Long Way Gone (16 page)

I don't understand half the language used by critics. What I do understand is how music makes us feel. Watch any group of Southern boys when they hear the first riff of “Sweet Home Alabama.” What do they do? Jump to their feet, remove their hats, cross their hearts with one hand, and raise their beer cups with the other. No discussion. No collaboration. They are tied to a tether and the music tugs at it.

Music reaches people at a level that is beneath their DNA. Dad was right. Again. Music exposes what and who we worship.

In my mind, the single highest compliment an audience can pay a musician is this: the last note rings out and is dangling from the rafters of heaven, where it echoes and resonates before fading. The audience responds with pin-drop silence. That's right. Crickets. With head-shaking disbelief and awe. Followed by rising, ear-piercing applause that lasts long after the performer has left the stage.

That's when you know that the music wasn't about you. In truth, it never was.

O
ne Wednesday night about midnight I found myself in a small area backstage next to a phone hanging on the wall. I stood there, twirling the knotted cord between my fingers. I danced around it, trying to act like it didn't have my undivided attention. After an hour, I dialed the number.

A voice answered, “Hello?”

There was a lot I wanted to say. To explain. But more than that, I wanted to hear his voice. I stood there quietly. Silence settled over the line. Twenty seconds passed. Then thirty. When he finally spoke again, his voice was soft. “Are you safe?”

I'd been discovered, so I reached to hang up the phone, then stopped short. I returned the phone to my ear. Stood there. After a while I managed a broken whisper. “Yes, sir.”

I heard him sit down in the creaky chair in the kitchen. I could see him sitting with his elbows resting on the kitchen table, staring west out across the mountains. I could smell coffee from the percolator.

He cleared his throat. His gentle words wrapped around me like velvet arms. “You find the map?”

The picture in my mind's eye was of the motel room where the air conditioner cover had been left open on the floor, the screws all lined up in a row, and the memory of how I'd lost my dad's life savings pierced me. “Yes, sir.”

He paused, and I could hear his palm brush over the whiskers on an unshaven face. “Good. That's good.”

I returned the phone to the cradle and slid down the wall, leaning my head against peeling wallpaper. A calendar on the wall caught my attention. It was my twenty-first birthday.

While I had very little desire to play publicly, that did not mean I didn't want to play. To write music. I was seldom without my small black notebook. I'd become so good with the Nashville Number System that I could write a song with verses and complete music in just a couple minutes.

Riggs used to watch me with muted amusement. He wasn't nosy but he was interested, so every now and then I'd ask him a question. Turns out he had been a studio musician for a few years, and what I lacked in some of the specifics, he knew.

One day he handed me a Martin he'd been tweaking for a customer and then tapped the notebook at my back. “Play me something?”

I hammered out a few licks and sang a verse and chorus. Not too much.

He walked away and said nothing. Couple hours later we were locking up, and he put his hand on my shoulder. “Don't keep all that to yourself.” He mussed up my hair. “I don't dig at you. I reckon you'll talk when you feel like it. But there are two types of people in Nashville. Those who want to get something. And those who want to give something.”

He pointed at a Martin hanging on the wall. “That thing is only beautiful when it's making the sound it was meant to make. Otherwise, why's it hanging there?”

I walked upstairs, stood on the roof, and cried. Everything in me wanted to go home. To fall on my dad, tell him about Jimmy, and tell him “I'm sorry.” But there was another part of me that would not let me do that. And that part needed to make something of the mess that was
me. To walk home with something more than scars and empty hands. To be something other than a failure. I was caught in the middle of that tug-of-war.

I didn't know what to do with the ache in me, so I developed a rhythm. Riggs trusted me. He would take vacations and leave me a week in the store. Sometimes two. My boss at the Ryman gave me my own set of keys. Trusted me with lockup. I kept to myself, did my work, arrived early, stayed late, did more than I was asked, and kept my ear pointed at the stage. I was learning on multiple levels. This endeared me to what I learned were, though admired and adored, mostly lonely people.

I got to know the acts, the performers, managers, producers, agents, everybody who came through the door. I got them what they needed when they needed it. I became known as the jack-of-all-trades. I hemmed shirts, tuned and strung guitars, bought new boots when a pair didn't arrive in time, gave a guy my shirt, called babysitters to tell them so-and-so would be late, reserved rooms at hotels, gave directions, ordered takeout. Many nights I solved problems before they became problems. Some of the biggest names in the business began trusting me. Phone numbers. Home addresses. Drives across town. Safekeeping. They trusted me with their secrets. Their confidence.

