Anne Tyler: A Slipping-Down Life

“It’s Drumstrings Casey, who do you think.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. Do you think it’s a good likeness?”

“Oh, well, sure,” said Evie. “But how were you — did you ask him to sit for it?”

“No, I did it at the Unicorn. That’s where he plays, same as Joseph Ballew. Joseph Ballew is my real favorite, but I think this one is kind of cute too. You ever been to the Unicorn?”

“I don’t even know what it is,” Evie said.

“It’s a roadhouse. Just south of Pulqua a ways. You can come with me sometime, I got a car I can borrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“What?”

“Are you going there tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s Friday. Casey only plays on Saturdays.”

“Will you be going there this Saturday?”

“Sure, I guess so.”

“I’ll come with you then,” Evie said. “Could I bring a friend?”

“Sure. And keep the picture, if you like.”

“Well, thank you. I don’t have anything to trade for it.”

“To—?”

“Trade. Trade for the picture.”

“Why would you want to trade for it?”

“I don’t know,” Evie said.

She pasted the picture in the middle of her mirror. Drumstrings Casey’s penciled head took the place of her own every time she combed her hair. “When we go to the Unicorn,” Violet said, “bring a camera. Hanging out with the likes of Fay-Jean Lindsay is bad enough; I fail to see how you can live with her art work.”

“I don’t mind,” Evie said.

The Unicorn was out in the country, a gray windowless rectangle on a lonesome highway with darkness closing in all around it. Cars and motorcycles and pickup trucks sat any old way in a sand parking lot. In front, beside a baggy screen door, stood a policeman with his arms folded. It was not a place that people dressed up for, but Evie and Violet didn’t know that. They came wearing full, shiny dresses and high-heeled pumps. Fay-Jean had on a skirt and blouse decorated with poodles on loops of real chain, and she twirled her car keys lightheartedly around her index finger as she passed the policeman.

It seemed to be noise that bellied the screen out — pieces of shouts and guitars and drums and an angry singer. Noise hit Evie in the face, on a breath of beer and musty-smelling wood. Someone wanted pretzels, not potato chips. Someone wanted to know where Catherine had gone. The singer’s voice roughened and he sang out:

You ask me to be somebody I’m not ,

How can you say you’re my honey pot?

“Hear that?” Fay-Jean said.

Evie thought if she heard any more the noise would turn visible.

She followed Fay-Jean through darkness, past rows of long tables and seated couples. Once she nearly tripped over someone’s outstretched leg. When they came to a table that had room for them, she found that a hand holding a lighted cigarette rested on the back of her chair. “Excuse me!” she shouted. Her voice disappeared as soon as it left her mouth. Finally Fay-Jean reached over and lifted the hand away, and Evie pulled her chair out.

“What did you do with that ring I bought?” the singer asked. He stood under a dim red bulb, moving constantly in a small circle as he sang. “You ain’t acting like no honeypot.” Besides his guitar there were three other instruments and possibly a piano, although Evie couldn’t be sure. All she saw was someone soundlessly pressing the keys. Behind them, on the same platform, a few people danced. The smell of beer gave the air a cold feeling. The rough walls and tables, built of the grayed wood used in picnic pavilions, made the building seem flimsy and temporary.

A fat man in a butcher’s apron was handing out beer. When he started toward them Fay-Jean shouted, “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” said Evie.

“How old is Violet?”

“I’m eighteen,” Violet said. “I caught scarlet fever in the fourth grade and was held—”

“What?”

“Eighteen, I said.”

“You’re okay. You— “and she pointed to Evie, “go way over. Say you’re twenty. Then they won’t ask for proof.”

But the fat man did not even question her. He wanted to see Fay-Jean’s driver’s license, which she showed him. Then he looked over at Evie, slumped against the table with her arms folded under the billowing bosom of her dress. “What’s for you?” he said.

“What?”

“Budweiser,” Fay-Jean told him.

“Same for you, ma’am?”

Violet nodded.

Joseph Ballew left the platform. The dancers remained, pivoting on their heels and gazing around the room, until someone started a record of Frank Sinatra singing “Young at Heart.” Then they gave up and wandered back to their seats.

“That Joseph Ballew is my ideal,” Fay-Jean said. “You can have your big names, I don’t care. He is only nineteen but looks twenty-five, at least, those two cool lines running down alongside his mouth.”

“Have you ever gone up and talked to him?” Evie asked.

“Oh, sure, all the time. Once I called him on the phone and he let on he was busy, but I could tell he was right tickled to be called.”

“What would you say if you went up?” Evie asked.

“Why, anything that comes to your head. You’ll see. Aren’t you going to go talk to Casey?”

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Evie said.

Her beer was brought to her in a chipped glass mug. She took small sips of it and looked sideways at the other customers.

“Once,” said Fay-Jean, “a girl fell out, right about where I am sitting. She was listening to the music and then the next thing you know had fell out. Laying out on the floor with her eyes shut. I would have been right embarrassed, if I was her.”

“Who was it over?” Violet asked. “Drumstrings Casey or Joseph Ballew?”

“What? Oh, I don’t know. It turned out to be a fit of some kind, nothing either of them bothered taking credit for. I will say this, though, she got a right smart of attention for it. They had to lay her out clear across a table. When she came to, Casey said, ‘This here is for that pretty little girl yonder on the table,’ and he played her a song. It was all wasted, though. Seems she didn’t even know she had fell out; she just slid down to her seat and looked around her for some time, smiling kind of baffled-like.”

“Is that right?” Evie said. She studied the foam on her beer a minute. Then she said, “Well, talking about attention. Would it cause a fuss if I were to snap his picture? I brought my Kodak.”

“Oh, I thought I had give you that portrait,” Fay-Jean said.

“You did,” Violet told her. “I remember it, clearly.”

“Well, I can’t see how taking a picture would do any harm. Joseph Ballew once had a lady here snapping photos all evening long, writing him up for a motel newspaper.”

Drumstrings Casey slid onto the platform as silently and as easily as some dark fish, the spangles on his guitar flashing dapples of red light. Nobody hushed or looked in his direction. He might have been anyone. Yet his face, which was a smooth olive color, gave off a glow across the cheekbones and down the bridge of his nose, and surely the audience must have noticed the separate, motionless circle of air he moved in. He hooked a chair with the toe of his boot and slid it to the center of the platform. With one foot resting on it he stared out over Evie’s head, and the blond boy ambled forth from behind an amplifier to seat himself at the drums. “Where is the drum with ‘Casey’ on it?” Evie asked Violet.

“How should I know?”

“He should be using his own drums.”

“Maybe these are better.”

“I wish he’d use his own. These could be just anyone’s.”