AN UNACCUSTOMED MUSIC
Jonathan closed his eyes and listened to the water.
Whenever he crossed Dark Fork on the big chestnut log his grandfather had
felled over the stream, Jonathan stood halfway across in his self-imposed
darkness until he imagined he was falling into the roiling creek below and the
water spoke to him. He would be on the brink of understanding the liquid
language at the point he was sure he was toppling into the flood, then he
opened his eyes to find himself still quite upright above it, and the water
just noise again with sunlight flashing from its surface and glimmering among
the rounded stones in its depths.
Dark Fork was named not for the shadows that cloaked it
except at the height of a summer day, but for Jonathan’s great-grandfather,
Edwin Dark, who first claimed the steep and stony land along its upper reaches
where the creek roared and tumbled and plunged down a narrow, bouldered gorge,
so sequestered from the sun by the high shoulders of mountains on either side,
that most who knew of the place called it simply, The Dismal. The original
human inhabitants of the area believed the Dismal was a way into the
underworld, a place inhabited by ghosts and demons. Most would not even drink
the water from the stream that flowed out of it, so they suffered Edwin Dark,
pale and solitary, an outcast even among his own kind, to occupy his chosen
acreage unmolested. When he seemed to thrive in a place where there was
scarcely enough sun and soil to grow a scraggle of corn, they decided that
Edwin must be himself a devil.
It was a mystery, even to his own descendants, how he ever
persuaded the woman named Dream Eater to share his exile, or why her people
would have allowed their improbable union. Each Dark generation made up their
own stories about Grandmother Dream Eater, but the stories were more revealing
of the imaginations of a clan of inveterate storytellers than of any verifiable
history. Edwin’s children had children before the Darks knew by name the
nearest neighbors of Edwin’s own race and saw little of them but chimney smoke
on a winter morning when the trees were bare and one could see for miles down
their cove. The Darks preferred their own company above all others, and unless
they were in search of necessities like tools or wives, the Dark men tended to
avoid places where humans gathered in numbers. They were honest, hard-working,
not mean nor cruel nor greedy, but by no definition sociable. They were to a
soul passionately contrary to anything ordinary. Their forbidding, inhospitable
slice of the earth seemed to suit their perverse natures, and for generations
the broader world left them to it.
Jonathan Dark, his elders decided, would be the first
of his clan since Edwin to stay long and far from the forbidding country of
their hearts. He had a scholarship to the state university in Asheton, two
ridges away across the mountains south and east. Jonathan thus became the first
among his kinsmen to be burdened with great expectations beyond discovering and
becoming fully himself. He did not protest, but he did not wear his load
easily. He suspected he might be about to participate in a life where he was
passably good at all manner of things he’d just as soon not be doing.
Jonathan never anticipated the complications Starblossom
Dorn would bring to his young life. She came to their homestead with her father
who was inspecting a small tract of timber he considered buying from the Darks.
Jonathan, as boys will do, made fun of her name. She told him her mother had
named her after the weed that grew around their steps the morning she was born.
“What about you, then?” she said.
Jonathan puffed himself like a lovesick toad.
“I was named after the son of a king.”
“You’re too scrawny to carry around such a heavy name,” she
said, all solemn and serious. “I bet I can beat you to that tree yonder.” She
pointed toward an old pine across the yard and Jonathan took off for it.
Despite his head start, the girl touched the scaly trunk first. Star laughed,
and Jonathan stalked off into the woods, breaking any branch within reach he
thought he could damage. He never looked back. He was afraid she would see his
defeat glistening on his cheek.
Jonathan didn’t see Starblossom Dorn after that until he
rode the bus down to the county high school at Drovers Gap and glanced covertly
at the dark-haired girl assigned the seat next to him. By then she had
blossomed into a ripening young woman. The sight of her slender neck curving up
between her collar and her hair rendered him as breathless as their childish
race.
Starblossom caused Jonathan to be suspended from school in
his junior year, though she didn’t know it at the time. He watched her from
afar, never daring to speak to her, or of her, to anyone. She for her part,
appeared to him oblivious to males. Her only observed conversations were with
friends of like gender. Jonathan knew that boys were watching her. It rankled
him that some would speak of her as if she were a young ewe or heifer awaiting
inspection at a stock auction.
When Jason Embers nodded toward Starblossom in the lunch
line one day and snickered, “My boys, would I like to poke around in that now,”
without a thought Jonathan hit him square in the face. Jason was by good
measure the heavier. He would have doubtless wiped the floor with a Dark mop
but his tray flew at the blow. Jason slipped in the wet of his spilled milk and
went down, cracking his head on the corner of a bench and rendering himself
unconscious. Fortunately, no lasting damage was done. Jason spent a few days at
home recuperating from a mild concussion, and both combatants were suspended
from classes for a week. When they were allowed back, after stern warning and
threat of permanent expulsion in the event of recurrent hostilities, neither
ever mentioned the incident again, and their friends feared to bring up the
subject in their presence. The altercation only ensured that Starblossom
remained studiously incognizant of both participants. When Wallace Keller, son
of Drovers Gap’s only practicing attorney, took a polite fancy to her, she
encouraged his attention, and Jonathan gave up whatever hopes he might have
nurtured to ever find her favor.
~
No real road led to Dark Fork from anywhere. A rough track
barely fit for a tractor provided their tenuous connection with the larger
world. The school bus stopped where this trail met the county road two miles
down the mountain, and Jonathan and Starblossom walked home from there. Every
day, she would charge ahead, daring the boy to keep her company, and Jonathan
would hang back, content to catch a glimpse of his heart’s desire at every
bend. After a mile, he passed her house, and his long legs made better time the
rest of the way. One rainy September afternoon, Starblossom slipped getting off
the bus and fell sprawling in the mud, ruining the new dress her mother had
made for her, and sending her books and papers flying across the puddles. The
driver, a scrawny old bootlegger named Silas Sykes, looked out the door,
“Youns all right there?”
Starblossom limped to her feet, wiped futilely at her
muddied dress, and with tears tracing down her face, answered in a voice
trembling with more rage than hurt,
“Don’t you mind, Sykes, I’m fine.”
Jonathan stepped down behind her. Silas closed the door, and
the younger children pointed and laughed as the bus pulled away. Without a
word, Jonathan gathered up the scattered books, put them back into her bag.
When he saw she was in pain, he shouldered the bag himself and held out his
hand.
“Don’t you touch me, Jonathan Dark,” she spat at him, angry
for no reason except he had been witness to the spectacle she had become.
“Touch me, then. You’re hurt,” he answered. Starblossom put
her hand on his shoulder, and they hobbled away up the path until Jonathan saw
a sapling small enough for him to cut with his pocketknife, but stout enough to
keep his companion upright.
“Wait,” he whispered. When he handed her the walking stick,
carefully cut and trimmed, they went on. Starblossom didn’t protest when he put
out a hand to steady her on a rough patch, or when, once they reached her
house, he carried her books to the porch.
“If you’ll wait up on me Monday,” he said, “I’ll tote your
bag for you to the bus, only if your foot ain’t better, understand.”
Starblossom offered no word at all but met his gaze and nodded. Jonathan went
on his way back to the Fork, sensing that something had changed between them,
without any vague notion of exactly how or what. The two days between Friday
and Monday stretched longer than long. He thought Starblossom, muddy and lame
and angry at life, more beautiful than ever he’d seen her.
