Читать книгу Rachel's Blue - Zakes Mda - Страница 4

Old hippies never die, an old song suggests, they just fade away. Actually, they just drift to Yellow Springs where they’ve become a haunting presence on the sidewalks and storefront benches. Some in discoloured tie-dyes, strumming battered guitars, wailing a Bob-Dylan-of-old for some change in the guitar case. Others just chewing the fat. Or giving curious passers-by toothless grins, while exhibiting works of art they have created from pine cones and found objects.

Jason de Klerk is too young to be one of the baby-boomer originals, though he puts a lot of effort into looking like them. He was drawn to Yellow Springs after dropping out of high school, and in that town he fell under the spell of a faded hippy called Big Flake Thomas with whom he busked at the public square or gigged at the Chindo Grille when no act with at least some regional profile had been booked. The master’s fat fingers strummed and plucked on an Appalachian dulcimer, while the acolyte furiously beat a conga drum, and then blew his didgeridoo. He carried the latter instrument with him everywhere he went, slung on his shoulder, almost touching the ground and peeking just above the top of his head. In the evenings in the tiny bar of Ye Olde Trail Tavern – reputed to be Ohio’s second oldest restaurant, in operation since 1847 – Big Flake took the acolyte on some nostalgic trip to an age of free love and flower power. After a few beers they staggered home under a cloud of Mary Jane. The master got high; the acolyte got stoned. And it happened like that every day. Until one day Big Flake Thomas was taken ill with pneumonia and passed on without any fuss or argument.

For Jason, Yellow Springs died with the big man. He loaded pieces of his life in his old Pontiac – and these included his mentor’s fretted dulcimer, the tumbadora and the didgeridoo – and drove back home to Athens, another county famous for its ageing hippy community. But unlike Yellow Springs, here the hippies have melted into the hills, emerging only on Wednesdays and Saturdays to sell their organic produce at the farmers’ market.

It is at the farmers’ market that we meet Jason loitering among the marquees, his didgeridoo on his back. People occasionally stop to admire the black, white and yellow lizards painted on it by an unknown Australian Aboriginal artist. Unless, of course, it is one of those ersatz products of some factory in China. He never really reflected on its pedigree since he received it as a gift from one of Big Flake Thomas’s buddies, who’d lost interest in the instrument with creeping age.

Jason walks past a busker, a clean-cut man on a stool playing a guitar and singing some country song whose lyrics are on a music stand in front of him. It must be the man’s own composition because Jason has never heard it anywhere before. He is selling CDs of his music. Jason would like to do that too. As soon as he gets settled he will cut a CD of some of the songs he used to play with Big Flake Thomas. It will be a wonderful tribute to his mentor, and it will also earn him a few bucks. But he will need a guitarist for that. Or at least a dulcimer player. A tumbadora and a didgeridoo on their own will not sustain the kind of performance he has in mind, let alone the recording. He has the big man’s dulcimer as a keepsake, but he never learned to play it. To make it in the busking world he needs some strings. But there is no sweat about that. Someone is bound to know some adventurous guitarist, or even a banjo or mandolin player, who would be willing to dabble in experimental sounds with him.

After a few stalls of beets, kale and zucchinis, and of candles made from beeswax and shaped into angels by a beekeeper who is also selling bottled honey, Jason stops to listen to yet another busker. She is strumming her guitar and singing “Oh My Darling Clementine”. Though her floppy straw hat covers part of her face he can see at once that she is one of those rural Ohio girls who look like milk. He concludes that it is not for her voice – rather airy and desperate – that her open guitar case is bristling with greenbacks. It is for her strawberry blonde bangs peeping out from under her hat, and her deep blue eyes, and her willowy stature, and her brown gingham prairie skirt, and her bare feet with tan lines drawn by sandals, and her black T with “Appalachia Active” in big white letters across her breasts – the entire wholesome package that stands before him. She is trying hard to make her voice sound full-bodied and round, but she was not born for singing. She loses a beat to say “thank you” after Jason deposits a single, and then she hurries to catch up with the song before it goes out of control.

