Chapter 2 #2
“Excuse me, what the—” The girl stopped, eyeing me carefully. The anger drained from her face and was replaced with something like curiosity. “I’m sorry. I thought you were a Peeping Tom.” She paused, cocking an eyebrow. “If you don’t mind me asking, what are you doing in front of my window?”
The girl was about my age, with glossy brown hair curled like a magazine ad and a prim pink cardigan set. But these elements didn’t seem a part of her. Her tall, strong body radiated a divine energy, like a goddess masquerading as a teenage girl.
In my silence, she studied me back. I imagined the dirt child she must see, and I took a step away so she couldn’t get a whiff. I reached up to smooth the wild, wavy tangle of my hair.
Her gaze made its way down to the ground, where she stared at my bare feet. In my haste to sniff out the music, I had forgotten my shoes. I expected to see judgment when her eyes met mine again, but I still saw only curiosity. It released the sound in my throat.
“I heard the music. From next door.”
She looked over at the boarded-up house with a frown. “The Clarks’ old place? But that’s been condemned for months.”
“No, um, on the other side.”
“The Haskins?”
“Yes, they’re my cousins. I’ve been staying with them.”
She nodded, seeming to accept it. “Well, then, I apologize for disturbing you.” There was something so elegant about her speech. The way she polished each syllable and strung them together like pearls.
“No, I… I love music.”
She exhaled. “That’s a relief.” Her mouth curled slightly. “If I may ask, what did you think of the song?”
“Truth is I couldn’t hear it very well, so I came over to get a better listen. What song is it?”
“It’s mine. I wrote it myself.”
I’d never met anyone else who wrote songs. “It reminds me of something all coiled up. Like a snake, maybe.”
The girl took further stock of me. “What’s your name?”
“Lulabelle.” I scrambled to remember the rest of the name I had crafted on the ride to Nashville. “Lulabelle Powers.”
Her mouth curled into a full smile, and she put her hand out. “Hess Walker.” I shook her solid, golden hand, and it felt like gripping a rock warmed by the sun. “Would you like to come in?” she asked, and I nodded without thinking.
She met me at the front door, and I walked carefully into the house. In the well-furnished front room, there were new-looking instruments scattered around and records stacked on shelves. So many treasures in one place.
“Is this all yours?”
“Oh, no. Most of these belong to Mom. Though I think that’s Martha’s bass,” she said, pointing at an amber guitar leaned against the wall.
I looked at her questioningly.
“Martha’s one of my roommates. This is a boardinghouse.”
“Is it run by your mama?”
“Oh, ha! No. Mom owns the place, but she doesn’t have children. Everyone just calls her that. She opened her house a few years ago to give unmarried women performers a place to stay. She used to sing and play fiddle in a duo with her husband, but he passed.”
I felt like I’d stumbled into some kind of dream. Who knew such a place could exist?
Hess led me back to her bedroom, which was just as beautiful as the rest of the house, with its matching floral coverlet and wallpaper and a closet full of candy-colored dresses.
While Hess tuned a gleaming blonde guitar, I waited patiently near the wall so as not to smudge anything.
“Okay, are you ready? I need your honest opinion.”
I nodded, afraid I would say the wrong thing and all of this would turn to vapor.
She started the coiled-up tune I’d heard through the window.
It was real tight, so that it felt like you were twisting through a narrow passage but still getting lost somehow.
It conjured up how trapped I’d felt back home and in the shed, but now it was at a safe distance, allowing me to study it. A few words appeared in my head:
She sat in the room, watchin’ the tree,
Waitin’ for someone to set her free
I closed my eyes and hummed with the melody of the guitar, and then I quietly sang the line, which led to another, and another, like it always did when I got on a story I wanted to tell.
After a few lines, I had this feeling that the music needed to crescendo, when the character feels that they can’t go on.
But then they get a chance at escape, and as freedom gets closer, the music gets looser, feeding air into the tight coil.
I said all of this to Hess, and she built upon it as I played around with the words.
After a while, she played it through with us singing together. When it was done, she stared at me.
“My word. Where on earth did you come from?”
The front door slammed, and an older woman’s voice called through the house. I jumped up from where I’d settled on the floor, suddenly aware of my surroundings. If this “Mom” woman saw me, she would certainly kick me out. “I’m sorry. I gotta go now.”
Hess looked panicked. “Now?” She followed me to the door. “Will you come back? Another day?”
I wasn’t sure it was wise, but I wanted to more than anything. “Yes. Just start playing the song, and I’ll come.”
Back in the stale air of the shed, I relived every moment of the afternoon with Hess, and I realized that my sense of time had returned.
Every moment I had been in Nashville had pooled together like shit in a pit, but now there was this one crisp stretch of time that stood apart, that marked an hour gloriously spent.
Music had returned to me as well, its raw material like fairy magic swirling into different combinations in my head. Our song played over and over, and the parts I wanted to add and change glowed in the dark space of my mind. I closed my eyes and pretended I lived only in that world.
The next time I heard Hess playing, I couldn’t stay away, and it was the same the next time, and the next. We met up almost every day that week, and I lived for our afternoons making music together.
I had missed the woods since I came to Nashville. It’s where I wrote most of my songs, alone among the trees. Their special silence allowed me to hear the music that drifted down from above.