Moonlight & Vines (19 page)

“Why did you never say anything before this?” I finally ask.

“I couldn't,” he says. “And anyway. Look at us, you and me. We grew up in the same neighborhood, sure, but . . .” He shrugs. “You deserve better than me.”

I have to smile. This is so Alex. “Oh, right. And who decided that?”

Alex chooses not to answer me. “You were always different,” he says instead. “You were always the first on the block with a new sound or a new look, but you weren't following trends. It's like they followed you. And you never lost that. Anyone looks at you and they can tell there's nothing holding you back. You can do anything, go anywhere. The future's wide open for you, always was, you know what I'm saying? The streets never took their toll on you.”

Then why am I still living in Foxville? I want to ask him. How come my star didn't take me to some nice uptown digs? But I know what
he's talking about. It's not really about where I can go as much as where I've been.

“I was lucky,” I say. “My folks treated me decently.”

“And you deserved it.”

“Everybody deserves to be treated decently,” I tell him.

“Well, sure.”

We grew up in the same building before my parents could afford a larger apartment down the block. My mom used to feel sorry for Alex's mother and we'd go over to visit when Crazy Eddie wasn't home. I'd play with Alex and his little sister, our moms would pretend our lives were normal, that none of us were dirt poor, everybody dreaming of moving to the 'burbs. Some of our neighbors did, but most of us couldn't afford it and still can't. Of course the way things are going now, you're not any safer or happier in the 'burbs than you are in the inner city. And living here, at least we've got some history.

But we never thought about that kind of thing at the time because we were just kids. Older times, simpler times. I smile, remembering how Alex always treated me so nice, right from the first.

“And then, of course, I had you looking out for me, too,” I say.

“You still do.”

I hadn't really got around to thinking what he was doing here in All Souls at this time of the morning, but now it makes sense. I don't know how many times I've had to ask him not to follow me around. It gives some people the creeps, but I know Alex isn't some crazed stalker, fixated on me. He means well. He really is just looking out for me. But it's a weird feeling all the same. I honestly thought I'd got him to stop.

“You really don't have to be doing this,” I tell him. “I mean, it was kind of sweet when we were kids and you kept me from being bullied in the playground, but it's not the same now.”

“You know the reason the dealers leave you alone?” he asks.

I glance toward the iron gates at the other end of the graveyard, but there's no one there at the moment. The drug market's closed up for the morning.

“They never knew I was here,” I say.

Alex shakes his head and that's enough. He doesn't have to explain. I know the reputation he has in the neighborhood. I feel a chill and I don't know if it's from the close call I had or the fact that I live in the kind of world where a woman can't go out by herself. Probably both.

“It's still not right,” I say. “I appreciate your looking out for me, really I do, but it's not right, your following me around the way you do. You've got to get a life, Alex.”

He hangs his head and I feel like I've just reprimanded a puppy dog for doing something it thought was really good.

“I know,” he mumbles. He won't look at me. “I . . . I'm sorry, Lillie.”

He gets up and starts to walk away. I look at his broad back and suddenly I'm thinking of the boy from the garden again. I'm seeing his sadness and anger, the way he dove off the wall into the fog and out of my life. I'm remembering what I said to him, that I would never hurt him, that I've never hurt anyone. And I remember what he said to me, just before he jumped.

That's what you think
.

I'm not stupid. I know I'm not responsible for someone falling in love with me. I can't help if it they get hurt because maybe I don't love them back. But this isn't anyone. This is Alex. I've known him longer than maybe anyone I know. And if he's looked out for me, I've looked out for him, too. I stood up for him when people put him down. I visited him in the county jail when no one else did. I took him to the hospital that time the Creevy brothers left him for dead on the steps of his apartment building.

I know that for all his fierceness, he's a sweet guy. Dangerous, sure, but underneath that toughness there's no monster like his old man was. Given a different set of circumstances, a different neighborhood to grow up in, maybe, a different father, definitely, he could have made something of himself. But he didn't. And now I'm wondering if looking out for me was maybe part of what held him back. If I'd gotten myself out of the neighborhood, maybe he would have, too. Maybe we could both have been somebody.

