All for a Song (40 page)

The image is tiny, but she remembers the moment vividly. It was the day they left, and the two women stand side by side. The old Brownie had captured them laughing, as if they’d been friends, or even sisters.

“That’s Aimee Semple McPherson.”

It is.

“She was an amazing woman. And you knew her?”

Lynnie nods.

“And this one—just says,
sisters
.”

It’s Darlene. Somehow, she’s always remembered Darlene as being ungainly, huge in her pregnancy. But those must have been her inexperienced eyes, because she looks beautiful. Radiant, but sad. Her smile is forced for the camera, as is Lynnie’s own. There’s a blur at the margin of the image where one of the boys—who remembers which one—had just been unceremoniously chased away.

Lynnie holds out her hand, making a writing gesture, and Charlotte digs through her bag, producing a pen. When she first came out of the last stroke, once she’d resigned herself to a life without speech, she often had a pad and pencil, ready to communicate as she could. But words often dissolved between her mind and the paper, and her life had become so simple, there’d been little need.

Now, as she takes the pen from Charlotte’s hand, the entire act seems unfamiliar. Charlotte turns the picture over and Lynnie writes,
Darlene and me. Aug. 1922.

She’s horrified at the trail of letters left behind. They are disjointed and half-formed, more like the product of a seven-year-old than one who’s lived a century beyond that. But Charlotte brightens and says, “Oh, of course,” before picking another picture from the pile.

“I love this one. It’s you, I guess, playing your guitar?”

This is Kansas City, at a park just a few blocks from their hotel. That much she remembers, but the picture itself is a surprise. In it, she is hunched over her guitar, eyes closed—mouth, too. There’s a posture of prayer, but instead of having hands clasped, one holds the strings to a chord, and the other is a blur of motion.

“You look so beautiful . . . and peaceful. There aren’t a lot of candid shots from that era. I think the photographer was a little bit in love with you.”

Enough.

Lynnie drops the photograph and shakes her head, still fearful of the thought of it, even with Roland long in Glory and she not far. Had he loved
her? Sometimes, when she thought back to that final afternoon on the beach, she knew for certain that he did. Not with the innocence that drove her own affections, but with enough compassion to set her free and send her home.

“This is the guy, right? Here with you next to this old car? This cracks me up because it says,
Remember, my car!
on the back.”

Lynnie would laugh if she had the strength, but a familiar, draining feeling hovers as the day takes its toll.

“You’re getting tired. I’m sorry, but just one more? I recognize the station, but I’m not sure if this is when you first arrived in Los Angeles or when you left.”

Lynnie doesn’t need to see the picture to know. There’d been no pictures when she arrived—not of her, anyway. Sister Aimee had been the subject of reporters’ and photographers’ interest that day. This picture was yet another that Roland called his “last one—just to finish off the roll, sweetheart.”

The girl in the picture is wearing a brocade skirt and peach-colored blouse that the woman in the bed can feel on her skin. It had been cleaned and pressed and was forever one of her favorites. He’d told her to take off her hat, as the shadow hid her face, and she’s clutching it in one hand while the other holds her ever-present guitar. A modest pile of bags is at her feet, and as soon as the picture is snapped, the tears that are invisible to the unsophisticated lens will pour down her face.

“So it’s the day you left?”

Yes.

“And you never saw him again?”

Surely Charlotte speaks of Donny, but the answer is the same for Roland.

Never.

When she remembers a last embrace, a final soft kiss, it is Roland, not Donny. Roland had bent to her, touched his lips to hers, merged forever the scent and taste of tobacco. She’d never smoke herself, for fear of tainting the memory.

Charlotte takes the picture and examines it closely. “You were even
younger than me, weren’t you? You could have been a star. Would have made it much easier to find you.”

Suddenly it’s clear what must be done. This minute, before the rushing tide of sleep steals her away. Lynnie presses Nurse Betten’s call button on the side of her bed, then fumbles through the pictures, separating out the unposed image of her playing the guitar. She flips it over and drums her fingers, waiting.

“Is something wrong?” Charlotte asks. “Can I get you anything?”

Lynnie trains her eyes on the door.

“I’m sorry. If you want me to leave, I’ll go.”

A burst of strength surges through Lynnie as she grasps Charlotte’s arm. It’s the first time in her life that she’s touched a tattoo, and some part of her wonders if the intricate Celtic cross is somewhat responsible for the exigency she feels.

“What you need, Miss Lynnie?” Nurse Betten is amply cheerful as she walks through the door.

“I think something might be wrong,” Charlotte says, covering Lynnie’s hand with her own. “She just, I don’t know . . . changed.”

Lynnie beckons Nurse Betten over, and when she arrives at her side, taps the photograph.

“Is that you? My goodness, how beautiful.” She looks up at Charlotte. “She still has that guitar, you know.”

“Seriously?” Charlotte’s voice is full of awe.

Nodding, Lynnie takes the photograph and forces it into Charlotte’s hand, disregarding any folds or crinkles the transfer might inflict.

“You want the girl to keep the picture?”

Lynnie shakes her head.

“It is my picture.”

Lynnie presses it into her flesh and forces two grunts from her throat.
Guitar.

Nurse Betten claps as if she’s solved a game show puzzle. “She wants you to have her guitar.”

Lynnie nods and points to the closet, but Nurse Betten, caught up in
the enthusiasm of the moment, is already there, lifting the case from the top shelf.

Already Lynnie can smell it, feel the warm, worn handle in the curve of her fingers.

“It’s heavier than I thought,” Nurse Betten says, and Lynnie can feel the ache of it in her shoulder as she carried it on the train, and the surprising ghost of regret that would sneak up every now and then since the day she carried it off.

