Bad Apple 1: Sweet Cider Page 8

  “Why didn’t you tell her?”

  “If you didn’t find a dead body, my father wouldn’t be involved and I could have told her everything about your thoroughly unpleasant family. Once we crossed into murder, then that’s a legal thing. I’m not even supposed to know. How much did you want me to say?” Truly pushed my fiddle case into my hands and walked, more like strode, out the kitchen door.

  As I watched him from the mudroom step, he stopped at his truck, opened the door and took out his guitar case.

  “Are you coming?”

  “You said you didn’t want to sing with me.”

  “I don’t. But that can’t get in the way of rehearsing.”

  Trailing him across the driveway, I reached the garage where he was already turning on all the equipment.

  I stood by the microphone stand I had used last night. “She’s going to tell me to leave.”

  He was plugging wires into an amplifier. “What?”

  “I don’t blame her. She won’t want me here. I’m not sure I would want me here.”

  “Did she say that?”

  “No, and stop arguing with me. This is probably our last day together, let it be as unlike a World Wrestling Foundation Grudge Match as possible.”

  He took a deep breath. “She’s not going to tell you to leave.”

  “They’re in there fighting because of me.”

  “That’s not how they settle disagreements, trust me on that. They love each other.”

  I stood there.

  “Isn’t this the time for you to say ‘What’s with you people?’”

  “Truly. Did you say that to hurt me?”

  “Toughen up, Buttercup, I said it to tease you. Give me your fiddle.”

  I held it out to him and he handed me his guitar.

  “Quit being so worried.”

  “You opened this door.”

  “And?” He drew the bow across the strings and began tuning the violin.

  “I’ll have a hard time surviving this loss.” I hadn’t realized how true that was until that moment. Now that I had been exposed to this family, saw the way other people lived, saw the opportunities so available except in the Kent house, and knew Truly, to take this away would leave me with nothing.

  “Did I say we were a team?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then. There’s not going to be any loss. Can we do Whispering Pines?”

  “We went shopping today.”

  “You’re not singing.”

  “You didn’t even notice my haircut.”

  “You look more attractive than you looked yesterday.”

  “Do you mean that? Or are you just impatient to begin rehearsing?”

  “Both.” He drew the bow across the strings again and smiled, pleased with the tuning.

  “I got an outfit to wear after the pumpkin judging.”

  “Leather?”

  “No!”

  “There must be a pair of old chaps in the barn you could wear. That’s a pretty popular get-up for singers.”

  “Why don’t you wear the chaps?”

  “Good idea! With or without jeans?”

  “Truly!”

  “I think I saw a guy on MTV wearing chaps and a sequined-encrusted Speedo underneath.”

  “Stop! That’s an image I don’t need. You in something flashing and sparkling.”

  “My mother would kill me.”

  “She wouldn’t have to, I’d get to you first.”

  “I won’t run very fast.”

  “Truly! Stop it. I thought you wanted to rehearse.”

  “I’m waiting for you to start singing.”

  I stepped closer to the microphone and began the song. In fits and starts, restarts and repeats, we went through the song for an hour. He had stripped it to the basics. With just the two of us, it couldn’t be otherwise and he wanted it that way. Truly had even minimized the guitar, until he recorded himself playing the guitar, as he was far more proficient than I was. He asked if I could do a key change in the middle. That wasn’t a problem, the words would always follow the music. Then he took it out. Then he insisted I stand at the mic without an instrument and used the playback instead.

  Finally, we were able to get through the entire song without stopping until the end. I nodded. I thought it was okay.

  Truly put the fiddle down.

  “Is that what you’re working on?” Steve asked from the doorway.

  “Yes.” Truly reached over to turn off the recorder.

  “That’s quite a bit different than what you’ve been doing up until now, Tru.”

  I waited for him to say something else.

  “If we do the barn, Mom will go get pizza.” Steve turned and headed to the barn.

  “What did he mean?”

  “You don’t have to translate it.”

  “In a good or bad way it’s not the same?”

  “Must it be either? Can’t it just be an observation?”

  “What were you doing before that was so unlike what you’re doing now?”

  Truly turned off the lights in the garage. “This will be easier if you just tell me what you’re trying to find out.”

  “I want to be a positive addition. I don’t want to upset anyone or anything.”

  “How’s that working out so far?”

  “Does your father think that’s not a song we should be singing?”

  “If he meant that, he would have said that.”

  “So you all say what you think?”

  “Yes. Is this where you say ‘What’s with you people?’”

  “I don’t have to, you keep doing it for me.” Reaching the hose, I turned on the faucet in order to fill the water buckets as I had that morning.

  A half hour later, hay had been served, stalls had been picked clean and we were back at the house, washing up. Looking in the refrigerator, there wasn’t a salad made, so I put some greens together and found a box grater for a couple carrots. I found the napkins, plates and silverware, and along with the apples from a bushel basket in the mudroom that I put in a large bowl, it all went on the table.

