Feeling somehow like it was going to be a mistake, Trey turned on the turn signal and steered up the exit ramp. He made the turn and accelerated down the two-lane. They drove on for several more miles, and he could see that she was struggling for words. Something was happening here that he didn't understand.

"My hero," she said finally. "You are aware, are you not, that one of the most effective ways to lie is to tell the truth, but only part of it?"

"Yeah, I knew that I guess," he said. "Never thought of it quite like that."

She sighed and went on, pain evident in her voice. "Trey, the time has come to tell you the truth. I shall try to tell you all of it, though parts are difficult to admit, even to myself. It may get emotional at times. Please try to bear with me."

A huge part of him wanted to cry out, "Now, what the hell?" -- but he kept that part silent. Something was going on here, something he didn't understand -- but something, he realized, that she wanted him to understand, painful though it was. "I'll try, Myleigh," is all he could say.

"I know you will, my hero," she sighed. "You are ever kind to me, kinder than I deserve by far. I fear I must again ask you to exercise discretion over what I am to show and tell you. Crystal knows some of what I hope to tell you, but far from all. Randy knows a lesser amount, as does Olivia, my roommate at Athens. Trey, you are the first person I've ever attempted to reveal the whole truth to, for you of all people deserve to know."

"Myleigh, you don't have to do this," he protested again. "I can see it's hard on you, and I don't want to see you hurting."

"No, my hero. As I said, the time has come, in fact, more than come. There is a convenience store coming up on the right. Perhaps you might get gas while I go in and get a few things that I shall need."

A few minutes later, she was back in the car, a small shopping bag on the floor between her feet. As Trey pulled back out on the highway, he watched out of the corner of his eye as she pulled her hair into a ponytail and held it back with a hair scrunchie. He'd never seen her do that before, even out surfing. She followed that up with a baseball cap, the tag still on it; finally, she pulled out a pair of dark wraparound sunglasses and put them on, in spite of the fact that it was a gray, dreary, and windblown day, if not particularly cold. He couldn't hold his curiosity. "Myleigh, what's this all about?" he asked.

"We must go to a place where I should not care to be recognized, especially with you," she said. "I suppose I'm actually deluding myself, but it makes me feel a little more comfortable in doing this. Go right at the second light, if you would."

Following her directions, he drove across town. It seemed to be a nice enough town, if nothing special, a lot like his own home town. Her directions took them to an older industrial section. Several of the factories appeared closed and boarded up; a couple were semi-collapsed piles of brick and rubble. She directed him to make one turn, then another, into what could only be called a shabby neighborhood. Trey had thought that his home was in the bad part of town, on the wrong side of the tracks, but this was far worse; his parents' neighborhood was a utopia by comparison. The houses were beat-up, tumbledown; junk littered the yards. Here and there was something that could be called a lawn, but mostly the yards were weeds and junk.

"Take a left at the corner," she ordered. "Observe the third house on the left. Drive slowly, but do not stop."

Trey turned the corner, and his eyes shot down the block. The third house on the left was about the worst he had seen in this bad neighborhood. Shabby and tumbledown barely described it, for it was worse than that. Three steps led up to a small porch; one step was broken. On the edge of the porch sat an older man, bottle of beer in his hand; he looked about as shabby and tumbledown as the house, fat and bald and obviously drunk.

Enlightenment had been dawning on Trey for some time. Now, all he could do was say quietly, "Your folks' house, huh?"

"Correct," Myleigh said from behind her sunglasses. "And the drunk on the porch is my father. You need not stop. I have gone to some effort to be sure that he shall never disgrace my presence again. I should not have come here, but you needed to see this. Trey, you need never feel or exhibit shame to me, or to anyone, about your own perceived mean and humble origins. Mine are far, far worse."

"I see," he said quietly. "Myleigh, I'm sorry."

"Do not be sorry," she said. "I have gone to great lengths to disguise my past. Only Crystal and Olivia, and now you, have seen this much. Randy has not, and you need not tell him. Take a left, and go back the way we came. Now that you have seen this, I shall not need to come here ever again."

"I said I'm sorry," he said. "I mean it. Not for what you were, but for the fact that I doubted you."

"My hero, you could not have doubted me more than I've doubted myself for many years. It is good to have that doubt in the past, at any rate, although I suspect that doubts shall always be there. But, I digress. You have heard the Jews-harp story I tell in the concerts many times, of course."

"Yeah," he said. "You told me the real story, once."

