We caught up, and she looked at me again.
“Where are you from?”
“Granville, near Columbus, Ohio.”
“Why did you come here?”
“Her sister’s in a band and someday will be singing in the Grand Ole Opry,” Kathy Ann bellowed.
Charlotte Lily smirked.
“What about your parents?”
“Her parents were killed in a plane crash when she was only five.”
“What did you do, Kathy Ann, get her whole life story in ten minutes? Be careful,” she warned me. “Her picture’s next to the word gossip in the dictionary.”
“It is not!”
“What’s it next to then, Pothead?” Charlotte said, laughed, and impulsively crossed the street.
“I thought you said she was your best friend,” I told Kathy Ann as we caught up.
“She is. She’s very popular and she can get us into Stumpin‘ Jumpin’,” Kathy Ann reminded me.
“Maybe it’s not worth it,” I told her.
She looked at me as if I was crazy.
“Give me a cigarette,” Charlotte ordered.
“Oh, I left them home,” Kathy Ann said. Charlotte stopped walking and glared at her.
“What? I told you not to forget.”
“I know,” she said mournfully.
“You smoke?” she asked me.
“Yes, but I don’t have any cigarettes on me at the moment.”
“Terrific.”
I looked at the drugstore just down the walk.
“Give me five minutes,” I said, and headed for it.
“Five minutes?”
They followed me in. I located the cigarettes quickly, but picked up a box of tampons I actually did need. I checked out the mirrors, watched the clerk behind the counter, and then picked up a pack of my favorite menthol cigarettes, shoving it into my blouse. Then I paid for the tampons and walked out, the two of them standing at the door.
Charlotte watched me take it out of my blouse.
“Here.”
“I thought something would ring if you did that,” Kathy Ann said.
“Obviously not,” I said.
“Why did you steal them? I saw you have enough money to buy them,” Charlotte asked.
I shrugged.
“I’ll save my money for something I can’t steal,” I told her, and she smiled.
“C’mon,” she said. “I think we’re going to have a lot of fun tonight.”
Kathy Ann’s face brightened.
“She likes you,” she said, as if the queen had just granted me permission to live in Nashville.
If it’s that easy to win friends here, I thought, maybe I’ll have a good time tonight.
Charlotte Lily offered me one of the cigarettes from the pack I stole for her. I took it.
“I want one too,” Kathy Ann said.
“You don’t get any. Punishment for forgetting,” she told her, smiled at me, and continued on. Like a whipped puppy, Kathy Ann remained a few steps behind us all the way to Stumpin‘ Jumpin’.
I was in Nashville and if Grandpa saw me now, I thought, he’d have me at a prayer meeting in the morning.
Too late for that, I told the voices inside me.
Maybe too late for a lot of things.
4
Getting into a New Groove
On the exterior Stumpin‘ Jumpin’ looked almost like another one of Mother darling’s honky-tonks. There was a blazing red neon sign over the two large black metal doors, at either side of which stood two human bulldogs. Each looked like a football linebacker, with thick necks and shoulders that made Grandpa’s look puny. Charlotte Lily exchanged some sort of greeting and message with her sister’s boyfriend through their own eye and head signals and then turned to us and said, “It’s a little too early. We have to go in when there’s a good crowd. We’re less conspicuous if we do it that way,” she explained. “C’mon, we’ll visit Keefer for a while.”
“Who’s Keefer?” I asked when I saw that Kathy Ann was very pleased by the suggestion.
“An old boyfriend of mine I toy with from time to time. He works in an auto body shop.”
“His father threw him out of the house,” Kathy Ann said.
“I believe it was by mutual consent,” Charlotte Lily told her.
“His father beat him up, didn’t he?”
“I swear, Kathy Ann, you still don’t know anything about men, do you?”
“Why?” she wailed as we turned a corner into a side street.
“Why? You don’t remind a man of a time when he looked a fool or lost a fight. Sometimes I wonder if you learn anything being in my company. She’s still a virgin,” she told me.
“So am I,” I said.