At that moment Jason recognises her. Rachel. Rachel Boucher from Jensen Township, about ten miles or so from his Rome Township. She has grown taller and has matured quite a bit since they did Athens High School together. She was a crush, once. And for a while it looked like it would be actualised. There was a period when they spent lots of time together. To him each moment was a date; at least that’s how he bragged about it to his buddies. To her it was just hanging out, and that’s what she told the yentas – as the Yiddish-speaking maths teacher from Germany called the notorious gossipmongers – with whom she shared the lunch table. He was a class clown and therefore was popular with other boys. He would have been popular with girls too, what with his soft eyes and friendly face – even when he thought he was scowling it looked like a smile. Girls, however, kept their distance because of his rich odour – a result of his estrangement from either shower or bath.

Rachel was the brave one who risked snide remarks for his company and jokes. “One day we gonna see you on Saturday Night Live,” she used to tell him. Until the ribbing got to her – especially from Schuyler, the yenta queen who had taken a shine to her – and she began to have excuses when he asked her out to Movies 10 or some such place. And then one day he saw her and the yentas at the cafeteria. His tray was loaded with pizza, Tater Tots, Bosco Sticks and milk. He smiled when he saw Rachel, but the smile froze on his lips when he heard a stage whisper: “Here comes Jason. I hope he doesn’t sit at this table otherwise I’ll gag.” It was Rachel. This stunned him. Of all people, not Rachel! But he soon recovered and walked with an exaggerated swagger to join a bunch of loud-mouthed jocks at the table opposite. Jocks are inured to body odours; they live with them every day.

Jason was facing Rachel directly, and he shoved his middle and index fingers into his mouth and pretended to gag. The mindless jocks laughed boisterously and did likewise with their fingers, even though they didn’t know the reason for the apery. They thought Jason was just teasing the girls, and imagined it was a good idea to join in the fun.

That’s when she became aware that he had heard her. If only she could shrink herself to invisibility. She was ashamed for trying to impress the yentas at Jason’s expense. She did not know what possessed her to utter such words about a friend who, truth be told, she would find attractive if it were not for the little matter of hygiene. Her cruelty had been a result of trying to assure Schuyler that there was nothing between him and her, hoping that the yentas would stop referring to her behind her back as “that girl who dates the stinky kid”.

Unfortunately there was no chance of her disappearing or, at the very least, of taking her words back. They had registered with Jason, and on subsequent days his bearing made it clear that he did not want to have anything to do with her. At one point she thought she should explain to Jason, and even apologise. But he was not interested in any explanation. He did not need her as a friend. For the remainder of their junior year not a word passed between them. Jason dropped out even before the senior year was over, while she stayed to complete high school.

Strange that he never thought of her again. But now it all floods back as he listens to her croon Oh, the cuckoo! in the manner of her mountain people. It is obvious that she does not recognise him behind all the beard, even though her eyes are fixed on his. Jason is not surprised by the fact. It’s been more than five years and he has since lost his boyish looks. What can be seen of his face has been sculpted into rugged lines by the severe summers and winters of Yellow Springs. His flaxen mane is an unintended disguise; it is braided into three ropes that hang down past his shoulder under a fawn embroidered kufi kofi hat – another inheritance from Big Flake Thomas. Red and green glass ornaments pretend to be rubies and emeralds all around the hat.

Even before the song ends Jason saunters away among the stalls.

“Play us something on your didj,” a boy makes his request.

“It don’t play good with a beard,” says Jason without stopping.

“Then what good is it carrying it around?” asks the boy’s pal.

The two boys are close on his heels.

“Yeah, and what good is your beard if you can’t play the didj with it?” asks the boy, rolling his eyes.

Jason stops to glare at them.

“It ain’t none of nobody’s business,” he says, and then walks away.

The boys just stand there looking at the man and his didgeridoo disappear among the cars in the parking lot.

