Hillbilly Heart (15 page)

Soon we were living together in a tiny apartment in Van Nuys. We adopted a couple of kitties, including a scrawny black one we named Spooky. We had a brown plaid sofa and a large poster of Pat Benatar on the wall. Practically every morning I had to double-check my reflection in the bathroom mirror. Was that really me? I mean here was my hillbilly self living with a centerfold I had once fantasized about, and best of all, she was even nicer than she was sexy.

That was the thing about Lynne: the more I got to know her, the more I realized she was also pretty on the inside. New layers opened up all the time, like a flower unfolding slowly, and I would marvel at the quiet sensitivity she revealed. Her mother was homeless, which weighed on her daily. Lynne was determined not to end
up living like that. She worked as a bartender and heard every line ever thought up by a guy. She learned to protect herself, and that gave her a bit of an edge. Yet she’d come home and share that big, soft heart.

For the next seven months, life was good. I was a top car salesman, confident, and in love. I continued to play music, mostly Wednesday-night freebies at the Palomino. I also wrote songs. They reminded me of what I was really about and, more important, that I wasn’t alone no matter how much I felt like a fish out of water in L.A. Whether it was Robbie Tooley or someone else, I knew I had help from somewhere.

The only glitch was that I was still having trouble finding a way for people to hear my music. Near the end of 1985, a letter arrived from my dad. He knew I was struggling and said he wanted me to know that no matter what, he believed in me and was certain that I would do the right thing. He said something along the lines of, if I knew I was following my life’s purpose, keep on doing it no matter how frustrated I got, because eventually I would get to where I was supposed to be. His love and encouragement, always beacons in my life, never shined brighter than when I read his letter that day. “Always know where you are and where you are going,” he wrote, “but don’t ever forget where you came from.”

Those words went straight to my heart. I loved Lynne and appreciated my lucrative job, but I wasn’t making any progress toward reaching my dreams. As I did daily, I repeated the goals I’d set for myself: to change my own life and the lives of others, and to share God’s light and love, through my music.

Then Kebo called, explaining that Changes had been rebuilt and that the club’s owner, Jimmy Getty, wanted me to fly in for an inaugural New Year’s Eve show.

It took five seconds for me to make my decision, and back to Changes I went. During my absence, Kebo had been playing with a band called Main Street, and the marquee outside the rebuilt club said,
NEW YEAR’S EVE PARTY WITH BILLY RAY CYRUS AND MAIN STREET.
The club sold out. The celebration overflowed into the parking lot. I saw familiar faces and made new friends.

Afterward, Jimmy and my brother both suggested I stick around and keep the party going. I’d been thinking the same thing. Lynne was disappointed that we’d be apart for longer than we’d planned, but she understood. About a week and a half later, I checked in with her. I was all jacked up: I’d played five nights in a row for the first time in nearly thirteen months.

“It’s like I woke up from a nightmare,” I explained to Lynne, “Changes burned down, and I ended up in California selling cars!”

“I wish I could’ve been there,” Lynne said. “It sounds like a great time.”

“I opened my eyes and was right back where I’d been,” I said. “Thank God I woke up.”

In early 1986, I returned to L.A. to tell Lynne that I was going to quit my job and go back to Appalachia for good. The problem was, I loved her and didn’t want to see her upset. Then, before I had a chance to detonate my own bomb, Lynne told me that our little black kitty, Spooky, was gone.

I printed up fliers with Spooky’s picture and our phone number and canvassed our neighborhood, knocking on doors in our apartment building and others’ nearby. If people didn’t answer, I left a flier under their door. I also tacked them up on telephone poles. At one place, an old lady answered the door. She was bawling her eyes out.

“Have you seen this kitty?” I asked.

“Have you seen what’s happened?” she asked in response.

She opened her front door wider and motioned toward the TV across the room. To me, the screen looked blue, almost blank. From where I stood, I thought maybe there was a dot in the middle of it, maybe a dot with smoke coming out. But I couldn’t tell.

