Girl Singer

6. An Endless Skyway

Lulu Martine

Singin’ don’t hardly take nothin’ outen me but dancin’ is somepin’ differ’nt. My hair ’n’ dress were all limp and soaked, I guess, from me sweatin’ in the heat.

When I fell offen the hood of the Dodge, Alvin cotched me, ’n’ I th’owed my arms ‘roun’ his neck ’n’ give him a big ol’ kiss ’n’ a wiggle. He ‘most nearly dropped me.

“Buh!” I said, right in his ear, ’n’ I giggled too. What I meant was, “Didja see me? Did I do good?” He set me down on my feet ’n’ gived me my kiss back.

“Bonnie! Bonnie!” Alvin was sayin’, all laughin’. I was so excited, I was bouncin’ up ’n’ down while Alvin had his hands on my middle, keepin’ me f’um gettin’ knocked down by all the folk crowdin’ in on us.

Singing didn’t seem to take much effort or energy, but dancing was different. My hair and dress were all limp and soaked, from me sweating in the heat, even though I’d mostly been in the shade.

When I fell off the Dodge, Alvin caught me and I threw my arms around his neck. I gave him a big kiss and a wiggle, too, and he almost dropped me. Right at that moment, I felt a lot more like Bonnie and hardly at all like whoever I used to be.

“Buh!” I said into Alvin’s ear, by which Bonnie meant, “Did you see me? Did I do good?” Alvin laughed, set me down on my feet and gave me my kiss back.

“Bonnie! Bonnie!” Alvin was saying in the middle of laughing. I was so excited, I was bouncing up and down while Alvin kept his hands on my waist, keeping me from being knocked down by the people crowding around us.

“Bonnie! Bonnie! Bonnie Mae!” Some of them were screaming my name. I shook off a feeling of having been right where I was once before. I was just beginning to realize what kind of magic I had accomplished up there on the hood of that old Dodge.

Alvin sort of pushed our way through the crowd, got the driver’s side door open and I slid inside. The windows were all down and the people crowded around them, trying to talk to me, ask me questions. All I could do was laugh and squeal. It felt so good to know that they loved what I had done.

Good old Chuck Berry, I thought. Then I felt a twinge of guilt. I’d just stolen his most famous song before he even wrote it! And the man was probably alive right now, a boy learning to play guitar, somewhere back among the evergreens.

I sat there with my mouth hanging open, still sweating from my efforts. Alvin gave me a few quick glances and looked concerned. “Poopy,” I said, Bonnie’s only curse word. I probably looked every inch the idiot I sometimes felt like.

Had I changed the future? Or would my performance just disappear in a chaotic time stream, allowing Mr. Berry to pursue his own destiny?

Alvin was trying to talk to a man in a business suit but the crowd was too noisy. They shouted at each other while I sat there numbly trying to assess what my knowledge of the future and Bonnie’s talent had done.

I couldn’t sing or dance like that, I felt pretty sure. Not in my previous life and not if I were in sole control of this body, either. And Bonnie couldn’t have performed a song she had never heard. Also, I knew, somehow, that Bonnie could only sing a song exactly the way she had heard it done.

She had an amazing gift, a true idiot-savant power. But she and I together were something else. I’d always loved music, and listened to all kinds, my whole life. But the best I’d ever done, back in my own future, was pick out a few melodies on a piano.

But I’d seen a lot of performers, live and on video. And Bonnie seemed to be able to channel that too, if it had music to it.

Alvin got in on the driver’s side and told me. “Scoot over here, sugarbun.”

I did but he fended me off when I tried to snuggle. “Buh?” I asked him, not sure myself what I meant by that. Then I squealed in surprise when the door behind me opened and the man in the suit climbed in.

“How do you do, Miss Goode?” he said politely. “I’m Herman van Kloot,” he smiled when he said it but he was right there, a big heavy man who made me think of the body I’d found in the bed with me that morning.

Had Alvin just sold me to this guy? Or rented me out? I tried to climb into Alvin’s lap but the steering wheel was in the way and Alvin fended me off.

“Calm down, Bonnie,” he said several times.

