Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel

by Butler, Nickolas

  The day was a golden kind of gray, the gauze of clouds in the sky occasionally obscuring the bright coin of the sun. It was a good day for a jacket.

  Ronny sat on the curb out in front of his apartment, his hair wet and combed back. A scrap of red tissue clung to his chin from where he’d cut himself shaving. He waved happily at us as we approached, unself-conscious in a tight polyester suit, a white shirt, and bolo tie. His old cowboy boots had clearly been shined up with polish.

  “Looking good, Ronny Taylor!” Beth said, sliding over toward me on the bench seat of our pickup truck while Ronny took her spot near the window. She kissed his cheek, and he blushed as she proceeded to rub the lipstick off his newly smooth skin.

  “Thanks, Beth,” he said, shyly.

  We listened to the radio the whole way there: local sports scores, the weather, a story about a cougar sighting not far from town. The truck hugged the back roads smoothly and we rode toward Lee’s place silently, nervously, happily. Chloe was a major actress, well known and loved. Between film projects she worked on Broadway. She had won a Golden Globe for playing a poet whose name eluded us all.

  They were out on Lee’s front porch as we bounced down his driveway toward them, their shoes off, feet propped up on the railing and they waved to us cheerfully as soon as we came into view. Even at fifty yards, we could see the steam rising off their coffee mugs and the smoke meandering off of what I assumed to be two smoldering joints in Lee’s favorite ashtray. There was a big herd of deer out in Lee’s pasture and he pointed to them as we approached the schoolhouse.

  “They’ve been there all morning!” Chloe cried out, smiling at us, her hand shading her eyes from a patch of sunlight that careened through a hole in the clouds.

  “Sweet,” Ronny said cheerfully. “I loves me some venison.” Beth punched him gently in the ribs and we laughed together as the truck came to a stop before the schoolhouse.

  Other than Lee, I’d never met anyone famous before, and like I said, even though we knew he was famous, we didn’t really think about it that way. But meeting Chloe … it blew my mind. Her hair smelled of vanilla and I remember the feel of her skeleton, her fine bones in my hands as she embraced me. Her strawberry blond hair was lustrous and thick and her eyes were wide open and slightly pink from the weed. She held my biceps loosely in her hands and studied my face, appreciatively I hoped, until I broke my gaze and looked down at my old shoes.

  “Lee says you’re his best friend,” she said, still holding onto me. “It is an honor to meet you, Hank.”

  “I thought I was your best friend,” Ronny protested, genuine hurt in his eyes.

  Lee touched him. “You are, Ronny. Just don’t tell Hank.”

  “I love your movies,” I said to Chloe. “You’re my favorite Juliet.”

  She blushed politely, flexing the arch of one of her beautiful feet. Her sole, I could see, was dirty, and I wanted very much to hold her feet in my hands and massage them.

  Beth hit me gently in the arm and broke my reverie. “I thought I was your favorite Juliet,” she said. We all laughed and then Beth and Chloe hugged each other. Lee went into the house and came back out with an orange plastic prescription cylinder. Inside were two more joints. He passed them to me and Beth.

  “We forgot to make brunch. So this’ll have to do. You want a Coke?” he said to Ronny, but Ronny was just staring at Chloe, couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t stop smiling.

  * * *

  It was a good morning. We sat together on the porch into the early afternoon, slouched out in our best clothing, our shoes kicked off. We watched the deer and smoked dope and the day slowly warmed, the sun burning the wispy clouds away. Chloe asked us about our kids, and from my wallet and from Beth’s purse we produced several dog-eared, well-faded photographs, the kids all much younger in the photos than they were by now.

  “Sorry,” we apologized, “we need to get some new ones. They’re so much bigger.” Almost all my friends owned fancy new cell phones, but Beth and I didn’t. We got by on our old flip phones, whose cameras were too pixelated to take a decent picture. Eleanore and Alex knew enough to tease us about them, calling them “antiques.” But sitting there, pointing at those old photos, telling Chloe how old Alex was in that photograph, or how this was a photograph of our last family trip up to the harbor in Duluth, I was filled with pride and a sense of our own mortality, as if we were somehow older than Lee and Chloe in that moment, though it was of course untrue. But our lives were unfathomably different.

