She stayed on the bench. No longer cold, she opened the case and took out the guitar. At that moment, she would have taken answers to just about anything, but the guitar said nothing. Blue gave a hesitant strum. The cold strings responded off-key. She turned the first peg, listened closely.
The pigeons watched as she focused. Step by step, closing her eyes and tilting her head, until everything sounded the way it should. She smiled and opened her eyes. A little boy stood in front of her, his lower lip jutting out. A few steps back waited a woman who had to be his mother—same big brown eyes, same full lower lip.
"Go ahead and ask the nice lady," the woman said.
The boy took a step closer. So little; he had to be three, maybe four. "You gonna play my song." He reached toward the guitar, his tiny fat fingers curling as if to stroke a cat.
Blue shook her head. She hadn't meant to play anything, just to hold the guitar while thinking about what she might do next. She didn't even know any kids' songs.
"You play song for me," the little boy persisted. She looked at him, and he reached again toward the strings.
She shrugged, ready to pack up, only then she heard something. Music, lacy, like a dulcimer heard from several rooms away in an old farmhouse. Head up, she stared across the park, searching for someone else playing. No one was there, though, aside from pigeons and the boy and his mother.
The boy. She leaned toward him. The music was somehow inside him, as if he'd swallowed a music box. Only way better than a music box, more like he'd swallowed a real musician and her instrument. It was beautiful.
Okay, so the boy had music inside him. Was it any weirder than the woman in the red dress, or losing her voice, or any of the bad things that had happened? Either the world was full of crazy things, or she was the only crazy one. Schizophrenic—that could be it. She was seeing and hearing things that weren't there.
Unlike everything else, though, the boy's music didn't make her afraid. It made her want to play. She strummed once or twice, then launched into a song Mama used to do for her and Cass, an old blues tune that reminded her of the clink of radiators in the winter, of cold hands warming around mugs of peppermint tea after they came in from playing in the snow.
The little boy shimmied along with the song, clapping his hands off beat, pumping his knees up and down. The pigeons, which had flown off at the first chord, came back in, clucking and cooing. Blue lifted her head to the sun, her foot tapping along. It felt good. More than good—it felt exactly right, as if the world had corrected its orbit.
At the end, the boy's mother handed him something while whispering in his ear. He marched forward and dropped a couple of dollars into the case.
"Carter," the mother said in a stage whisper. "Say thanks."
He didn't, rushing back to wrap his arms around his mother's leg instead. The woman smiled. "Thank you," she said.
Blue flashed her a peace sign, and the pair walked away.
Just like that, she had two dollars more than she'd had ten minutes ago. Maybe the guitar had more answers than she'd assumed.
Blue played right on through the early afternoon. Not constantly—when no one was around, she let the guitar rest in her lap and sucked on her sore fingertips. Real players built up calluses on their fingers. Hers were too soft, and the steel strings wore them raw. As soon as people walked by, though, she was all smiles, the pain her secret.
By the time she knew she couldn't play another song, she'd made forty-eight dollars. There had been other mothers and kids stopping by, a whole little group at one point. At lunchtime a couple of men in suits had listened for a song. They'd each tossed a ten in before leaving together. She'd heard them as they walked away, something about a college band and where had the time gone.
The money didn't come close to making up for what Marcos had stolen, but it gave her hope. The guitar was the answer, just the way the woman in the red dress had said. All she had to do was play. She couldn't believe she hadn't thought of it before. Tish had survived her travel along the Gully by busking. But Tish was a genius, and Blue was just … Blue.
That afternoon, Blue started walking, unsure what she should do. She had enough money now for food, and either a bus ticket or a place to stay. Not all three. She'd stayed out in the woods at home with just a sleeping bag plenty of times. That was in a place she knew well, though. And with a sleeping bag—that was the real difference. The night before, she'd managed okay because she'd had leaves for insulation. The thought of spending the night in a doorway with no sleeping bag or leaves made her stomach ache.
Eventually Blue came across a two-story brick building with HEFFLELAND MEMORIAL LIBRARY printed in black on the white sign on the lawn. Libraries, every one she'd ever known, were warm and welcoming, and full of information. The perfect place to sit and figure things out.
Inside, past an entryway hung with flyers for toddler music classes and dog-obedience training, was a large room. Blue walked quickly past the circulation desk, where a gray-haired woman sat, a pot of orange mums next to her.
The librarian glanced at Blue, smiled, and returned to her work taping a cover to a book. Blue shuffled by, trying not to hit anything with the guitar case. She made her way to a terminal in the center of the room and sat down with her pack between her feet and the guitar to her side. From somewhere farther back among the bookcases came a cough, but no other signs of people existed.
