Happy Accidents of Harmony
BY COPPER SMITH I NOVEMBER 12, 2008
And then someone went and asked Bonnie Jean about her life before finding her calling in the world of Kane Cosmetics and, as had become her custom, she gave them the short version by pulling out the dusty old record (the one with Chuck on the horse) and pointing out the third backup singer from the left. And it was her alright, all smiley-faced in satin and denim like the rest, with feathered hair so heavy it brought her knees to a buckle, she joked. It really was her.
Nine grinning singers surrounded the piano, but on the record it was only her and Chuck; it was easier that way, with nothing but her sweet soprano lacing itself around Chuck's predatory rumble. Chuck liked the results, and when he asked how she did it she offered only a smile and a shrug that seemed to say that these happy accidents of harmony just kind of slipped into place. Who knows how they come to be?
But she knew. She had studied vocal arrangement, first from her 'colorful' choir director uncle who could make her laugh when the rest of the world danced without her, then from the professor who hated her for knowing more about the origin of Gregorian chants than he did. She knew how to offset a growling baritone with flourishes nobody heard but her and she know how to cover his clunky missteps with subtle shifts in range, how to take a step back so the ear would hear only our hero's playful come-ons, his half hungover apologies, his late night whispered confessions that strutted forth for only eight-ninety-nine on eight-track or cassette.
And there was also this:
She became a kind of den mother to the boys on the road, cleaning up after meals and drunken tussles, lying to the ladies who'd call and wonder what their boyfriends were up to. Mending the strap on Tommy's bass and waking Wayne up when Chuck was too drunk to notice a missing drummer at rehearsal. Somebody had to do these things, she'd say to herself. It didn't really matter that nobody noticed.
And there was also this:
Chuck had taken her by the hand and tugged her into a clumsy kiss behind the lighting rig in Denver and she made herself forget that he used the same move on Sandra the fiddler who limped a little. He had also told her that her kiss was like "the opposite of a migraine." But with Sandra it was "the opposite of a stroke" and with Debra—that girl who just kind of showed up on the bus in New Orleans—"an aortic aneurism." (what did Chuck think the girls talked about in that tiny tour bus bathroom?)
They were a couple for exactly 50 days that raced by like a weekend. A Friday evening of accidental glances and limbs that would brush under tables like a promise. A Saturday of stolen kisses in motel hallways like kids who thought they invented it; a Sunday of sleeping off the previous night's coupling, waking up before him and wordlessly wondering if it was such a good idea after all. She knew better than to think she could be loved by a man who didn't even pretend to remember her name; and when drunk, he made her feel like a daughter who had burnt his breakfast again. So it was time to do what she did best: It was time to disappear.
She slipped away with steps so quiet that Chuck never noted her absence. No one did, really, not even the painted ladies of Chuck's faithful fan club who would always say—in the same smoker's rasp—that the album with Chuck on the horse was their favorite because it had some indefinable quality, a resonance that made every story it told seem to flutter above the mess of everyday life.
But when the world needed new songs from Chuck and a new stepladder of a soprano to bring them to his reach, he knew what was missing. Three empty albums later, while his pride slept off a surreal series of wounds (did he really get booed at the Grand Ole Opry?) he arranged a breakfast with Bonnie Jean.
***
She waited for him in a booth at Donnie's, a small dust-ridden diner that hadn't changed much in six decades of vaguely hostile service. It was, as her grandaddy used to say, as hot as a polecat humping a bonfire in July. Her bright pink sun dress felt pasted on and gnats gathered at the backdoor dumpster and rose together like a mist. Everyone inside frowned because what else can you do when the heat presses on.
Chuck swaggered inside and fired gun-less shots at polite smilers and ladylike wavers that greeted him, pretending not to care that only a few years prior, his presence might have inspired demands for autographs and scarcely veiled offers of oral copulation. It had, after all, been three years since the album with him on the horse.
He greeted her with a chuckle and a grope that everyone just kind of expected of him.
"Look at you," he said with a smirk that announced that he had heard her story. He knew she was working at the fish house and struggling.
"I hear you need a singer." She had heard his story too.
"My needs are plenty," he said, leaning forward, hands finding sweaty skin beneath the softness of her sun dress, roaming upward. She pulled away, arching her supple spine and angling her legs elsewhere.
But this was not a retreat; it was a renegotiation.
"I just want a place to sing. Nothing else." She couldn't look him in the eye.
But she couldn't look away. Not with this awkward silence.
Now he was smoking, angry eyes chopping away.
"You want to sing, I need a singer. Can you start Monday?"
"I'll have to check with my boss." Her eyes now found his knees. He was standing, turning, not happy.
And before sauntering out:
"Don't worry, I'll have you back to your fish house in a few days," he said, spitting out the words fish house like they had suddenly become a euphemism for whore house or homeless shelter.
She was used to feeling like a void—she wore nothingness like a tailored evening gown. But these stabs at her soul made her feel like less than nothing. And Chuck's narrowed eyes promised only a second round of stabbing. But the world needed something to sing along to while the demons hovered above and she needed a way to pay her rent without smelling of catfish and tartar sauce. So she sang.
But she sang like a stranger, leaving Chuck's rum-tested rattle without cover, naked, exposed. Even in her own mind it was unclear how willful this act of sabotage was.
Was she simply too nervous? Out of practice? Had the muses abandoned her?
Or maybe she was distracted by the silly questions she made the mistake of asking herself somewhere between the denim and satin-clad dreamy nights of near fame and the wake-up call of Callie's Fish House: What if she had stepped before that microphone and braved the heated glare of the all-seeing spotlight? What if she had dared to tell her story, stumbles and all?
What if she was meant for more than the role of unseen stagehand, changing the scenery of somebody else's play?
In the end all that mattered was the sad way each song limped to life and crawled to an unseasonable demise shortly after surviving the recording process. After the last day's final take she evaded Chuck's cutting glare and wordlessly faded into the parking lot. Even a 'goodbye' would have felt insincere.
But for years, whenever some droning deejay would wonder aloud whatever happened to Chuck, why he never really sounded the same, she'd smile the mischievous smile of an arsonist springing from the front window of a blazing home, reeking of lighter fluid and matches while waving at the arriving fire brigade and somehow knowing she'd escape detection.
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