Jonathan Dark never meant to hurt anyone. Even after it
was over, he could not have said who took advantage of whom. When Starblossom
invited him on a picnic, an afternoon in her company was all that was in his
mind. They spread their food on a flat boulder beside the little waterfall
above the crossing log over Dark Fork, just beyond sight of the path. The first
kiss was Starblossom’s idea. The second was Jonathan’s. Their swim in the pool
at the foot of the fall was a conspiracy. Afterward, they lay in the sun drying
on the warm rock. Starblossom’s taut breasts and flat belly drew Jonathan’s
gaze until he could see nothing else.
He reached over and lay his hand in the hollow just beneath
her ribs and felt her life under his palm, throbbing and surging like the
stream beside them. When she took his hand in hers and pushed his fingers down
to the moist nest between her thighs, they turned to one another and lost
themselves in mutual exploration and ecstatic discovery.
Jonathan Dark was walking Starblossom Dorn home one last
time, although this trip, there were no books to carry. “What have I done
wrong, Star?”
“It’s Starblossom. You know that. My name is Starblossom.”
Jonathan, frustrated almost to tears, willed his voice
steady as he answered, “but you were my Star, and I was your Jonny until
graduation. Then all summer you treat me like a stranger. What did I do?
Starblossom’s face flushed. “You’re going off to college.
I’m staying here. Everything will change now.”
“But I’m coming back. We talked about that. We’ve given
ourselves. I’ll always come back to you.”
Starblossom shook her head, looked away, wiped her face with
the back of her hand. “Go and forget about me. I would only hold you back.”
Jonathan would have said more, but Starblossom ran on ahead. “Go. Leave me to
myself!” she shouted at him without looking back lest he see her terror
streaming down her face.
Jonathan threw up his hands like a plea for heaven’s
intervention, but he did not run to catch the fleeing Star. It wasn’t
anything you did, my dear foolish boy, Starblossom screamed inside herself
as she ran. It was what we did that day. It was our only day. I wish now
there had been others, that I could carry more sweet memories to my end.
When she reached her house, Starblossom kept running. Nobody
was out to see her pass and call her back. She ran until her chest ached and
her stomach hurt. She pressed against it with her hand. Her stomach always hurt
of late. She kept it bound tightly so the life growing inside her wouldn’t be
public. She walked on until she came to the log across Dark Fork, and once
across, she left the path and made her way up to the little waterfall that had
witnessed her undoing. She was still sitting there, adding her own dark tears
to the flow of the Fork, when Jonathan crossed the creek later. She heard him
stop and call her name. She didn’t answer, though she half-wished she had after
she heard him walk on up the path toward his own Darks.
Starblossom was not ignorant of her own body. When the
moon had turned twice without drawing her blood, she confided her fears to her
friend Martha. Martha whispered the name of Lizzie Charon. The old herb woman
lived up on a high bald accessed by no road at all, just a single trace for
two-legged or four-legged beings afoot. Starblossom knocked on the door and
waited. While she summoned nerve to knock again, it opened, and a wizened face
appeared out of the shadows beyond. Starblossom would have turned and fled away
home, but two eyes bright and sharp as a hawk’s nailed her fast where she
stood. Lizzie’s thin mouth shaped something resembling a smile, radiating
unfathomable calm while she held out her hand. When Starblossom took it, Lizzie
led the girl into her dark little house and sat her by the fire, then sat herself
before her guest, their knees nearly touching.
Against the silence, the flickering fire sizzled and cracked
and sighed like a flock of starlings taking flight. Other eyes than Lizzie’s
were watching her from the shadows in a corner, throwing back at her the hot
glow from the hearth. A large hulking bird, an owl perhaps. She couldn’t tell.
Her heart raced and her breath shallowed on the verge of panic, then slowly she
began to settle into Lizzie’s peace. She stilled and waited, patient beyond
expectation. After a minute or an hour, the Herb Woman spoke,
“Was it love or lust? Did he force himself?”
For no reason she could think, Starblossom wasn’t surprised
that Lizzie seemed to know without asking why she had come. She felt that she
was seen through and through by this old crone, that there was no way now to be
but honest. “I invited him in. Had he not been so willing, I might have begged
him for it.”
“And has young Dark refused his child?” Starblossom had left
all her secrets at the door.
“He doesn’t know, and I can’t tell him. He would come to
hate the burden of us.”
When Lizzie reached out and touched her knee, a warm current
welled through Starblossom, resolving in tears. Lizzie leaning close enough
that Starblossom could feel her breath, whispered, “and will he love you longer
if you pluck from life the fruit of all his longing for you?” Starblossom
stared at the old woman. Lizzie drew back and shook her head. “That is what you
want from me, isn’t it? I can’t give you what you’ve come for. You took to yourself
a right-hearted young man. He wants no more than to be true to you. Deny him
that, whatever you think it might cost him, and there will be no end in this
life to his hurt or yours.”
“But you don’t understand,” hissed Starblossom. “He’s
leaving Dark Fork.”
“Then you best go with him if he does. Go or stay wherever,
you will be together.”
Starblossom stretched out her hands, knelt like a supplicant
at a chancel rail. “Please help me. Please?”
Lizzie took the young hands in her old ones and stood, her
own eyes glistening with tears when she said, “I’ve given you what I have. Let
your Jonny give you what is your right and his.”
“I can’t. I can’t. I will not hold him back from his life.”
Choking on her sobs, Starblossom ran out the door. As she fled across the yard
toward the concealing trees, she heard Lizzie’s door slam behind her. Whether
it was the old woman, or the wind that closed it, Starblossom didn’t know or
care.
Lost in the song of the little waterfall, Starblossom
played her visit to Lizzie over in her mind. The old woman had helped others,
why not her? She knew Lizzie was right. If she told Jonathan about their child,
he would abandon his dreams and stay to care for them both. But his family
would judge she had ruined his life. The Darks kept long score. At every given
opportunity, they would remind Jonathan of all he had sacrificed for love and
pity’s sake, until at last he would come to agree with them that Starblossom,
or any woman, was unworthy of such cost.
“No. I can’t,” she whispered to the gathering dusk. She took
off her dress and folded it neatly on the rock beside her. Her sister had
envied her for it and could have it now. Then Starblossom slipped into the
pool, and when she had accustomed to the chill, lay back into the dark water.
When he felt his vertigo build to certainty, Jonathan
Dark opened his eyes. As he expected, he was still upright on the chestnut log.
Below him, flashing amid sunstruck waves and ripples, the bright stones of the
creek bed, and among them, brilliant under the morning, an object he recognized
even before he fetched a branch from beside the stream and snared it to his
hand. He held it a moment, dangling from its broken chain, the locket he had
given Starblossom for her birthday, back in the spring. “So, she thought no
more of me than that,” he said aloud to the day, and threw the trinket as far
down the creek as he could.
This seemed to be Jonathan’s day for rejection. He had
planned to tell Star today what he told his family the night before, that he
had never wanted to go to university, and wouldn’t. After a long silence, his
father said, “You’re old enough to be your own man. But you’ll have to do it
someplace else.”
Jon had anticipated this turn. Jason Embers was working on a
carpentry crew in Poplar Spring, building summer houses for rich people, and
said there was a job there for Jonathan if he wanted it. Jonathan broke into a
loping run. He didn’t want to miss the bus to Poplar Spring.
Drowning turned out to be not so easy as Star imagined
from the picture of Hamlet’s Ophelia in her literature textbook. She heard
thunder from a storm somewhere beyond the ridge as she settled into the cold
creek. While she contemplated her final act, the water was rising. Somewhere up
the mountain the deluge had already commenced.
As soon as the cold became tolerable, Star held her breath,
closed her eyes and slipped beneath the surface. She thought it would be quiet
underwater, but she could hear the rush and tumble of the stream loud in her
ears. She opened her eyes, let out her breath, watched the last of her life
bubble past her face and sail away on the current. Her world reduced to a green
murmur. A vacant peace blossomed in her mind. She was ready now.
