Emma muttered again as she took a cautious backward step.
Lucille wrapped her arms around Emma’s shoulders, smothering her in cinnamon-and-rose-scented perfume. “I missed you so much.”
“Me . . . me too,” Emma stammered in response, as she broke the embrace. “You look different.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Lucille shrugged. “How you been?”
Emma couldn’t stop staring. “Okay.”
“That’s good.” Lucille sauntered over to the piano, sat down, and skipped her fingers over the black and white keys. “You still go down to the river on Saturday afternoons?”
“Nah. They closed that juke joint down.”
Lucille’s eyebrows arched. “Was that your daddy’s doing?”
Now it was Emma’s turn to shrug her shoulders.
“Oh, that’s awful,” Lucille huffed. “That place was the one good thing about this town.”
The statement stabbed at Emma’s heart. They were best friends so shouldn’t she be the one good thing about this town?
Lucille scratched her cheek. “So you just gonna stand there gawking at me?”
“Oh, please,” Emma smirked, “like you something to look at.” She plopped down onto the bench beside Lucille. With her ponytail and plain cotton frock, Emma felt dull and dreary next to the shiny new Lucille. “I swear,” she started out of nowhere, “if I have to listen to one more rag, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Lucille chuckled. “Ragtime ain’t so bad.”
“It is when that’s all there is.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Emma’s fingers joined Lucille’s, and together they tapped out a tune.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Emma said coolly. “Tell me all about it.”
Lucille happily shared about the hypnotic roll of the bus, the mystery of falling asleep under a moon in one town and waking to the sun in another, and the thrill of standing before an audience of strangers shouting her name, begging her to sing just one more song.
She told Emma about Bill Hegamin, the man who wouldn’t have given her the time of day had their paths converged in Macon. But luckily for her, their destinies collided in Jacksonville, Florida, when most of the old Lucille had flaked away along the highways and byways that crisscrossed the Southern states.
“Now,” she concluded with a blushing smile, “he say he wanna give me all the time of day and night.”
Emma nearly choked on the bile of jealousy rising in her throat.
Chapter 3
In 1916, Sam Elliott arrived in Macon on the heels of Lucille’s triumphant return. Born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky; the color of a newly minted penny; lean and easy on the eyes with a mouthful of strong white teeth that never failed to startle a smile out of women and even some men—Sam was a carpenter by trade, quiet and inconspicuous. He could be in a room filled with people, and the next day, not one person could recall him having been there, which was why it took a minute before Emma even noticed him.
The first time Sam saw Emma Robinson he was sitting in the barbershop with his back to the glass-pane window, staring at his reflection in the wall of mirrors, trying to decide whether or not to get his shoes shined before the barber called him to the chair. Sam lowered his eyes, slipped his hand into the pocket of his coat, and thoughtfully fingered the loose coins inside.
When he looked up again, Emma’s reflection appeared in the mirror, sheathed in yellow sunlight, glowing like an apparition.
“Pssst,” Sam hissed at the barber.
“Yeah, boss?”
He tilted his chin at the reflection. “You see that girl?”
The barber’s head swiveled from the mirror to the window and then back to Sam. “Yeah, I see her,” he replied, and then added with a chuckle and a wink: “Wouldn’t mind seeing more of her though.”
Sam grimaced at the barber’s off-color remark.
“You know that’s the reverend’s daughter, don’t you?”
“Is it?” Sam replied.
“Yep. So you ain’t got a chance in hell.”
* * *
Sam thought about Emma for the rest of that Thursday, but by Friday afternoon his mind had moved on to more immediate concerns, like work and food and rent.
But just as quickly as Emma was crowded out of Sam’s memory, she was thrust back in when she passed him in the street on Saturday morning and then again the following Tuesday. The encounters continued with increased frequency until Sam became convinced that God was trying to tell him something, which was funny in and of itself because Sam wasn’t quite sure if he even believed in the Almighty.
That aside, Sam had become undeniably smitten with the pretty Emma Robinson and decided that he’d better develop a personal relationship with God if he wanted to get acquainted with her. So the following Sunday, Sam walked into the Cotton Way Baptist Church smack in the middle of Reverend Robinson’s fiery sermon.
An usher planted herself squarely in Sam’s path and aimed her white-gloved index finger at a space along the wall.
“I see a free seat up front,” Sam whispered.
The grim-faced usher shook her head and again pointed at the wall.
Sam didn’t budge. He and the old woman glared at one another until Sam feigned submission. When the usher dropped her guard, he faked left and then right, swiftly maneuvered around the woman, and trotted noisily up the center aisle. He had to climb over a mother and her three small children to get to the vacant seat. In the process, his heel came down on the woman’s big toe and she cried out, “Lawd, Jesus!”
Sam apologized profusely, but the woman’s godliness had sailed out the window. She swatted his arm with her fan and called him a fool under her breath.
When the service was over, the hoodwinked usher cornered Sam in the pew and gave him a good tongue-lashing. By the time she was done, the reverend and his family were standing on the church steps shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the parishioners.
Sam thought of joining the line of congregants, but decided against it. The time didn’t seem quite right, and besides, the barber’s discouraging words had rattled his confidence. Sam would have to repair it before he moved forward.
That night, unable to sleep, Sam went down to the Ocmulgee. The river had teeth, so he hung back amongst the saplings, a safe enough distance between him and the alligators trolling the riverbanks for food. Overhead, a family of bats swooped and screeched in the milky glow of the quarter moon; the blanket of leaves on the ground crackled with foraging insects and snakes.
He
