by Alison Ryan
Hayes Calloway.
With my mother asleep, I knew that if I didn’t make my presence known he would bang on the door until she woke up, so I swallowed my nerves and stood up, rounding the corner of the porch at the moment he hit the second step.
We made instant eye contact.
“Sarah?” He asked, not in a “are you who I think you are?” kind of way, but rather in a “is that really you?” tone of voice.
“Hello again, Hayes,” I replied, clinging to the corner of the house for support.
“I know we just saw each other, but… I was just so happy to see you again, I didn’t want to wait and take a chance that you’d leave again before I could say some things.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. I figured I’d run into him while I was home, looked forward to it, truth be told, but not so soon. And now I’d seen him twice in one day.
He got close enough that I could reach out and touch him, and our body language said that we were both awkwardly thinking about a hug, but we reconsidered.
“The whole town is buzzin’, by the way,” he said with a grin on his perfect face.
“News travels fast around here. That certainly hasn’t changed,” I replied.
“It was all the talk at the Waffle Hut just now,” Hayes explained.
We strolled back down to where I’d been sitting, and I returned to my chair. He’d always preferred the railing, and he took up his familiar perch there, hooking the toes of his boots beneath the lower railing and leaning back to stretch. The years since I’d seen him had been extremely kind to the middle Calloway brother.
“I’ve sure missed you around here. Whitmer’s missed you. This place ain’t the same without your smile, Sarah.”
I dismissed him with a wave. “You’re going to try to convince me that you’ve just been here pining away for me all these years? Don’t you still have The Side Pocket? That place is filled with women every night.”
“Sure, yeah, it is. And I could probably take a different one home every night, were I so inclined. But there’s not a Sarah Acres in the bunch,” he looked at me, his expression serious.
“What, you don’t allow any plain Janes in there?”
“If you’re over twenty-one, or have a reasonable enough facsimile sayin’ so, you’re welcome in The Pocket. Just none of ‘em are as special as you.”
I took a sip of my iced tea and then nestled it into the space between my knees and the arm of the chair. I turned my hands over, pointing my fingers back toward myself. “There’s nothing so special happening here, you goober.”
“You’re nothing but special, Sarah. Never have been. Or would it be ‘always have been’? Either way, you know what I mean.”
“What is so damn special about me?” I asked. The sun was beginning to consider setting out over the field, just past his right shoulder.
“What do you mean? You’re beautiful. You’ve always been beautiful. There’s no mystery why a guy would be into you,” he replied, smiling that same goofy, crooked, heart-melting smile he’d always had.
I rolled my eyes. “I know I’m not ugly, but in a school with Amber Halliday and Carla Kenyon, and the Jennings twins? Come on, I was much closer to average than beautiful. And you and your brothers were like royalty, I mean even back to your dad and your uncle, the way my folks tell it, between all you Garvins and Calloways, the school had to build a new trophy case. Sports heroes, handsome, every girl in the county was after you and Hunt and Huck. So, that’s why I ask ‘why me?’ Why Sarah Acres?”
“Carla Kenyon,” Hayes laughed. “That’s a name I haven’t heard in quite a while.” Hayes got a faraway look in his eyes.
“I get it. She had huge boobs.” I extended a leg and kicked Hayes in the shin, hard enough to sting.
“Ow! Okay, okay forget Carla. Sarah Acres. You want to know what it was that drew me to you?”
I took a sip of my sweet tea and nodded my head expectantly.
“This is going to sound… oh, the hell with it, I’ll just tell you. You remember my mom’s funeral, right? I mean the whole town came out for it.”
“Of course. It was the first funeral I’d ever been to. The first one I remember, anyway. My granddaddy in Great Falls died when I was three, and I know I went to his service, but I don’t remember it,” I replied.
Hayes continued. “The whole thing was like a tornado. I mean, I was just a kid. We all were. It had been crazy for years, but none of us ever expected it to…” He paused and covered his mouth with his hand, his eyes clouding with sadness. “When you’re that age, your mom and dad aren’t going to, you know, die. Momma had been to the hospital before, but they always patched her up and sent her home. That was just normal for us.
“So, when it all went down, everybody was numb. Nobody seemed that sad. More shocked. You know Hunt and Huck, they’re so damn serious, so tough. But that’s not me.