"Even then, I did not tell you the whole story," Myleigh said. "In fact, only a handful of people have heard the story you know so far. I probably would not have told you, had it not come at a time that I was emotionally overwhelmed. When I told you -- and Crystal, and Randy, and Olivia -- I intimated that I was allowed to keep Blue Beauty, in spite of the fact that it was too much of an instrument for a child, because of the small cost. The truth is that my great-uncle was fully aware that anything of value of mine in my household would soon have been pawned, and the proceeds spent on drink. Therefore he made up the story about the pawn shop. I think fifteen dollars was as much as he dared say; had it been twenty, it would have been pawned, I am sure. Trey, you have seen the pocket in the case liner, meant for music and such, have you not?"

"Sure, many times," Trey said sadly. "I never thought about it much."

"I happened to look in it not long after Blue Beauty was presented to me," she said. "Fortunately, I was alone at the time. My great-uncle could be a bit absent-minded in those days, I fear, for he should not have run the risk of leaving the receipt for Blue Beauty's purchase in it. With tax, it came to $1,574.86." She let out a long sigh and continued. "Even though I was a small child I realized the implications, and realized what would have happened had my parents seen that slip of paper. I slit open the liner, folded the receipt carefully, slipped it inside, and glued the liner back in place. There it remains. I have not seen it since that day, but I always have known it was there."

Myleigh stopped for a moment, took off the sunglasses, and dried her tears with her sleeve, then went on. "Trey, it was the nicest thing anyone ever did for me. More than Blue Beauty, that slip of paper told me that I was worth something, that someone had faith in me. That was the greatest gift anyone could have ever given me, and it was the gift that changed my life. Perhaps you will understand now why I was so despondent when Blue Beauty disappeared last winter, and why I was so joyful when you returned her. You, my hero, gave me back the only evidence from my childhood I had that someone thought I could be worth something, and it is for that, not for Blue Beauty herself, that I am ever grateful to you."

"I remember last spring, when Randy said that you had to put the soul into an instrument," Trey said. "I think I can understand now why you have trouble with Brown Bess."

"Yes," Myleigh said. "You will remember that I told him that I hoped to never have to go through the trials and tribulations it took to put Blue Beauty's soul into her. They were far more than Randy could ever have imagined. My great-uncle's faith in me, as evidenced by that slip of paper I had so carefully hidden, told me that I had no other choice but to learn to play her. Of course there was no money for a teacher, as if anyone could have been found who might have been able to teach me. I learned to play her how I could, by experimentation, by playing along with the radio and old records that happened to be about the house, and, to some degree, from books that I obtained from the library. You've heard me say on occasion that I had the benefit of not knowing that some of the things that I learned to do were considered impossible, so I learned them anyway. That was an absolute truth. It was the only way open to me, and it has proved to be an unexpected, if welcome benefit. But Trey, however I managed it, I had to manage it somehow. It was the only way I could repay my great-uncle's kindness, the only way I could honor the fact that someone really cared."

By now, they were nearing downtown; Trey pulled to the left, to make the turn to head back out to the four-lane. "Not yet," she said. "Please go straight. There's considerably more I must tell you, and one other thing I must do. This is the first opportunity I've had to do it."

Trey pulled over to the right lane, flicked off the turn signal. He could see that this experience was painful for Myleigh, and he didn't want to put her through it, but he couldn't see anything to do but let her get it out of her system. "Whatever you want," he said.

"Thank you, Trey," she said. She sighed, caught her breath as they drove through the intersection, and went on. "I mentioned that my great-uncle was a bit absent-minded at the time he gave me Blue Beauty," she said. "In truth, he was not a well man, although we did not realize it at the time."

"Alzheimer's?" Trey guessed.

"Yes, though it was not diagnosed as such for some time. He had to have had it when he gave me Blue Beauty, and he got slowly worse through the years. About the time I left for Northern the doctors began to realize that there was something worse than simple absent-mindedness. But, Trey, he was so proud of me for even going to college, it . . ." she let go with a big sob, and cried for a few seconds before she pulled herself together a little. "At least I had the joy of knowing that he knew what an inspiration he had been to me," she finally managed to say through her tears. "I'm sorry to say that I saw him very little. I had no vehicle at Northern, so I was dependent on Crystal for transportation. She took me to visit him a few times. He continued to get worse, and in my senior year at Northern, he had to be put in a nursing home."