But the first flood of water through her head and throat
propelled her sputtering and gasping toward the light. If she wanted to die,
some soul within her pined to live. Star scrambled and grasped, fell and
floundered, barking hands and feet, elbows and knees. She fixed her eyes on the
blue dress by the shore and plunged toward it, but the quickening stream swept
her feet out from under her and hauled her downstream. Something snagged her
birthday necklace, and by the time she reached for it the chain had parted, and
it was gone. The footlog across the fork passed over her like the shadow of a
huge bird, wings spread wider than her vision.
She might have drowned as she had plotted had not a mossy
boulder midstream stopped her short, stealing her breath as it impacted her
back. Star flailed blindly. Her hand caught a limb of a fallen maple tumbled
crown-first into the water. She held on, found a purchase among the tangle for
her feet, and as soon as she could see again, made her way branch to limb,
until she gained the trunk. She lay with her face resting against the rough bark
while the rain washed all her sins away. When the rising water touched her
dangling palm, she inched along the nearly horizontal trunk until she reached
the bank.
Shivering, gasping from the cold, all but naked to the
elements, Star was nevertheless alive and glad of it. When she reached home,
she climbed into the barn-loft and hid in the hay until she saw her father
leave. Then she came down and limped toward the house to face her mother’s
wrath and beg her mercy, having already abandoned all hope of forgiveness and
restoration.
Showers slathered the windows off and on while the bus
swung and strained between close hills along a road hugging a silty river,
still high and boisterous from last night’s storms. By the time the dozen or so
passengers were jostled to stillness in front of the courthouse in Poplar
Spring, the clouds had broken and run away down a sky blue as a robin’s egg.
Jonathan filed off the bus with three other strangers to
stand like mourners at a burial, waiting for the driver to retrieve their
luggage from underneath the coach. A young woman with a little boy and a
solitary old man received their belongings and walked away. The driver secured
the luggage hatch, climbed back behind the steering wheel, and when he was
satisfied the town was not going to grant him any paying passengers, closed the
door and carried away the souls remaining in his custody who had better places
to go.
Jonathan stood with his rucksack watching the bus swerve off
through the town toward more mountains beyond. Then he turned and stared at
this place where he could claim no belonging. He had no idea what he was
supposed to do next, or why he had talked himself into coming here in the first
place. He pulled from his pocket the wrinkled envelope bearing the scribbled
address of Jason Embers. Clueless as to where to find his purported friend,
Jonathan hoped it wasn’t too far to walk. He didn’t have much money, certainly
not enough to waste on a cab.
He was still pondering where to start asking directions when
the blast of a car horn provoked a momentary mingling of panic and annoyance. Behind
him, a muddy Ford sat muttering in place next to the sidewalk. Through the
cracked windshield, Jason’s sunburned face leered at him, the mouth bowed in a
satisfied grin. Not for the first time, Jonathan suppressed an unreasoned urge
to push that smile as far down Jason’s throat as his arm could reach.
“No, Ma, you
don’t understand. I invited this. Jonny only did what I wanted of him. If he
knew, he would throw his life away for me. I couldn’t bear that.”
Irene Dorn shook her head, “It wouldn’t be throwing his life
away to take his responsibility for you. You have a life, too, one more than
your own. You didn’t get into this fix without his help.”
“I can’t tell him, Ma. Not now. He’s just left for college.”
Irene held Star’s face between her palms, gazed intently
into her daughter’s eyes, “You know what your father will do when he finds
out.”
Star wondered now if her drowning would have caused less
suffering than her life. “He would kill Jonny, Ma. Oh, what am I going to do?”
“For now, you’re not going to do anything. I’m going to
write to your Aunt Margaret in Asheton. She will write back and tell me she is
not well and needs someone to stay and help her cope for a while. I’ll show the
letter to your father, and he’ll likely suggest that we send you to Asheton to
watch after my sister. If he doesn’t, I will. My sister has experience of the
world. You will be useful to her while you are there, and she will assist you
through your present difficulties. But, Star…”
“Yes, Ma?”
“Sooner than later, you are going to tell Jonathan Dark what
he has done for you and give him a chance to be a proper man. Do you understand
me, girl?”
“I understand, but Ma…”
“No buts and maybe’s left to you, daughter. You’ve played
away your choices. All you’ve left is necessity. Now go clean yourself up and
get on some proper clothes before your father gets back here and sees you so
ungathered. While you tend to your state, I’ll make you some soup. You’re
shivering, pale as a bone. It wouldn’t do to have pneumonia achieve what the
creek didn’t.”
Starblossom Dorn pulled the old quilt tighter around her
shoulders and stared at the fire. She was emptied now of all will and questions
and hope. “Yes, Ma,” was all she had left to say.
~
Jonathan Dark opened his eyes and stared at the rose vines
twining up the wallpaper for a full five seconds before Jason Embers’ snoring
from the bed across the room confirmed his situation.
Charlene Edgerton, their landlady, seemed skeptical at
first, when her sometimes boisterous and perpetually late-paying boarder
introduced his friend from over the mountain. Jonathan’s shy charm eventually
wore down her caution. Jason had a spare bed in his room. For an extra twenty
dollars a month, they could share the room.
“Remember,” the old woman said, struggling to look sterner than
she was accustomed to presenting herself. “No liquor, no girls, no loud music.
I keep a quiet and restful house for hard-working decent people who need their
night’s sleep. Breakfast is at seven. If you’re late, I can’t promise more than
a cold biscuit.”
Jonathan looked at the big clock ticking on the dresser. He
had fifteen minutes to prevent a cold biscuit. When he turned the faucet in the
bathroom, air in the pipes set a grand thumping in the walls, immediately
answered by a shoe or a fist pounding against the other side. When his face was
clean, Jonathan stared through his headache at his reflection in the mirror.
He’d have to shave after breakfast. Clothed and on his way to sustenance, he
passed Jason, still sitting groggily in his bed.
“Save me some,” he said as Jon closed the door behind him.
Last night, Jason had been intent on showing him the town,
even though Jon was more eager to get acquainted with his bed, and Jason had
insisted on buying Jon a few drinks at the bar down the street. Jon wasn’t a
drinker. Two drinks had been enough to make him wish he’d kept his throat dry.
Jon’s headache now was his sole souvenir of the evening’s festivities. He
couldn’t remember what sort of concoction he’d imbibed but made a mental note
to avoid it in the future.
Whatever it was,
Jason had consumed in greater quantity, and it had put him in a hilarious mood,
although he turned suddenly sullen when Jon tried to shush him coming into the
house so they wouldn’t disturb Mrs. Edgerton. By the time Jon found the key in
Jason’s pocket and unlocked the door to their room, Jason was leaning against
the wall, snoring softly to himself. Jon guided him to his bed, and Jason
collapsed face down to lie like a dead dog until morning.
Starblossom Dorn waited by the road nearly an hour
before the bus rounded the curve, and when she raised her hand, slowed and
sighed to a stop. She picked up her suitcase, heavier than when she left home
that morning, and climbed aboard, grateful her father had not been there to see
her leaving. He would have been full of admonition and questions, would never
have spoken the blessing Star wanted to hear, the blessing he would have
bestowed freely had she been his son. It was easier to be gone without goodbye.
“Where you to, Missey?” said the driver, speaking as if she
were a child rather than with child. For now, her secret was still hers to
keep.
“Asheton,” she said, handing over a wrinkled ten-dollar bill
from her mother’s cornmeal jar.
