Dirty Little Secret

He pointed at me. “You have a sister.”

He remembered exactly what I’d been trying to forget.

“But you’re the older sister,” he added, weighting his words to let me know older sisters were the world’s most desirable creatures.

I wanted to flirt back, but it was hard for me. I’d lost the ability to laugh without sounding sardonic. And past Sam’s shoulder, Mr. Hardiman stood near the entrance to the department store with his guitar slung over his back and his arms folded, staring up at the ceiling with deliberate patience, as if he’d been waiting hours for us.

“Your dad doesn’t like me very much,” I murmured.

“No, he doesn’t like me very much.” Sam gave me one last bright grin before we parted ways on either side of his father.

Mr. Hardiman strummed his guitar. “A little old-time bluegrass?” He wasn’t looking at me, but I figured he was talking to me rather than Sam. I couldn’t picture him okaying anything with Sam before he did it.

“Yes,” I said.

“Awesome,” Sam murmured, lips curving into that adorable smile, pick at the ready over his guitar strings.

“What do you know?” Mr. Hardiman asked.

Again, I assumed he meant me. “Everything.” Even to my own ears, I sounded weary as I said, “I know everything.”

“ ‘Soldier’s Joy’ then, in E.” He had to name a key for me this time. The song was older than America and had probably been recorded in all twelve keys.

I felt my adrenaline spike at the idea of playing one of the first tunes I ever learned on fiddle, a staple of late nights messing around at the edge of a bonfire after the main events at a bluegrass festival were over. The casual audience had gone home by then. Only us die-hard campers, my family and several other families of musicians we’d grown close to over the years, were left to close down the night with ones and fours and fives and ones. Somehow this happy tune woke up those tired chords for me and made their familiarity a good thing.

Or maybe it was Sam who’d turned my mood around. As was typical, we played a couple of verses, took turns with solos, and then sang one verse. Bluegrass singing was about harmony rather than anyone having a strong voice. I automatically took the higher line in a group. Hearing Mr. Hardiman on the bottom with Sam in the middle, I wanted rather desperately to know what Sam’s singing voice really sounded like, but I couldn’t pick it out with my own voice filling my head.

The singing was over almost before it began. We ended the tune with another instrumental verse, then jumped into “Cripple Creek” almost immediately. This day was so different from my other days on this job. The music was faster, the musicians were better, the backup guitarist was a hunk from heaven, and we gathered quite an audience of customers coming out of Macy’s laden with shopping bags. Some got caught up in the infectious rhythm, tapping their toes. A gaggle of tween girls edged closer to Sam every time he looked up and flashed them that sweet grin. A toddler girl stood so close to me, staring way up at my flashing fiddle bow, that she made me uncomfortable. I looked around for her mother. If this little one caught the bluegrass bug, God help her. Better to spend her childhood watching TV and throwing rocks.

Though we amassed a big audience, we were supposed to be a traveling band. Mr. Hardiman was getting itchy, waiting for the proper time to end the set. It came when some teenage skater boys started their bad imitation of buck dancing at the edge of the crowd. Genuine buck dancing broke out at bluegrass festivals all the time, and admittedly, Julie and I had made fun of those backwoods people and their spontaneous jigs. But fake buck dancing to our real music was an insult. It reminded me of Toby raising a pierced eyebrow and sneering every time he caught a glimpse of my fiddle.

Sure enough, at the end of that song, Mr. Hardiman announced, “I’m Johnny Cash. Thank you very much,” and started down the corridor without a word to Sam or me. Sam and I exchanged glances—mine startled, his resigned—and hurried after his father.

The rest of the afternoon passed that way. I did twice as much playing as I had with any other band. As we moved from our stop at Zales to our stop at Bath & Body Works to our stop at the Gap, Sam and I practically ran behind Mr. Hardiman. I was sorry Sam didn’t get much of a chance to flirt with me and I didn’t get much of a chance to respond with all the enthusiasm of a block of wood. I got the feeling Sam didn’t want to talk to me anyway. Not in front of his father.

A few minutes before six o’clock, we made our last stop in the food court, which was crowded with weekend shoppers. “Dad,” Sam said before his father could launch a song. “We’ve gone flat. Let’s take a minute to tune to the human pitch pipe here.” He flashed his brilliant grin at me.