  Emily came in with two large pizzas and put them on the counter. “We should have asked what you wanted.”

  “Anything is fine.” Anything is more than I expect is what I meant.

  She took off her jacket and hung it in the mudroom. “You made a salad. Thanks for doing the table.”

  “Emily, I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about Joe.” I said then wondered if that was true. Why would I want to tell someone so nice about someone so malevolent?

  How do you start that conversation? Let me tell you about Joe. He doesn’t know how to bathe but thinks he’s the studliest guy in this part of the state, maybe the entire state. Why not? He knows how to spend money but he doesn’t know how to earn it. If you took an x-ray of him, he’d be touted as a medical phenomenon because nothing would show up inside.

  I wanted to never talk about him again. I never wanted to see him. I never wanted to go back to that house or even that road because of the memories of him that were like the living dead, prowling around the farm waiting to inflict more hurt, more damage, more violence.

  I wasn’t sorry I didn’t tell Emily. I was trying to protect her from his adamantine heart.

  Steve came in. “Everyone sit down, we’re going to have a talk. Where’s Tru?”

  “In the den doing transcription,” I said.

  Steve walked out of the kitchen and a moment later appeared with Truly. We all sat down.

  “This is a situation none of us have been in before,” he began. “It’s accurate to say that Neal faced potential danger where she was living. That’s why she’s going to be staying here. Aunt Maude agrees and I’ve consulted an attorney.” Steve opened the lid to one of the boxes. “What do we have? This one is half plain, half meatball. Who would like either of those?”

  ***

  It was almost midnight when I picked up the cell phone and pressed #2 on the speed dial
.

  “Neal.”

  “Truly.” I could stay on the phone and not say another word for the next hour just to have him at the other end. “I’ve been thinking. Did...does my name appear on any of the publicity for the concert?”

  “No. The members of the band are not listed. It was all done weeks ago. As far as the newspaper articles or any posters are concerned, it’s Lambert and Luton.”

  “You don’t know Toby. She’s like a pit viper, poisonous and always on the hunt. They’ll find me.”

  “I don’t see how as long as Maude covers for you. They don’t have superpowers. They’re dangerous and mean but they don’t know where to look.”

  “They’ll figure it out. Somehow.”

  “Can’t let them catch me, no,” he sang.

  “You have a beautiful voice.”

  “I’m a musician. You’re a singer.”

  “I want to stay here.”

  “I want that, too.”

  Chapter 15

  The season asserted itself and I woke up to find a cold front had replaced the mild temperatures we had been enjoying. The sky was gray and by the time I got downstairs, it was starting to drizzle. There was a note on the table from Emily that she was out running errands, that I should eat breakfast and get started on a short list of schoolwork until she got back. I ate and cleaned up the kitchen then went into the den. For a long time, I didn’t do anything but sit there looking through the window at the weather getting worse. The rain was hitting the window at a diagonal and the tree branches were bending with the wind.

  I heard the kitchen door open and close.

  “Neal?” Truly called out.

  “I’m in the den.”

  A moment later, Tru entered and put a sheet of music in front of me.

  “Have you ever seen the movie Distant Fires?”

  “Yeah, it was on Movie Classics last winter. Why?”

  “You’re familiar with the song Meg Bruce sings?”

  “Yes...?”

  He put his hand down on the music. “I worked out an arrangement for us.”

  “No. I’m not singing that.”

  “Why not? The problem with the song was Meg Bruce is a better singer than the character should be. Her background is all Broadway, Tony Awards; she had operatic training. She has a great, big voice. It makes her do too much to the song. You do less.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a rousing endorsement of my singing but I’m not doing it.”

  “Why?”

  “The Farther You Go?”

  “Yeah, vocally, it’s perfect for you.”

  “It is so not perfect. While you were busy with the music, did you bother to listen to the lyrics?”

  “It’s not about us.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You’re going to sing a lot of songs about loss in your life. You can’t just sing happy songs. People don’t write songs when they’re happy, they write when they’re miserable.”

  I shook my head.

  “If you only want to sing happy songs, we’ll be singing to kindergarteners for the rest of our lives. We’ll be performing songs about Tommy the Turtle sitting in the shade of a toadstool. We’ll be like that Bix guy.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He’s famous for making music for kids not old enough to dress themselves.”

  I looked at him. “You cut your hair.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tru.”

  “The song’s not about us.”

  I sighed.

  “You don’t listen to me.”

  “I do, that’s why I’ll do the song.”

  Taking my arm, he started pulling me toward the living room. When we got there, he positioned me by the piano, dropped the lyrics next to me and sat down on the bench.

  “Piano?”

  “For now.”

  I’d never sung accompanied by a piano, and I’d never even heard him play the piano.

  He put his fingers on the keys, played the first notes and stopped. “No vibrato, just that great resonance you have. I don’t want you to be Meg Bruce, I want you to be that character, wearing the faded housedress, no make-up, looking across land so flat she can see Oklahoma. At the horizon, she can see the smoke from distant fires.”