“You’ll have to switch buses in town, but you won’t need to
wait long. Everybody’s on time today,” the driver said, handing Star her
change. “I ought to stow that bag, but it ain’t far now, just keep it by your
seat.”
Star folded her money in her purse, scanned the eight other
passengers, nobody she knew. She took the nearest seat, had it to herself, and
pulled her suitcase in beside her as she sat by the window. Before she had time
to think on her transgressions or contemplate her future, the bus was jolting
through the town, past the school where she would never set foot again, past
the Methodist church and Owens Hardware and Sundries. For an instant, she
thought she saw Jonathan Dark going into the store as the bus swept by, but she
knew it couldn’t have been him. He’d be away at State College by now. A part of
her life that she’d best pretend to herself she’d forgotten, although she knew
she never could. The memory was growing inside her now day by day, becoming her
future.
After the bus deposited her in Drover’s Gap, Star sat on the
bench in front of the post office, courting the scant shade of an ailing maple,
waiting for another bus to Asheton, and praying nobody she knew would see her
sitting there. The driver said her wait would be about thirty minutes, and
after twenty, Martha Thompson, her sister from another mother, the only living
soul on earth who knew all Star’s secrets, waved from across the street,
calling Star’s name loud enough for the whole town to hear.
“Blossom. Blossom, honey, how youns been, girl?” Star was
glad there would be nobody in Asheton prone to call her Blossom.
At the first break in traffic, Martha darted across to
Star’s bench, hugged her so tight Star wondered if she could feel the roundness
below her ribs. “Where you off to? Martha blurted, without waiting for an
answer. “You still sweet on that Jonny Dark?”
“I ain’t seen Jonny in a while, Martha. He’s off at State
now, I reckon. Probably forgot all about this little mountain child already.”
Martha’s face clouded with puzzlement for an instant, then
brightened, “I can’t say what he’s forgot, but he didn’t go to college. Jason
Embers told me Jon might be working with him building houses for Cliffbilt
yonder to Poplar Spring. You really haven’t seen him in a while, have you?”
Martha eyed the suitcase, leaned close and lowered her voice, even though
nobody else shared the bus stop, “You ain’t still in trouble, are you,
Blossom?”
A bus turned the
corner and started up the street toward them. The sign above the windshield
said, Asheton. “I have to catch my bus now, Martha,” Star said. holding
her suitcase with both hands in front of her, like a shield.
~
“Hey, Jonnyboy, You ready to go yet?” Jason Embers
hollered even in the quiet. Jon thought his roommate might burst if he ever had
to whisper.
“I’m going to stay in tonight, Jason. I have a letter to write.”
Jason hooted, slapped Jon hard between his shoulders, “I bet
you’re writing to that Blossom Dorn, begging her to take you back.”
“I told you, there’s nothing now between Star and me. I’m
writing to my ma. There’s no phones up on the Fork.”
Jason snickered. “You’re always writing to your ma. Why
don’t you write to your dad sometimes?”
“He wouldn’t be interested.”
“Come on,” Jason said, “We haven’t done anything lately
worth writing home about. I’ll buy the beer, unless you think you’re too good
to drink with me.”
Jonathan sighed, finally looked up from the book he was
holding, “I’m not the least bit good. I’m just tired. We go out every night and
drink and talk to girls I don’t want to know, and I go to work next morning
hung-over. That’s no way to live.”
Jason’s laugh sounded like rocks falling into a wheelbarrow.
“You get to know them better, you wouldn’t have to talk so much. You ought to
have been a preacher, Jon. You think it’s a sin to have a good time.”
“There’s lots of ways to have a good time, Jason.”
Jason put a hand on each shoulder, put his face close and
stared hard into Jon’s eyes. “You know what, Mister Dark, sir, I think you just
don’t want to be seen in my company.”
Jon pushed the hands away. Jason’s breath smelled like he
already had a head start on the evening. Jon reached up, patted Jason on the
cheek, a gesture calculated to irritate. “Let’s go, then,” he said.
~
The bus crossed the mountain only thirty crooked miles
to Asheton, but to Starblossom Dorn, it looked and sounded and smelled like
another world. She had been here twice before on school field trips, once to an
exhibit at the art museum, and once to tour a stately castle proclaimed to be
the largest private residence ever built in America. It was a grand and
glorious ostentation, but Star’s reaction had been that it must be lonely to
live in such a big house.
Aunt Margaret was waiting at the bus station. Star had been
a child the last time she saw her aunt. She’d thought Margaret Boone the most
beautiful and exotic human she’d ever encountered. Margaret still looked
beautiful, but to Star, she also looked old. One Day, Star thought to herself, You’ll
look just like that. The thought didn’t frighten Star at all. Old or not,
Aunt Margaret looked like a woman who owned her life, and if family gossip was
to be believed, she did.
Margaret took hold of her, hugged Star mightily, squeezing
the breath out of her, then stepped back, beaming as if they were on their way
to a party. “Look at you now. What a grand young woman you’ve become. You must
be starving.” With that, Margaret took possession of Star’s suitcase and strode
away, beckoning the younger woman to follow, “Let’s not stand in the hot sun
all day, we’ve places to do and things to go.”
Margaret stopped behind a tan Plymouth, lifted the trunk and
tossed in Star’s suitcase, then unlocked the passenger door and held it while
she ushered Star inside, as if she were a chauffeur. “Watch your toes and
fingers,” she lilted, and slammed the door hard enough to rock the car. Star
sat bemused and unspeaking while her aunt went around and slid in behind the
wheel.
“You have a car?” queried Star, finding her voice at last.
“No dear,” said Aunt Margaret, turning the key in the
ignition. “But it’s too far to walk and this one looked nice. I thought we’d
just borrow it for a while.” She glanced at Star, who clutched her seat and
stared straight ahead as if she expected to be ejected from the vehicle. “Of
course I have a car, dear. One has to get around, don’t you know. Everyone has
a car.”
“We don’t have a car,” said Star, almost in a whisper.
“How quaint,” Margaret said, “why not?”
“I don’t know. I guess there’s just no place to go. Pa has
an old truck, but it doesn’t run half the time. If we need to go to Drovers
Gap, we just take the bus.”
Margaret kept her eyes on her road, reached across, patted
Star’s hand and chatted on brightly,
“Well, Darling, in Asheton there’s more places to go than
any sane mind would ever wish to. You’ll be wanting to learn to drive. I’ll get
Robert to teach you.”
“Robert?”
“Robert is…well, Robert is a business associate and my
closest friend. You’ll be seeing a lot of him. He’ll like you and you’ll like
Robert. Yes, I think Robert would be an excellent driving instructor for you.”
“Why can’t you teach me, Aunt Margaret?
Margaret hit the brakes suddenly, stopping a foot short of
the van halted just ahead. Star got her hands in front of her just in time to
prevent her chest colliding with the dash.
“Because, dear one,” Margaret continued as if nothing had
happened, “I’d very much like us to still be friends after you’ve learned to
drive.”
~
“Don’t you want to talk to me?” the dark-haired young woman
said, a declaration more than a question.
Jon looked up from his warm glass, still half full of beer,
“Sorry,” he murmured, as much to himself as to the woman, “I don’t have a lot
to say.”
She sighed, patted him on the arm, slid off her stool and
wandered away through the smoky haze, trolling for more profitable prey. The
cloudy air swirled visibly around her as she moved. Jon thought for just an
instant of the mist drifting over Dark Fork after a rain. The smell here was
different, though. Stale tobacco smoke, day-old sweat, rancid cooking oil and
cheap perfume.
