CW: racist assholes.

On an unmarked road somewhere in the Appalachians, a midnight blue Cadillac rolled to a stop, gravel popping under tires, headlights peering out into the discord of dusk. Outside the car, in the shadowy thicket, cicadas and crickets hollered like they would never see the sun again. But inside, the four suited-up singers—known for their 1953 smash hit single “How Did We (End Up Here)”—remained silent.

The Crooners were headed from Asheville, North Carolina to Roanoke, Virginia, the next stop on their “Harmony Revival Tour.” But at some point, snaking along the Blue Ridge Parkway, a very wrong turn must have been taken.

Behind the wheel was Jonas Hall, the falsetto of the group. He switched on the cabin lights and snatched the map down from the visor, paper crinkling in his shaky hands.

“Got us lost in the wilderness, I see,” said Ralph “Big Mouth” McCoy, the lead singing Lothario, from the backseat. “Told y’all the only thing that boy can drive is us to an early grave.”

“Shut your trap, Big Mouth,” Jonas said. “I know exactly where I’m going.”

Ralph scoffed. “Yeah, you and the devil.”

In the passenger seat, Clifford Brown, the bass singer, rolled down the window, letting the scent of pine needles and damp soil drift into the parked car. He lit a cigarette, then poked his head out to let the smoke escape.

“Peep these rocks here.” He coughed, then pounded his chest to clear his airways. “We fixing to blow a tire messing ’round on these back roads.”

Behind the driver seat, Dudley Foster, the group’s composer and tenor, gazed into the woods. Nothing to see but silhouettes of dense shrubbery and tree limbs reaching out for help.

He muttered, almost to himself: “It’s not the rocks that trouble me.”

Jonas held up the map. All four singers, in unison, leaned in to take a look-see. “Check this out: We was here about twenty-three minutes ago,” Jonas said, tracing the winding route with his finger. “Then we came to this fork. Remember that crooked sign? It said to the right was Hancock’s Bluff—”

“Which didn’t look right at all,” Dudley said.

“Right,” Clifford added, “that road woulda took us right smack to damnation.”

“Right,” Jonas continued, “so we went left, which means we should be right around here.”

Ralph scoffed again. “You full of should.”

Jonas tossed the map aside, whirling around. “Real easy to beat your gums in the back there.”

Ralph leaned forward. “I’ll beat my gums in the front, the back and all over this Cadillac—”

“How ’bout I just beat the black off you,” Jonas said, lunging at Ralph.

Clifford shoved his body between them, stopping the brawl. “Quit all this foolishness,” he said. “Lookie here now, we passed a diner ’bout three miles back. Let’s just go there. Get our wits about us. Maybe some Good Samaritan can usher us in the right direction, huh?”

The sun was almost down. It wasn’t the brightest of ideas to stop at some random diner in this particular area at this particular hour. But it was either that or keep driving blind in a twisty maze of maple and oak trees and God knows what else. Unable to contain his nervousness, Dudley bit his nails. Ralph glared at Jonas. Jonas glared back. Then he faced forward and started up the car. The engine grumbled and the Cadillac whipped around, tires flicking dirt into the darkness.

• • • •

The roadside diner looked cozy—at least from outside. It was a simple wooden building. Unassuming. A golden glow spilled from the windows onto the porch, where a swinging sign welcomed passersby to the Dogwood Diner. In fact, the only thing that stood out was the nearby dogwood tree, its delicate white bracts exploding into the shady surroundings.

As the Cadillac pulled up, all four singers, in unison, leaned forward, trying to peek inside. Seeing no evidence of activity, Jonas cut the engine, the keys jingling in the ignition.

“Here’s the plan,” Jonas said. “We go in, we get directions, we get the hell on. No lollygagging. We don’t wanna hear about any two-for-one specials. Agreed?”

Clifford crushed his cigarette. “We can’t afford to eat here nohow.”

Ralph groaned, shoving the door open. “Y’all are talking me to death. I’m heading in—”

Dudley, on high alert, grabbed his arm. “Hold on, Big Mouth.”

Ralph looked back, agitated. “What? What we holding on for?”

Dudley squinted through the windshield. Nothing felt right about any of this. He couldn’t explain it yet. But there was one thing he was certain of: “If we not together, we’ll be picked apart.”

“Well, thank you, Ol’ Blue Eyes,” Ralph said. “Now are we composing lyrics or going inside?”

The four car doors closed with a collective thud. Headed toward the diner entrance, the group passed the dogwood tree, a branch holding a sign that hung from a rope: “Hancock Victims Welcome!” But it was too hidden behind the showy bracts for the quartet to notice it.