People munching pizza and kung pao chicken from plastic trays snapped their heads up at us as I bowed an E for Sam and Mr. Hardiman to tune to. Over the note, Mr. Hardiman said, “I don’t know about you two, but I’m plumb tuckered out.”

He meant the three of us had tested each other that afternoon. He was attempting to be friendly.

“Wow, I don’t blame you,” Sam told his father. “Tired after four hours of work.”

Mr. Hardiman stared Sam down, Sam stared back, and I wasn’t sure what this animosity meant.

“ ‘Old Joe Clark’ in A,” Mr. Hardiman barked. Turning to me, he added, “We dress it up a little with a major G.”

I laughed at the idea of a seven chord turning this ancient song avant-garde. “Wow, a major G chord?” I exclaimed sarcastically before I thought.

Mr. Hardiman’s eyes narrowed at me. Suddenly he looked more like Johnny Cash than he had yet, stern and gruff and not afraid to play concerts in maximum-security prisons.

“Um,” I backtracked, feeling a blush creep up my neck. I’d meant all afternoon to make a chord joke to Sam. My attempt had come out at the wrong time. Sheepishly I asked Mr. Hardiman, “Where does the major G go?”

He nodded smugly. “You see? You’ve gotten too big for your britches. All that talent doesn’t mean shit if you won’t shut up long enough to listen to instructions so you can play with the group.”

That stung. Everything bad that adults said about me stung, because all of it was true.

But the pain didn’t have time to settle before Sam stepped in to draw the fire. “Dad!” he called, letting his guitar hang from his neck by the strap so his hands were free to wave between us. “Over here.”

Mr. Hardiman glared at Sam, then at me, then down at his guitar, tuning his E string like I was dismissed.

Sam leaned toward me behind his father’s back. “Sorry,” he mouthed.

I tried to smile a little, to show him I appreciated him sticking up for me, but my lips couldn’t make it.

I played “Old Joe Clark” perfunctorily. The fun was gone for me now, and Sam looked as grim as I felt. Despite our lack of enthusiasm, we gathered another crowd, because we were more interesting to listen to than the Muzak that the mall piped in over the loudspeakers. We played a few more Johnny Cash tunes, and then Mr. Hardiman said, “Last one. ‘Folsom Prison Blues.’ ”

This was another song with a breakneck pace and Cash’s signature freight-train beat. Whenever I stole a glance at Sam, his smile was creeping back, which made me try a little harder when my solo came around. He took his solo, Mr. Hardiman took his and sang the last few verses, and I thought the song would end.

As we were wrapping it up, Mr. Hardiman called over the music, “Not again. Don’t do that, son. I’m warning you.”

I watched them, puzzling through what they were talking about. I couldn’t see that Sam was doing anything unusual, and then I heard it. Under Sam’s pick, the freight-train beat on a major one chord morphed into a slightly different but equally driving rhythm. Confused, I followed along, retracing the one chord with my fiddle, until something developed. I finally recognized the song a measure before Sam started singing it: “Shake Your Body” by the Jacksons.

Mr. Hardiman’s face was beet red by now, but he played along with Sam’s funky beat. He had no choice. Professional musicians didn’t stop in the middle of a song.

I was more intrigued by Sam. I was finally hearing his voice. And it was good. Strong. Soulful. White boy was singing the hell out of some Michael Jackson.

I wasn’t sure what part I was supposed to be playing. For a while I just backed up the chords and doubled the bass line. Then I remembered this was a disco song with violins, so I played the soaring part from memory. That was the right answer, apparently. Sam had stopped singing, anticipating that I would know what to do in the bridge. He flashed me his biggest grin yet and melted my heart.

He picked up singing again in the next verse. His voice was deeper and fuller than Michael’s, but he wasn’t afraid to imitate the wails that made Jackson famous. The crowd loved him, and not just the tweens this time. Shoppers stood three deep around us, gazing at him with their mouths open. Mr. Hardiman could do a mean Johnny Cash, but there was no question who was the star of this show.

The song as I remembered it was drawing to a close, assuming it didn’t morph again into something equally bizarre for a Johnny Cash tribute band like a Bach fugue or a Gregorian chant. Mr. Hardiman watched Sam, presumably for the cutoff. I did, too. As our last notes rang around the vast room and the crowd burst into applause, I finally smiled. My face and my whole body felt light for the first time in a long, dark year. I turned to Sam to tell him so.

