The Singing Trees by Boo Walker
Chapter 4
COLD RIVER
On Halloween night a week later, Annalisa slipped out of bed already dressed. She picked up her boots and purse, wrapped her red scarf around her neck, and slipped out of the room. As much as she wanted to rush, she took her time passing through the hallway, tiptoeing with such exaggeration as to feel like a cartoon character. Entering the living room, she breathed a sigh of relief. Part of her was surprised her grandmother hadn’t been waiting with a wooden spoon, with which she would have smacked Annalisa on the rump—or more harshly on the shoulder—and spat: You think you can fool me, ragazza! If Nonna had noticed that Annalisa wasn’t wearing a bra, being in trouble for sneaking out would be the least of her worries. Annalisa didn’t care, though. No one wore bras anymore.
Crossing the bare living room floor, the volume of creaking pine planks nearly unbearable, Annalisa trudged on, one stockinged foot after the other. She glanced at images of the three men who stood guard over the entryway. For as long as Annalisa could remember, a framed glossy of Frank Sinatra and a printed portrait of Pope Paul VI had hung to the right of the door. Shortly after John F. Kennedy had been shot, a twelve-year-old Annalisa had delighted Nonna with a charcoal portrait of him on newsprint paper. Having always loved the man, Nonna had framed and hung Annalisa’s drawing directly below Mr. Sinatra, completing the trifecta.
Dipping two fingers into the holy water font hanging to the right of the pope, she crossed herself and asked for forgiveness (from all three), then stepped out into the night. She wasn’t only asking for forgiveness for sneaking out tonight. She was looking for absolution for all the sins she was about to commit, because Nonna had just laid into her again about her desire to move to Portland.
Teased by a brisk breeze, the wind chimes sang, and she wondered if her mother was up there watching her, shaking her head. If so, surely Celia Mancuso could understand that she’d left her daughter alone to deal with all these situations that no seventeen-year-old girl should have to navigate alone. All her mother had had to do was find the courage to leave her husband, and then she’d be alive and able to help Annalisa deal with life’s confusions, such as boys like Thomas and decisions like leaving the Mills. Surely her mother would have supported her decision to move to Portland. But time and time again, her mother had taken Annalisa’s father back, and it had turned out to be one time too many, leaving Annalisa to fend for herself.
When she turned left at the sidewalk and walked through the neighborhood, carved pumpkins with jagged teeth smiling at her from many of the front stoops, the sound of the chimes faded and gave way to a barred owl hooting from somewhere up high. Glancing back, she searched for lights on inside her grandmother’s house. Looked like she’d gotten away clean, thank God. As much as she needed to let loose some steam tonight, the last thing she wanted was to get in another fight with Nonna. For both of their sakes.
“Hey, hitchhiker, you looking for a ride?” Nino asked, sticking his head out the window of his beater, which was coming to a stop a few feet away from her. Annalisa couldn’t have said what the make and model of the car were, but it seemed a miracle the old thing was still clunking along.
Seeing Nino’s flavor of the month sitting shotgun, Annalisa climbed into the back seat next to their friend Christina, who handed her a can of Old Milwaukee. “Here you go, babe.” If Annalisa was a dragon and Nonna was a tiger, Christina was somewhere between a lynx and a kitty cat. She still had claws but was far from intimidating. She was probably Annalisa’s closest girlfriend in the Mills, but that wasn’t saying much. Outside of Nino, her true friends were back in Bangor, slowly losing touch.
As always, Roger was next to her. He was nice enough, but Annalisa found the guy borderline barbaric and couldn’t remember ever sharing an interesting conversation with him. He and Christina had been dating since ninth grade, and Annalisa knew way more than she wanted to about their sexual escapades. To put it bluntly, it wasn’t his brains Christina liked.
“It’s about time you joined us,” Christina said. “We were making bets. Nino thought you would back out.”
“Oh yeah?” Annalisa said, smelling the pineapple scent of the air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. “That’s because he’s more afraid of our grandmother than I am.”
“What’s not to be afraid of?” he asked.
With the cool air rushing through the windows, they listened to rock ’n’ roll and sped through the night. Still reeling from her argument with Nonna and missing her mother like crazy, Annalisa drained her first beer—perhaps a little too quickly—and reached for another from the box on the floorboard. Aside from her terrible day, it was nice to take a break from working so hard.
“There you go,” Roger said. “Get after it.”
Though he couldn’t see it, she rolled her eyes.
On the hour-long drive north, she took down four more beers, more than she’d drunk in as long as she could remember. The others seemed to be keeping up, though, and they stopped twice to relieve themselves in the woods off the road.
The alcohol dulled her frustration with Nonna, and she settled into the good music from the radio: Led Zeppelin, Three Dog Night, the Who. Letting her troubles go, she was suddenly having fun, though slightly annoyed by Christina and Roger making out. Couldn’t they wait until they parked? And what was with the sounds?
Following the long line of cars packed with eager music lovers, Nino eased his beater along a gravel road through a thick forest of lumber trees. After a quarter mile, they broke through the forest, and Annalisa saw the weathered brown barn she’d heard so much about, glowing by spotlight high up on the hill. Some of the best bands in the Northeast played inside those walls. She felt a rush of excitement. If she was going to take the night off from painting, she’d much rather hear music than attend a sports game.
