Twang (20 page)

I stared at her. Suddenly I knew.
It’s normal for a woman to react the way I did! I wasn’t psycho or deluded!
At last, I exonerated
myself for pouring out Holt’s liquor. I also scrubbed the last shred of any feelings for the man right out of my heart. Part of that cloud following me disappeared, and I was actually hungry. I gobbled up the pecan spin and milk Tonilynn offered.

I got to Flint Recording early and walked up and down Seventeenth Avenue thinking about how this was the first time I was going to sing, “Daddy, Don’t Come Home” in public. I felt panic like hungry little dogs nipping at my heels, and I started mentally screaming for Tonilynn to arrive. Finally I saw her crossing the street, wearing a sparkly aqua T-shirt and tight stonewashed jeans tucked into her pink cowboy boots.

I held the door for her, and she passed through wheeling the biggest, reddest Samsonite I’d ever seen, and cradled in her other arm, like a baby, an enormous load of flowers. “Brung you some hydrangeas for the road trip, hon,” she said, her frosted pink lips stretching in a wide smile as she lifted the bouquet.

I was stunned. “Ohhhhh, thank you. Nobody ever gave me flowers before.”

“Sure they did. I’ve personally seen dozens of bouquets lined up every time you have a concert or award ceremony.”

“They all say ‘To Jenny Cloud’ on the little cards. Those people don’t know me.” I felt tears welling.

Tonilynn set the flowers on a table and took my hands in hers. “When we’re all boarded, I’m going to sit down and write
a little card, saying, ‘To my dear friend, Jennifer Clodfelter, who is beautiful inside and out.’ ”

I blinked back the tears. Tonilynn loved me despite my flaws and it was a relief just having her with me. Maybe this tour wouldn’t be the disaster I feared.

“Alrighty,” Tonilynn said a bit later, “time to head to our home away from home.”

We hit the sidewalk, striding along in the early morning air, walking the few blocks to the tour bus

“Thanks again for the flowers.”

“Well, all I did was cut them. Aunt Gomer did the planting, the fertilizing, and the weeding. I swan, Jennifer, that woman may not know what she ate for lunch, but she recollects every little thing from her growing-up years! She started in telling me this long, convoluted story about how these hydrangeas are descended from ones on her great-aunt Myrt’s homeplace, and you know how old people are, once she got going on the hydrangeas, that led to her having to tell about how she used to love to play marbles out on the packed dirt of their front yard, and then how on Saturdays, she and her passel of cousins would ride the train into the big city to watch a moving-picture show. She still calls them moving-picture shows! Ha! Then she got going on the gristmill. I don’t hardly know what a gristmill is.” Tonilynn laughed as she wrestled her luggage down a curb, turning the corner where the Eagle came into view.

“Ooooh weee!” Tonilynn stopped so abruptly I almost crashed into her standing there, her mouth open as she stared at the side of my forty-five-foot “Eagle Luxury Entertainment Coach,” which Mike had recently commissioned to be painted with a huge color picture of me from the waist up, holding my Washburn, singing. Next to my giant head were the words JENNY CLOUD, LIVE! Milky-blue clouds airbrushed in the background gave the image an otherworldly look.

“That just beats all I ever saw,” Tonilynn said after a spell. “A bona fide piece of moving art! The artist captured both your tomboy side and your sweet side. I love it. Don’t you love it?”

“Sure,” I said. But for the millionth time that day I felt really unsure. The stage had always ushered her siren call, offered me the promise of her transformative powers. I’d always anticipated her with full faith in a beautiful experience. But today, the fear was overwhelming. I still didn’t know how Mike had convinced me to journey back to that place I had to go in order to write “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.” And though I’d rehearsed to a ridiculous degree what to say between numbers, working up a smooth transition from “Blue Mountain Blues” to “Daddy, Don’t Come Home,” trying my best to soften the bad feelings by coating them in vague words I didn’t really want to call lies, still I had a sense of overpowering dread inside me. I was so nervous about tomorrow at the Toyota Center in Houston I could hardly swallow.
What if I lose it up there? What if I fall apart and embarrass myself in front of thousands of fans?

