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CHAPTER I OF A FOUR PART STORY

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Mozelle Pilgrim drove her 1969 Buick Electra 225 Custom Convertible the way other women carried pocketbooks—with purpose, pride, and the unspoken threat that she might swing it at you if provoked.

The Electra was the sort of car that made a statement even when the engine wasn’t running. Gold paint, white top, a hood long enough you could host a cakewalk on it. Folks in Abilene claimed it cast shade in two neighborhoods at once. Mozelle liked the rumor. She did not correct it.

On a hot Saturday afternoon in 1971, she eased the car into the Dairy Treat lot on South First and, as usual, occupied one and a half parking spaces. She cut the engine, listening to the big V8 tick itself cool, and stepped out like she was exiting a stage instead of a Buick.

Cat-eye sunglasses. Pale blue scarf at her throat. Capris that fit just right. Her bouffant hair didn’t move in the faint breeze; her silk scarf fluttered like it wanted to escape whoever last sprayed it.

The Dairy Treat’s neon ice cream cone buzzed overhead. A couple of kids squabbled over sprinkles. A man in work boots leaned against his pickup like he’d personally invented gravity. Abilene moved slow in the heat, like somebody was dragging time with a rope.

Then Mozelle walked up to the window and time picked up its feet a little.

She ordered a vanilla-dip cone, paid with exact change, and returned to the Electra, which gleamed in the sun like it knew it was being admired.

She was two licks in when she heard it.

The unmistakable clop-clop-clop of sensible church shoes marching with intent.

She closed her eyes for a beat. “Lord,” she murmured, “if this is You, I apologize in advance for my tone.”

“Miss Mozelle! Oh, Miss Mozelle Pilgrim!”

Here came Oleta Vickers and Imogene Clark from First Baptist Abilene, striding toward her with clipboards held like summonses. Their smiles were bright enough to qualify as intimidation.

Mozelle straightened up, leaning casual against the Electra’s fender. “Ladies,” she said. “Y’all look like a pair of missionaries who took a wrong turn and found sin on special.”

Oleta laughed in the way women laugh when they intend to get what they came for. “We’re raisin’ money for the First Baptist Youth Group,” she said. “The F.B.Y.G., dear.”

“Praise the alphabet,” Mozelle replied.

Imogene stepped closer, clipboard forward. “We’re holdin’ a raffle. Five dollars a ticket. Wonderful prize.”

“What prize?” Mozelle asked, wary.

The two church ladies exchanged a look that said the Lord worked in mysterious ways, but they worked in bullet points.

“A piano,” Oleta chirped. “A real upright piano from the fellowship hall. Very good condition.”

Mozelle stopped mid-lick. “Why on earth would I need a piano?”

“Because you have a musical spirit,” Imogene said.

“Because you hum in the parking lot on Wednesday nights,” Oleta added.

“Because the Lord provides,” Imogene finished, like they were reading off a brochure.

“The Lord’s got a funny sense of humor,” Mozelle muttered.

They didn’t move. They had the patience of barn owls and the persistence of wasps. Mozelle glanced at the Electra, then at the Dairy Treat window, calculating possible escape routes and finding none that didn’t involve gossip.

“Five dollars is steep,” she tried. “I drive a Buick, not an oil well.”

“Five dollars is an investment in the future of our youth,” Oleta said sweetly.

“And in air conditionin’ for the revival they’re attendin’,” Imogene added. “They’re goin’ to Lubbock. Have you ever spent July in Lubbock without air? It’s a sin.”

Three minutes later, Mozelle was five dollars lighter and holding a strip of raffle tickets she fully intended never to think about again.

“Thank you for blessin’ the children,” Oleta said.

“Don’t thank me till you see who wins,” Mozelle replied.

She forgot about the tickets almost immediately. That was how trouble preferred to travel in Abilene—on the back of good intentions with no follow-through.

Life filled in around the edges. She went to her job at the insurance office downtown, where she translated adjuster jargon into English for people who’d backed into things they swore had not been there a minute ago. She stopped at the corner grocery. She took the Electra cruising down Treadaway in the evenings, letting the hot wind tangle with her scarf.

Sunday morning, she found herself at First Baptist almost by habit. The weatherman had promised triple digits, and the sanctuary’s air conditioner had more faith than some of its members. She sat three pews from the back, halfway under the balcony, firmly between salvation and the exit.

Brother Clements delivered a sermon about tithing in the careful, wheedling tones of a man asking people to pick up his tab with good cheer. Mozelle doodled in the margin of the bulletin, sketching the curve of the Electra’s fender from memory.

“And now,” Brother Clements said finally, “before we close, Sister Oleta has a special announcement about our youth fundraiser.”

Mozelle felt her stomach drop.

Oleta stepped up to the pulpit holding a crinkled brown paper bag full of ticket stubs. She beamed at the congregation.