A good woman does not resist temptation; she succumbs. That’s Nana Moira’s philosophy. She is really talking of candy, not of anything that would warrant the blushes of the women around the table. It is the way she says it that is suggestive. And the fact that she is a grand mature lady of eighty who is not expected to dish out double entendres so freely and unflinchingly is the source of suppressed giggles. It is because most of these young women are new to the Jensen Township Quilting Circle – their first day, in fact – and are therefore not yet used to her robust humour which is always accompanied by cackling laughter that comes even before the punchline.

Nana Moira never fails to crack herself up.

Rachel can hear her raspy voice even as she gets out of her green Ford Escort and walks into the Jensen Community Centre. Nana Moira is telling the women how she has always liked Star Mints and Hershey’s Kisses and she is not about to stop satisfying her sweet tooth now just because some quack tells her to take it easy on the sugar on account of her weight. But she suddenly stops when she sees Rachel walking into the room. Her hand, which was reaching for another piece of candy from a glass jar on the table, withdraws ashamedly.

“You ain’t even that big, Nana Moira,” says one of the women.

“She’s big enough to have diabetes,” says Rachel sternly. “She knows that she’s gotta deal with her weight if she wanna have diabetes under control.”

She is not “that big” only if you compare her weight with that of some of her neighbours who are morbidly obese. In these parts obesity is a malady of poverty. The last time Nana Moira was taken to the ER at O’Bleness the doctor said she was no longer overweight, she was obese. Now she walks with the aid of a stick, which is something new. It worries Rachel no end.

“Sweet grief, child, you ain’t my Officer Rick,” says Nana Moira. “You ain’t my nanny neither.”

Officer Rick is a popular Athens policeman, famous for his programmes that help teenagers to steer clear of drugs.

“I’m nobody’s cop, but you know you got high blood pressure and arthritis too. You got everything that kills and you don’t give a damn.”

Nana Moira chuckles dismissively.

“Well, I’m bound to go one day. Rather go happy than sad and blue.”

Rachel hates Nana Moira when she jokes about going. She resents her already as it is for getting sick. She wants her Nana back, the one who was hale and lusty, foraging for morels with her deep in the Wayne Forest. And this joke about going; it’s no joke at all to Rachel. It’s a threat. It’s blackmail. This adds to the resentment that is building up in her. The resentment is so apparent that an old lady from the neighbourhood once asked Nana Moira: “That ungrateful Rachel, I wonder why she’s not so nice to her grandma who brought her up all by herself with nobody’s help but good ol’ Uncle Sam’s food stamps?” But Nana Moira was not about to gossip about her granddaughter with any blabbermouth.

Rachel grabs the candy jar and pours all its contents into her handbag.

“Some kids will appreciate this,” she says. “You guys, don’t you bring this poison to the Centre again.”

The five women sitting at the table – some cutting fabric with scissors and Rotary Cutters, and others fiddling with uncooperative bobbins – may be new to the Circle, but they already know they don’t like Rachel. She is so full of herself, they whisper among themselves when she and Nana Moira have gone to the kitchen. One makes the observation that arthritis never killed anybody, and she knows this from personal experience because her own grandma lived to be ninety-five though she practically spent a number of her later years in a wheelchair because of arthritis. What finally took her to God’s own house which has many mansions was old age and not arthritis.

It would seem today is Nana Moira’s day to impart skills. First there were the young women who have recently joined the Quilting Circle and were learning how to cut and sew the Irish Chain, the Ohio Star and the Bowtie from her all morning, and now it is Rachel’s turn for edification. Her grandma promised to teach her how to make the pawpaw bread that she learned from her own grandma. It never fails to get gushing compliments from the visitors at the Centre every time she bakes it and puts it on the table for everyone to have a slice or two. Even those folks who profess not to care for the fruit love her bread. She was persuaded to display and sell it at the Ohio Pawpaw Festival, which is an annual event in mid-September by the shores of Lake Snowden. And there, among such pawpaw delicacies as sorbet, jams, pies, beer and sauces, her bread won the hearts of the lovers of this native fruit. Rachel hopes that if she can make pawpaw bread that is half as good as Nana Moira’s she will be able to sell it at the farmers’ market and supplement the money she makes from her busking. People will come for the bread, listen to her music and drop a few bills into her guitar case. Or they may stop to listen to her songs and notice the bread and buy a loaf or two.

