The idea for “Kimberly Road” came to me as I was driving from Dallas to Austin back in 1994. I was listening to a Lightnin’ Hopkins CD and the story just started forming. It was one of those instances where I stepped on the gas to hurry home and get to my computer while the story was still coming together in my head. I worked on it for a few days, and the day I finished turned out to be a good day. It was the day I met a woman who would introduce me to one of her co-workers whom I would eventually marry.
I picked the story up a few years later and re-wrote the character of Jake, basing him heavily on a man with whom I worked for a short time. His name was Willie and almost everyday he’d say, “Now see here young man, der’s two kindsa people out there. Them that’s happy at home, and them that ain’t. Them that ain’t is about ten percent and they like to make ever’body else unhappy. So you got to watch out for that other ten percent, see?” Everyday. Some days it would go up to 20%, but usually it hovered around ten. - JB
Kimberly Road
Pebble.
Rock.
Pebble.
Rock.
Pebble.
Rock.
Bedrock.
Home.
Karen looked up, and there she was, just as expected. She’d been watching the stones go by underfoot until she knew she was home. The nurse had sent her home early. Sucker, thought Karen. The old witch posing as a school nurse never learned. Karen got to the door of the old house she shared with her mother and dug through the pockets of her dirty jeans until she realized her key was trapped uselessly on the other side of the door. Well, I guess that’s what I get for bullshitting my way out of school, she thought as she sat down on the porch to await her mother’s arrival. She’ll probably be late, Karen knew.
Karen’s house was a small old country home on a dirt road. Kimberly Road. She once thought that it was named for her, Karen Kimberly, but her mom told her it had been Kimberly Road since just after the revolution when Houston’s men sent Santa Ana packing, back when the first farmers settled. Karen had learned all about the Texas revolution and the Alamo in social studies class, but Karen didn’t think much had changed much since then, at least not here in the east Texas piney woods. Except for the fact that there were cars on it now, but most of them hadn’t changed much since the 1960s. They just piled up in people’s yards. The road itself was still dusty and unpaved and filled with potholes. The neighbors all either had tiny houses like she and her mom, or small houses attached to small poor farms. The houses were unevenly spaced, so her nearest neighbor lived across the street and down the road about a hundred feet.
He was an old black man named Jake who spent his days and evenings on the front porch playing music on his guitar and ignoring his old lady who liked to yell and nag at him. Karen asked him once why he didn’t just run away like her father had, and Jake smiled and said it would be too easy, and that only a sad, hard life could inspire true blues, like the music he played. He said he needed to be oppressed and miserable to make his guitar work right. Karen thought he was just plain crazy, but not in the bad way her mother said.
Karen’s mom always told her to stay away from Jake and his booze and lewd music, but most days Karen couldn’t, and she even cut out of school early on many occasions just to spend a few hours listening to Jake play and tell stories. Sometimes Jake’s wife would even talk to her, which made her wonder if she didn’t really love him more than she—or Jake for that matter—let on.
That day, however, Karen had Kimberly road to herself. Jake’s car was gone, so she figured he must of got ol’ Betty, his wife, to take him to town, which was about twenty miles down the farm road. It was too far to try walking, and the one time Karen had tried, her mother caught her up and grounded her for two weeks. It seemed a stiff sentence to Karen whose father had bailed when she was only six. Now she considered herself a woman, though she had only been on this earth for less than thirteen years, and therefore qualified to decide for herself where and when she wanted to go. Her mom was seldom around and when she was it seemed she was too full of don’ts, no’s, and shouldn’ts for Karen’s taste. Naturally, most of Karen’s free time was spent sneaking around, either away from places such as school and church or to places such as Jake’s and the creek in the woods. Or through places like the Jackson’s cotton farm with it’s mysterious old shacks and broken down fences. She’d even found an old arrow head out there once, which she still kept in her pocket as a good luck token.
Most days, it was enough just to see Jake. He was the only adult who she thought knew anything and probably her only friend. Not many of the other girls at school liked her boyish behavior. Neither did the boys for that matter. Except one, but he could never do anything, because his father always made him work their farm. Karen’s mom at least didn’t make her work. Not yet anyway. She always said a kid should get to have at least a little bit of a childhood.
It was only 10:30, and Karen really didn’t have anywhere to go or anything to do. She’d left school to avoid a fight with another girl. One more fight for her would mean a week of suspension and who knows what from her mom. Karen would rather be called chickenshit, than get in trouble for another fight. She wished Jake would get back, so she could hear him play his blues.
