JEZEBEL'S BLUES Page 8

  “Old Jezebel would have waited until I got here to throw her temper tantrum, the way my luck is going.”

  Willie’s eyes, rheumy with his nearly seventy years, sobered. “I heard about the accident,” he said. “Hard luck.”

  Eric nodded curtly, then realized he owed much more than that to the man who’d given him the guitar in the first place, the man who’d taught him all he could absorb. Wild Willie was old now, but once upon a time, he’d played with the best in clubs big and small all over the South. An accident of his own had brought him into Eric’s life, and while he’d mended, Willie had taught a restless, hungry boy how to play blues guitar. And more.

  Grimly, Eric held up his hands, displaying the riddled mass of scars. “Can’t play a lick,” he said.

  “I’m real sorry, boy. You were one of the best.”

  It was no idle compliment, and Eric accepted it in the spirit it was offered. “Thanks.”

  Willie examined him for a minute, and Eric allowed it, feeling the concern and questions behind the twitch of the old man’s lips. “Why don’t you come on and sing with us? Do you some good.”

  “Ah, Willie, you know singing was never my thing. Guitar was what I did, and it’s gone.”

  Wild Willie shook his head, smiling fondly. “Boy, the blues don’t let you go,” he said. “Sooner you know that, better off you gonna be.” He clapped Eric on the shoulder, then rose and left him alone.

  Eric looked into the amber liquid of his glass, and through the wails of his crumbing defenses, he saw the accident—the rain and dark road, the shrill fury of the woman next to him. He felt anew the anger beating reckless in his chest, felt the rebellious press of his foot on the accelerator, felt the sick lurch of his stomach as the car left the road, sailing like a missile through the wet dark.

  Reacting instinctively to protect his eyes, he’d raised his hands.

  And for a few moments, there had been only the sound of shattering glass and twisting metal and screams cutting through the dark as the car smashed into a tree. Eric had been thrown clear through the windshield. Retta had not been so lucky.

  The thought still made him sick. Much as he’d hated her in those moments before the crash, he would never have wished her dead.

  He flexed his hands, so hungry to play, it was a physical pain. It hadn’t been much of a life. As much as he’d loved losing himself in the blues, he hated the constant travel it required, the late nights in strange places, the loneliness, that even with Retta—hell, even more with Retta—followed him like a faithful dog. He’d hated the life.

  But, Lord, he missed the blues.

  As if in emphasis, Willie’s guitar sung out, alone, a bottle-neck slide whining over the strings in an exact rendition of the loneliness in Eric’s heart. Eric turned to watch, knowing that sad chord was for him.

  But instead of easing his mood, the song only pulled him deeper into his despair. He’d come here tonight looking for something nameless, something he’d found here once upon a time. Instead, all he’d found was that he had lost everything.

  Abruptly, he stood up to yank bills from the front pocket of his jeans, needing urgently to escape. The money caught on a seam and he had to struggle to get it out. Just as it came free, a gentle pressure fell on his arm.

  “Don’t go,” Celia said.

  Startled, he looked at her, taking in the low sweep of her black dress, a black that made her hair and eyes and skin seem even paler by comparison. Anyone else with her coloring would have looked dead in black. Celia looked ethereal, fey, magic—as if she had some inner light.

  “Dance with me,” she said quietly.

  In her big, gray eyes was a shadow of the hero worship he’d seen before, an innocent kind of expression completely at odds with the message of her dress and her unconsciously seductive movements.

  He swallowed, a little lost in those eyes. Lord have mercy, he thought vaguely. He wanted to grab her and pull her tight, wanted to escape the fear and hunger and desperation eating away at him like acid. He wanted to bury himself deep in her softness so that he could forget that the last person he had on earth might be dead.

  It would be selfish to touch her, knowing it wasn’t her he needed. He opened his mouth to refuse, but Celia took his hand. “Just one dance,” she coaxed, and then gave him a sweet and somehow very inviting smile. “For old times’ sake.”