“Sure, right. And there really is a Santa Claus. Oh, good, Keefer’s at work,” she announced. “The light’s on in the shop, and he’s the only one who would be working now.”
We entered through a side door. A young man was working on a car fender, the sparks flying from his welding torch. There was a radio blasting country rock music. The shop was lit by a half-dozen white neon lights. Next to the car that the young man worked on was a vehicle with its rear end bashed in, a taillight hanging by wires as if the accident had just occurred.
“He hates it when I sneak up on him,” Charlotte Lily told me with an impish grin. Then she did just that. She walked up beside him, waited a moment, looked back at us, and with her hands around her mouth, shouted, “Keefer!”
He jumped to the side, the torch nearly turning at Charlotte Lily, who then screamed.
“Damn you, Charlotte Lily,” Keefer shouted at her after lifting his mask off his face. There was a streak of grease down his right cheek. “I told you a hundred times that’s dangerous. You nearly got fried.”
Charlotte Lily regained her composure.
“Oh, fiddlesticks, Keefer. You’ve become an old fuddy-duddy at the ripe old age of nineteen.”
“Right,” he said. He still hadn’t noticed either Kathy Ann or me. “What’s up?”
“I wanted you to meet our new friend. She just moved here from… where you from, Robin?”
“Granville, Ohio,” I said.
Keefer turned to me, and for a long moment, we just gazed at each other. He had a strong, square jaw with firm lips, dark eyes, and hair the color of a crow. Although his hair wasn’t really long, it looked wild and untrimmed, but somehow, it wasn’t unattractive. There was something very natural about it.
“Like what you see?” Charlotte Lily asked, and followed her question with her short, thin laugh.
He tilted his head and looked at her, the side of his mouth lifting just slightly as he squinted.
“What are you up to now, Charlotte Lily?”
“Nothing. We’re going to Stumpin‘ Jumpin’ and thought we’d stop by and see how you were doin‘ first, Keefer,” she said with a voice dripping maple syrup.
“Right,” he said, and wiped his hands on a rag before walking toward me and Kathy Ann. “You really her new friend?” he asked.
“We just met about twenty minutes ago,” I replied. He smiled at my honest and exact reply.
“I’m Keefer Dawson.”
“Robin Taylor,” I said.
He held out his hand, looked at it, and then pulled it back because it was thick with grime.
“You don’t want to shake that if you’re going to Stumpin‘ Jumpin’.”
“You wanna go with us?” Charlotte Lily asked him. “We can wait for him to clean up, can’t we, girls?”
“Oh yes,” Kathy Ann said quickly.
“You’d even take him along dirty,” Charlotte Lily told her, and she withered quickly, even stepping back.
“No, thanks. I’ve got to finish this car tonight. Promised Izzy I’d have it ready for paint in the morning. You here for good or what?” he asked me.
“I think both,” I said, and he laughed. “I’m with my sister, who came here to be in a band. She sings.”
“Parents let you mov
e off?”
“They were killed in an airplane crash,” Kathy Ann volunteered.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. We’re all the family we have now.”
“I know the feeling,” Keefer said. “It’s like my parents went down in a plane.”
“Keefer lives here,” Charlotte Lily said, obviously enjoying our warm conversation.
“Here?”
“In the back,” he said. “I have a small apartment Izzy lets me have. It’s all one room, nothing special.”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” Charlotte Lily declared.
“Don’t do nothin‘ bad in there,” Keefer warned. He looked serious. I waited until she went in and then asked him what he meant by that.
“She’s been known to light up a joint or two or sniff some snow. All I need is Izzy to think I let something like that happen in his place. Ain’t that right, Kathy Ann?”
“Yes,” she said obediently.
“Where do you live?”
“She lives in my complex, upstairs, in Cory Lewis’s apartment,” Kathy Ann answered for me.
He shrugged.
“I don’t know him. So, are you a singer, too?”
“Hardly,” I said.
He laughed.
“You’re probably the only one in Nashville who would admit it.”
Charlotte Lily emerged from the bathroom, apparently having gone in only to check on her makeup.
