The From-Aways (29 page)

She looks up at me, embarrassed, and I get it. This stuff with the carousel, and town, it’s about her, but it’s about us too. The two of us, together, is part of the reason why Rosie thinks Menamon is worth fighting for these days. I was just too dumb to understand it, because sometimes I can’t understand anything ever. I grab Rosie’s face and I kiss her. On her mouth but also on her eyes, her forehead, her chin. It’s emotional spillover is what it is. It’s like: I love you so much I can’t just kiss you here I’ve got to kiss you there and there and there.

Rosie smiles and kisses me back, only once, only on the mouth, but she means it. We walk to the end of the street and come out on Bayonet Lane, which will take us closer to the town green, to the show.

W
HEN WE GET
to the green, it seems like every teenage boy in town has showed up and offered himself as an electrician, a grip, a groupie. They’ve heard that Carter Marks is going to sing. Sure, none of these kids know what folk music is, but this is the biggest thing that’s happened to Menamon in so long that Carter might as well be the fucking Beatles.

The boys are snaking wires and carrying black boxes all over the green. We’ve had three whole days of sun, so the mud is firmed up. It’s seventy-two degrees and sunny. People are starting to spread out their quilts and beach towels. Old people are struggling to set up sea-rusted beach chairs that creak. Kids are toddling about, followed by tired-looking but happy mothers. Happy is what everyone looks like, because if this town knows anything, it’s to take a spring day when you get it.

The boys unfurl a hand-painted banner above the gazebo’s gables, and I recognize the loopy handwriting immediately. Rosie’s. The banner says
CONCERT
FOR
THE
THAW
.

We sit up front, in the grass, and watch things come together on the wooden platform someone found time to build in front of the gazebo this week. Billy Deep taps a mic, and the sound reverberates. “One two three,” he says. “Hey, Rosie! How do I sound?”

“I can hear you all right!” Rosie shouts back, through cupped hands.

More people show up. Joseph Deep is running the grill, making burgers, clams, and corn. All proceeds, says another sign painted in Rosie’s handwriting, will go to pay fines unjustly incurred at the Neversink Park Protest. By the time the boys begin carrying instruments onstage, the green is packed. Two hundred, maybe three hundred people. When Carter and his band head up to the bandstand, people applaud.

Carter’s wearing jeans and a faded red T-shirt, nothing special, but he walks onstage with some swagger in his step. He’s got a smile creeping up on his face he’s trying not to let show. His hair is loose and falls almost to his shoulders.

Three men climb onstage. There’s a rail-thin guy with a bristly mustache wearing a huge green baseball cap. He picks up a Gibson I’d give my left arm for. A man who looks like a bear—square-jawed, sideburns black and hair thick, enormous hands—picks up a bass. The drummer has silver hair and twinkling eyes. He looks ten years older than the rest of them. He’s wearing a black brace on one hand and holding his sticks in the other, and he’s got a smile you’d pay a million dollars to see. Carter’s checking out the setup and talking to them and they start laughing about something.

Carter loops his guitar strap over his head and plucks a few notes. They ring out and silence the crowd. Then he comes forward and takes the microphone. “Hello,” he says. “I’m Carter Marks and these good men are the Jackson Ramblers. I’d like very much for you all to welcome them to town.” The crowd claps and the Ramblers nod and tip their caps.

“Whoo!” Rosie shouts so loud I grimace. She elbows me, and I give a little whoop.

“We’d like to start with a special song for the good folks at town hall,” Carter says. He counts off and they launch into “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell. The crowd is cheering and laughing and everyone sings along extra loud at the parts about trees and parking lots. Rosie is singing so hard her eyes are shut.

They go into their own set next, a mix of Carter’s stuff plus some blues and trad. The Ramblers and Carter play together perfectly. I watch them shoot each other looks before solos and double up on a chorus on the fly. It’s like they’ve been doing this for years. And then I realize, they probably have. The bass player I recognize from an album of Carter’s I used to have. The old drummer too, he just used to be more unkempt and dangerous-looking. Carter’s got the old band back together.

