The Songs She Never Gave Him

A wrinkled white shirt, sleeves pushed up to the forearms, mud on the cuffs of his pants.

He heard the door and stood, turning around.

His lips were dry and cracked, like he'd come a long, hard way.

When he saw me, his voice came out a little rough. "Aria."

I didn't answer.

I went around him into the house and started digging through the cabinet.

My ID was in the second drawer, wrapped in a cloth pouch.

He followed me in and stopped in the doorway. "I bought the ticket the second she signed. Red-eye into Nashville, then a bus, then a bike the rest of the way."

"I didn't stop anywhere."

I bundled the ID together with my heavy clothes.

His voice came from behind me. "The jars in the yard. I saw them."

"Aria, listen to me. I'm not leaving."

"This time it's real."

I shut the cabinet.

He blocked the doorway, one hand braced on the frame.

I stood up and looked at him.

Close.

Close enough to smell the leather of an airplane seat on him and the diesel off the bus.

I said, "Move."

He didn't.

"The thing with Mavis signing the deal, it's not what you think."

"Let me explain."

His phone went off inside the jacket slung over the chair back.

The ringtone was a few bars of folk guitar.

I knew that tune.

A mountain ballad, the melody I'd taught him, the one he'd later rearranged for guitar.

It rang twice.

He turned to reach for the jacket, too quick, and knocked something out of the pocket.

A folded piece of paper dropped to the floor.

He swiped the call away first.

The name that flashed on the screen was Mavis.

"See? I didn't pick up." He turned back to me.

I wasn't looking at him.

I was looking at the paper on the floor.

Print showed through the fold.

"Letters in Folk Song — Track List"

First line at the top: "01 Song of the Cicada, words and music: Mavis Pruitt"

Song of the Cicada.

"Song of the Cicada," one of the old mountain harmonies.

I'd taught it to him line by line.

The credit said Mavis Pruitt.

I bent down, picked up the paper, and put it in his hand.

"Yours."

I slipped past under his arm and walked out into the yard.

Seven empty jars, lined up neat and straight.

The sun caught the mouths of them but couldn't reach the bottoms.

I carried my clothes toward the gate.

He called after me. "Aria, I can explain that song."

I didn't look back.

A figure flickered at the mouth of the lane, a bundle of timber on his back, walking steady.

Mama wouldn't let Luke Weiss in the door.

He stood outside the yard for two hours.

From the back room I could hear him, every word squeezing in through the cracks in the wooden door.

"Ma'am, I just want to say two things to Aria."

"Let her come out. Five minutes, that's all."

Mama sat in the main room stitching a shoe sole, her hands never stopping. "Go on home."

"She doesn't want to see you."

His footsteps went back and forth outside the door.

In the end he left.

The sound of him faded off down the flagstone path and folded into the crowing of roosters somewhere far off.

Once the footsteps were gone, I dug out my phone.

I searched three words: Letters in Folk Song.

Mavis's new album, not released yet, but the pre-order page was already up.

The cover was a bell-tower hall.

Wooden flared eaves, gray tile pitched to a point, terraced fields stacked behind it.

I knew that bell-tower hall.

Three autumns ago, Luke Weiss sat below it and took a whole stack of photos.

I scrolled to a promo interview and tapped it open.

In the video Mavis wore a long linen dress, sitting in a recording studio, her voice soft.

"The inspiration for this album comes from the Appalachian highlands. Luke took me through so many mountain towns, and we collected so many folk songs."

She gave a little smile. "He was my guide."

She said, "took me through so many mountain towns."