“Don’t worry,” she said when he glared at her. “I didn’t do anything that would get you in trouble.”
“That’s a surprise. Well, I gotta get back to this car,” he said, more to me than to Kathy Ann and Charlotte Lily.
“Sad when a young man like that is more interested in working on a car than being with us, isn’t it, girls?” Charlotte Lily teased.
He looked back.
“I don’t get many arguments from my cars,” he told her. “And they appreciate what I do for them.”
“Oh, you poor sad boy. Someone done your heart in good. Put that torch to work and mend it,” she told him, laughed again, and sauntered back to the door. “Let’s go, girls, unless you’d rather stand there and watch Keefer make love to a fender bender.”
I glanced back at him. He had his mask on and turned the torch back on. The sparks were flying again.
Not sure myself why I was so reluctant about it, I followed Charlotte Lily and Kathy Ann out of the shop.
“You don’t want to get yourself involved with him,” Charlotte Lily lectured as we started back toward Stumpin‘ Jumpin’. “He’s a loser from the get-go. Quit school, has no family anymore, and never does anything with his old friends. That’s one boy you look at and know that what you see is what you get. Now,” she said, turning toward the dance club, “let’s see if we can entice a few of those college boys. They know what fun is. After all, what’s the point of being young if you’re going to waste it on being responsible, huh?”
She laughed at herself and looked at Kathy Ann, who smiled widely and then glanced at me for approval. I shrugged.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be considered responsible,” I said, “young or old.”
She liked that.
“Yes, we’re going to have a good ole time of it tonight. If you listen to us and watch us carefully, Kathy Ann, you might even lose your virginity,” she said, and laughed again.
Kathy Ann looked to me, but I walked ahead, still thinking about the way the sparks flew around Keefer Dawson.
There was a long line at the entrance of Stumpin‘ Jumpin’, but Charlotte Lily took us around on the inside of the crowd, and when we approached, her sister’s boyfriend glanced at our fake IDs and just stepped out of the way. Kathy Ann looked excited enough to explode.
The moment we entered, the music washed over us like an ocean wave. The dance hall itself was a long, dark room with sofas and tables and drapes, giving the impression you were in someone’s house, except that there was a large dance floor and to the right a long bar with a half-dozen bartenders, all with black cowboy hats, black suspenders holding up jeans, and no shirts.
They were all well-built, good-looking men. The bar was already jammed, mostly with what looked to me like college-age women flirting with the bartenders. Small spotlights combed through the dancers as the beat grew quicker and the volume of the music was turned up another notch or two. It was very hard to hear anyone talk, but no one cared, even though people sitting side by side at the bar were literally shouting at each other.
Waitresses in cowgirl outfits and fancy, glittering boots took orders from those seated on the sofas. We were just standing, drinking it all in, when suddenly Charlotte Lily saw someone she recognized.
“C’mon,” she screamed, pulling at my arm. “There’s Wyatt Baxter. He goes to Tennessee State.”
I didn’t know how she could see anyone through the thick jungle of swinging bodies. We wove our way through to three young men sitting and drinking at one of the sofa and coffee table setups. One of them recognized Charlotte as we approached and broke into a wide smile.
“Hey, Charlotte Lily, I was hoping you’d be here tonight,” he cried, standing.
“I haven’t seen you here in a while,” she said.
“Busy, busy in summer school session,” he said, shaking his head. “Who are your friends?” he asked, focusing mainly on me.
“This is Robin. She’s new to Nashville. Surely you remember Kathy Ann?”
“Oh,” he said, looking at her. “Yeah, yeah. How ya doin‘, Kathy Ann?”
“Just fine, thanks,” she said.
“I’m Wyatt,” he told me, and extended his hand. He was a little less than six feet tall, with an athletic build and dirty-blond hair, the strands of which lay trim over the top of his forehead.
