Hillbilly Heart (27 page)

Now I know God most likely wasn’t taking a time-out from the much more important matters on his schedule to deal with my career decisions—or indecisions. Then again, within a few minutes, a voice said, “Go to the audition. If they hire you, you’ll know the answer is yes. If they don’t, you’ll know you didn’t miss an opportunity intended to do my will.”

That was it. I returned home and called Al.

“Keep my seat on the plane,” I said. “I’m going to the meeting. It’s in God’s hands. What’s meant to be will be.”

CHAPTER 24

“Stand Still”

B
EFORE
DOC
HAPPENED
, I got involved in another production: the birth of my youngest daughter, Noah. She came into this world on January 8, 2000, the day the Tennessee Titans were playing the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Wild Card playoff game. Both events were memorable for the same reason—they involved a miracle.

Tish felt wonderful the whole nine months our little girl was growing inside her, and she’d scheduled the delivery so we’d be sure I’d be in town when it happened. But she woke up on the eighth feeling like the baby might be coming, so we went to the hospital early.

By the afternoon, nothing had happened. We had long ago decided to name the baby Noah Lindsey, after my papaw Cyrus, whose middle name was Lindsey. I had brought an old photograph of him preaching and hung it in the corner so he could oversee the birth of his namesake. What I liked about the picture was that it showed the woodcarving on his pulpit. It was one of his favorite sayings:
EXPECT A MIRACLE
.

And we were expecting a miracle.

Tish even said, “It’s going to be a miracle if I can get this baby out of me.”

Meanwhile, the Titans started playing the Bills. We could practically see the stadium outside the window of Baptist Hospital. Unfortunately, we couldn’t watch the game or hear the cheering because the TV in our private room didn’t work. Tish didn’t care about the game, but I followed the doctors and nurses into a waiting room, where there was a TV that worked. Every few plays I checked on Tish. Well, sometimes a nurse went in my place because the game was so close I didn’t want to leave and miss the action.

With less than two minutes, the lead changed twice. First, the Titans went ahead on a touchdown drive, and then with only sixteen seconds on the clock, the Bills took the lead on a field goal. They kicked off, the Titans received, lateraled in a crazy kind of Hail Mary, and ran the ball for a touchdown as time expired, winning the game in what became known as the Music City Miracle.

The cheers that filled the hospital’s corridors turned into tense quiet as the play was challenged and brought under review. It was one of the first times instant replay was used to decide the outcome of a game. The only place the drama was thicker was in Tish’s room. Suddenly it was baby time. The doctors, nurses, and I all looked at Tish, then at the broken TV, and then at one another, our expressions saying the same thing: “But the
game!
”

Then two more miracles occurred. First, the TV in Tish’s room lit up. The game was on and officials ruled that the Titans had won the game. Our cheers were just in time to welcome Noah Lindsey Cyrus, whose eyes were wide open and looking around as if to say, “What’s going on?”

I cut the cord, kissed Tish, and then glanced up at the game, though on the way to the TV my eye caught the photo of my papaw. He might as well have been standing there with us in person. Expect a miracle.

A miracle, indeed.

Brothers David and Gary Johnson were the cocreators and producers of
Doc.
With Andy Griffith and Michael Landon as their biggest influences, their goal was to make a family show with a strong,
moral male role model. They dreamed up Clint Cassidy, a Montana doctor who takes a job in a New York medical clinic and brings his country ways to the big city.

Within the first ten minutes of our initial meeting, David, Gary, and I knew we were meant to work together. Their idea of a family show was exactly like mine. They even put Tish and the kids in a quick cameo in the pilot. If you look closely in one scene, you can see Tish as a nurse checking me out as I walk through the hall. Still, despite the good vibes, I was still plagued by doubts—but as was usually the case with me, that turned into a good thing. I just wanted to keep it real.

One day, midway through the pilot, I had to take off for a few dates that had been booked before I signed on to the TV series. My plane was delayed on the tarmac in Toronto. As we sat on the runway, with the pilot periodically apologizing for the congestion, I wondered what the heck I was doing there in the first place. It was the same confusion as before. Why am I up here acting like an actor? Why am I not playing music full time?

Feeling lost, I shut my eyes and flashed back to a time when I really was lost. I was eight or nine years old, and my dad had taken me squirrel hunting in the woods. I’d never killed a squirrel. I didn’t have it in me to shoot anything. Who was I to take a life? Even a squirrel’s life.

While my dad went his own way, I sat with my gun and waited. After a while, I went for a hike and headed deeper into the woods until I was hopelessly lost.

At that point, my walk turned to a jog and then my jog turned into a run. I called my dad’s name. I knew you were supposed to be quiet when you hunted, but I was hollering, “Dad! Dad! Dad!” I tripped over a log and my gun snapped in two.

Finally, late that night, I staggered out onto an old country road. A sheriff spotted me.

“Don’t worry, son,” he said. “Your dad is right up here looking for you. I’ll radio in that you’re all right.”

A moment later my dad pulled up in his car, got out, and ran
toward me. I was thinking he was mad and might pull his belt off. Instead, he wrapped his arms around me, pulled me into his chest, and hugged me. It seemed like he might have been crying a little bit. He knelt down and looked in my eyes.

“Listen to me, son. When you’re lost, stand still.”