It helped, but my body was ready to have sex. Horrified, I realized that my nipples were already hard, and not all the damp I felt between my thighs was from sweat. I looked back at Herman and licked my lips. Bonnie was used to this and quite willing to fuck the guy!

On top of that, we had an audience. There were still people outside the car, laughing and talking and watching us. My brain, Bonnie’s brain, was overheating. She liked the idea of doing it with people watching.

“Buh!” I said to Herman. Meaning, “Am I pretty? Do you like what you see?” I reached up to start unbuttoning my dress. I closed my eyes, the only thing I seemed able to do on my own initiative.

Alvin grabbed my hands. “Stop, Bonnie. No. No. Behave. Herman’s just here to talk. He owns a theater, I think that’s what you said, Mr. Van Kloot?”

I opened my eyes. “Uh,“ said the man, staring at me. “Yes. The Concordian. It’s right on the other side of the square.”

I leaned back on Alvin. Bonnie was disappointed but I was relieved, or tried to convince myself I was. Apparently, I wasn’t going to have to fuck the guy. Or be allowed to either.

“Are you okay, Miss Goode?” Herman asked.

“Buh,” I said. I’m fine, thanks for asking.

Alvin sighed. “Bonnie doesn’t speak, Mr van Kloot. She can sing any song she’s ever heard. She even makes up new ones. But she can’t talk.”

“I—” Herman looked astonished. “Is that right?” he asked me.

I grinned at him, tapped my forehead with a finger and said, “Poopy.” Meaning shit-for-brains, that’s me.

“She’s also, pretty—uninhibited? I have to watch her.”

I craned my neck to look up and back at him and stuck out my tongue.

Alvin laughed. “So this theater?” he asked, looking at Herman.

They talked over my head and I listened. I felt more in control but I couldn’t focus completely and I missed some of what they said. When they talked numbers, I could feel my eyes turning glassy.

But the theater was too big for the town. It had been built as an opera house back when little Concordia was thought to be developing into a metropolis. Now, it had more than enough seats for half the town.

It stayed afloat on showing movies, occasional vaudeville nights and the fact that none of the small burgs around it had any theater at all. Mr. Van Kloot wanted me to do my act there, at least twice this weekend.

That woke me up. I sat up straight with a little bounce and threw my arms wide, singing in my best Ethel Merman, “There’s no business like show business, like no business I know! Everything—”

Alvin clamped his hand over my mouth. “Bonnie, we’re trying to talk here.”

“Mph, mff, mffl,” I kept singing against Alvin’s palm. Stopping a song once I’ve started it is difficult. I tried to pull his hand away but I didn’t have any force to do it with.

“What—what was that?” Herman asked.

“I told you she makes up songs sometimes. Like the one she sang about herself. Though her last name is Carroll, not Goode.”

I manage to stifle Ethel and Alvin let me go.

“Why did you sing Goode instead of Carroll?” Herman asked me.

I tapped my lips twice and put a hand behind one ear then the other.

“Very good, Bonnie,” said Alvin. “It rhymed,” he told Herman.

I giggled, nodding, and they both laughed.

“Well, it can be your stage name,” Herman suggested. “Because, pumpkin, you are good.” He gestured at the crowd outside who had now begun to gather around a hay wagon on top of which a group of musicians were setting up.

That looked exciting and I pointed toward them. “Oo-oo-oo!” I sang.

Alvin looked at me, “That’s…that’s what you want?”

I nodded. “Buh!” I said and I pushed on Alvin to get out of my way.

He shook his head. “Not just yet, Bonnie. Mr. Van Kloot and I aren’t done talking. Sit. We’ll be done in a bit.”

I sat but I pouted. The guys on the flatbed wagon had guitars and a fiddle and a big bass and a horn. It would be a lot of fun to sing and dance with them. And looking at the fiddle made my hands itch in an odd way.

“Those guys are pretty good,” Herman was saying. “They call themselves The Hayriders. They’re from Alabama, too.”

“Oh.” Alvin looked embarrassed and I giggled. “We’re not from Alabama, that’s just her song again. I’m from Tennessee and she’s from Georgia.”