  Hell. He melted in the sweetness of her invitation and nodded to her. She took his hand and led him to the dance floor. It was covered in slick linoleum tiles, clean and waxed, but a long way from fancy.

  It was hot in the little club, the air steamy with bodies and the heavy rains and the normal east Texas summer heat. A sheen of moisture made Celia’s face shine, and he smiled as he took her into his arms loosely. Not too close. “How do you like the sunshine now, sugar?”

  “It’s hot.” She smiled up at him. “Hotter than any jungle, hotter than anything I’ve ever experienced.” She stepped a little closer. “But I still like it.”

  He smiled in acknowledgment of the afternoon in her attic.

  “I like this song,” she said.

  The truth was, Eric hadn’t been listening. It was a smoky, old ballad about a good woman and a bad man—and she was right. It was sultry, especially in Willie’s raspy voice. Eric thought about how he’d been known to sing it pretty well himself and half regretted his refusal to sing.

  He pulled Celia closer, willing to take the bartender’s advice and leave his troubles behind for a minute or two. As the plaintive guitar music circled them, he felt her hands fall onto his waist, felt the moisture and heat that came with such contact in such weather. Their thighs somehow tangled and he could feel the swish of her stockings against the fabric of his jeans. Her flesh was damp, and she smelled of her oddly exotic perfume, patchouli and roses.

  He shifted, bowing his face into her hair, feeling it sweep over his mouth and nose. He tugged her closer yet, letting his hands roam over her back and the sway of her waist and to the very edge of her pretty round bottom. He wondered how that flesh would fit his hands.

  “Mmm,” he growled in her ear. “Celia, you’re sweet. You feel so good.”

  She made no answer, but moved against him, sinuous and innocent and instinctive, and a small, soft sigh escaped her throat.

  He smiled. It felt natural to hold her, to contemplate dropping a kiss to her ear or temple, to feel her humming under her breath.

  All at once he was flooded with an acute and aching hunger—a hunger for Celia, for the music he’d lost, for a normal life. It welled and filled him from toes to scalp, stinging and sharp and irresistible. It scared him to want anything. To want so much was akin to losing his mind.

  And yet he couldn’t let her go. He closed his eyes and pressed his mouth into her hair.

  The band slid without a break into a new song. Eric paid it little attention at first as the sax and guitar played a mournful intro.

  Then Wild Willie’s voice growled over the microphone, “This one here’s for our local boy.”

  Eric panicked as Willie began to sing a low and sorrowful ballad of a lonely man, a song Eric knew intimately—every dip and slide and swell. It was famous. It was his favorite.

  A cold ache rose in his throat and froze his arms across Celia’s back. Abruptly he let go of her. For a minute he stood there, wanting to tell her—

  “I’m sorry,” he growled, then walked stiffly from the dance floor, unable to face the sound of the life he’d lost.

  But even outside in the hot night, the music followed. The wailing sax dove into the splash of Jezebel’s skirts against the bank, creating a union that sounded so much like home, it made him want to cry like the boy he’d been when that home had been stolen away. He couldn’t breathe. The air was too thick, too hot, too wet.

  Why did he ever come home? Every time he came here, he lost control. He’d hated it as a child, when townspeople snubbed his mother so that it was obvious enough for even a six-year-old to under
stand. He’d hated it when his sister had cried over the names school children called her. He’d hated it when…

  Always. In Gideon, his walls crumbled and he became as vulnerable as a naked baby bird fallen from its nest. Out there on the road, playing blues or just roaming, at least he had some feathers.

  He had to find his sister. And once he found her, he would take her out of Gideon, too, so he never had to come back here again.

  * * *

  As Eric rigidly walked out of the club, Celia stood on the dance floor feeling as oddly deprived as she had the morning he’d rolled away from her, leaving her cold after the heat they’d shared in the middle of her bed.

  Remembering the loneliness in his eyes that morning, she frowned. Then forgetting everything else, she followed him out the open door of the Five O’Nine.