I shook his hand, but he didn’t let go of mine. Instead, he pulled me a bit closer because of the loud music and screamed, “This is Axel Farmer.” He pointed to the stout boy in the middle with dull brown eyes and a military-style haircut. He looked as big as the security guards at the door. “Axel’s a linebacker on the football team. And that there is Birdy Williams,” he said, pointing to the third boy, who was lean and had an interesting, sensitive-looking face. “He plays trumpet in the marching band, and he’s in a jazz band on the side, thus we call him Birdy, after Bird, the famous jazz musician. Hey, make some room, Birdy,” he ordered.
Birdy shifted to the left. Charlotte Lily moved quickly to the open seat.
“You wanna dance?” Wyatt asked me.
The music changed to something more rock than western. I looked at Charlotte Lily, who seemed already interested in Birdy Williams. Grandma would say she had “wandering eyes” and was never satisfied.
“I guess,” I said.
“Hey, Axel, order a round of drinks for everyone, will ya,” Wyatt ordered. “What do you want?”
I wasn’t sure what to order.
Charlotte Lily piped up with, “Get us three Saddle Soaps.”
“You heard her, Axel,” Wyatt said, and pulled me toward the dance floor. When I looked back, I saw the waitress taking the drink orders and then Axel asking Kathy Ann to dance.
The truth was, I had never been to a dance club before this. I had gone to some of the honky-tonks Mother darling sang in, and most had a dance floor, but there was nothing that compared to this. The frenzy, the loud music, the exciting lights were all hypnotizing. Wyatt was a good dancer, too. I copied some of his moves and we danced into the next song, which was more country western. I wasn’t into the beat as well and unsure of my steps, so he leaned over and shouted, “Let’s get a drink.”
I found out Saddle Soap was some kind of draft beer. It tasted very good, and after working up a sweat dancing, I found it very enjoyable. I drank it fast. Wyatt saw that and hooked a waitress to bring me another.
“You go to school with Charlotte Lily?” Wyatt asked.
I shook my head.
“No. I just moved here from
Ohio. We just met, actually.”
“Great. You’ll love it,” he promised. “We’re all having a good time.” He howled something which Axel mimicked and then we were all out on the dance floor. Nearly an hour later, and two more rounds of drinks, Charlotte Lily announced she had her house empty. Her parents had gone away for a few days and her sister was at a friend’s until very late.
I saw that it was approaching ten and knew that Mother darling would be upset if I didn’t get back by eleven, but I wasn’t even sure which bus to take. Before I could express any of my concerns, everyone was up and moving toward the entrance. When we burst out on the street, my ears were ringing and my throat felt like I had swallowed sandpaper because of how much shouting I had done to be heard while we were dancing. The beer had just enough alcohol to give me a buzz, and for a moment, I felt a little unsteady.
“Whoa,” Wyatt said, taking me around the waist. “You all right?”
“Yes,” I said quickly.
“Hurry,” Charlotte Lily screamed, “we can catch this bus.”
Everyone ran, Wyatt pulling me along. When we got on the bus, I wasn’t able to talk to Charlotte Lily because we sat boy-girl. The bus trip only took about five minutes, but as soon as we got off, I pulled Charlotte Lily aside.
“This is my first night here,” I told her. “My sister wanted me back by eleven.”
“Why? You don’t have any school to go to tomorrow. It’s summer. We’re not college students taking a summer session. We’re free, like we’re supposed to be.”
“I know, but my sister and I just arrived and…”
“She’ll be happy you made new friends so fast. That way you won’t be in her hair,” Charlotte Lily assured me. I started to shake my head. “C’mon. My house is just ahead. We’ve got to do it for Kathy Ann. Axel looks serious.”
I gazed back at them. He had his arm around her. Together, I thought, they would sink a rowboat. He looked like he weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Charlotte Lily giggled and moved back under Birdy’s long arm. Wyatt seized my hand and began to ask me questions about where I had lived, what interested me. I was nervous because he was the oldest boy I had ever been with and yet he didn’t seem to care about my age. He told me he was going to get a B.A. in public administration, but he might go on to law school. When he asked me what my interests were, I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to sound young and stupid, so I said I was still thinking about it.