Bronwyn wasn’t fooled by the optimism. “But you’ll teach me the song.”
She nodded. The passage of the family song from mother to eldest daughter was a major thing to the Tufa, and in this case, since both Chloe and Bronwyn were hereditary First Daughters, it was monumental. The loss of this song would devastate their community. “As soon as Terry-Joe has you able to play.”
“I’ll work real hard, Mom,” she said softly.
11
Susie Swayback stood in the bedroom doorway, hands on her hips, and said, “Donald Carter Swayback, what the hell are you doing?”
Don looked up from the floor, where he knelt as he pulled things from the closet. “Looking for my old guitar. Have you seen it?”
“Lord, do we still even have that thing?” Susie put her purse on the bed and sat down to remove her shoes. Susie had been adopted from China but raised across the line in Georgia, so she had a thicker Southern twang than even Don. It often disconcerted people when they traveled. “And why do you want to find it? Planning to sell it online?”
“No,” he said petulantly. “Thought it might be nice to start playing again. Just fooling around with it, you know. Is that okay with you?”
“You didn’t lose your job, did you?” Susie said accusingly.
“No!”
“Well, good,” she said as she took off her scrub pants. Susie was an X-ray technician at the county hospital, and for the past three months she’d been pulling third and first shifts to cover vacations, which meant she went to bed almost as soon as she got home in the evening. Don was beginning to feel like they were college roommates with mismatched class schedules instead of husband and wife.
“Ah-ha!” Don said. From the very back of the closet he pulled out the battered black cardboard case. He placed it flat on the foot of the bed.
“Don’t get dust on my comforter,” Susie warned. “And put that other stuff away.” She went into the bathroom; a moment later he heard the shower start.
Don opened the case. Inside was his cheap old Sunburst acoustic guitar, now some thirty years old. The remains of a sticker, probably for Nirvana or Pearl Jam, marred the surface. He lifted it, rested it across his lap, and lightly strummed. The sound shimmered, mingling with the shower noise. He adjusted the G string slightly, but otherwise it sounded in tune.
He strummed again. The room abruptly seemed to grow clearer, as if a hazy curtain had been yanked away. He looked around, seeing his home as if for the first time. The cheesy landscape painting they’d bought on their honeymoon hung over the bed; straps of Susie’s bras protruded from the top dresser drawer. His brown loafers, one upright and the other showing the worn sole, lay on the carpet beside the door. The effect quickly faded, though, and then Susie came out of the bathroom, tying her robe.
Inside the case was a spiral notebook. He opened it and saw lyrics and chords in his own handwriting. He remembered that he used to write lots of songs, documenting his life through music; how long had it been since he’d done that? And why did he stop?
“I declare, that Coletta is going to get herself in trouble before long,” Susie said as she sat on the bed and began brushing her black hair. “She was an hour late, and I swear she smelled just like pot. She can only slip past so many pee tests before they catch her, I tell you what.”
Don looked steadily at his wife. He admired her shiny black hair, pale skin, and delightful slanted eyes. Her legs, where they emerged from under the robe, were smooth and soft. By the time his gaze returned to her face, she was also staring at him. “What,” she asked, “are you looking at?”
He smiled. “The most beautiful redneck Asian woman I’ve ever seen.”
She continued to stare; there was an unmistakable rumble in his voice. “I’ve been on my feet for sixteen hours,” she said warningly.
He crawled across the bed and growled teasingly, “Then you won’t mind being on your back for a while.”
He kissed her shoulder, and she giggled. “What’s got into you, Don?” she demanded, but did not resist as he pushed her back onto the pillows.
Later, she turned to him and said, “Now I need another shower. But if this is your idea of a midlife crisis, I have to admit I like it.”
“I’m not middle aged,” he disputed with a tired grin.
“And my eyes are round like Ping-Pong balls,” she said in a cliché Asian accent, swapping the l’s and r’s. She ran her fingertips across his chest; the remains of his youthful muscles were still there beneath the layer of sedentary fat he’d accumulated. “Seriously, what brought this on? Did you imagine I was that cute little clerk down at the Q-Mart?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, I just… I was out at Aunt Raby’s today getting the old Swayback family Bible. I hope I can find some family connection between me and Bronwyn Hyatt’s family that might let me get that interview with her.”
“You’re part Tufa?”
“Yeah, my right leg below the knee and the three fingers on my left hand. One of my ears is suspect, too.”
“Seriously? I guess it explains the hair and the teeth, but you never mentioned it before.”
“Never really thought about it before. But my great-grandmother was Tufa, and if I can track down her family in Needsville, it might give me an in with the Hyatts.” He paused, looking down at her hand now drawing lazy circles on his bare stomach. “The thing is, Aunt Raby mentioned that Grandma Benji used to sing weird Tufa songs. I checked online, and at the library: nobody knows anything about any Tufa songs. I mean, any songs that are specifically Tufa.”
“And all this made you think, ‘Hm, I want a quickie when my exhausted wife gets home’?”
“No, all this made me think about my guitar and the songs I used to write, which made me feel kind of… I don’t know, young, I guess. And that made me want a quickie with my exhausted wife, who I might add was up to the challenge.” He playfully yanked a stray strand of her hair.
She giggled, then stretched luxuriously. “Boy, I’ll sleep now. You know, one of the ambulance drivers who drops people off at the hospital is a Tufa. Bliss Overbay. I could ask her if she knows any Tufa songs.”
Don shook his head. “Nah, doesn’t matter. Just thought it was odd.”
Susie looked into his eyes. “I like you like this. All interested in something. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you this way.”
“Been a while since I’ve felt this way.”
“Think it’ll stick?”
He shrugged.
She kissed his ear and took the lobe in her teeth. “Anything I can do to help it stick?”
He turned to her. “You’re doing a fine job already,” he said as he kissed her.
It took forever for night to fall.
The sunlight faded and at last the moon rose, casting enough light that Bronwyn could see the yard outside her window where the trees didn’t cast shadows. In that clear spot of silver, the haint would again appear. Eventually.
She rubbed around the point where the largest pin went through the skin of her thigh. Scratching was totally forbidden, but the itch had grown exponentially. She would be immensely glad to be shed of this monstrosity, and would hold Bliss to her Tufa timetable. She dreaded what she’d see when the Ilizarov mechanisms were removed, though; her legs, once the envy of all the other Tufa girls, would be permanently scarred. She pretended it didn’t bother her, but it did. She liked being the Bronwynator, the hell-raising hot chick all the other girls hated and all the boys wanted to take out on a quiet gravel road. That would be hard to maintain once she looked like she’d been through a blender, and she never, ever wanted a mere pity fuck.