  In spite of the steaminess of the club, there had been at least a few overhead fans beating the air, moving it around. As she stepped into the night, there was no such luxury. The air struck her like a soft, wet net, clinging to her hair and sticking her dress to her body and making her legs crawl beneath the stockings. For a minute, she couldn’t catch her breath and stood just outside the door, looking for Eric.

  His figure was shrouded by the shadows of a great, old pine. He was bent over, his hands on his knees, like a man who wanted to rid himself of an evil in his belly. Sorrow rose from him in waves.

  She approached quietly and stopped a foot or two away from him. “Who are you?” she asked.

  Eric straightened. For a long moment, he stared at her, his jaw hard, his eyes shuttered. “No one you’d want to know, sugar,” he said in his rough voice. “Trust me.”

  Then he turned and strode off into the forest. The darkness swallowed him in an instant. Celia crossed her arms, struck suddenly by two facts.

  The night and everything about it was once again reminiscent of one of her father’s novels. She and Eric had taken their places and acted them out perfectly—he was the tortured and magnetic drifter; she was the woman drawn irrevocably to his fire, a fire kindled in hell. Even the music now was right, and the air. She felt as though she were trapped in some strange dream from which she couldn’t escape.

  As disturbing as that was, the second fact was even more so. Even knowing her father would write the scene in just this way, knowing that Eric was obviously a man with a grim past and no future, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

  It disgusted her. She’d never liked her father’s heroines. They were always passive creatures, at the mercy of storms and men and their own emotions. Victims, every last one of them.

  She raised her chin and headed back into the club. She was no victim—and she’d thwart this story line if it was the last thing she did. For a moment, on the threshold of the club, she paused and looked toward the river, toward Jezebel, hearing the seductively calm sound of her waters singing over the rocks in her path.

  Jezebel. Celia smiled, feeling a sudden kinship with the river. There might be lessons that a river named Jezebel could teach a woman if she were willing to learn.

  She took her seat next to Lynn, strangely fortified.

  “How do you know Eric?” Lynn asked.

  Celia shook her head, still reluctant to share the story of the flood. “I don’t, not really.”

  Lynn inclined her head. “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary, Celia. Come on. You must have met him before.”

  “I don’t really want to talk about it, okay?”

  “Okay.” Lynn took a long swallow of her gin and tonic, eyes shining secretively. “Do you know who he is?”

  Celia sighed, seeing she would have to listen if she wanted to be finished with the subject. “Should I?”

  “I’d say so. He’s as much a local hero as your daddy.”

  Frowning, Celia looked at her.

  “That song he walked out on?” Lynn continued. “He wrote it when he was seventeen years old—it’s been recorded about a dozen times. And it’s just one of many. There are those who say his songs are some of the best of this generation.”

  Celia uttered an earthy curse. Her heart plummeted. “I would rather he’d been a drifter,” she said harshly, then excused herself to go to the ladies’ room.

  She splashed cold water on her face. It was bad enough that he was physically the most compelling man she’d ever seen, that his eyes were so lonely they made her want to cry, that he was so much like one of her father’s heroes she wanted to kill him.

  But he was a blues man, a wandering blues man. It would be hard to imagine a worse choice.

  She tore a paper towel from the dispenser and blotted the moisture from her face, staring at herself in the mirror. Her eyes went hard.

  Eric was right. She didn’t want to know him.

  Chapter 7

  Eric approached the high school with a feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach. A handful of children shimmied up a cottonwood tree Eric remembering climbing himself as a child. He envied them for an instant. If only he were five and Laura eight, playing Robin Hood in the trees.

  Inside, there were hand-lettered signs posted on the walls—tempera paint on butcher paper, the same kind of signs he remembered from his short term in these halls. But instead of asking support for glee club or announcing a bake sale, the signs pointed toward various Red Cross stations.

  An arrow directed him toward the auditorium, a musty-smelling room with heavy velvet drapes. Eric paused at the doors. A woman passed him, her head down, her face running with tears she couldn’t control.

  Dread seized him again. Sweet Jesus, he prayed. Don’t let her be dead.