“The space shuttle blew up. With Christa McAuliffe on it,” she said, weeping. “It just blew up. They’re all gone.”

“What?” I exclaimed.

“Just after takeoff,” she said. “Come in; watch the report.”

With this old lady sobbing next to me, I realized the irrelevance of my problems: Where was my kitty? How would I break the news of my departure to Lynne?

Still, Lynne didn’t take the news well when I finally worked up my nerve to break it to her. She cried her eyes out for days. I kept telling her that I’d get my feet on the ground and then maybe she could visit—or even stay. I described the woods, the rivers, my people. Even though I knew she was a full-blooded California girl, I said, “Maybe you’ll like it there.”

To Lynne’s credit, she understood why I was going back to my roots. Although my heart was committed to her, I had to follow my gut. I was a musician. I didn’t belong out in L.A. wearing Florsheim shoes and selling Oldsmobiles. The next few weeks were painfully sad. At the end of February, my brother Kebo flew out and helped me load my stuff into a U-Haul, which we hooked up to the back of my car.

“I’m going to come see you,” Lynne said as we hugged one last time. “A lot!”

I headed east, picked up Interstate 40 around Barstow, and never looked back.

CHAPTER 13

“Roses in the Winter”

I
’D BEEN HOME A
little more than a month when Lynne came to visit. Excited, I picked her up at the Cincinnati airport and drove her down the Appalachian highway, a brand-new stretch of road. Accustomed to multilane freeways in L.A., she was amused as I explained this was progress over the two-lane road we’d had before.

For the next two weeks, I showed her my old life before I moved to California. We hiked in the woods and boated on Greenbo Lake. She watched me play at Changes. She saw the way the crowd multiplied between the first show and the fourth, when the whiskey flowed and the dance floor was packed. Lynne had fun, but she was smart and could read between the lines. Night after night the bar was packed with beautiful women. It was a nonstop party, and I loved being part of it.

Both of us were sad when she had to go back home. Our drive to the airport was quiet, painfully so, and when we said good-bye at the gate, we knew it was really good-bye to something special.

I stayed in party mode. The band—Kebo, Mark Carlisle, and Bobby Phillips on guitar, Joey Adkins on bass, and big Bob Anders on drums—was pretty dang tight. I was jubilant that I’d found my way back home, literally and figuratively, and turned back into a big
fish in a little pond. By summer, Changes continued to rock even harder and so did we. Booze, weed, music, women; it all flowed nightly and mightily.

Our set list was a high-octane mix of outlaw country (Willie, Waylon, Merle), southern rock (Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, Charlie Daniels), straight-ahead rock (ZZ Top, Bob Seger), and a bunch of originals I’d written, including “Snooze You Lose,” “Appalachian Lady,” and “What the Hell Is Goin’ On.” People knew when I hit high gear. I stood front and center, my shirt ripped or completely off, and leaned out over the dance floor singing Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell.”

As the nights got hotter and stickier, I noticed this pretty blonde in the bar. The first night I remember seeing Cindy, she was wearing a small halter top and very short shorts. It was probably about twelve fifteen on a Friday or Saturday, and with her sweet little face, greenish blue eyes, and that outfit, Cindy stood out among the crowd on the packed dance floor.

She was with an older man, who also stood out for being smaller and better dressed than all the rednecks. I wondered about her, but she disappeared after a few songs.

The next week and the week after that, Cindy continued to come to Changes. We played a game where we didn’t speak. The stage was elevated about three feet above the dance floor, and I noticed each time she came in she got closer and our eye contact became more direct. I think she tried to dress a little more provocatively each time, if that was even possible.

The tension between me and Cindy was a battle between willpower and desire. It was like Eve tempting Adam all over again. I sang about it, too—the song “Pink Cadillac” was on the set list nightly. Then one night she sent me a drink onstage—and yeah, I gave in. I bit the proverbial apple.