She hung her head in silence for a moment. "I am ashamed to admit that I did not see him for nearly two years after that," she said. "He had but few visitors, but by then I was at Cornell, and later, Athens. I was still dependent on others for rides, but I did not wish Randy to know what you have just seen, so I did not ask him for his assistance. During my first year at Athens, I was able to borrow cars on occasion to drive over to the nursing home to see him, and then after the checks started coming from Jennifer, Randy helped me purchase my Neon so I had more freedom of movement. But in his failing days, I did manage to visit him several times. I always brought Blue Beauty along and played for him." The tears were rolling now. "Sometimes he recognized me a little, and sometimes I could make him happy for a while." She broke down into serious crying. "Trey, I have always felt that I should somehow have done more in his hour of need to comfort the man who so changed my life."

"Myleigh," Trey said gently. "Don't kick yourself for it. You were doing what he wanted you to do, and you made him proud. I can't think of a better way to have comforted him."

"I'm glad you think so," she said quietly, calming herself a little. "I've told myself that on many occasions, and maybe now I can believe it a little more." She cried a little more, then pulled herself together. "He died during my last semester at Athens," she said. "My great-uncle was not a wealthy man, but he had managed to pull together a small estate. He had no children, no relatives closer than my parents, and I am sure they enjoyed anticipating drinking up that estate. But he was wise enough to thwart them, and leave his estate to me. It came at a troublesome time, as I was trying to finish my dissertation, but I had no choice but to deal with it. I could not have managed it without Olivia's assistance. Have I ever mentioned her to you?"

"Just that one time, after the first concert," Trey said. "And, today, of course."

"You shall most likely never meet her," Myleigh said. "Perhaps it's just as well. I know I told you that Olivia is a lesbian, and rather forward about it. In fact, Randy once characterized her as a 'Feminazi,' and I confess he was correct. He had to meet her, three or four times, and they took an instant dislike to each other. Perhaps, worse than that. Randy said that his initial instinct was to, quote, neutralize, end quote, her. When Randy says that, he means something far worse."

"I know the word," he said. "We used it in the Army that way, too."

"She is rather abrasive, at best, most of the time, even toward other women. She is considerably less kind toward men, and it says something for Randy's control of his temper that he refrained from beating her to a bloody pulp. Olivia and I were but roommates, hardly even friends, but at the time of my great-uncle's death, she was the only assistance I had to turn to. I confess I could have not made it through that difficult period without her assistance." She sighed. "I could have called upon Randy I suppose, and perhaps I should have, but at the time I was trying to stay away from him to not interfere with his romance with Nicole, which was then in a very delicate period. Considerable magic existed between Randy and myself, and still does to a degree, though now we have learned to keep it under control."

"I've heard both you and Randy talk about that," he said. "It had to be difficult."

"It was difficult," she said, directing him to make a left turn into a cemetery that was coming up. "I questioned myself dearly for doing it, but I now confess that it was probably the right thing to do. By the time of my great-uncle's death, it was the only thing to do. In any case, as I said, the estate was not a great deal of money. Much of it had to go to covering the expenses at the nursing home, and funeral expenses, and when it was all paid, only a few hundred dollars remained. My parent's disappointment at not being able to have a big drunk on his funds was extreme, as you could imagine."

"Pretty upset, huh?" It seemed like a stupid thing to say, but he could imagine nothing else.

"That hardly describes it," Myleigh said. "Up until my great-uncle's death, I had seen my parents but three times in six years, and then only very briefly. Each time, I had Crystal with me. You are aware, I'm sure, that Crystal has a black belt in karate. I would not have risked visiting them without her protection."

"That bad?"

"That bad," Myleigh agreed, pointing for him to take a turn as they slowly drove through the cemetery. "After the funeral, there was a confrontation. Trey, you cannot imagine how desperately I wished that I might have Crystal present, but at least, I had Olivia. Olivia does not have the skills that Crystal has, but makes up for it in abrasiveness." She sighed, and waved him to a stop. "Please forgive me for the words I am about to use, but I see no choice but to use them. My parents have many problems, most of which they brought upon themselves through their attachment to the bottle. But, they cannot see that. They blame others for their situation. According to them, it's all the fault of the niggers and the queers that they are in the condition they are in. I heard that many times over when I was growing up, that everything bad that happened to them was somehow the fault of niggers and queers."

"And, you had Olivia with you," Trey smiled.

"Yes," Myleigh grinned evilly. It was good to see that grin, after all the sorrow of the last few minutes. "The infamous kiss. It was her idea, although I seized upon its wisdom in an instant. Trey, I told you that Olivia and I kissed. We were, uh, rather more demonstrative than a mere kiss."

"That must have been a sight to see," he grinned.