  “They’re the best kids,” Lee said. “I love those kids. So good.”

  “They love him,” Beth said, smiling at Lee. And in that pause in the conversation I understood that what Beth must have wanted to say aloud was: He would make a fantastic father. He should be a father.

  Ronny had gone into the house for more ice cubes and came out saying, “It’s one o’clock, you know.… Weren’t we supposed to be there at one-thirty?”

  It was a startlingly clear moment for Ronny, and we stared at him for a beat as we processed his question. Then, without a word, Beth and Chloe jumped up and slipped into their heels. We all ran toward the truck, scattering the deer out in the fields. We were going to be late for the wedding, and we were stoned.

  Beth drove with Chloe riding shotgun while Ronny, Lee, and I sat in the bed of the truck, clutching onto whatever we could. We smiled at one another, our hair wild in the wind, the air tearing fresh and good into our nostrils. We pounded the ancient metal of the racing pickup truck with the palms of our hands, and we were happy and alive and on our way to a wedding. I suppose in that moment, we’d forgotten whose wedding it was we were racing toward.

  “Go! Go! Go!” we yelled over the rushing air. Ronny was thrilled with the speed of the vehicle and giggled uncontrollably. Chloe and Beth glanced at each other and began laughing too. The barn was still forty-five minutes away; then again, the truck was doing eighty.

  Lee and I settled back against the front of the truck’s box, our backs against the window of the cab, and we watched the world behind us retreat away: the colors of autumn punctuating the unchanging green of the balsams and white pines, the almost perfectly reliable yellow and white paint of the road lines spooling out for miles beneath us. Farms with red and white barns. Cows and horses and sheep, and every now and again a slowgoing Amish buggy. Once, Ronny stood up in the bed of the truck and Lee and I reached for his belt loops, reached to pull him back down, but up he stood, against that great rush of wind, his arms out for a while in an iron cross, his eyes closed, hair blowing. And sitting there, watching him with a mixture of concern and admiration, you could still see the old Ronny—all that balance and strength and wild energy.

  We arrived only a few moments late, the fields around the barn jammed with vehicles and wedding-goers still making their way clumsily toward the barn in high heels and probably rented, too-tight patent leather shoes. Old people clutched onto their younger kin. The horses looked on, chewing. We leapt out of the truck, all of us out of breath and smiling. Chloe and Beth looked youthful and resplendent, Chloe’s dress a marvel of the finest materials and delicately sequined. She whisked hair from her eyes and deftly brushed some makeup over her face. She and Beth shared a tube of lipstick, touching up each other’s lips with their little fingers because there was no mirror and no time for a mirror. Lee matted down his hair with a palm full of spit. I did the same and adjusted my tie. Ronny just grinned away happily. And then we joined the throng, glad to be entering all together. Then, suddenly Lee stopped. His face had gone white.

  We stopped too, and looked at him.

  “Shit,” he said, in something like disbelief. “Shit, shit, shit. Fuck.”

  “Your guitar,” I said. He nodded his head and then shook it.

  “Guess you’ll just have to go a cappella,” Chloe said cheerfully, taking his elbow. “No big deal, right?”

  I nudged Lee. “It’s all right, buddy,” I said. “Give Kipper something to sweat about.”<
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  We headed toward the barn again, outside of which we noticed a mob of what looked like photographers intermingled with the wedding attendees. Suddenly they seemed to be moving toward us, holding their cameras above their heads as they picked up speed, some of them even running now.

  “He couldn’t have hired all of those people,” Beth said as we walked toward them.

  It was Chloe who understood first. “It’s okay,” she said. “Seriously, it’s okay. I think I even recognize some of these jokers. Maybe we can talk to them, you know? Give them what they want, real quicklike. Get it over with, right?” Then she leaned into Lee’s arm and we could see that his face had grown red, that he was furious. Chloe placed her delicate hands on his jaw, and it seemed that she was trying to make him look at her, that she was trying to calm him.

