Rough Country

down to the dozer from a second bulldozer; the second dozer was apparently trying to pull the first one out of the muck.
    “Guess what he got a job driving,” Signy said.
    “The bulldozer?”
    “He has accidents,” Zoe said.
    Virgil gave the photo back to Signy, who asked, “You want another beer?”
    “I shouldn’t,” Virgil said. She went and got him another one, and said, “I’d give you a sandwich, but I don’t have anything in the house. I usually eat out.”
    “Got a bag of sweet corn in the truck,” Virgil said.
    Signy’s eyes lit up: “I could do some sweet corn. That’s just boiling water, right?”
     
     
     
    VIRGIL GOT THE CORN and she looked in the bag and said, “Cucumbers. I could put together a salad. I’ve got some apples and lettuce. . . .” Virgil got the impression that she wasn’t big on cooking.
    Signy wandered off to the kitchen and Virgil sat down again and said to Zoe, “Tell me all about this band. Tell me about Wendy and Berni and whoever else. . . .”
     
     
     
    ZOE TOLD HIM that the band had been around for two or three years, but that Wendy had been something of a Grand Rapids celebrity since middle school. “She’s always been the best singer that anybody ever knew. When she was a little kid, she used to sing with a polka band, and even travel around with them. Around the Iron Range, I mean. Not all over.”
    Wendy and Berni became best friends in middle school, and Berni learned the drums because she wasn’t any good at other musical instruments. Together they played in a high school rock band that later became a country band when Wendy decided that she had more of a country voice. She also decided that women got a better break in country music than in rock.
    After high school, she worked for a while at a local convenience store, and then for her father, breeding dogs. “Nasty hairy yellow-looking things,” Zoe said. “Though I guess they get a lot of money for them. They’re some kind of rare dog, or something.”
    “I wonder if she literally breeds them,” Signy said from the kitchen. “She breeds everything else.”
    “Shut up, Sig,” Zoe said.
    All the time she was working, Wendy had a band. The band was getting better—they were shedding the old high school part-timers, and were picking up some pros—and Wendy’s voice was getting richer. So was her love life.
     
     
     
    ZOE SAID, and Signy agreed, between bouts of looking into the corn kettle, that Wendy was a heartless slut who played her lovers off against each other, and sometimes slept with men to demonstrate her independence.
    “But she’s really talented. You heard her,” Zoe said, her face alight. “She’s got this magnetism that pulls people in. Even McDill. That’s what all the big stars have. You can’t figure it out, but you can feel it.”
    Berni, on the other hand, was a below-average drummer, Zoe said. “She can do it, but she’s not so creative. Wendy told me that.”
    “You think Wendy’ll dump her?” Virgil asked.
    Signy said, “If Wendy thought Berni could cost her a recording contract, she’d drop her off the bus on the side of the interstate.”

    WENDY KNEW THAT she had to move—Taylor Swift, Zoe said, was two years younger than Wendy, and was already a huge name with the best-selling album in the U.S.
    “But you know what? Taylor Swift is like Grace Slick. You know who Grace Slick was?”
    “Jefferson Starship?” Virgil ventured.
    “Yeah, and another band, Jefferson Airplane, before that. Everybody thought that she was going to be the queen of rock and roll. Then along came Janis Joplin, and Janis Joplin was the queen of rock and roll. Wendy is Janis Joplin. But she’s got to make a move. She knows it. Time is pressing on her.”
     
     
     
    WENDY AND BERNI LIVED together in a double-wide out at Wendy’s father’s place, Zoe said. Berni and Wendy’s father were tight.
    “I think he’s the one that got Wendy back with Berni, instead of with me,” Zoe said.
    “Are you still in love?” Signy asked.
    “Well, what do you think?”
    Signy said to her sister, “I think it might be a lack of other opportunity. If you were down in the Cities, with lots of other women, you’d be fine. But up here, what’re you going to do? Go out with Sandy Ericson? I mean, Wendy’s what you got.”
    Zoe faked a shiver and said to Virgil, “Sandy goes about two-twenty in her boxer shorts.”
    “And it ain’t muscle,” Signy said. To her sister: “You