“Suit yourself.” Sheriff Saunders descends the steps. She never looks back, crosses the yard to the Explorer and drives off, leaving the men to tap the well.
* * *
• • •
I leave Rosita to her computer and go mourn alone in the music room. There is a change happening. Any bad memories of Caroline are being replaced by some more forgiving version of the truth. I’ve always despised the idea of elegy and the unfair way trauma works on the mind. It’s happened before. As soon as Angela and I were finished, she became a saint. An almost mythical woman with no human failings or idiosyncratic flaws that troubled me. I’ve wondered if I became the same thing to her. Probably not. I’m the one who took on all the blame.
Loss isn’t the same for disabled men. Every time something good appeared in my life, I needed to observe all the angles. Scrutinize it until nothing felt genuine or I became convinced it was a sort of cosmic trap. A ploy by the universe to expose me as a rube weak-minded enough to believe the impossible. How many times have I lost a good thing because I couldn’t trust? It might be more prudent to ask how many times I’ve never even noticed the opportunities because I was too busy protecting myself from the coming failure.
Most men think their last woman is the only woman who could still love them. In that aspect, I’m not so different from everyone else. Men, at least where the capacity to love is concerned, have regenerative powers. Same as the old blue-tailed lizards that used to sun on the church walls and slink off into a crack whenever I tried to seize them. Grab a tail and they’ll leave the severed appendage bleeding between your fingers. Eventually this will grow back, the same as a man’s belief in love, but the act can only be performed so often. Too many close calls and things harden, refuse to grow back. Maybe men like myself only get to perform this once.
* * *
• • •
By now, Angela’s plane will have touched down at Yeager Airport. The band will have already navigated the small hive of the terminal. Other airports are a blend of accents and styles, individuals from all over the globe moving fast to catch their flight or sitting in stasis at their gate, but not Yeager. She’ll recognize the people waiting. The West Virginians grouped tight, their clothing emblazoned with WVU’s Mountaineer Mascot or some sort of camouflage. Sometimes a mixture of both. They’ll stand uneasy, shift in their seats and watch the Arrivals screen for returning relatives. Most will have been waiting for hours, a punctual group annoyed with the excess of the airport. Children cling to their mothers, no doubt warned that in the city kids go missing daily and are never recovered. Grandmothers read from paperbacks or Bibles with the graph of a family tree inscribed on the title page. All births and deaths get inked in here. These elderly women smell of a distant kitchen, like powdered sugar even in the sanitized air.
Will Angela still feel any kinship? Looking out the window of the plane, watching the small humps below change to mountains, does she feel the familiar pull, I wonder? Here, where civilization remains in constant danger from flash floods, landslides or simply from the vegetation growing back down through the asphalt into the usurped soil. Can a person ever escape the imprint of a place that still feels like pioneer life? Men blazing out a homestead by blasting the tops off mountains. Burning combustible stone for power like some antiquated alchemy. Does she miss it?
I decide to quit stalling and find out.
I sneak into the bedroom while Rosita makes alterations to the photo of a woman with no arms. I take Angela’s picture off the wall, open the frame and retrieve the small business card hidden inside. I remember the mailing address by heart but have purposefully expunged her cell number from my mind.
The phone rings three times before she answers.
“Hello.” The voice is the same. A mixture of husk and smooth enunciation that a younger Angela cultivated. I’ve been trying to dodge it despite her popularity, avoid hearing it utter anything that might share a syllable from my name. The sound drapes old memories over me.
“Angela,” I manage. “This is Hollis.”
Something catches in her throat. She swallows it down with a little sound over the line. “Hollis, oh my God. This is a surprise.” There’s a falseness in her voice I’ve never heard before. It makes me wonder how much the money has changed things.
“I know you’ve heard the new tapes.” Not how I wanted to open the conversation, but the words just spill out.
“They’re brilliant, Hollis. Some great stuff. I’m not so sure if concept albums are selling, so I’ll have to speak to marketing about the overall arrangement. They may want a few changes, but it’s such impressive stuff. Really relevant to now, you know?”
“I’m glad you like it,” I say. I can’t understand how she glides into business so quickly. Speaking directly should cause her at least a momentary pause. It makes me feel insignificant.
“I think we might need to do something about the tone,” Angela continues. “Eight tracks and it’s all acoustic. We need something a little more energetic on there. I think we can keep at least four, fill the rest in with some electric and save the other ballads for the next release.”
This just shows how little she understands the idea. I’m thankful the work isn’t hers to butcher.
“You can’t have it, Angela. Doesn’t matter who you sent to steal them.”
A long silence from her end of the line. I can feel her groping for a lie.
“We’ve all been worried about you after months with no word. Now, I’m even more concerned.”
“I didn’t release them. They aren’t yours, Angela. I’ll write you something else, but these songs are mine.”
“Hollis, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Anger swells inside until I’m gripping the phone tight enough to make the plastic crack.
“Can’t we talk this through? I mean, the band really loves these tracks. I love them. It’s an honor to sing them.”
“I’ve owed you, but not that much,” I say.
“Listen, we’ll be at the Mountaineer Hotel the day after tomorrow. Why don’t we talk in person? I’ll send a car to pick you up?”
A change comes over the line. A hardening that Angela must carry into the board meetings, the strategy sessions with the publicist and record executives. Anything human is severed. From this point on, I’ll likely be negotiating with the lawyers.
“It won’t change my mind,” I say.
“You’d be surprised,” Angela says. “Things change whether you want them to or not. You know that.”
The line goes dead.