Long Way Gone (7 page)

T
he first day she slept deeply. Didn't even roll over. On the second day, I checked her for fever, pushed the hair out of her face, then sat next to her on the bed and drank in the smell of her. I stayed there an hour. Maybe two. I thought a lot about what she knew, what she didn't know, and what, if anything, would be gained by telling her the truth.

On day three I lifted her head, fed her some chicken broth, and made her eat some peanut butter toast. When she finished, she laid her head back down, closed her eyes, and slid her hand out from beneath the sheets. Reaching for me. I laid mine in hers and she drifted off. Her hands were rough, and if they told a story, it was not one of tenderness known.

When she woke on the fourth morning, I heard her talking on my landline. I couldn't make out the words, but she sounded apologetic, like the other person was not happy. She hung up and made a second call. Sounded like she was trying to get some information. When she appeared a few moments later, I'd come to little resolution. The truth of our lives would only open Pandora's box, and I wondered if that wouldn't hurt more. She'd already suffered a lot.

When she walked out she was wearing the fog of deep sleep and one of my Melanzana fleece pullovers. She poured herself some coffee and found me on the porch with Jimmy on my lap. I don't know how long she'd been standing there when I saw her leaning against the door-frame.

The clouds hung in the valleys below us. A hundred miles west, dark clouds threatened the year's first snow. When she spoke, her voice was soft but not necessarily peaceful. Worry had returned, as had that self-protective shell. Her tone was apologetic.

“Hey, I . . . I just talked with the folks in Biloxi. They're losing patience. I was supposed to be there two days ago. They said there's some video on the Internet. Me in a bar. Getting lots of views, and people are calling about me. Shows are starting to sell tickets. It might be a chance.”

While she talked, I studied her. She'd removed the Aircast. The hand was still a little puffy, but the bruise was turning a darker shade of purple. The circles beneath her eyes, meanwhile, had faded, and a glimmer of light had returned.

“I'm really sorry . . . I checked the bus schedule. Could I trouble you for a ride to the bus station?”

My heart registered a feeling that it had not felt in a long time. The closest word I can use to describe it was
hurt
. I set Jimmy down and slid on my boots. “Sure.”

She was staring at Jimmy, and the space between her eyes had narrowed. When she touched the bullet hole with the tip of her pinkie, I could all but see the question perched on the tip of her tongue. She must have thought better of it, though, because all she said was, “I'm going to take a quick shower.”

When she returned from the shower, wet hair and smelling of soap, I slid the Jeep keys into my pocket. “Ready?”

She owned the clothes on her back and a backpack with a lot of room in it. “Yeah.”

The thought of her arriving in Mississippi with nothing to play was bugging me. “Have you got three minutes for me to show you something?”

There was a pleading in her face, but I didn't know what to make of it. “Sure.”

Just off my kitchen stood a heavy wooden door with three locks. I unlocked all three, clicked on the light, and slid the door open. “You and I
met when I couldn't take my hands off your guitar.” I laughed. “Not much has changed.”

She stepped into the room, and, as it had at the hospital, her jaw went one way while her eyebrows went another. She began counting, her finger bobbing up and down as she pointed along the racks. When she finished she said, “You own sixty-four guitars?”

The number surprised me. Sounded high. “Don't know.”

She walked into the room and turned around, talking to herself. “You own so many you've lost count.”

I'd paneled the room in western red cedar and installed a dehumidifier. It would kick on when the humidity rose above 50 percent, but given the arid climate that wasn't often.

Daley walked around touching each guitar. The room was filled with Martins, McPhersons, Gibsons, a few Collingses, Taylors, and others. She looked genuinely impressed. “This is the nicest collection I've ever seen. You are officially a guitar hoarder.”

“I've been called a lot of things. That's a new one.” I stood off to one side while she continued to walk up and down each row. I'd displayed them in racks—one hanging over the other. Like clothes at a Laundromat.

“If I'm strumming, nothing compares to a McPherson. You know what they say—you can play a chord, go to lunch, and when you return it's still ringing. Harmonic perfection. But sometimes I like a note to die and not keep ringing, so if I'm flat-picking or playing finger-style, the answer varies depending on the day of the week.” I shrugged. “It's tough to top a D-28 or D-35.”

