Bluebird, Bluebird

After the tense meeting with Van Horn and Wally, the conversation between Randie and Darren reveals more about Randie’s complicated relationship with her husband. She believes she is being kept from important details surrounding her husband’s death and is frustrated with Darren’s need to placate the local authorities. Randie is confused about why Michael would return to Texas. Even though it is the place of his birth, she does not see it as his home. Darren knows well the influence Texas can have on a person. He quit his law career in Chicago to come back to the Lonestar state. He feels connected to the land and his roots run deep. Darren wants to explain this to Randie, but she is still deep in grief and denial over what has occurred. Darren gives her the emotional space to feel and experience her pain and he understands her desire for immediate justice. As he attempts to calm Randie, Darren’s problems rise to the surface with a phone call from Lisa. Darren has neglected to tell her he is staying in Lark, having lost himself in his reinstatement and pursuance of the case. This phone conversation goes much differently than the last. Darren is no longer sad or repentant for his behavior. His words to his wife are terse and forthright. Darren has no intentions of conforming to Clayton’s and her desire for him to return to law school. He outright refuses Lisa’s request to return home, and he knows with the click of her abrupt disconnection they are on the rocks again.

Darren’s issues with women continue as he must return to Geneva’s and give an account for his deceptive lurking the previous day. Geneva waits for his anxiety to build before she lights into him. He is still unnerved by his brief encounter with Wendy outside and the knowledge Keith Dale and his cronies are intimidatingly cruising up and down the highway past the café. The fact that both Wendy and Geneva have concealed weapons signals that they are keenly aware of an ongoing and long-standing threat to their establishment. Darren speaks with Geneva as a man might with his grandmother or any older, wiser woman, and she in turn rebukes him like a child. Having never had a presence like this in his life, Darren is temporarily transfixed by her matriarchal energy, something he has never experienced. Bell’s influence on her son was a negative one. She gave Darren his first drink and often left him in a state of neglect. Darren has only known the influence of strong men. The lack of a positive female influence in his life has left him with unresolved emotional trauma that washes over him just as powerfully as all the sensory experiences of the café.

Randie breaks the reverie of Darren’s flashback with the recognition of her husband’s guitar on the wall. It is a strange and arresting moment in the narrative. The 1955 Gibson Les Paul is a rare guitar that could sell for thousands of dollars in the current market, though Randie is not drawn to it for its monetary value, but in quaking terror at seeing a personal possession of her husband’s hanging on the wall in a tiny Texas roadside café. Geneva is equally in shock as she proclaims the guitar is hers, belonging to her late husband Joe. Geneva’s strange answer to Darren’s inquiries about Michael raises more questions and her abrupt exit shows she is not interested in further involving herself in Darren’s investigation. Huxley again serves as a clarifying voice from a minor character. He reveals key details of Michael’s visit to the café but reiterates that the icehouse is where Darren should be focusing his attention. Huxley goes one step too far in revealing the icehouse as the place where Geneva’s son Lil’ Joe was killed. Faith stops him, saying she would prefer no more talk about her parents. Faith’s mother is imprisoned, and Geneva has gone to visit her. These tense moments reveal more about Geneva’s role, not just as a Black business owner and pillar of the community, but also as a matriarch trying to hold together fragments of her family in the wake of tragedy and trauma.