cognac
. Wrong syllable accented on
cognac. Track, attack, bric-a-brac
…
Tess opened her eyes and sat up to soap her washcloth, humming the verse and trying to come up with a last line. She tried a couple.
Feeling like she's somehow gotten off the track…
Trying to fit in here but she's lost the knack…
Neither of them pleased her, so she went on trying others. And so it went, the birth of a song. Some of them happened this way, an extension of what Tess was living, taking her experiences to a subliminal plane of creativity that spoke to her as if she had no part in the creating.
By the time she dried and powdered and put on her silk pajamas, she had the first three lines pegged and was impatient to get upstairs and write them down.
In her bedroom, she sat at her old dressing table and got the words on paper, wishing she could go down to the piano and pick out the chords she heard in her head. Unlike most country singers she had never played guitar. Piano was the instrument on which all three McPhail girls had been given lessons. She had tried guitar, but her fingers were too short and it ruined her fingernails, so she'd given it up. But often Tess envied the band members who could pick up their instruments on a bus or in a motel room and play, sing, or compose wherever they were.
At eleven o'clock she crawled into her old bed and turned out the light. At midnight she was still awake, energized by the song, kept awake further by the strange mattress that was far from comfortable.
The last time she looked at her clock it was 1:38 and she knew it would be hell rolling out at 4:30.
----
CHAPTER THREE
Tess slept through her alarm and awakened with a start when her mother called up the stairs, "Tess? Time to get up, dear. It's five after five already."
Five after five… Lord o' mercy, did people actually get up at such a reprehensible hour?
"Okay, Mom, I'm awake," she croaked, and sat up unsteadily. A faint peachiness had begun tinting the east window shade. She scratched her head while peering at it with one eye squinted. Pulling herself to the edge of the bed by her heels, she tried to fix in her mind the fact that she really had to rise and get dressed. No time for a shower—oh, shoot, that's right, there was no shower, only a tub.
Her head felt like the surf was up at the base of her skull. "Hey, Momma?" she called, shuffling to the railing and calling down. "Where we going again?"
"To Poplar Bluff." Wintergreen was too small to have a hospital of its own.
"Thirty minutes?"
"Thirty minutes, same as always."
Heading for the stairs, Tess passed the east window and pulled up the shade to verify that it really was the sun coming up. It was. In about twenty minutes or so it would splat up right over the top of Kenny Kronek's house. Grimacing, she jerked the shade back into place and grunted off in search of her toothbrush.
With little time for morning ablutions, she managed with only a quick splash and a smear of lipstick before dragging on jeans, cowboy boots, and a polo shirt over which she pulled a white sweatshirt with the word Boss plastered across the front in huge black letters. She spared time to hook on her earrings—she felt naked without earrings, no matter what kind of clothing she had on—then clattered back downstairs to see what she could do with her hair. While she was in the bathroom realizing the hair was hopeless on such short notice, Mary called from outside the door, "You just about set, Tess? We should be leaving."
"Yeah, just a sec."
In the end she finally rubber-banded it into a frowsy tail and pulled the tail through the hole of a bill cap that said
Azalea Trail 10K Run
across the top. Boy, did she look bad. But surgery schedules wouldn't wait, and her mother was hovering outside the bathroom door with her purse handle over her wrist.
Tess told her, "I'll take your suitcase out and put it in the car, then I'll come back to help you down the back steps. Now, you wait
. Wrong syllable accented on
cognac. Track, attack, bric-a-brac
…
Tess opened her eyes and sat up to soap her washcloth, humming the verse and trying to come up with a last line. She tried a couple.
Feeling like she's somehow gotten off the track…
Trying to fit in here but she's lost the knack…
Neither of them pleased her, so she went on trying others. And so it went, the birth of a song. Some of them happened this way, an extension of what Tess was living, taking her experiences to a subliminal plane of creativity that spoke to her as if she had no part in the creating.
By the time she dried and powdered and put on her silk pajamas, she had the first three lines pegged and was impatient to get upstairs and write them down.
In her bedroom, she sat at her old dressing table and got the words on paper, wishing she could go down to the piano and pick out the chords she heard in her head. Unlike most country singers she had never played guitar. Piano was the instrument on which all three McPhail girls had been given lessons. She had tried guitar, but her fingers were too short and it ruined her fingernails, so she'd given it up. But often Tess envied the band members who could pick up their instruments on a bus or in a motel room and play, sing, or compose wherever they were.
At eleven o'clock she crawled into her old bed and turned out the light. At midnight she was still awake, energized by the song, kept awake further by the strange mattress that was far from comfortable.
The last time she looked at her clock it was 1:38 and she knew it would be hell rolling out at 4:30.
----
CHAPTER THREE
Tess slept through her alarm and awakened with a start when her mother called up the stairs, "Tess? Time to get up, dear. It's five after five already."
Five after five… Lord o' mercy, did people actually get up at such a reprehensible hour?
"Okay, Mom, I'm awake," she croaked, and sat up unsteadily. A faint peachiness had begun tinting the east window shade. She scratched her head while peering at it with one eye squinted. Pulling herself to the edge of the bed by her heels, she tried to fix in her mind the fact that she really had to rise and get dressed. No time for a shower—oh, shoot, that's right, there was no shower, only a tub.
Her head felt like the surf was up at the base of her skull. "Hey, Momma?" she called, shuffling to the railing and calling down. "Where we going again?"
"To Poplar Bluff." Wintergreen was too small to have a hospital of its own.
"Thirty minutes?"
"Thirty minutes, same as always."
Heading for the stairs, Tess passed the east window and pulled up the shade to verify that it really was the sun coming up. It was. In about twenty minutes or so it would splat up right over the top of Kenny Kronek's house. Grimacing, she jerked the shade back into place and grunted off in search of her toothbrush.
With little time for morning ablutions, she managed with only a quick splash and a smear of lipstick before dragging on jeans, cowboy boots, and a polo shirt over which she pulled a white sweatshirt with the word Boss plastered across the front in huge black letters. She spared time to hook on her earrings—she felt naked without earrings, no matter what kind of clothing she had on—then clattered back downstairs to see what she could do with her hair. While she was in the bathroom realizing the hair was hopeless on such short notice, Mary called from outside the door, "You just about set, Tess? We should be leaving."
"Yeah, just a sec."
In the end she finally rubber-banded it into a frowsy tail and pulled the tail through the hole of a bill cap that said
Azalea Trail 10K Run
across the top. Boy, did she look bad. But surgery schedules wouldn't wait, and her mother was hovering outside the bathroom door with her purse handle over her wrist.
Tess told her, "I'll take your suitcase out and put it in the car, then I'll come back to help you down the back steps. Now, you wait
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