The screen door creaked as they stepped inside, greeted by the smell of sizzling bacon and brewed coffee. Some pop song warbled eerily through a tube radio, shushed by an ensemble of static. The wooden walls displayed photographs of previous patrons, all frozen in the same pose—tongues out, hands clutching their own throats. Yellow lights hung over four booths, all empty—except the booth at the end. There, a middle-aged white man sat alone at a table strewn with napkins. He didn’t look up at the singers, but stayed focused on whatever he was scribbling on the napkin in front of him.

The group exchanged uneasy glances, but held steady.

Then out from the kitchen came a rotund white man wearing a smudged apron and a perpetually stitched-on smile.

“Well, well, well, if I woulda known the Rat Pack was stopping by, I woulda put on my Easter tie,” he said, grabbing a rag to bus one of the tables. “Welcome to Dogwood. I’m Silas, the owner. Have a sit down, gentlemen. You’re in luck ’cause I got a sweet two-for-one special—”

Ralph held up a hand. “We can’t stay long, unfortunately. We got somewhere to be.”

“Oh?” Silas said, wiping in quick circles. “And where pray tell is that?”

This time, Clifford spoke up, his deep voice reverberating in the room. “Roanoke.”

“Ah, Roanoke.” Silas went to the counter to grab four place settings. “What’s in Roanoke?”

Again, the group exchanged uneasy glances.

Silas set the table. When nobody answered, he paused, then turned around to face the group.

The silence hung between them till Ralph decided to break it: “We’re the Crooners.”

Silas smiled. “The who now?”

“Listen, Mr. Silas,” Jonas said, “we appreciate your show of hospitality, but we’re on tour and we got ourselves a little turned around—”

“On tour, you say?” Silas went to fetch four glasses. “Ah, I see, so you’re like a singing group of sorts.” Silas returned to the table, placing the glasses down. “Like doo-wop? Some rhythm and blues? Mr. Radio ain’t too friendly out here in the boondocks, but any songs I mighta heard of?”

Frustrated, Ralph spun around with a huff. This was obviously going nowhere in a hurry. Clifford put a hand on his shoulder to keep him from blowing his top.

Jonas cleared his throat. “If you could just point us in the right direction.”

Silas frowned, seemingly confused by the lack of forthrightness. But he exhaled and nodded. “Sure. No problem. Yeah, these roads got more twists in ’em than a Hitchcock picture. But don’t you worry none. Silas will direct you where you need be. Have a sit down.”

“We’d rather not,” Clifford said.

Silas smirked, his eyebrows raised with a gleam in his eye. “You’d rather not?”

“Like we said,” Ralph said, talking slowly. “We cannot stay here. We are on the clock.”

“As am I.” Silas took a step forward. “You Negroes come waltzing into my dining establishment, asking for guidance, yet decline me the courtesy of partaking in my culinary creations.” He took another step forward to stand face to face with the four of them. “Now call me old-fashioned, but that don’t sound like a fair trade in this land of equality to me. It sound like that to you, Barnabas?”

Silas turned to the man in the last booth. He still didn’t look up, drawing with his right hand and twiddling a fork with his left.

Through gritted teeth, Clifford said: “We ain’t hungry.”

Silas nodded, his smile fading. “Fine. I’ll do my darnedest not to take offense at your rejection.” He began clearing the table he just set, glasses clinking as he carried them to the counter. “But there is still a matter of legalities that must be addressed before I can bestow my navigational support.”

Jonas rummaged through his lapel pocket. “How much you asking for?”

“Whoa there, horsey,” Silas said. “Offering money would imply that I’m some penniless fellow with a failing dining establishment, which, despite your rejection, is miles from the truth. But in these here woods, as I mentioned before, my humble radio doesn’t receive all that well. So, if you boys would be so willing, I wouldn’t mind indulging in a song. Any number of your choosing, of course.”

Ralph grimaced, then shooed him off. “I’m splitting. Y’all coming?”

Clifford looked at Jonas, who shrugged, the options sorely lacking. They would have to find their own way to Roanoke. Jonas snapped his fingers to get Dudley’s attention, but Dudley had his focus elsewhere: on the man in the booth.

“Say, man, can you help us out?” Dudley asked him.

Barnabas didn’t respond. He just kept scribbling.

Clifford coughed and pounded his chest. “Reckon he ain’t the sharpest bulb in the shed.”

“Oh, he’s sharp,” Silas said, “just not much of a conversationalist these days. Good luck getting a word outta ol’ Barney boy.”