A chemically rendered blonde perched just down the bar, who
had come in with Dark Hair, whose name Jon had already forgotten if she’d ever
told him, apparently was still enraptured by Jason Ember’s extended exposition
on all his heroic adventures in the building trade. Jon suspected she made a
concerted effort to appear more interested than she was, and that she would
continue doing so as long as Jason kept buying watered-down drinks for her.
Across the room, Dark Hair already sat at a table with
another man Jon knew from work, bending close, hanging on his every word. Only
she knew if she was laughing with him or at him. John was contemplating if he
should have another beer or go back to Mrs. Edgerton’s house and finish his
letter to his mother, when a womanly voice broke his concentration, “You don’t
look happy to be where you are, Jonathan Dark.”
Jon jumped, nearly knocked over his glass, then almost
toppled it again when he tried to grab it as it teetered on the verge of
shattering disaster. He looked up into the deepest gaze he could recall, and
Starblossom Dorn rose clear in his mind, near enough to touch, to smell. Jon
felt the pieces of his broken soul spill out of him and fall tinkling into his
glass, like ice.
“How do you know my name?” when he found his voice.
A slow smile that warmed his heart and chilled his soul. “I
listen,” said the woman behind the bar. The eyes held him benignly enough, yet
harrowing in their intimacy, knowing and oracular. The hair that might have
been black in some forgotten day shone in the light like burnished pewter, long
and dense, immune to gravity, caressing its owner’s face in a luminous cautionary
cloud. The face itself, touched but not diminished by time, bespoke mysteries
and adventures and secrets and powers. It might have once been a pretty face.
Now it was simply beautiful. And for no reason he could name, looking at it
made Jon afraid.
More accurately, it was the way she looked at him that
unsettled. She gave him her attention without reserve, without judgment,
without promise or expectation. She was simply and profoundly there, completely
present and revealing. Jon found himself seen, knew all his secrets were
escaped and discovered. If he was fearful then, he was also glad.
The woman behind the bar set two cups between them, took a
battered metal coffee pot from someplace he couldn’t see, and poured them full.
Jon watched the steam waft up above the twin darks, thought again of the mist
above his river, and lifted his cup to drink. The coffee, rich and spicy, with
a hint of bittersweet that might have been cocoa or chicory. Hot to the tongue but
not scalding. He took a sip,
“But I don’t know your name,” he said.
“My name is Laurel,” the woman answered.
“Is that your real name?” he asked.
“That’s what you can call me. Nobody in this place could
pronounce my real name.” She raised her cup, inhaled the vapor from the ebony
brew, gazed at Jon over the rim, “need to talk?”
There was a lot then that Jon needed to say, but until this
moment, he could never have found the words.
Aunt Margaret piloted her Plymouth away through
downtown Asheton, along streets already thronged with tourists and nature pilgrims,
between imposing art-deco buildings, survivors from a more illustrious and
affluent era when the elite of arts and commerce congregated in the mountain
city to enjoy the scenery, the moderate climate, and to hatch their capitalist
plots. The writers and movie stars and millionaires had left with the onset of
the Great Depression, and found more luxurious hideouts by the time it was
over, but Asheton still drew the tourists, who were as enamored of her
mountains and rivers as their parents and grandparents before them.
To Star, the town seemed as exotic and foreign as London or
Paris or Rome.
What on God’s green Earth am I doing here. Aloud, she
said, “Why did you come to Asheton, Aunt Margaret?”
Margaret stopped at a cross walk as a flock of uniformed Cub
Scouts swarmed past, herded with small success by two frazzled den mothers. She
laughed. Star wasn’t sure if at the spectacle before them or the memories in
Margaret’s head.
“I’d have gone anywhere to get away from the Fork,” Margaret
said, “Asheton was just the first stop on the way. But the bright lights caught
my eye, and there were interesting people here in those days. Before I knew it,
I’d caught the eye of one of them, and Asheton became the last stop on my
journey.”
“Did he catch your eye, then?” asked Star.
Margaret laughed again. “It wasn’t a he, Dear. Robert came
along later. By then, I’d become more pragmatic in my outlook. He didn’t catch
my eye so much as his money, but there was more to him than I could see at
first.” Star sat silent, gazing at the shop fronts passing by, the people
clustered to them like bees to blossoms.
“Do I shock you? I hope you’re not disillusioned with your
old aunt.”
“No,” said Star, “I haven’t had enough money to know much
about it, but I’ve had enough love to realize it can’t be counted on for
sustenance.”
Margaret laughed again, “a woman after my own heart. If you
stay, we’ll try to find you enough of both to satisfy.”
Jason Embers hung his head over the edge of the roof
and vomited. “Watch it up there, man,” a voice shouted from below. “Hey, that’s
nasty.”
“Feel better now?” Jon said without looking up from the
shingle he was nailing down.
Jason didn’t answer, just crawled across the slant of tar
paper, picked up a shingle from his bundle, and added it to his row. After he’d
secured three more, he muttered, “damn, I’m hot.”
Jon swallowed his laugh, “That’s what you kept saying to
that girl at the bar last night. She might believe you now.” He regretted the
impulse as soon as the words were out. Jason didn’t like to be teased about
anything, and Jon knew from experience that he could carry a grudge for days.
Jason swiped his crimson face with a soggy sleeve, “I didn’t
spend the whole night confessing my sins to an old lady,” he said dryly.
“I didn’t confess anything. We were just talking.” Jon kept
working as he spoke. “Besides, Laurel isn’t that old, but she is a grown
woman.”
“Laurel is old enough to be your grandmother,” Jason said,
with a snicker, apparently feeling better now that he could focus his innate
anger on someone in particular. “Did she give you milk and cookies?”
“She didn’t give me a hangover,” murmured Jon, “but she did
offer me a job.”
Jason stopped his work, stared at Jon. “She need somebody to
sweep floors?”
“She might. I don’t know. But she asked if I’d be interested
in tending bar.”
Jason laughed at that, went back to his shingles, “what do
you know about keeping bar? You won’t hardly even drink a beer.”
“Laurel said that anybody who likes to drink shouldn’t be
keeping bar.”
Jason’s voice
began gathering an edge, “Missy Laurel was just pumping you full of wisdom, she
was. Did she offer you some lessons in bed?”
Jon’s face reddened in the shade of his hat brim. The
thought had not occurred to him, but now that Jason had put it in his head, it
seemed like a not unpleasant prospect. He answered, more loud and sharp than he
intended, “she’s not that kind. I’m not sure she even likes men that way.”
Jason snorted, “maybe she prefers little boys.”
“We were just talking business, mostly,” Jon said, ignoring
his friend’s baiting.
“Well, you be careful of Laurel,” Jason said, sounding all
at once sincere, almost sympathetic, “things I hear, She’s been in some pretty
strange business along the way.”
They worked silently for a while, then Jason said, “Jon boy,
you going to take her job?”
Jon smiled to himself then, “Well, I tell you, I’m starting
to think about it.”
“Drink your
juice,” Aunt Margaret said, “And eat your eggs.”
“I’m not really hungry,” Star murmured, “but it does look
delicious.”
“It is delicious,” Margaret affirmed. “Helen made it just
for you, and you are hungry; your stomach is just still asleep.”
“Maybe a biscuit,” said Star, picking one up, weighing it in
her hand. It might have been a feather. Then she broke the biscuit open with her
fork. The moisture steamed in the cool air until she laid a pat of butter into
it. Star watched it melt away, turning the white insides the color of
dandelion. She tasted. She was hungry after all. She took a sip of her juice,
decided she might be up to Helen’s omelet.
