Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't born in the mountains. Nor had he been raised in a cave. His appearance, though, often led people to think otherwise.
A barber's chair was as likely a place for him to visit as the moon. I don't believe he had ever shaved. His hair, long and unkempt, looked even longer thanks to his seemingly endless beard, which was braided and knotted at the bottom. If unfurled, it probably would have dipped well below his waist.
His mannerisms and manner, while peculiar, were so only in that he was almost religiously polite. What at first glance might appear stand-offish was nothing more than his attempts at being inobtrusive. He was almost like some Appalachian monk, raised by a society trapped in the past, who occasionally ventured into town.
He was extremely well-read and more tech savvy than most teenagers. Utmost, he maintained his privacy. No one knew just where he lived. He came and went at his own leisure, unnoticed by the world until he made his presence known. All of these things combined only added to his mystery.
It was a cold, rainy morning as he stood on the platform at the Amtrak station. He silently prayed for the sun to part the clouds. In his mind, this would be the ultimate validation of his burgeoning love. To see her step off the train, sun overhead drying her path to his arms - would speak the volumes he was already writing in his heart.
Such is the foolishness of young, lustful love. A baseless emotion aroused by biological urges and desires to mate. Delusional, dishonest, and often self-defeating.
But he was in too deep to think clearly on the subject.
She, on the other hand, was more pragmatic. Even in her small home town of Holly Springs, she learned that life is far too often transactional - especially in young romance. Not as wild as many of her peers, she logically understood the ideas behind arranged marriages. Such were designed to build communities, coupling fortunes into larger ones. Breeding familial livestock to keep the bloodline going for generations. This wasn't such an arrangement, but she felt it might be the next best thing.
At least they had some shared basic interests. Theirs would be, if both were honest, a life filled with music. The blues, to be precise.
He was an ardent fan of the genre.
Her grandfather was a musician - the real deal. He had come up playing with the likes of Junior Kimbrough and Charlie Feathers.
He could rattle off titles, composers, recording details, and label names.
She could rattle off the lived memories of the people, places, and things behind the music.
It could be perfect.
The train was late.
Of course it was.
Nothing ever arrived the way it did in songs.
He stood beneath the narrow overhang of the Amtrak platform with both hands buried in the pockets of an old army surplus coat, shoulders curled inward against the cold rain. Water dripped steadily from the edge of the corrugated roof beside him, tapping the cracked concrete like a leaky faucet. Beyond the tracks, the river looked black and swollen beneath the gray morning sky.
In his inside pocket rested the photograph.
Not a real photograph. Not really.
A cheap inkjet print on thin glossy paper bought at a drugstore. The corners had curled from being handled too often. There were faint horizontal lines through the image where the printer cartridge had dragged. Her skin carried that strange over-saturated warmth cheap printers gave to everybody. The shadows beneath her eyes had disappeared entirely in the bad contrast.
Still, he had studied it for weeks.
The photograph showed a woman leaning against the hood of an old Buick somewhere beneath a pecan tree. One hand rested on her hip. The other held a cigarette. Her smile looked halfway between amusement and challenge.
He had imagined everything else.
The softness of her voice.
The smell of her hair.
The rhythm of her footsteps.
The exact shade of her eyes in daylight.
He had filled in the blanks the way lonely men always did.
Around him, the station remained nearly empty. An exhausted-looking college kid sat hunched over a phone charger near the vending machines. A woman in yoga pants, hospital scrubs, and a hoodie smoked nervously beneath an umbrella at the far end of the platform.
He glanced again toward the tracks.
Still nothing.
Rain hissed softly against the rails.
He silently prayed for sunlight.
Not because he was religious. Not exactly. But because some childish, embarrassing part of him wanted validation from the universe itself. He wanted the clouds to split apart the moment she stepped off the train. He wanted steam rising golden from the tracks. He wanted warmth. He wanted arrival.
He wanted a goddamned movie scene.
Instead, the station smelled like wet concrete, diesel fuel, and old coffee.
He reached into his coat and unfolded the photograph one more time.
The paper was getting soft around the edges now.
“You keep lookin’ at that thing, it’s gon’ dissolve.”
The voice startled him.
The old black janitor standing near the doorway grinned around a toothpick.
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“Must be love.”
He almost laughed at that.
Love.
No, not love.
Anticipation, maybe.
Projection.
Hope dressed up in old blues lyrics and nicotine.
The distant horn finally echoed through the valley.
His stomach tightened instantly.
