Paradise (25 page)

Mother followed me as I gingerly moved through the crowd, careful not to rub my thighs against each other. The burning had almost turned numb.

The boys hung together along with a crowd of folks. Paradise had his arm around his grandfather, but dropped it and came running toward me. He picked me up and spun me around. I tried not to scream when my thighs brushed against his jeans.

“Put her down,” Mother ordered. “Down!”

I patted him on his back. “My legs.”

He let me down and saw the swollen bands where the
caja
had cut into my thighs.

Paradise knelt down and rubbed his finger around the swollen part just above my knee.

“That’s enough.” Mother shooed him back.

Waylon and the other guys walked up.

“We let her play too long.” Paradise had his hands on hips. “She stayed in the pocket with the ropes slicing her legs just so we could make a bigger entrance.”

“Sorry, Paisley.” Waylon’s skull cap was off and his hair was as wild as his guitar playing. “I had no idea.”

“I’m OK. It’s my fault for wearing shorts.” My legs continued to ache. I really didn’t want everyone staring at my thighs. “I’m sorry we lost.”

Waylon’s father rushed up with a bag of ice. I took it and held it against one leg.

“I don’t know who you think lost,” Waylon’s father drawled. “Those girls have been playing the Austin circuit for years. They’ve got a table set up with CDs on the other side of the stage.”

Levi laughed. “We lost to some home cooking.”

I switched the cold bag to my other leg.

“Y’all made a name for yourselves.” He squeezed Waylon’s neck and the pride just burst through Waylon’s smile. “You made a name with good, solid playing. That wins every time.”

The pastel colors in the sky intensified as the sun set lower.

The soft voice belonging to Paradise’s grandfather drifted in. “Gabriela, you have to go.”

I pulled the ice pack off. “Go where?”

All of us, the whole group stared at him.

Paradise looked down at his boots, then grinned like a barn cat. His cheek dimpled deep enough for a coin slot. “Los Tres Reyes. The Tejano trio?” He smiled as if we all knew who he was talking about.

“Grammy winners.” Uncle L. V. helped him out.

Paradise took off his hat and rolled the brim. “They caught me as I came offstage.” He put the hat back on. “I’m going to play accordion for them at a Cinco de Mayo celebration in Houston. I’m flying out with them tonight.”

The boys congratulated him in their fist-bumping, bromance kind of way.

I hugged him, but I had to laugh. “You know you have to get on a plane to fly?”

“Yes.” He reached for my hand and clasped my fingers in his, tucking our hands behind his back where Mother couldn’t see. “But it’s not going to be some war relic we have to land in a pasture.”

Uncle L. V. pointed at us. “Your boy there can catch a ride to the airport with us. We’re going to need to get
Miss Molly
up and headed east.”

Paradise leaned down and breathed onto my neck. “Did he just call me your boy?”

He held my hand as we followed L. V. and Mother out of the park. High on adrenaline and the success of drumming at Texapalooza, I walked beside him forgetting about the pain in my legs.

“I guess if I’m your boy”—Paradise kissed the top of my head—“what does that make you?”

CAL’S LYRIC JOURNAL

SIX STRINGS AND A HEART FOR YOU

The crowd heard you first, but for me they screamed

I’m high on that rush, it’s what I’ve dreamed

But what goes up comes down and when I turned around

I had a hold on my guitar, you couldn’t be found

This is how I do

Six strings and a heart for you

Picking out a melody, playing it through

Some place away from the crowd and the noise

I should tell you I care, but I can’t find the voice

This is how I do

Six strings and a heart for you

We’re heading back home, but it won’t be the same

Me and my boys, only a mention of your name

It would’ve been sweet to have you along

But when he took your hand, I knew you were gone

Some place away from the crowd and the noise

I should tell you I
love
care, but I can’t find the voice

So this is how I do

Six strings and a heart for you

38

SWEET GOOD-BYE

While Mother chatted on the phone to Dad and Uncle L. V. turned in a flight plan, I snuck outside with Paradise.

The thunderstorms that skirted around Austin during Texapalooza had drifted southeast, leaving us with a cool breeze and a clear night. We found a bench where we could watch the planes take off and land.

Paradise pulled my legs across his lap. He rubbed his fingers softly over the red welts. “I can’t believe you stayed in the pocket.”

“Yes, you can.” I flicked at the gold ring dangling from his ear. “I didn’t even know the rope was cutting. Once the crowd started, I jumped to a whole new level of consciousness.”

Paradise slid his arm along the back of the bench and leaned into me. “I was good, wasn’t I?”

I laughed as a plane touched down. “Greatness. Sheer greatness.”

“No.” He waved off my observation. “That was Waylon.” Paradise shook his head. “What got into him?”

“I think he’s always had it. He’d just never broken free and let it all out. You helped him along.”

Paradise watched a plane race down the runway and lift off. “Wide-open. That’s how it’s got to be.”

“And you’re OK with flying to Houston?”

He fiddled with my ring, turning it on my finger. “That’s how it’s got to be.”

“Paisley,” Uncle L. V. hollered from the doorway. “
Miss Molly
’s ready, so’s that DC-3 your boy’s flyin’ in.”