Ralph had enough. “If y’all wanna keep fooling with these peckerwoods, knock yourselves out. I’ll be outside.” The screen door creaked shut behind Ralph as he stormed off.

Dudley, known to scribble on a napkin or two as the lyricist of the group, marched over to the napkin-covered table. He craned his head to see what Barnabas was so engrossed in. It was the same drawing over and over.

“What is that?” Jonas asked.

Dudley picked up one of them, turning the napkin around to examine it from different angles. “I don’t know. It’s just a black circle.”

“Looks like a mouth from here,” Clifford said.

And it did look like that: a mouth, open wide and filled with black ink.

“Is it yawning?” Jonas gulped. “Or screaming?”

Dudley shrugged.

Clifford turned to Silas, who was leaning on the counter, arms folded and smirking, thoroughly entertained by the whole ordeal.

“Listen,” Clifford said, his brown eyes narrowed. “We tired and we got a long road ahead of us. We didn’t come here to eat, but if you saying we need to order something in exchange for directions, then lemme get a coffee. No cream, no sugar, just coffee.”

“Ah, it appears you and I are in harmony,” Silas said. “I take mine black too. As for your order? That would be all fine and dandy, but there’s only one itty-bitty problem.” Silas held up his wrist, pointing to an invisible watch. “The kitchen is now closed.”

“C’mon, man,” Jonas pleaded. “All we wanna do is get to our next tour stop.”

Silas raised both arms. “This is it. Your next tour stop.” He pointed to Barnabas. “Gentleman, the Dogwood Diner is proud to present the one, the only . . .” Silas paused, then whispered to Jonas. “What was it again? The Cooners? No, the Crooners, right? Right.” He went back into showman mode. “The Crooners!”

The singers stood frozen, but their insides blazed.

Full of gusto, Silas darted over to Barnabas, forcing him to clap his hands. The sudden movement disturbed Barnabas, causing him to drop his fork, which clanged onto the floor. Startled, Silas staggered back. Ralph sprang out from the kitchen and caught Silas from behind. Jonas charged forward and, together with Ralph, pinned him against the wall, knocking down a few hanging photographs. Dudley blocked Barnabas from getting up.

Clifford picked up the fork and held it to Silas’s throat. “Now, you tell us,” he said. “Where the hell do we go from here?”

Even with his arms pinned to the wall and a utensil pressed against his neck, Silas couldn’t help but cackle. “You think you making it outta here? You’re fooling yourselves. Hancock won’t let you.”

“Who?” Ralph asked, scanning the diner to make sure nobody was hiding.

With the tines of the fork jabbing against his trachea, Silas managed to sputter: “They say he a monster with a hankering for voices.” He pointed weakly out the window. “Out there? That’s his domain. The only way outta here is to go through the tunnel. Through Hancock’s Bluff.”

Jonas shot Ralph a worried glance. “We passed that junction.”

Silas shook his head. “You gotta go back. It’s the only way out, but if you so much as breathe while driving through that tunnel, Hancock will snatch your voice away and you won’t get it back.”

Dudley’s jaw dropped as he reexamined the napkin in his trembling hand. “It’s not a mouth.” The other three singers turned to him. Dudley held up the napkin. “It’s a tunnel.”

Silas chuckled. “Well, well, well. Looks like you got a bright future as an art critic when the singing career goes south.”

Clifford drove the fork deeper, the metal tines piercing his pale flesh.

Silas winced, his eyes watering, as he pleaded: “I swear on my family’s life I’m telling you nothing but the truth. Please. If you take me out, you’ll be in for a world of trouble, and you know it.”

The urge was there. As was the opportunity. But these four singers had endured enough. Punctuating their comeback tour with a crime of passion held no promise of profit. Clifford backed off. Jonas and Ralph did the same. Silas slumped over, wheezing to catch his breath.

Clifford, Jonas and Ralph made their way out the diner.

Dudley followed, then turned to Barnabas. “Is he legit?”

Barnabas paused. He grabbed the napkin Dudley had and wrote something on it. Then, exhaling, he stuffed it back in Dudley’s hand. With much apprehension, Dudley unballed the napkin to see what the man had written. What he saw was his name—Barnabas—scrawled, like an autograph, across the top. Stunned, Dudley dropped the napkin on the floor. On the way out, for posterity’s sake, he gave the hunched-over Silas a swift kick in the nuts. “We appreciate your service.”

• • • •

About a mile from the diner, the midnight-blue Cadillac rolled to a stop. All four singers, in unison, turned around to make sure nobody was chasing them. The coast looked clear—as clear as could be possible in the pitch-black woods.