“You just do it like any other bread,” says Nana Moira as she sifts the all-purpose flour and mixes it with salt and baking soda. “It ain’t no big sweat.”

She asks Rachel to put butter in the mixer and cream it. Under her direction Rachel adds sugar, and then eggs, and continues beating the mixture until it is fluffy. She adds the flour, mashed pawpaw pulp and hickory nuts. She then places the dough in the oven. As it slowly bakes Rachel and Nana Moira go back to the sewing room to join the quilters. But the women are already calling it a day and packing the fabric and sewing machines away.

“Don’t leave before you taste my bread,” says Rachel. “I need your expert opinion.”

“We got things to do,” says one of the women abruptly.

They say goodbye to Nana Moira and leave.

“Did I say something?”

“They think you’re a party pooper, that’s all,” says Nana Moira. “They don’t know my sweet little girl, that’s why.”

“Am not a little girl any more, Nana Moira.”

“Sweet Jesus! It don’t make no never mind how big you think you are, Rachel. You’ll always be my little girl.”

“Party pooper! What party did I poop on?”

Nana Moira bursts out cackling and says, “They don’t like nobody who confisicate my Hershey’s Kisses.”

“Confiscate, Nana Moira.”

“That’s what I said.”

Rachel does not respond. Instead she busies herself with paging through Monday’s issue of the Athens News while Nana Moira spreads cut pieces of cloth on a long white table for the next quilt she will be stitching together.

The loaf is rosy-brown when Rachel takes it out of the oven an hour later. She covers it with a cloth and asks Nana Moira to share it with her Centre regulars and visitors tomorrow. She will return on Friday to bake a number of loaves for the Saturday market. And she will do that every week for the rest of the pawpaw season.

“I’ve a surprise for you in your room,” says Nana Moira as Rachel gets into her car.

Their home is only half a mile from the Centre. It is a double-wide, much bigger than the other five trailers that form a row. Unlike the rest, which are in bad shape with peeling paint and gutters that need fixing, Rachel’s trailer is glistening with new paint. Its surroundings are clean and neat with cottage pinks and tomatoes growing in pots. The big satellite dish on the roof makes it look like a spaceship from some awkward sci-fi movie.

Rachel parks her car on the paved driveway in front of the trailer, making sure that she leaves enough space for Nana Moira to park her 1983 GMC Suburban when she returns in the evening. To Rachel’s consternation she still drives at night at her age, and loves speed. These days she struggles to climb into the car since it has become too high for her arthritic knees. But she won’t give it up or trade it for a lower car; it belonged to her late husband.

The mobile home is just as neat inside, and smells of Febreze in every room. Rachel goes straight to her room, the master bedroom that used to belong to her parents. When Nana Moira came to live with them after her late husband’s creditors obtained a default judgment and foreclosure decree on her truck farm, she took the smaller bedroom and filled the third bedroom to the roof with boxes of all the sentimental stuff she owned. Those days Rachel used to sleep on the sofa-bunk bed that is still in the living area in front of the television.

Since then Rachel has upgraded the place, fixed new tiles in the bathroom and shower, and bought a new stove for the kitchen area. It is rarely used though because Nana Moira does most of the cooking at the Centre and brings the food home in the evening.

In the bedroom Rachel is greeted by a rag doll sitting perkily on top of her pillow as if it owns the place. At first she cannot believe her eyes, and then she shrieks and reaches for it.

“Blue! My Blue! Where’ve you been?”

Blue is still in the blue frock as Rachel remembers her. A blue frock, a black cape and a black bonnet.

She holds her close to her bosom. She had forgotten all about Blue since she went missing a few years back. Just like she forgot all the others who had disappeared. She had mourned, and then moved on. But here’s Blue, she has come back. None of the others did.

She was four or five when she first got Blue. She had always wanted a Raggedy Ann and had badgered her father for it. One day he – an itinerant musician and teller of tall tales – was travelling through Amish country when he chanced upon a roadside stall covered with different sizes of rag dolls. He bought one for his little girl.