While I could have leveraged this time with the stars to advance myself, I did not. I didn't care. Or at least I told myself I didn't. Riggs had grown increasingly suspicious that I'd once been more than I let on, that I could have been more than hired help earning a little better than minimum wage, that I once had dreams. To his credit, he didn't probe. He could see that I needed a place to mend. To heal. I kept my nose to the grindstone and worked with a singular purpose—to save up enough money to pay my father back what I owed him. Which was a lot.

At a fair price, the truck was $7,500. I'd stolen $12,800. On today's market, Jimmy was worth between 17 and 25K. At a low end, I needed $37,300. I told myself that when I had that I could walk home, face my father, and buy myself out from underneath the weight on my shoulders and the stone in my gut.

I'd not told Riggs my story, but he saw my affection for Martin guitars every time my hands touched one. I had told him I'd once owned a Brazilian D-28 named Jimmy. When he asked what happened to it, I didn't answer. I think he thought I pawned it or something. He asked me if I'd know Jimmy if I ever saw him again. I told him that when my mom gave Jimmy to my dad, she'd had Ruth 1:16–17 engraved into the back of the headstock. Only way to remove that was carve it out or remove the neck—both of which were unlikely.

Life in Nashville was not all hardship and pain. One part was better than anything I'd ever known.

Life at the Ryman.

When the crowds left, when they turned out all the lights, when the floors had been swept and mopped and the bathrooms cleaned, when power to the soundboards had been cut and echoes faded, I was left locked inside. Alone with my voice and one of the most hallowed stages in all of music. While some around Music City thought that understanding the Nashville Number System was the key to the kingdom, in reality it was the Ryman. Every night, right or wrong, I strapped on a borrowed guitar from Riggs's shop and played my heart out for an empty auditorium. For two years I “performed” there six or seven nights a week. I looked for Blondie, but he never showed. Not once. Only the rats knew.

Then Daley Cross came to town. And took the world by storm.

And fire.

D
aley Cross had been discovered in a California talent show. Malibu looks matched to an angelic, pitch-perfect voice. A one-in-a-million combination. Her people touted her as a country voice with crossover star potential. Meaning she could make money in several markets. Including world tours and multiple endorsement opportunities. Her stage presence endeared her to young and old and belied her twenty-one years. The buzz backstage was that her Ryman performance could be the ignition to her rocket shot. All she needed was a hit. A song that distinguished her from the rest of the dime-a-dozen pop star crowd.

For the last year I'd heard the rumblings. They'd have been tough to miss. Her first single had climbed into the top ten. An easy-to-sing pop jingle that got a lot of airplay and showcased a bit of her range. The conversation around her included words like,
It's only a matter of time.
Over the last several months she'd begun making the rounds of second-tier talk shows and drive-time radio shows. Her sound and picture were becoming more heard and seen. Her brand was growing. She was on her way.

Whenever I heard her, I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. Don't get me wrong, whatever “it” was, she had it, but whenever I heard her voice or saw her glittery picture gracing some magazine cover or television screen, I always thought that whoever was in charge of her was trying to make her fit into a box she wasn't made for. Someone had taken the sum of her, chopped her into little pieces, and was trying to reassemble those pieces into some formula that had worked elsewhere. I
sensed in her a resident sadness that no light show, electric guitar solo, or eyeliner could disguise.

Evidently I was alone in this analysis, as everyone else was head over heels for her.

With much media buzz, her show had come to the Ryman. Several black tour buses and just as many semitrailers logjammed the streets. Her rehearsal began early afternoon, ran late into the evening, and included a lot of people yelling, “Again!” or “Daley, that won't cut it. Not in this business.”

One guy in particular liked to throw down his earphones and clipboard whenever he wanted to emphasize his immense dissatisfaction. To me, she seemed little more than a pinball, and somebody without her best interest in mind had his hands on the flippers. As she sang the same stupid song for the umpteenth time, I kept wondering why she let them try to make her into someone she wasn't. She could sing that song fifty times, but she'd never find her voice in it.

But nobody was asking me, so I kept my nose down, mouth shut, and hands on the mop.

By one a.m. the frantic crowds and people trying to make themselves look busy had left and I was alone. The Ryman was dark save a single light on the stage, which the sound engineers left on every night in honor of those who'd stood there. I checked off my “final” list, double-checked the doors, and wandered to the stage. Daley Cross's band had left their instruments onstage, and given the multiple security guards posted around the block, they weren't going anywhere.