They play highlights from their old albums, most of which no one knows. But I know them all. Every damn song I grew up listening to and wondering about. Dissecting the words and imagining what Carter’s face looked like when he was singing them. And here he is.

In the grass, Rosie and I are swaying back and forth together as night has come on. It’s blue-dark out, and then I see Cliff Frame messing with something out behind the gazebo. He brings his hands together, just like he did with his Christmas display, and a million little twinkling lights go on. They are strung all around the green: in the trees and around the gazebo and over our heads. Carter says, close into the microphone, “Mr. Cliff Frame, everybody,” and everyone is on their feet and cheering.

The Rambler with the mustache and the green hat produces a fiddle, and Carter counts it off for the next song. It has been winter for so long, and finally here we are out of our houses and together. Some of the old-timers get up and start dancing. Rosie pulls me to my feet and we’re dancing too. The lobstermen and fishermen dance, because seafarers are always the dancing kind. The guys from the ironworks, though not dancing, are stomping their feet and nodding like they approve. Carter’s voice is so low and smooth it carries into the night. I imagine even Maude Gunthrop is able to hear it up at her house.

“Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming out tonight. Let’s hear it for the Ramblers!” Carter says. Everyone gives a big cheer and Rosie and I jump up and down. Then Carter says, “For our next song we’d like to call up a special guest. Miss Rosalind Salem, would you come to the stage?”

Rosie kisses me on the cheek and then cuts through the crowd. She jogs up the steps and is out of breath by the time she gets there. “Hi,” she says into the mic, and Billy Deep lets out a whoop that sets the whole crowd laughing and clapping.

“Rosalind is going to help me sing the next number,” Carter says. “A song called ‘No Medicine.’ ”

My song. It’s my song.

I am so embarrassed I think I should probably die. It’s too awful, just a scrap of nothing in my notebook. I played it for Rosie only once. I see Carter and Rosie talking and nodding and they’re about to start, so I start pushing my way through the crowd, getting the hell out of there. “Excuse me, excuse me,” I say. But then Carter starts playing.

You thought I was a train, come barrelin’ down the tracks

I thought your heart was a white, white bird,

but when it flew off it was black

You thought I was a fighter, you thought I was a saint

Your face it looked like broken glass when you realized I ain’t

There’s nothin’ to be done for that, no medicine I can give

Can’t patch up what’s broke too bad,

some ills you have to live with . . .

When I hear how Carter takes my opening, those first couple chords, and adds all this finger picking to it, I turn around. Because it sounds really good. He drives the intro into a rollicking rolling verse, and Rosie sings, her voice deep. The Ramblers sing the low harmonies behind her. The chorus Carter has brightened, and made faster, so it sounds half like one of his songs and half like one of mine. Rosie belts out the chorus, and I can’t believe her up there, in her enormous earrings, with her deep voice. Carter jumps in with the tenor part, and when they harmonize I almost die on the spot. Everyone in the crowd looks like they’re a little bit in love with Rosie singing like this, but I don’t feel mad or jealous or any other rotten thing. Because it’s my words she’s singing. They can love her all they want, ’cause it’s my song she wants in her mouth.

They hold down the last line of the chorus, long and low, and then everyone cheers. For my song. Just like they would one of Carter’s. I’m still frozen there, halfway to the exit, when Rosie comes trotting through the crowd. When she gets to me, she stands facing me square, out of breath again. “It’s a good song,” she says, by way of apology.

I put my arms around her. “You sounded so good,” I say. “In a real band and everything.”

Carter thanks Miss Rosalind Salem and then lets everyone know this will be the last tune of the night. “But there will be hats going around for donations for the protesters to pay off their fine. If any of you all should see fit to put some change or a dollar inside, it would be greatly appreciated. And either way, to all of you, we thank you for coming out and listening.”

The band passes around their hats and each of the protesters has brought one too. The guitar player’s green hat, Billy Deep’s knit cap, which I can’t believe anyone would touch, and some of the boys running things add their Red Sox hats to the mix too. The hats start going around and then, suddenly, they’re multiplying. I swear there must be nothing but bare heads in Menamon tonight because everyone has taken off their hats and is filling them with nickels and with bills. I put a dollar in every hat that comes my way, and five bucks in an empty Yankees hat I swear is Leah’s. I don’t see her, but who else would have such a thing?

