You'd Be Mine(6)

“It’s a list of churches,” she says.

“I see that.”

“I had your grandfather find a congregation at each stop of your tour. He used the internet,” she explains unnecessarily. I’m taken with the image of my crotchety grandfather googling “where to find Jesus in Pittsburgh.” “Never let yourself get too far from the Lord, Annie.”

I refold the paper, tucking it into my pocket. “I won’t.” I don’t bother explaining I’ll be playing late and traveling through the night most weekends.

I try again. “Gran, I mean it. I’m not like her.” I hate the pleading in my voice, but it’s so important to me that of all people, my gran sees there is a difference this time around—that this isn’t history repeating itself. After all, if I can’t convince her, how can I expect to convince the rest of the world?

She smiles sadly, patting my hand. “I know it. You aren’t like Cora. You’re better than she was. It’s why I worry so. You’ve got even more to lose.”

Swallowing hard, I turn away, making a point of returning to my packing. After a minute, she leaves, closing my door softly behind her. At the click, I crumple to my bed, curling in on myself, hot tears streaming down my face. I’m not even sure why. Is it because I’m leaving the only real home I’ve ever known? I know I can come back, but it won’t be the same.

Is it because no matter how much I argue, my gran will only ever see Cora when she looks in my face?

I’ve spent the last five years trying not to be me. Five years spent planning for a life that didn’t include music, all the while performing in small venues like some kind of adulterer. I planned for college. I planned for normal. I really, truly tried. But the pull was too strong.

I know the consequences of signing that contract.

You’ve got even more to lose.

My mom lost her life to country music. How could I lose more than that?





3



Clay


may

outside indianapolis, indiana

I don’t like being home. In the last two years, I could probably count on two hands the number of nights I’ve spent in this old house. It’s too empty. Years of folks running in and out and now it sits, dusty and dried up. I make a mental note to drop a key off at Taps for Maggie. Maybe she or Lindy can air the place every now and again so I don’t come home to a mausoleum. Except I know I won’t. It’s not that Maggie wouldn’t be willing. She’s known my family for years and would love nothing more than to help. But asking for help feels dangerously close to initiating contact, and initiating contact is a rocky slope to family in a small town like mine.

The thought of my brother’s fiancée, Lindy, and her mother always makes my skin prickle with unease. I haven’t seen Lindy or my niece in probably six months. I stopped back for Thanksgiving but barely made it through the afternoon and left straight after dinner. At Christmas, I saved us all the trouble and just sent them a text from a resort in Cabo San Lucas.

Danny would punch me in the gut if he knew how shitty I was being to his girls. Lindy didn’t know she was pregnant with Layla until after Danny was already in Iraq. He hoped to be home for the birth but instead died before he had the chance. Lindy sends me a card with pictures every few months. One arrived this morning, and I spent hours staring at images of a chubby toddler with Danny’s blue eyes until my own eyes threatened to dry up and shrivel into raisins.

I wish she’d quit. I don’t know what she’s playing at. I’m not uncle material, and I’m nothing like my stalwart big brother. We’d all be better off if they would let me be an occasional check in the mail.

I toss an empty bottle, and it shatters on the cement floor of my grandfather’s old woodshop. My legs dangle over the edge of the loft, and the late-afternoon sun slants through the patchy roof. I watch, transfixed, as the dust particles catch the rays and spin. It’s been at least three years since the last time my grandfather filled this space, larger than life. He would stand at his lathe, somehow shaping a spindle for a rocking chair out of a piece of rough-hewn wood.

He taught me how to see the potential in the scrap pieces—how to find the beauty in the ordinary. My grandfather would play his old Carter albums in this shop. He’d close his rheumy eyes and say, “They don’t make music like this anymore, my boy. You’ve been given a gift, Jefferson. Don’t waste it.”

He was the only one to call me Jefferson. He and Danny. It’s my real name. One I left behind once no one was left to call me by it.

I reach behind me and pull out my guitar. I strum the opening chords of “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” and shut my eyes, conjuring up the smell of sawdust and varnish in my mind. I don’t hate what I do. I sing songs about cold beer and cutoffs. Pretty girls and Dixie cups of homemade wine. It’s my thing. I sing songs people hook up to, and I get paid well for it. I travel the country making people feel good.

Sometimes, though, I like to imagine I could sing something different—something real. Something true, straight from the hills. Or the harvested patchwork of green in Indiana. Or this woodshop, even. A melody, sweet and simple, stirs in my throat. Lyrics swirl in and out of my brain, fuzzy as yet but becoming clearer each day. A song is coming. I only need to open myself up to it.

I still the strings under my hand, shutting down the muse. I’m already on thin ice with the label.