She moves her legs, making room for the case on the foot of the bed. Nurse Betten steps aside to give Charlotte the honor of opening the latches.

It’s not the first time Lynnie has heard this sound over the years. There had been other guitars—one given to her as a wedding gift by her husband, another on her fiftieth birthday. She’d played in countless Sunday services and every county fair, but never
that
song, and not with Donny’s guitar. Not since that morning in the recording studio. Often, when she’d find herself alone, and then later, when solitude loomed as a constant state of being, she’d flipped those latches, sometimes even opening the lid to tuck a treasure inside that space between the curve of the instrument and the softness of the velvet.

Charlotte looks into the case as if discovering a relic. “Can I lift it out?”

Lynnie pleads with her to do just that.

“It’s a Martin.”

1912.

She lifts it out the way one would lift a baby, with gentle support at the neck and an arm cradling the body. Lynnie longs to take it from her, but she knows it wouldn’t be the same. The silken sheen has turned to dry, parched wood, and the strings are little more than a layer of dust along the frets. Junk to anyone else—especially any of those who’d gathered today in the celebration room. Charlotte, though, holds it in all its priceless glory.

“They used to string them with actual catgut,” Charlotte says, whispering. “They’ve disintegrated.” She looks at Lynnie. “You haven’t played in a long time, have you?”

A lifetime.

“Is it ruined?” Nurse Betten asks.

“It’s in good shape,” Charlotte says, turning it over in her hands. “I know a guy in Santa Fe who does amazing work. He can restore it.” She looks to Lynnie. “If that’s okay with you.”

Lynnie gestures a blessing.

“And I’ll bring it back? It might be a couple of months, though.”

Lynnie waves her off.

“I think she wants you to keep it,” Nurse Betten says.

For a couple of months. From this point and forever.

“I couldn’t. This thing could be worth a fortune, and the rest of her family doesn’t even know I exist.”

Nurse Betten cups her hand around her mouth and whispers, “The rest of her family barely knows
she
exists. They’d just trash it.”

Lynnie looks away, embarrassed for both her family and the place she holds in it. She knows nothing of what has become of most of her material possessions—not those from her home, or her first apartment at Breath of Angels. She’s thought, always, that it didn’t matter. Once she’s with Jesus, in Glory, none of it will matter. They were the stuff of dust, like the catgut strings on her guitar. But now, seeing new life possible for the only object she’s ever treasured—a life that will take it to someplace as exotic as Santa Fe—that truth takes hold. Before her eyes, she sees both an inheritance and an heir, something she never felt she deserved.

“And who’s this?”

She can see that Charlotte is holding yet another snapshot, but the shadows are crowding too quickly to answer.

For the last hundred miles or so, Dorothy Lynn had the bus to herself, and she wondered if that was always the case when a Heron’s Nest resident came back to the roost. Not that many ever came back. People left; people stayed. She didn’t know anybody who had ever done both.

“Normally I’d just drop you right here at the main road.” Her driver, Alvin DuBose, was a Heron’s Nest regular, but not a resident. Nobody knew exactly where he lived, and given the basket of snacks he kept beside his seat, it wasn’t too far-fetched to believe the legend that he actually lived on the bus. “But seeing you’re a lady and all alone, I’ll take you right up to the door of your choosing.”

“Thank you,” Dorothy Lynn said, “but I’m worried the road up to my house might be a bit narrow.”

“Oh, I’ve hauled this old girl up and down roads you wouldn’t believe. Always an adventure, you know what I mean?”

“I’m sure.”

“Yep. You just never know where one road is going to lead you. Or how many switchbacks and pathways you’re gonna have to take to make your way home again.”

“No, you don’t.”

He’d been at this for over an hour, trying to wheedle a story out of her. When she got on the bus, she’d been one of a dozen passengers. Some, like her, were sleepy from spending days and nights on the train; others were awake and eager, with the early morning bringing adventure. All gathered together in the narrow seats, facing one another with unspoken stories.

Unspoken, that is, until Alvin DuBose loosened their tongues, asking questions and telling tales of his own. Then conversation smothered her, making her want to scream for silence. Town after town, passengers and luggage dropped away, leaving her alone, exposed, as Alvin’s final, uncracked nut.

“And I tell ya,” he said in continued, valiant effort, “there’s nothin’ I like more about my job than having the opportunity to bring people home. There’s adventure aplenty out there, but nothing compares to home. What’s that the song says? About all the nests? ‘Better than a palace with a gilded dome is the love nest you can call home.’” He sang this last part, creating a close facsimile of a popular tune.

“I like that song.”

“Yeah? Sing me a few bars.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.”

“I see that guitar there. You gotta be some sort of singer.”

“It’s my brother’s,” Dorothy Lynn said.

“Aw, that’s nice.”

He didn’t go on to explain just why he thought it was nice, perhaps because he was hoping she would fill in the details. But her head was too full of what she would say to her mother, how she would explain that her only son never intended to come home. Or to Brent, as she faced him with no evidence of her good intentions.

Alvin was humming about the love nest they called home,
and Dorothy Lynn perched on the edge of her seat in anticipation of returning to her own. The canopy of forest, her own room in the house she shared with Ma. And Brent. Would she still have a place in his heart after she ran away from the promise of their future?

They all twisted together, these feelings of place and belonging and love, like the very streets of Heron’s Nest. No wonder the town didn’t have the straight, orderly blocks and streets she’d seen in the cities. People wandered from home to home, wearing footpaths to one another. It was confusing and unwelcoming to a stranger—that’s what Brent had said when he first arrived, that the town was laid out like some sort of secret language.

She’d laughed and said, “Isn’t that the way with every family?”

Alvin DuBose brought the bus to a sputtering halt in front of Jessup’s, which served as a bus station along with all its other responsibilities.