Rain Gods (Hackberry Holland 2)

?What?s that mean??

?Honey, it means on a day like this, your old man would like to be a full-time musician.?

What would her father say about her and Pete?s situation now? She had always identified her father more with his music than with his career as a lawman. He was always happy, his tanned skin crinkling at the corners of his eyes, and seldom let the world injure him. He lent money to people who could not pay it back and befriended drunkards and minorities and didn?t allow either politics or organized religion to carry him away. He had collected all the Carter Family?s early music and was immensely proud to have known the patriarch of the family, Alvin Pleasant Carter, who, in a postcard to Vikki?s father, had called him ?a fellow musicianer.? His favorite Carter family song was ?Keep on the Sunny Side of Life.?

Where are you now, Daddy? In heaven? Out there among the mesas or inside the blowing clouds of dust and rain? But you?re somewhere, aren?t you? she said to herself. You always said music never dies; it lives on the trade winds and wraps all the way around the world.

She had to wipe a tear from her eye before she went inside the steak house.

?A couple of famous fellows were asking about you,? the bartender said.

?How do you define ?famous???

The bartender was an ex?rodeo rider nicknamed Stub, for the finger he had pinched off when he caught it in a calf-rope at the Calgary Stampede. He was tall and had a stomach shaped like a water-filled enema bottle and hair that was as slick and black as patent leather. He wore black trousers and a long-sleeve white shirt and a black string tie and was drying champagne glasses and setting them upside down on a white towel while he talked. ?They were in last night and wanted to meet you, but you were busy.?

?Stub, would you just answer the question??

?They said they were from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.?

?They?re hanging out here rather than Malibu because they like the weather in late August??

?They didn?t say.?

?Did you give them my name??

?I said your name was Vikki.?

?Did you give them my last name or tell them where I live??

?I didn?t tell them where you live.?

?What are their names??

?They left a card here. Or I think they did.? He looked behind him at two or three dozen business cards in a cardboard box under the cash register. ?They liked your singing. One of them said you sounded like Mother something.?

?Maybelle??

?What??

?I sound like Mother Maybelle??

?I don?t remember.?

?Stub??

?Maybe they?ll come in tonight.?

?Don?t talk about me to anyone. No one, not for any reason. Do you understand??

Stub shook his head and dried a glass, his back to her.

?Did you hear me??

He sighed loudly, as though a great weight had been unfairly set on his shoulders. She wanted to hit him in the head with a plate.

Until nine-thirty P.M. she served dinners from the kitchen and drinks from the bar to tourists on their way to Big Bend and family people and lonely utility workers far from home who came in for a beer and the music. Then she took her guitar from a locked storage compartment in back and removed it from the case and tuned the strings she had put on only last week.

The Gibson had probably been manufactured over sixty years ago and was the biggest flattop the company made. It had a double-braced red spruce top and rosewood back and sides. It was known as the instrument of choice of Elvis and Emmylou or any rockabilly who loved the deep-throated warm sound of early acoustic guitars. Its sunburst finish and pearl and flower-motif inlay and dark neck and silver frets seemed to capture light and pools of shadow at the same time and, out of the contrasts, create a separate work of art.