“This is good, Aunt Margaret. Really good. I’ve never tasted
eggs like this. What is the green stuff?”
“Cilantro,” Margaret informed. Helen makes the lightest
biscuits and the best omelets on earth. That’s why she works for me. She’ll be
happy you approve.”
A telephone rang in the hall just beyond the door. Margaret
went to answer it while Star communed with her groceries. She couldn’t hear
what her aunt was saying, but she caught the tone, not harsh but quietly
commanding. Helen brought in a pot from the kitchen and without asking filled
Star’s cup. She expected coffee, but the dark liquid proved to be some sort of
tea, the taste unfamiliar but not unpleasant, vaguely nutty.
“Maté,” said
Helen, “it’ll settle your stomach and make you hungry. You need to eat.” Before
Star could compliment her omelet and biscuit, Helen turned and glided swiftly
away into her kitchen.
Margaret returned
from her phone, sat down at her place, looking decidedly pleased with herself.
“You have a
phone,” Star said, not sure that was at all what she’d meant to say.
“I have three in
the house,” said Margaret, managing to look amused without appearing
patronizing. “I also have a brand new television receiver.”
Star didn’t try
to hide her surprise. She’d only seen pictures of television consoles in
magazines, tiny screens and knobs set in massive wooden cabinets begging large
rooms. Her family had only had electricity in their house for two years. There
still weren’t enough people on Dark Fork to convince Summit Utility Cooperative
to run a phone line into their corner of the county.
“I didn’t know there was a television station in Asheton,”
she said.
Margaret nodded.
“There will be soon, and we’ll be ready for it.”
“How do you
know?” asked Star. “I haven’t seen anything about it in the news.”
“You will.” Aunt Margaret beamed, as if announcing a birth.
“We’re about ready to make it public.”
“We?” said Star around her biscuit bite.
“Wallace Hoover, Robert and I own the station.”
When Jonathan Dark came down the steps at Falls Street
Room and Board, Charlene Edgerton stood in her front hall in conversation with
a young man he’d talked to enough at breakfast to know his name was James
Smeltzer. They’d had brief conversations over eggs and biscuits about James’
work and ambitions as a photographer, and about Jon’s momentary satisfactions
and continual frustrations as a carpenter. Jason didn’t like Smeltzer, called
him Pictureman.
When Jonathan hesitated before going out the door, Charlene
looked at him, flashed her smile reserved for boarders who paid their rent on
time, and lilted, “can I help you, Jonny?”
“When you have time, Miz Edgerton,” Jon said, a little
embarrassed to interrupt a conversation, “I’d like to talk to you about getting
a room of my own, if you have one open.”
Charlene glowed with delight, “just happens I do, Jonny.
Jim’s running off from us to work for the newspaper over in Knox. If you’re
ready to move right in, I can refund his deposit. It’s a really nice room. Gets
the morning light. Let me clean, and I’ll show it to you after supper.”
“Thanks. Don’t let it go. I want it for sure,” said Jon.
“You and Embers parting ways?” asked Smeltzer. He didn’t
sound surprised.
“I’m changing jobs,” answered Jon. “Different hours.”
James had apparently finished his business with Mrs.
Edgerton, as he started out the door with Jon. “Can I gift you a lift, Jon? I
have to go gas up my car.”
“No thanks. I’m just going down to The Dreadful Dram to
accept my new job.”
“You going to tend bar for Laurel Charon, are you?”
“I hope so.”
Smeltzer laughed as he opened the door to his black coupe, “you’ll
still be seeing your old roommate every day then, won’t you?
“I’ll try to keep the bar between us,” Jon said.
“You really want to be a barkeep, then?” Smeltzer queried.
“It’s a job I can do well, I think,” John said. “Can’t
everybody be a photographer like you.”
“You could come with me to Knox,” Smeltzer said, “plenty of
jobs there, that pay better than this. I could teach you photography, if that’s
what interests you. You see things as they are. I think you might have a talent
to suit the newspaper business.”
“Well, that’s a notion,” Jon said, “When would I need to let
you know.”
Smeltzer laughed. “If you want a ride to Asheton, now would
be the right time.”
“What are your
plans now, Star?” Margaret queried over her morning coffee.
“I’m going to keep the child,” Star said, rubbing her belly,
rounding now to the life inside, “he’s all I have left of Jonny.”
“You’re sure of that?” said her aunt with a glint of a
smile.
“Sure as I can be. He’s gone. I don’t see him back for the
likes of me.”
“I meant, are you sure he’s left you a boy?” Margaret said
with her little laugh that could serve either merriment or distress.
Star took it for merriment, smiled despite herself. “Feels
like a boy. Feels like Jonny there inside me.”
Margaret shed her laugh, spoke with a stern edge, “but you
never told him. Don’t you think he would want to know, has a right to know?”
Star answered solemnly, but not sad, with calm acceptance,
“I about spoiled his life once. This isn’t his burden. I invited him. Wherever
he is now, I want him free to choose his own way.”
Margaret shook her head. “I don’t think you give your Dark
man enough credit. One day, your child will ask about his father, and what will
you tell him?”
“I’ll tell him his father was a fine man, a splendid man,
and I hope he’ll grow up to be just like him and find someone to share his life
who will have more sense than his mother.”
Margaret’s laugh sprinkled the air between them again, “and
assuming this child is a boy, what will you name him?”
Star didn’t hesitate, “I’ll name him after his father, of
course. I’ll name my son Jonathan.”
“And if you’re wrong, and it’s a girl?”
Star laughed now, sounding just like her aunt, “I’m not
wrong, but If I were, I’d name her Margaret.”
Jon wasn't sure if he was on his way to find his life
or if he was running from one he had lost. Either way, he reckoned he would
remember Laurel Charon for the rest of his tenure on earth. She had heard his
story, as best he could tell it, and trusted him to be what he said he could
be. Jon's last night tending bar, Jason Embers came in spoiling for a fight
with anybody who might give it to him. He tried to conjure an argument with
several he knew from work, who had the good sense to laugh him off and bribe
him quiet with a drink. Late in the evening, drink had pretty much gained his
full attention, Jason ordered a whiskey, then accused Jon of watering it,
though he'd seen it poured straight from the bottle.
“If you don't like it, Mister Embers, you don't have to pay
for it, but that's the last drink you’ll get here tonight. You’ve had enough,”
Jon said, his voice quiet and steady.
Jason roared like a wounded bear and tried to crawl over the
bar. Jon stood his ground, not sure what he would or could do about the
escalating situation. The other patrons simply stared, either afraid to
intervene or not wanting to spoil the show. Jason, atop the bar now on hands
and knees, too enraged or too drunk to speak, spat into Jon’s face and reached
for his throat.
Jon had not seen Laurel come in from her office, but
suddenly, there she was behind Jason. She reached up, laid her palm between his
shoulder blades, and whispered, just loud enough for Jon to hear, “sleep.”
Jason whimpered like a puppy, crumpled and folded, his face
flat against the polished wet, his eyes open and staring at nothing. His glass
rolled off the bar and shattered on the floor. Laurel patted his face tenderly,
beckoned to one of the regular customers sitting across the room. “Willis,” she
said, “Come help Jon carry this boy to his bed and your next drink is on the
house.”
Willis’ prompt
response testified to his thirst, and it only took a few minutes for them to
hoist unresisting Jason down the street and deposit him in his bed at Charlene
Edgerton’s boarding house. On their way out, Jon paused to turn out the light,
and heard Jason’s slurred voice in the dark,
“Jonboy? You still here?”
“Yup, Jason, I’m here.”
Jason’s next words sounded sober as a judge. “She’s a witch,
Jon. Laurel Charon is a witch. Get away from her and save your soul.”