“We came back from the funeral and there was all this food at Uncle Rick’s house. It was like the whole town had cooked meals. All this food and all these people. Your momma brought over a whole truckload, it seemed like.”
I laughed and nodded. That sounded just like my mother.
“Huck wanted to go out back and toss a football around. Hunt went with him and he told me to come, too. At that point, I think he thought he was supposed to be the new ‘man of the house’ or whatever, and tell us what to do. I thought it was dumb. I didn’t want to play football. I didn’t want to eat brownies. I wanted to hug my momma. I wanted everything to be back the way it was.”
A tear rolled down Hayes’ cheek, and I wanted so badly to wrap him up in my arms, the little boy he was transformed into in that moment, to hold him and squeeze him and kiss every tear away.
“But I couldn’t stay in that house, either, with all those people telling me how sorry they were for me. I went out and threw the football for a few minutes. Hunt was zipping the ball, you know he always had a rocket for an arm, and he was firing it in and Huck and I kept dropping it. He was throwing it so hard the varsity receivers couldn’t have caught it. We had no chance. He started getting angry and yelling at us. He sounded just like my dad when he’d come to our practices or games and we’d make a mistake. Or even when we didn’t make a mistake. ‘Catch the fuckin’ ball, Hayes! Don’t be such a pussy, Huck!’ When I finally did catch one, I turned and threw it as hard as I could into the woods. I’d never thrown a football that far before. Hell, I don’t think I’d ever thrown a baseball that hard or far.
“Huck was just standing there, staring, and Hunt, he was mad. He walked up and shoved me, knocked me right down. Uncle Rick came out and hollered at the three of us, told us to stop making asses of ourselves, to come in and thank the people who’d been kind enough to come over, to bring all the food and everything.
“We all started toward the back door and Hunt came up behind me and got right in my ear. ‘That’s my ball, shithead, you go find it. It’ll be dark soon, but I don’t care. You better find it or I’m gonna whip your ass’.
“I never liked the dark, and Hunt knew that. I had to choose, and Hunt scared me more than Rick did. So, I turned and took off into the woods. Rick was yelling for me to come back, but I didn’t care. When I hit the tree line I started crying. And I mean crying. Bawling like a baby. I’d been numb for days, hadn’t shed even a single tear. But I hit that woods running and the tears just came pouring down like one of those storms we get around here in the springtime. You know the ones, all the lightning, raindrops the size of cue balls.”
I nodded. I knew exactly the kind of storms he was talking about. Hayes had taken my virginity in our hayloft during a storm like that.
“I didn’t care about Hunt’s old football. Once I started running, I wasn’t about to stop. I didn’t want anybody to catch me, especially the ghosts of my momma and dad. I wanted to outrun all that pain.
“I ran and ran. I crossed two creeks, went through pastures, jumped fences; you know how far it is from Uncle Ri
ck’s place to get out here, it’s not close.
“My heart was pounding about out of my chest and I didn’t know where I thought I was going, but I set my sights on those mountains and I just kept running. I finally hit the edge of your property, and I was spent. I must have looked a mess between the sweat and tears and my nose running. I finally stopped when I got to that tree out yonder. The big fat one.”
Hayes pointed into the yard, to the pine tree, the one that was Kevin’s favorite for climbing. The same one he now laid buried under.
“I slumped down by that tree. I didn’t know where I was, exactly, or how I was gonna get home. Or, hell, even what, or where, home was at that point. I sat right there by that tree and it was dark by then, so I was in even more trouble, since, like I said, I was terrified of the dark. But that tree was big and strong, and it felt safe, so I climbed up into that big crook right down near the bottom, where I could be comfortable while I figured out what I was going to do with the rest of my life. At that point, twelve years old, it seemed like a completely reasonable thing to do.”
“So many nights in middle school I sat up in my room and looked at the stars and planned my entire life,” I said. “If twelve-year-old me could only see what I’ve become, she’d be very confused. I didn’t know about all this Hayes, about Kevin; about California. At 12 years old, no one knows what’s going to happen to them or what to do with their life.”
“Not true,” he said, staring at me. “When I was 12 years old I knew I wanted to marry you. And love you the rest of my life. Didn’t you know that?”
I shook my head, suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah. Well, that was then. And this is now, and look at me. I’m a disappointment to both of us.”
