“Hey, baby,” his grandmother said, “ain’t you something.”
“You are filthy,” his mother observed.
“What?” he said. “What did you want?”
His grandmother said, “You got to get you some breakfast before you try chasing down that fiddle.”
His mother rolled her eyes and sighed, but did not contradict her mother.
All that morning, and well into the afternoon, Ray searched. At one point he found a few boxes of piano music, so he figured he was getting close. Beneath a pile of moth-eaten coats, four huge boxes lurked. Inside he found more coats. He lifted out each one, shook it. How many coats do people need in Georgia?
His search did turn up one artifact, though. Under one of the far eaves, in the top drawer of a shiny yellow dresser with green knobs, an old tan envelope sat on a pile of 1981 tax returns. Ray was about to close the drawer and move on to the next when he deciphered Leon Marks in rough pencil scrawled across the back of the envelope. Leon Marks, he knew, was his grandmother’s grandfather—PopPop. He searched carefully through the dresser and the surrounding area but did not find the violin.
After 2:30 he had to take a bathroom break. His grandmother was in the living room watching a soap opera.
“I found a lot of stuff but no fiddle,” he told her. “Are you sure it’s up there?”
She held out her hand to him, not seeming to mind that his right arm was covered in some kind of thick gluey dust, with blackened cobwebs across his knuckles. “It’s up there. Your granddaddy put it up there years ago. You hungry? I can fix you some lunch.”
“I did find something, though.” He handed her the envelope with PopPop’s name on it.
“Oh, baby, you found this?” She turned it around and around in her hands, looking up at him, but making no effort to open the envelope.
“I thought you might want it. Looks like PopPop’s papers.”
“It sure is,” she said. “That’s exactly what this is.”
“I’m going to go back and look some more,” he said. “I’ll be back down in a little while.”
“You be careful, you hear me? It’s in an alligator-skin case. The handle is a little loose so be careful how you pick it up.”
He lost track of time, lost himself in the rhythm of unearthing a pile, going through each section one piece at a time, putting the pile back.
“Get down here!” His mother was yelling up at him again. “You get down here right this minute.”
“In a sec,” he called.
“I said, right now. It’s after nine and we got pizza. You wasted enough time on this foolishness.”
He looked back at the stack he’d half finished processing, clambered downstairs covered in dust and cobwebs.
His mother was tapping her fake nails—now silver and red—on the wall. “No,” she said.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no. You ain’t coming down here like that. You go take you a shower and get changed. Right this second.”
After he showered and changed, he gulped down two mushroom slices, folded a third, and, chewing, started back up the stairs to the attic.
“Uh-uh, no you don’t,” his mother said. “You been up there enough.”
“I think Mama got rid of that thing years ago and forgot about it,” Aunt Joyce said, taking another sip of her wine. “You remember when she threw away your sweater with the clouds on it?”
“Girl, I was so mad. You remember that?”
“What time are we getting on the road?” Ray asked.
“Eight thirty. You go up and pack.”
“Eight thirty? Can’t we leave a little later?”
“No. You know I don’t want to hit traffic.” He knew that tone, and knew not to argue. After kissing his grandmother good night, he set his alarm for 6:00 a.m. There was that one area under the eaves, not too far from the piano music, where he was now convinced the fiddle had to be hiding. He could take one more look before they left.
He was up before the alarm clock. The fiddle was not under the eaves. It felt like only moments before his mother was calling for him. Eight a.m. already.
Downstairs his grandmother was waiting. “You find it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, you sure did look for it. I’m proud of you, baby.”
“I just wanted to see it,” he said softly.
“It ain’t going anywhere, don’t you worry about that.”
“I told you,” his mother said. “It’s probably not there.”