The Clumsy Interloper

BATESVILLE MARKET (INTERIOR AFTERNOON) The misty afternoon drizzle layered atop the June humidity to create a frizzy hair biome in the verdant Albemarle countryside. The band flyer displayed the name “GootGenuG” in wavy script but none in the party could pronounce it with confidence. We walked toward the Batesville Market from the overflow parking lot across the street ready for jazz fusion, good conversation and cold libations.

Once inside, the room pulsed with drum, bass, saxophone and keyboard, the band already in full swing. Our party of 6 made up a quarter of the patrons in attendance and we assumed a central vantage by joining two highboy tables together. String lights zig-zagged overhead, pastoral paintings from local artists adorned the walls and a steady churn of to-go orders from the kitchen marked the scene.

Near the front, just an outstretched arm’s length from the saxophonist, was a 70 year-old gentleman with shaggy grey hair, tidy white mustache and rounded spectacles. He wore a slightly wrinkled blue-and-white gingham button-down shirt, open to display an olive tee that bore amber Sanskrit characters, no-doubt far East in origin. His tan pants had pockets embroidered on the outside and his brown driving moccasin tapped in sync with the flow of music. He looked like Burt Landcaster, the elder Moonlight Graham, if he opted out of acting and instead lived a rural existence amidst the Blue Ridge.

As the jazz poured out, he wriggled gently like seaweed in the surge of the tide. His fingertips undulating, as if conducting the band, he appeared to be experiencing an altogether separate auditory euphoria from those seated around him. He was in a distant place in his mind, delivered by the music, only to rejoin the present with dutiful, but heartfelt clapping after each musician’s solo. Without a care in the world, this man spent the afternoon sliding through the crowd, disarming strangers with his ready smile, commenting on the virtuosic piano player, celebrating the jazz standard sung by the bass player’s teenager daughter during the second set and generally filling the space with an aura of kindness and calm.

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After completing their final song to a smattering of applause, the bass player hopped from his seat, fanning out circular black-and-white ephemera above his head. With a bouncy timbre to his voice and a glimmer in his eye said:

Thank you for coming to our show. Please come get a bumper sticker – they are free! – but mind you, by accepting one you must agree to stick them on your vehicle. No refrigerators! We want those people in traffic tailgating you to try to read the small print on these! Check out our website and we will be at Afton Mountain Vinyard on July 18^th and in Gypsy Hill Park for the Staunton Jazz festival on August 20^th. We are “Goot Gah-nook”!

Everyone at the table then turned to each other and silently mouthed the words in unison, as if they had just solved the final clue on the crossword puzzle together.