She had a seat, she was warm, she had Internet access. Now what? Should she look up cheap bus fares? Ways to travel without money? How to get the devil to leave your soul alone?
That last seemed the most important, but she doubted that what she needed to know she would find online. She started searching for motels instead. Nothing she found was under ninety bucks a night. Maybe a phone book? She glanced back at the librarian. The woman didn't look up. New problem. Even if she could check out the library phone book, she couldn't check out a voice to use with it.
But the librarian might call for her. Blue looked around, saw no one else, decided it was safe to leave her bag for a minute. She wrote her question out before going up to the desk, taking pains with her penmanship.
The librarian finished taping a label on the spine of a book. Blue handed her the notebook, waited while the librarian read her note.
"Laryngitis is the worst. You're smart to rest your voice instead of trying to whisper." She reached under the desk, offered Blue a phone book. "You can take it back to the table if you want. Just bring it back, okay?"
Blue smiled in response. At the table, she tried motels, found only one that she hadn't seen online. A name alone, nothing about cost or location. No website. She searched the name anyway, came up with nothing.
On to Plan B. She went back to the librarian, her new question printed out. The librarian pushed her glasses back on her head and studied Blue. "I don't know if that's really a place that you'd want to stay," she said at last. "I could recommend some nicer ones."
Blue pointed at her question, mouthed the word please. The woman lowered her glasses and dialed the phone. Blue watched, breath held.
"Hello, I'm calling from the Heffleland Library. I'm wondering if you could tell me what your nightly rates are. Yes, and do you have rooms available for tonight?"
The woman wrote as she listened, upside down, so Blue could read it. Sixty-five dollars. She had just over eighty dollars. Enough for the room tonight. Tomorrow, she could make some more money in the park. Enough to get out of town and then … Well, the guitar was the answer, right? She'd just keep playing in each town she stopped in.
Get directions for me?
The librarian studied her so carefully that Blue felt that the parts of her face were being catalogued, labeled, and stored away. Close up, she could see the pale powder caught in the woman's soft wrinkle lines, the brown pencil she'd used on her eyebrows. The woman smelled of chicken soup, and Blue's stomach growled.
"I've been reading a lot about the Great Depression recently. Do you know much about it?" The woman paused. Blue shook her head. Who read about the Great Depression on their own? Was this librarian one of those women who were always taking classes? If Blue had free time, she couldn't imagine spending it in history classes. Then again, she wasn't totally sure what she would want to do. Unbidden, the memory of playing in the park came, of how it felt to have people listening to her music.
"Well, it was a time of hoboes. Drifters. Men without work, young folks without many prospects. A hard, hard time. One cool thing—these drifters, some of them would leave messages in the places they'd travel. A lot of different symbols, a kind of secret language. They warned each other of folks who were intolerant; they pointed out places to find food. One mark, a cat, was the sign of a kindhearted woman. Someone on the road saw that, they'd know they might get a meal or a safe place to sleep for the night."
Blue shifted, wondering where all this was going. All she could think of was the motel room, of a shower and a bed.
"It's a personal interest for me. My father was one of those drifters, looking for work, for hope. There's a story he always told when I was little. One rainy night he was very sick, feeling close to dead. The way he told it, the rain nearly washed the life right out of him. He'd been chased away from a railroad yard, and the nearby town had a reputation for being hard on travelers, and he thought he'd just lie down in a ditch somewhere and meet his maker.
"He sat down next to a mailbox. Glanced up, just because, and saw a little stick cat drawn on the underside. So he dragged himself to his feet and walked up to the house, figuring the worst that would happen is that he'd be shot, and he already expected to die. He didn't, though, because the woman who lived there took him in, and she kept him a whole week, in a warm guest room bed, with more food than he'd had for months. Patched him up, and once he was well enough to move on, she told him that she expected he'd do what he could for others along the road."
Blue looked up, suddenly understanding.
"My father took that debt seriously. I do as well. This world can be the kind of place where a man can die in a ditch without anyone stopping to help, or it can be the kind of place where we all look after each other. I think you might be a person in need of help. If that's the case, well, I have a room you could use overnight."
Blue hesitated. Last night had been more than enough to persuade her never to stay with strangers again. But if she saved her money by staying, then she could buy a bus ticket in the morning and arrive in her next town during the day. Enough time to check things out, maybe even find another park to play in.
The librarian might be like Amy, or she might be the way she felt—warm, gentle, kind. Lou had said to trust herself. This woman, with her salty chicken-soup smell, and the soft creases of her face, and her story, didn't scare Blue.
K, thanks!
