Paradise (12 page)

Paradise followed behind me to the hangar.

“Paisley,” he called out.

I kept walking.

I’d been thinking about what I’d say, to him, to Waylon. But there wasn’t anything to say. We needed to play and move on. No point trying to get Paradise to make a blood oath not to use us as his backup band.

“Paisley!”

Blood oath or not we were going to have to trust him. The way I figured it, we all just needed to practice and get better and hopefully by the time we took the stage in Austin, we’d be ready and we’d play as the Waylon Slider Band.

When I rounded the corner by the hangar, Paradise ran behind me and snatched my drumsticks from my back pocket.

I whipped around, marching him backward against the hangar. I held my hand out. “You’re really good at making stupid choices.”

“I need to talk to you before we go in,” he said, holding the sticks above his head out of my reach.

“See, that’s where you’re wrong. None of us in the band need to talk to you. We need to trust you. And right now, you’ve just stolen my drumsticks. I’m not feeling real trusty.”

Paradise rolled the drumsticks between his fingers and bent his arm just enough to make his biceps swell. “You can’t expect me just to sing lead then fade into the background.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, none of us expect you and your accordion to fade into the background. It’s all about you,
Gabriela
, and that’s the problem.”

“I’ll do what I have to, to be a part of the band. You’ve got my word.” Paradise extended the drumsticks to me; then he pulled them back.

“You trust me?” He dangled the sticks.

I reached for them. He pulled them away.

“Say you trust me.”

“I don’t trust you.” I jumped to grab at the sticks and missed.

Paradise laughed. “I took an MIP for you, for the others. You know I’m not going to mess the band up again. I’m not giving the sticks back until you admit that you can trust me.”

I snatched his hat off his head. “Now what?”

Paradise grabbed me around the waist, picking me up off the ground. He slipped the drumsticks and his hand into the back pocket of my shorts. And he kept it there, holding me to him with his other hand pressing against my back. His breath warmed my neck. His hair, or maybe it was a hint in the breeze, smelled like the wisteria in full bloom and tangled in the treetops. My lips touched his ear and I just held on—breathing, taking him all in. “Put me down.”

From the corner of my eye, I could see L. V. standing on his patio, watching every move we made.

“You need to move your hand.” I stretched my legs toward the ground.

Paradise set me down.

I clutched his hat to my chest. “It’s really Waylon that has to trust you.”

14

LEVI LAYS IT ON THE LINE

Levi was not himself.

I expected a fair amount of resistance from Waylon, but I never gave one thought to Levi. The band was only a side thing for him. Levi had colleges beating his door down with baseball offers. Furthermore, he was dipping. Levi hadn’t been dipping since last summer when Lacey told him it was gross and girls would never kiss him because he’d get a black, hairy fungus on his tongue. Still, the wintergreen stench of chewing tobacco hung inside the hangar.

Cal must have taken the tarp off my drums. They were uncovered and it was like him to be so thoughtful.

“I guess we can get started,” I announced. With Paradise beside me, I decided to put everything on the line. Go for broke. “We’re all here.” I hoped the pretend-like-the-disaster-at-the-Tucker-Barn-never-happened approach would fly.

It never got off the ground.

Waylon was leaving. He stripped off his guitar and kicked open its case.

“Waylon.” I knelt down and closed the case before he could put away his guitar. “Let it go. We’ve got to have him.”

“You may, but I don’t. I can go to Nashville and play backup right now, right this minute, for anyone. I’m not playing backup in my own band.” Waylon faced Paradise, turning his nose up as if he smelled roadkill. “He’s … he’s using you, Paisley.”

Paradise rolled his sleeves up. He obviously took that personally, and I wasn’t sure if he was distracting himself with the sleeve rolling or prepping for a fight. Furthermore, given what just happened outside the hangar, that remark kicked me in the gut. But if Paradise was using me, then Waylon was too. “Look around, Waylon. You’re in my uncle’s hangar. What does that mean you’re doing?”

