His to Own: 50 Loving States, Arkansas Read online

  “Well, see you later, I guess.”

  I knew I ought to be grateful to have a mom who didn’t care what I did or where I went at night, as long as it didn’t interfere with my ability to play guitar for her the next weekend. But I remember it grating on me as I left our apartment to wait for the first of the two buses it would take to get me all the way to Forest Brook, Mike Lancer’s neighborhood. Sometimes, I remembered thinking, it would be nice to have a mom who actually gave a shit. For that matter, it would be nice to have anybody who gave a shit.

  An hour later, as I walked through Forest Brook, one of Alabama’s richest suburbs, I recalled my grandparents in Tennessee who I used to stay with during the summers. That was before I learned how to play the guitar and Valerie decided she needed me down here in Alabama more. My grandparents gave a shit, and I felt a tug of guilt knowing how much they would disapprove of what I’d been doing with Mike Lancer all summer.

  And as I walked past the Tudor mansion Beau Prescott lived in with his parents, I remember wondering to myself why I was doing this. Taking two buses to hook up with a boy I’d met at the fair, just because he was friends with Beau.

  But I kept walking. Keeping my head down, so it would be easy for folks to assume I was either one of the many black live-in servants who worked in Forest Brook or one of their daughters. It wasn’t that hard of a role to pull off. My mom used to be one of those servants. So really, I was just acting like what I would have been if she hadn’t decided to pursue her country music career full time after having me.

  Still, I remember feeling a little stupid as I slipped around the side of Mike’s large colonial house and scuttled to the servants entrance in back, like a cockroach who did booty calls.

  However, this time when I got to the back stairs, I didn’t find them empty like I usually did. There was a boy there, sitting at the bottom of the steps. Like he was guarding the staircase.

  This boy, from what I could tell, looked to be around my age, but he was very long. It took five steps to accommodate his bent legs. I’d sat on these steps before to wait for Mike and knew it only took two or three drops before my feet found a place to rest.

  I stopped short, not quite knowing how to handle this. I’d never run into anybody back here before. Hell, sometimes Mike wasn’t even there to greet me, which is why I knew how many steps my legs took up. From waiting, since I wasn’t allowed to knock or do anything else that might draw attention to me.

  This boy on the steps was blond, too. But he didn’t look like Mike. While Mike’s hair was combed back in lacquered waves, this boy’s hair fell past his ears in stringy locks that made my hands itch for a bottle of shampoo to throw at him. The rest of him wasn’t too much better. He was sporting what looked like a huge black eye behind a pair of thick, square glasses. And his clothes were worn. Not in a cool way, but like they’d originally been bought at a deep discount store, given away to the Salvation Army, then bought out of the dollar box by him. High-water corduroys and a dingy t-shirt.

  The boy was also “skinnier than a pile of sticks” as my grandmother might say, with long knobby arms hanging out of his t-shirt. Even before I spotted the violin case, sitting at his feet, the word “nerd” ran through my mind. Maybe he was Mike’s younger brother. A sibling who’d inherited even more height, but not any of Mike’s wide receiver beefiness.

  But somehow I didn’t think so.

  This kid had a different energy than Mike. A kind of feral presence I recognized well after nearly a lifetime spent in honkytonk bars. Even with the glasses and the violin and the fact that he was here, he looked like what he probably was: poor white trash. Especially with that black eye.

  To me, he looked hungry in ways that had nothing to do with food, and I didn’t know who he was or why he was here but I recognized him for what he was from the minute I laid eyes on him: a coyote in human clothing.

  “Hi,” I said tentatively. Just like I would have if I had run into an actual coyote in the woods behind my grandparents’ house.

  He gave me a lazy coyote up and down look, before asking, “You one of Mike’s girls?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer his question, seeing as how I wasn’t supposed to be claiming Mike out in public. Also, I didn’t love hearing myself called “one of Mike’s girls.” So I didn’t say anything.