The first time Rachel saw the doll it freaked her out.

“It ain’t no Raggedy Ann, Pops,” she had cried.

“It’s a rag doll, what’s the difference?” asked her father.

“It ain’t got no eyes or mouth or nose or ears or nothing. It’s creepy.”

“It ain’t got no face because it’s an Amish doll, baby. Them Amish believe all folk are the same in the eyes of God. So they don’t do no faces on their dolls.”

This explanation, however, did not comfort Rachel. She couldn’t bring herself even to look at the doll without a face. Until her father drew eyes, a nose and a mouth with a ballpoint pen. Though they were crude, like those one would see on a stick figure drawn by a child, Rachel accepted them, and gradually she learned to love the doll. It became her constant companion.

As a kid Rachel showered all her love on Blue. All her anger too. When she had tantrums she repeatedly hit the floor with Blue, and Blue took the abuse uncomplainingly. She was made of sturdy stuff. The Amish stitches were tough and Blue did not fall apart.

After her father died in Operation Desert Storm, Rachel grew even more attached to the doll and held on to it everywhere she went. Even to kindergarten. Though they didn’t allow kids to come with their own toys to school the teacher made a special exception for Rachel and her Blue because “this kid has issues”. As a result she was picked on by bratty kids. When Nana Moira and Rachel’s mom met Rachel at the bus stop she was in tears.

“They called me a routter,” she cried.

“What the fuck is routter?” asked her mom, who was not quite sober at that time of the afternoon.

“That’s what they call hillbilly kids in Athens. After some poor family called the Routters way back in the day,” explained Nana Moira, whose work at the Jensen Community Centre exposed her to all sorts of gossip.

“This ain’t no hillbilly doll. It’s an Amish doll. They’re too dumb to know the difference,” said Rachel’s mother, glaring at her mother-in-law as if Nana Moira was the originator of the “routter” idea.

“It ain’t about no doll. It’s about us ’cause we poor,” said Nana Moira.

That was before Rachel’s mom lost her teeth to meth, and then her mind, and wandered away with a fellow meth-head never to return. The people of the township said it was a result of a broken heart after she lost her husband who had enlisted because, as he said, “The music business ain’t paying no bills and some bad folks are crapping on America in Kuwait.”

When everyone was gone, Blue was the only one that stayed. There was Nana Moira of course, but she didn’t count that much. She spent the whole day working at the Centre’s Food Pantry, or travelling to Logan to get more food from the food bank. Blue, on the other hand, was always with Rachel. She was not apt to die in a war or disappear in a fog of drugs.

Although Nana Moira tried to be with Rachel as much as possible, she spent most of her time at the Centre unloading food from the trucks, dividing the cans and vegetables into many equal parcels, and then giving them out to long lines of people who would otherwise not survive without the Food Pantry. Or cooking in the kitchen of the Centre for the senior citizens of the township. Or sewing quilts with the women of the Quilting Circle. Or poring over papers and receipts and vouchers. And all that time Rachel played alone under the long tables, or on the porch, weather permitting, inventing games with Blue.

It is after nine when Nana Moira hobbles in with a small pot of bean soup.

“I know you gonna bitch about my driving at night,” she says. “Save your breath already and eat the bean soup.”

But Rachel is in no mood for a confrontation.

“Where was she at?” she asks, holding Blue up.

“In the storeroom. I found her when I was looking for something else.”

“You knew all the time where she was at?”

“I forgot where she was at.”

Nana Moira reminds her that there was a time when Rachel was collecting and piling up stuff. She didn’t want to part with anything, however useless it was, so Nana Moira began to take things away from her as soon as they seemed to accumulate. Empty ice cream containers, plastic spoons and Styrofoam boxes all found their way into the garbage can despite Rachel’s tantrums. That gave Nana Moira the idea about the doll; if she could take away the stuff she could take away the doll too.

“You was at middle school already, still attached to that raggedy thing. Everyone said it was unnatural, so I hid it away.” Soon Nana Moira forgot in which of the many boxes she had placed the doll.