Waylon’s guitar case was easy enough for him to reach down and pick up, but he wasn’t moving on it.

“We’re all using each other,” I explained. “It’s not such a bad thing.”

“It’s Waylon’s band, Paisley.” Levi stood up with his bass resting on the tip end of his work boot. He spit a brown tobacco-juice zinger into a Dixie cup and glared at Paradise. “Dude, I ain’t got no problem with you or your squeezebox. I’ll even give you some points for helping Paisley and Lacey and Cal get home. But if you’re hung up on bein’ an attention whore, you can hang a tambourine off your left foot and be your own one-man band. Make no mistake. We will walk offstage and leave your ass up there.”
Thooooop.
He nailed a brown spit wad in the cup again.

We all stood stock-still like mannequins. Immobile. Reverent. Even Cal, who was always fingering a chord, silenced his Gibson. From the nose of the old bomber,
Miss Molly Moonlight
’s come-hither-honey grin morphed into a gasp of pure shock.

“Levi.” I reached out to touch his arm, but he turned away.

He set his cup down on the hangar floor, gripped his bass guitar by the neck. “Y’all know I’m done after Texapalooza. But if that’s off, then I’m done now.”

Levi pulled in his bottom lip; the muscles in his cheeks jumped. He wouldn’t look at me. Whatever was bothering him had to run deeper than band issues with Paradise or Texapalooza.

Paradise stepped up. “I got carried away, man.” He slapped Levi on the back. “Must’ve been your home brew.”

Levi ignored Paradise and locked eyes with Waylon.

“It won’t happen again,” Paradise added.

I liked to be able to count on things: the sun coming up, even Mother’s dependable disapproval of my heathen drum dreams. I’m a planner and I count on the constants in my life. Levi’s good-humored swagger had been a certainty for as long as I could remember. It wasn’t like him to snap, cuss, and dip in a single hot-tempered moment.

Cal Boone, God love him, started plucking a plinky-sounding kid’s tune. I swear it was the Barney song.
I love you. You love me.

Levi rolled his eyes, but his jolly heart wanted to laugh. I could see it.

I took that opening to scoot across the concrete. Get behind my drums. Change the momentum.

Waylon futzed around like a kid pacing on a high board, getting ready to dive for the first time. Finally, he pulled his guitar over his shoulder and turned to me. “Count us in on four.”

Four was Waylon’s blues-rock count. I let the sticks speak the rhythm. One. Two. One, two, three, four. Waylon was testing Paradise with one of Waylon’s own signature songs.

Paradise left his accordion in his murse. If Waylon was going to test him, Paradise was committed to passing. He managed to put his pride to the side for the sake of the band. That scored points with me.

Paradise waited for Waylon to open the song, let him carve the intro with an unmistakable wailing that only his skill and his ’61 Fender Stratocaster could pull off.

I kept the beat steady, held the song together, barely hitting the snare on the backbeat. Slow and simple. That was the blues. That and locking in with the bass player.

But Levi still wouldn’t look at me.

Not that it mattered so much musically. We’d played together, played Waylon’s songs so much that we knew to simply anchor the groove. I suppose we didn’t have to look at each other. But that didn’t change the fact that we always did. That’s when I knew whatever Levi’s problem was, it had something to do with me.

Paradise must’ve practiced at home because when Waylon turned the song over to him, Paradise growled out Waylon’s lyrics in his velvety bass. The more he sang, the more his voice melted with the whining guitars, the more the deep drum tones seemed to sink like an anchor in a dark sea, the worse I felt about Levi.

We played it out, song after song, according to Waylon’s playlist, like we should’ve done at the Tucker Barn. After about the fifth song, Paradise added his accordion. He drew out the bellows, which howled through the hangar like a lonesome train whistle. No rocking Carlos Vives. Paradise proved he could fall in with the Waylon Slider Band.

I rode the blues tempo—rode it from one song to the next and into the next, as smooth and slow as the sun setting over the pasture. Feeling my heart drop on every ghost note. I had to figure out exactly what Levi’s problem was.