“Alright,” Jonas said, putting the car in park, “so what now?”

Ralph frowned, confused by the question. “What now? We go through Hancock’s Bluff.”

Chirping crickets filled the dead air.

Ralph looked around at each member of the group: Dudley stared outside, biting his nails again. Jonas banged his head on the wheel. Clifford lit a cigarette, opened the window to let the smoke escape.

“Are y’all really that dense?” Ralph asked. “After everything we done been through?”

The Crooners had been through it all. After forming a vocal group in high school in Memphis, their path to success was a haunted highway of racist venues, conniving managers, infighting, stolen payments and worse. But they kept on. Together. Soul-stirring singles such as “When Will the Hurting Stop (Hurting)” and “So Lonely, So Lost, So Long” seized the booming hearts of a post-WWII nation. But when their album, Harmonic Resonance, failed to catapult their star power, the group broke up. That was seven years ago. The Harmony Revival Tour was meant to be their renaissance—Ralph McCoy, Jonas Hall, Dudley Foster, and Clifford Brown coming back together to remind the world that the boys from Memphis were still a four-part harmonic force to be reckoned with.

“We didn’t come all this way to hit a dead end now,” Ralph said.

Clifford blew out smoke. “We didn’t get this far being reckless neither.”

Jonas lifted his head, took a deep breath and rubbed his hands together. “Alright, we need to be together on this. Our problem is, we forgot how to operate as a unit. We became four soloists masquerading as a group. But we can’t afford to move like that.”

“We can’t afford much of nothing,” Clifford said.

“Right,” Jonas said. “And why’s that? Because we had the world in our hands and blindfolds over our eyes, letting other people say this and that and divide us—and what happened?”

Clifford slammed his fist on the dashboard. “Jonas is right, dammit. I mean, we hit rock bottom and we hit that baby hard. But here we are now. This tour is our chance to reclaim everything we lost.”

“But if we lose our voices,” Jonas added with a shrug, “that’s all, folks.”

Dudley kept his gaze out the window. Ralph thought this over. It still made little sense to him, kowtowing to some kooky myth they just found out about. But what was the harm?

“Fine,” he said. “Y’all want me to hold my breath, I’ll hold my breath for y’all.”

Clifford took one last drag. “Guess I oughta put this out then.” He flicked the cigarette.

Then Jonas turned all the way around to Dudley. “What say you, Duds?”

Dudley still had his eyes out the window. He was quiet for a while. Then, when he did speak, his voice seeped out in a whisper: “I saw this coming.”

“What’s that now?” Jonas asked.

“I wrote about it,” Dudley said. “All of this.”

Ralph slouched. “Man, what you babbling on about?”

Then, out of nowhere, Dudley started singing:

Did we choose the wrong time or take a wrong turn,
or lose a sound mind on a bridge that we burned?
I can’t breathe in the dark and let my voice be taken too.
In this tunnel o’ love, darling, how do we make it through?

When Dudley stopped, the other members stared at him blankly. Of course, they all recognized the snippet—anybody who was anybody would—from verse one of “How Did We (End Up Here).” But that didn’t explain the impromptu solo.

Eventually, Dudley turned to the group to explain himself: “Back when we were holed up in that tiny one-bedroom on Vance, these backwoods kept haunting my dreams. Night after night, I had this disturbing vision. It was always the four of us, riding in this car, just like now. We were all here, but sitting in different seats.” Unnerved by the recollection, Dudley turned back outside, nibbling on his nubs again. “We never stopped at a diner. We turned right. We always turned right at that crooked sign. I never could make out the name, but we all knew about the legend. We all knew about that tunnel.” Then, Dudley murmured as if singing a nursery rhyme: “Hold your breath the whole way through, or the beast will take your voice from you.” He nodded slowly. “These hills and hollers had a lure we couldn’t seem to shake. That wide-mouth tunnel was calling us. We all knew the only way through was to face the devil head-on. And we’d roll up to the tunnel and take big, gigantic breaths, all of us . . .”

On the literal edge of his seat, Clifford asked: “Then what happened?”

Dudley shrugged. “I always woke up right then.”

Ralph sucked his teeth. “That figures.”

“I kept my lips sealed,” Dudley said, “because I didn’t want y’all calling me loony again and go laying the blame at my feet, claiming I cursed the album with my dark lyrics.”

The silence was unsettling as the others sat there, running through the song in their heads. References to their current predicament could be inferred—at least, an argument could be presented. But the evidence could just as easily swing the other way. Lines such as “Baby, this is unknown territory” or the part on the bridge when Jonas, in his heart-shattering falsetto, wailed “Tell me, darling, what’s the cost to show affection when all the crooked signs say we’re lost with no direction” could relate.

