Chapter 12
TWELVE
ESTELLE
Then
Estelle leaned back from the microphone, her fingers strumming the final chords of a new song she’d been working on.
“Return to Tennessee” she called it, and when she’d played the small towns around Knoxville and Chattanooga, it had brought down the house.
Here in Mississippi, she found it didn’t work quite as well, although that might also have been due to the beer garden audience having reached the stage of the evening when rowdy became riotous.
County fairs were like that, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and she told herself she was grateful for any gig, no matter how small.
A bottle swished by her up on the small stage, and she ducked, her heart racing wildly as the bouncer located the brawling culprits and dragged them out.
At least the bottle hadn’t been meant for her.
At a diner last week, she’d stopped playing when a piece of grilled cheese had lodged in her hair after an irate customer had taken issue with her playing anything but Garth Brooks.
After she finished her set, she packed up her guitar and duffel and lugged them out of the tent into humid night air that was so thick with moisture it vibrated in place.
Her dress clung to her back within minutes, and she wrinkled her nose as the smell of her own body reached her nostrils.
She hadn’t had a real shower in over a week, having slept in her car as she’d traveled south through Alabama, stopping wherever she found work.
Money had been tight since she’d left Greg four months ago.
She’d brought whatever cash she’d been able to tuck away, but it wasn’t like she’d been under any illusion it would last her for long.
Which was fine; she was used to struggling.
At least now, she was doing it for herself with a goal in mind and no one else holding her back. This hustle was worth it.
She made her way through the fairgrounds to the trailer where the organizer, a stout man named Morris, had told her to meet him after her gig.
She’d gotten his number from a guitar player she’d met in Marietta as someone who often needed entertainers for his traveling fair, and Estelle had been in luck.
Not only did he have an opening, but he and his wife also had a spare bed she could use for the night since she was playing again tomorrow.
She’d get a hot meal, a shower, and money in her purse.
The holy trifecta of a struggling artist.
She knocked on the door of the trailer, waiting for Morris to open it.
Behind her, the music and screams from the fair rides rose and fell with the warm August breeze, and plenty of people still milled about.
A low moan drew her attention to the side of the trailer, but she averted her eyes as soon as she realized what the two lovers were up to in the shadows, the sight of them forcing open the door she’d closed to the past.
She’d let Greg have her one last time before she’d finally had the nerve to tell him she was leaving.
They’d fought so much over the past few years that it had felt like the only way to wrap up their fourteen-year marriage with something that wasn’t miserable, but her effort to leave on some semblance of a high note had failed.
He’d called her cruel. She’d called it closure.
She knocked again, and this time, a woman opened.
“Yes?” she asked with a bark.
Estelle asked for Morris, explaining who she was.
“Oh, the singer. Morris is asleep, but I’ll show ya where it is. Hold on.” She closed the door before Estelle could ask what she meant.
The woman opened the door again, this time with a sweater wrapped around her shoulders as if the Mississippi night might somehow threaten a chill. “Follow me.”
Estelle had no choice but to do so, but her confusion grew when they set off toward a field adjacent to the fairgrounds. “I think maybe there’s been a mix-up,” she said. “Morris told me he had a spare room?”
The woman stopped abruptly and spun around. “A spare bed,” she clarified. “What did ya think—that we have room in the trailer for ya?”
Estelle blinked back the way they’d come where the pale outline of the trailer sat like a beached whale occasionally lit up by the lights from the Ferris wheel. “Then what…?” she began asking, but the woman had already started walking again, so Estelle had to jog to catch up.
“It’s the blue one over there.” The woman pointed as a cluster of tents set up on a makeshift campground came into view.
“There’s a blow-up mattress and a blanket.
The public washrooms are over there.” She tipped her head left, and then she turned on her heel and walked off with a, “Have a blessed evening,” thrown over her shoulder.
Estelle stared after her, various objections sticking in her throat. A tent? Or you can sleep in your car again, she reminded herself, her knees aching at the very thought of folding her five-foot-nine frame into the backseat of the Ford another night.