Next to Daley's microphone stood her guitar. A McPherson. It was really difficult for me not to put my hands on a McPherson. So I picked it up, slid the strap over my neck, and began running my fingers up and down the neck and strumming out a few chords. It was both aesthetically and acoustically beautiful. Melodious. Rang like a bell and filled the air with a sonic tapestry. It sounded so good and leant itself to a fingerpicking style . . . so I dug back in my memory and began playing a song I'd written years ago about the storm that threatened to rip the
tents apart and how Dad had lifted me out from underneath the bench and told me to “let it out.”

Though I'd initially written it on a piano, I'd transposed it. It sounded especially good on a guitar because over the years I'd learned how to simultaneously flat-pick and strum the strings while also tapping the body of the guitar in a percussive, drumlike rhythm that created the feeling of a coming violent storm. The style I'd developed allowed the listener to both hear and feel the music through the use of contradicting major and minor chords.

Minor chords are sad, anxious, heavy. They grab your attention in that by their very nature they are uncomfortable. Disconcerting. They make you want to run for your life. Major chords are happy, warm, full, light, and triumphant. They make you want to do the impossible. The first would lead us to the second. But to get to triumphant and resolute, we had to endure anxious and fearful.

The second way I accomplished this style was to use an actual sound from the storm. A shrill whistle that I'd learned from Dad. In an odd mixture of physics and sheer volume, he could curl his tongue and press his lips tight to his front teeth and blow. Actually,
shrill
doesn't even come close to describing the sound. As a kid I'd spent countless dizzying hours mastering it.

If I played it right you could hear the thunder rumble, lightning crack, tent rip; then a rising crescendo replaced that uncertainty, lifting you and erasing the memory. Then before you knew it, the storm had faded and you were galloping atop notes that reached out from the stage, wrapping you in their arms and shaking off the fear.

It's a song about promise. Gifting. Calling. About identity. And, I guess, it's a song about how music is sometimes the only thing that will silence the raging storm in us. My dad had always loved that song.

Three verses, a bridge, and a chorus later, I finished playing, retuned the low E string to a drop-D tuning, the way I'd found it, and was about to set the guitar back in its stand when I heard the sound of someone clapping quietly.

The hair rose on my neck. “Hello?”

The clapping quieted.

“Somebody there?”

A woman's voice responded. Her two words betrayed a weariness. “Just me.”

I began retracing my steps in my mind. Had I locked all the doors? Had she been here the entire time? Who was she? I considered dropping the guitar and running. I tried to sound like I had some authority. “Ma'am, this building is closed for rehearsal.”

A chuckle. “Thank goodness.”

While I tried to sound in charge, I'm afraid my voice took on a hand-caught-in-the-cookie-jar tone. “I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

I could hear the smile on her face as she spoke. “Sure, just as soon as you put down my guitar.”

Ouch. I really had been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. I placed it quietly in its stand. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

She rose from her seat in the back of the auditorium and began making her way toward me. “Don't worry. You play it a lot better than I do.”

I had not watched her evening sound tests because I'd had my head buried in replacing some lightbulbs, but her voice was unmistakable. Daley Cross was a good five inches shorter than me, but she did not seem to know this. She made her way across the stage, hands behind her back, and looked up at me. I waved my hand across her guitar. “I'm sorry. I didn't hurt it. You can—”

“That's a beautiful song.”

I figured I'd try the play-dumb approach—which was extraordinarily stupid given that I was standing on a stage and had been holding her guitar while my echo faded off the walls. “Song?”

She smiled and circled me, singing the chorus back to me. “ ‘Let it out . . .' ” She quit singing as abruptly as she began. “Where'd you hear that?”

I chewed on my lip a second, asking myself just how honest I wanted to be with her. “In my head.”

She looked up at me. Surprised. “You wrote it?”

I wasn't sure where this was going or how my answer might contribute to me losing my job. If my boss knew I'd been rather cavalier with what had been entrusted to me for safekeeping, I was pretty sure she'd fire me on the spot. My instructions had been pretty clear: “Clean up, lock up, touch nothing. Whatever you do, don't, under any circumstances, mess with the musicians' instruments. Don't even breathe on them. Ever.”

And Riggs had vouched for me, which made it even more troublesome. I could lose both jobs.

I waved my hand across the stage. “Nothing's missing. You can check. I was just locking up and—”

“Where'd you get the music?”

“I can't afford to lose this job.” I scratched my head. “So if you could just forget—”

“Where'd you learn to play like that?”

