Cool Shade

Theresa Weir

Copyright 1998 Theresa Weir

First Printing April, 1998

Reissued by Belfry Press

Belfry Press

The best of Yesterday’s fiction today

Lay me down in the cool shade

Under a cobalt sky

Lay me down in the cool shade

Hold me while I—

Sigh?

Cry?

Die?

Not a real death, but a symbolic one.

Yeah, die.

That'll work.

Big Empty

Fired.

Now that was the F word for you. The big F word.

At two a.m. Mountain Standard Time, a cardboard box positioned on the floor between her feet, Maddie tugged at the overstuffed desk drawer. It came open in a burst of mutilated paper, and she began to excavate what amounted to the last six months of her life.

Six months.

It had to be some kind of record.

Out came giveaway pencils. Chewed pens. A spiral notebook.

She came to a partially eaten candy bar and gave it a toss. It hit the side of the metal trash can with a
ping
.

Mints. Aspirin. Vitamin C. A few dimes, quarters, pennies.

Half-standing, she slipped the change into the front pocket of her denim shorts, then plopped back down on the cushioned office chair.

She came upon a paperback she'd started but never finished. Some author who was supposed to be hot but had only been boring. She tossed the book in the box. That was followed by a hairstyle torn from a magazine, a style she'd never gotten around to trying. With the vampire lifestyle she lived— working nights, sleeping days—why bother? So her hair stayed the wildly curly, shoulder length it had always been.

She dug more and came across another spiral notebook, Post-its, a plastic container full of bulletin board tacks, and her business cards.

MADISON MAGENTA SMITH

DISK JOCKEY

201 Brady Street

KLBJ Tucson, Arizona

NIGHT RADIO FOR THE CONSERVATIVE LISTENER

Conservative.

That's what had gotten her into trouble. It was just possible that there wasn't a conservative bone in her body.

"No words," her employers had told her. "At radio station KLBJ, we don't play songs with words."

A married couple, the owners had hired her from their living room while they reclined in matching La-Z-Boys, asking questions like, "Who wrote Brahms's Lullaby?" And, "If you were having your appendix removed, what kind of music would you want the surgeon to listen to?"

At first, the absurdity of the situation had appealed to Maddie. She had a penchant for quirky. But it didn't take long for the novelty to wear thin. What was music without words?

And so, six months after starting the job, she'd played a song with words. And not just any words, it turned out. She should have paid more attention to the dictates of George Carlin and his seven dirty words you were never supposed to say on the air.

Oh well. It was time to move on. Past time.

Leaving.

It was what she did best.

Nothing remained in the drawer but the familiar chaff left after a clean-out. She returned to the desktop and scooped up a handful of demo tapes. One was by yet another person claiming to be the new Rick Beck. The unusual thing about it was that the tape actually said Rick Beck on it. There were a lot of brazen people out there. The idea that someone would claim to be Rick Beck, well, that had to border on illegal.

Rick Beck.

Now there was a guy who knew words. Powerful words.

A hero. That's what he'd been. To Maddie anyway.

Maybe because heroes to her weren't the guys who flexed their muscles and went to battle. No, for her, the real heroes were the artists, the poets, the men who were brave enough to voice their emotions. It took courage to be honest. It took courage to face your demons head on with words, to go beyond the hunter-gatherer thing.

The world needed the action hero, but it also needed the quiet hero, the poet.

Rick Beck had been that.

The world had lost a hero the day Rick Beck was killed.

He'd been on his way to becoming as big as John Lennon. And like John Lennon, he'd been gunned down by some maniac. Shot on stage, just before he was to debut a new song.

Maddie dropped the tapes in her box. Maybe she'd listen to them on the way to wherever she was going. No one at the station would have any use for them.

Finished, she was getting to her feet when a knock sounded on the door. Anthony, her coworker and now emergency replacement, stuck his head inside, the fluorescent light giving his complexion a purple cast.

"Madison?" He stepped in, closing the door behind him. "Is it true you got fired?"

She nodded, hoping he wouldn't make a big deal out of it.

"Why?"

"You know the owners."

"No, I mean, Why'd you do it? Why'd you play a song with words?" He was totally baffled.

That's how it would always be with Anthony. He could find a problem on a control panel in minutes, but when it came to what made a person tick…. Well, the poor guy didn't have a clue. He was smart, but he wasn't deep. She'd quickly found out that she couldn't talk to him about anything other that what was happening on the surface. But in another way, that was part of his appeal. With Anthony, there were no mind games. You got exactly what you saw.