  And then the paparazzi were upon them, nearly knocking Ronny down as they surged right past him like a stampede. They shouted Chloe’s name, shouted Lee’s name, his stage name. They instructed Chloe and “Corvus” to pose, to hold each other. They moved in close to the couple. One of them even reached out to adjust the fringe of Chloe’s dress. Lee kicked at the man, but Chloe held his hand tightly, and we watched as her face changed, hardened even, I couldn’t help thinking. Her lips now became bulbous, her eyes cool and inviting as river stones. She thrust a leg forward, heels braced confidently in the mud. She knew what she looked like.

  Lee pulled roughly away from her and stalked toward the barn. I went with him, Ronny behind us. Lee found Kip at the door of the barn, where he was busy greeting guests. He was just checking his watch when Lee grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him away from the crowd, around a corner. He took Kip by the black of his necktie and brought their faces close together.

  “What the fuck, man?” he said. “What the fuck?”

  Kip shrugged, smiled, removed Lee’s hand from his tie and smoothed it back. “Hey, all publicity’s good publicity, right?” he said. “Look, you’re famous. Your girlfriend’s famous. I don’t know, I thought you’d be used to this kind of thing.” He smirked. “Doesn’t seem so bad to me. Besides,” he said with obvious satisfaction, “it was you that invited her.”

  “Not here, man!” Lee growled. “Not here. Never here! This is my home, all right? This is my home.” He was fuming, close to tears. He paced the area in front of Kip, fists clenched up white.

  “One more thing,” Lee said, his voice suddenly controlled again. He was in Kip’s face again, the veins on his forehead pulsing. I had never seen him so angry. Ronny put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him gently away. “I’ll sing one song. And then we are done. You hear? Forever. Don’t ever call me again. You understand?”

  “It’s okay,” Ronny said. “It’s okay, buddy.”

  We went into the barn then, found our seats. The space was full of people: some in the hayloft, most on the vast refinished wooden-planked floor, with some of the spillover even down in the stone basement, where the skeletons of ancient stanchions were still bolted into the floor. Still more people mingled and wandered outside, peering in through the doors. Votive candles hung down from the rafters, and gauzy fabric from the door frames.

  Light filtered inside through chinks in the barn’s siding as a booming sound system now broadcast Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, and from the back of the barn Kip’s bride walked forward in her white dress, one arm hooked tight inside her father’s right elbow. She was luminous. Her father’s wrinkled cheeks were wet with tears. They moved slowly forward through the attendees, toward Kip and the pastor, and as I watched their approach I wondered whether the slow pace of a wedding march was for the benefit of a bride on her most beautiful day, or for the aging father preparing to give her away. Flashbulbs popped, some still trained upon Lee and Chloe.

  Midway through the ceremony, the pastor motioned to Lee, who rose quietly from his chair and walked to the front of the barn. I watched him shake Kip’s hand firmly and then kiss the bride on her cheek, before whispering something in her ear that made her smile in a way I’d never seen before. You’d never have known he was furious with Kip. He was that graceful. Then he went to the microphone. All of the cameras were upon him. He straightened his wrinkled suit and smoothed his hair.

  “I forgot my guitar,” he said sheepishly.

  The grateful crowd laughed and it was good, some of the ceremony’s tension released and several in attendance even clapped and whistled. Lee shrugged, raised his empty hands in the air and made a face as if to say, What the hell.

  “So, listen,” he said, “I thought we’d just sing together. A sing-along. I thought maybe we could hold hands, you know, and sing together. I think most of you know the words to this one, but if you don’t, I do. I’ll lead you. So don’t be afraid, okay? Don’t ever be afraid to sing.”

  I gripped Beth’s hand on one side and Ronny’s hand on the other. We looked up the aisle at our friend as he began singing. We sang with him. We all knew the words.

  Wise men say only fools rush in,

  but I can’t help falling in love with you.