But none of that's important right now. So maybe I'm not in love with Alex. So what? He's still my friend. He opened his heart to me and it's like I didn't even hear him.

“Alex!” I call after him.

He pauses and turns. There's nothing hopeful in the way he looks, there's not even curiosity. I get up from where I've been sitting and go to where he's standing.

“I've got to let this all sink in,” I tell him. “You caught me off guard. I mean, I never even guessed you felt the way you do.”

“I understand,” he says.

“No, you don't. You're the best friend I ever had. I just never thought of us as a couple. Doesn't mean all of a sudden I hate you or something.”

He shrugs. “I never should have said anything,” he says.

I shake my head. “No. What you should have done is said something a lot sooner. The way I see it, your big problem is you keep everything all bottled up inside. You've got to let people know what you're thinking.”

“That wouldn't change anything.”

“How do you know? When I was a kid I had the hugest crush on you. And later, I kept expecting you to ask me out, but you never did. Got so's I just never thought of you in terms of boyfriend material.”

“So what're you saying?”

I smile. “I don't know. You could ask me to go to a movie or something.”

“Do you want to go to a movie?”

“Maybe. Let me buy you breakfast and we'll talk about it.”

So I'm trying to do like Lillie says, talk about stuff that means something to me, or at least I do it with her. She asks me once what I'd like to do with my life, because she can't see much future in my being a bouncer for a strip joint for the rest of my life. I tell her I've always wanted to paint and instead of laughing, she goes out and buys me a little tin of watercolors and a pad of paper. I give it a go and she tells me I'm terrible, like I don't know it, but takes the first piece I do and hangs it on her fridge.

Another time I tell her about this castle I used to dream about when I was a kid, the most useless castle you could imagine, just these walls and a garden in them that's gone all wild, but when I was there, nobody could hurt me, nobody at all.

She gives me an odd look and says, “With old castle rock for the walls.”

So I guess Alex was right. I must have been looking for ghosts in All Souls—or at least I found one. Except it wasn't the ghost of someone who'd died and been buried in there. It was the ghost of a kid, a kid that
was still living somewhere in an enclosed wild garden, secreted deep in his grown-up mind, a kid fooling around in trees full of grackles, hidden from the hurting world, held safe by moonlight and vines.

But you know, hiding's not always the answer. Because the more Alex talks to me, the more he opens up, the more I see him the way I did when I was a little girl, when I'd daydream about how he and I were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

I guess we were both carrying around ghosts.

Life ain't all a dance.

—attributed to Dolly Parton

It's celebrity night at the Standish and we have us some line-up. There are two Elvises—a young one, with the swiveling hips and a perfect sneer, and a white-suited one, circa the Vegas years. A Buddy Holly who sounds right but could've lost fifty pounds if he really wanted to look the part. A Marilyn Monroe who has her boyfriend with her; he'll be wearing a JFK mask for her finale, when she sings “Happy Birthday” to him in a breathless voice. Lonesome George Clark has come out of semi-retirement to reprise his old Hank Williams show and then there's me, doing my Dolly Parton tribute for the first time in the three years since I gave it up and tried to make it on my own.

I don't really mind doing it. I've kind of missed Dolly, to tell you the truth, and it's all for a good cause—a benefit to raise money for the Crowsea Home for Battered Women—which is how they convinced me to do that old act of mine one more time.

I do a pretty good version of Dolly. I'm not as pretty as her, and I don't have her hair—hey, who does?—but I've got the figure while the wig, makeup and rhinestone dress take care of the rest. I can mimic her singing, though my natural voice is lower, and I sure as hell play the guitar better—I don't know who she's kidding with those fingernails of hers.