"Oh, indeed," she smiled. "It did solve the problem of my parents, once and for all. Since they blame niggers and queers for everything, the fact that I had turned queer on them with a nigger for a lover sealed forever the fact that they would hate me and stay away from me, and not wish to have anything to do with me." She smiled again. "I do not wish to test the case, but should they discover that I have once again turned straight; the fact that for a while, at least in their eyes, I was a lesbian with a black lover should suffice to keep the distance I desire."

"And, it worked?"

"It has worked well so far. This has been the first time that I have laid eyes upon my father since, and I hope it will be the last, but perhaps you will understand my small attempt at disguise." She smiled again. "Upon reflection over the years, I do have to admit that Olivia came up with a very elegant solution on the spur of the moment. It worked much better than having Crystal break their heads."

"Seems like it to me," he grinned as she opened the door. The story of Olivia and the kiss had obviously gotten her into a little better mood, but something told him he still hadn't heard the whole story. Let it come, he thought. She'll tell you what she wants, when she wants to.

"My hero, would you be so kind as to hit the trunk latch," he heard her say as she got out.

"Sure thing," he said, hitting the button, and getting out himself.

He watched as she went around to the trunk and got out a copy of the Harp Strings CD from one of the boxes there. She closed the trunk, went back to the seat, pulled a pen from her purse, and pulled a small garden trowel from the bag on the floor. "Come with me," she said, starting through the low gravestones in the cemetery. "I do not get here often," she explained. "In fact, I have not done so since a year ago last summer. I do pay a local florist to occasionally leave flowers here, especially on Memorial Day. My great-uncle was a veteran of World War II, and he took some degree of pride in it. Now, there is something I must do."

She got down on her knees in the wet grass, and began to cut through it with the trowel. "Can I help?" he said.

"No, Trey," she replied. "This is something I must do for myself."

In a few minutes, she'd managed to break off a small rectangle of sod and flip it back upon itself. She put down the trowel, tore the wrapping paper from the CD's jewel case, and pulled out the label, like he'd seen her do to autograph an album so many times. He watched silently as with tear-stained eyes, she wrote the simple words, "Thank You" on the label, inserted it back in the case, closed it, and placed it in the hole, flipping the sod back over it.

She stood up, brushed the loose grass from her nylons, and just stared down at the grave for a long time. Trey didn't want to intrude. This was her moment, but mentally he sent thanks of his own to the man who lay there, whom he'd never met -- and to whom, he began to realize, he owed a great deal, also.

Finally, she looked up. "Trey," she said. "Once Canyon Tours has been released, we must stop here again."

"I understand," he said. "It's fine with me."

"I know time is growing tighter," she said, turning back to the car. "But as long as we're in Franklin, there's one other thing I need to do."

"We've got plenty of time, Myleigh," he said, turning to follow her.

They walked silently back to the Cougar and got in. "Trey," she said, once he had the car moving out of the cemetery, "I believe that I once told you that my parents were utterly opposed to my getting a college education, and were much in favor of my producing as many grandchildren as possible, as soon as possible."

"Yeah," he said. "Back on the night after the first concert, but you've never said anything about it since."

"Again, it was something I would not have told you, except for the fact that it was an emotional evening, and you offered me support and a listening ear," she said. "But, it is none the less true. My parents had a much different vision of what I should do than I did. They wished to see me married as soon as possible, lest I be a further drain upon them, not that they gave me much in the way of support, and none in college. In fact, I believe they hoped that I should marry some man who would support them in their drinking habits. Should it not have been the case that I marry, they still were anxious for the grandchildren, that my income as a welfare mother could support their drinking. Crystal is aware of that, as is Olivia. I gave Randy only a brief outline of it, and I'm afraid that he has the impression that my parents are merely antifeminist, of the opinion that a husband should have the say in the household, with a wife hewing to his beck and call. I just could not bring myself to tell him the whole truth about how bad my background really is. You are aware that he is from a hard-working, wealthy family, and I feared that he'd have no way of understanding deep in his belly just how bad things were. You have a much better chance to understand it. You come from a humble background, surely, but your parents are hard-working and proud and tried to do the best they could for their children. It's evident in the kind of man they produced."

"You're right," he said. "Things were never that bad for me, but I was around kids who had it that bad, or nearly. None of them ever climbed out of that kind of background the way you have, though."