But was this a premonition? Or purely a coincidence?

Up front, Clifford rocked in his seat, jittery either from the tale or from withdrawals. “The real question is: How you know you ain’t dreaming right now?”

Jonas let out an exasperated sigh. “Alright, does anybody else have any distressing confessions before we move the hell on?”

The question floated about the cabin. It was clearly rhetorical. But the silence and the darkness opened the space for unspoken truths to come spilling out.

“I gots to sing,” Clifford said, his voice low and raw. “If I ain’t singing with y’all, folks assume I’m just some big dumb, good-for-nothing ogre. Diane made that clear when she broke our vows, then took me for every cent I had.”

The gravity of Clifford’s words made Ralph sink deeper in the backseat, the weight of guilt tugging on his conscience.

“I hated you, Jonas,” he said. “Your voice, your range—the talent scout wanted you to be lead. But I couldn’t play second fiddle. I just couldn’t. So I made sure I was in front—the loudest, the flashiest, the one with all the ladies. Sorry I stole your spot, man.”

Jonas pressed his lips together and nodded. “Remember that ten dollars going to your stylist? Well, truth be told, it was only five. This here second fiddle was fiddling a little something off the top.”

Ralph’s eyes widened in shock and he sprang up. “You did what?”

But neither the admission nor the reaction had much room to take root because—

“Somebody’s coming,” Dudley said, looking back.

Sure enough, in the distance, two headlights appeared like white eyes, creeping up on them. Maybe another lost driver. Or the diner owner with a shotgun, aiming for gratuity. Either way—

“Go, go, go,” Ralph said, banging on the headrest.

Jonas turned on the car, floored it and started fishtailing, struggling to regain control as he hightailed down the winding, narrow road.

Clifford pointed forward. “There go that sign.”

At the fork, there was a crooked wooden sign, the words painted in white: Hancock’s Bluff. Jonas yanked the wheel. The car skidded, whipping around. They went right.

Up ahead, the tunnel loomed like a gaping maw, its jagged lips carved into the heart of the mountain. It was wide and open, a black hole devouring all light, all sound and all sense of direction. To the left, a dense cluster of trees huddled in solidarity, branches on branches grasping out, casting shadows that strangled the road. To the right, the narrow shoulder hugged the edge of a steep drop-off, which plunged into some bottomless abyss.

Jonas wiped his slick forehead, his grip on the wheel cutting off circulation. “We doing this?”

Ralph put his hand on Jonas’s shoulder. Clifford then put his hand on Ralph’s hand, and Dudley followed suit. They nodded, their bones full of fear and fatigue, but fueled by adrenaline as they raced forward into the unknown.

“Time to make history, gentlemen,” Dudley said, “in four, three—” he counted down, his voice joined by the others with him, “—two, one!”

The Crooners all took big, gigantic breaths . . .

And they held their breaths as the tunnel swallowed the midnight blue Cadillac whole, and the four of them sat there, eyes bulging, cheeks puffed out like a quartet of Dizzy Gillespies, and every so often, they would look at one another, seeking the strength to endure just a little longer, but the road kept going on and on—stretching out endlessly, no exit in sight, no flash of light, their hearts thrashing in their rib cages—as Jonas clenched his jaw and stomped on the pedal, pushing the car to its mechanical limits, and the engine roared, but then Clifford let out a small cough he couldn’t contain and covered his mouth, his eyes welling up as he looked at the others and shook his head to say he could no longer hold on, but Ralph pointed at him, urging him not to quit, not to give up, to keep fighting, for they would make it through together, but then, suddenly, a terrifying sound echoed through the tunnel—a pop—and they all heard it, and their eyes bulged as the car veered and Jonas struggled to regain control, to keep the car from crashing, but the fender scraped against the unyielding wall, metal screeching on concrete, and he gripped the wheel with all his might, but the car careened in the opposite direction, hurtling them toward the other wall, and the left headlight shattered, darkness closing in as the car came to a halt, the engine hissing in submission, and the Crooners clutched their chests, their souls besieged by uncertainty, and scanned their shrouded surroundings, peering ahead and behind, then turning to each other, eyes locked in a bond unspoken, and all four singers, in unison, gasped for air.¹

¹. Nobody knows what happened to the Crooners. Their bodies were never found. To this day, their vanishing in the Appalachian Mountains remains a confounding mystery, carved in the annals of the music industry, where echoes of their haunting and, as some claim, prophetic magnum opus, “How Did We (End Up Here),” continue to resonate.