I rubbed my hands together. “Listen, Miss, um—”

She held out her hand. “Daley. I'm playing here tomorrow night.” She looked at her watch. “Or tonight.”

Our conversations were walking in circles around each other. I said, “I feel like I'm talking about one thing and you're talking about another.”

She pointed behind her. “I couldn't find an unlocked door, so the rent-a-cops let me in.”

That explained it. Sucker punched by security. “Oh.”

“Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. Provided—” She stood across from me, motioning for me to pick up her guitar. “Please.” She smiled, walked off the stage, sat in the front pew, and pulled her knees up into her chest. “You play that again. Just like last time.”

“You're not mad about me playing your McPherson?”

She waved me off. “My producer gave me that. Said he thought it matched my voice.”

I turned the guitar in my hands. “Nice producer.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It's a ten-thousand-dollar guitar.”

“He can afford it.”

“How long have you been sitting there?”

“Long enough.”

I sat on a stool and folded my hands in my lap. “Couldn't we both go home and forget this? I'll walk you back to your—”

A single shake of her head. “Can't sleep.” She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees and waited, warding off a cold wind I couldn't feel. She looked both bone-tired and soul-weary.

“So all I have to do is sing this one time and we can both go home and you'll forget we ever met?”

She smiled.

My fingers rolled quietly across the strings. “That's not an answer.”

“We can go home, but I doubt I'll forget.”

“So, you
are
mad?”

She rested her chin on her knees. “In the last six months I've listened to hundreds of demos. Maybe more. None of them touched me as deeply as your song.”

I muted the strings. “Can I ask you one question?”

“Sure.”

I eyed the photoshopped glamour posters along the wall. The one where the unseen fan at her feet pushed back her glistening hair. “Is
she
listening? Or are you?” I looked back at the front row, my fingers tapping the strings.

She let out a breath, and the square edge of her shoulders melted into a relaxed round. “I'm listening as me.”

So at two a.m. in the Ryman, with nothing but air between us, I lifted my voice and played for an audience of one—offering my song out across the world that lay before me—and the well-constructed walls of two broken strangers came tumbling down.

When I finished, she shook her head and wiped her face on her sleeve. She sat there a minute, slouching in the seat, closing her eyes, resting her head against the back of the pew. For almost a minute she said nothing while one toe tapped unconsciously.

Finally she stood. “Thank you.” She crossed her arms again like the cold wind had returned. She half turned and spoke over her shoulder. “Very much.”

She had made it to the exit when I hollered after her, “Hey, would you—”

She turned.

“Would you sing it with me?”

She took a step back toward me. “Really? You wouldn't mind?”

I stepped to the side, out of the direct rays of the single light shining down. “No.”

She nodded. “I'd like that.” She came back and climbed the steps leading onto the stage. “You teach me the words?”

I slid the notebook from behind my back and opened to the page.

She pointed to the Nashville Number System. “You understand this?”

“I can get by.”

“The guys in my band are always telling me I need to learn it, but it's Greek to me.” She read through the words again, finally brushing the pen strokes on the page with her fingertips. “Beautiful.” She looked up. “Where's it come from?”

“My dad was . . . is a tent preacher. I was just a kid. A bad storm rolled in. Lightning caught the tent on fire. Thunder everywhere. I hid under the piano bench. Sideways rain stinging my face. People scattering like ants. My dad reached down and lifted me up with one arm, set me on the bench, pointed to my heart, and whispered in my ear—”

She finished the sentence by singing, “Let it out.”

“It was the first time I played before a group of any size.”

“I think I would like your dad.”

I worked my way through the intro and nodded for her to come in. She started quietly, breathing in the guitar, breathing out my song. Her voice was custom-made for it. She had the range and the volume to toy with the verses, which she refrained from doing, I suspected, for fear of hurting my feelings. By the time I started playing the second verse, she'd opened up her lungs and sung my song back to me.

When the last note faded, we sat quietly. One minute. Then two. Finally she raised an eyebrow. “How'd that sound? Was that okay?”

She'd had a rough go lately. Too many negative responses. Like a dog that's been on a leash so long that even when you take it off it won't walk beyond the length of the chain.

Her singing my song was one of the more beautiful things I'd ever heard. I tried to figure out how to tell her that without sounding like her growing and adoring fan base.

“I've always thought that the best voice is not the one that can sing the most octaves, or the loudest, longest, whatever . . . but the one who makes us believe that what he or she is singing is true.”