Over the next month, I would step outside during breaks with Cindy and her friend Johnny. She and I would smoke a joint as Johnny, a nonsmoker, kept the conversation going. He was the first
openly gay man I’d met, the first who became a close friend. As he heard me talk about my career, he was impressed with my positive approach, and he arranged for me to speak to his students about setting and achieving goals.

Eventually I asked Cindy out to dinner and then took her to Greenbo Lake, where, with the addition of various substances, our unbridled lust careened out of control, and our relationship took off from there. I remember it being like a nonstop party.

In December, Cindy took a few days off from her job to accompany me on one of my periodic trips to Nashville where I hoped to persuade someone to listen to my songs and sign me to a deal. I had a meeting or two, but neither was a for-sure appointment. It was an unusually warm day, though, perfect for a pretty drive. We took Cindy’s convertible and started the good times immediately. By the time we got to Lexington, the top was down and Cindy was riding shotgun without her shirt (she liked to get the sun). Between there and Morehead, we had finished our first joint, and I turned to her and said, “You know what? Nashville’s nice… but it’ll wait.”

“Huh?” she said. “What’re you talking about?”

“If I go down there, somebody is just going to turn me down. Or they’re going to tell me I suck. I’m feeling too good for that. Why don’t I hang a left on Interstate Seventy-five and go to the Smoky Mountains instead?”

Cindy’s smile said it all.

We might’ve reached behind us into a cooler and pulled out a couple of cold beers; I can picture us doing that. I know it’s terrible to drink and drive; I don’t do it now, ever. But I certainly did it back when I was a twenty-five-year-old dumbass. Cindy and I drove to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a well-known getaway in the mountains, and got a tiny cabin room in the primitive section.

All we wanted was to find a waterfall. That’s how simple life was back then. Giddy and laughing, we hiked up into the mountains and found a beautiful spot on the Little Pigeon River. I knew this once had been sacred ground for the Cherokee, and I could feel that spirit in the scenery.

We got fired up with beer and some vodka and OJ. Back at the cabin we added shots of tequila. Then we threw a little lightning on top of that cocktail, and well, all I can say is that we got every nickel we could out of that hotel room that night and the next day. Before leaving, Cindy said, “I got an idea. Let’s go to the courthouse and get a blood test, and then we’ll go to the little white chapel in the middle of town and—”

“Oh my God,” I said, without letting her finish, “that’s a fantastic idea! And that Merle Haggard song I play when I’m real drunk, ‘Roses in the Winter’? We’ll get some rings, I’ll play that song, and we’ll be husband and wife.”

And that’s how our drunk asses came to exchange rings and vows a short time later in front of a justice of the peace. Afterward, through the fog in my head, I remembered that I had band practice that night. With no way of making the six-hour drive in time, I called bassist Joey Adkins and told him that I had just gotten married.

“You did what?” he exclaimed.

“I married Cindy,” I said. “In Gatlinburg. So I can’t make it tonight.”

“Holy shit,” he said.

“Man, it really was some holy shit,” I said, laughing.

Looking back, the funniest part of the whole thing—hard as it is to believe—is that I wasn’t certain about Cindy’s last name. I’d heard her use Smith or Lewis; but now she was officially and legally Cindy Cyrus. My brother, who had married the first girl he kissed, Missy, thought I was crazy to have exchanged vows with a woman I’d known only three months. “Brother, you don’t know what you just did to yourself,” he said. The other guys were fine as long as it didn’t interfere with our music.

My female fans were not so open-minded. Early in 1987, I was onstage, in the midst of the night’s third or fourth set, when a waitress brought me one of those fancy flaming drinks and motioned to a couple of women who’d bought it for me. They were standing
behind Cindy. Smiling, I blew out the flame and was about to take a sip when I heard my wife’s voice rise above the din of the crowd and the buzz of our amps: “That bitch set my hair on fire!”