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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108-page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/paperback book “Blackbirds, Lyrebirds, WeaverBirds” cc&d, v340, the 12/23 issue Order the 6"x9" paperback book: 
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part 3 of the story
The Wind Chime
George R. Justice
Wendel was good about keeping his distance, though not so good about liking it. At night he would sit on the steps of the Blue Goose in his T-shirt and pretend to amuse himself with his harmonica. Danny Boy and Amazing Grace came at us with nightly attention, as lonesome and assured as the rumbled groan of the midnight train. Moonlight Serenade and Happy Trails drifted toward us with the same unalterable cycle. They were sounds that caused a far-away look in Rosa’s eyes, and often sent her reaching for her heart with limpid-but-calloused hands.
“He’s downright cowpoke lonesome, ain’t he?” Mamma said, always quick to get at the heart of things. Though she never thought of Wendel’s blowing sad as objectionable, she would, after a time, up the TV’s volume as a way of separating herself from it. Still, it worked its way between the lines of the movie stars we tried to watch. “I’d as soon listen to the crickets,” was Mamma’s favorite dig, her last and unwavering add-on before wandering off to bed. Wendel seemed to know when we had had enough, seemed to understand the primal part of him that said his chaunt had been heard. Then again it could have been the lights we shut off and the trailer going to dark.
Not long after the Blue Goose was patched and painted and put back together, Wendel was back at it, only this time hacking and chopping and digging, clearing all that the fire hadn’t reached: the briars and brambles, wild grass and vines; the roots and cactus and all that choked and strangled and intertwined its way through the tangle he called a yard. He stayed with it right up to mid-morning when he stopped for water and a quiet spell on his steps. The rest of the day was more of the same, only with Sheila Gay stopping by to make sure he wasn’t about to burn anything. The heat and humidity of a south Texas July and Sheila Gay dogging him like a straw boss on a chain gang, barking out what he ought and ought not do, didn’t help matters. By the end of the third day, it looked like he had barely scratched the surface. “Hard telling what he might do next,” said Mamma. “My guess, though, is he’s in for a long July.”
It was hard not to like Hector Rios, despite his interruptions to my time with Jay Leno each night. I said nothing when he appeared, just lifted the latch and motioned him in ... sentinel that I was. But it was near the end of July, right about the time Wendel was putting the finishing touches on his landscape, that Hector came fixed with a look that spoke to the brighter side of life. He stood wavering in the blue hue of the TV, rocking just enough to take the edge off and with a smile stretched across his big yellow teeth.
“I got Rosa a ride,” was the first thing out of his mouth. Mamma stopped dead in her tracks and gave him a sideways look. “I mean ... I think I do,” he said.
Day by day, things began to take on a different order around the Blue Goose. An air of livability began to take hold. Pots of black-eyed Susan’s and bluebells, irises and forget-me-nots were scattered in no particular pattern around the yard. From a distance, it looked like the Blue Goose was surrounded by a field of wildflowers. Wendel had hacked and stripped away everything in a huge swatch around his bus, as big around as the shade cast from the giant cottonwood above it. So short was the grass when he finished that we could see all four of the Blue Goose’s tires, rotten as they were and flat as skipping stones. And there was a walkway to the door, a mixture of white rocks and gravel, and lined with thick limbs from the cottonwood, stripped and laid end-to-end. Some of the paint over the windows had been scraped away, and though there were no curtains, there was the promise of light filling The Goose’s dark places. Day after day: new life, new order, new color. “He seems determined,” Mamma said, and that’s where her words died, her thoughts unfinished except to herself.
I don’t know what winds were blowing to suggest anything different, except to say that Wendel was unwavering in his pursuit, resolute to outlast the cloud that had beset him; destined to impose a sense of adoration ... or at least his idea of it.
August came with vehemence, turning our south Texas winds into what felt like blasts from open ovens. The drone of our air conditioner was as common as the rust stains beneath it, its on-again-off-again rattle filling us with the dread that it might at any minute sputter and gasp a final time. But August’s heat and humidity was simply a part of the landscape, what we learned to live with, and what we endured as best we could. Yet, despite its bite, Wendel seemed ready to prove he was every bit its match. “I believe he’s on a mission,” Mamma said, “and a right hell-bent on getting it done ... whatever it might be.” I remember my daddy saying that work was an aphrodisiac for those who didn’t have to do it. I found that to be the case watching Wendel clear and plant and essentially bring his lot to life. “Hard telling what he’s liable to do next,” Mamma said.