She turned toward me. “I'm really happy for you.”

I waved my hand across the racks. “Pick one.”

“What?”

“Any one you like.”

She took a step backward. “Peg, I couldn't possibly.”

It was the first time she'd called me Peg. It had rolled off her tongue naturally, without thinking. In a heartbeat we were twenty years younger. My voice stopped her retreat.

“What are you going to play when you get where you're going?”

She waved me off, but I could tell the thought bothered her. “Thanks to you, I've got a few dollars. I'll pick up something.”

“You're not a very good liar.”

She walked down the middle of a row, hands out, fingertips brushing the headstocks. “They said they've got something I can borrow for now.”

So she had already approached it with the people in Biloxi. It proved my suspicion; she was worried about it. I picked up a McPherson and handed it to her, bridging the space between us. “This is Rose. Her voice matches yours.” I rested the instrument in her hands. “Please.”

“She has a name?”

“They all have names.”

“But, Cooper—”

“Please,” I said again. “For old times.”

She turned it over in her hands. “I can't afford—”

“It's a gift. You don't pay for those.”

Careful not to hurt her hand, she played a few chords, then turned the guitar over in her hands and said, “It's beautiful.” Stepping closer, she kissed me on the cheek. “Thank you.” She kissed me a second time. This time not so far back on my cheek. Closer to the corner of my lips. “Really, I don't know what to . . .”

I pulled the hardshell case off the shelf and laid the guitar inside, along with a few extra sets of light strings and several dozen picks, and headed outside to the Jeep. She followed quietly.

Idling down the mountain, she chewed on a fingernail and tried not to look at me. But she didn't do a very good job.

The BV bus station is little more than a spot on the sidewalk where the bus pulls over in its route south from Leadville to Salida. You purchase your ticket in the post office and when you see the bus coming, you wave it down. It's old-school but effective.

I bought her ticket all the way to Mississippi, which she protested, but I did it anyway. Then I drove her to the Roastery and bought her a Honey Badger, and then we walked down the sidewalk and waited. While the milk froth covered her top lip, I opened my wallet and gave her what cash I had. Several hundred dollars. Between that and what she'd made in tips and playing at the Rope, she had close to a thousand. Probably more than she'd had in a long time.

She tried to protest, tried to seem stern. Strong. “Cooper, no. I can't.”

I held the folded bills toward her. “I made that money off your voice.”

She looked at it. “Then you should teach the rest of us how to save money, because my voice hadn't made anybody money in a long time.”

The implication was understated.

I tucked the money into her jacket pocket. She stood, arms crossed, staring into the southbound traffic. We were both quiet.

Finally she broke the silence. “I had fun yesterday. Or whenever it was that we played. Feels like yesterday.”

“Me too.”

She gazed at the mountains. “I haven't felt this rested in a long time.”

My eyes walked the peaks of the Collegiates. “The mountains have that effect.” I checked my watch. We had a few minutes.

I'd rehearsed this so many times. Now that my chance had arrived, I couldn't find an opening. I wanted Daley to know the truth. To correct our history. But I needed to stop short of the whole truth. False hope was more damaging than false history.

My voice was a hoarse whisper. “You remember when we first met, I told you how my mom gave a guitar to my dad when they married?”

“Yes.”

“And I told you how I grew up playing that guitar, and that when I left here, I stole him from my dad.”

She nodded.

“You remember how when I came to Nashville, someone had stolen him from me?”

Another nod.

“You remember that guitar's name?”

She searched her memory. “Frankie? Arlie? Something-ie.”

“Jimmy.”

“That's it.”

“This morning you saw me playing a D-28 with a small hole beneath the sound hole. You stuck your pinkie finger in the hole.”

She nodded.

“That's Jimmy.”

She looked confused. There were too many pieces and we were too far removed. “Where'd the hole—?” She stopped.

“In the aftermath of the fire, Sam spun two stories. You remember?”