  We were a town then, all together, a band of friends and strangers all clad in our Sunday best, and we were touching, holding hands, and singing, our voices shooting straight up into the rafters and moving the flames of the candles, our voices enough to reverberate off the rusted tin roof and echoing out into the fields where the horses must have been lifting their heavy heads and pricking up their tall ears to wonder what that new strange sound was. I felt Ronny’s hand in mine, his well-calloused skin, and I squeezed it and I felt sad for him, and at the same time happy to be beside him, happy that he was there. Just then I remembered holding his hand in the hospital all those years before, and I felt my throat thicken. And I felt my wife’s soft hand too, and touched with my thumb her veins and her nails, and inside my heart was a great well of love that I knew was not just overflowing but infinite. Before us stood our friend, his voice intermingling with ours, and I winked at him and he winked back at me.

  The song ended, but I did not let go of the hands of those two people I loved, and throughout the barn I could tell others had done likewise, clinging to their friends and family and the travelers who had come to witness this wedding inside a barn. Lee stepped away from the microphone, nodded once at Kip, and then kissed Felicia once more and sat down. Chloe kissed him softly on the temple and they looked to be in love.

  Kip turned to his new wife and kissed her, and we all stood and applauded. Bags of rice were quickly circulated as the newlyweds strode down the center aisle and out of the barn, and we all threw our white confetti at them, rice clinging to the bride’s veil, her hair, her well-tanned cleavage. We went outside then, into the fresh air, and there was a reception line. I noticed that Chloe and Lee had ducked away to an outside corner of the barn, near the foundation of an old stone silo, where they stood smoking cigarettes and looking elegant almost despite themselves. Beth and I greeted Kip and Felicia, who could not have been more gracious on this day that was hers.

  Dinner was served on vast, long tables that had been erected out in a nearby field. We drank wine and chatted, ate pheasant and gnocchi and greens and fresh, warm bread. There were toasts, silverware chiming against glasses; at several points the bride and groom stood and kissed deeply, eliciting yet more applause and catcalls. Everyone was happy. Even Lee seemed pleased, and Ronny high-fived him repeatedly, singing: “Dar-ling so it goes, some things are meant to be-ee-ee!”

  The gloaming had set in as we leaned back in our folding chairs, overfull and sipping more wine than we needed. Waiters cleared the dirty plates and set out cups and saucers for coffee. Their arms moved swiftly over our shoulders as they decorated the tables with fresh plates of cake, new spoons, little pitchers of cream, small bowls of sugar. There was cake frosting smeared across Ronny’s face. Beth removed the icing with a fingernail and licked it off playfully. Lee produced a pack of cigarettes and shook some loose. He lighted three cigarettes in his mouth, then passed one to Chloe,
and one to Beth. My wife took the cigarette, smiling, and inhaled deeply. She held the smoke for a long time in her lungs and then breathed out, a jet of gray smoke departing her lips. I leaned back and considered her.

  “You don’t smoke cigarettes,” I said, my brow wrinkled more than I might have liked.

  She shrugged and smiled at Chloe. “It’s a good night for a cigarette.” They touched wineglasses and laughed. Ronny and I accepted cigarettes, too, and we all smoked, watching the stars poke through the darkening blue wool of night.

  A strange whooping sound came over the trees and fields then, at first almost imperceptible, but then more persistent. Whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop. We turned in our chairs to scan the fields. The horses were restless, whinnying, their teeth huge and white in the gathering dark. Suddenly, a helicopter came into view over the treetops, bending great boughs and upsetting every leaf, it seemed, within a mile of us. The grasses of the fields danced madly. The helicopter had a spotlight and it scanned the partygoers, many of whom had now raised their middle fingers. Finally, the light settled on Lee and Chloe. We saw a man lean out of the chopper with a camera. Lee tossed his cloth napkin onto the table and strode off toward the barn.

  “I’m sorry, you guys,” Chloe said loudly and to everyone, “I’m just so sorry.” And we saw that she meant it.

  The helicopter hovered over our table for some time and the tablecloth snapped like a sail where it was not weighted down by silverware or ceramic plates, the fabric flapping loose over our knees. Ronny rose from his chair now and stood up on the table, his cowboy boots sharp and gleaming on the white cloth. He was wearing a belt buckle from a rodeo he’d won in Missoula.