus with him when it crashed and died myself. Louis wouldn’t have wanted that. There are a lot of maybes in life, honey, and if you let them haunt you, you’ll never have a life at all. I had a good life.”

“But you never found anyone else.”

She scoffed. “I didn’t want to. I’d had my happiness, which is more than some folks can say. And it’s more romantic this way, don’t you think? A fine gothic romance immortalized in song. And I’ve been able to watch Tommy grow up, have his family. I have more than enough honorary grandbabies to knit for. I never spend a holiday alone. I want for nothing.”

And suddenly, I was kicking myself in the butt for not recording this conversation.

“Is there a reason you never told anyone else about this?” I asked her.

“It was nobody’s business but mine,” she said. “And what sort of person would run around town screaming ‘It was me! It was me! I stomped Louis Gray’s little heart into dust!’ Not exactly the image of a responsible young librarian.”

“What about a responsible, mysterious, older librarian who owes me a favor?”

Miss Earlene narrowed her rheumy brown eyes at me. “What are you getting at, Bonnie?”

“Would you let me interview you?”

My Louis Gray display had taken a dramatic turn. With a video display looping Miss Earlene’s interview placed behind the Lucite shadow box framing the lyrics, it was a centerpiece of the museum. Miss Earlene hadn’t been excited about “coming out” as Lurlene, but she was cooperative, sharing sweet little details of her first flirtations with Louis. Theirs had been a fairly innocent romance, in terms of torrid musical love affairs. The day after he’d noticed Earlene at the music hall, he’d found out her address and brought daisies to her front door. They shared sweet, secret conversations on Earlene’s back porch in the hours before her mother returned home from work.

They’d had to hide their relationship from Big Earlene, who had downright puritanical standards when it came to her only daughter, because if Miss Earlene had a life, that meant no one would be around to keep the family afloat. Big Earlene would have gone ballistic at the thought of her daughter “whoring around” and forbidden her from seeing Louis again. At the very least, Miss Earlene was afraid her mother would have some sort of episode that would scare Louis away.

Keeping the relationship secret from Earlene’s mother meant keeping it secret from most of the people in town. The McBrides and Louis’s bandmates were aware of the amount of time they were spending together, but few others were. While shooting the interview, Miss Earlene dressed in that good pink church suit while sitting in one of the prettier corners of the library. The more questions I asked, the more Miss Earlene relaxed and the more stories she shared. Eventually, she began to enjoy the idea of her neighbors seeing this new Brontë-esque side of her.

As for my own sad love life, Will hadn’t had time to follow up on his “cold shower” comments, as he’d had to travel to a Kentucky League of Cities meeting in Louisville the following day. It was his first official act as mayor outside the town. Will had played it off as no big deal, but Brenda said he was pretty nervous about hobnobbing with city officials from other cities across Kentucky. He even packed his neckties, both of them.

I felt bad for Will, all alone in the big city, not really wanting to be so far from home. The first night he arrived at the Galt House Hotel, I was getting ready for bed and sent him a friendly
You’ll be fine
text, hoping that one, he wasn’t in possession of some giant Zack Morris phone that predated texting, and two, he wasn’t entertaining some cocktail waitress in his room. He texted back almost immediately,
Should have let McGlory come. They have those portable chest shocker things now. He would have been okay.

I slid between my crisp white sheets, giggling as I texted back,
That’s so wrong.

I plugged my phone into the charger and it immediately beeped.
But you laughed. I can tell.

I laugh at cat videos on the Internet. Doesn’t mean they’re funny.

I appreciated the fact that he wasn’t using stupid abbreviated text-speak. At least he liked me enough to spell out full words. He wasn’t rushing through with emoticons and LMFAOs. But as much as I wanted to continue the conversation, I didn’t want to be the one to stretch it out. So I fluffed my pillow, wondering how the heck Miss Martha managed to get the sheets to smell like summers at my Gam-Gam’s house. My phone beeped from my nightstand.
Shouldn’t you be in bed by now?

I smirked as I texted back.
Who said I wasn’t?

There was a long pause before I received,
That’s mean.

And then there was an even longer pause before I got,
So what are you wearing?

I snorted.
Really? “What are you wearing?” Too easy. It’s beneath you, Will.

Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know.

I was using my personal phone, but somehow I didn’t think sexting with the very public official who was set against my plans for the music hall was the best idea. So I ignored the question.

You not replying is giving me all kinds of leeway, imagination-wise,
he texted a few seconds later.
And that’s kind of evil.

I glanced down at my purple flannel pajama pants printed with Grateful Dead bears. They’d been washed so many times that the fabric was paper thin and soft as water.
A teddy. Purple.
I texted back.

I had time to read four pages before he texted back,
Evil.

For the next few nights, the texting continued. Most of our discussions did not revolve around my pajamas. At first it was short little updates on what was happening in our respective locations. He wrote,
Mayor from Belleville got kicked out of an Arby’s last night in a dispute over a Beef ’n Cheddar.
I shot back,
Sissie McNabb found Sammy in the arms of Carrie Ann Fuller at the Bowl-A-Rama. The automatic ball cleaner was put to creative, horrific use.
And then he moved on to lament not being able to find Ale-8-One, a regional ginger ale specific to eastern Kentucky, as he tended to get cranky if he got overcaffeinated. And the last thing he needed was to get cranky while he schmoozed with city officials. So I told him about a gas station near his hotel that I knew carried Ale-8-One.

And when I couldn’t find anything to watch at midnight while I was finishing up copy for the engravers who would etch the plastic information tablets, Will recommended Dr. Mysterio’s All-Night Fright Fest on the local Fox affiliate. Dr. Mysterio was a local radio DJ with a penchant for awful monster movies from the 1950s. That night’s selection,
The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy
, was one of Will’s personal favorites, so he made valiant attempts to defend it, but it was still horrible.