Herman grinned at me, shaking his head. “But you don’t have music,” he said looking at Alvin.

“Hmm,” said Alvin, looking out as the band began tuning up to play after setting up an awning on the hay wagon. “Think you could work with these guys, Bonnie?” he asked me.

I nodded a lot.

“We promised the crowd another song or two. Let’s go see if they’re willing to let you sing with them,” said Alvin. Then he added, “And if they’re good enough to play for you.”

He scooted out and I followed him and Herman got out on the other side. Most of the crowd had wandered off, but a few stood close and I heard some of them talking.

“Good lord,” one large, fleshy woman said. “You can almost see through that dress.”

Her horse-faced friend commented. “She’s a shantoozy and no better than she ought to be, most like.” I took her to mean chanteuse but I recognized the backhanded countrified insult, too, with both halves of my mind. I started to make a gesture at them.

Alvin captured my hand and towed me along beside him so I had to settle for sticking my tongue out at the two ladies. It made me giggle, and Alvin, who had seen and heard what I had, ordered me to behave.

“Poopy,” I said which made him laugh, too.

The band had finished tuning up and getting set and looked ready to play when Herman attracted their attention. “You boys still for hire?” he asked.

“You betcha, Mr. Van Kloot,” said the tall guy with the neat mustache. “That’s why we’re setting up here to play after the little lady there drew a crowd for us.” He nodded at me. “We’re hoping somebody needs a band for a hoedown or a weddin’ or somethin’.”

“Or something,” Herman agreed. “This here is Al Porter,” he continued, motioning to Alvin, “he’s the manager of the girl singer who got such a crowd gathered without even having any music behind her. Come say, ‘Hi,’ Bonnie.”

I stepped up closer to the men, but not closer than Alvin. I suddenly felt oddly shy. “Buh,” I said and giggled.

“Heigh-do,” said the man, “I’m Bill to my friends. I play gee-tar and do some singing and yodeling. Pleased to meet you, Miss Goode.” He tipped his hat instead of offering to shake hands with me, but bent down to offer his hand to Alvin.

“Bonnie doesn’t say much,” Alvin explained. “She lets her singing do her talking for her.”

“Yup,” agreed Bill. “She can sing mighty fine.” He looked back at his band. “We’ve got a girl singer, too, but she ain’t here right now.”

They began to talk business, and damned if I didn’t tune it out almost completely. I tried to pay attention but Bonnie was more interested in getting up on the wagon and closer to that fiddle. I could almost feel the instrument singing in my hands, though in my previous life I knew I had never touched a violin.

At one point, Bill noticed me and called to the big guy with the bass fiddle, “Shook, why’nt you help Miss Bonnie aboard the wagon, she’s gonna sing a couple of tunes with us.”

That made me happy and I let out a squeal and clapped my hands, and all the men laughed. Then with Shook offering a hand from above and Alvin lifting me from below, I got up to the flat bed of the hay wagon. “Knock their socks off, Bonnie,” Alvin said to me as he pushed on my round butt. I giggled and nodded.

I headed straight for the fiddle player when I got on my feet. I held my hands out to him and said, “Buh!”

Oscar was the fiddle player’s name and he seemed reluctant to surrender his instrument. “Can you play the fiddle, Missy?” he asked.

“Buh!” I shouted at him. Everyone looked at Alvin.

He nodded, “I’ve yet to see an instrument she can’t play, but she’s best at fiddle and loves it most.”

Wow? I am? I do? I nodded at Alvin and then at Oscar and he handed the fiddle to me. “You be careful, miss,” he said. “It’s old and likes to be loved and talked sweet to.”

I nodded again. I plucked a few strings and looked the bow over then drew a few notes from the fiddle. Somehow I knew that it was tuned a whole note lower than most usual for a country fiddle, something someone might do to an old instrument to reduce what strain it was under.

I nodded at Oscar, put the fiddle under my chin and blasted out the first few notes of The Star Spangled Banner, then stopped and looked at the other musicians expectantly. They grabbed for their tools and off we went, Bill coming in with the vocals. He had a fine clear tenor and did a passable job of singing the patriotic tune.

