the kinds of things she usually plays, but then what do I really know about music? Don’t ask me to discuss it. I either like it or I don’t. But Robert seems pleased with what she’s doing, nodding to himself, has a little smile starting up there in the corner of his mouth.
I can see his left hand shaping chords on the neck of his guitar, but he doesn’t strum the strings. Just follows what she’s doing in his head, I guess.
I look at Staley a little longer, smiling as well to see her standing there so straight-backed in her overalls, barefoot in the grass, the sun glowing golden on her short hair. After awhile I lean back against the door of the trailer again and close my eyes. I’m drifting on the music, not really thinking much of anything, when I realize the sound of the fiddle’s starting to fade away.
“Shit,” I hear Robert say.
I open my eyes, but before I can turn to look at him, I see Staley’s gone. It’s the damnedest thing. I can still hear her fiddling, only it’s getting fainter and fainter like she’s walking away and I can’t see a sign of her anywhere. I can’t imagine a person could run as fast as she’d have to to disappear like this and still keep playing that sleepy music.
When Robert stands up, I scramble to my feet as well.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
“She let it take her away.”
“What do you mean? Take her away where?”
But he doesn’t answer. He’s looking into the woods and then I see them too. A rabbit being chased by some ugly old dog. Might be the same rabbit that ran off on us in the city, but I can’t tell. It comes tearing out from under the trees, running straight across the meadow towards us, and then it just disappears.
I blink, not sure I actually saw what I just saw. But then the same thing happens to the dog. It’s like it goes through some door I can’t see. There one minute, gone the next.
“Well, she managed to pull them back across,” Robert says. “But I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.”
Hearing him talk like that makes me real nervous.
“Why?” I ask him. “This is what we wanted, right? She was going to play some music to put things back the way they were. Wasn’t that the plan?”
He nods. “But her going over wasn’t.”
“I don’t get it.”
Robert turns to look at me. “How’s she going to get back?”
“Same way she went away—right?”
He answers with a shrug and then I get a bad feeling. It’s like what happened with Malicorne and Jake, I realize. Stepped away, right out of the world, and they never came back. The only difference is, they meant to go.
“She won’t know what to do,” Robert says softly. “She’ll be upset and maybe a little scared, and then he’s going to show up, offer to show her the way back.”
I don’t have to ask who he’s talking about.
“But she’ll know better than to bargain with him,” I say.
“We can hope.”
“We’ve got to be able to do better than that,” I tell him.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
I look at that guitar in his hands.
“You could call her back,” I say.
Robert shakes his head. “The devil, he’s got himself a guitar, too.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Think about it,” Robert says. “Whose music is she going to know to follow?”
The stranger laid his guitar case on the grass and opened it up. The instrument he took out was an old Martin D-45 with the pearl inlaid “CD MARTIN” logo on the headstock—a classic, pre-war picker’s guitar.
“Don’t see many of those anymore,” Staley said.
“They didn’t make all that many.” He smiled. “Though I’ll tell you, I’ve never seen me a blue fiddle like you’ve got, not ever.”
“Got it from my grandma.”
“Well, she had taste. Give me an A, would you?”
Staley ran her bow across the A string of her fiddle and the stranger quickly tuned up to it.
“You ever play any contests?” he asked as he finished tuning.
He ran his pick across the strings, fingering an A minor chord. The guitar had a big, rich sound with lots of bottom end.
“I don’t believe in contests,” Staley said. “I think they take all the pleasure out of a music.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean nothing serious. More like swapping tunes, taking turns ’till one of you stumps the other player. Just for fun, like.”
Staley shrugged.
“’Course to make it interesting,”