She sighed, hoisted her duffel over her shoulder, and pressed on.
The tent smelled of weed and mildew, but the mattress was mostly inflated, and the zipper closure worked.
She considered heading back to the car to lock up her guitar, but it was late, and the parking lot was all the way on the other side of the grounds.
Instead, she resorted to bringing all her stuff with her to the restroom as she went to clean up for the night.
Rubbing a wet towel over her skin was no shower, that was for sure, but she felt marginally better as the cool water dripped from her hair into the sink, and her make-up swirled down the drain.
It was one night. She’d perform here tomorrow again, then she’d be on the road to whatever came next, each experience a brick in the foundation she was laying for her career.
At some point, someone would hear her, and word of mouth would take off.
She just knew it. It was only a matter of when.
Painting a future of accolades and ever-larger venues, Estelle crawled into the tent and closed the zipper behind her.
There was no way she’d use the stained blanket that came with the mattress, so she dug up the small quilt her mother had made for her as a wedding gift years ago and willed it to cover at least her legs.
She had to lie on her back to keep her weight spread evenly—on her side, her hip and shoulder sank through the mattress all the way to the ground—but it was nice to stretch out.
Before long, she was drifting off, the sound from the fair a faint backdrop that followed her into dreams where the noise was for her and her alone.
She waved to a crowd of thousands, spotlights dazzling her.
She joked with her musicians, all of them looking at her for pointers.
She signed autographs, the crowd pressing up against her—a tug on her sleeve here, a whispered word of praise there.
Estelle huffed out a breath as the prodding of eager fans reached into the place between dream and consciousness, and when she couldn’t make it stop, alertness rushed back in with a cold grip around her throat.
Someone was in the tent with her. She knew it before she’d opened her eyes.
The air was too cloying and in sparse supply, and the quilt no longer covered her legs.
Sensing danger, she played dead to the world while carefully opening one eye to gaze into the murky darkness, barely making out a large motionless shape near her feet.
The zipper was pulled open, and beyond was safety, but how Estelle would make it there, she had no idea—not when this man was blocking her way.
As her mind struggled to solve this problem, the man lifted his hand and placed it lightly on her bare calf, one finger sliding along its side in a move that made Estelle’s skin prickle all over. She had to do something. She had to move.
No sooner had the thought entered her mind than she sprang up, shuffling backward away from this stranger’s touch. “What the fuck are you doing?” she hissed. “Get out now before I scream.”
The man stilled. “Not sure you want to do that,” he drawled in a low voice.
“I most certainly do,” Estelle said, feeling the ground next to her for her bag.
“I don’t know. You’ve got a free bed here and a paycheck coming in. I’m thinking my dad might change his mind about both if you make a ruckus.”
Fuck. This was Morris’s son, the great lug of a man she’d spotted hauling tarps earlier in the day. Her fingers found the duffel pocket they’d been looking for. “Look, I don’t want any trouble, but you’re not welcome here. I just want to sleep.”
“And I say this tent was mine first.” He reached for her knee this time, but she batted off his hand with the back of her hairbrush, the thwack ringing out between them.
“You bitch,” he growled, cradling his fingers to his chest for an extended moment before lunging forward.
“Get off me!” Estelle shouted, clawing at him as his onion breath billowed into her face. “No!”
She bucked and shoved at the grunting oaf, protesting as loudly as she could with him crushing her beneath him, and finally, after what felt like an hour of struggle, another voice called out from nearby.
“What’s going on?”
Then another, “Everything okay?”
It was enough to distract her attacker for the opportunity she needed to roll him sideways, and as she did, she drew her knee as hard as she could into his groin.
A strangled cry left him as she scrambled up and out of the tent into a small group of people who’d made their way closer.
“He attacked me while I was sleeping,” she managed, still struggling to get a full breath into her lungs. “Someone call the police.”
A guy sporting a wavy mullet crawled into the tent and pulled the guy outside. “Damn it, Fred. We’ve talked about this.”