Sometimes Jake would say, “Back me up, hon,” and she always did. Jake smiled and laughed, and once even said, he’d be damned, because a little white girl really could sing the blues. Karen said, that she wasn’t as sad as him, though, and maybe someday she’d be really sad enough to do it right. Jake said that when that day came he’d give her his guitar and sing backup for her.
Karen wanted to learn, but her mom couldn’t afford to buy her a guitar or lessons, and she’d be damned if her little girl was going to learn music from ‘that old buzzard across the street.’ It sounded to Karen as if all adults would be damned, so to hell with them and she’d just do as she pleased. For the most part her mom didn’t seem to mind, but then she probably didn’t have a clue either.
She also smoked. She tried one of Jake’s cigarettes one day. He’d left them on the porch when he went in to fetch a drink and when he came back, Karen was puffing away like a pro.
“Ever smoke before,” he asked.
“Just once.”
“Good, then no one’ll blame me for corruptin a minor.” Then he laughed and lit one and put it in his guitar, and started playing something noisy and fast. Saying, “Now, girl, that’s smokin and you can’t do it without you got a guitar.”
“How long you been smoking, Jake?”
“Since I us up in that Vietnam.”
“What was it like bein in a war?”
Jake’s face darkened and he looked hard at Karen. Suddenly, he smiled. “It wasn’t so bad, except it was hot. It was hotter than here, and they made you carry a bunch of stuff around in your pack all day.” Jake smiled and kept playing. Karen nodded importantly.
All day long, on some days, she’d sit there and listen to him jam and talk. One eye on his guitar to try and follow his fingers, the other on her house in case her mom came home unexpectedly. She had forbade Karen from visiting Jake and she got in a heap of trouble when her mom found an old Lightin’ Hopkins record in Karen’s room. Jake had given it too her and her mother made her march across the street to give it back.
I’ll be damned if I do, thought Karen, thus proving her adulthood to herself. When she was across the street, she darted down the road and back around to her back door. She got up to her room and hid it under her mattress. Her mom never saw her, or else never let on that she had. Now when her mom wasn’t home Karen liked to listen to ol’ Hopkins, wishing she could play those blues too. She tried singing like Jake:
I’m just a sittin’ around
I’m just a sittin’ around
Got my feet off the ground
I’m just a sittin’ aroundGot nuthin’ to do
Got nowheres to go
On ol’ Kimberly Road
A-watchin’ grass growOh, I’m sittin’ on my ass
Just a thinkin’ bout the grass
Watchin’ it grow
Down by ol’ Kimberly Road
She laughed to herself. Jake had taught her how to compose blues songs and told her that it couldn’t be writ down first, it had to come from inside and be made up right there on the spot without any sort of planning. Karen repeated it to herself several times, so she wouldn’t forget. She wanted Jake to play a riff for her that would match the words. She wished she had a guitar and knew how to play. She figured Jake would like it since it was about what he did most all day anyway.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEECH! A battered old bluish gray beast of a car came flying into sight, skidding across the road to land in Jake’s front yard. Betty raced out of the car, up the steps, and into the house. A few minutes later, she came running back out the door with a fistful of papers and a terrified look on her face. She glanced over at Karen and paused before throwing the papers in the car and taking off again. In an instant she was gone, leaving only dust to settle on Kimberly Road.
That was the most activity Karen had witnessed from Betty in the twelve years she had known her. I’ll be damned, she thought. Karen sat for almost an hour, curiosity building and boredom growing. Sat until the curiosity inside forced her to her feet. Looking around and seeing no one, she decided to investigate. She strolled over to the house, walked up the porch and looked through the window. Nothing amiss. Betty always was a weird one, but where was Jake? He wouldn’t be gone long though because she could see his guitar, leaning against the wall over by the kitchen. She thought about trying to get it. She didn’t know how to play, but she thought it might be fun just to hold it and pretend. Maybe she could figure out a thing or two. Jake would be impressed. Or pissed.
The guitar was made of a beautiful dark brown wood, with shiny golden strings. Karen stared at the guitar as if she thought it might escape. Jake probably wouldn’t mind if she snuck into the house and played it a bit and hell that was only an issue if she got caught. Karen walked to the side of the house checking the windows. Locked, every one. She walked around the house where the trees pressed thickly against the small yard in need of a mow. Around back she ran into the same problem. Locked, locked, locked and lastly locked. She stepped away from the house to have a look at the larger picture. Her eyes probed every corner, every window, until she found a second story window not quite closed. Well, thought Karen, if you’re not going to lock your house up, you might as well hang out a sign inviting strangers over, and she was certainly no stranger.