"I can't seem to keep from sabotaging my own life," Maddie said, telling him more than she usually admitted, even to herself, hoping he would understand, looking for someone to understand. "Whenever things start going smoothly, whenever I get caught up on my bills, when I'm riding along, wind at my back, I always have to jab a stick into my own spokes."

His blank look shouldn't have been a surprise. But Maddie couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness at once again demonstrating her inability to connect.

"What does that have to do with leaving?"

Moving on was her defense against what she referred to as The Big Empty. Even though she knew it was useless to explain, she tried again. "Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and feel this overwhelming sense of loss, of despair pressing down on your heart?"

The blankness. The puzzlement. The expression that said, Are you nuts?

He shook his head. She was scaring him.

His reaction only served to further emphasize her position in regard to the rest of the world.

She was living in another dimension.

It was lonely there.

She would make it simple for him. "I need a change, that's all."

He continued to look at her with a baffled expression, as if trying to figure out what he'd done wrong.

It wasn't like they were a couple. They'd had breakfast together a few times, gone to a few yard sales. A movie.

They weren't a couple. He was nice. He deserved a nice girl. Not somebody who blathered on about things that made no sense.

"There are other radio stations in town," he said, his expression brightening. "You'll get another job. You've got a great voice."

"It's time to move on."

Oh God. He looked like he was going to cry.

Please don't cry. Not because of me.

She hadn't realized he'd been so serious about her. This was awful.

Anthony, don't do this. I'm not good for you.

"You're leaving Arizona?"

"At least Tucson."

He swallowed. "I'll miss our breakfasts together."

"Me too."

He frowned, trying to figure it all out." What'd I do?"

"It's not you. It's me. I can't stay in one place very long. I feel like I'm being smothered. Dying."

She wanted him to see how much better off he was without her. It seemed to be working. He was looking at her as if he didn't quite know who she was. Get in line. Someone once told her she was ever-morphing. That wasn't it at all. She revealed too much. And most people, she'd come to realize, didn't want that much reality.

Maddie picked up the soft-edged cardboard box, cradling it in her arms. "Take care of yourself."

Anthony stepped aside. "You too."

Outside, the night air was clear and crisp, the kind of air that you could breathe only in Arizona.

In her little beat-up green Fiat, Maddie headed for the low-rent area where she lived, feeling a sense of release tempered by sadness.

She turned on the radio. News. A murder. A plane crash. She switched stations until she came to a decent song. Then she settled back in her seat and drove.

In another time zone, Eddie Berlin awoke from a deep sleep with feelings that were too familiar. They came out of the dark, catching him unaware, when he was vulnerable, when his guard was down.

Despair.

Guilt.

Loneliness.

He gave up on sleep and went outside, the dew-damp grass cold and wet under his bare feet. He reached through the open window of the abandoned car, turned the key, flicked on the radio, then climbed up on the hood, the windshield cold against his bare back, hard against his shoulder blades. He stared up at the stars, the music filling the night, wrapping around him, bringing him a small measure of comfort.

Gotta Get Away

Maddie hadn't exaggerated her desperation to move on. She'd been there before and she knew it was too big to fight, an instinct, like the migration of birds. And there was something so satisfying about being on the road, moving, going somewhere, anywhere.

At home she poured dry cat food for Hemingway, then began sorting through her belongings, separating them into two different piles—one to pack, one to pawn.

Two hours later, just after the sun had come up, a knock sounded on the door. Not a timid knock, or a polite knock, or a sorry-if-I'm-disturbing-you knock. This was impatient. This was hurry up.

This knock sounded exactly like her landlady's.

Maddie straightened from where she'd been crouched over a pile of rubble, rubbed her face, and walked stiff jointed to the door. On the other side of the screen was the imposing sight of Mrs. Hamilton, wearing her requisite housecoat with the bulging pockets that cradled her coveted stash of dirty tissues and rent receipts. Her feet were jammed into their usual faded flip-flops—heels mashed down to the insubstantial thickness of a piece of paper. And her toenails. Maddie didn't want to think about her toenails.

Mrs. H came in as if she owned the place—and she did. "Got some mail for you." She pulled an envelope from her pocket, handed it to Maddie, then turned her head this way and that, surveying the mess. "Looks like you're moving. You still owe for last month's rent. Not trying to leave without paying are you?"

Mrs. H had never liked Maddie, and Maddie wasn't sure why. She didn't have loud parties. She didn't invite strange men to stay the night. She didn't feed the cockroaches.

"You owe me three hundred dollars."

