The High Notes: A Novel(22)

“I don’t know,” she answered him. “I’ve been having so much fun here, I kind of forgot about where I want to go next. The original plan was to head for New York. I haven’t thought about it since I got here, but if you guys are leaving, I guess I’ll go too. Are you going back to Nashville with the others?” She assumed he was, and was sorry to see their time together come to an end. That’s the way it was with performers on the road. She had lived that life for the past nine years, since she was eighteen, she knew it well.

“I don’t have to,” he said casually. “I’m not playing the same gig they are. I can take some time off. Do you want a passenger on the drive to New York? I can share the driving with you,” he offered, and she thought about it. It sounded appealing. She liked being with him, and it was going to be a long drive across the country from Wyoming. She had planned to do it alone, but driving with Boy would be more fun, he was good company.

“You wouldn’t mind?” she asked him.

“I’d love it. You’re pretty nice to hang out with,” he teased her, and she laughed. “Except when you hit those high notes. They hurt my ears.”

“Bring earplugs. When do you want to leave?”

“In a few days. I think we’ve done it here. I’d like to leave them begging for more.” It had been a good run and they’d all enjoyed it, especially after Iris joined them. She had added new dimension to their performance, and the audiences loved her. Moe said he was going to miss them when they left.

They played their hearts out for the next three days. Boy knew a dozen of Iris’s songs now, and loved singing them with her, especially the duets. She let Annie try some of them, but she didn’t have the range or power that Iris did, and the crowd loved it when Iris hit the high notes that soared up to the sky and back. She even sang a few gospel songs. Boy and the others were good backup for her. They had left Moe’s customers with memories of evenings they would never forget, and Boy was sure they would remember her one day when they heard her name. From the moment Boy met her, he was sure she would be a star one day, which she didn’t believe, but she thought the same thing about him.

Their last night at the Elk brought tears to Iris’s eyes. Singing with Boy’s group for the past few weeks had restored her self-confidence and made singing fun again. She no longer felt like a caged bird with clipped wings. She even looked better and happier, her hair was starting to grow out, and the brown was fading. She thought about dyeing it again, but she didn’t have to worry about any of Glen’s scouts seeing her once they were on the road. She and Boy weren’t going to perform anywhere without Boy’s band. They were taking all the sound equipment back to Nashville with them. Boy and Iris planned to be strictly civilians on the drive east, and would do all their singing in the car. Iris was looking forward to it, and so was Boy.

They thanked Moe on the last night, and gave him a bottle of rare Scotch they’d bought at the general store. He said he’d drink it and think of them. He thanked them on return for the business they’d brought in. He’d made more money in three weeks than he had in the three months before.



* * *



—

On the morning they left Jackson Hole, Annie and Iris hugged, and then Iris hugged the boys. It was going to take them two full days of driving to get back to Nashville. They had sixteen hundred miles to cover. Boy and Iris had twenty-two hundred miles to travel to New York, but they were in no rush, and planned to take it slowly. They figured they’d do it in four or five days, and maybe stop along the way if they got to a place they liked. After all her years of touring, Iris was surprised how much she enjoyed just rolling along with Boy. They sang to the music on the radio, and then sang some of her songs. She was working on a new one now and turned off the radio while she wrote, and then pulled her guitar out of the backseat, and laid it on her lap, to try the melody with some chords. It sounded pretty good on the first try, and she sang the words to him.

“I like it.” He glanced over at her and smiled, and then hummed along. She wrote the words down verse by verse, made a few corrections, and then played it again. It was a pretty song about flying along the road to freedom like a bird in the sky. You could almost feel the breeze and the sun on your face while she sang it, and he looked at her with admiration.

“Does that stuff just pour right out of your head like water?” She made it look so easy. She played some other songs then on her guitar, while he drove.

They stopped for lunch at a truck stop, and she drove after that, as he slept. They were comfortable with each other. He was easy to be with, and their love of music created a bond between them like no other.

As they drove along that night in Nebraska, he turned to her with a question. “What happens after New York? There’s someone you want to see there, and then what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking pensive, “that’s as far as the dream went. I never thought I’d get this far. It ended in New York.”

“An old friend?” he asked her.

“No, someone I’ve never met. I don’t even know if he’ll see me. I got his name from a guy I sang with on tour who gave me his number. He probably won’t even see me. I have his number in New York. If I can get up the guts, I’ll call him anyway.” She didn’t want to say more. It seemed too crazy to her that she wanted to try and meet Clay Maddox just because she had his number. It was like reaching for the sky. She thought Boy would laugh at her or tell her she was nuts if she told him. But he wouldn’t have. He thought all her dreams were justified, and she had a right to them. She deserved them. He was the exact opposite of all the men she’d ever known. She was tempted to give her heart to him, but she was afraid that their roads would split off in different directions and they’d get hurt. Their futures were too uncertain. For now anyway. If it was meant to be, it would happen in its own time. There was no rush. She was enjoying feeling comfortable with him and just being friends. It seemed the wisest course for now.