“Brothers and sisters, we just want to praise the Lord for your generosity,” she said. “Because of y’all, our young people will be able to travel to Lubbock to hear the Word and not melt into little Baptist puddles.”

Polite chuckles.

“And now, the winner of the First Baptist upright piano, soon to be blessed with more hymns than you can shake a stick at.” She plunged her hand into the sack, swirled the tickets like she was stirring up a dust devil, and pulled one out.

She squinted, then brightened. “Well now. Our winner is… Miss Mozelle Pilgrim!”

The sanctuary went quiet for the exact length of time it takes an entire room to have the same thought: This ought to be good.

Mozelle said, louder than she meant to, “I believe there’s been a mistake.”

Brother Clements chuckled nervously. “The Lord don’t make mistakes, Sister.”

“He does have a sense of humor, though,” somebody whispered.

Oleta beckoned. “Come on up here and claim your blessing, Mozelle.”

There was no dignified way to refuse without creating the kind of scene people in Abilene would talk about until the next tornado. Mozelle was not about to give them that kind of material.

She smoothed her dress, lifted her chin, and walked down the aisle like she was accepting a beauty pageant crown she hadn’t competed for. She took the certificate from Oleta, smiled a smile that made sugar crystals nervous, and turned to head back to her seat.

“We all look forward to hearin’ you play,” Oleta murmured.

“I don’t play,” Mozelle said through her teeth.

“Well, you will,” Imogene hissed from behind the organ. “The Lord does not hand out pianos to idle hands.”

The congregation clapped. Someone called, “Play us a song, Mozelle!” Brother Clements launched into the closing prayer before the crowd could organize a request list.

Two days later, a pickup truck rattled to a stop in front of Mozelle’s duplex just off Butternut. Two sweating teenagers hopped out: a boy in a stretched-out youth camp T-shirt and a girl with a sunburned nose and the air of someone who’d been promised lemonade at the end of a very long job.

“Well, hey, Miss Pilgrim,” the boy said. “We got your prize.”

The upright piano sat in the back of the truck, strapped down with two fraying ropes and an amount of faith not normally recommended by the Department of Transportation. Its dark finish was scarred from decades of fellowship hall duty. A strip of tape still clung to one side, marker letters faded but legible: DO NOT MOVE.

“It just needs a little tunin’,” the girl said. “Brother Clements says this is a real blessing.”

“I’m sure he does,” Mozelle replied. “Where he wants it is back in the fellowship hall.”

“Ma’am?” the boy blinked.

She sighed. “Bring it on in. We’ll put it against that wall.”

Getting the piano into the duplex took forty-five minutes, three near-deaths, one miracle turn in the hallway, and a brief but earnest prayer when a leg caught on the doorframe and everyone saw their lives flash before their eyes scored to “Just As I Am.” By the time they muscled it into the living room against the far wall, Mozelle’s hair had surrendered. A loose curl clung damply to her neck.

“There,” the boy panted. “All set.”

The girl stood expectantly. “Ain’t you gonna try it?”

“That thing’s been set on ‘Victory in Jesus’ since 1949,” Mozelle said. “I’m not sure it knows any other song.”

“You could just play a note,” the girl said. “Make sure it works. Brother Clements says you’re very musical.”

“Brother Clements says a lot of things.”

But they kept looking at her with open faces and fresh sins, and she’d never been able to stand around too long in that kind of earnestness without relenting.

“Fine,” she said. “One note. Nobody gets saved.”

She sank onto the narrow bench, which creaked like it had seen too many revivals. Up close, the piano smelled like lemon oil and old paper. A dried corsage had been tucked into the music rack at some long-ago church wedding; it crumbled under her fingers.

She pressed a key. The note came out slightly flat, like a singer with a summer cold.

Another key. Then a third. Her fingers hovered, then settled.

They remembered.

Almost without her consent, her right hand slid into a lazy F chord, then B-flat, then C. A progression that lived in her bones. Not a hymn. A different animal—swing in its spine, sunlight in its teeth. A tune she hadn’t heard in a long time.

She played four bars before she realized what she was doing.

“What song is that?” the girl whispered.

Mozelle snatched her hands back and slammed the lid down more fiercely than she’d intended. The keys gave a little gasp.

“It’s nothin’,” she said. “Just old noise. Y’all tell Brother Clements the delivery was successful, and if he raffles off the air conditioner next, he and me are gonna have words.”

They retreated to the truck, glancing back once, like they’d witnessed something they shouldn’t have. Mozelle closed the door behind them and stood for a long moment in the quiet living room.

The piano crouched against the wall, hulking and self-important, like an uninvited guest planning to stay through the holidays.

She walked past it and busied herself in the kitchen. Opened a can of soup. Fussed with dishes that didn’t need fussing. But every time she glanced toward the living room, the dark outline was there, tugging at her attention like a loose thread.