“Good night, Jason.” Jon closed the door. As he started down
the hall after Willis, he heard the muffled sound of a man weeping.
Midnight came and, in accordance with the
city ordinance, Jon and Laurel ushered the die-hard drunks out into the
fog-bound street. Jon began turning off lights. He and Felix, the chief cook
and bottle washer, would stay and put the place to bed. Laurel began putting on
her coat. John held it as she slipped her arms into the sleeves.
“Tomorrow’s Sunday. We’ll be closed.” She said, as if Jon
didn’t know that. “What are your plans for the weekend?”
“I’ll write a letter home, I imagine.” John said.
“You’re fired, Jon.” Laurel said softly, as if comforting a
mourner.
Stunned, Jon prayed he’d misheard. When he found his voice,
“I thought you liked my work.”
“You do good work and you are a good man, Jonathon Dark.
That’s why I’m firing you. You have an interesting life ahead and it isn’t
here.” She handed him an envelope too weighty for a letter. “Here’s your
severance. Before you leave tonight, borrow the phone in my office and call
your friend James Smeltzer. Come Monday morning, buy a train ticket and get yourself
to Knox.”
Laurel turned then and walked away into the night, leaving
Jon standing open-mouthed in the doorway. Whatever happened to him now, Jon
reckoned Laurel Charon would be the second woman in his life he would always
wish he had known better and longer.
Charlene Edgerton was disappointed her favorite boarder
would be departing so precipitously. Since he was leaving without notice, John
offered to pay an extra week’s rent, which he could do, thanks to Laurel
Charon’s generosity.
Charlene pretended to be offended. “Keep your money, young
man, she snapped. “You’ll need every penny to stay afloat in that big city.”
Then she sent him off with a kiss on his forehead, and a motherly hug, and
before he could feel embarrassed, or notice the tears in her eyes, turned and
disappeared inside her door.
Jon had not made the phone call to Smeltzer, as Laurel
Charon instructed, but he did buy a train ticket to Knox, and once again found
himself being jostled through the night to some strange place he never hoped
nor feared to be. Lights passed through the dark beyond the windows, some
bright and near, some dim and far. Occasionally, he caught a glimpse of the
moon riding down the current of the Long Broad as it flowed on, skirting the
railbed toward the Shaconage, and beyond into Tennessee. Stars winked in and
out of clouds, and once, one streaked across the sky, gone almost before it
startled. Jon wondered if it was a sign that his life had some plan and purpose
after all, or if it was a portent of one more incompletion. Or if it was just a
flash in the night, God’s little joke on Jonathan Dark.
Over the grumbling mutter and rattle of the train, faint
conversations filtered through the dark, voices that didn’t quite jell into
words, conveying varying intonations of weary anticipations and half-hearted
forebodings. John tried to listen, wanted for some distraction and escape from
his own thoughts, which after all that had happened, still dragged him back,
only half unwillingly, to Starblossom Dorn. He’d asked about her in letters to
his mother. Is she well? Have you seen her, by chance? He tried to
disguise his veiled inquiries as idle curiosities, though there was no reason
anyone who had known them both would think so. His mother’s responses were all
in the same vein. No. I never see the Dorn’s. Mr. Dorn told your father that
his daughter had gone off to care for his sister-in-law who was ill. How is
your work? Do you have any friends there? Your Father would never say so, but
he would welcome a visit if there is ever a time for you that you can come to
us.
~
“How was your lesson with Peter Murphy?” Margaret asked
over supper.
Star put down her spoon a bit too abruptly. Robert flinched
at the clash, glanced at Margaret, shook his head in silent disapproval before
he wiped his mustache.
“Terrible,” blurted Star. “I can’t sing a measure without
making a mistake and Mister Perfection makes me do it over.”
“That isn’t what Peter told me,” Robert put in. “He says you
have a fine voice but are afraid to use it.”
“You have a beautiful and powerful voice,” Margaret agreed.
This fall, we’ll arrange a recital.”
“I can’t sing in front of other people,” Star protested, her
face pouted like a child.
“You sing in your room. You sing in the bath. You sing in
the garden. You can sing anywhere you want,” Margaret insisted.
“Why can’t I just sing for myself, then?” Star said, her
voice clipped and sharp, not at all musical.
“You should sing for yourself, no matter who else is
listening,” Margaret said, like a teacher addressing a recalcitrant pupil. “But
understand this, Starblossom Dorn, you do not live just for yourself, but for
the life that is growing inside you. You must make a way in the world for you
both. You are a lovely woman, but it is your voice that will sway men to your
will. Your looks render you a fine ornament to any social occasion, but this
town is full of decorative females. Your voice is your power. It is your
weapon. Murphy will train you to hone it and use it to effect.”
“Aunt Margaret, you make me sound dangerous,” Star said,
intrigued and vaguely flattered despite her protestations.
“Yes, Miss, you certainly are that,” murmured Robert, as if
he believed it, and rose from the table to fetch their desserts.
The train burrowed through the night like a mole
through spring soil. Jon slept and woke and slept again. Sometimes lights
sparked the dark, lonely and solitary, occasionally paired, never more than a
few. Where there were no lights, the mountains rose up steep and close against
a barely less dark sky, for one mile leaden with cloud and over the next aswarm
with stars. At Shelton Crossing, the train stopped on a siding, while a fast
freight roared past in the opposite direction, rattling whatever and all that
was not tightly fastened down. Freight was more profitable for Transmountain
Rail Lines than were passengers, so freight claimed the right-of-way.
While the train waited at Shelton Crossing, the kitchen crew
must have taken on provisions, because when the sun emerged above mist-shrouded
heights, an aroma of coffee permeated the dining car, where Jon ordered a cup
to go with his eggs and biscuit. He ate, readied himself for a big day in a
strange place, and sat watching buildings emerge from the wider morning beyond
the tracks until the train swung on a high bridge across the Long Broad and
descended in a slow and slowing crawl before coming to rest with clanks and
groans between two long platforms where people and baggage waited to be carried
away deeper into the wilds of Tennessee.
Jon retrieved his bag, said a polite farewell to the
pleasant lady in the seat opposite, and emerged into the bright morning air
filled with the unaccustomed music of a genuine city already intently pursuing
the brand-new day. Before Jon had time to consider immediate possibilities, a familiar
voice called out of the transient crowd,
“Jonathan Dark, there you are, only ten minutes late.” It
was Smeltzer. Jon’s surprise wrestled with his delight at finding a friendly
and familiar soul in this alien city. Small, as cities go, but to Jon it
appeared and sounded like a metropolis.
“James Smeltzer, you leaving town already?” he said as they
shook hands. “What are you doing here, waiting to catch a picture?”
“Believe it or not, old salt, I’ve been waiting for you,”
the photographer said cheerfully, clapping Jon’s shoulder hard enough that he
almost dropped his luggage. James made a mild attempt to take the suitcase,
which John refused to relinquish.
“How did you know I’d be on this train?” Jon queried,
encouraged and irritated in roughly equal measure.
“Laurel Charon phoned me, because she knew you wouldn’t,”
Smeltzer confided smugly.
“Wherever I go,” Jon muttered, “people are trying to plan my
life for me.”
Smeltzer laughed. “Don’t knock it. Being on your own can get
lonely. Take it from one who knows.” He waved his arm like opening a door and
led the way through the aggregate commotion.
“I have a car,” he confided in a whisper, almost as if he
were ashamed to admit it.
