“Another gin cocktail?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t say no.”
Later, when they went back to Beau’s log cabin and sat on Lily’s shawl, Beau asked her to tell him how she got from Chattanooga to around here. She put her head on his shoulder. “It’s not all that interesting,” she said, slurring her words a bit. She was the only girl in a family of four boys. The oldest, she was mother to those boys, bathing them, cooking for them, dressing them, and putting them to bed. When Beau asked where her mother was, she shrugged. “Mama was a bit of a socialite. She was a real beauty. People in town just loved her, and she and Daddy were always going to this party or that dinner. It didn’t leave a whole lot of time for mothering, so I did what I could for those boys. They called me ‘little mama.’” She smiled. “I love those boys, I really do. I always sang to them. I sang to myself. Singing was my best company. I knew I wanted to be a singer, but I kept that to myself. When the boys got older, they didn’t need me so much. I decided to leave Chattanooga and come to a place that had music. Mama and Daddy were fine with me leaving home: one less mouth to feed and all that. As long as I could support myself, they gave me their blessing. I’d always heard that Asheville was beautiful and had the music. So here I am.” She placed both hands firmly on the floor. “That’s it. Story’s over.”
“You must have had a fella or two along the way,” he said. “A gal doesn’t up and leave home without any prospects.”
Lily turned to him, her mouth a straight line. “I said, story over. Let’s talk about you. How’d you get here?”
Beau told her about how he sold antique musical instruments and how his car broke down here when he was driving from his home in Orlando, and how if he never saw Orlando again—a swampy shithouse was how he described it—that would be fine with him.
Lily asked to see the antique instruments. Beau got up and removed a leather fiddle case from the shelf. He made sure to hold it close enough to Lily’s nose so she could smell the leather. “It’s genuine,” he said, unzipping it and removing the fiddle.
“You know how to play that thing?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said.
“Okay, let’s hear.”
He started to play some honky-tonk number. Lily stood up and cocked her head. It was as if the music was spiraling through her. It started with her feet tapping. It wriggled up her legs, shook her abdomen, and made her breasts sway. She thrust out her arms and tossed back her head. The louder and faster Beau played, the more frenzied Lily became, until she pulled Beau into her vortex. Although now there was no music, there was Lily’s body. The thrum and thrusts of it were all he needed to fall into her rhythms, dance in her spell. Lily slipped the straps of her chemise off one shoulder and then the other. She opened a few buttons, unsnapped some strategic snaps, and before you knew it, Lily Doucet and her clothes had parted company, and she and Beau found their way to the primrose shawl.
Lily Doucet did not seem to Beau like anyone’s “little mama.” Beau even wondered if Lily Doucet was her real name, though she wore it as if it had been sewn onto her. He didn’t give a fig if she’d made up the whole story about her mama the socialite and her four little brothers. Lily Doucet was fun and sexy and tasted like peppermint Chiclets, and for the next four months, fun and sex was exactly what Beau had.
For Lily’s part, she said she liked men with class and could tell that Beau was such a man. As a salesman, seeming to be a man of class was Beau’s top priority. He wore a straw boater and tweed suit every day and carted his instruments in those leather cases that smelled expensive. That he was also something of a looker in his own right, with his velvety black hair, globe-blue eyes, and that feathery mustache, didn’t hurt. Beau was the kind of man who became your friend at his first “howdy.” He made the ladies laugh and could talk man-to-man about Jack Dempsey or the latest Lon Chaney movie.
Personally, Beau felt that classy was overrated, and in that regard, Lily Doucet suited him just fine.
Chapter 4
Before either of them had ever talked about any of it, Lily was pregnant. So much for courtship and marriage. Beau was forty-five, and the idea of being a father had long ago passed him by. Now, the thought of having a family intrigued him, so he asked Lily to marry him.
Lily was never one to swoon about marriage or daydream about having a kid. Quite the opposite. She’d never even had a doll. With four younger brothers to take care of, babies held no romance for her. Freedom was what she dreamed about, freedom and singing. So when Beau first asked her to marry him, she said absolutely not. What better way to stomp out a career than to get married? Lily figured no man wanted to be sung to by a gal with a ring on her finger. Better the fantasy of not knowing, the romance of possibility.
But as Lily got rounder and fatter and couldn’t even bend over to tie her shoes, it dawned on her that if she had a kid by herself, she’d be trapped forever. She had no money. How would she ever get out of the house to work? To sing? Beau was a nice guy. She could tell he’d be a good father, and she guessed she liked him well enough to marry him for a while anyway. So a very pregnant Lily—“Under no circumstance will I change my name”—Doucet and a beaming Beau Fox were wed before the justice of the peace in March, two months before their son was born on May 28, 1931. They called him Dillard in honor of the password they used to get into the gin joint their first night together.
Lily’s first reaction upon pulling out of the ether haze and laying eyes on her newborn son was to curl her bottom lip and say, “Oh crap, he looks more like you than me.”
Beau traveled a lot in those days and did a pretty good business in the South. But on nights when Beau was home, Lily would perform at Barney’s, despite the ring on her finger. One night, when Dillard was three, a man came up to Lily after she’d sung a few songs by Alberta Hunter and Sippie Wallace. He wore a brown fedora and shoes that matched his suit and pocket square. A real city slicker. He told Lily he’d been coming to Barney’s for a few months and that her voice had an earthy quality to it that would play well on radio. His name was Raymond Kriss, and he worked for a record company in Nashville. He handed her a card and said: “You call me whenever you get serious about this singing business.”
Raymond Kriss’s card became soaked through with a peppermint Chiclet smell as Lily kept it in the zippered compartment of her pocketbook. By this time, Lily, Dillard, and Beau had become a pretty normal family. When they celebrated Dillard’s fourth birthday, Lily had to pinch herself. She’d never thought she’d stick around this long. Beau and she got along fine, and Dillard—she called him Dilly—turned out to be easier to care for than any of her brothers had been. Even so, she couldn’t deny this thing that burned within her. Ambition. Restlessness. Boredom. Whatever it was, it was a part of her that always yearned to break free like one of those horses bucking at a starting gate. She kept thinking she’d wait a little longer, until Dilly was older and able to hold some memories of her. Every few days she’d take Raymond Kriss’s card out of her pocketbook and cup it in both hands like holy water. Then she’d sigh and go back to life as a wife and mother.