Mamma held Remy Rhodes with some regard, but it was his continuing to show up unannounced that became a thorn in the flesh. I can’t say he came often enough to become a fixture, but certainly enough to become an annoyance considering what it took to keep Rosa out of sight. After a time, Mamma gave up her bed and took the couch, downgrading me to the padded bench against the wall behind our kitchen table. Rosa, of course, took the bedroom. It was a loving gesture, but with Rosa’s condition and survival at its root.
A few times Remyl was invited in to sit on the couch next to Mamma. I kept my eyes on him the whole time, kept him locked down like he was my one and only concern—a concern that kept him dead center of my crosshairs.
“I believe you’re trying to stare a hole through me” was Remy’s only comment, his way of nudging me to turn over and go to sleep. I never gave him a comeback ... nor did I ever look away. It was enough to keep his actions in check, keep him behaving like a gentleman.
For Sheila Gay, Remy’s pickup outside our door, and always so late at night, was a festering sore. She said it had the appearance of unrighteousness. One night she even went so far as to send Wendel to our trailer to check on a gas leak of her invention. Wendel couldn’t have been happier to get inside our trailer, and proceeded to crawl in and under and around things, finally being annoying enough to send Remy packing. Another time Sheila Gay came herself, saying she needed to borrow a flashlight then bullying us with scripture about David and Bathsheba till Remy excused himself not so politely. That was the night she followed him out the door and halfway to his truck, all the while inviting him to Sunday school. But Remy was not to be deterred, which only worked to spur Sheila Gay’s resolve, inviting herself in at the first sign of Remy’s truck, and with exaggerated reminders that Mamma wasn’t officially divorced. Other times she’d come to warn us of approaching storms and what to do should the Rio Grande jump its banks, even though it was some ten miles away. She even came once to talk about who would benefit us most come election time. So interrupted were Remy’s visits, that he eventually stopped making excuses, just simply walked out the door at the same time Sheila Gay was coming in, brushing past her without as much as a howdy or a goodbye.
It was a familiar pattern: Hector scratching on the screen door, Remy driving up when we least expected him, Wendel blowing sad from the steps of the Blue Goose, and Sheila Gay feeling the need to protest and protect. But it was on an evening when the density of stars came in full profusion—the drape of their brilliance from horizon to horizon, diamond chipped and crystalline, and each doing what they could to outshine the rest—that a kind of perfection began to rise up and blow across our patch of hardpan.
The evidence of such change came the very next evening when Wendel stood outside our door in the soft hue of evening, magenta rimmed cloudbanks ornamenting the horizon over his shoulder, and for the first time to my recollection, he knocked.
“Well ... Wendel,” Mamma said, stepping to the door and bordering on a loss for words, “what do we owe the honor?”
“Was hoping you might be up to seeing what I done,” he said, shifting his torso just enough to point at the Blue Goose.
Mamma stared out over his shoulder, squinted her eyes and made to give an approving gawk. “You mean, sorta like show an’ tell?”
“Got a cake,” he said, his eyebrows lifting, adding a slight excitement to his eyes.
Mamma put her tongue in her cheek. “Coffee?”
“Fresh this morning.”
“What kinda cake?
“Coconut. Last one on the shelf.”
Mamma just stood there nodding real slow like while Rosa stepped up beside her with a smile every bit as grain-fed as Wendel’s. Mamma’s eyes went back and forth between them, then rolled her head toward me and gave a little shrug.
“Alright then, Wendel,” she said. “I reckon we could all stand a piece ’a cake.”
We waited till dark. For obvious reasons. Then made a beeline for The Goose. He was there waiting, as welcoming as his arms were wide, and as unpretentious as the paper lanterns hanging outside his door. One would have thought we were guests of a royal order.
Wendel couldn’t have been happier, right away directing our eyes here then there, up then down and in between, delighting in what he’d done to the bus’s overall décor, to say nothing of its hygiene. It was a home he could be proud of despite its festering age and a whiff, however faint, of mold. A number of scented candles—pumpkin spice if I were to guess—flickered from too few surfaces. We inched along, oohing and aahing, our praise becoming a bit saccharine before he motioned us toward the table and his coconut cake. With some maneuvering, four of us managed to squeeze around a table made for two. Four paper plates, a water glass packed with plastic forks, and a coconut cake dead center of it all and without an inch to spare.
