Fiddler

Fiddler
By H. Courreges LeBlanc
illustration by Shelton Bryant
3 December 2001

November always dragged around the station, but today was one dead Sunday. Not one car pulled off the interstate all morning. Nothing hit the drive but a thin steady rain, puddling slow rainbows in the oil. Me and Harnie just tilted back our chairs against the cigarette rack, watched the monster movie, and waited for the game to start. The big flying turtle was about set to barbeque downtown Tokyo when the drive bell rang, and up sluiced a car so damn gorgeous it hurt to look at it. A '37 Buick Roadmaster it was, painted a red so rich it was nearly black, that straight eight engine whispering like a lover while teardrops of rain rolled down the chrome grill.
Out climbed this tall fellow, dressed like God's grandpa done up for a wedding or a funeral. His skin was brown as a buckwheat cake, with creases deep as drainage ditches. Took a mighty long stretch of sweat and toil, love and birth and dying, to carve a face like that. He flexed his shoulders, then rolled his neck till it cracked. He pulled a pack of Camel straights from inside his vest and flipped one out.
"Got a light?" His voice was deep and warm, half gravel, half honey.
I tossed him a pack of matches through the open door; he caught it left-handed, then flipped it open, folded over a match, and struck it with his thumb.
"This the town with the dead fiddler?" he said after a long drag on the smoke.
"You might say so," I said, ignoring the look Harnie gave me. Nobody talked about her; I wondered how this fellow had even heard about her. "Ain't a fiddle, though. It's a cello, like in the symphony."
The stranger shrugged. "Close enough."
"She ain't d-dead, neither," Harnie said. "M-more sleeping, like."
He puffed out a wreath of smoke. Then another. "Let's go wake her up," he said.
"You best not try, mister," I said. "She been sleeping for thirty some year."
The man grinned. "I'm feeling lucky today. C'mon, boys, let's go."
"Mister, I sure hope you ain't as lucky as you feel. Woman like that, best not woke at all."
"You scared?" the stranger said.
"Damn right I am," I said. "You'd be too, if you knew."
"I just want to see her, is all."
"She ain't no damn tourist attraction. You wanna play tourist, get back in that car of yours and drive on up to Graceland. North on 55, three, four hours."
"I'm no tourist," the stranger said. "You can't spook me." He stepped over the sill through wreaths of smoke, and leaned against the rack of pork rinds.
"Look here, mister," I said. "You see how Harnie ain't got no right hand?"
"M-muh-" Harnie said. "M-my f-f--"
"Take it easy, Harnie," I said, laying my hand on his shoulder. "I'll tell it."
Harnie scowled and grabbed the remote to turn down the sound of Tokyo roasting. Then he tilted back and scowled at me again.
"Me and Harnie was just kids," I said, turning back to the stranger. "Thirteen, fourteen, know what I mean? Harnie fell in love with the lady the day she come to town."
"Y-you too."
"Sure," I said.
"When was that?"
"Back in the late sixties," I said. "Don't remember the date."
"The d-day they sh-shot Dr. K-King," Harnie said. "She was b-beautif-ful."
"Sure she was," I said. "Skin like the moon, hair black with red highlights."
"Like y-yer car," Harnie said.
I hadn't noticed that. "Guess so," I said. "Anyway, she was wearing this long white dress kinda thing, and at first we figured she was just another of them hippie gals hitchhiking to the Mardi Gras, come to sleep in the park."
"L-lots of hippies," Harnie said.
"Sure," I said. "They was everywhere back then. But this 'un was different. She took that cello out of her case, opened up her legs, and snugged it up against her."
"She was s-so-so b--"
"Yeah," I said. "Harnie and I was on our bikes, just watching her wrap her fingers across the strings. She sighed just then, and looked up at Harnie and me with them green eyes of hers."
"B-blue," Harnie said.
"They was green, Harnie," I said.
"B-bl--"
"Dammit, Harnie..."
"What happened next?" the fellow said.
I looked down at the counter. All that smoke of his was stinging my eyes. "She smiled at us."
"Ah," the fellow said. The rain whispered steady on the concrete, the smell of its mist cutting through Camel straights and wasted fuel. "Ah."
"Then she sighed again, her smile melted away, and she shut her eyes. She just sat there, cello snuggled between her knees, and didn't move at all. Not then, nor ever again neither."
"What about his hand?"
"I-I-I--"
"Dammit, Harnie," I said. "Don't get all riled. I'm telling it."
Harnie blushed and nodded.
"Well, me and Harnie just sat there watching her -- heck, we wasn't moving no more than she was. We