Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

“Wow, thank you,” Bliss said. “Before we get started, just wanted to mention that there’s a yellow Chevy Nova outside with its lights on. Also, the kitchen’s closing in about ten minutes, so if you’re hungry, you better make up your mind now.” She looked down, and her demeanor shifted from casual to something more serious. She exchanged a long, enigmatic look with the six-fingered banjo player, then spoke. “This is one of my own, which y’all have been nice enough to ask us to play before. Hope you like it this time, too.”

She began to sway, her skirt waving against her body; then she counted four. The band came in behind her with practiced precision. Their tightness impressed Rob; they clearly played together often. He imagined them as young boys on a mountain cabin porch making music for barefoot girls in long summer dresses, who swayed to the music with their eyes closed just as Bliss Overbay now did.

Then Bliss stepped to the microphone and let out a long, deep wail, a counterpoint melody to the banjo and guitar. The fiddle came in as harmony, soaring over the woman’s smoky voice. The sound quieted errant conversations and stilled the dancers as everyone turned their attention toward the stage. Rob got chills that had nothing to do with the weather.

She wrapped one hand lightly around the microphone on its stand and began to sing.

The guitar kept the rhythm, while the banjo plucked a metronomic counterpoint. The fiddler wailed softly beneath the woman’s full voice.

The crowd was absolutely rapt. Even Berklee and Doyle kept their eyes on Bliss. Rob had never seen anyone so thoroughly command a crowd’s attention. Even the packed audiences at the TV show tapings had not been this riveted. The cliché said that at a good concert, each audience member felt as if the performer sang directly to him or her; here, that was no cliché at all.

Bliss closed her eyes and bent her head back, letting her long braid sway with the music. She knew that, when she sang right and truly embodied the music, she was beautiful, that all the empty superlatives slathered on her were, at that moment, entirely true. If the song was graceful, so was she; if the words were biting and yet playful, her smile shone the same way. The twinkle in her eye gleamed like the notes flying from the banjo, and she swayed like the fiddler’s bow. The clunky, flesh-bound bulk of her life was made bearable by these freed-spirit moments when she became what the Tufa ultimately were: a song. Then she slowly twirled, the skirt flaring around her, and timed it perfectly so that her hand slid back around the microphone as she began to sing again.

She threw her free hand into the air, and the band stopped instantly, except for the plinking beat carried on the banjo.

Then the band thundered back, or at least as much as a bluegrass trio could thunder, carrying the melody as Bliss sang wordlessly in a style half yodel, half blues wail.

When they finished a measure later, the place went nuts.

Rob applauded and whistled through his teeth, as impressed by her presence as by her song. He’d just encountered a whole new genre; it was fucking Goth bluegrass .

And for a brief moment, the pain and loneliness no longer enveloped him.

The appreciative noise fell over Bliss like an old, comfortable blanket until a sharp whistle stood out from the rest. Her eyes flitted among the familiar faces until, this time, she spotted the new one. He had black hair and Tufa-dark skin, although like Peggy Goins, she instantly knew he had no Tufa blood in him. He watched her with the inadvertently blatant look she knew so well. She didn’t know him, though; how had she missed him earlier? His presence recalled the previous night’s dream, and that connection sent a rush of panic through her. Suddenly the room felt small, hot, and dangerous. Hiding it as best she could, she made for the exit.

Rob leaned close to Doyle and shouted over the noise, “Who is that again?”

“Bliss Overbay,” he said with real admiration. “Something, ain’t she?”

“Yeah, she’s something, all right,” Berklee said, “and it rhymes with ‘rich.’” She finished her beer in one long drink, belched, and waved to the bartender for another.

“She just does one song and then leaves ?” Rob asked.

“It is a weeknight, and she lives pretty far out of town,” Doyle said.

“Good thing, too,” Berklee added as she took a drink of her fresh beer. “Much closer, and I don’t think you boys could stand it.”

“I have to meet her, man,” Rob said. “I have to tell her how good she was.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Berklee sighed.

“You better hurry, then,” Doyle said. “She’s probably already gone.”

Bliss saw the stranger break away from Doyle and Berklee Collins and move toward her, hindered by the crowd. It panicked her even more. She moved her fingers in a certain way, taught to her by her mother and stretching back in her family to a time when the rolling mountains grew jagged and tall into the ancient sky. It had the desired effect of hiding her from non-Tufa eyes, and she made her escape.

Rob pushed through the crowd as politely as he could. Outside, he saw no sign of Bliss, or dust from any recently departed vehicle. He rushed around the building, surprising the giddy young couple in the bed of a truck. But he saw no trace of the elusive dark-haired girl.

He walked to the highway and looked for taillights topping any of the hills in the distance. Gradually the excitement dissolved, and he realized how uncharacteristically he’d behaved. It was too soon after Anna, he reminded himself. Sure, he’d noticed how hot Berklee Collins was, but that was normal and he could handle it. He’d never seriously pursue a married woman, and he wasn’t the kind of man to inspire thoughts of infidelity in them anyway. But Bliss Overbay was something else entirely, and he couldn’t even identify what about her attracted him so strongly: her voice, her smile, her eyes, or her song. It was as if she’d simply sent out some kind of emotional tentacle and wrapped it around him as she sang.

But as his breathing slowed and he felt the cool night air on his sweaty skin, that intense hold faded. He turned and walked back to the Pair-A-Dice, his footsteps loud on the gravel.

Inside, Doyle and Berklee huddled together. Their expressions and gestures told Rob they were arguing. Not wanting to intrude, he detoured around the wall, until he tripped over the feet of the six-fingered banjo player.

The old man sat by himself on a wall bench, sipping coffee from a faded, stained mug. Even in the crowded, noisy room, he radiated a kind of earthy calm, and everyone seemed to respect his personal space. He looked up sharply as Rob nearly fell over him, and swung the cup away so it wouldn’t splash on his lap. “Careful, son. This is hot.”