Rachel has a vague memory of her hoarding days which are a far cry from who she is today, a woman obsessed with neatness and clean surroundings. She remembers how devastated she was when Blue went missing. Blue was with her when she was a latch-key kid. She had given her comfort and security in times of loneliness and longing. And then all of a sudden Blue was gone. Like all those who left. Fortunately, middle school had become hectic with new friends who did not call her a routter, among them Schuyler who is still her best friend to this day. And lots of social activities. Choral society, drama club, boys, birthday parties, sleepovers, you name it. Blue became a fading memory.

And now she has returned. The ballpoint-pen eyes, nose and mouth have long faded off and Blue is faceless again. But Rachel is not scared of her any more; Blue is no longer creepy. She tells Nana Moira so, and they both laugh at what a silly kid she was to be spooked by a faceless doll.

“I hope you ain’t gonna start obsessing on that rag doll again,” says Nana Moira jokingly.

“Come on, Nana Moira, I’m not a kid any more. She’s just a good keepsake now because Pops bought her for me.”

Nana Moira is pleased to hear this. When she discovered Blue she debated with herself as to whether she should give the doll back to Rachel or keep it hidden forever or even get rid of it. What if she became fixated again on the darn thing? She decided to take the risk since Rachel is now a woman of twenty-three who has developed other interests. Thankfully, Rachel is confirming that her decision was the right one.

Some of those “other interests” that she has developed over the years, however, worry Nana Moira. She had hoped that Rachel would go further with her learning after completing high school at eighteen with mostly As and one or two Bs. She would have been the first in the family to go to college. But Rachel was taken up by music; something that runs in the family but that Nana Moira had hoped would by-pass Rachel.

“This singing thing ain’t working out; you been doing it for five years and it ain’t taking you nowhere,” she nagged Rachel.

But Rachel had a highly romanticised notion of her father singing and telling tall tales at county fairs. She wanted to be like him or, better still, be a recording star.

She had an even more romanticised view of her grandpa, Nana Moira’s husband, who people still talk about with nostalgia to this day, more than a decade since he passed on. Nana Moira has inadvertently reinforced that view by narrating with great relish at the slightest provocation the good old days when Robbie was a country and western singer who played a guitar in his own group known as the Jensen Band. He played in dance halls and on social occasions, and Nana Moira and the other young ladies of the township went square-dancing every weekend in their colourful gingham square-dance dresses and circle skirts. The fifties were crazy years for Moira and Robbie Boucher and for every young couple in Jensen Township. It didn’t matter if it snowed or not, the Jensen Band travelled to dance halls all over the county and even as far as Meigs and Washington counties. On occasion they would stop in the middle of the road and square-dance in the snow.

But Robbie also played his guitar – sometimes the mandolin or the fiddle – at home for Nana Moira and the kids. It didn’t matter whether there was an audience or not, he sat on the porch and played and hummed and sang and yodelled and field-hollered. Neighbourhood kids often came and joined in sing-alongs until their moms yelled for them because it was already dark and the stars were shining in the sky.

“Anyone playing or just loving music was right up his alley,” Nana Moira said. “He took after his mom and pops because they played music too. For generations and generations the Bouchers was always music people.”

At this, Nana Moira got misty-eyed, and then she broke out laughing.

“We all loved Robbie’s music; it is one thing I miss about him. One of my favourite songs that he played was Burn Down the Barn and Boil the Cabbage. It was a very romantic song.”

This brought derisive laughter from Rachel.

“Yecchy! Boil the cabbage!” she screeched. “How did it go?”

“It didn’t have no words. Just guitar. But, sweet Jesus, it was a mighty pretty tune.”

The boys of the band often came to the house to play with him. Nana Moira loved to entertain and there would be lots of eating and singing and dancing. If it was too hot or too cold the festivities would be in the barn. Maybe that’s where she got the bug to entertain senior citizens and all the other folks of Jensen Township at the Centre with dinners and lunches on special occasions such as Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving and Fourth of July.

“No wonder I like music so much, I lived around it for years,” said Nana Moira. “That’s how your pops got infected with the music bug.”