"Then you can imagine the amount of encouragement I had from everybody except my great-uncle," she said, directing him to make a turn. "By the time that he gave me Blue Beauty, I had already discovered my old books. I owned none, of course, but thank the good Lord for libraries. As I told you that time, it was already my dream to spend my life with those books. It was very nearly an impossible dream, but I had realized early on that there was but one way out of the nightmare I was living. My great-uncle and Blue Beauty were my only encouragement. It was some years before I realized that I had attained any great degree of skill with her, in fact not until that time at the renaissance faire that I tell about in the concerts, so at that time, the books seemed to be the only avenue open to me. That seemed impossible as well, but it was clear to me that college was the door to something out of here. I soon learned that my only hope of attending college was on the strength of excellent grades, and I worked extremely hard for them."

"You did very well with it," he said.

"Yes," she frowned. "In fact, I have considerable pride in that fact, even if no one else still alive in Franklin does." She sighed, and went on. "Trey, once I told Randy that I was hated and disdained in high school. He tried to understand, but again he does not have the background to understand it. The fact was that it was very, very bad. Of course, everyone knew about my parents, how poor I was, and it, excuse the language, pissed a lot of people off how hard I worked for those grades, how important they were to me, and most importantly, that I in fact got them. I had no friends, of course, just Blue Beauty, and no one knew of her -- she was just my little secret. Trey, you have no idea of how badly I was bullied, put down, ignored, and disdained for being smart and a hard worker. It would have been easy to let it overwhelm me, and at times it often did."

"But, you hung in there?"

"Trey, what other choice had I?" she said, directing him to park in the visitor parking in front of the city high school. "I will gladly admit to occasional contemplation of self-destruction. It was the worst during my senior year, when it was recognized that I was well ahead of the rest of my class in my grade point average, save for one individual. There was a teacher, never mind which, who apparently decided that a shunned, mousy little girl from the slums should not destroy the glory of the popular student-athlete who was close to me in grades. I had the misfortune to have a class with that teacher that year, and he marked me down for that reason, no other."

"That had to have been even worse," Trey said.

"Trey, I have never been so fucking pissed off in my life," Myleigh said angrily. Trey had been around her long enough to know that if she used language like that, the weapons better be well hidden. "Fortunately, the year before, the school had started having Advanced College Preparation classes, and they gave an extra point for the grade. This hotshot athlete hadn't bothered with AP classes, while I had taken two, and I aced those. The teacher involved hadn't been smart enough himself to take them into account and therefore didn't mark my grade down quite enough to attain his goal. He then tried to get the school board to change the policy, but on a vote of four to three, they refused, more on the idea that it wasn't right to change horses in midstream than it was for anything on my account. But by then, I was so disgusted by the whole school that I determined to carry through the plan that had kept me going on through bad days for years."

"Which was?" he said, seeing an evil glint in her eye.

"As valedictorian, I had to give a speech at graduation," she said. "I confess, I might not have worked quite as hard had I not known that would be the case. The speech was to be pre-approved by the administration, of course, so I prepared a couple paragraphs of meaningless blather, and they were duly approved."

"But that wasn't the speech you gave, right?" he smiled, guessing by now what would come.

"You are correct," she smiled. "I shall remember the words I spoke as I stood there with my diploma in my hand to my dying day: 'I have a message to you from the bottom of my heart: fuck you!'"

"Straight and to the point," he smiled. "If it's any help, you probably aren't the first smart kid who's had a tough time in high school and dreamed of doing exactly that. You're just the first I've ever heard about who actually did it."

"Oh, yes, I did," she smiled. "Next spring it will be ten years since I graduated. I am of two minds about the reunion. Perhaps I should not go, for I know if I did, I would be sorely tempted to state to the class, 'I am Dr. Myleigh Harris, professor of literature at Marienthal College, and a member of the Boreal String Band, with two solo albums to my credit. That message of ten years ago to you was from the bottom of my heart and has not changed in the slightest!'"

"Yeaaah," Trey said slowly. "Maybe it might be best if you gave that one a pass." He grinned, and sighed, "I take it that your speech was not received with applause."

"Oh, I could have said more, had I the time," Myleigh said. "I had considerably more to say, but that was at least a summation. In any case, I could not have said more as the principal was diving for the microphone as I ran for the door. He did catch up with me outside, and asked me to apologize, and I had the same message for him. I believe that he went back and apologized, while I left my cap and gown lying on the lawn, and ran down that alley over there to escape." She sighed. "Perhaps we better go, Trey. I had not realized how much hate for this place still lies within me. If we stay, I would be tempted to go inside and read him off for daring to apologize on my behalf."

"Sounds like a good idea," he said, starting the engine, and backing out of the parking place. "Any place else we need to go, or should we head to Pettisville?"

"Perhaps we should go," she said quietly. "I've done what I need to do here, and I think that I can tell you the rest of the story a little less emotionally with this place in the rear view mirror."

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