  He was asking me to dredge up enough pain of my own so that I could tap into the open wound of the character in that very bleak and unhappy story. “Tommy the Turtle is sounding pretty good right about now.”

  Truly began to play, and the music reminded me of the sweeping vistas in the movie. The grain undulating like a bronze ocean. The endless expanse of open territory, the likes of which I had never seen in my life. The sky that went on forever. The lone figure in the middle of it all, dwarfed by the magnitude of her surroundings and diminished by what was stolen from her.

  “I watched you leave under blackened skies

  “All that was said, how much I regret

  “With smoke from distant fires filling my eyes

  “And the farther you go, the smaller I get

  “The hot wind rushes through my hollow soul

  “Bringing you back won’t make you stay

  “I can’t remember when I still felt whole

  “The smaller I get, as you go away.

  “You don’t care, called me unwise

  “A toss of the die, a spin of roulette

  “With smoke from distant fires filling my eyes

  “The farther you go, the smaller we get.”

  I finished singing, Truly put a decent end to the song and there was silence.

  I had to ask. “Tru, what kind of band are we trying to be? Last month you were doing traditional songs. Now we’re doing...everything.”

  He started playing the opening bars of Gershwin’s Concerto in F.

  “I’m not going to pretend I know anything about it. That would be an insult to you.”

  “But...” He stopped playing.

  “I remember seeing a movie a couple years ago. It was funny. It was about a traveling air show, barnstormers, part of the performance was a girl would get out on the wing and walk around. So you’re watching and laughing because it’s so comical, and she falls off the wing. You’re sure the camera is going to move under the plane to show she had a safety wire on and is fine dangling under the fuselage. But she’s dead, splatted flat on the ground a thousand feet down.”

  “And your point is?”

  “The audience is emotionally misled. Just tell me what we’re doing. What are we going to say we’re doing now so that people aren’t confused and annoyed with us.”

  “I had almost the same conversation with Quinn. He’s not a happy drummer.” He moved over on the bench. “Sit down. Rest your leg.”

  I sat down next to him, shoulders touching. “Is it about me? Am I getting too much focus for Quinn?”

  “We needed a lead singer.”

  “You were the lead singer.”

  “We need two strong voices. Sonny can do backup but he doesn’t have much of an ear for harmony. That’s why Ed was there, so we weren’t stuck with one voice but that limited us to certain songs. I can do a solo act without drums or a second guitar if I can’t find people to do what I need them to do.”

  “I don’t need the band. Last month I would never have imagined it. If my presence is creating trouble...don’t spare my feelings. It’s not a loss.”

  He took my hand in his.

  “My staying here isn’t contingent on my singing, is it? It’s not how I’m paying room and board, is it? I can work in the barn or something. I’m a pretty good worker.”

  “Slow.”

  “But neat.”

  “I can’t leave you two alone, at all, can I?” Emily said coming up behind us. “What are you saying to her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I heard the song. It was wonderful. And now you don’t want her in the band?”

  “This is what happens when you eavesdrop,” Truly said as he let go of my hand and sto
od up. “You don’t hear the whole conversation. You don’t know what we were talking about.”

  “I can see Neal’s upset.” Emily turned to me. “You can stay here as long as you want and you don’t have to work anything off like an indentured servant. If that’s the kind of thinking they do at your former residence, you most certainly don’t belong there. You will have chores like everyone else, though. Anyone want lunch?”

  We followed her into the kitchen.

  “Aren’t there some legalities?” Truly asked.

  “We can’t find any record that Neal was ever adopted by your father’s wife. Were you?”

  “Not that anyone told me.”

  “That’s all you need to know. We have a lawyer working on it.”

  “What about Aunt Maude?” I asked getting out plates for the sandwiches.

  “She wants what’s best for you. Just like we do.” Emily took out the sliced turkey, tomatoes, lettuce and pickles. “If you want to stay with us.”

  I didn’t know what to say. It was the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.

  Truly poured milk into our glasses. “Tell her.”

  “Yes, please. I never want to go back there. You won’t be sorry. I won’t be any trouble.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” Truly sat across from me, shaking his head. “She was a bad, bad girl,” he sang.

  Ignoring that, Emily sat down and opened up the mustard and mayonnaise. “So what’s this about not wanting her in the band?”

  “I don’t care about the band. The band can die if can’t survive without my life support.”

  “Truly!” I was as shocked as his mother.

  “You’ve put so much time and effort into it. I don’t understand.”

  “Ed’s a good musician but he didn’t want to do what I wanted to do. Sonny and Quinn are used to what we used to do and now there’s a rebellion brewing.”

  “I told you I was creating problems,” I said.

  “We were treading water. You create solutions. You created a way forward. We’re not going to do the same material anymore. There’s no point in it.”

  Emily placed plates in front of us.

  “You heard her,” Truly said to his mother. “And that’s when she doesn’t know what she’s doing.” He glanced at me. “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “We’re a fusion band now whether it’s the two of us or four or six.”