Third Annual Wild Violet Writing Contest Winners (2005)

Fiction — First Place

Soloist
By Chrissy K. McVay

(continued)

"Poor sweet Dutch," I suddenly whispered aloud. I pulled my pants back over my broad hips, no longer in the mood for naughty thoughts. Dutch split his skull on a dusty bike trail the Devils were exploring in New Mexico. He was cruising too fast, had a bit too much whiskey, and collided with a low cliff that must've looked like a harmless shadow in the dusk of late afternoon. His brains lopped out as the edge of the rock fragmented his skull, splintering the sections like a dry wishbone. Smack... straight down the middle.

Thank heavens he was sauced on whiskey and didn't feel his head split, or so the doctors assured me over and over as they dosed me up with downers to help numb my shock. While I sat there at the morgue, I finally asked myself what had happened to my mother. I knew where Dad was, the Greenville Cemetery in South Dakota. But Mom had just faded away from my life. I remember suddenly despising her for not giving me brothers and sisters, someone I might be able to cry to that wouldn't expect me to apologize for the last twenty years.

I was also angry at the way Dutch had died. He'd deserved something with more dignity, like a knife to the gut in a legendary bar brawl. I hoped Dutch hadn't had time to look down and see the slew of cops yakking away about the previous night's football game while they idly scraped membrane off the red rocks.

Three of the Dakota Devils traded in their Hogs for pickup trucks after they got a look at the gap in Dutch's skull. I'd honored Dutch's request for an open casket no matter what, but the image haunted us all. Each passerby inside the funeral home scanned a bold advertisement to wear motorcycle helmets. Most of the guys couldn't stand the thought of a helmet, so they just quit riding. As for me, I haven't had anything between my legs since.

Then the soloist wandered into my life, his music my effort toward fresh dreams. These new visions stretched my body out like a rattlesnake wriggling in its new skin. His violin's voice caused the fuzz on the back of my neck to prickle and a wild current smoothed the kinks in my spine. I was that young girl again on the back of a motorcycle, despite what the mirror tried to tell me.

Early one morning I got close to him in the laundry room. He was playing his violin while his whites washed, unashamed to show us a bare chest, tanned and lightly sprinkled with dark curling hairs. He tilted forward at the waist and played a ballad so softly that even the women deep in gossip near the coin machine shut up and listened. He had to know what he was doing to us and clearly loved the mesmerizing effect.

I stood very still, staring at him while at the same time feeling as if I should dive for some sort of camouflage. I wasn't used to absorbing him so openly. I ached with that song and wished my bones could lift out of my body and drift off in a desperate search for younger flesh to house my skeleton. I watched him gently touch the wood, his fingertips pressing in. I swore I saw his pulse quicken at the wrist. I became jealous for a moment, fighting the urge to rip the violin from the cradle of his neck and question his eyes like a suspicious wife who wakes from the dream of a cheating husband.

When I'm certain he's flown to New York or Chicago for a concert I pick the lock to his apartment and sneak inside. I touch the delicate folds of his clothes, look inside his fridge, put on a dab of his cologne to saturate myself in his odor before lying on his bed. I visualize us showering together, his body leaning in, up on his heels. He hums softly in his beautiful alto voice as he gently washes my breasts and hips.

In these faithful dreams we outlive the bitterness of old age, our eyes never sifting for the sense in our existence. Then finally I feel the crispy chill of October blowing in, colder than I remembered it. I'm feeling the full blast of a north wind when I happen to see the soloist with a young redheaded man, his numerous freckles and lovely blue eyes lending his features a Howdy Doody look.

There was no doubt the two were lovers. I recognized the centered gaze of passion and the way their fingers brushed one another's bodies as if no one was looking. They playfully picked up the dead leaves, marveling at the brilliant colors, eager for a quiet kiss. I watched them closely, lost in that solid place where two people are so much alike they seem to mold into one passionate being.

There was no hope left for me at that moment. No more girlish delusions of the soloist one day becoming my lover. I'd been long delighted with my daydream. Playing "Mrs. Robinson," dressing in stretched leopard print lingerie and dripping hot wax from a burning candle onto a young lover's naked chest.

The last evening of the soloist's life I slunk into the bushes outside his bedroom, hiding from a pair of headlights that passed over where my shadow had been seconds before. The thorns on the bush pressed against my throat and I welcomed the physical pain, since it dulled my other emotions for a brief moment.

Twice I nearly retrieved the poisoned bottle of wine. But soon I was too numb with indecision to think clearly about anything. I just needed to put the dream to rest. The part of my brain still able to reason took precautions; rubber gloves, body wrapped in plastic under my clothes, which would be burned later. Hair net, et cetera. Nothing left behind but faint imprints of my socks on the carpet, sure to fade before the police arrived. The bottle of wine had already been opened, the cork easy to lift. At the time, the events of that night appeared so uncomplicated.

Back in the safety of my own apartment I took the violin out of its case and held the curved treasure against my shoulder the way I'd seen him cradle it. The instrument was all I took with me.

No one questioned why I suddenly transferred to a job at a video rental store in a far west corner of New Mexico. Most of the patrons that drift into the store speak Spanish and look past me. I'm as white as a plain pillowcase next to their brown skin, and it's disheartening to realize I'm invisible all over again.

I found a pop-up camper to set on a nice grassy plot at a small campground within sight of the distant mountains. I drive to the store once a week in a rusted out pickup that resembles a hundred others around Little Mateo. Each night I fall asleep with the soloist's violin across my left breast, breathing in the odor of pampered wood. I rest my fingers on the cold strings to touch all the places his hands used to glide along with the horsehair bow. It's a marvel to me how a simple movement that used to bring beauty can be such a hideous sound of alarm in the wrong hands. I've complicated things.

If they do catch me it's no big deal. Life has started to lose her mystery. I crave the spontaneous bit of action, the unforeseen outcome. Perhaps an aggravating twist on my strange story will force everyone to remember my name. "Bernice Avery" up in lights, finally. Ms. Avery on trial for premeditated murder of a gay man, the news headlines might read. A journalist will visit the jail, offering to turn my wild ride down life's demoralized road into a sleazy novel.

We never really know whom we live next to, do we? At the very least, my presence might give the superstitious Mexican locals something else to chant about in their half-Catholic, mostly witchcraft jumble of hocus-pocus. I'm beginning to think I'm not the sort of person meant for obscurity. I certainly don't want to fade off the humanity billboard like poor Dutch. So here's my story folks. I suppose you'll have to do what you think is justice.

home | contest winners 2005