“You’ve got followers. People posting responses, saying what they’re going to do, like your instructions said. ‘Carve your initials into something. Brand them, paint them, shoot them, transpose them, change them entirely and sculpt yourself out of a new medium.’”
Fuck. Up until that moment, I hadn’t entirely understood, but she had it memorized.
“Do they, uh, know who I am? Or am I just some woman yelling at a locked gate?”
“Nobody knew at first, but then somebody said you were a musician from Baltimore, and then there was a bunch of arguments about your band name, and they’ve decided your name is Harriet. All the videos say ‘Harriet speaks truth’ or ‘Harriet is right’ or ‘Be like Harriet.’ Well, except the ones that say ‘Lady loses it outside Graceland.’”
Which meant in either case they hadn’t connected my name, or “Blood and Diamonds.” It wasn’t a nostalgia thing. They were watching because they believed in what I was saying. Or because they got amusement out of watching what they thought was a breakdown; I couldn’t help those people. But the others… the others were my people.
She recognized the look on my face. “You’re thinking, ‘How do I reach them?’”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I have an idea. We need you to say all that again for SHL.”
I couldn’t believe we’d come round to the same thing again. “You said that wasn’t the idea.”
“Not you signing for them—not you signing for us, I mean. You agreeing to do a one-time show.”
“A, no, and B, didn’t you say those things are choreographed and timed? Am I supposed to ask them to block five minutes for me to trash them?” I handed her the Hoodie and retrieved my plate to make a leisurely circuit of the potluck offerings. I wasn’t hungry, but I put a sugar cookie on my plate to justify the movement.
“You call it ‘five-minute vamp on D’ or ‘sixteen-bar intro’ so that everyone knows when to come back in,” she said when I circled round to her. “They won’t pay attention to the content as long as the time is built in.”
“This is ridiculous. Why would you think I’d want to do that?”
“Because it’s the largest platform you could possibly get. You could subvert it.”
I put the plate with the uneaten cookie on the table corner again. “It’s not subversion. You keep working inside the system thinking you can change it from the inside. This works for them. They have zero incentive to change the way they do business.”
“Better than not trying at all!” She waved Nolan’s Hoodie at the musicians. “These people are nice, but is playing for this group getting you anywhere?”
We had reached an impasse. “Rosemary, you’re not listening to me. If you think I said something so important, why are you ignoring the actual message? I said fuck StageHolo and I meant it. I’d rather play barns and back rooms for a hundred years.”
“And you’re not listening to me. You’re being stubborn. You want to burn it down, but you’re not interested in saving the people inside before you light the match? Take us with you! Tell us where to go.” A tear ran down her face and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. “Tell me what it would take to get you to do one show. One show where I promise I’d make a way for you to tell them what you thought of them, for everyone to hear.”
“I’d still be taking their money. I’d be endorsing them.”
“You don’t have to take their money. Or you could take the money and donate it somewhere. Argh. I didn’t come here to argue with you. Why are you so stubborn?”
“And why are you so naive?” A couple of musicians tossed glares in our direction. I hadn’t meant to raise my voice.
“You’ve given up on ninety-nine percent of the people out there, Luce. You’re playing to the people who know to come find you. You would’ve missed me entirely. Or I would have missed you. I don’t even know which it is. Forget it. If you can’t understand this doesn’t have to make you compromise yourself, I don’t know how to explain.”
She unclenched her fists and walked away. I thought of her making that same gesture as I watched her from my window at the 2020. She was letting me go again.
I didn’t see her again that evening. She must’ve been somewhere around, since her friends hadn’t left the jam, but she didn’t come near me again.
Our plan had been to sleep in the van, then drive back in daylight. At one a.m., having driven all day and played a show, I slipped out. The ground between the barn and the van’s side door was getting muddy, and I kicked my boots off under the bed before crawling into the backseat bed, hoping the others would do the same. Marcia appeared not long after, and we made out until Silva climbed into the front passenger seat a little while later, reclining it as far as it would go. The fiddlers were still playing, but it was a distant sound, a lovely soundtrack for sleep. One thing was for sure, they had more stamina than I’d ever had; my fingers would’ve fallen off hours before. I made a silent toast to musicians of all stripes before passing out.
I woke before the others. It wasn’t physically possible to get out without climbing over Marcia. I tried to wait out my bladder, but that wasn’t physically possible, either.
“Sorry…” I threw a leg over, searching on the floor for my boots, then reaching for the door handle. I slid out backward, feet first, into at least five inches of mud. It filled my low boots even as they sank. When I tried to step out of it, my left boot stayed behind.
“Ack.” There was no place for my foot to go, and it was already covered in muck. I tried to find my boot with my toes, with no luck. At least it seemed to be mud run down the unpaved driveway, not manure. I gave up and settled my foot down into it.
The passenger door opened. “Don’t step out,” I said, too late.
“Well, that’s fun.” Silva lifted one muddy foot then the other, squelching. His sneakers had stayed on better than my boots.
“Getting out of here is going to be even more fun.” The van was hubcap-deep. Had it been that muddy the night before? I didn’t think so. I looked up the hill. “It looks like the entire road washed out down here.”
When I slid the barn’s side door open, the mud followed at a slow ooze. It had already made its way under the door and a few feet in. I used the bathroom, then investigated what remained of the evening’s potluck: chips, a bowl of apples and oranges, chocolate chip cookies; all of those looked safer than the potato salad. I chose an apple and a hamburger roll.
“That’s a good look,” Marcia said, pointing at my feet. Hers were covered in mud, too, but her shoes had stayed on.
“Everybody’s a critic,” I muttered.
She joined me in snacking, then we busied ourselves looking for the tools to get the van out of the mud. She found some lumber behind the stage. I found a spade. I wasn’t sure where Silva had disappeared to, so I got to work digging, starting with the spot where I’d lost my boot. I found it after a few minutes, though the digging itself felt Sisyphean. Every spadeful replaced itself. It didn’t help that the rain hadn’t stopped.
“I chose this life,” I repeated to myself. A mantra. “This is my journey.”
Marcia had joined me with a rake. Neither of us seemed to be getting anywhere. The lumber would help under the wheels, maybe, but I didn’t want to try moving before Silva returned.
About twenty minutes later, he came around the side of the barn, followed by a young man on a tractor, a long-haired blond farm boy out of central casting. The kid’s eyes went wide. “I’ve seen you!” he said. In this setting, after the biblical rains, I half expected him to say my ghost was roaming the hilltops.