“Outside, in my truck.”
“In this heat? Are you crazy? You got air-conditioning in your truck?” Chip shook his head, and was already halfway to the door. He was at the truck in a few long uneven strides, with his limp. Iris was sitting cross-legged on the seat, red-faced from the heat and singing along with the music on the radio.
“C’mon,” he said when he opened the door. “I got you an audition.”
“For what?” She looked surprised. She’d sung in churches and at church socials, but never at a bar.
“They have a setup for live music in the back.” He took a boom box from the floor behind his seat, and Iris hopped out, and followed him back into the bar. She was flushed from the heat. Pearl poured her a Coke and handed it to her as soon as she saw her, while Harry stared at her.
“She’s twelve?” he asked. She looked more like nine or ten, and she wasn’t decked out in makeup and sexy clothes as he had feared. She looked like a normal, ordinary kid. “What’s your name?” he asked her in a kind voice.
“Iris.” She smiled at him and took a long sip of the ice-cold Coke, and thanked Pearl for it.
“Your dad says you have a knockout voice.” She looked suddenly shy.
“I like to sing.”
Chip set the boom box down on the bar. “I’ve got the instrumentals she sings to on here. She can sing anything you want. Ballads, country, western. She can sing requests. She knows everything on the radio.” He signaled to Iris to back away a little, which she did. She set the glass down on a table, and Chip turned the machine on. Just before he did, he reminded her to hit the high notes, and she nodded. She got right into the first song without hesitating, an old cowboy song the ranch hands always loved, followed by “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” which gave Harry a sense of the range of her voice. The next one was a gospel song, and she did as her father had told her. She hit the high notes and held them. Harry and Pearl stared at her. Chip turned the machine off after the third song, and Harry looked at him skeptically. He had guessed what the trick was. She was lip-synching. No child could sing like that and few women were able to. The ones who could were famous.
“Okay,” he said cynically. “Great performance. Now let’s see what she can do without the music on.” He was sure that they would beat a quick retreat after that, and Chip didn’t look happy. She sounded better with the music, but he gave Iris the nod and she sang three more songs a cappella. Her voice was even stronger without the music. She had a voice that filled the entire room, and she hit high notes like he’d never heard before. Chip was right. Iris sang like a grown woman, but she was this slip of a girl, who didn’t even look her age, and had a voice that ripped your heart out. Harry and Pearl stood mesmerized. Iris clearly wasn’t lip-synching. Chip was right. She could sing anything, and hit the high notes like no one else.
“Your customers are going to go crazy when they hear that,” Chip said, and Harry looked at her intently. He liked how clean and normal she looked. No makeup, no artifice, there was no suggestion of sex about her, and she still had the body of a child. Little girls dressed up like women and trying to be sexy made Harry uncomfortable, and he didn’t want any part of that. There was nothing suggestive about her. She looked like an ordinary little girl.
“Have you had singing lessons?” Harry asked her, still amazed by what he’d heard, and Pearl handed her another Coke.
“No, I’ve just been singing all my life. I sing in church choirs sometimes, when we stay somewhere long enough,” Iris told him. There was no way her father could have paid for singing lessons, but she didn’t say that because it would embarrass him. “I listen to the radio a lot.”
“She knows all the hit songs,” Chip intervened again. “So what do you think?” he asked Harry.
“I think you have a prodigy on your hands.” The contrast between the way she looked and the way she sang was utterly incongruous, and he didn’t know how people would react, particularly since she was so small and looked so young.
“Why don’t you try her for a couple of nights? I guarantee your customers will be begging you to get her back.” It was entirely possible after what he had just heard. Live entertainment was hard to come by. They had to rely on the occasional cowboy band, or a group passing through on their way to somewhere else.
Harry turned to Chip and asked him, “What did you have in mind?” At night there were two waitresses, Pearl and Sally, and Harry tended bar. It was a small operation, but a profitable one. The ranch hands left pretty good tips when they drank. The food was decent and he had a loyal clientele. The cook came in at night. Harry made lunch himself.
“Six nights a week, twenty-five a night.”
“Weeknights are slow. Maybe Thursday through Sunday,” Harry countered.
“Five nights at thirty bucks a night,” Chip said, “and she gets to keep her tips. You won’t be sorry. And weeknights won’t be slow if she’s singing.”
Harry wondered if Chip might be right, and he felt sorry for Iris, with her father dragging her around bars to have her sing, at her age.
“You’ll keep an eye on her so no one hassles her?” He looked at Chip sternly, and he nodded. “We’ll try it for a week and see how it goes. If people love it, she can have the job, five nights at twenty-five a night.” That would give them five hundred dollars a month, which would make a big difference for them. It was easy money, and Harry could afford it.
“And I’ll get her in and out. She can wait for me in the truck.” It sounded like a miserable life for a kid her age, but she didn’t look unhappy. While the men were talking, Pearl offered her a piece of peach pie with vanilla ice cream on top, and Iris stared at it hungrily. She sat down and gobbled it up immediately, and took the plate out to the kitchen. The equipment was old, but the place was clean.
Chip had a beer before they left, and told Iris to wait for him in the truck. She left quietly after thanking Harry and Pearl. After Chip left, Harry turned to Pearl and shook his head.
“That poor kid. He’d have her singing in a coal mine if it made him a buck. But her voice is a gift from God.”
They’d agreed that she would go on at nine o’clock and do a full set. She would be starting in two days, on Wednesday.
“What if they don’t like what I sing?” Iris looked at her father nervously as they pulled up at the house where they were living for now.
“They’re going to love you. And you’re going to be a big star one day. Don’t forget that. What are you going to wear?”
“My blue dress.” It was the only nice dress she had, and she rarely got a chance to wear it. She had a pair of sandals to go with it. She wore that when she sang in church.
“You’ll make some money on tips too.” Chip was smiling, pleased with himself. They needed the money, and this could be the start of her singing career. The possibilities were endless. He’d been waiting for this moment for years. She had found her voice at six.
“They’re nice,” Iris said, thinking of Harry and Pearl, and the peach pie and Cokes.
“So is the money.” Chip grinned broadly, as they got out of the truck, and Iris went to check that her blue dress looked all right. She was nervous about singing at the bar, but she liked the idea too. As long as she got to sing, everything would be okay. Singing always fixed everything and made her happy.