  Which was answer enough for him. He leaned back, resting his knobby elbows on the steps behind him.

  “Figures. He likes them from the wrong side of tracks—as long as mommy and daddy don’t find out.”

  His voice was deeper than I would have expected it to be, coming from such a skinny body, and it rang with authority. Like he didn’t need me to confirm nothing, because he already knew everything he needed to know about me.

  This time when he looked me up and down, I could see judgment in his eyes as they tracked over my dusty brown hair, my cut up clothes, and most of all, my light brown skin.

  “So which wrong side of the tracks are you from?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “Where did you get that black eye?”

  The corners of his lips tugged up. “Alright, so you don’t want to tell me where you’re from. What do you think we should talk about while you’re pretending not to be waiting for Mike to get here then?”

  “We don’t have to talk,” I pointed out.

  “No, we don’t,” he agreed.

  That got me a whole minute of silence. But eventually it became so uncomfortable, I had ask, “Is there a reason you’re sitting out here as opposed to going inside?”

  He shrugged, his thin shoulders going up and down like two knobs underneath his thin t-shirt. “Putting together some thoughts, I guess.”

  “Trying to figure out how you’re going to explain that black eye?” I asked him.

  A sad smiled passed over his face. “Nobody in there’s going to ask, so I don’t have anything I’ve got to explain. Especially if I lay low until it fades.”

  “Laying low ain’t too bad a deal,” I said after thinking on it for a few seconds. “At least you’ve got air conditioning.”

  He let out a sound between a bark and a laugh. “Yeah, I guess that’s how I should look at it. I’m not hiding. I’m staying in the air conditioning.”

  My eyes wandered to the violin case at his feet. Wondering about it. Wondering about him. Even as I said, “Well, you should probably go on and see about that A/C.”

  “Yeah, I probably should,” he agreed. But he didn’t move. Instead, he followed my gaze to his violin.

  Leaving me to grow more and more curious in the second silence, until I just had to ask, “So you play violin?”

  “Sometimes. Come fall, I’ll be back performing the classical stuff with the Alabama Youth Symphony. But it’s been a long day.” A thin smile crosses his face. “Got in an argument with my dad in Tennessee, and decided to take the bus home. So tonight, it’s probably going to be a fiddle.”

  That was a joke I sort of got. Violins and fiddles were basically the same instrument. You could call either the other, as long as you were playing the right song.

  I also got that the part about the argument with his father was his way of explaining the black eye, which made my heart constrict with sympathy for him. But he didn’t seem like the kind of boy who would take well to sympathy, so I kept my voice casual as I said, “I should have brought my guitar. We could have played something sad and depressing together.”

  Now his face lit with curiosity, and he tilted his head to reassess me, which put his eyes directly in line with the overhead light. I could now see they were an incredible blue, a blue so pretty, they caused my breath to unexpectedly catch. The boy might not have been much to look at, but his eyes packed one hell of a punch. That’s another thing I clearly remember thinking That Night.

  “What kind of music do you like to play?” he asked.

  “This is and that. Mostly stuff I make up,” I answered. A sip of my story, not the whole glass. I’d learned a long time ag
o that admitting I was basically a unicorn—a black girl who played and wrote country music—brought up more questions than it answered.

  “Do you sing?”

  “Yeah. Sort of.”

  The boy raised his eyebrows, like he didn’t quite know whether to believe me. “Alright then, let me hear you.”

  This was before what happened happened, before I stopped singing in front of people ever. But even back then, I can remember thinking there was no way in hell I was going to get up the nerve to sing in front of this weird teenager with the intense blue eyes on Mike Lancer’s back steps.

  The boy wasn’t nearly as cute as Mike, but he made me nervous all the same. Maybe because of the way he was looking at me now. Like I’d suddenly gone from being a simple math problem to a complicated one.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I answered, my stomach fluttering with butterflies at just the thought of singing one of the songs I’d written.

  “Why not?” His voice sounded different now. Even deeper and huskier, like we were involved in some kind of secret conversation.