“That’s how I got infected too,” said Rachel.

“Sweet grief, child, you was not there in them ol’ days.”

“Pops got infected from good ol’ Robbie and I got infected from Pops. That’s how it goes, Nana Moira.”

Rachel grew up with these stories and she loved them. They confirmed to her that she was born to follow the family tradition. No one had the heart to tell her that her voice was not nearly as easy on the ear as her dad’s and grandpa’s. It didn’t matter as long as she played the guitar and sang for the joy of it. But when she spoke of making music her life Nana Moira began to be concerned. The girl had so much potential to bring glory to the family in other ways, and she nagged her about going to college.

But Rachel had a dream and was going to pursue it, no matter what.

There was a time when Nana Moira thought she had finally prevailed on her, and she agreed to consider going to college. Nana Moira hoped that perhaps after years of struggling as a wannabe music star she had come to realise that the dream was not materialising. She brought brochures from Hocking College and they pored over them together until Rachel decided on a two-year associate degree in addiction counselling, because her mom was destroyed by meth.

“Not that I’m giving up on my music altogether,” she told her grandma. “Otherwise I would be giving up on my heritage. I would be betraying my genes.”

She was planning to be a singing counsellor, using her guitar as therapy to bring the meth-heads, pot-heads and crack-heads of southeast Ohio back to the road of clear-headedness and healing. She did not know if this was possible or even acceptable in that profession, but it was the only way to harness her heritage to this new cause.

“Whatever,” said Nana Moira.

As long as the girl went to school that was all that mattered to her. When she got to Hocking College and came face to face with the real world she would give up all the singing-counsellor silliness.

Nana Moira got worried when weeks went by and Rachel was not completing the forms and submitting the application. She kept on finding this and that excuse. Until finally she confessed that her heart was not on college – not at that moment. Perhaps some time in the future she would consider it. Nana Moira knew that there would be no time in the future. She might as well give up on any notion of having the first college graduate in the Boucher family, and be stuck with another itinerant musician – albeit a very bad one this time.

“Don’t be so sad about it, Nana Moira,” said Rachel. “Hocking College can do without my money. I’d rather use it to take care of you.”

Rachel is the only one who brings some reasonable livelihood home, thanks to her busking. Everyone at the Jensen Community Centre is a volunteer, including Nana Moira. The only reward for her selfless work is the free food that she gets from the Food Pantry and a small stipend that is far below minimum wage.

“Sweet grief, child, I don’t need nobody to look after me,” said Nana Moira adamantly. “I managed all right from the time you was little without your help.”

It is not just Rachel’s music that Nana Moira worries about. After all, she is taking after the rest of the Bouchers before her and there is nothing anyone can do about that. Perhaps she should just accept it. But now Rachel – and Nana Moira blames Schuyler’s bad influence for this – has taken to running around all over the county at her own expense, attending meetings and yelling slogans against the government, which is none of her business. She has joined Appalachia Active, a group of concerned citizens of southeast Ohio who protest against fracking.

Nana Moira complains that Rachel spends too much time attending anti-fracking demonstrations instead of focusing on the more important things in her life. She is afraid that one day the law will come knocking at the door to tell her that her granddaughter is in jail for chaining herself to fracking equipment. That’s the sort of thing these crazy people do; you read such stories in the Athens News all the time. Or worse still, she may end up like Schuyler.

Although Rachel refuses to discuss Schuyler, Nana Moira has heard the gossip that she is either doing time or has done time for some crime and is now crippled for life because of her wayward behaviour with men. Not that Rachel is one of those man-crazy girls you see running around with other people’s husbands. No, not her Rachel. She is raised too well for that. But with a friend like Schuyler, who knows what bad influence she may exert on her?

Rachel is very headstrong. Stubborn just like her father. Whenever Nana Moira talks to her about this anti-fracking business and about Schuyler’s bad influence she throws a tantrum and tells her grandma to mind her own business, that she is not a kid any more and should be left alone to make her own decisions. She says she is entitled to her own mistakes. Whoever heard such moonshine?