Karen knew she could climb the tree that grew next to the house and from there reach the window. She started up the tree when she heard a car approaching from somewhere down the road. It came slowly and seemed to take forever before passing the house. When Karen started breathing and climbing again, the car stopped as if it were searching for her, made a U-turn, and parked in front of Jake’s house. Karen jumped and started running along the tree line of the backyard, into the next yard, and did not stop until she was a least a good half-mile down from the house. At this point she casually walked out across Kimberly Road and started back down towards her own house.
She kept a wary eye on Jake’s house without being too obvious about it. Another car pulled up and parked next to the first. A middle-aged man in a blue suit stepped out and walked over to the man from the first car. They shook hands and the first man offered the second a cigarette. Karen was beyond earshot, but she figured they weren’t saying much, just sitting and smoking. Probably waiting for Jake. He always had friends come and go and they mostly just sat on the porch and drank and smoked without saying much. She didn’t like going over when he had company.
Karen sat down again on her porch, pretending to read a book while she watched the goings on at the house across the street. Over the next three hours, more and more people arrived and parked along the street near Jake’s house. They all looked tired and upset, but they were also quiet, mostly just sitting around and smoking.
Eventually, the shadows lengthened, the sky turned purple and the air cooler. Karen had become genuinely involved in her book, which was about World War II. It wasn’t very girlish, but she was fascinated by the idea of war. It seemed so pointless, but at the same time more exciting than sitting around on Kimberly Road and then growing up to work in a restaurant like her mom. Karen stopped reading and became aware, once again, of the people milling about in Jake’s front yard across the street. They seemed like they were getting ready for a party. They either did not notice or did not care that she was watching. Finally, Betty’s car came creeping down the road. It barely stirred the dust, abandoning the speed it had shown that morning. Betty drove into the driveway and stepped out of the car. The sea of people clustered around her, helping her out, hugging her. Karen heard the sounds of crying, but not just one person; many voices mingled in tears drifted across the old dirt road.
Then she knew. It was the same thing that happened when her uncle got killed in a car wreck. Lots of people brought food and smoked and drank and cried and oh shit where was Jake? Terrified with what she suddenly knew, her eyes grew hotter and hotter, cayenne waterfalls streaming down her cheeks. Blinded, she jumped up, ran madly across the street. Ran full into the cluster of people. Heard herself screaming for Betty. The bewildered mob gave way to its center where Betty clung to an old woman, both crying.
“What happened to Jake?” Karen sobbed, barely able to form her words. “Where is he?”
Betty knelt down, drying her own eyes and then wiping Karen’s with her hanky. “Karen, sweetie, ol’ Jake had a bad heart. Caught him up this morning. I tried to get him to a doctor, but he was already dead. I’m sorry, child.”
Karen turned and ran. Betty called after her for a moment but stopped. Karen kept running, hard. She flew down Kimberly road, until she reached the edge of the woods where she plunged herself into the relative darkness of the pines. When she arrived at the creek she fell to her knees, sobbing. Jake was, beyond all family and other friends, her best friend. She’d be damned if she ever found another friend like him.
Karen cried until her tears gave way to anger, and she realized she was clutching the grass near where she knelt in white knuckled grips as if she was holding herself to the earth. She let go and stood; it was late now. Her watch said it was after eight-thirty. Her jeans stained with mud and her face red and puffy from crying, she began trying to find her way back, carefully picking her way between the trees. By nine she was back at her front porch. The house was still quiet and dark. Karen sat, once again, on the porch, shivering with the cool night breeze. There were only two cars across the street at Jake’s house now. The lights were off, save one in the upstairs window. That was Betty’s room. Things seemed to have settled down a bit, and Karen exhaled and tried to relax. She realized what a tight grip she was keeping on her feelings and hoped it wouldn’t slip.
Then an idea began forming in Karen’s mind. She began to wonder if maybe she had Jake’s guitar she could learn to make it sound like Jake did. How could she get it though? She knew where it was, but what about Betty? Karen wondered and thought for quite awhile, imagining the guitar, the shiny wood and golden strings. The beautiful, sad—and occasionally happy—sounds she had heard Jake make through it. She thought about learning to play so she could play a song for Jake, and maybe somewhere, up in Heaven he’d be able to hear.