While Mrs. H waited for money that didn't exist, Maddie's hands went to the front pockets of her shorts. She dug deep. She jingled the change she'd found in her desk. "I… I, uh…" Her shoulders sagged. "The truth is, I lost my job."

Mrs. Hamilton clicked her tongue and shook her head, as if to say she wasn't in the least surprised.

Maddie pulled her hair back from her forehead, feeling perspiration begin to drip down her spine. It had sure gotten hot in the last few seconds.

Mrs. Hamilton shook her head some more, and Maddie sweated some more.

"The truth is I not only lost my job, I'm broke."

Maddie cast a nervous gaze about the room, hoping for inspiration. She spotted the purple electric guitar in the pawn pile. It was a souvenir from her Nevada days when the bar where she'd worked had gone bankrupt and the owner had paid her with a guitar. No matter that she didn't know how to play. The guitar had been good to her; she'd hocked it twice. Maybe she could get some more mileage out of it.

She dove for the instrument, wrapping her fingers around the long neck, holding it high in the air for Mrs. Hamilton's inspection. "A guitar?" Maddie asked hopefully. "It's got a great sound." She braced a foot on the couch cushion, resting the body of the guitar against her thigh. She strummed the dead strings. "Look, it's even got a whammy bar." She picked up the metal rod from the amplifier, screwed it in place, and demonstrated the correct movement.

Mrs. Hamilton wasn't convinced. "Can you play country music on it?" she asked dubiously.

"Oh, sure. It'll play anything."

Maddie plugged the jack into the amp and the amp into the wall, then flicked the switch. The amp hummed in anticipation and remarkably little feedback. "Here's some Hank Williams."

Maddie counted down the frets and found the proper positioning, the metal strings biting into her fingertips. She strummed a C chord, one of the only three chords she knew. Above the sound of the out-of-tune strings, she faked the first two lines of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." "Or how about some Woody Guthrie? 'This Land Is Your Land?'"

Before she got to the part about New York Island, Maddie knew it was a done deal. Mrs. Hamilton was looking pleased, looking at Maddie as if she suddenly approved of her for the first time in their relationship.

Another truth in life. People change when you have something they want.

"I'll take it," the woman said. "And I want that thing too." She pointed to the two-hundred-dollar Peavey amplifier.

Maddie didn't care. What good was an amp without a guitar?

After Mrs. Hamilton left, Maddie stood with hands on hips, staring dismally at the diminished pawn pile. Her big ticket items were gone. She was still thinking about what else she could part with when she remembered the initial reason for Mrs. H's visit.

She grabbed the letter off the counter where she'd tossed it, then sat down on the arm of the couch.

Nebraska postmark.

She didn't know anybody in Nebraska. Willa Cather had been from Nebraska. So had Rick Beck.

The handwriting, which looked like an older woman's, wasn't one Maddie recognized. Curious, she tore open the envelope and pulled out a piece of pink, floral scented stationery, the tight, slanted script the same as the envelope's.

Dear Madison:

You don't know me, but I have taken the liberty of writing to you out of concern for your sister, Enid.

Enid. What now? Last Maddie knew, her sister had been living in California. Over a year ago, Maddie had sent her a card. It had come back with that familiar stamped, pointing finger, the one that always made her think of Elvis Presley. Return to Sender. Address Unknown. Maddie went back to the letter.

I'm not a nosy person, but your sister rents a house from me and she hasn't been home in over a month. The yard needs to be mowed, the mail has stacked up, which isn't like her. Any other time she's been gone, she's asked me to look after things for her. This time, she didn't say a word.

As I said, I'm not a nosy person, but I thought I should go in the house to look around. That's how I found your address. Her rent is overdue, and I'm going to have to start packing her things soon. Could you come and get your sister's belongings? I can't rent the place until they're out of there.

It was signed Evelyn Stoikavich, Chester, Nebraska.

Maddie slowly folded the letter and stuck it back in the envelope.

Enid.

The beauty of the family. The favorite.

When Enid was little, she would perform for her mother's friends.

"Come on out here, Enid. Do your impersonation of Marilyn Monroe."

Enid would skip into the room, her blond curls bouncing. She would sing the Happy Birthday song that Monroe had performed for President Kennedy. Everyone would clap and fuss over her.

That's how Enid’s childhood had been. One cute performance after another. But as it turned out, too much of that kind of attention wasn't good for a person. It made Enid terribly self-absorbed.

Four years.

Maddie hadn't seen her sister in four years. Not since Enid had stolen Maddie's car and wiped out her bank account.