Men with flashlights directed the cars toward the large grassy area being used as the parking lot. When the five of them rolled into their spot, they all piled out into the raw energy of the night. Bluegrass, rock, folk, and who knew what else played from many of the cars at the same time, competing over each other. Tobacco and marijuana smoke and waves of incense spun through the air.
She watched Roger cut a slit in his beer with a key and then shotgun it. Apparently eating Christina’s face had made him thirsty. Was there any wonder Annalisa wasn’t dating anyone? Between men like Roger and her own father, men weren’t high up in her book. No wonder she wasn’t letting Thomas in, no matter how hard he tried.
As her friends gathered around the trunk and drew others to their party, Annalisa leaned against the front hood and watched the cars line up and the people walk by. The hippie strumming an acoustic guitar three cars down sounded just like Paul Simon. Or maybe it was the beers that made him sound good.
She spied a couple sitting on a truck bed across the way, passing a joint back and forth. Stepping their way, she asked, “Mind if I get a toke?”
The guy replied through a cloud of smoke, “Yeah, sure, man. All yours.”
She took a long pull from the half-smoked joint and let it settle in her lungs. Nino had introduced her to marijuana over the summer, and she’d partaken with him every couple of weeks since then. Everything back in Payton Mills—the cage in which she was trapped, Nonna’s warnings about leaving her family and the Mills, even her grief—faded even further away.
The guitarist sang “All Along the Watchtower,” and she lost herself in the words. Music was the only thing outside of painting that could take her away from the grief that clawed at her daily. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Alcohol and Mary Jane had delivered the same effect tonight.
“Hey, daydreamer,” Nino said. She’d found her way back to leaning against the hood of the car, staring up at the stars. “You coming? The band’s about to start.”
She joined her friends as they wove through the parked cars and made their way up the hill to the barn. She tripped once but found her balance before falling. Maybe that joint wasn’t the best idea.
Several hundred young people piled in through the large doors. Once she was comfortably inside, she realized she’d lost her friends. Winding her way toward the right, she found a spot of fresh air along the wall of the barn and looked for Nino’s head bobbing above the sea of people. When the crowd cheered, though, she gave up and faced the stage.
The four young men who made up the band Cold River appeared, and Annalisa joined everyone in another round of cheers. Whereas the bands she’d seen on television over the years might be in matching blue pants and white shirts with neatly trimmed haircuts, these guys were disheveled, long-haired mavericks. She stood on her toes to watch as they took to their instruments in front of a giant gold curtain that lined the back wall.
The overhead lights went dark, leaving only the stage lights brightly shining at the band. They broke into a tune, and the large amplifiers punched through the chatter. The crowd burst into a swarming, chaotic dance. Though her buzz was a little stronger than she liked, she did enjoy the numbness of it, and she let the beat start to move her body.
Dressed in an army jacket and jeans, the singer had swagger and let out an easy smile, acknowledging the crowd. She let her body experiment to the groove, exploring feelings of freedom, feeling like she was floating in space. Her thoughts disappeared into the night with the volume of the music, the thump of the bass, the stinging guitar solos, the soul of the singer, and the band’s harmonies.
These men, this band, had found their voice, and they couldn’t be much older than her. Surely she wasn’t far away from the same discovery.
The next song was a slow one. Couples paired up and slipped their arms around each other. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the music. Her buzz was even stronger now, and she wished she could turn it down a few degrees.
She was flying when she heard a voice behind her.
“Want to dance?”
She turned to see the person who dared to invade her space.
The coastal preppie with an edge stood there with his familiar smile. “Annalisa in Wonderland. Or was it Alice?”
“You have got to be kidding me,” she said, wondering if she were seeing things that didn’t actually exist. Her words had certainly come out slurred, proving that her grasp on reality had slipped away.
He moved closer and said loudly over the music, “Three strikes and we have to go out, right? I think Fate has deemed us one dance.” He held out an arm.
She looked at it like a loaded gun pointed at her stomach and took a step backward. “No thanks.” What a cruel joke. No matter how charming he was or how drunk and stoned she was, Annalisa knew he was nothing more than a sharp-and-deadly fishing hook dressed up with enticing bait.
Thomas lowered his arm and stopped his approach. “All right, well . . . I tried, Annalisa.” His piercing hazel eyes were almost too much to take. She had the urge to both hit him and kiss him.
“What else do I have to do to show you I’m not interested?” she said, hearing herself slurring more. A cloud of marijuana smoke floated by, making her feel even more stoned.
He took another step forward. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.” He pointed to the band and leaned in, coming within inches of her face.
“I said . . .” She lost her thought, noticing an attraction to him, as if she’d let down her guard. After a long breath, she said forcefully, “I said you have to stop this. No matter how charming you might be, I’m not interested.”
He lit up, acting like a beacon of light in her own haze. “So you think I’m charming? Does that mean I’m wearing on you?”
“I think it’s just the . . . the alcohol talking,” she said, stumbling backward, bumping into people, the room spinning.
“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, sticking his hand back out.
She slapped it away angrily but then realized she’d turned her ankle the wrong way. As she fell, she saw him reaching for her. Her butt hit the hard dirt, and her head dropped back.
She saw three or four of him as he knelt beside her, saying things she couldn’t interpret. Strobe lights flashed above, and she saw the legs of dancers moving to the loud music, and then it became blurrier, turning into a wash of color.