Long Upon the Land Read Online Free PDF Page A

thinks Sue as she sets her drink on the scarred piano and speaks to the drummer, who is older by a good ten years. The guy on bass was three or four grades ahead of her in school. They are not part of her crowd, but they know who she is, just as she has a clear sense of their social standing as well. Not that she cares, but her mother’s judgmental voice is always in her head: “ Not quite our kind of people, are they, dear? ”
    They hand her a playlist that consists mostly of swing band standards for the older dancers mixed with boogie-woogie tunes for the young and agile. Only one is unfamiliar. She can read sheet music, but mostly plays by ear. “If your fiddler doesn’t get here by the time you’re ready for this one, one of y’all will have to hum it for me.”
    She runs exploratory fingers over the keyboard. B-flat wants to stick and the G feels spongy, otherwise it is in surprisingly good shape. The drummer hits his high hat to get the crowd’s attention, the bass player gives her the key, and they launch into a lively version of “In the Mood.” Toes tapping and fingers snapping, a dozen or more couples immediately spill onto the dance floor. After some slower tunes—“Begin the Beguine,” “Who Am I?” and “Once in a While”—they clear the floor of gray-hairs with “Jukebox Saturday Night.” Among the younger set, Zell and Ash are almost as good as Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire as they jitterbug down the length of the hall and back. His legs are a blur when he spins her in and out, and the skirt of her swingy new dress swirls so high that Mrs. Stephenson’s lips would be clenched in a tight line, embarrassed that a daughter of hers would show that much thigh in public.
    Near the middle of that first long set, Sue hears the sound of a fiddle behind her and glances over her shoulder to see a tall skinny man in a cheap blue suit and a string tie. He looks like someone who would be more at home on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry than playing pop songs for this crowd. A worn fiddle is tucked beneath his chin and his fingers fly up and down the strings as he works his way into the song they are playing. At first he follows their lead, but by the second chorus, they are following his.
    The set ends with Ash swinging Zell over his head, giving nearby dancers a flash of white lingerie. Sue closes the piano, smiles at the other players, and stands to join her sister and their friends.
    “Hey,” says the drummer. “You’re not quitting on us, are you?”
    “I was only filling in,” she says. “You don’t need me now.”
    “Sure we do,” says the bass player. He props his tall instrument against the back wall and they move off the platform where he pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, then slaps his pockets in a fruitless search for matches. Sue hands him her lighter. He immediately reads the initials engraved on the front of it. “Your boyfriend?”
    “No.” How to explain that complicated relationship? “No, just a friend who didn’t make it back from Germany.”
    “Sorry,” he says and offers her one of his cigarettes.
    She starts to refuse. Movies are making it more acceptable that women smoke, but her mother still thinks it “common” for women to do so in public. What the hell, though? “Thank you,” she says, and bends her head to accept a light from him before he lights his own and passes the Zippo back to her.
    The drummer and the fiddler are lighting cigarettes of their own and they sit on the edge of the platform. With her skirt tucked around her knees, she perches on the step beside the bass player, chatting with friends who come and go with song requests and, in Sue’s case, asking for a dance before the evening was over. No one seems to be saying much to the fiddler, so she turns toward him and says, “I’m Sue Stephenson. I don’t believe we’ve met?”
    “Kezzie Knott,” the man says.
    His name is vaguely familiar, but she can’t think in what context.