Tonilynn hauled her luggage up onto the Eagle. “Soon as we put our things away, I’ll make coffee and we can just sit and visit a spell.”

We had a half hour before Mike and the band were scheduled to arrive, and I was glad to hang out with just Tonilynn and her chattering, get my bearings, and settle in for the week ahead.

Every time I boarded the Eagle for another round of concerts, a part of me was still astonished. To look at the Eagle from the outside, you wouldn’t dream it could hold a kitchen, a lounge with a U-shaped leather sofa, a full bath, and a color satellite TV along with a complete sound system in all ten bunks. For sleeping, on one side of the bus was me, Tonilynn, Mike, my publicist, and the driver, and on the other, my five band members. The band and I shared a lot of mutual love and respect, but we didn’t hang out together. I think
they understood I’m the loner type. The rest of my entourage traveled separately.

After a bit I heard Tonilynn calling, “It’s ready, hon!” and I met her in the lounge where she had two mugs waiting. She’d put my hydrangeas in a pitcher full of water.

“That looks pretty,” I said.

“Well, I was gonna bring you some Queen Anne’s lace, too, but I ran out of time because I made Bobby Lee pancakes and bacon.”

“You’re a good mom,” I told her, cradling my warm mug in both palms.

“Lord help me, I try. Poor thing’ll have to deal with Aunt Gomer by himself for a week. I just don’t believe they’re weeds, do you?”

“Huh?”

“The county agent said Queen Anne’s lace is actually a weed, in the carrot family or something. But I think they’re every bit as pretty as a rose. In their own way. I mean, who makes the scientists—or whoever it is that classifies stuff—the end-all-be-all as far as classifying something a flower or a weed?”

“You’re right.” I took a sip of my coffee.

“Hey!” Tonilynn laughed. “Maybe there’s a song in that for you. About a weed being a beautiful flower fit for a queen? Guess I got something from Aunt Gomer, because I just love all kinds of plants, weeds or not.”

“Me too.” I was thinking of the ferns and mosses along the rivers from my childhood, the sycamores along the Cumberland.

“I take that back,” Tonilynn said, a scowl crossing her face. “There’s one plant, well two if you count Poison Ivy, I literally despise!” Her brown eyes narrowed. “I told Bobby Lee just this morning, ‘I’ve a good mind to get the chainsaw and cut that
nasty row of catalpa trees down. I don’t know why on earth you have to obsess on those disgusting worms!’ ”

I figured she’d get around to explaining it all, and she did, in her roundabout way.

“I mean it, Jennifer. I told that boy I’ve seen artificial catalpa worms, which look exactly like the real ones he harvests from those nasty catalpa trees. I’ve seen them in the Walmart fishing tackle section. But he claims they got to be live for the catfish to go crazy.”

I recalled Bobby Lee saying the large, juicy worms he harvested from his “worm trees” were like manna to catfish and bream.

“And, oh, my goodness,” Tonilynn sighed, “it’s that time of year when the boy’s literally obsessing. Reckon why the Lord makes men love football and fishing so much?”

I didn’t answer. An obsession with fishing or football was a walk in the park compared to one with drinking and chasing wild women.

“You can’t tell Bobby Lee a thing when it’s football or fishing season, either one,” Tonilynn continued. “But I reckon I ought to call it
worm season
. Now that the catalpa eggs have hatched and it’s caterpillar stage. And Aunt Gomer!” She blew out a blast of frustration that sounded like “Phwuh!” “That woman makes me spit nails!”

“Why?”

“She encourages him, says to me, ‘Honey, Bobby Lee’s just doing what he loves. He’s not going to tumble into the lake. He’s the best fisherman around here. Can outfish any so-called able-bodied man, blah, blah, blah.’ ” Tonilynn paused for a gulp of her coffee. “See why I get so put out with her? She needs to keep a better eye on my boy. He’s out there at those catalpa trees day and night, determined to beat the wasps that love
to eat the disgusting caterpillar worms. Our freezer’s running over with them.”

“He freezes them?” I was on the edge of my seat.

“Mm-hm. Now I admit that part’s amazing. Bobby Lee explained it to me one day. He says it’s something to do with a thing called cryogenics, and the worms are just suspended in the freezer, dormant. He says all he has to do is just tuck the jar near his backside, and before he even gets down to the water, they’re wiggling around like new, absolutely frantic as they search for the leaves that keep ’em alive.”

