Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

One of her long braids fell in front of him, and he found himself focusing on the individual strands looped and twisted together. As her movements caused the braid to sway, his slightly fuzzed mind went through a list of connections: a black racer snake, a bullwhip, a horse’s mane, and finally a hangman’s rope. A lyric struck him:

He hoped he’d remember to write it down later. And he wondered if, instead of a lyric, it was a premonition.

The split in Rob’s scalp was deep but not wide, and less than an inch long. Bliss could’ve stitched it in her sleep, and as she worked, she tried to puzzle out both why this boy had affected her so deeply the night before, and why he left her cold now that she was alone with him. He looked like a Tufa, but there was none in him; she’d been almost sure of that anyway, and now she was positive.

“So how’d you get the name Bliss?” he asked.

“The granny-woman who delivered me named me.”

“‘Granny-woman’? Your grandmother?”

“No, sort of a… community grandmother. Like a midwife. She delivered almost all the children around here, and it was a sign of respect to ask her to sing a song that names the babies.” She dabbed at the cut, then asked, “You were down at the Pair-A-Dice last night with Doyle and Berklee Collins, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. I noticed you, too. You were— ow! —incredible, and I wanted to talk to you, but you ran off before I could.”

“Once Rockhouse and the boys get you started, you’re lucky to get out before dawn. They’re all retired, they don’t have to get up early and go to work. I told ’em I’d come by, but not how long I’d stay.”

“And you wrote that song you sang?”

“Yeah.” If he noticed the slight hesitation before she answered, he didn’t mention it.

“What was it called?”

“Er… ‘Lament for the Storm.’ Silly, I know.”

“So why are you doing this instead of playing music full-time?”

“Under the circumstances, you should be grateful that I am. Besides, all anybody really wants to hear is what’s on the radio, and I don’t have any interest in playing that.”

“So you know a lot of the songs from around here?” he asked before he’d even consciously formed the question.

“Some,” she said. “Why?”

“Well… I’m looking for one.”

“Which one?”

“Don’t know. Someone told me about it. Said, ‘If you sing it, it’ll heal your broken heart, and the heart of anyone who hears it,’ and ‘It would be on a hill, carved in stone.’”

“That’s all you’ve got?”

“Pretty much.” He found himself holding his breath, awaiting her reply.

“Never heard of anything like that,” she said. The thread pulled tight, and he heard it snap. “There. Good as new in a few days. Go see your regular doctor to get these out.”

He tenderly felt around the cut. As she’d said, pine needles protruded from his scalp like an acupuncture treatment. “It still hurts.”

“It’d hurt worse without ’em.” She wrapped the towel around the bloody tools. “You’ll probably have a black eye, too. Now, let’s walk around a little, make sure you didn’t do anything more serious.”

She helped him to his feet and led him through an adjoining door into the garage, past the fire truck. They went into the backyard, which bordered an overgrown field slanting down toward the valley. Beyond that, the ever-present Smoky Mountains formed cool blue and gray curves. The view, like all those in Needsville, would’ve been breathtaking if the sun hadn’t added to his headache. The light seemed extra bright, the way it did after a summer thunderstorm.

Bliss stood in front of him to again check his pupils. “Don’t squint.”

“Can’t help it.”

He managed to open his eyes enough for her, and she nodded approvingly. “I think you’ll live.”

“Will I be able to play the piano?”

“Of course.”

“Good, I always wanted to do that.” As his eyes adjusted, Rob noticed something in the field. “What’re those?” he said, pointing at a spot where some white stonelike objects rose above the tall grass.

“What?”

“ Those. Those things sticking up there.”

“Some old family cemetery. They’re all over the place around here. This is the second-oldest town in Tennessee, you know.” Her blasé demeanor masked her frustration and confusion. What the hell are you? she wanted to scream. How can you see that graveyard when there’s not an ounce of the true anywhere in you?

Impulsively, Rob walked into the field toward the cemetery. “Hey, where are you going?” Bliss asked, following him. “Maybe you should go back and sit down for a while.”

“A minute ago, you said I needed to walk around.”

Before she could think of a reply, they’d reached the spot. A waist-high, rusted iron fence surrounded the tiny graveyard. Inside it, the ground was mostly bare, as though grass did not grow there very well. Four headstones and a smattering of foot markers delineated the burial plots, all adorned with the surname SWETT.

“So how come the Swetts bury their kin all the way out here behind the fire station?” Rob asked.

“They used to have a house here, but the family’s gone now. The last one sold it to the city for a dollar to use as the first fire station, in fact. Until it burned down.”

“The fire station burned down? That’s ironic.”

She nodded. “I was in high school when it happened. One of the firemen fell asleep on the toilet with a lit cigarette. He got out, but the old building went up like rice paper.”

Rob opened the gate with difficulty; the hinges were rusty and stiff, and the tilted ground had caused them to seize up at an angle. The grass stopped growing in a straight line exactly beneath the edge of the gate; he wondered if the ground had been treated with something.

“That’s not very polite,” Bliss said. “You don’t know these people.”

“‘I beg the pardon of the dead, should I tread upon their head,’” Rob said with mock solemnity. It was part of a poem he and his friends used to chant when they’d play hide-and-seek in the church graveyard. In his peripheral vision, he saw Bliss make another hand gesture, similar to the one he saw back in town. “Hey, you just did it again.”

“Did what?”

“That hand thing. Like you did to Queen Kong that made her stop dead.”

“I was shooing a bee.” Another insect, small and fluttery, popped up around her face, and she made roughly the same move again to chase it away. “See?”

He knelt before the tallest tombstone. It read THOMAS SWETT, 1824–1901. The letters were cut so deeply, the normal weathering had not yet obscured them. Beneath the name was an inscription:

Rob ran his fingertips over the chiseled letters. On a hill, the man had said…. “That’s not from the Bible, is it?”

“I’m not sure.” Oh, hell, she thought. He had to notice that.

He moved to the next marker, whose name was illegible, although the words BELOVED DAUGHTER and the dates 1832–1837 indicated it was a child. Beneath that was another inscription.

“Am I reading this right?” he asked. “‘Buried in a keg’?”

“Yeah. It means she died at sea, and her body was kept preserved in alcohol until they could bring her home. She was literally buried in a keg of rum.”