But in the end, the looks never mattered. It was always the songs. The first time I heard her sing them, I just plain fell in love. “Jolene.” “Coat of Many Colors.” “My Blue Tears.” I planned to do a half hour of those old hits with a couple of mountain songs thrown in for good measure. The only one from my old act that I was dropping was “I Will Always Love You.” Thanks to the success Whitney Houston had with it, people weren't going to be thinking Tennessee cabins and Dolly anymore when they heard it.

I'm slated to follow the fat Elvis—maybe they wanted to stick all the rhinestones together in one part of the show?—with Lonesome George finishing up after me. Since Lonesome George and I are sharing the same backup band, we're going to close the show with a duet on “Muleskinner Blues.” The thought of it makes me smile and not just because I'll get to do a little bit of yodeling. With everything Dolly's done over the years, even she never got to sing with Hank Williams—senior, of course. Junior parties a little too hearty for my tastes.

So I'm standing there in the wings of the Standish, watching Marilyn slink and grind her way through a song—the girl is good—when I get this feeling that something is going to happen.

I'm kind of partial to premonitions. The last time I felt one this strong was the night John Narraway died. We were working late on my first album at Tommy Norton's High Lonesome Sounds and had finally called it quits sometime after midnight when the feeling hit me. It starts with a hum or a buzz, like I've got a fly or a bee caught in my ear, and then everything seems . . . oh, I don't know. Clearer somehow. Precise. Like I could look at Johnny's fiddle bow that night and see every one of those horsehairs, separate and on its own.

The trouble with these feelings is that while I know something's going to happen, I don't know what. I get a big feeling or a little one, but after that I'm on my own. Truth is, I never figure out what it's all about until after the fact, which doesn't make it exactly the most useful talent a girl can have. I don't even know if it's something good or something bad that's coming, just that it's coming. Real helpful, right?

So I'm standing there and Marilyn's brought her boyfriend out for the big finish to her act and I know something's going to happen, but I don't know what. I get real twitchy all through the fat Elvis's act and then it's time for me to go up and the buzzing's just swelling up so big inside me that I feel like I'm fit to burst with anticipation.

We open with “My Tennessee Mountain Home.” It goes over pretty well and we kick straight into “Jolene” before the applause dies off. The third song we do is the first song I ever learned, that old mountain song, “In the Pines.” I don't play it the same as most people I've heard do—I learned it from my Aunt Hickory, with this lonesome barred F# minor chord coming right in after the D that opens every line. I remember cursing for weeks before I could finally get my fingers around that damn chord and make it sound like it was supposed to.

So we're into the chorus now—

In the pines, in the pines,
Where the sun never shines
And the shiverin' cold winds blow
.

—and I'm looking out into the crowd and I can't see much, what with the spotlights in my eyes and all, but damned if I don't see her sitting there in the third row, my Aunt Hickory, big as life, grinning right back up at me, except she's dead, she's been dead fifteen years now, and it's all I can do to get through the chorus and let the band take an instrumental break.

The Aunt—that's what everybody in those parts called her, 'cept me, I guess. I don't know if it was because they didn't know her name, or because she made them feel uneasy, but nobody used the name that had been scratched onto her rusty mailbox, down on Dirt Creek Road. That just said Hickory Jones.

I loved the sound of her name. It had a ring to it like it was pulled straight out of one of those old mountain songs. Like Shady Groves. Or Tom Dooley.

She lived by her own self in a one-room log cabin, up the hill behind the Piney Woods Trailer Park, a tall, big-boned woman with angular features and her chestnut hair cropped close to her head. Half the boys in the park had hair longer than hers, slicked back and shiny. She dressed like a man in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, barefoot in the summer, big old workboots on those callused feet when the weather turned mean and the snows came.

She really was my aunt. She and Mama shared the same mother except Hickory had Kickaha blood, you could see it in the deep coppery color of her skin. Mama's father was white trash, same as mine, though that's an opinion I never shared out loud with anyone, not even Hickory. My daddy never needed much of a reason to give us kids a licking. Lord knows what he'd have done if we'd given him a real excuse.