She nodded slightly, suspicious of why I was picking at this scab.

“What if neither one was true?”

“Be tough to prove.”

“But what if?”

No response.

“What if there was a third story? The truth, even.”

“That would beg the simple question as to why you didn't love me enough to tell me. To fight for me.”

I was about to open my mouth when the bus appeared over my shoulder and the piercing sound of the air brakes shattered the thin line of hope stretched across the air between us. Sometimes raising a question as to the possibility of a truth is more effective than actually telling the truth. And my time had run out. “What if I loved you enough not to tell you?”

The bus stopped and the door opened. The driver waited.

Daley shouldered her backpack and picked up the McPherson. Her eyes were watery. The weight had returned to her shoulders. “You ever think about the Ryman?”

I kissed her cheek. “Only when I'm breathing.”

She held my hand. Lingered. “You ever think about what might have been? About us?”

“More than the Ryman.”

“You think there's still a chance for us?”

“I think your life has been prelude until now. The best is out there waiting for you.”

“I stopped believing in me a long time ago.”

“I didn't.”

She kissed me again, holding her lips to mine. They were soft, warm, moist, inviting, and trembling. She pulled back to look at me, then kissed me again. This time cupping my face in her hands. Finally she turned toward the bus. “You want to come?” she said. “You can stay a week or two. Make it vacation. Or you could stay forever.”

Every ounce of me wanted to climb on that bus. To grab her in my arms and never look back.

She was crying now. Embarrassed to be getting on a bus with puffy eyes. I gave her my Costas. “Call me when you get settled. Let me know how you're doing.”

I saw her shiver, then hug herself in response. Collecting herself, she nodded, climbed aboard, and when the driver opened the luggage compartment beneath the bus, I handed him the ticket and stowed her bag beneath. As I was sliding her bag in with the rest, I unzipped it and slid in three notebooks. My best stuff. Each written with her in mind. Her voice. In truth, every song I'd written for the past twenty years, I'd written with her in mind.

The driver climbed aboard, the door closed, and I stood on the sidewalk as the bus pulled away. The sight of her face growing smaller as she stared through the glass was one source of pain. And it was poignant. But it was the second source that was piercing: after twenty years, I'd still not told her the truth.

As much as I wanted to run after that bus, to bang on the door and scream for the driver to stop, I could not bring myself to tell her the words she wanted to hear.

I still loved her too much.

I
made my way home. Slowly. Quietly. I was going to open the windows and doors, but the remnant of both Daley and Coco Chanel was still hanging on the air, so I kept them closed and just walked room to room, breathing. I didn't feel much like eating. Finally I walked into her room, sat next to her bed, laid my head back, and closed my eyes.

The episodes I had experienced the last twenty years were coming more frequently, giving less warning, and lasting longer. Sitting next to the bed, I felt one coming on. I walked quickly up to the creek, stripped my shirt off, and waded in. Over the years, I had developed a habit of leaving my pants on because if things went south, somebody could use my belt to fish my body out of the water.

What comes next happens in waves. The first is the cold. It literally takes your breath away. The next is the pain, which the brain doesn't know how to process because it's getting the same get-me-out-of-here signal from every inch of the body. I try not to focus on it. The third stage is a sludgy sort of paralysis mixed with an odd sensation of prickly heat. After a couple of minutes the pain goes away and you stop feeling cold or hot. You just find yourself shivering in a room where there's light ahead and dark walls on either side. When the walls start closing in, it's time to either get out or head toward the light.

I heard, or maybe sensed, someone coming toward the pool, and then a shadow fell over me. A giant hand hooked beneath my belt and lifted me out of the water like a crane, then set me gently on the bank. I
opened my eyes, coughing, sputtering, trying to force movement into my limbs, and saw Big-Big looking down at me.

“I told your dad I'd look out for you, but it's getting tougher.”

I had wrapped myself into a fetal ball and spoke through chattering teeth. “How'd you get up here?”

“I'm old. Not dead.” He handed me a towel.

