Their music floods me with longing, making me think of ninth grade, when the three of us met. Sarah had just transferred from another county, and Orlando had moved to Briar Springs from Miami the summer before. We were close friends within a few weeks and started playing music together soon after. Orlando was happy to discover that the bluegrass Sarah and I liked reminded him a little of the guajira music—Cuban country—he’d grown up playing with his grandfather and uncles. He taught us a few Cuban songs, and we taught him bluegrass and folk. Music is what made us friends, but now it feels like it’s pulling us apart. If we could play together again like we used to, when it was just for fun, when we laughed through half the songs we played—
I grab my fiddle and follow their notes like bread crumbs through the trees.
They both look up, startled, when I reach the small clearing where they sit. “That’s the one,” I say, pushing down all my doubts. “We’ll play that for the open mic night.”
I linger in the woods after Sarah and Orlando head home. The sun has gone down, and the woods are hushed, shadows spilling like ink through the trees. The air is cool and sweet with the smells of early spring.
I raise my fiddle and breathe into the quiet, my eyes closed in concentration. A great horned owl hoots gently somewhere nearby, like a chiding mother telling me to get on with it.
Daddy always said twilight was good for ghost raising because it’s an in-between time, when the barrier between worlds seems to grow thin as tissue paper and the ghosts are at their lonesomest. This fiddle can’t so much as poke a hole in that tissue paper, but it’s the only one I’ve got now.
Daddy’s fiddle drew ghosts like hummingbirds to nectar. Mine only reminds me of everything I’m not, everything I’ll never be.
My bow slices across the strings, sending a wail into the blue hush and startling the owl, who erupts in a flurry of shocked feathers from a branch high above my head, hooting her displeasure.
I play “The Twa Sisters” over and over again, trying to imagine myself as the drowned sister, watching the world turn to brown river water. Then I play it as the fiddler who finds the body and strings the girl’s long, yellow hair into a fiddle bow. But the song comes out the same—sad and sweet, quiet and calm as the river that washed up her bones.
Finally, I let the song fade, its last notes disappearing into the skinny pines. Night settles in around me, the air close and clammy. Cicadas take up where my fiddle left off, and small animals rustle in the brush. The trees sigh and sigh and sigh. This forest feels like an ear that’s always listening but never hears what it’s hoping to. Maybe it misses Daddy’s fiddle same as I do. Maybe it’s waiting, like I am too, for a voice of its own.
I turn to put my fiddle in its case, when, like a belated echo, a snatch of music comes back to me from the trees, deep and pure and full of grief, the dark twin of my bow’s last arc. A shiver runs up my spine, spreading chill bumps over my arms. Every muscle in my body tenses, waiting for another note.
“Shady,” Mama yells from the trailer, making me jump. “It’s dinnertime.” The door slams, and I shake myself.
I put my fiddle in its case and turn for home, back through the hungry, darkening woods, back toward Mama’s trailer, to the life we made inside the emptiness Daddy’s death left behind.
Two
Our trailer always puts me in mind of a tin can with a firecracker that’s about to blow. Tonight’s no different. My stepdad, Jim, is laid out on the recliner with NASCAR cranked up loud enough to make you think you’re on the track yourself, inhaling burned-rubber fumes. Mama’s at the stove banging pots and pans and swearing under her breath, while my two-year-old sister, Honey, tugs at Mama’s Waffle House uniform. The smells of fried chicken, instant mashed potatoes, and canned spinach make my stomach turn.
“Shady, where’ve you been?” Mama asks when she catches sight of me standing at the counter that divides the kitchen from the living room.
“I was in the woods with Sarah and Orlando.” Honey wanders over, and I start to braid a section of her silky hair. My own hair’s so curly and thick you can’t run your fingers through it, so I love playing with Honey’s.
“They left an hour ago. You been out there by yourself playing that fiddle?” Mama wipes sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
I don’t answer, so she goes on muttering. “Just like your daddy, too busy playing that instrument to help me.”
Mama’s in a temper, but I know it’s not really about me. It never is. “I’ll help you, Mama. What do you need?” I say, touching her arm.
Her eyes soften. “Go tell Jesse to come in here for dinner.”
I cross back through the living room, but Jim doesn’t even see me, his eyes locked on the endlessly circling cars. His cell phone is ringing, but he ignores it.
I knock at Jesse’s door and then poke my head in. “Mama says come to dinner.”
My older brother sits on his bed, back against the headboard, with earbuds in, steadily texting. An awful, metallic-sounding music grates from the speakers.
“Jesse.”
“What?” he says, yanking one earbud out. He pushes a shock of light-brown hair from his eyes.
“Are you coming to dinner, or not? Mama’s in a bad mood, though, so you’d better get in there.”
Jesse sighs like I’ve come to lead him to his death.
“What’d you do now?” I ask.
“Why’s it gotta be something I did?”
“It’s always you. Can’t you find something better to do with your time? You could play with my band and me. It doesn’t have to be fiddle—you could learn mandolin or something. Daddy would be so disappointed that you—”
Jesse’s face goes hard before I can even finish the sentence. “Fuck off.”
I step back and look away, my cheeks flushing with anger and embarrassment. I turn to leave, but Jesse’s voice stops me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
I spin back to face him. “You did, though.” Sometimes I look at Jesse and don’t even recognize him anymore, but he’s still my brother, and I miss him. I miss the way we used to be, before he saw Daddy die right in front of him, before Mama moved another man into Daddy’s place.
“Yeah, I did, but I’m still sorry. I just don’t want to play music like that, okay?” Jesse’s voice softens. “Playing that sad song over and over again isn’t going to make him come back, you know. You’re only making it harder on yourself.”
His words sink like fishing weights in my stomach, landing cold and true. Is that what I’m hoping for, deep down, when I spend hours in the woods, playing for the unreachable ghosts? Is that why I can’t stop playing “The Twa Sisters”? These past few weeks it’s all I’ve wanted to do.
I shrug and change the subject. “Will you at least come see me play at the open mic next weekend?”
“Maybe,” he says, pushing me forward. “Now get out.”
When we trudge into the kitchen, Mama’s eyes snag on Jesse, but she doesn’t say anything. Jim’s glowering at the screen of his phone, which has started ringing again.