The Girl from Charnelle Read Free Page A

father cry before, not even when Gloria eloped.
    The other boys sat down on the porch, and first Gene and then Rich began to weep. Laura breathed deeply and looked up at the sky. It was cloudy and pink. The light spilled over their house, but the sun was blocked from view. Their street, out on the eastern edge of the town with only half a dozen houses, all still sleeping, seemed far too empty. She stood on the lawn—her two younger brothers on the porch, crying; her father and Manny, huddled by the tree, crying. She stared at the western horizon. It seemed right there, but so far. She could picture that bus, disappearing over the edge, rolling away from them, her mother not looking back.

1
New Year’s Eve, 1959
    S he’d only tasted beer before, never champagne. It was sweet and sharp and stung high in her head, and it gave her a tingling jolt, akin to her father’s black coffee. The more she sipped, the better it tasted. Soon she was finished with the whole cup. She stood by the punch bowl. The dance floor was swollen with people. The Pick Wickers, a six-piece band from Lubbock, plucked out a country waltz. The Pick Wickers had become minor Panhandle celebrities, had even opened for Marty Robbins in Lubbock, Amarillo, Fort Worth, Austin, and Houston. They had played the Charnelle New Year’s Eve celebrations twice before, in ’56 and ’58, and were regulars at the Armory dances. Laura had seen them only once and was glad that they were playing tonight. Though billed as a country act, they played a little bit of everything (rock and roll, the blues, swing, blue-grass, gospel) and would, rumor had it, get wilder as the night wore on and they drank more beer. The lead singer was a pudgy, gray-haired man with a string tie who sang like Fats Domino and sometimes played a screechyfiddle, and most of the other members of the band were in their thirties, except for the guy on the stand-up bass, a tall, thin boy with Cherokee cheekbones and a suit that looked too big for him. He would close his eyes during the songs and sway back and forth on the balls of his feet. Earlier in the evening, he popped his eyes open in the middle of “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and caught Laura staring at him. He winked at her, smiled, then closed his eyes again and continued plucking his bass as if that wink were a dream and the real world was in the rhythm of his fingers.
    A little after eleven now. The decade almost gone, Laura thought. Another coming. Though her mother had left them a year and a half ago, it seemed at times like it had happened just yesterday and at other times like her mother had never existed. Time slipped or seemed stuck, but never the same. She didn’t know how to judge it, and it no longer mattered, or at least it didn’t matter in the same chronically aching way.
    And on nights like this, it certainly didn’t matter. Her first New Year’s Eve party. Except for Rich, who was staying with Mrs. Ambling, her family was all here. Manny with his girlfriend, Joannie. Her father at the bar. Gene with his friends. They’d arrived late, almost eight-thirty, and the whole time she’d been dancing—the twist with Gene, a polka with her father, and other dances with boys she went to school with. Though chilly outside with the threat of snow, the inside of the Armory felt warm. On the deck were three barbecue grills with chicken and ribs and brisket. Inside were chips and a thousand variations on potato salad, bean salad, and fruit cocktail. Mounds of cookies and cakes and brownies. And a table full of champagne bottles, a few opened each hour, plastic cups filled. Her father had said she should try some, see if it tickled her fancy.
    When she finished her champagne, John Letig suddenly stood by her side with a bottle in his hand, smiling, twirling around in goose-step foolishness.
    â€œLet me top her off there, Miss Tate.”
    She liked Mr. Letig. No one called him John, except