[Like a bad penny, Willie Boye, in some manifestation, keeps showing up in my stories. Who is this guy? Don’t forget, a penny saved is a penny earned. SB SM]
June
Willie Boye travels light. He carries his guitar (no case), his bedroll, and a small backpack mostly for guitar paraphernalia. He is always well-groomed and very clean.
Hitchhiking is, of course, illegal in The Villages, but everyone is so hospitable that the gesture of an extended thumb is completely unnecessary. His first ride takes him to a senior center in Savannah, Georgia, where he spends approximately twenty-five minutes outside before being invited in for a meal, an impromptu concert, and a bed for the night. In the morning, a staff member hooks him up with a delivery driver who takes him north to Georgetown, South Carolina, and puts him up on a sofa bed in his trailer.
The driver has a cousin—a long-haul driver headed north to a pick-up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey—where Willie looks up a lady who is a seasonal resident of The Villages and has returned home for the summer. He spends two nights in the proverbial lap of luxury before catching a ride to New Haven, Connecticut, with her grandson, who is picking up his older brother finishing up his sophomore year at Yale. Willie hangs out in the dorms for a night before a member of the janitorial staff invites him to stay at his apartment in West Haven. The janitor’s wife is a nurse at the Medical Center, and she knows a visiting nurse who lives in New Hampshire and is finishing up her shift the next night.
Willie hitches a ride with her and spends the evening entertaining them with a selection of Doo-Wop classics at their home in Claremont, New Hampshire. Her husband, a golfer playing the next morning at the Neshobe Club in Brandon, Vermont, has no trouble dropping Willie off at the address Ray wrote down for him on a napkin. Since Lorette and Little Ray do not have their mail transferred from their address in The Villages, the physical address Willie holds is for The Stead.
He knocks. Grace comes to the door.
“May I use your phone?” he asks. “I need to call Ray-Ray to tell him Willie Boye is here.”
He arrives on July 1 at 10:00 a.m. Ray calls around the neighborhood in the late morning, announcing, “He’s here!” and inviting everyone to an introductory barbecue—burgers and dogs—at their place for 6:00 p.m. Willie sequesters himself with Leo and Oakley after first dispatching them to fetch their guitars from home. After huddling with the young men for an hour, Willie joins the group, who are already into their second drinks and the full swing of neighborhood conviviality. He regales them with the account of his voyage northward, then takes a crack at guessing everyone’s favorite musical artist. He nails Emil (Willie Nelson) and Manny (Tom Petty), but misses badly on Teresa (AC/DC) and Muffy (he guesses Johnny Cash; it’s Elvis). He gives himself half-credit with Grace (he guesses Dylan, but she prefers Leonard Cohen) and Henry (Beatles/Kinks). He lands smack on the rosebud with Olive (James Taylor).
Ray-Ray builds a fire in the pit and encourages people to pull up a chair. Willie Boye takes an easy center stage. “Where shall we go tonight?” he asks.
“How about Nashville?” suggests Little Ray.
“Always a fun place to go,” Willie answers. “You know the boys that were here earlier—Oakley and Leo? I started them on a Nashville journey tonight. I told them by the end of the summer they’re going to be the Vermont Everly Brothers. I’m not exactly sure what that means yet, but we’re going to find out.”
“Sounds like Willie Boye plans to be around for a while,” Henry whispers in an aside to Grace.
“I don’t like this at all,” Grace whispers back. “I smell the heavy hand of Ray.”
“Give it a chance,” Henry says, patting her knee.
“Let me go a step further… I smell a rat.”
“Grace! You’re being ridiculous. Give the guy a chance.”
“I’ll shut up, but I’m telling you right now—”
“Thank you for shutting up!”
Willie idly strums chords on his guitar. “If I had a son, I’d definitely name him Boudleaux Bryant. But you know what? Boudleaux wasn’t even his first name. His first name was Diadorious. Jeez, I got Edward William, and he gets Diadorious Boudleaux? He was a classically trained violinist from Georgia who met up with Matilda Scaduto in Milwaukee, and by 1950 they had set up shop in Nashville as the city’s first husband-and-wife songwriting team.”