  He set his jaw and pushed through the doors. A knot of people on the old wooden stage gathered before a table staffed by several volunteers. One of them was Lynn Williams, a woman he’d known since sixth grade. He joined the line in front of her.

  When his turn came, she looked up wearily, and seeing Eric, smiled. “Hello there, stranger. Sit down.”

  Her friendliness eased the fear in his chest. “Hi, Lynn. How are you doing?”

  “Can’t complain.” She folded her long fingers together. “Is this business or social?”

  He took a breath. “Business,” he growled, and cleared his throat. “I can’t find Laura and—well,” he looked at Lynn. “I guess I figured you’d know who was dead.”

  “Oh, honey.” She touched his hand over the table and squeezed his fingers. “Hang on. I’ll get the lists.”

  It seemed to take forever for her to stand up and cross the slats to another small table piled with computer printouts. Eric watched her flip through one stack, then pick up another, her neat, dark head bent over the lists as she walked back. A pulse beat in his ears, thready with terror.

  She sat back down and looked at him, shaking her head. “There are three counties affected by the flood. Twelve people are reported dead—four all from one farm down river. Nobody else fits Laura’s description.” She glanced up. “There’s a missing persons list about a page long. I can put her on that, but you may not hear anything for a while.”

  Eric nodded. A weakness of relief and renewed worry skimmed his nerves for an instant, making it hard to speak. “Put her on the list.” He narrowed his eyes. “Is Jake Gaines on there?”

  Lynn nodded without even having to check. “His mama and sisters were in here the day the Red Cross got here, screaming about their baby.” She rolled her eyes. “Never met such a useless bunch in my life.”

  Eric grinned. “Thanks, Lynn.” He stood up, mindful of the others waiting their turns.

  “Don’t be such a stranger, now, you hear?” Lynn said, sliding the stacks of paper to one side. “Stop in and have some coffee with me some evenin’.”

  He tipped an imaginary hat. “I’ll do that.”

  As he was about to turn, Celia came through the drapes at the back of the stage, her arms overflowing with rags and sprays and brushes, all kinds of cleaning supplies. Her hair was caught back under a splashy purple bandanna,
and her jeans were filthy. He wondered what she’d been doing.

  Then her eyes lifted and she caught sight of him, and a sharp, hard spark darkened the silvery irises to a gun-metal gray. Her chin rose.

  Eric gave her a quick nod, then pivoted blindly, nearly missed a stair and bolted from the room. There was no other word for it. The damnable thing was, as he stood outside again, he realized that for an instant, he’d really felt a little better.

  * * *

  Cooking was not an art that had come easily to Celia. Her mother had never entered a kitchen in her life, and her father, being male and Texan, could hustle up pecan pie or biscuits, but nothing substantial. As a result, Celia had spent the past ten years slowly but surely educating herself on the finer points of putting a meal together. It was mathematical and orderly, and she enjoyed the meshing of ingredients that formed a new product. It soothed her.

  In the late afternoon after seeing Eric at the school, she baked one of her grandmother’s specialties, turtle brownies. It was the first real baking she’d been able to do since the flood, and as the scent of chocolate and caramel and pecans wafted through the newly cleaned kitchen, a sense of ease crept through her. She hummed under her breath as she washed the bowls and spoons, then shook out a paper doily to decorate a plate.

  When the brownies had cooled, she cut them into perfect squares and arranged them on the lacy paper, admiring the contrast of dark chocolate against snowy white. Pretty enough for an entry in the fair, she thought, then grinned—as if she’d dare compete with women who’d been cooking for thirty or forty years!

  Her grandmother had won first-prize ribbons for watermelon-rind pickles and plum jam and peach chutney every year. Celia remembered sitting on a stool in this very kitchen, listening to injunctions about sterilizing jars and washing the lids with a hot wet cloth; about cutting plums just so and loading slices of fruit into the jars in an even way. She had yet to tackle canning. Maybe this fall.

  When the brownies were finished, she showered and changed into a cool cotton sundress, then brushed her hair. It wasn’t until she found herself on the road toward town, the brownies in her hands, that she allowed herself to realize she was on her way to Eric.