Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

“Mr. Quillen, I can truly say I’ve never heard tell about anything like that. Do you mean like caveman paintings?”

“I’m not really sure. Someone told me to look for the stone carvings when I came through here. Maybe on a hill?”

“They must’ve been pulling your leg. There’s nothing like that in Cloud County.”

“Is there anyone around here who’s older than you who might know of something?” He realized how it sounded, and could only hope she didn’t take offense.

“The only one who might know is old Rockhouse Hicks. But good luck getting a civil word out of him.”

Rob perked up at the name. “Does he play the banjo? And have six fingers on his hands?”

“That’s him.”

“I saw him at the Pair-A-Dice last night. He was awesome.”

“Well, if you’re feeling brave, you can find him down on the post office porch. He likes to watch people coming and going, so he can keep up on all the gossip.”

“Is his name really Rockhouse?”

“That’s what we’ve always called him.” She leaned close and lowered her voice. “When we were kids, we called him ‘Rock- head ’ behind his back.” She smiled as if this were privileged information. Then she looked wistful. “Course, the kids now, what with cable and the Internet and all, call him Rock A-s-s , pardon my French. The world’s just harsher than it used to be.”

“Sounds like you don’t care for him.”

“He’ll say anything to anybody just to get a rise out of ’em. I remember being a little girl, and him making fun of my daddy for being 4-F for the draft. If somebody had cleaned his clock a couple hundred years ago… Well, he’s just a mean old man now, isn’t he?” Without waiting for a reply, she went back inside.

He chuckled to himself. A couple hundred years ago. He loved the way Southerners used exaggeration to make their points.

He recalled the way the old man blew him off the night before. This time, Rob would use all his considerable charm, the very thing that got him through the SYTYCS? audition process when more blatantly talented performers were ruthlessly weeded out. At the time, he’d felt no remorse about it, since everyone was entitled to use whatever gifts he or she naturally had. Now he wished that the show truly judged people on talent, instead of just paying that idea lip service. He’d never have made the finals, and Anna would still be alive.

Peggy reappeared with a cordless phone. “You have a call, Mr. Quillen,” she said. “And please bring the phone back in when you finish, they get left all over the place if I don’t keep an eye on them and then the batteries run down and it’s just…” She finished the sentence with a fluttery hand gesture before going back inside.

A sticker on the phone sported the same TAKEN BY MISTAKE warning as the coffee cup. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Doyle Collins said. “Something told me you were an early bird. How’s it going?”

“Pretty good. So did Berklee make you sleep in the truck?”

“Nah, we always fight like that. It’s part of our rustic charm. Speaking of which, want to come out to our place for dinner tonight and see some more of it?”

“Do you use paper plates, or should I just wear a helmet for when she starts throwing the china at you?”

“I promise we’ll behave. And she’s a heck of a cook, really.”

“What time?”

“Seven. Kind of late, but I’ve got to replace a head gasket today and my dad’s helping. That doubles the time it takes, but it makes him feel useful.”

“Okay. I was going to poke around town today anyway. I’m not in my room right now, so call me on my cell later and give me directions.” He gave Doyle the number.

When he returned the phone, he considered asking Mrs. Goins about the howling, but decided against it. He’d seen too many movies in which outsiders encountered strange phenomena and were ridiculed by the locals. He put his guitar in its case, picked it up, and headed to the post office in search of Rockhouse Hicks.

A single pickup passed Rob as he negotiated the uneven sidewalk. It was the same one he’d seen the day before, when he left Doyle’s service station. In the bed, three dark-haired, dark-skinned teenagers stared blankly at him. Two of them, boys around fifteen or sixteen, were so thin, they reminded him of famine victims. The other one, a girl of about twelve, was bigger than both of them combined.

The brand-new post office was a brick square with bright blue mailboxes out front and a flagpole that gleamed silver in the sunrise. A narrow covered porch ran the length of the building. The plaque next to the door stated that it had been built four years earlier on the site of the original post office. Rob assumed the ancient rocking chairs that lined the porch had been inherited from that prior building.

The customer service window wouldn’t open for another hour, but Rockhouse Hicks already sat in one of the rockers. The chair creaked in the morning silence; his banjo case hung on the back and occasionally tapped the brick wall behind him. At the opposite end of the porch, a shrunken elderly woman sat working on a huge quilt that covered her lap and pooled at her feet.

“Morning, Mr. Hicks,” Rob said as he stepped onto the porch. He also nodded at the old woman. “Ma’am.”

She did not look up or respond.

Rob continued, “Looks like it’s going to be a fine day once it warms up, doesn’t it?”

Rockhouse glanced up at him. His beard hid any change in his expression. “If it ain’t the talking musician.”

“Mind if I join you?” Rob said as he took the empty chair next to the old man.

Hicks’s expression, whatever it was, stayed hidden in the creases of his face. “You one of them people coming around to see if their family tree goes back to the Tufa?”

“No, sir, I’m just here… Well, I’m looking for a song.”

He smiled, or scowled, depending on the way the light hit his face. “You can find a song on the radio, or one of them fancy lap computers.”

“Not this kind of song.”

“And what kind would that be?”

Rob suddenly felt self-conscious under Hicks’s withering, unspoken contempt. On a hill, long forgotten, carved in stone, he wanted to say, but chickened out at the last instant. He laughed nervously and said, “Ah, never mind. I see you’ve got your banjo; why don’t we just jam a little bit?”

Hicks laughed scornfully. “Only jam I know is what I put on my toast with my sorghum. Besides, I don’t reckon we know too many of the same tunes. Can you play ‘Hares on the Mountain’?”

Rob knew that the same folk song could have half a dozen different titles. “No, not as such.”

Rockhouse closed his eyes and leaned his head back. His voice was surprisingly high and clear.

Hicks smiled smugly, and then the old woman, without looking up from her quilt, sang:

This made Hicks grin even wider. “Do you know that one?” he challenged.

“I do now,” Rob said, and bent to open the guitar case.

A heavy foot slammed down on it. “This the boy you said was bothering you, Grandpa Rockhouse?”

Rob looked up. The backlit figure looming over him was broad shouldered, square headed, and the size of a portable toilet. Slowly Rob sat back in the chair until he could make out the face, and realized this was a woman.