But he was looking at his father. And his father lasered him with a glare that made the one they’d given each other when we first met look like a smiley face.

Mr. Hardiman said slowly, clearly, loud enough for the crowd to hear, “Don’t you ever do that again.”

Quite a few people in the audience deduced that if the band was arguing, the good times were over. They exchanged a few words with each other and moved off. But those who’d never seen the likes of a Johnny Cash impersonator get in an argument with his son at the mall sidled into the front spaces the departing crowd had vacated, eager for more.

Sam seemed to realize this was not the time or place for the discussion his father wanted to have. He glanced up at the crowd, then over at me, making my heart jump. He whispered to Mr. Hardiman, “I didn’t co-opt your song. You went with me.”

“I only went with you because she was going with you”—Mr. Hardiman shot me a mean look, then glared at Sam again—“and I wasn’t going to fight two of you in the middle of a performance. You know it and I know it, so cut the shit.”

Sam blushed. His eyes never left his dad’s. He was embarrassed at the scene his dad was causing, but he wasn’t going to give in.

“Quitting time,” I sang with a glance at my watch, which of course neither of them saw because they still glared at each other, even now that I’d spoken up. “Maybe we’ll have this much fun the next time we play together.” As I whirled around to get out of there, my skirt spun in a wide circle. The material whacked Mr. Hardiman on the leg of his loose suit pants. I had to elbow my way out of the persistent crowd, protecting my fiddle and bow in front of me.

3

As I hurried out of the food court, toward the shell of a Borders, shoppers followed me with their eyes. I didn’t blame the small children or the adults. My clothes were obviously a costume because of their anachronism as well as their thick durability. They had a peculiar odor, like Ms. Lottie had sent them back in time for authenticity and they’d returned with a scent of Brylcreem and tomato aspic. Seeing me roaming the mall alone was like running into Snow White buying a pack of crackers and a fountain drink in an Orlando gas station.

I did, however, blame the teenagers who snickered behind their hands and didn’t bother to keep quiet. I had never fit in with them, not in this costume, not in my everyday one, not before I’d started wearing one. I was an anachronism no matter what I wore, an expert on a sixteenth-century instrument nobody wanted. I’d thought I could enjoy this job. Instead I’d been sexually harassed by one dead rockabilly, and I’d developed a hopeless crush on the son of another.

I wasn’t supposed to have a crush at age eighteen. Crushes were for little girls without the maturity and confidence to ask for what they wanted, and without the strength to pursue it anyway if they were denied. Yet here I was, eleven all over again, quaking in my cowgirl boots when a fresh-faced, blond Sam smiled at me. For the rest of the summer I would be on edge every moment at the mall, hoping for another glimpse of him. If Ms. Lottie was right about the randomness of the schedule, I might never play with him again.

I could ask to be assigned to Johnny Cash permanently, unless he or his son objected to being saddled with a saucy fiddle player. But I didn’t want to feel this way, did I? Staring at Sam with my mouth open because he was so handsome, hanging on his every word, shivering when I brushed past him? I’d be better off following Dolly Parton around from now on. Maybe I could make it to August without seeing Sam again.

Yeah, right, that’s exactly what I wanted. I caught myself looking around the mostly empty Borders on the slim chance Sam had miraculously beaten me there.

Dolly Parton gave me a hard squeeze instead. I didn’t recognize her at first without her blond wig and boobs. I actually had a split second of panic that I was being attacked by a mall groupie with a fetish for impersonators. Then she said in my ear, “Bye, hon! Have a great weekend!” and I figured out who she was. The outsize br**sts might be a put-on, but the Appalachian accent wasn’t.

I hadn’t realized I’d earned such an emotional response from her after playing in her band once. I needed to get this outfit off as soon as possible and put my usual makeup back on to warn away good-hearted middle-aged country singers. And hunky teenage guitarists dressed like Buddy Holly. Feeling closed down over the past year had been awful, but it might actually have been more awful to think that music and this boy had opened me up. In a state of something like despair, I mumbled a good-bye to Dolly and slid into Ms. Lottie’s chair.