I knew I could do better but you can’t sing while playing the fiddle. When we got to the end, I saw Alvin was holding something up toward me. A guitar like the one I had at home! Well, that Bonnie had at home. I handed the fiddle back to Oscar and took the three-quarter-size guitar Alvin must have borrowed from someone.

I checked the tuning, I have no idea how I knew how to do that, then off I went. Staying with the patriotic theme, I did Cohan’s “Grand Old Flag,” singing and playing, and the Hayriders stepped in at the end of the first line, they knew that one too. They were all grinning by now. We went through that twice, with me motioning the crowd to sing along.

“What else you got for us Bonnie?” Bill asked.

I pointed at him with the neck of the guitar. Then I played and sang,

“This land is your land, this land is my land,
From California to the New York Islands
From the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,
This land was made for you and me.”

The tune for the verse is the same as for the chorus so they were right there with me when I sang,

“As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me the golden valley
This land was made for you and me.”

I gave them two more verses, then the chorus twice with the crowd singing along the second time. Then I motioned the Hayriders to be quiet while I played and sang the verses I hadn’t heard since Arlo sang them at a concert I went to in college—the one about hunger and the one about private property being a lie.

Then I pointed at Oscar to come back in with the fiddle, just him, and I sang:

“Nobody living better try to stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can make me turn back
Cause this land was made for you and me.”

Then I brought the band back and we sang the chorus three times with the crowd right along with us.

“Never heard those words to ’The World is Burning’ before,” commented one of the Hayriders when we ended it. I shrugged, it wasn’t quite the same tune, just the first two bars of each stanza. Woody Guthrie was alive somewhere and might be writing the song while I was performing it.

We all took a break then, I passed the borrowed guitar down to Alvin and after he handed it off to Herman, I leaped into his arms.

“Jesus, Bonnie, give me a heart attack,” he complained. I pretended to listen to his chest then shook my head and giggled. He set me down, then took the guitar back from Herman and handed it to me. “I bought this off that girl over there,” he pointed. “It’s yours now, Bonnie.”

I squealed, grabbed the guitar then ran to the lady he had pointed at and hugged her and the guitar at the same time. “He gimme fifty dollars for it, sugar,” she said. “I had to sell it.”

So I ran and hugged Alvin, too.

“You knocked their socks off, honeypie,” Alvin whispered to me. “We’re gonna do five shows at the theater this weekend.”

I bounced up and down a couple of times and kissed him. It did not seem at all odd to be doing that. I’m almost all Bonnie right after I sing, I thought.

“Hey,” Bill called from the wagon. “Can she get up here and do another number? The crowd don’t want to hear us, no more.”

So I climbed back up on the hay wagon and gave them, “Sink the Bismark” again, this time with a band backing me. The Hayriders were good, I only had to do the first verse and part of the chorus by myself.

Then I borrowed Oscar’s fiddle, pointed at Bill and began on “The Battle of New Orleans”. They knew different lyrics than I did but Bonnie knew where they were going and we got through five verses.

My dress and hair were sodden with sweat. Someone passed me up a bottle and I took a drink before I realized it was beer instead of coke. I made a face but drank it down, I needed some kind of fluid.

The Hayriders played something without me while I caught my breath. I’d given his fiddle back to Oscar but he kept looking from me to his instrument and back, even while he was playing. I am good with a fiddle, I thought proudly.

The Hayriders had reached the end of “Sweet Betsy from Pike” but the crowd wouldn’t let them begin a new tune. I could hear them shouting, “Bonnie Mae Goode” and Bill was looking at me with pleading in his eyes.

I nodded, picked up my guitar and walked back out in front of the band. A woman I didn’t know, dressed in cowgirl chic, had joined us on the wagon with a five-string banjo. She glared at me and I shrugged.

I wondered for a moment if there were any electric guitars yet, and if Bonnie would know what to do with one. I listened to the crowd screaming my name, before I finally motioned that they should be quiet. It took them awhile but they mostly did. Then I put another nail in Chuck Berry’s coffin.