I could see it in my mind’s eye, and I smiled. “I’d like to see one of those worms.”

Tonilynn laughed. “I wouldn’t touch those nasty things for nothing! Ooey gooey, pale-yellow wormy looking things, with a black spine and a horn on their rear. Bobby Lee says if you leave ’em be, they’ll turn into some kind of sphinx moth. But moths are hardly better than worms or caterpillars, are they?”

I didn’t answer. I liked moths.

“Anyway, back to the host trees for those buggers. Catalpas have got to be the messiest trees ever! Got big old ugly leaves, almost as big as tobacco leaves, and these enormous brown pods that look like cigars and drop off all over the place. The birds open them up for seeds and make a pure mess. I don’t even like the flowers. They’re these whitish-purple blooms that look cheap.”

I was gripping my coffee cup’s handle so tight my fingers were white, watching Tonilynn’s furious face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so riled up. “Aunt Gomer says to Bobby Lee, ‘Go get ’em,’ and ‘You’re amazing on those wheels,’ and ‘When you want to do something, there’s nothing can stop you.’ ”

Something in me had the feeling that Tonilynn might be overreacting to Aunt Gomer and maybe just a little jealous of how happy those trees and caterpillars made Bobby Lee.

“Know what, Jennifer?” Tonilynn said after a spell. “I think Aunt Gomer has a mean streak in her she hasn’t turned over to the Lord yet. Whenever I remind her Bobby Lee’s handicapped, she says, ‘Motorcycles don’t crash themselves.’ ” She made her voice sound exactly like Aunt Gomer’s, but despite the mocking, I noticed tears in her eyes.

“Know what I’m terrified of?” Tonilynn asked softly, leaning forward to whisper.

“What?” I whispered back.

“I’m absolutely terrified that Aunt Gomer’s gonna get those nasty creatures out of the freezer and cook ’em up in one of her famous spaghetti casseroles.”

“Ewww!”

“I thought she might have the old-timer’s, but now I’m sure of it.”

I felt the sides of my throat aching. Poor Aunt Gomer.

“I just know she’s gonna get mixed up and cook those worms, and I’m going to be so exhausted from work, I won’t even notice what I’m eating until it’s too late.”

“Surely she can see they’re worms.”

“I don’t know. She’s still spry and able-bodied for the most part, but I’ve noticed that in addition to her mind going, her vision’s growing dim. I’ve seen her squinting at her gardening catalogs, and she’s moved her rocker up not five feet away from the TV to watch her shows. I used to think Aunt Gomer and Bobby Lee were the perfect team.”

Tonilynn blotted a tear from her cheek with a napkin. “Anyway, now I realize more than ever how much Aunt Gomer needs Bobby Lee, and here she is claiming I spoil him! That I’m squelching his happiness, and I ought to kick him out of the nest.”

I watched Tonilynn twirling a little silver cross on her necklace, thinking how capable both Aunt Gomer and Bobby
Lee seemed to me. I was sure they’d each one do fine on their own. But I would never say this to Tonilynn.

“It just breaks my heart,” Tonilynn’s voice trembled. “If I ever did kick Bobby Lee out of the nest, he’d die of loneliness. None of his old friends come around anymore. Reckon most of ’em are married and got families to tend to, wives who want ’em home, but still, doesn’t seem right to just totally abandon someone. Seems after they realized Bobby Lee wasn’t gonna get the use of his legs back, they decided they didn’t have no more use for him.” She looked at me, eyes pleading. “I’m doing right by my boy, ain’t I?”

I was thinking Tonilynn would be the one who’d die of loneliness if Bobby Lee moved out. I felt an urge to get up and hug her, but I was nervous because I’d never been the hugging type. Finally, I set my cup down and stood up to go settle on the sofa next to her, reaching my arms out to encircle her, saying, “Of course, you’re doing the right thing.”

Tonilynn smiled through her tears and whispered, “Thank you, hon,” and for one brief moment my heart fluttered with joy.

I figured the joy came from knowing that I was not alone in my human frailty and that I did know how to connect with another human.