Only large slices would do, Wendel said, his way of thanking us for coming, I suppose, for allowing him the luxury of such a grand gesture. That’s when it all seemed to matter, to come together; when the three of us began to sense a Wendel we only thought we knew; a man who seemed determined to shore up the lesser parts of himself, to shed old skin for new. And it started with the first bite of cake; him bursting out with a laugh for no apparent reason except maybe being happy about our being there ... or maybe it was the opportunity for sitting alongside Rosa, about her sharing his very own private space.
Around our coaxing, Wendel offered up a tale about lumberjacking, a humorless tale, actually, but one which started him laughing again, sudden and with a force that could be heard clear to Sheila Gay’s. It was the belly kind of laughter: tight-eyed and open-mouthed, table-slapping and floor-stomping. We were instantly caught up, laughing right along with him, our own folly making it all the more ludicrous. We roared and bellowed, held our sides, slumped till we caught our breath ... then started again.
Wendel was all of a sudden a man with a voice, loosened in a fashion and in a dialect that skipped with the most affable undulations and in a most unfamiliar tongue: modulated and sing-song it was; words lilting, rising and falling, spirited and dancelike, words that seemed to yodel, echo and bounce off the roof of his mouth; and all filled with stories of lumberjacks from up dare in da U.P, eh! There was a sturdiness to it, right along with all that toyed and played and turned the wrinkles upward on his face.
We were a bit bewitched, and searched for words to the things he said; sometimes wanting to question him about what they meant, other times caught up in their spell. We laughed without reservation, even Rosa, even though she understood little of what he said ... on and on until he pulled the harmonica from his shirt pocket.
“Harpoon,” he said, and with that, gave us a rollicking what for, his right foot stomping to where he vibrated the whole bus. Mamma hooped and clapped, and Rosa bounced and rocked, her tiny frame jubilant and enticing, and taking us south of the border. I beat on the table with spoons and Wendel gave the harmonica everything he had, blowing with his eyes closed till he was a full crimson. Then it was another. Then another. It was nearly ten o’clock before we wound down, before Wendel walked us home. We thanked him, then watched after him till he made it back to The Goose, till the lights that illuminated his stoop went to black.
Rosa stood in our doorway a longtime afterwards enjoying the evening breeze and whatever else God was willing to share with south Texas on a sweltering August night. She stayed there till the last of Wendel’s lights went out, just before the local news blared its daily account of undocumented immigrants caught trying to enter the U.S. by way of Brownsville and Harlingen—announcements as hollow and forlorn as the dry lightning shimmering through the night clouds.
The trains continued their journeys: north and south, day after day, as unalterable as the dust and dirt that swept through our trailer in the south Texas wind; and with them, the now-and-again wave of illegals racing breathlessly past us in the night, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the border. We grew used to it over time and even mourned when the authorities corralled the unlucky few and set them in the back of vans for the long ride home. But the authorities couldn’t be everywhere all the time, allowing windows of opportunity to those undocumented—those like Rosa Cantina Venezuela. It was on such a night, long after Jay Leno signed off and a herd of harried footsteps died to the tall grass beyond the highway, that I heard Hector’s familiar scratch on the door. “It’s time,” he whispered.
I knew nothing of the plan to get Rosa to Arkansas, but when Hector came crouched in shadows, scratching at our door and saying it was time, I was quick to put two and two together. Then when Rosa came tiptoeing from the bedroom with a pillowcase stuffed tight and tied off with a knot, I figured I was looking at her for the last time. That is until Remy swung his big silver pickup onto our tiny patch of gravel, its headlights pouring through our screen door and sweeping over Hector and Rosa like they’d been caught with their hands in a cookie jar.
“Well, what have we here?” Remy drawled stepping out of his truck, his tone quick to convict. Hector stood frozen, caught in the very act he’d worked for weeks to conceal.
“Well ... if it ain’t the devil himself,” Mamma said, stepping in front of Hector and pushing Rosa into the shadows.
From across the way, Wendel sat blowing through the strains of “Summertime,” but then stopped right in the middle and started walking toward us, investigation, no doubt, on his mind.
Right about that time Sheila Gay’s porch light went on. In the next instant, she was out the door, down her steps and across the road just ahead of Wendel, her mousy thin hair a fright, her muumuu only half tied, and with a broom in her hand. Our trailer looked like it was under siege with Remy’s truck lights on high beam and everybody with necks and backs in a bow: Remy, Wendel, Hector, Rosa, Mamma, and Sheila Gay ... and everybody talking at once. I don’t know what Remy’s intentions were, or even if he had any to begin with other than to get up next to Mamma, but Sheila Gay lit into him without him even opening his mouth.