Willie pauses, his fingers moving over the fretboard. “They had their first hit in 1953 with a song called ‘Hey Joe.’ Now, I know what you’re thinking—Jimi Hendrix. But here’s the Bryants’ ‘Hey Joe.'” He plays a verse. “And here’s the one Hendrix recorded.” He plays another riff. “Same song? I don’t think so. Same title, different roots.”
“How does he know all this?” Olive asks Grace.
“Ever hear of AI?” Grace asks sarcastically. Olive ignores her.
And so it goes throughout the languid evening. Ray keeps the fire going. Willie occasionally breaks into a full-fledged song, but mostly he talks his way through the musical catacombs. He coaxes a verse of “Good-Hearted Woman” out of Emil and even gets Teresa to sing along on the chorus of “Highway to Hell.” As the fire dies down, Grace notices Olive in a close tête-à-tête with Willie. The next time she looks up, both of them are gone.
The next morning, after a breakfast of cereal, blackberries, and yogurt, Henry and Grace are sitting at the kitchen table.
“I’m going to go check on Olive,” Grace says, fully dressed and heading toward the door.
“Hold on. She’s a big girl, you know,” Henry says.
“I know, but last night might have been a little overwhelming for her.”
Sipping his coffee, Henry agrees. “I’ve got to hand it to Lorette and Ray-Ray on this one, though. Willie Boye is going to liven up this neighborhood.”
“I’m just going to look in on her.”
“Can’t you just call?”
Grace pauses, appears to consider the suggestion, then rejects it. “I’d rather look in on her.” She picks a small bouquet from the back garden to bring along.
It’s a short walk to Olive’s place, and Grace takes the shortcut between their properties. From a distance, she sees Olive and Willie having coffee on the deck. “Hey, you two!” she calls out early so as not to startle them.
“I brought you these,” she says, proffering the flowers.
“How pretty!” Olive says, filling a Mason jar with water for a makeshift vase.
“And hello again,” Grace says to Willie, who looks entirely at home lounging in one of Olive’s flowered robes.
“Mornin’,” says Willie. “Coffee, Grace?” She is moderately impressed that he remembers her name. “Is this an exceptionally beautiful morning, or are they all this beautiful around here?”
Olive hands Grace a mug. Grace takes a seat opposite Willie. “I’d put this one in the exceptional category. You two certainly didn’t waste any time getting to know each other…”
Willie smiles broadly. “At this stage of life, I’d have to rank ‘wasting time’ as one of the Seven Deadly Sins.”
“And it’s not exactly my first one-night stand…” Olive says. She smiles awkwardly and looks to the right. “Not… my… first rodeo,” she adds, stumbling over the words.
“I don’t mean anything by it,” Grace says. “It’s just that things seem to have happened—”
Willie stands abruptly and takes two quick strides to Olive, gently taking the coffee pot from her hand. “Olive, honey, smile for me. Give me a smile. Can you lift your arm? Do you know your name?”
Olive turns to him with a quizzical look on her face.
Grace speaks up, a touch indignant. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Willie cuts her off sharply. “Call 911. Right now. She’s having a stroke!”
“What are you talking about—”
“DO YOU HAVE A PHONE? CALL 911 RIGHT NOW! No questions!” Willie’s voice is commandingly forceful. He turns back to Olive, encouraging her to sit down in a soothing tone.
Grace dials 911, but stammers when the dispatcher answers. Willie takes the phone from her hand.
“We need emergency services immediately. Someone is having a stroke. We’re at—” He looks up at Grace. “What’s the address here?” He thrusts the phone toward her long enough for her to give the dispatcher the house number, then takes it right back. “DON’T DELAY. Tell the crew we’re dealing with an acute stroke so they can prepare for a medivac airlift at the hospital. Got it?”
Grace stands frozen, deferring entirely to Willie. “What can we do?”
“Nothing right now—just keep her calm and comfortable,” Willie says gently. “Help is on the way. You’re going to be fine, darling.”
The ambulance arrives in less than fifteen minutes. The crew is quick and efficient, with Willie handling all the critical handoff information. When asked for their names and relationships, Grace answers, “Neighbor.” Willie answers, “Friend.” When it’s time to load Olive into the vehicle, Willie hops into the back right before they close the doors.
