Alex Bledsoe - Wisp of a Thing

The boy cocked his head like a puzzled animal. He had the right hair and skin tone, Rob observed. “Hey, can I ask you something? Are you… a Tufa?”

The boy did not respond. Then abruptly he ran off into the forest.

“Wait!” Rob cried, but the boy had vanished.

He laughed at his own reaction. Like an idiot, he’d expected the first Tufa he encountered to be identical to the ones in that famous century-old photograph he’d found online. He anticipated something far more mysterious than a bored country kid skipping school.

A Ford Ranger pickup emerged from the mist, passed over the very spot the boy had stood, and climbed the hill toward Rob. The vehicle had a camper shell and the name COLLINS AUTO SERVICE stenciled on the side. It slowed as it approached.

Rob swallowed hard. Locals, he thought. Just be cool. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.

“…and then ol’ King of the Hill, he put on that devil costume and started down the street, trick-or-treating,” Doyle’s father, Finley, said, laughing. “That old crazy Christian woman, she just got all puffed up like a bullfrog ’cause all them kids starting following him instead of her.”

Doyle nodded patiently. His father always assumed the title of any movie or TV show referred to the main character. It worked okay with things like Matlock and Shane, less well when he insisted that Bruce Willis’s name in the movies was really Die Hard, and Angela Lansbury played a woman called Murder-She-Wrote. He said, “Glad it was a good show, Dad.”

“You and Berklee should watch it. Give you something in common.”

“We got plenty in common, Dad.”

“Not too much. I ain’t tripped over no grandchildren yet.”

“Everything in its own time. Berklee’s not ready yet. She wants to get promoted at the bank before we start a family.”

“Son, you ain’t never ‘ready’ to have kids, you just have ’em and hope for the best. Hell, I was five months laid off from the timber mill when you was born, you know that?”

“Remember it like it was yesterday.”

Finley scowled. “You must’ve got that smart mouth from your momma.”

“Hey, look,” Doyle said.

Finley leaned forward and squinted through the dust-coated windshield. “Appears that fella’s got car trouble. Looks like a Tufa. You know him?”

“Nope,” Doyle said. He slowed down as they approached. “Better see if he needs a hand, though.”

The pickup truck stopped. Rob stood mock casually beside the car, radiating all the self-assurance he’d learned from his weeks on TV. The glare on the dirty windshield hid the driver, but the old man in the passenger seat grimaced, an expression that, if he’d had all his teeth, might have been a smile. He leaned out the window and said, “Car broke?”

“Yeah, it’s been out of work for a while,” Rob said.

The old man laughed, a barking sound bracketed with wheezes. “That’s a good’un!”

Rob smiled. “Thanks. I had to stop quick, and now she won’t start back up.” He patted the fender like the car was an old, usually reliable friend.

The old man spoke to the driver, who shut off the engine and stepped out of the truck. He was about thirty, tall and thick bodied. His hair was light brown, which meant he wasn’t a Tufa. He carried a toolbox almost as large as Rob’s guitar case, and the oval name patch on his blue work shirt read DOYLE. “I can take a look at it if you want. If you need a tow, my garage is just down the road.”

Rob stayed between Doyle and the vehicle, like a warrior defending a fallen comrade. “No, that’s all right, really. I can call Triple A.”

Doyle stepped to one side, and again Rob jumped in front of him. Doyle frowned, then saw the Kansas license plate. “Sorry. Didn’t realize you was from out of town.”

“He ain’t from Needsville?” the old man called from the truck.

“Nope. From Kansas,” Doyle said.

“He sure looks like one a’them high-yeller Tufa nigras, don’t he?”

“Dad,” Doyle said sharply. To Rob, he added, “Sorry.”

“I’d probably be pissed off if I knew what that meant, wouldn’t I?” Rob said.

“Probably,” Doyle agreed. “He don’t mean nothing bad by it, that’s just how old folks are around here. When he was my age, white folks didn’t stop to help coloreds. Everybody stayed with their own.”

“I’m ‘colored’?” Rob repeated, unable to keep an outraged chuckle from the word.

“That’s just the way my dad thinks. It’s that Tufa hair of yours. To me, you’re just a fella who needs help, I don’t see no color.”

Rob shook his head. His experiences observing racism firsthand as he drove the length of Tennessee had completely startled him. His skin was darker than most “white” people, due to a Filipino grandmother brought to America by his grandfather after World War II; she’d also passed down his jet-black hair. So far in the South, when he wasn’t recognized from the TV show, he’d been mistaken for Mexican or part African American, referred to as “boy,” “son,” and “Paco,” and once even actually denied use of a restaurant bathroom when other, more Caucasian-appearing tourists were allowed. (“I said it’s out of order, boy. You lookin’ for trouble?”) And now came the ultimate irony: being mistaken for one of the very people he sought.

“I won’t charge you nothing for just looking at your car, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Doyle continued. “And I know you Yankees depend on them cell phones, but you’ll have a hard time getting a signal out here to call Triple A. Once you get down into the valley, it’s fine, but there ain’t enough towers to get down into these hollers. And even if you did get ahold of ’em, they’d probably just send me anyway. Not a lot of garages around here; most people fix their own.”

“Well… all right,” Rob said, and stepped aside. He quickly added, “But let’s talk some more before you do anything, okay?”

Doyle opened the hood. As he studied at the engine, Rob looked back down the road for either the boy or the mysterious creature that had caused him to swerve. It had really and truly seemed, based on just the blur of movement, like a mostly naked girl in a tattered dress.

“Yep, it’s the starter,” Doyle said. “Lucky for you, I got one at the shop that’ll fit.” He closed the hood; the unnatural metallic noise echoed among the trees. Somewhere a dog or coyote responded with a sharp, yipping cry. “We’ll tow it in, and I can get right to work on it. Won’t take too long, and,” he added with a grin, “I won’t charge you the usual Yankee price.”

“The rental company better pay for it,” Rob said.

“I imagine so.” Doyle looked at him oddly. “You sure do look familiar. Did you used to live around here?”

“Nope,” Rob said. He hoped they wouldn’t press the issue. He was quite ready for his fifteen minutes to be over. “Grew up in Kansas.”

“Same place as your rental car,” Doyle observed.

“That’s where I got it. Left straight from home.”

Doyle and his father quickly chained the car to the truck, Rob squeezed into the cab with them, and fifteen minutes later, they pulled into the station. It wasn’t much: two gas pumps outside a cinder block building divided into a garage and a tiny convenience store. The faded sign read, COLLINS AUTO SERVICE STATION AND SCRAP METAL, with an added placard at the bottom stating, WE BUY FUR. Doyle opened the garage door, while his father shambled over to unlock the store.

“So you’re a long way from Kansas,” Doyle said as he returned. He carried a round mechanical device Rob assumed was the replacement starter.