Carter hits the first chords of his last song and I know what he’s playing. So does the crowd. They cheer before he even starts singing. It’s “Leave Your Shoes Behind,” the one about the whiskey-eyed dame, his one big hit, the one he wrung out of Marta before ditching us, the one they have all come to hear him play.

I think of Marta, and how she loved this song so much even after he was gone. How she was so proud that she wanted it in her obituary and I thought she was a fool for not seeing the truth. But when Carter moves into the chorus, you can tell this is not a musician playing his number one song for the millionth time, jaded and running through the motions. Not the way he plays it. The way he bangs out the big chords and then quietly moves into the sweeter finger picking makes my throat catch tight. Goddamn if the way he plays doesn’t make you think it still means something to him. I watch him and know, just like that, that he still loves my mother.

Loving Marta Winters was never an easy thing. I can tell you, because I love that woman too. It’s not something I would say out loud, but there were times when I thought about running. When she was screaming irrational things, just to test me, or making me beg and fight just so she would take her pills. When I felt like I had to be more of a grown-up than she was, and couldn’t stand the way she forced me into it, again and again. I didn’t run, because that’s not what I do. But sometimes I wanted to, and it occurs to me now that it’s possible a person could have loved her, but run anyway. That those two things might not be mutually exclusive.
Can’t it be both?
Marta said.

I have an urge to visit her weeping willow down in Mystic so she’ll know that I get it now. That I’ve followed her
please
all the way to the end. I want to climb up in that willow’s branches and spend the night there, just in case she’s forgotten all about us two people who love her, like the forgetful dead sometimes do.

Carter finishes the song, wishes everyone a good night, and says he hopes they get home safe. The crowd starts to get up and disperse, but I stay put. I will never stop missing my mother. And that’s the way it should be. Carter maybe has been missing her awhile too. It’s possible, I admit, that I was not the only one grieving when Marta Winters died. Possible I am not the only one who has been feeling random, alone, and full of holes. It’s possible that in hoarding my grief, denying Carter the heartbreak that was rightfully his, I’ve prevented us from portioning out the load between us. And mutual heartbreak is what a family is built of, I think. People need to be all broken and busted up first in order for their parts to heal fused together.

Rosie and I help Joseph break down his barbecue. We load plates with some leftovers, supporting both sides of the paper with our hands, and the three of us head over to the gazebo, where everyone is milling about, eating food and drinking beers. Billy is sitting on an amp and messing around with Carter’s guitar, no longer plugged in. Carter is sitting on the platform. His shoes are off and around his hairline he’s sweaty. He is drinking an Allagash.

“Great show, boys,” Joseph says. Carter turns to Rosie and me and nods.

“Hey,” I say.

“Quinn,” Carter says. No bullshit “Miss Winters” stuff this time. No “hey, girls.” There’s something about him, postshow, that is earnest and stripped of agenda.

“That last song,” I say. “It was pretty good. You got that one on CD?”

The other guys crack up.

“Sure enough,” Carter says. “I think we’ve got that one laid down somewhere.”

“You never did get sick of playing that song, Carter, you bastard. I told you last time we played it I wasn’t never playing it again,” the mustache guy says.

“How long’s it been, Carter?” the drummer asks. “Since the last barn show?”

“Fifteen years, you fool,” the guitarist says.

Carter turns to me, serious, nervous. “Listen,” he says, “I hope you didn’t mind we worked up your tune. It’s a good song. I just thought—”

“It’s fine,” I say. “It sounded good how you guys did it.”

And then he hugs me, wrapping his arms around my head, his beer cold against the back of my neck. Before I can react I feel a second set of arms coming from behind: Rosie, not wanting to be excluded, not even for a second, hugging on to both of us. Goddammit, I think. This is it. This is it.

Squatting on the ground, Joseph Deep, ever reasonable, is counting the money from the food and the donation caps. He’s got piles of bills on the grass and he whispers numbers to himself.