  “Because…” I started, searching for a plausible excuse.

  “What are you doing here, Fairgood?”

  I turned to see Mike coming towards us in a tux, face screwed up with irritation, glare aimed at the boy sitting on the steps.

  “Decided to come home early from Tennessee,” the boy answered Mike. “Was out here fixing to put in some fiddlin’ time before I went to sleep. How about you? Wasn’t tonight was your parent’s big charity ball? Surprised you’re not still there.”

  Mike huffed. “They don’t let me drink at those things, so I put in an hour and left out since they weren’t letting me have any fun.”

  The boy Mike had referred to as Fairgood lifted his eyebrows, probably thinking what I was thinking. Mike’s explanation for leaving his parents’ charity ball early made him sound like the worst kind of spoiled rich kid cliché.

  But Mike didn’t seem to care what the boy on the steps thought of him. He turned to me and said, “I thought I told you eight.”

  “I can’t control when the bus gets here,” I answered him, a wave of irritation rolling over me. “I got here early and came back here to wait for you. I wasn’t expecting to meet…”

  “Colin,” the boy finished for me. To my surprise, he actually stood like a true Southern gentleman, and took my hand in his with a charming smile. “Colin Fairgood, and it’s real nice to meet you, sweetheart.”

  That smile, combined with his words and blue gaze, caused my heart to backflip inside my chest. What the hell, I thought to myself. Is he flirting with me?

  Mike must have been thinking the same thing, because he said, “It’s going to be nice to beat you if you don’t get out of the way.”

  With that threat, he grabbed me by the arm and said, “C’mon. I’ve got beer in my room. Some pot, too.”

  “You go to school around here?” Colin asked me, like Mike hadn’t even said anything.

  “No, she’s over in Beaumont,” Mike answered.

  My cheeks heated with Mike’s confirmation that I was indeed from the wrong side of the tracks. Beaumont was a small neighborhood in Birmingham that managed to earn a spot on the news for violent outbreaks at least once a week. But the rent was cheap, and living there gave my mother more to spend after the monthly check came in from my father.

  “How about you?” I asked Colin, rushing away from the subject. “Do you go to school with Mike?”

  “Yes, Mike and I attend the same school,” Colin answered, as if he and Mike were little more than far flung associates, even though they apparently lived in the same house.

  “He’s our housekeeper’s son, so technically, he’s in the district.” Mike all but sneered.

  The way Mike referred to him as “our housekeeper’s son,” as if that made him too low to attend the same school as him, made my blood crawl. Another feeling I remember clearly from That Night.

  And it must have done something to Colin’s inside, too, because his fist bunched at his sides, even as he flashed another charming smile my way.

  “You should come back with your guitar sometime,” he said to me, like Mike wasn’t even there. “We could try our hand at some Mark O’Connor.”

  “You play guitar?” Mike asked me. Like this was some kind of state secret I’d kept from him on purpose, as opposed to one of the many things we’d never gotten around to talking about since he never seemed all that interested in actually talking to me.

  “I do,” I admitted to Mike. “But I’ve never heard of Mark O’Connor,” I confessed to Colin.

  “You should look him up. He’s mostly known for his fiddle work, but he plays guitar, too—”

  In a sudden burst of violence Mike yanked the violin case off the ground and flipped open its latches.

  “No!” I yelled, instinctively knowing what he planned to do.

  But Mike already had the violin case open. I only got a small glimpse of the frail instrument, its smooth wood gleaming underneath the back stairs light, before Mike took it by the neck and flung it with all his might against the side of the house.

  The next thing I heard was it hitting the house with a sickening crack.

  “Oops,” Mike said to Colin, his face shining with smug triumph. “I guess you should have gotten out of my way when I told you to the first time, huh, Fairgood?”

  “You son of a bitch!” Colin ran over to where the violin had fallen to the ground.

  “How could you do that?” I asked Mike.