That moment was frozen in my mind as if it had happened the day before.

Now, there I was on the tarmac, a grown thirty-nine-year-old man, feeling just as lost as I’d been in the woods that day. I picked up a pen and pulled out the puke bag from the seat pocket in front of me and began to write:

When I was just a little boy

I wandered through the woods

Searchin’ for my daddy through the pines

I guess I took a wrong turn

Somewhere along the way

But the Bible said,

“Seek and ye shall find.”

Daylight turned to darkness

Adventure turned to fear

When I finally found my way back home

His words I still can hear…

Stand still!

When you’re in the dark,

Listen to your heart

And pray for God’s will

Stand still…

Stand still!

Adrift in the wind…

Your voice within

Will be your best friend

Stand still… and pray

Stand still

Now that I’m a grown man

On my own and on my way

I got my own decisions

to be made

And when I’m at the

crossroads

Unforsure and unforeseen

I bow my head

And with these words I pray…

After my shows, I returned to Toronto and played the song for David and Gary Johnson. I said, “Guys, I think this is a theme song for
Doc
.” They agreed, and introduced me to Jack Lenz, who had been hired to score the pilot, as well as write the theme. He was a kindred spirit, someone who lived and breathed music the way I did.

During production for
Doc,
I rented a condo in a twenty-four-story building in downtown Toronto, a far cry from my Nashville farm (now five hundred acres altogether). The windows in that condo didn’t even open. I hated not being able to breathe fresh air at night.

Tish and the kids flew in as their busy schedules permitted. (By this point, Brandi was showing horses and Miley had cheerleading practice after school.) I also got back home at least one weekend a month, but things were changing. The kids were growing up so fast and I longed for a simpler time. Just a few years before I had put Miley and Braison in my pickup and driven them to the farthest hill on our property, where there was a tiny clearing surrounded by forest.

There was a meteor shower that night, and I wanted my kids to see Mother Nature’s best fireworks display. We got set up at our secret place, by the kids’ favorite tree with a notch at the base where they hid Matchbox cars and RugRat toys. (They’re still there to this day.) We had marshmallows and wieners and we built a fire. Suddenly, Miley took off like a sprinter, running full bore.

She got about four feet in the pitch-black before tripping over a
tree stump. She flew an equal distance in the air and landed against the bumper of my truck. Oh man. A baseball-size bump appeared on her forehead. Blood spurted everywhere. I swung by the house to pick up Tish, and beelined it to the emergency room.

“Whose idea was it to play in the woods close to midnight?” Tish asked.

Miley looked at me. I tried not to look guilty… but I was.

“I thought so,” Tish said. “I got five kids and one overgrown, terminal teenager.”

After wrapping production on
Doc
’s first season, I was like a kid getting out of school for summer vacation. I hadn’t ever worked as hard or as long in a concentrated stretch as I had making those twenty-two episodes. It was June 2001, and all I wanted to do was go out on the road and play music with my band. I took fairs, festivals, and casinos—any and every gig I could get. I just wanted to find the music, thank the fans, and be in the band.

On the night of September 10, 2001, I flew from Nashville to Toronto, reading the script for the first episode of season two. Based around my song “Some Gave All,” it was the story of a Vietnam vet dealing with PTSD—post-traumatic stress disorder—who can’t let go of loving his high school sweetheart even though she’s married to another man and has a child.

I landed about 11:15 p.m., and by the time I got through Customs in Toronto, it was close to midnight. It turned out I needed a new work permit, but only one guy was around, and he didn’t work in that department. He told me to come back in the morning when one of the officials would be there.

So I went on my way, back to my condo, and got up early the next morning. It was about five thirty; a car arrived for me at six. I remember yawning in the backseat. By eight thirty, we were rolling film on the opening scene. I was listening to the vet tell me his life story and about his inability to move on. We had begun filming season two.

We were about thirty-five or forty minutes into the scene when
somebody said, “Hey, there’s been a plane crash in New York City.” At that point, we didn’t know much of anything. The folks on the morning news were waiting for details to emerge. As the crew prepared for the next take, we turned the monitor into a TV, and we couldn’t stop watching the tragic events that unfolded right before our eyes. By nine thirty, the whole world had changed.

People would have thought I was crazy if I’d told them about the dreams I’d had six months before this dreadful day. It took me a while before I mentioned them to anyone, except my driver, Loren Fredrick, who I told about the dreams the morning after they happened. I didn’t even want to think about them, but I couldn’t help it. As I sat glued in front of the TV, I remembered the two startling nightmares I’d had that America was attacked and I couldn’t get home to be with my family.

The second one was so vivid that I woke up in the middle of the night having an anxiety attack. The only way I could catch my breath was to get dressed, go outside, and stand by the lake with the cold air blowing off it.

Now, with that nightmare a reality, my breaths were short again and my chest filled with an unsettling tightness. This time I couldn’t open my eyes and make it go away, though I tried. America had been attacked. I was in Canada. My family was in Nashville. It was exactly what I’d dreamed.

Every fiber in my body was telling me to get to Tish and the kids. I wanted to be with them so badly, but I couldn’t. The borders were closed. I called home and hung on the line with my wife. We watched the news together in silence, except when one of us fought back tears. Despite being thousands of miles apart, I had never felt or needed to be as close, but I was so far away.