LaVyrle Spencer: Small Town Girl

© 1997

Many thanks to the people who helped me

during the research and writing of this book.

Ruth Reed, friend

Dr. David Palmer, consultant

Connie Bennett, fellow writer

Reba McEntire, inspiration and consultant

Verse 3

Verse 4

The black 300 ZX with the smoked windows looked completely out of place in Wintergreen, Missouri, population 1,713. Heads turned as it downshifted and growled its way around the town square behind Conn Hendrickson's lumbering Sinclair fuel oil truck and Miss Elsie Bullard's 1978 Buick sedan, whose speedometer hadn't seen fifty since she drove it off the showroom floor. On the open road, Miss Elsie cruised at forty-five. In town, she preferred a genteel fifteen.

The Z came up short behind her. its stereo booming through the closed windows. The brakes shrieked and its rear end vaulted, drawing attention to the Tennessee vanity plates.

MAC, it said.

And MAC said it all.

Four old men stood out in front of Wiley's Bakery with coffee on their breath, sucking toothpicks, following the car with their eyes.

"There she is."

"She's back."

"Showin' off some, too."

"Shoo-ey. 'At's some car she's herdin'."

"What's she doin' here anyways? She don't come back too often."

"Her momma's havin' her other hip surgeried. Come back to help her out awhile's what I heard."

"How can she see out them there windows?"

"Always figgered people who needed windows that black got somethin' to hide, ain't that right, Delbert?"

They watched the sleek machine follow right on Miss Elsie's tail. The traffic around the town square moved oneway, counterclockwise, and on this lazy Tuesday in April, Miss Elsie, just off her volunteer stint at the Three Rivers Nursing Home, was hankering for a strawberry ice-cream cone from Milton's Drugstore. She putt-putted around four sides of the square at the speed of a candle melting, searching for just the right place to park; the Z followed her around three, a scant yard off her heavy chrome bumper.

Inside the sports car Tess McPhail interrupted her singing and said aloud, "Move your ass, Miss Elsie!"

For the last five hours she'd been listening to her own voice on a rough cut off the upcoming album she'd been recording in Nashville for the past several weeks. Her producer, Jack Greaves, had handed the tape to her on her way out of the studio yesterday, and said, "Give it a listen on your way up to Missouri, then call me when you get there and let me know what you think."

The tape continued playing as Tess impatiently tapped the leather steering wheel with a long persimmon fingernail.

"Elsie, would you move it!"

Miss Elsie, her sprouty white hair creating a fuzzball silhouette, retained a two-handed death grip on the wheel and continued around the square at the same snail's pace. She finally reached the corner, turned left and got out of Tess's way while Tess squealed around a right, speed-shifted, laid on the gas, and burned her way up Sycamore, muttering, "Lord o' mercy, small towns ."

This one hadn't changed since she'd left it eighteen years ago. Same red-brick courthouse in the town square, same tired storefronts around it, same old World War II veterans watching the traffic and waiting for the next parade to give them something to do. Same aging houses along Sycamore. Though the hickories and elms were bigger, most places looked just like when Tess had graduated from high school. There was Mindy Alverson's house: did her parents still live there? And what had happened to Mindy, Tess's best friend back then? That was where Mrs. Mabry used to live. She had taught geometry and could never instill the tiniest flicker of interest in Tess, a girl who had drifted her way through any class that wasn't related to music or creative arts, insisting she wouldn't need it, not when she was going to be a big country western singer after she graduated. And there was the house where that snotty Gallamore girl used to live, the one who landed the lead role in the class play the year they did Oklahoma ! Tess had wanted to play the part of Laurie so badly she'd cried when the cast had been announced. Everybody said she should have gotten it; it was only because Cindy Gallamore's father was on the school board that she got picked instead.

Well, she'd shown Cindy Gallamore, hadn't she? She wondered what old Cindy was doing now. Probably giving herself home perms and changing diapers in one of these dismal little cracker boxes while Tess McPhail's latest number-one country hit wafted from the radio behind the piles of dirty dishes on Cindy's kitchen cupboard.

Tess reran the tape of "Tarnished Gold" one last time, listening with a critical ear. Overall, she liked it. Liked it a lot, with the exception of one single harmony note that continued to bother her after listening to the cut perhaps fifty or sixty times during her drive up.

She passed Judy and Ed's house on Thirteenth Street. The garage door was up and a car was visible inside, but Tess went on singing harmony with herself and gave the place little more than a hard-edged glance. Judy and her damned peremptory summons.

"Momma's got to have surgery on her other hip and this time you're taking care of her," Judy had said.

What would Judy know about the demands of a major career? All she'd ever done was run a beauty shop. Why, she hadn't a glimmer of what it meant to be pulled away from your work midway through recording an album that a whole record label was planning to release on a date that had been set more than a year ago.

But Judy was jealous, always had been, and throwing her weight around was how she got even.

The last thing Judy had said on the phone was, "You're going to be here, Tess, and don't try to get out of it!"