Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

“You’re particular,” Bliss said.

“Found out the hard way that traveling with guitars is like traveling with kids. You can’t leave ’em alone for too long, and you always have to make sure they’re buckled in.”

Rob closed the door, fastened his seat belt, and turned to Bliss. “So. Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. It’s a beautiful spot, especially to watch the sunset.”

As they rode down the street, Rob noticed a new, odd detail about the town. He waited until they had passed all the buildings before remarking, “There aren’t any churches. I thought church was a big deal to Southern people.”

“There’s churches, just not in Needsville or Cloud County,” Bliss said. “Most of them are just across the county line. Have been as long as I can remember.”

“And nobody built any in town?”

“Have you looked around? Except for the post office and convenience store, nobody’s built anything new in years. It’s not a place where much changes. Besides, not many people actually live in town. And a lot of folks don’t like coming into town any more than they have to.”

“Like the Gwinns?”

“Exactly. Here’s what I always heard. Way back in the last century, before the Spanish-American War, a bunch of ministers came through here, setting up churches and schools and trying to bring the word of the Lord to us unchurched heathens. Around here they still talk about one in particular, Brother Bull Damron, this old ‘holiness roller’ who went around preaching against ‘love songs’ while he seduced every girl between fifteen and forty.”

“What did he have against love songs?”

“It’s not what you think. Around here, a song can be about murder, suicide, sex, torture, or war, but if it’s also got a man and a woman in it, it’s a love song. No sweet ladies in May for us, just plenty of jealousy and shame and false true lovers. Anyway, after they got a few converts, they went around renaming places, like changing Devil’s Fork to Sweetwater. But they overplayed their hand when they said our songs were the devil’s music. Even called fiddle-playing ‘the devil’s dream.’ Music’s too big a deal for us to put up with that nonsense, so we sent them packing. They tried to call down fire and brimstone on us, but we just laughed at them. Nothing’s more fun than watching a hypocrite sputter and smoke.”

“You sound like you were there.”

“I’ve heard about it so often, sometimes it feels like I was.” As if to end the conversation, she pushed a cassette tape into the old-fashioned player. Immediately, a woman’s voice came from the speakers, perfectly clear despite the road noise.

“Who’s that?” Rob asked.

“Kate Campbell. The song’s called, ‘When Panthers Roamed in Arkansas.’”

“Is she a Tufa?”

“No, she’s from Mississippi. But she is a preacher’s daughter.”

They passed the turn-off to the fire station and continued up the forested slope. The truck swung with easy familiarity around the curves, and all signs of the modern world vanished. Rob could not even see a cell phone tower on any of the wooded summits. He had a momentary thought that no one would ever find his body if Bliss decided to dump him out here.

He ejected the tape so he could ask, “Where are we going?”

“On a picnic,” she said brightly.

“A supper picnic?”

“Sure. Why not?” She put the tape back in the player.

Rob couldn’t take his eyes off the hills around them. Most were still green, but there were patches where fall had taken hold and the scabby-red leaves seemed to mark open wounds along the slopes. The woods here, he realized, had the same overwhelming presence as those behind Doyle’s trailer, only they were more majestic. They had a sense of ominous importance that he’d never before experienced. One tree in particular, its mostly bare branches towering above the others, looked to him like the groping fingers of a mighty giant drowning in the sea of gold, red, and green leaves.

Bliss pulled off the road and stopped the truck beside an enormous oak tree with a swollen lump in its trunk. This growth, easily the size of a small car, had split the bark sometime in the past, leaving two painful-looking scars grown black with time and decay. The tree shaded a concrete picnic table with a tin garbage can chained to it. “Here we are.”

Rob sat very still. The area, the view, everything was identical to his dream. Even the tree with the huge lump in its trunk. He looked around for Old Man Jessup and the other diminutive tree people.

Trying to sound casual, he asked, “So what made it grow like that? With that big lump?”

“The park rangers say it’s a fungus called oak gall,” she said. “They have a scientific explanation for everything. But you want to really see something?”

She led him to the edge of the slope. It wasn’t exactly a vertical cliff, but it fell away quickly, and a tumble down it could very easily be lethal.

The sun hadn’t lowered at all in the time they were driving. If anything, it was higher, as if time had slightly rewound for them. He squinted and shielded his eyes against the glare.

Mountains rose to the right and left like great waves in a storm, and bracketed a panoramic view of the whole valley. Directly ahead, at eye level, big crows drifted back and forth against the sun, perusing the ground far below.

It was the same as his dream. No, it was almost the same. In his dream, the mountains had been taller, sharper, younger. And the birds were gigantic, practically prehistoric.

Needsville appeared ridiculously small, a few spot-sized buildings clustered along the gray black line of highway. In fact, Rob realized, the town looked out of place; the valley should be pristine and empty, with maybe the occasional farm, but only if it was worked by people who respected and loved the place. It wasn’t meant to be settled by just anyone.

“See that?” Bliss said. She pointed to a gnarled tree thirty feet down the slope. “That hickory tree is nearly three hundred years old. It was here before George Washington was president.”

“Shouldn’t there be a marker or something?”

“So some Yankee tourist could cut it down for a souvenir?”

“Good point.”

“Besides, he’s a friend.”

“The tree’s a ‘friend’?”

She nodded. “He’s an old, tired man who wishes more people would listen to him before he dies because he knows things they’ll need to know later on.”

Rob’s mouth went dry as he recalled the tree-folk in his dream. “Poetic.”

“Is it?” Without waiting for an answer, she walked back to the truck, grabbed her guitar case and the picnic basket.

Rob retrieved his own guitar and followed. Should he tell her about the dream? Would she think he was a lunatic, or that the repeated bonks to his head had driven him slightly mad? And what would she say about the feral girl whom, in his dream at least, she claimed as a sister?

“So, why are we here?” Rob asked as they sat on opposite sides of the table.

“That’s very existential for a picnic.”

“You know what I mean. I thought maybe… you recognized me.”

“Are you famous?”

Why the hell did I bring this up? he wanted to yell at himself. “Well… yeah, actually.”

She skeptically pursed her lips. “Really?”

There was no backing off now, he decided. He said grimly, “Really.”

“In what capacity?”

“I’m Rob from So You Think You Can Sing? ”

Her face remained vaguely amused for a moment; then her eyes opened wide and she pressed her fingertips to her lips. “Oh, my God,” she gasped. “You are.”

“I am.”