The train emerged slowly through the rain, silver and filthy from hundreds of miles of bad weather. Brakes screamed softly against steel. Water sprayed outward beneath the wheels.
People began stepping down one at a time.
An elderly couple.
A young mother dragging two children.
A man in a business suit already shouting into his phone.
Then he saw her.
And immediately understood the danger of photographs.
She looked like herself.
That was the problem.
Not the perfected self his mind had assembled over weeks of messages and late-night conversations. Not the blues-ghost version of her that had slowly formed in his imagination while old Junior Kimbrough records spun in his apartment.
The real woman stepped down carrying too much luggage and looking irritated by existence itself.
Her hair was thicker and rougher than it appeared in the photo, pulled back hastily beneath a knitted cap. Her coat strained slightly at the buttons around her hips. Her skin carried small blemishes the printer had erased entirely. She looked older somehow. Not old. Just real.
Then she spoke.
“Lawd Jesus, it cold as SHIT up here.”
The accent hit him like a shovel.
Not soft.
Not seductive.
Not the slow honey-drip drawl he had unconsciously invented.
This was deeper. Stronger. Sharper around the edges. Mississippi Delta flattened and stretched through generations of hard weather, cigarettes, churches, arguments, and front porches.
It carried weight.
History.
Poverty.
Family.
It was the voice of an actual place.
And for one horrifying instant, his heart sank.
Not because she was ugly.
Not because she had deceived him.
But because reality had entered the room.
His fantasy shattered so fast he could physically feel it happen.
And immediately afterward came shame.
Hot and vicious.
Because he realized what he had done to her without ever touching her.
He had turned her into scenery.
Into symbolism.
Into salvation.
A girl from Mississippi.
Like she was a song title instead of a human being.
She spotted him before he managed to compose himself.
“Well I’ll be damned,” she laughed. “It IS you.”
He forced a smile and stepped forward to help with her bags.
Up close, she smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, cocoa butter lotion, and the stale recycled air of long-distance trains.
“You drove all the way down here in this weather?”
“Wasn’t gonna let you wander around the station alone.”
“Mmmhmm.” She eyed him curiously. “You taller than I thought.”
“You too.”
The second the words escaped his mouth he regretted them.
Her eyebrow lifted slightly.
“Excuse me?”
“I mean - not taller. I just meant...”
She burst out laughing.
“Oh honey, don’t start panickin’ now. We ain’t even left the station yet.”
Her laughter was loud.
Not delicate.
Not cinematic.
Real laughter. Open-throated and uncontrolled.
And somehow that hurt worst of all.
Because somewhere deep inside himself he realized he had wanted her to arrive already edited.
They walked together through the rain toward the parking lot.
Then she saw the car.
“Well shit.”
He glanced back proudly at the long black Cadillac.
“Built in sixty-six,” he said.
“That your daddy’s?”
“No. Mine.”
“You drivin’ around in a funeral home special?”
He smiled faintly.
“Maybe.”
“Naw.” She grinned. “I kinda like it.”
Rain rolled in silver streams across the massive hood.
The car looked beautiful from a distance.
Up close, reality returned again:
small rust bubbles beneath the chrome,
a cracked rear taillight,
duct tape hidden beneath one weather strip,
and an interior smelling faintly of gasoline, wet wool, and old records.
As he loaded her bags, she quietly studied him.
The beard.
The nervousness.
The careful politeness.
“You always this quiet?”
“Usually.”
“You nervous?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
He almost answered honestly.
Because you were safer as imagination.
Instead he shrugged.
“You rode twenty hours on a train to meet a stranger.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
They drove through the rain in silence awhile.
The heater clicked weakly beneath the dashboard. Old blues played softly through worn speakers.
Finally she sighed.
“You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“You ain’t nothin’ like I pictured.”
He laughed quietly.
“Same.”
“Lemme guess.” She smirked. “You thought I was gon’ come floatin’ off that train smellin’ like magnolias and old records.”
He gripped the steering wheel tighter.
Her grin widened.
“Oh my God. You DID.”
“No,” he lied weakly.
“Honey please. I know white boy blues disease when I see it.”
Despite himself, he laughed.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It mean y’all hear three sad songs and decide sufferin’ got magic powers.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It ain’t wrong neither.”
Rain beat steadily against the windshield.
She looked out the passenger window for a long moment before speaking again.
“My granddaddy used to say white folks loved the blues ‘cause they could visit sadness whenever they wanted. Then go home when supper was ready.”
That landed harder than he expected.
