This Heart of Mine: A Broken Records Extra

“My parents were young and into some bad stuff. They drifted in and out, you know? My grandparents raised me. Memaw put a guitar in my hands when I was fourteen after my grandfather died… for a long time I was a pissed-off, messed up kid…”

Grady Dawson, Broken Records

The pawn shop is run by Tommy Keller’s boy, one of five children, she thinks, but can’t recall for certain; she mostly remembers a gaggle of spindle-limbed dark haired children who squirmed and climbed and whined during church service. Then again, don’t they all act that way? Her Lily certainly did, when she was young. Lord knows Grady runs around like he’s got bees in his britches, that child is never still.

Tommy himself worked at the rock quarry until he hurt his back and took an early retirement. His wife—Brenda? Brandi? Bonnie, that’s right—she kept some children at the house while their parents worked to make ends meet, which was clever, but maybe a few children too many to keep mind of, in the end. But who is she to judge?

Tommy Keller’s boy is no longer skinny and spiky haired, now fully grown with a round belly and meaty arms, no hair on his head but plenty enough for a bushy unkempt beard. His arms are covered in bright tattoos. She wanders around, touches merchandise, considers how many desperate people have come in here only to get heckled by Tommy Keller’s boy when they came for a moment of salvation and enough money in their pockets to keep the lights on for one more month.

Well, that’s between Tommy Keller’s boy and God, surely he’s just trying to keep his own lights on, too, aren’t they all? And anyhow, she didn’t come here to judge, really, or to wander, she came here for a guitar.

There are three set on hooks in the wall, the first one an electric guitar, purple. She passes right by that one. The two acoustic are both of a similar type; blond polished wood, standard rounded body. One is clearly newer, barely touched even, the other worn in all the places fingers and picks would have picked and plucked and strummed. She chooses that one. And not just because the price is better. It has a history, a troubled past, and she finds she quite likes that.

“This was a hardware store, before,” she says conversationally while Tommy Keller’s boy rings her up. “Mel’s,” she adds. Not that there were other hardware stores in this whistle-stop town. Mel’s was the only game around, at least until that big one with the ugly orange sign opened up two towns to the East.

“Oh yeah?” He says, a tad distracted, she can tell, but he was clearly raised well enough to feign polite interest, so she carries on.

“Yes, well. His son was supposed to take it over when Mel died. Cancer, you know. Terrible stuff.” She roots in her bag for her change purse, the one with the snapping pearl clasp her mother gave her when she left home. It’s worn, but no sense in buying something new as long as it sees fit to hold together. “He didn’t take it over, Mel’s son. Moved away. Can’t make your children do anything, really, not like you’d think. So the space sat empty for a while. Then, it was a travel agent’s office for a bit, though heaven knows why anyone would try to open a travel agency in Willow Creek.” If the people here ever do leave, it’s never a temporary vacation, that’s for certain.

Tommy Keller’s boy makes a deep chortling noise at that, then says, “That’ll be one fifty-six, ma’am.”

“Oh dear,” she frowns and sighs and looks sadly at the cash folded into a neat rectangle in her change purse. “Well, I must have read the tag wrong when I came in last. I only brought ninety.” She unfolds the bills then counts out all the coins gathered heavily into the bottom, setting it all on the counter one by one until the change purse is barren. “Ninety-three dollars and sixty seven cents.”

She waits. Tommy Keller’s boy crosses his arms.

Then she smiles, suddenly remembering them very clearly. “At the church, whenever a woman was expecting, us church ladies would make casseroles. You know, something to put in the freezer for those early days when you can’t even manage to wash your hair, much less cook something. I’ll never forget coming by with a hashbrown casserole and there was your mama with three little ones running around and a brand new baby in her arms and still she invited me in for a lovely chat. What a dear she was. Or is, I’m sure.”

Tommy Keller’s boy flickers a smile across his bearded face. “She’s a good woman, my mama.”

