Purple Hearts(41)

“It’s a Presbyterian preschool in Buda, Texas,” I told her as I sewed up a hole in one of my socks. “And he didn’t really get in trouble. The teacher just told Jake and Hailey, that’s all.”

“Still. That shouldn’t even be a thing.”

Around Thanksgiving, after I’d sent three letters with no response, Hailey had finally started writing back to me. I got the first one last week: She’d said Jake knew that she was writing, that he appreciated it but wasn’t ready to respond, but she’d like to keep in touch, make sure that they knew I was safe, at least.

Meanwhile, Rooster was behind me, cleaning his gun with shaving cream. Cassie had to stop herself from staring at it in abject fear. When he clicked the safety on, she jumped and let out a little scream, all the way from Austin.

I couldn’t help but laugh at her. A moment later, she started laughing, too.

“What else?” she’d asked.

It had been three weeks since we last spoke. I told her about volleyball.

I had even started a letter to my dad. Hadn’t gotten much further than Dear Dad, I’m sorry without crossing everything out, but earlier drafts had things like I’m learning a lot, I’m becoming a better man. How are those Cowboys looking?

I looked back at Rooster, who had moved on from cleaning his gun to doing sit-ups, conveniently in sight of the laptop’s camera, of course. It was a small room, but he didn’t have to make those grunting noises.

I looked back at Cassie. We were both trying not to laugh.

“So,” I said, glancing at my notes. “Savages? The band?”

“Oh, good. Yeah. So underrated. They are going to blow up, I swear to God,” she began.

As she spoke, I began to want a little more—I wanted to know what her own music sounded like. After a pause in her description of a “love-hate” relationship with something called Pitchfork, I asked her.

“What about you?” I said. “How’s your music coming?”

“Great,” she said.

“Can I hear something?”

She looked surprised, and then happy. “Yes, yeah. Definitely. Be right back.”

I wasn’t a connoisseur, but I was human. Everyone liked music. I liked the classic-rock station my dad played on a boom box in the garage. Led Zeppelin. David Bowie. Doobie Brothers. Moody Blues. The Doors. Janis Joplin. The ill-advised metal phase.

I snorted to myself thinking about the e-mail where I told her about Rick Richardson. I would have never thought to tell anyone about that—I’d hardly thought of it since it happened. There was something so unapologetic about calling and writing with Cassie that brought out parts of me that I’d forgotten.

Cassie was back, humming to herself, setting an open notebook beside her on the couch.

As she set up her keyboard, I found myself wishing I could tell Cassie about listening to classic rock in the garage. When I was a kid, I knew how much my dad loved the song “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum, so I used to call in to V100 and request it for him. I did it so much that they started to note our number on their caller ID and answered each time with “Hi, Luke. ‘Spirit in the Sky’?”

“Are you ready?” Cassie asked. “This one’s a little rough, but it’s getting there.”

“Go ahead,” I said. Rooster had stopped doing sit-ups, I’d noticed, and was now lying on the floor on his back, listening.

“This is called ‘Green Heron,’?” she said, and played a chord. “And imagine this with bass and drums behind it,” she added.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” Rooster said from the floor.

“When I saw you, you were on the fence,” she sang, and flourished the keys. “They said you weren’t a sign from God. I didn’t know what that meant. But when I walked to you, you didn’t fly away.”

After that introduction, she played a rhythmic, almost old-timey section. Every time I thought I knew the beat, it swept off to another. But it always returned, too. It wasn’t off the rails or hard to listen to, like jazz. It made its own kind of sense.

The lyrics were about her mother, about not knowing what to do, about forgiving herself for not knowing what to do, and her voice was dramatic and sweeping, a combination of Billie Holiday, if Billie Holiday were one octave lower, and Freddie Mercury. She seemed to skip shame and go straight to forgiveness. I’d never learned how to do that.

“Man, that was good! Goddamn!” I found myself saying as she finished.

“That was really, really good,” Rooster said from the floor. “I almost cried a little bit.”

“What’d he say?” Cassie said, wearing a big smile, catching her breath. She had put her hair up into a little ponytail at the top of her head, and now it was almost gone, the strands having fallen as she played, nodding along.

“He said he cried a little bit.”

“Almost!” Rooster corrected.

“Wow,” I said. “Nice work. That’s great. Really great. Honey,” I added with a sideways glance at Rooster.

“Thank you,” Cassie said, her cheeks reddening. Was she blushing? Or just flushed after singing? “Well, I should go. Gotta go to work.”

“Okay, we’ll talk in a few.”

“Thanks for asking me to play for you, Luke. Baby,” she said, scratching her head, embarrassed.