She went to bed early and stared at the ceiling until the shadows shifted into morning.

Sometime after midnight the next night, she gave up on pretending she was asleep.

The house was still. Outside, a passing car hummed by, then faded. Streetlight spilled through the curtains in thin, pale lines.

Mozelle padded into the living room barefoot. The piano loomed in the half-dark.

She sat down on the bench, the wood cool under her legs. She rested her hands on the closed lid.

“You don’t know me,” she told it quietly. “And I don’t owe you a blessed thing.”

Silence.

She lifted the lid.

Her fingers found G. Then C. Then F. A hymn, at first, because it was safe: “Softly and Tenderly.” Simple, steady, the kind of song you could play half asleep or half heartbroken.

Her voice slipped in quietly on the second line. It was lower than it used to be, a little rough around the edges, but sure.

She finished the verse and meant to stop.

She didn’t.

Her hands kept moving, sliding into another progression, one she hadn’t allowed herself to touch in years. The rhythm shifted. A walking bass, right hand bouncing in bright little triplets. She heard the ghosts of a fiddle, a steel guitar, other voices braiding around her own.

“Oh, the road is long and dusty,” she sang under her breath, “but the Lord knows where it goes…”

The notes filled the small room, big as any stage she’d ever stood on. For a moment, Abilene fell away. There was only the tune, the keys under her fingers, the old, fierce joy that came from making something bigger than yourself out of air and nerves and courage.

When the last chord faded, the house seemed to exhale.

Mozelle stared at her hands like they belonged to somebody else. Then she closed the lid gently this time, as if tucking in a sleeping child.

“That’s enough,” she whispered. “We are not on the radio anymore.”

By mid-week, everyone in her circle knew Mozelle Pilgrim had acquired a piano.

Her neighbor Mrs. Delgado mentioned it over the chain-link fence while hanging laundry. The clerk at the grocery store asked if Mozelle was takin’ requests now. The ladies at the beauty shop speculated about whether this meant Abilene might finally get a decent soprano in the Christmas cantata.

Mozelle pretended not to hear any of it.

Friday evening, she pulled the Electra into her carport, turned off the ignition, and sat with her hands on the wheel. The engine pinged as it cooled. Cicadas buzzed in the elm tree out front.

Then, with a little crackle, the Buick’s half-broken radio sprang to life.

Three seconds of music spilled out—fiddle, steel, and a woman’s high harmony clear as a bell. It sounded like it had been recorded in a gymnasium in 1940 and never properly let out since.

Mozelle froze.

The harmony line twisted through her ribs, looking for its old place.

Then the radio fizzled back to static and went dead.

She reached forward and turned the knob carefully to off, as if she were quieting something fragile.

Inside, the piano waited, hulking and patient.

She walked past the living room without looking in, heated a frozen dinner, watched half the news with the sound down, and went to bed earlier than usual.

The shoebox in her closet stayed where it was: behind a stack of purses and a winter coat, full of old photographs, a program printed on cheap paper, and a newspaper clipping about a group of women whose smiles never quite reached their eyes.

She didn’t open it.

She didn’t have to. She knew every word in it by heart.

Saturday morning dawned hot and bright, the kind of West Texas light that didn’t bother with subtlety. Mozelle tied a yellow scarf around her hair, slipped on sunglasses, and decided she’d had enough of breathing recycled air and memories.

She needed wind.

The Electra started on the first turn of the key, rumbling like an amused giant. She backed out of the carport, swung onto the street, and pointed the nose north, out past the shopping centers and gas stations, toward where Abilene gave way to open country and sky.

She rolled the windows down, let the hot air rush in. The long hood stretched out in front of her like a golden runway headed nowhere in particular. Telephone poles ticked by. Mesquite trees hunched in the heat. The horizon shimmered.

Out here, she was just a woman in a big car with a tank full of gas and nowhere she had to be.

Nobody passing her on the highway would know there was a piano in her living room that smelled like lemon oil and history. Nobody would guess there was a shoebox in her closet full of proof that her life had started over once already under circumstances she did not discuss.

They wouldn’t know she’d stood in front of a microphone with other women once, her voice wound into theirs, going out over the airwaves to places she’d never see. They wouldn’t know about barbed wire and stage lights sharing the same sky.

They wouldn’t know anything at all.

Mozelle liked it that way.

She eased the Electra a little faster, feeling the big car settle into the road like it meant it. The past could stay in its box. The piano could sit quiet. The old songs could hum in her bones where nobody else could hear them.

Up ahead, the highway stretched out, bright and uncertain.

Mozelle Pilgrim drove toward it with her hair wrapped up, her sunglasses on, and her secrets riding silent in the backseat, exactly where she intended to keep them.

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