She leans in and pats his very large arm. “Of course. Why she raised you after all.”

He charges her seventy five dollars even for the guitar. She thanks him and send love to his family. One of his tattoos is a portrait of Jesus Christ himself, which is so strange. Of course, she keeps that little observation to herself. That’s Tommy Keller’s boy’s business. But what would Jesus think?

She gets home before Grady’s school bus arrives which is good. The days that she doesn’t, it’s anyone’s guess when he’ll come home. This way she can oversee homework and give him a good meal and hopefully now he’ll bide his time with the guitar instead of whatever mischief those hooligan friends of his come up with.

She used to come home to find Marvin asleep in his armchair. He’s not there, but muscle memory makes her unfurl a knitted blanket over the empty chair anyway and close the blinds just as Grady bangs into the trailer like a wayward gunshot.

“Oh,” he says. “You’re home.”

To her eyes, Grady looks like the angelic little boy he always has, those golden curls and blue eyes and ruddy cheeks on pale soft skin. A doll baby, a cherub sent down from God’s own hand she used to say. Such a beautiful child that others would remark his looks were wasted on a rough and tumble boy and not a sweet little girl. And then she would have to remind those people that jealous hearts aren’t fit to honor the Lord.

Of course, he’s bigger now, long and thin like he’s been stretched on a taffy pull. His voice cracks sometimes, the man he’ll someday be making a brief and not entirely welcome appearance. She’s only gone through this with a girl, and Lily turned sullen and withdrawn at fourteen, but Grady has gone the opposite way. If Lily’s teenage rebellion was a distant black storm cloud, Grady’s is a lighting strike.

He’s angry, and he wants everyone to know it.

She straightens some mail on the kitchen counter, watches him wrench open the refrigerator, scowl and slam it closed again.

“I’m going out,” he says.

“Where?”

He rolls his eyes. “The library,” he says, with a tone that’s intended to show that he’s lying and wants to make sure she’s aware. He turns toward the door before she can give permission.

She’d been so strict with Lily. Her only child, her pride and joy and she never meant to—She didn’t think wanting to keep her safe and sheltered would suffocate her instead. And Marvin—Marvin had his own issues and she’d tried to keep her safe from Marvin, too, when he got like that. When he’d been drinking. He didn’t mean it. Lily took it to heart anyway.

So she gives Grady a wider berth, and she knows his choices aren’t the best, what fourteen year old boy makes good choices all the time? And she tries to show him, tries to make sure he knows without ever forcing it that she only wants the best for him. That she believes in him. That she’ll always love him no matter what. That in her own way, as best as she can, Lily does too.

“I got you something,” she says to Grady’s retreating back.

He stops. Turns. “Really?” The scowl leaves his face and he smiles, hopeful and crooked and radiant like a sunrise. He looks the most like Lily when he smiles.

She picks up the guitar from the couch and sets it in his hands. He holds it out from his body, awkward.

He frowns. “But I don’t know how.”

“I know a little,” she informs him. “I can show you.” Grady thinks she was sprung into this Earthly world already a grandmother, the silly boy, why she can play a bit of guitar, some banjo, even harmonica—she’s a regular June Carter Cash. She doesn’t mean to push, or force, but, “You know what they say about idle hands, Grady.”

Grady laughs and shakes his head. “Yeah, I do.” He tucks the guitar to his chest, snags a string, and then another with his thumb. It’s out of tune and his movements are halting and unsure. But there’s something. Something. Like that guitar was meant to be there all along.

He grins again, and she’ll never stop being heartbroken and guilt stricken over Lily’s problems, how she can’t fix them or stop them no matter what she tries, will never be over the way that Grady ended up here with them in the first place. She’ll never be able to fill the hole Lily left in Grady, barely a whisper in his life now, and Marvin gone now, too, but it’s with God’s grace, she thinks, that she was lucky enough to have this boy for her own.

“Thanks, Memaw.”