Days passed, added up into weeks, became a month, then some
more. Starblossom Dorn watched her belly grow, developed strange tastes for
vinegar and dill, as well as marked aversion toward anything that smelled or
tasted like fried fish or fresh-brewed coffee. Her awareness that she did not
inhabit her body alone became constant and intense. Finally, one day the
expected happened unexpectedly, in the middle of a song she was practicing,
pain, immediate and hungry for release. Margaret wasn’t there. Robert,
unruffled and efficient as ever he was, drove her to the hospital.
Margaret was there afterward, when a nurse brought the baby
to Star’s room, and as the two women looked on, Star brought him to her breast
and murmured, softly, like a summer breeze, as she held his head to her,
“Jonny, oh, Jonny, my beautiful, beautiful boy.”
What would have been scandal in the rigid, stratified moral
matrix of Drovers Gap, in the wider and wilder cultural climate of Asheton was
regarded as delicious spice for the social stew. Dawn Starr, the professional
name Robert had concocted, had evolved into a singer of talent, an artist of
growing repute, thus not expected to abide by the sensibilities of more mundane
mortals for whom respectability meant survival. The wags and witches of that
wicked town speculated endlessly about who the father might be, since the
singer seemed to cultivate a vast indifference toward any local male that might
be deemed worthy of her affections. The more inventive among the gossiping
elites suggested that Jonathan Dorn might not be the singer’s son by birth, but
a servant’s or an unseen relative’s offspring, or even, as one or two extremely
imaginative tale-spinners insinuated, Margaret’s, who everyone agreed was
younger than her years, ripe as a summer peach ready for peeling, and even more
generous with her affections than she was with her money.
As for her money, several local grand causes had basked from
time to time in her benevolence, rendering the movers and shakers of Asheton
tolerant of her personal vices and desirous of her esteem. Margaret Boone was
an institution. She could do no real wrong and actually accomplished a lot of
good in their fine town, so all whose opinion was important agreed. All anyone
knew for a fact was that she and her musical niece had gone off to an exclusive
inn in the High Balsams on a spring retreat and returned before winter with a
wee babe among their luggage. This was not deemed anything extraordinary, for
everybody said Margaret had always exhibited a penchant for bringing home
strays.
As for young Jonathan, if he was doted upon and spoiled, he
was also loved and guided. If his faults were generally ignored, his best
tendencies were consistently encouraged and praised. He was an intelligent
child, like his father of whom no one other than his mother rarely spoke. And
in answer to his childish inquisitions, she seldom answered more than, “your
father was a fine and wonderful man. You’re growing up to be just like him.”
It didn’t bother Jon in the slightest that his friends had
resident fathers. He had Uncle Robert, and in that privileged household, where
all affairs were discussed and debated freely in his presence, as if he were a
miniature adult, he grew to know about all the foolish cruelties loosed in the
community around him without being personally wounded by them. By the time he
was seven years old, he was as worldly-wise, or perhaps wiser than many human
males of seventy.
The course of Jonny’s life would take a drastic change in
direction when his mother announced that to celebrate his seventh birthday,
Jonny and Aunt Margaret would accompany her to her next concert in Knox.
Although Jonny had heard his mother singing since before he was born, he had never
seen her perform on stage before an audience. As they boarded the train to
Tennessee, in Jonny’s mind, another world entirely, he was feeling very
grown-up indeed.
Jonathan Dark had no ambitions to be a music critic. He
had not spent the past several years convincing the Editor-in-Chief of the Knox
Record that he was a hard news writer just so he could spend two hours sitting
among rich strangers listening to a woman he didn’t know singing in languages
he couldn’t understand; not the sort of music he was accustomed to at all.
Normally, Ed Long, chief editor and self-proclaimed opera
fan, would have covered the event himself, but Ed was in bed with the influenza
that had been wracking the city of late, and Jon had not been able to invent a
convincing excuse in time to avoid being tagged for the assignment.
“And behave yourself,” Ed had commanded. “You’ll be sharing
a box with one of the major broadcast people in Asheton, television, no less.
Convince her the Record is a real newspaper, that their little screens will
never be able to compete with timely print for a news audience.”
As he drove his almost new car to the theater, Jon marveled
at the unlikely turns in his life since he stepped off the train in Knox into
James Smeltzer’s custody. He recalled the unsettling ride across town to
Smeltzer’s apartment, with James driving one-handed, waving the other out the
window as he said blithely, as if they had discussed it already, “there’s an
opening on the Record for a feature writer. I told Ed Longstreet- he’s our
chief editor- that you’re just the man for it. He’s willing to give you a
trial. Part time, you understand, but show him your good and he’ll make a
proper place for you on staff.”
When Jon could get a word in edgewise, “I don’t know
anything about writing for a newspaper.”
Smeltzer went on, unfazed, “you have a good eye for details.
You don’t use big words, and you can spell. Just fake it until you make it.
Pretend you are writing letters to your mother.”
That was essentially what Jon had done, finally, after two
weeks of trying to find “normal” work and feeling guilty because his friend
wouldn’t let him pay rent. “When you’re working,” Smeltzer would say, “you can
buy me a steak dinner at Riverside Inn and we’ll call it even.”
Jon’s job search was hindered by his having no idea what he
wanted to do. He knew he didn’t want to tend bar which accounted for most of
the work experience in his brief employment history. He might have accepted an
offer to join a logging crew up in the High Balsams, had not Smeltzer told him
horror stories about the short and risky lives of timbermen and insisted one
more time, “go talk to Longstreet. What can you lose by it? If he hires you, he
might buy your lunch.”
Although the Editor-in-Chief of the Knox Record immediately
grasped that Smeltzer’s recommendation was not based on the applicant’s
experience, he led Jon to a vacant desk in the newsroom and queried, “how did
you get to this town, Pilgrim?”
“I rode a train all night from Poplar Spring, Mister
Longstreet,” Jon confessed.
Longstreet gave no sign he was impressed, but said, “sit
down here and write me a story about your train ride. Six hundred words. You
have thirty minutes.” He turned and walked back to his office. Thirty-eight
minutes later Jon knocked on the office door and handed over as many words as
he’d been able to write. Longstreet read them while Jon stood in front of his
desk, hat in hand, coat folded across his arm, ready to leave upon hearing the
inevitable verdict.
Finally, the Editor looked up, appeared surprised, as if he
had forgotten Jon was there, handed back the pages.
Only Longstreet’s eyes were smiling when he said, “that’s
your desk out there.” He pointed through the glass door. “Get Doris over yonder
to show you how to type. She will if you offer to buy her lunch.”
Doris turned out to be a good teacher of typing and other
things pleasurable and interesting, and Jon proved himself to be a quick
learner, and now, seven years down his road, he was in a theater box
introducing himself to a tastefully-dressed and handsome woman of indeterminate
years from Asheton, accompanied by a male child lively and quick, who for no
reason Jon could discern, seemed startlingly familiar.
The boy introduced himself, “my name is Jonathan. My mother
says I was named for a prince.”
“So was I,” Jon said. “Our parents must have read the same
book.”
The lights in the hall dimmed. The crowd below quietened.
The boy reached up to take the hand of the woman in charge of him. “Aunt
Margaret and I came to hear my mother sing tonight,” he informed Jonathan Dark.
Little Jonathan pointed at the stage, “there she is,” he whispered, and the
curtains began to part as the audience applauded.
Parts of An Unaccustomed Music originally
appeared under the title Dark Fork in the anthology, Fall,
published 2018 by Dark Ink Press.
Find your copy here
About the author
Henry Mitchell reads and writes in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of North Carolina. He has written six novels and three collections of
short stories. Before he began writing fiction in 2012, he worked for fifty
years as a painter and sculptor.
