An Unlikely Angel

Chapter 2 Around the same time Big John was kicking down the door to Sammy's room, Jule Jones was at the far end of the motel in a room of her own, unaware, putting new strings on her guitar. A scarred yellow tom cat, a stray who'd finally allowed Jule to befriend him with a can of tuna a month or so back, watched her every move from atop two boxes stacked by the window. This was the cats third time in her room and his first time laying down. When the strings were on and the guitar tuned, Jule strummed the D- chord and cut her eyes playfully at the cat. She gave him a little wink. "Any requests, Wily?” Hmm? Anything special you wanna hear?" The cat, missing a piece of his tail, flicked what was left of it and yawned. "No? No request. Well, ok then." In one sweeping motion she reached inside the bag of potatoe chips beside her and put a handful in her mouth. She sucked the three fingers she'd used in the process clean in three quick pops then wiped the fingers on the knee of her jeans. "Now," she said, chewing. "Since you've offered me no request big kitty, what I'm gonna do is play you a song by some really good friends of mine who I never got the chance to meet." She wrapped her long blond hair over to one side and lowered her head. "The band was called Kansas and the songs called “Dust in the Wind." The hair along the cat’s spine stood up. He sensed, if such a thing’s possible, that he and Jule were about to have a moment. In the middle of wiping his face with a paw, he froze the way he froze when he spotted a tasty creature he stood a good chance of eating. He held his breath. It was almost as if he realized- in a way that transcends what it's like to be animal or human and connects things all together- that he was witnessing brilliance. In a dingy motel room on the edge of a rumpled bed, a bag of yesterdays Plain Lays potato chips propped against her leg, Jule played her own version of the songs introduction at a level that only a handful of musicians ever reach. She was a few days shy of her 20th birthday. She was nine years old the first time she ever picked up a guitar. At a yard-sale with her aunt Frances, her mothers sister, she came across a much traveled and out of tune black Gibson. She took a seat on the ground behind a folded up ping-pong table and tuned the guitar as if she'd done it before. Within a minute she was playing a one string rendition of 'Down in the Valley.' Shortly after that she found the D-chord, then the C. If there'd been the right kind of witness to what was happening there behind the ping-pong table, somebody with an interest in prodigy’s and phenom’s and things such as that, who knows where the road might've lead. But there were no witnesses except for her aunt Frances, and Frances didn't harbor that kind of interest. With one hand on a meaty hip and the other holding a Benson & Hedges cigarette, Frances stood there listening for about ten seconds before remarking, "I didn't know you knowed how to play a guitar." Juel looked up with a light in her eyes and said, "Neither did I." She sang the first verse of 'Dust in the Wind' for the cat in the voice of a real life, honest to God angel (It'd been a girl exactly like her ? years past who first inspired an old woman in a one room church to make the connection, and first utter the phrase 'The voice of an angel'). The stray cat, perfectly still, fully alert, exhaled the breath he'd been holding and purred for the first time in his year long life. 'I close my eyes only for a moment and the moments gone. All my dreams pass before my eyes a curiosity Ahh, dust in the wind All they are is dust in the wind.' Just as she finished the verse something thumped in the distance. It was just enough to divert both Juel and the cat’s attention, and the moment between them passed. Without consciously thinking about it Juel went from playing Dust in the Wind to something of her own. The one song leading into the next. The words started to come from who knows where. 'I need to take a bath in the O- cean, try one more time to save my soul. Aint’ even talkin' bout redemption now it's too late and I'm too damn cold... it's time to move on. Pretend my sins are now washed away, dance a new dance in knee deep waves, and for one fine moment, yall, everything seems... A-OK… Her voice trailed off as she continued to play. Eventually she went back and sang the song over, what she had of it, four or five times. Another verse was right there like a dream she was trying to remember, but she just couldn't quite find the right words.