  Mike sneered again and shook his head. “That kid’s gotten uppity lately, forgetting about who employs who around here. Now he knows not to cross me.”

  I had no idea how to answer that seriously fucked up explanation for ruining somebody’s instrument. So I didn’t. Instead I went over to Colin and bent down next to him over his broken violin. Colin was looking it over like a doctor trying to decide what to do next. But even I with my limited knowledge of violins could tell it was too late. The instrument was lying there in two pieces, its stringed neck hanging at a crooked angle from the rest of its wooden body.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my heart breaking for both Colin and the beautiful instrument.

  Colin didn’t answer. But I could actually see his thin chest heaving in and out with rage and sorrow as he looked over his poor, broken instrument. And when he got to his feet, I knew what he was fixing to do even before he started toward Mike.

  “Colin, don’t!” I yelled, getting to my own feet in order to run after him.

  But it was too late. By the time I caught up with Colin, he and Mike were full out brawling. Their fighting styles were almost comically different. Mike, bulky football player that he was, threw punch after punch while Colin feinted and dodged, using his elbows and knees to occasionally land a good blow on Mike.

  For a few moments, I watched them go at it in horror-struck fascination. Colin looked exactly like what he was. A violinist/fiddler who knew he couldn’t hurt his hands, but was determined to take on the asshole who’d destroyed his instrument.

  I thought of what Colin had said before about having a spot in the Youth Symphony, and what would happen if he lost his ability to play because of this fight, and my heart seized with panic for him.

  “Stop!” I yelled at them as loudly as I could without attracting attention.

  They didn’t even pause.

  So I did my best impression of the small boxing referees I’d seen on TV and got between them, shoving them apart as I did.

  Colin stopped fighting immediately. But then he yelled, “Get out the way!” at me.

  “No!”

  “I’d listen to him if I were you, girl,” Mike growled on the other side of me.

  He took several menacing steps forward, and I knew I only had a matter of seconds before he mowed me down in order to get to Colin. Both the guys didn’t just look angry—they looked murderous. Whatever this was between them, it wasn’t about me, or even the violin, real
ly. It was about class, privilege, and entitlement, and it went deep.

  But I stood my ground against Mike anyway.

  “Well, you’re not me, boy,” I let him know. “And if you don’t want me screamin’ so everybody comes running, then I suggest you turn your butt around and head on up to your room. Otherwise, a whole bunch of folks are about to find out you’ve been clocking time with a black girl.”

  The way Mike’s face blanched told me nearly more than anything proceeding that moment that I’d been nothing less than a stone cold idiot to ever let this boy touch me.

  “Go’on, Mike,” I said. “Just go’on now.” I could barely stand to look at him.

  For a moment, Mike looked cowed. But only for a moment.

  Eventually he straightened up, a nasty smile coming over his face, as he looked around me at Colin.

  “What is it with you and the black girls?” he asked. “You know what? I think I’m going to go over to Beau’s now and tell him I just discovered your special wimp power. Getting black girls to save you from ass kickings.”

  I had no idea what Mike was talking about, but my entire chest split open at the mention of Beau. Beautiful Beau Prescott, who I’d never had the guts to talk to myself. The boy whose football buddy I’d settled for. Thinking of Beau, I watched Mike walk away, out of the yard, and through the white picket gate. All casual, as if leaving was exactly what he’d been fixing to do all along.

  When he was out of eyeshot, I relaxed and turned to Colin. “You alright?” I asked him.

  “You’re an idiot.”

  Not quite the answer I’d been expecting after saving his bacon, and I stared at him, blinking, I was so taken aback.

  Another thing I remember clearly about that night: the way his eyes glittered in the moonlight as he snarled, “You shouldn’t have interfered.”

  I took a step back, but just like with Mike, I stood my ground. “I was only trying to help.”

  “What makes you think I needed some idiot girl’s help?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I guess you being maybe a buck forty soaking wet up against a state champion football player made me think that?”