We stood up. Paradise faced me and rested his fingers on the fullest part of my backside. “You didn’t answer me earlier. If I’m your boy, what does that make you?”

“Boss.”

He cocked that little barn cat grin again. “OK, Boss.” He cleared his throat. “When I get back, I’m going to take you to Moon Lake and let you tell me
no
some more.”

I kissed him. “When you get back and take me to Moon Lake, I will tell you
no
some more.” I had all I could handle figuring out my place in the world. No matter what,
yes
would be a long time coming.

Paradise tugged on my hand. I felt my ring leave my finger.

He took his necklace off and slid my ring onto the chain. “‘One Life, One Love.’ When girls start throwing themselves at me, I may need this as a reminder of what’s waiting back home.”

We took our time going inside. “I’m telling my mother you stole my ring. She already thinks you stole one of L. V.’s hats.”

“You better tell your mother to nail down everything she cares about. She don’t know what I might run off with.” He hugged me one last time. “Moon Lake. Think about it.”

I pressed my ear to his heart. I’d remember that beat forever.

39

SMOKE AND ASH

I could always find a rhythm. A cycling air conditioner in a quiet house. A frog’s ribbet at the edge of a still pond. The steady thumping of my own heart.

But when I heard Uncle L. V.’s voice in my house on Monday morning when he should’ve been on a run to Houston and the only time he didn’t make a run to Houston was in bad weather and he was in my house and it wasn’t even Christmas we were nowhere near Christmas or December and when I saw my mother with her hand over her mouth and my dad with both hands pressed onto the table like if he pushed hard enough everything would stop and L. V. wouldn’t stop talking about plane crashes and musicians and DC-3s and Ricky Nelson and that there was nothing left but smoke and ash …

I couldn’t find a beat anywhere.

Not even in my own chest.

I broke in two. Like one of those candy straws that you snap and all the candy comes pouring out leaving nothing but an empty straw. Nothing left.

No amount of sorrys would ever make things right, would ever bring Paradise back.

And the phone could keep ringing and Lacey could keep telling Levi and Waylon and Cal and anybody else who asked that I was strung out. She hadn’t seen strung out yet. I didn’t care about anything anymore. The band. The drums. When a life is gone, it’s gone.

Paradise was gone.

40

A HEARTBEAT AWAY

“Get her up, Diane.” Uncle L. V.’s voice came from our kitchen for the second time in a matter of days. “You can’t let her lay in there forever.”

Mother whispered some excuse for me.

I was sick of hearing them talk about me. I walked into the kitchen, following the smell of warm vanilla. She had a pound cake in the oven. My favorite.

“Put some jeans on, Paisley.” Uncle L. V. rubbed his mustache. “I disked the ruts in my pasture and drug it back to level this morning. You get to sow the seed and fertilizer.”

“I’ll help you another day.”

“Another day and weeds’ll take root.” He pointed to the door. “You caused the mess. You’ll make it right. Today.”

“Let the weeds take over. I don’t care about your pasture.”

Mother doused a bowl of strawberries in sugar. She might make my favorite dessert, but she’d leave me to fight my own battle with L. V.

“My pasture doesn’t care about your feelings either.” L. V. turned the doorknob. “I’ll be waiting.” He shut the door behind him.

I stomped to my room, threw on a pair of jeans.
I’d sow his freakin’ seed and be done with it. With him.

Mother clanked around in the kitchen. From the noise it sounded like she lost her favorite frying pan. A lid crashed to the floor and spun. I knew it was a lid because nothing else came that close to a cymbal.

“Take a snack. You haven’t eaten lunch.” She handed me a brown paper sack on my way out the door. “Paisley.” She brushed a wave of hair from her face. “Don’t give up on yourself.”

I cut through the woods on the four-wheeler. Pine straw covered the trail and the hard ride over it stirred up the evergreen scent. I burst out of the woods and saw the hangar on top of the hill. I turned my head. Didn’t even want to look. The band and Texapalooza and Paradise. I couldn’t think about any of it without feeling like I wanted to curl up, sleep it off. And pray that when I woke up, Paradise would be a heartbeat away.

I parked the four-wheeler by L. V.’s house and walked down to the pasture. Uncle L. V. waited, like he said. He had a rectangle half the size of a football field turned over in a rich black dirt. The tractor was nowhere in sight. Just L. V in a sombrero standing by a cooler.

“Strap into that.” He pointed to a hand seeder with shoulder braces and a bucket on the front deep enough to hold a twenty-pound bag of seed.

“You want me to hand seed this whole area?”

“No.” L. V. took a frozen candy bar from the cooler. “I want my field of clover back. But since I can’t have that, I expect to enjoy a green patch of Bermuda grass in June. Hand seeding keeps you from tearing up the rest of the pasture with the tractor.”

I hooked the straps over my shoulders. L. V. handed me a pair of gloves. I shoved my hands in them and made a fist.

He tucked the candy bar in his shirt pocket and glared at me. “Seed don’t spread any faster mad than it does when you’re glad.” He poured half a sack of Bermuda seed into the spreader.

The weight pulled me forward. I pictured Paradise in my mind. How strong he was and how easy he made playing the accordion look. Like it was tin-can light.

“I need some water.” I choked back tears.