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Excerpt
from the Book:
In her early morning dream, Alva Beth sits in a
dark, smoky bar with Bessie Smith, who talks to her about love. “Honey, what I
know about love could fill this room,” Bessie says. Her sable-colored fingers
wave away a thin blue layer of cigarette smoke and through the paisley it makes
around her face, she whispers, “Love is like smoke. In the morning, child,
ain’t nothing left but the stink.”
Bessie Smith throws her head back and laughs, her laughter the sound of a
trumpet wailing a single note, high and long, like something stuck. Alva Beth
covers her ears, but the sound only gets louder and sharper, piercing right
through her until she wakes. And gradually, as the vividness of the dream
recedes, Alva Beth realizes that what she hears is neither music nor laughter,
but machinery.
“Jesus Christ,” she mutters. She throws off the sheet and
clomps down the upstairs hallway, following the grinding hum into her parents’
empty bedroom. She stands, naked and grumpy, at the French doors that lead onto
the balcony. The tree surgeon stands in a little bucket not fifty yards away
taking a chain saw to the limb of a live oak. She watches as the saw slices
clean through and the branch crashes with a thud to the ground. The tree surgeon
cuts off the chain saw motor and looks down, yelling something to someone Alva
Beth can’t see. He lifts the chain saw easily, as if it were a toy, and braces
it on the edge of the bucket. Sunlight, filtered through the branches, dapples
his body with shadows that dance over the muscular curve of chest like a strobe.
His torso seems to waver, and Alva Beth fears for a moment that his weight will
propel him over the side. He lifts his safety goggles high on his forehead and
rubs his cheekbones with broad fingers. As he reaches again for the goggles, he
looks at the window where Alva Beth stands behind sheer curtains. He nods as
though he were being introduced, and then slides the goggles over his eyes and
turns away. He grips the side of the bucket as it descends out of sight.
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