"Wes. Go get your sister."
"She heard. She's coming."
A moment later the other youngsters arrived, accompanied by the dogs, ever optimistic at the possibility a klutzy human would drop a bit of dinner.
As Dance, Maggie and Boling set the table, she told those assembled that her friend, country crossover singer Kayleigh Towne, who lived in Fresno, had sent her and the children tickets to the Neil Hartman concert taking place next Monday.
"No!" Martine hit her playfully on the arm. "The new Dylan? It's been sold out for months."
Probably not the new Dylan but a brilliant singer-songwriter, and ace musician too, with a talented backup band. The gig here in town had been scheduled before the young man's Grammy nomination. The small Monterey Performing Arts Center had sold out instantly after that.
Dance and Martine had a long history and music informed it. They'd met at a concert that was a direct descendant of the famed Monterey Pop Festival, where the "original Dylan"--Bob--had made his West Coast debut in '65. The women had become friends and formed a nonprofit website to promote indigenous musical talent. Dance, a folklorist by hobby--song catcher--would travel around the state, occasionally farther afield, with an expensive portable recorder, collect songs and tunes, and then sell them on the site, keeping only enough money to maintain the server and pay expenses and then remitting the profits to the performers.
The site was called American Tunes, an homage to the great Paul Simon song from the seventies.
Boling brought the f
ood out, opened more wine. The kids sat at a table of their own, though right next to the adults' picnic bench. None of them asked to watch TV during the meal, which pleased Dance. Donnie was a natural comedian. He told joke after joke--all appropriate--that kept the younger kids in stitches.
Conversation reeled throughout dinner. When the meal wound down and Boling was serving Keurig coffee, decaf and cocoa, Martine cracked open her guitar and took out the beautiful old Martin 00-18. She and Dance sang a few songs--Richard Thompson, Kayleigh Towne, Rosanne Cash, Pete Seeger, Mary Chapin Carpenter and, of course, Dylan.
Martine called, "Hey, Maggie, your mom told me you're singing 'Let It Go' at your talent show."
"Yeah."
"You liked Frozen?"
"Uh-huh."
"The twins loved it. Actually we loved it too. Come on, sing it. I'll back you up."
"Oh. No, that's okay."
"Love to hear it, honey," Stuart Dance encouraged his granddaughter.
Martine told everyone, "She has a beautiful voice."
But the girl said, "Yeah, it's that I don't remember the words yet."
Boling said, "Mags, you sang it all the way through today. A dozen times. I heard you in your room. And the lyric book was in the living room with me."
A hesitation. "Oh, I remember. The DVD was on and they had the, you know, the words at the bottom of the screen."
She was lying, Dance could easily see. If she knew anything, it was her own children's kinesic baseline. What was this about? Dance reflected that Maggie had seemed more shy and moody in the past day or two. That morning, as the girl tipped her mother's braid with the colorful elastic tie, Dance had tried to draw her out. Her husband's death had seemed to hit Wes hardest at first but now he seemed better, much better, about the loss; perhaps now Maggie was feeling the impact? But the girl had denied it--denied, in fact, that anything was bothering her.
"Well, that's okay," Martine said. "Next time." And she sang a few more folk tunes, then packed up the guitar.
Martine and Steven took some leftovers that Boling had bagged for them. Everyone said good-bye, hugs and kisses, and headed out the door, leaving Boling alone with Dance and the older boys. Wes and Donnie were now texting friends as they sat around their complicated board game, gazing at it intensely. At their phone screens too.
Ah, the enthusiasm of youth...
"Thanks for the food, everything," Dance told him.
"You look tired," Boling told her. He was infinitely supportive but he lived in a very different world from hers and she was reluctant to share too much about her impossible line of work. Still, she owed him honesty. "I am. It's a mess. Not Serrano so much as Solitude Creek. That somebody'd do that on purpose. It just doesn't make sense. It's not like any case I've ever worked. It's already exhausting."
She hadn't told him about the run-in with the mob outside of Henderson Jobbing. And chose not to now. She was still spooked--and sore--from the encounter. And, to be honest to herself, just didn't want to relive it. She could hear the rock shattering Billy Culp's jaw. And see the animal eyes of the mob as it bore down on them.
Fuck you, bitch...