The windshield wipers dragged rhythmically back and forth.
“You think that’s me?”
“I think,” she said carefully, “you lonely.”
The statement hit with frightening precision.
Not cruel.
Not judgmental.
Simply observed.
He stared ahead at the road.
“You ever notice,” she continued softly, “how people always think the thing far away gon’ fix ‘em?”
He said nothing.
“Folks down south dream about New York.
Folks up north dream about the Delta.
Poor folks dream about money.
Rich folks dream about authenticity.
Everybody think somebody else got the answer.”
“And what do you think?”
She smiled tiredly.
“I think everybody mostly just gets older.”
The rain finally began easing as they crossed the bridge into town.
Weak sunlight struggled somewhere behind the clouds but never fully emerged.
He suddenly became aware of how absurd everything was:
the weeks of anticipation,
the carefully chosen records waiting back at his apartment,
the romantic expectations,
the desperate private belief that this woman might somehow begin his real life for him.
Beside him sat an actual human being with tired eyes and swollen feet from a twenty-hour train ride.
Not destiny.
Just another lonely person.
He felt something collapsing quietly inside himself.
Not hope exactly.
Something younger than that.
Something stupider.
She leaned back against the cracked leather seat and closed her eyes.
“You know,” she murmured, “I almost didn’t come.”
“Why?”
“Because I figured one of two things was true.”
“And?”
“Either you was dangerous…” she said sleepily, “…or sad.”
“And which am I?”
One eye opened slightly.
“Oh honey,” she sighed, “you ain’t nearly dangerous enough.”
He lived exactly where she expected him to.
Not in the mountains.
Not in a cave.
Just in a small second-floor apartment above an old storefront that had once been a tailor shop sometime during the Carter administration. The narrow stairwell smelled faintly of wet wood, dust, and somebody’s cooking grease drifting up from the alley below.
“You really DO live like a cryptid,” she muttered as she climbed the stairs behind him.
“I’m not that bad.”
“Honey, you drive a hearse and disappear into the woods for days at a time. You absolutely that bad.”
He laughed despite himself.
Inside, the apartment was warm in the particular way lonely men’s apartments often were. Not truly warm. Just overheated enough to compensate for silence.
Records lined entire walls.
Books sat stacked in uneven towers across the floor.
Old concert posters curled gently at the corners.
Low lamps cast amber pools of light across carefully arranged clutter.
The place looked less lived in than composed.
She noticed immediately.
Not critically.
Just honestly.
“You been rehearsin’ this.”
The words hit him squarely in the chest.
“What?”
“This.” She gestured vaguely around the apartment. “The whole thing.”
“It’s just my apartment.”
“Mmmhmm.”
She smiled softly enough to remove any cruelty from it, but the damage was already done. He suddenly saw the room through her eyes:
the strategically placed records,
the whiskey bottle left casually visible,
the books turned outward like personality advertisements,
the faint incense lingering in the air,
the old black-and-white photographs pinned near the stereo.
He had not built a home.
He had built a mood.
And until she said it aloud, he had never realized there was a difference.
“You hungry?” he asked quietly.
“Starvin’.”
He had planned carefully.
That embarrassed him now too.
There was already a roast in the crockpot. Potatoes waiting in the oven. Bread from the bakery downtown wrapped neatly in a towel beside the stove.
He had imagined this moment differently.
Candles.
Wine.
Music.
Meaningful glances.
Instead she kicked off her boots near the radiator and groaned loudly as she peeled off damp socks.
“Sweet Lord my feet hurt.”
Reality entered the room again.
Not maliciously.
Just relentlessly.
While he fixed plates, she wandered the apartment studying things openly.
“You got more records than furniture.”
“That’s probably true.”
“You own every sad white man album ever made?”
“Probably that too.”
She laughed.
Not mockingly.
Warmly.
“Y’all preserve blues music the same way folks preserve old guns. Don’t nobody wanna admit what they was actually made for.”
He blinked. He had no other way to respond.
The roast turned out good. Better than he expected, honestly. She ate enthusiastically and without performance, occasionally speaking around bites of food in a way he found both horrifying and strangely comforting.
“This real butter?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God. Y’all northern people always tryin’ to poison folks with margarine.”
He smiled weakly.
The rain continued tapping softly against the windows while an old Junior Kimbrough record spun quietly in the background.
She noticed it immediately.
“My granddaddy hated this album.”
He blinked.
“What???”
“Said the producer cleaned him up too much.” She shrugged. “Said they took the dirt off him.”