Karen stood and crept through the darkness towards the old house. She walked up to the door, turned the knob, and to her astonishment it opened. Karen stood in the doorway. The house was completely dark, but she could hear muffled talking. Several voices, but she couldn’t make out words. Glancing over, she saw the guitar leaning up against the wall where it had stood that morning. Karen moved silently towards the instrument. She felt a part of the shadows that hid most everything in the room. The guitar was not hidden, however. It stood out, gleaming in the moonlight, as if it were center stage under a hot spotlight.
Karen put out her trembling hand to touch the guitar. A loud creak came from somewhere else in the house. The voices upstairs were walking about. Walking towards the stairs. She heard the first heavy footsteps beginning their descent. Creak. Creep. Creap. Groan. Karen was sweating in the cold and trembling in her panic. Trying to make herself invisible in the shadows, she wished she could just run. Without a second thought, she did just that. She grabbed the guitar’s neck and went running out the open door, faster than she had ever run in her life. She heard her own footsteps echoing through the house, but then she was out and she kept running, clutching the guitar, silent as a wind blowing straight across the street and around to her own back yard.
She leaned the guitar against the back of her house and panting for air, snuck back along the side of the house to get a view across the street. The lights were on downstairs now, and Karen saw Betty standing in the doorway looking about. There was no way she could be seen, she knew, but she still felt uneasy being hunted. Karen sank to her knees, watching and listening to her own heart pound at her chest, her blood coursing like strange applause behind her ears. Eventually, Betty went back inside. Karen watched the lights go out throughout the house, including the upstairs window. Now, she finally relaxed and cried herself to sleep, leaning against the house.
* * *
Karen woke up in her own bed. Coming from downstairs, she could smell eggs and bacon. Hurriedly, she got dressed and ran down to see her mother, dressed for work and making breakfast.
“Leave your keys in the house again?” her mom asked without looking up. Her mom looked tired. It must have been a tough night.
“What? Yeah.”
“I found you outside, so I put you to bed. Sorry I was late getting in. Didn’t mean for you to miss dinner. I was fixin’ to come home, but Mary called in sick and I had to double shift.”
The guitar. Karen ran out of the kitchen through the living room and out the back door to find it hidden in the oleanders that grew near the house. She picked it up and snuck it up into her bedroom. When she got there she carefully closed the door and looked around. She opened her closet and buried it in the back under a pile of old blankets.
“I gotta go early, Karen, but I ain’t stayin’ late no matter what,” her mom shouted from the kitchen. “Breakfast is down here. Love you.”
“Bye,” Karen called after her.
After breakfast Karen walked out onto the road, towards the bus stop, which was only a mile away. She heard a car approaching from behind her. She began to get sick when she recognized the sound. Next thing she knew, Betty was pulling up alongside her telling her to get in. Karen glumly obeyed, staring down at her hands as she sat nervously inside the car, which started inching towards the bus stop, ever so slowly.
“I ain’t no fool,” Betty started, “I know you came over last night an stole Jake’s guitar.” Her voice cracked a bit when she said her husband’s name. Karen could tell that Betty hadn’t slept much the night before. She looked old and tired and sad. Like one Jake’s songs. It broke Karen’s heart to see. Karen melted, sinking into and through her seat. She had no idea what to say. She was caught and felt red-faced ashamed.
Betty ignored her discomfort and went on, “But he also said he wanted you to have it, on the condition that you really wanted it. Wanted it bad enough to come an get it, which I guess is just what you did. If you didn’t, he said to just throw it on out with the rest of his junk.” Betty smiled. “But I see you did want it.”
Karen was speechless. She stared at Betty, mouth wide open.
Betty continued, “See, now girl, I figure it like this: Jake wants you to play it because if you do, and you think about him while you play it, then a part of Jake won’t ever die, and as long as you live, so will he. And you might even be able to hear him sometimes. Singin’ to you.”
Betty stopped the car at the bus stop. “Now, get on out girl and go to school. And shut your mouth—flies’ll get in.”
* * *
That night, late, long after her mom was asleep, Karen dug the guitar out from the back of her closet. She didn’t know how to play a lick but she held it the way Jake always had and tried to arrange her fingers on the strings the way Jake did. In her right hand she took the pick and rested it against the top string. Then, closing her eyes, she pressed down, gently bringing the pick across each of the six strings. It did not sound good, and it certainly wasn’t the blues, but for now it fit her mood. She did it again. It sounded angry and tired and confused, like she was actually hurting the guitar. She smiled, these were her blues, and tomorrow she would tell her mom everything, and even take a job to get some guitar lessons because she knew she would be damned if she wouldn’t one day hear Jake coming out of her guitar. She thought she understood sadness now, and she would be damned if she couldn’t find the music in it.
©1994, James Brush