The ambulance departs, leaving Hiram Road quiet once again. Grace retraces her steps back home. When she spots Henry out in the garden, he calls out, “You missed all the excitement!”
As Grace finishes telling him what happened on Olive’s deck, the distant beat of a helicopter rotor fills the air, heading toward the hospital.
Willie is a Rolling Stone
The Hiram Road community assembles at The ‘Stead at 4:00 p.m. that afternoon in an emergency session to discuss Olive. Grace, as mistress of the house and Olive’s unofficial best friend, leads the discussion.
“Here’s what we know, which isn’t much. Olive suffered a stroke this morning. She was taken by ambulance to the Kimball Community Health Center in downtown Eden and was transported via helicopter to the Dartmouth Regional Hospital, where she was admitted at 10:37 a.m. and is listed in ‘stable’ condition. The only other thing we know is that she was accompanied by Willie Boye.”
“Uh… question.” The speaker is Manny. “Why Willie Boye? Did I miss something?”
“Olive spent the night with Willie. They were together having coffee on her deck when I stopped by to visit this morning. It was Willie who recognized the symptoms of her having a stroke.”
There is a collective silence, finally broken by Manny: “It just goes to show how you need to plan for the unexpected—”
“Manny…” Henry interrupts, his voice carrying a threat. “You get one brief ‘I told you so,’ and if I hear one word about Olive’s house going on the market, they’ll be pulling the splinters of a real estate sign out of your…”
“Calm down, boys,” interjects Grace. “Here’s what we know: next to nothing. Olive has a daughter and a sister whom she doesn’t seem to keep in touch with. None of us know anything about her finances, her official records, whether she has a will, or an advance directive. For someone whose life is an open book, we know next to nothing about her.”
“That’s why I say—”
“Shut up, Manny.”
“I know where she keeps her stash,” volunteers Emil.
“And I know where she hides her back door key.”
“We all know that, but she doesn’t lock her door anyway.”
“I know where she hides the jewelry that she inherited from her grandmother.”
“You mean the purple tea tin? Best-kept secret on Hiram Road!” Suddenly, everyone is chiming in with Olive anecdotes.
“Okay, okay…” asserts Grace. “Let’s get back to order.”
“How does Willie Boye fit into this?” asks Manny. “Has anybody heard from him?”
“Uh… good question,” says Grace. “I haven’t heard anything.”
“Willie doesn’t do cell phones—at least for himself,” says Little Ray. “It’s not what he calls rock ‘n’ roll. I should probably drive to Dartmouth to pick him up.”
“He can’t stay at Olive’s.”
“I… I dunno,” says Ray. “He can stay with us, I guess. Willie’s kind of a rolling stone.”
Lorette says, “I propose that Grace and I go to Olive’s house and go through her things so that we can respond when we know something more. You know, look for the essentials—maybe things that she’ll need in the hospital.”
“I already have a list.” A new voice comes from the back of the room. Heads swing. It’s Willie Boye.
“And she’s told me where to find everything,” Willie continues. “Olive’s in good hands. She’s resting comfortably, and the doctors are calming things down in her brain. They’ll keep her for observation for a couple of days, then she will move to their in-house rehab for a few days before coming home. She’s going to be okay.”
“How’d you get here?” asks Little Ray, mouth agape.
“You, better than anyone, should know not to ask a question like that. I’ve got my marching orders on feeding the cats, what to bring her in the hospital, what plants to water, where she keeps the keys to her Prius, where the checkbook is, and what’s needed at the grocery store. You know what she would really like? A big greeting card with a ‘get well soon’ message from each of you.”
“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this,” Grace whispers to Henry.
“Then I suggest you get comfortable pretty damn fast, because Willie is about five steps ahead of you.” Their eyes meet. So do their minds.
“Lorette, will you be in charge of the greeting card? I think we’ve done as much as we can.” Grace draws herself up to full Chair of the Board status for a final proclamation. “Thanks to all for coming. That’s what good neighbors are for. But I also want to take a moment to acknowledge our newest neighbor, whose quick thinking is giving us this encouraging ending.”
She smiles at Willie Boye, who throws his hands skyward and exits to a standing ovation.
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