That sentence lingered heavily in the room.
He had spent years revering these recordings like sacred texts.
To her family, they were products.
Compromises.
Paychecks.
“You ever notice,” she asked, “how folks with money always want poor things polished just enough to make ‘em easier to consume?”
He stared at her.
“You think too much,” she added casually.
“I’ve been told that.”
“I believe it.”
After dinner, she called her mother.
Not privately.
Not ceremoniously.
Just sitting cross-legged on the couch in borrowed sweatpants while absentmindedly scrolling her phone.
“Naw mama, he ain’t weird-weird. Just regular weird.”
He pretended not to hear that.
“Nah, apartment clean enough. Little dusty maybe.”
He quietly looked at the bookshelf he had dusted twice before leaving for the station.
“Mama, I am NOT gon’ marry no man after two months of internet messages.”
A pause.
“Yes mama, I know my cousin Rochelle dumb ass did.”
Another pause.
“Mama I gotta go.”
She hung up and sighed deeply.
“Family?” he asked carefully.
“That’s Southern for organized chaos.”
He nodded.
For a while they sat quietly while the record played.
Then she looked around again.
“You really spend most your time up here?”
“Mostly.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
The question startled him because it sounded genuinely confused.
Not accusatory.
Not pitying.
Just practical.
Like asking someone why they kept a broken refrigerator.
“Sometimes.”
“Honey.” She leaned back against the couch. “You lonely all the time.”
He opened his mouth to protest.
Nothing came out.
Because she was right.
Not temporarily lonely.
Not heartbreak lonely.
Not isolated by circumstance.
Structurally lonely.
Lonely as a lifestyle.
The realization made him feel suddenly transparent.
“You know what I think?” she said gently.
“What?”
“I think you done fell in love with bein’ almost happy.”
The room seemed to shrink around him.
Outside, headlights drifted silently through rain-slick streets below the apartment windows.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Yes you do.”
And unfortunately…
he did.
Because anticipation had always been safer than fulfillment.
Longing safer than intimacy.
Fantasy safer than reality.
A woman arriving on a train could remain perfect forever.
A real woman with wet socks, family problems, a loud laugh, and sore feet could not.
She stood and wandered slowly toward the shelves near the stereo.
Her fingers drifted across album spines.
“You know what the difference is between you and my granddaddy?”
“He actually played?”
“That too.” She smiled faintly. “But granddaddy loved the blues ‘cause he survived things.”
She turned toward him.
“You love it ‘cause you wish you had.”
That one cut deep enough to bleed.
Because she was not entirely wrong.
He had spent years romanticizing hardship from the safety of contemplation.
Treating sadness like atmosphere.
Curating melancholy.
Wearing loneliness like a well-tailored coat.
Meanwhile the people who made the music he worshipped had often been:
* exhausted,
* broke,
* drunk,
* abused,
* frightened,
* hungry,
* trapped.
Not mythic.
Human.
He suddenly felt unbearably suburban.
Not geographically.
Spiritually.
A tourist wandering through suffering looking for authenticity.
“I didn’t mean to do that,” he said quietly.
“I know.”
That somehow made it worse.
She sat back down beside him, softer now.
“You ain’t a bad man.”
“Feels debatable tonight.”
“Naw.” She shook her head. “You just built yourself outta songs.”
The record crackled softly in the silence between them.
Then, after a long pause:
“You know what I think really happened?”
“What?”
“You got lonely… and started mistakin’ aesthetics for truth.”
He laughed once through his nose.
Painfully.
Because it was exactly the sort of sentence he himself might have admired in a book.
Which made hearing it aloud feel even more humiliating.
She leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes.
“For what it’s worth,” she murmured sleepily, “you ain’t what I pictured neither.”
“What did you picture?”
“A dangerous man.”
“And instead?”
One eye opened slightly.
“A sad one.”
He looked away toward the rain-dark windows.
Down below, neon reflected across wet pavement in trembling colors. Cars drifted silently through the streets like thoughts passing through somebody else’s mind.
For weeks he had imagined this woman as the beginning of his real life.
Now she sat ten feet away wearing his sweatpants and talking about hot sauce and family arguments while dismantling him psychologically with rural kindness.
And the terrible thing was:
the real version of her was probably better.
More intelligent.
More grounded.
More alive.
But somewhere deep inside himself, he still mourned the woman from the scratchy photograph.
Not because she existed.
But because she never had.
copyright notice © 2026 Michael C. Metzger
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