He stacked wood for a fire, starting with kindling, then broke a few larger limbs over his knee and made a pyramid. After he lit the pine needles, he knelt down and blew softly on the flame. When it caught, he slowly added more sticks, feeding it. Within minutes it was roaring and popping and cracking. I inched closer. His tone of voice told me he wasn't too happy. “You gonna just sit there? Watch her leave?”

I didn't respond.

“You think it's just some giant cosmic mistake that she ended up broke and busted in your town, on your street corner, in front of your Jeep?”

Still nothing.

He shook his head. “Your father would be chasing after that girl. Running full speed.”

“My father's dead. And I will be shortly.”

He spat. “Whether you live or die isn't the point. And you don't know squat about your father.” Big-Big was getting animated. “That girl deserves to know the truth. To know that all this ain't got nothing to do with her. That she ain't the reason.”

I shook my head. “I can't ask her to fall in love with a dying man.”

“You been dying since you drove back up this mountain twenty years ago. You want to lose twenty more? Living like a hermit up these hills. Love was made to be given away. Why you holding on to yours?”

“The truth of me will only hurt her.”

“I used to think the same thing. Thought that by keeping it to myself, I was protecting you. Truth is—” He shook his head and spat again. “The truth is the only thing that doesn't hurt. The truth is a giant hand. It both cuts us free and holds us tight.”

“You make that up?”

“No. Your father did.” He rubbed his hands together, searching for words. “I need to tell you something.”

His tone had changed. Hurt was bubbling up. I waited.

He sucked through his teeth. “Your father died in that water. Drowned right there.”

I sat up. This was a different story. “I thought you said he died in the house from a heart attack.”

He nodded. “His heart quit working all right, but why it quit working is another thing.”

“Okay . . . why'd it quit working?”

Big-Big stared at me. “Complications.”

“Complications from what?”

Big-Big's eyes darted left and right and then stopped, piercing through me. “It jes' be broke.” He looked like he had more to say but let it go. Instead, he pulled the weathered letter from his vest pocket and set it gently on the ground next to me. At one time, I'd read it with greasy hands. At another, I'd spilled some coffee on it. Yet another, I'd torn the pages in two. Tape now held the pieces together. Most every other time, I'd stained it with tears.

Big-Big spoke over me. “Your turn.”

My father had written the letter the night I'd left. Big-Big had found it lying faceup on his desk after his death—like he wanted it to be found. This much I knew. Big-Big had given it to me upon my return. For a long time I had treasured it, memorized it. My father's last words to me. A few years in and Big-Big asked to read it again. I saw how he held it. How his shoulders rounded as he held it. Saw the glassy reflection in his eyes. So we began taking turns holding on to it. Passing it back and forth every year or so. One year the tenderness wore off and I got mad. Hence, the tape. By now I didn't need the letter to know what it said. I'd read it so many times I could recite it backward. And while it answered most of the questions of my heart, it did not answer the one that remained.

Big-Big turned and rested his hand gently on my shoulder. His voice was a warm whisper. “Cooper?”

I knew what he was going to say. He'd said it before. I rested my hand on his.

“You can't tell a dead man you're sorry.”

I unfolded the letter, and for the ten thousandth time washed myself in the sound of my father's voice.

Dear Son,

You left tonight. Drove out of the Falls. I stood on the stage and watched the truck's red taillights get smaller and smaller. I'm sitting here wondering whether I should've let you go. Wondering if I should've gone about all this the way I did. Maybe I was wrong. I don't know. I know my heart hurts. I imagine yours does too . . .

The handwritten letter continued for three pages. I knew it by heart. Water in the desert.

Dad had signed his name five times. Two in blue ink. Three black. The date at the top had been scratched through five times, and a new date written in its place. All of which occurred on the anniversary of my leaving. That meant Dad had pulled the letter out every year, reread it, and then changed the date and signed his name afresh.

Maybe that image comforted me most.

I folded the letter and inserted it back into the envelope. After twenty-five years my father's voice still echoed. His last words to me. And when they settled in the middle of me and I once again realized that the words I had long wanted to speak, the words I came home to offer, would never get spoken, but lay silent and sour, where they cut my soul like slivers of stained glass, I cried like a baby.