Uncle L. V. stepped into the hangar just as we finished. “Y’all plannin’ on depressin’ everyone in Austin?” He pointed his beer at Cal’s guitar. “Or are you gonna let him use that Gibson on some Southern rock?”

Waylon smiled for the first time. L. V. had ridden him for months about going wide-open and not playing so much in his daddy’s style. “We worked the slow stuff today. We don’t have much time left.”

Levi packed up his bass. “We practicing again this week, Waylon?” He said it like he had a thousand things to do and needed to get rehearsal on the calendar. But Levi had never been a calendar kind of guy.

Waylon glanced at me, then appealed to L. V. “We’re behind the eight ball. We’ve got to pull together a fifteen-minute set that shows our style and still gives each of us a chance to show what we can do individually. We’re going to start…”

L. V. waved him off as Waylon launched into one of his overly detailed explanations. “Use the hangar anytime, son.” L. V. turned to me. “Make it work, Paisley. But your momma ain’t ever going to believe my house needs cleaning more than once a week.”

Levi slammed the lid on his guitar case. “Call me when you figure rehearsal out, Waylon.” He stomped toward the hangar door.

I tucked my sticks in my back pocket and ran out after him. I still had daylight left to burn. “Levi, stop.”

Levi dropped his guitar in his truck bed then opened the door.

“Levi, what is wrong with you?” I stared up at him. “Please tell me what I did.”

“I ain’t lying for you anymore, Paisley. That goes for Lacey too.”

“Lying? I don’t understand.” I glanced beyond his truck. Clover had gone to seed and the blush across the pasture matched the red in Levi’s cheeks. “I’ve never asked you to lie for me.”

Levi reached into the door pocket and pulled out a can of Skoal. “Not directly.” He pinched a fresh wad and tucked it behind his bottom lip. “Paisley, I have to face your daddy every day at the batting cages. Jack Tillery taught me to pitch. He caught balls for me when no one else had the guts to get behind the plate. He’s the reason for my scholarships.” Levi spit a dart at the ground. “I’m going to college because of him. No one in my family’s ever done anything more than a few hours at community college. If it weren’t for baseball, if it weren’t for your daddy, I don’t know what I’d be doin’.”

I heard Paradise’s accordion rip through the hangar. L. V. and Waylon and Cal were taking him to task. “I’ve never asked you to lie for me, Levi. Me or the band.”

“Your daddy knows. He ain’t stupid.” Levi spit again. “He knows about the band. He knows about the parties. God, Paisley. He asked me at the cages this afternoon if I was takin’ care of you and Lacey.” When Levi wiped his cheek with his big bear paw of a hand, I thought I’d crumble. “I should’ve stepped up sooner. I let Coach Till down. I let Lacey down. I can’t stand what she’s doin’ to herself.”

I knew he meant all of it. I also knew how he felt about Lacey. He’d always wanted to date her, but he had the absolute worst of résumés in my mother’s mind: a deeply rooted East Texas country boy and a baseball player. He was everything Mother stayed hell-bent on keeping us from.

Levi took a long study of his red-dirt-stained boots. “I may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I know this: A lie ain’t no rifle bullet. It’s a shotgun shell. You and Lacey think you’re lying to your momma and gettin’ around her. Truth is, there’s a whole lot of other people gettin’ hit when you pull that trigger.”

“You know how my mother is.” I half resented Levi trying to make me out to be the bad girl in this situation. “There’d be no drums, no band, no nothing for me if she knew the truth.”

Levi stepped into his truck and sat behind the wheel. “That’s what you keep sayin’, and Lacey keeps sayin’ she wouldn’t get to go to beauty school. But neither one of you have given Diane Tillery a chance to be that big of a bitch.”

My mouth fell open. Levi was serious.

He kept on, “And neither one of you have bothered to trust your own daddy to help.”

Now I was ticked. “So what do you suggest I do? March down to my house and tell my mother about the band and that we’re rehearsing every day until Texapalooza, which by the way I’m also going to play at? How about that? Is that what you think?”