I stuck my nose right up in the middle of things till Mamma shooed me back toward the kitchen. But then I hiked myself up on the table, hell bent on not missing a thing. It wasn’t long before lights started coming on, before a collection of pit bulls started barking and straining at the end of their chains. All around us, neighbors spilled into the lane without shirts or shoes or anything worthwhile to say. With everybody dug in and believing the louder they talked, the more right they were—Sheila Gay in particular—Remy quickly realized he was roundly outnumbered, and finally threw up both hands and stepped off to his truck, waving off Sheila Gay’s spit and cuss. In a last-but-grand goodbye, he swung himself into the cab, shifted into reverse, and backed his truck all the way up the lane toward the highway. Everybody just stood and watched, a hush settling over us with the quiet of a night wind.
“Well,” said Mamma, her voice private and breathy, “he’s either runoff or gone for help.” She smiled, but only part way, pretending not to care one way or the other.
The mood eased considerably after that. Still, neighbors lingered over fences, going-on and sipping beer, then slowly made their way back inside when Sheila Gay went waddling off to her trailer. Wendel just stood there with his head down as if waiting for some kind of revelation, the moonlight ghostlike on his skin. He stayed long after everybody else had cleared out, alone and lonely, seeming to understand the placement of the stars and what they foretold.
Days later, Mamma sat with a troubled look, drinking coffee and staring out the window—the way I found her at first light and still that way when I went off to dig worms with Jimmy Duncan (live bait netting us fifty cents a dozen at the Dragon Drop). Mamma called off sick that day, told the Whistle Stop she was having dizzy spells and running a fever. Truth was she was still drinking coffee and staring out the window when I got home. When I asked if she’d heard any word from Rosa, she simply shook her heard. “She’s gone,” she said. By her tone, I knew that meant forever. She clammed up after that, just sat there staring off into nothing. I gave in without a word.
To our surprise, Remy Rhodes never came back around—like he and his belt buckles and boots just up and blew away. But just as I was about to forget him altogether, Mamma came trudging home one evening saying he’d stopped at the Whistle Stop on his way out of town ... to say goodbye. Reassigned to San Antonio as it turned out. Didn’t even stay long enough for a cup of coffee, she said, just thought I’d want to know that he wouldn’t be coming around as often, but that he still had her number and that San Antonio wasn’t all that far away. That was about the extent of it: his attempt at a profound farewell and Mamma trying to keep from laughing. She said his oversized tires spun heavy white gravel across the parking lot before he threw up his hand in a last goodbye, before Highway 77 reduced him to just another cowboy riding off into the sunset. That was the last she ever saw of him. I guess San Antonio had everything he was looking for.
Wendel lasted out the month, holed-up and without as much as an utterance, then left pretty much the way he came: sore-footed and clutching an old brown suitcase with that same rope tied around its middle. We watched him amble past the weeds he’d let grow around the Blue Goose, eyes on the ground, glancing up only once and at the last minute at Mamma in our doorway. He held her in his stare for the longest time, for the sake of remembering, I suppose —a look of longing deep in the lines of his face. They said nothing, their silence going the way of things left to wither. We watched him all the way to the highway, his long slow trod stirring the last traces of dust in the lane.
Daddy never came back. We hadn’t really expected him to, but I suspect Mamma would have made him a pallet if he had. It took her five years to take his picture down off the wall, and another five to remove the ring from her finger. She never did remarry; never had the mind for it after Daddy, the heart either. She’s still there, though: at the Wind Chime, sole owner and proprietor after Sheila Gay willed her everything—after she stretched out in her big Lazy Boy chair just before Christmas and never got up again. Stroke was the official cause, although orneriness may have had something to do with it. We waited until March to spread her ashes, on a day made for kites and with a wind strong enough to send her into every corner of the park. And although she never said, we believed it was what she would have wanted.
I turned forty this past July and thought of Wendel Sizemore, maybe because he was just forty when he first came wandering up the lane to beg a job from Sheila Gay. We never heard from him after he left the Wind Chime, but on clearer nights I swear I can still hear those blemished renditions coming from his blues harp, scratchy and raspy renderings of this and that—things worth remembering. We have no idea if he ever caught up with Rosa Cantina Venezuela, or even if he tried. The one thing we do know is that he turned right onto Highway 77 the day he left ... in the direction of Arkansas.
