Love Songs: The Wrong Note - A Collection of Short Stories

5

I had never had the pleasure of meeting them, but they seemed to know me just the same.

Peck rapped gently on my bedroom door.

"Come in," I whispered.

He was a strapping boy of about fifteen, skinny, with spindly long arms and legs that were deceptively strong. His curly black hair was thick and unruly, and one or two curls brushed his eyebrows like baby birds leaving the nest.

He had apple-red cheeks and bright green eyes that burned with intelligence. He was barefoot, wearing patched overalls with ragged hems that clipped his shins. His ankles and feet were red and rough, and he had a nervous habit of dropping his head slightly when he looked at me, snatching glimpses of me through half-closed eyes. He couldn't leave his hands alone, rubbing them obsessively as if he was holding both beneath the spout of an old-fashioned hand pump gushing with water from a bottomless well.

"Don't be afraid," I said from my perch beneath the covers. "I can tell that you're not used to being in a lady's company, much less her bedroom, but I ain't no lady. I've heard them in town when me and Papa take the wagon and mule to see Albright Jiminy at his bank twice a year at plantin' and harvestin' times.

Them fancy-pants ladies see us comin' down Main Street, and their heads start shaking. They start talkin' behind their hands, and look at us with eyes that say we ain't welcome. I just sit beside Papa, look down from the buckboard seat, and make a face at them like this."

I made my ugliest face, and his cheeks flushed. All the same, that huge grin that broke across his face told me all I needed to know.

Buntie entered next.

She was beautiful. A dream in lace and petticoats.

Peck's jaw hit the floor at the sight of her, but Buntie ignored him.

"He don't talk much," I said.

"Who? Peck?" Buntie said.

"No," said Buntie. "He doesn't hear. Measles."

"Oh," I said solemnly, pretending I'd understood Buntie's cryptic message.

"He saved my life, once," Buntie continued. "Pulled me out of a rain barrel when I was five or six. Grabbed me by my ankles and whooshed me right out!"

She smiled.

"Course, there wasn't a thing he could do when I became with child a decade later. Too bad he couldn't have whooshed that little life inside me out by its ankles. Yes, too bad indeed."

I just stared at Buntie.

Words escaped me. I did not know what to say.

The fever was causing a fog to build in my poor overheated brain, but I was afraid Buntie would think me touched in the head, so I just watched her.

A dark-haired man came rushing into the room.

He was finely dressed, in a medium gray suit and blood-red ascot tie elaborately knotted around his neck. A small diamond tie pin in the center caught glints of light from the dying fire in the fireplace, causing the little stone to sparkle like a far-away star.

Gray had just begun to paint the thick strands of ebony hair at his temples, and tiny crows' feet creased the corners of his dark brown eyes.

His fawn-gloved hand touched Buntie's shoulder lightly as he turned to me and said, "Don't worry. Everything is going to be fine."

Buntie's smile accentuated the veracity of his words, and I felt a cooling calm suddenly fill me, as if I'd lain down in the middle of a clear-flowing stream.

Peck, standing at Buntie's side, began to fade away, not obviously at first, but slowly like the mirror's reflection of a face changes over the span of a lifetime.

I started to protest.

"Oh, don't," Buntie said.

"He can't hear me," I said.

"No. That's just how Peck is. Someone else needs his help. Someone who is precipitously close to . . . well, you know."

I shook my head, but the fog was getting thicker. I could only stagger a step or two down whatever path Buntie's conversaton was leading.

Mama, asleep in the rocking chair beside my bed, breathed deeply and sighed. She resumed her quiet snoring.

The gentleman kindly adjusted Mama's shawl so that it covered her shoulders, preventing chills from setting in.

"Now," Buntie said, "you must be a good girl and stay under the covers."

"That's right," the gentleman said. "Remember what I said."

"Everything's going to be alright."

"Exactly," he said, casting a warm smile on me that enveloped me with a glowing sense of security.

They turned and walked out the door, but not before I caught their parting whispers.

"Do you think she fell for it?" Buntie asked.

"Of course," the gentleman said. "That kind always does."