“Whatever, Sarah, everybody in Whitmer is jealous of you,” Hayes said, and it was good to see his sadness replaced by his easy smile.
“Pfft,” I said, and waved my hand at him, to banish the thought.
“I sat in that tree a while, and the fireflies started coming out. It was early in the summer and there weren’t that many yet, but they made the dark not quite so scary. I decided I had to come down out of that tree, but right when I started to, I heard voices coming from the house, so I scrambled back up to where I’d been hiding. I saw a light come on upstairs, right up above where we are now.”
Hayes pointed up to where my childhood bedroom was. Even all these years later, it looked pretty much the way I’d left it when I went away to Loyola Marymount.
“A voice started coming out of that window up there, singing, and I’d have sworn it was an angel. I couldn’t place the song at first, it started off kinda quiet, but once the song got rolling, it got louder and louder. I’m sure you couldn’t possibly remember what song you were singing that night, but- “
I cut him off. “What was that, two-thousand one or two?”
“Two-thousand one,” Hayes replied. “June fourteenth.”
“Summer between sixth and seventh grade, then? Had to have been the Dixie Chicks.”
Hayes laughed. “Yeah, you did sing a lot of Dixie Chicks that summer.”
I cocked an eyebrow. How would Hayes Calloway have known what I was singing way back then?
“But that night it was Reba. It was a song called ‘What Do You Say?’ Remember that one?”
“Of course, that’s a classic. It’s such a sad song. I can never make it all the way through that last verse without crying.”
“You did that night. I sat in that tree and had a personal concert. Even though I still didn’t know who was singing. You belted that song out and when you got to the part about the lady dying, saying she just wanted to go home? It just about ripped my guts right out. I’d never had a song do that to me before.”
I was incredulous. “You heard me sing? I’d think that would be a reason to run away, not fall for me,” I joked.
Once upon a time, I fancied myself a singer, and those nights I’d stared out my window at the stars, were spent dreaming of being on a stage somewhere, not being the person representing actresses and singers. I went on a few auditions early in my time in Los Angeles, but I realized quickly how deep the chasm was between real talent and being small town famous.
Hayes gave me a hard look; one I wasn’t accustomed to from him.
“Sarah, I sat in that tree in the dark damn near every night that summer hoping to hear you sing. Uncle Rick didn’t know what to do with three boys, especially wild as we were. Without school to worry about, I could pretty much come and go as I pleased. I mean, where was I really gonna go? It was far, but I figured out the best shortcuts I could and I came here. Once school started, I’d sneak off on the weekends, until it got too cold and your windows were shut, so I couldn’t hear you anymore.”
If a flying saucer landed in the middle of the yard right at that moment and little green men got out, I wouldn’t have been more surprised.
Hayes could read the shock on my face. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I never told you, but I never told you because I didn’t want you to stop. Or think I was weird. It was something I could look forward to, something I could focus on. Uncle Rick did his best to make things normal for my brothers and me, and bless him for that, but you gave me something to hold onto, something good and pure and beautiful. Like my momma. Hearing you sing the Dixie Chicks and Reba and who else… Sara Evans, LeAnn Rimes, and that one girl group, dang it, oh yeah, SheDAISY. The way you sang was straight from the heart, I just loved it.
“One night you had a slumber party, I guess, and you came outside with a couple of girls, Jenny and Erika and y’all had jars and were catching fireflies. I know this all sounds creepy and like a damn stalker or something, but I promise it wasn’t like that. And your momma came out with you, so then it all clicked for me who it was that was doing all that singing. Sarah Acres.”
Erika and Jenny and I’d had countless sleepovers and slumber parties, so I couldn’t recall that one, exactly, but it all added up. And, yeah, I did feel a little violated, and I would have been absolutely mortified to have known it at the time, that Hayes Garvin (he was still Garvin then) was listening to me sing, but looking back now it was flattering. And I began to cry.
Hayes let himself slide down off the railing and he knelt next to me, wrapping his arms around me.
“Why are you crying, Sarah? What’s wrong, baby?”
He hadn’t held me like this in years. There was something familiar and comforting about it.
“I don’t know, Hayes, I’m thinking about how young we all were then, how the things we thought were important didn’t mean a damn thing. How Kevin was still around, and what a tragedy the whole thing with you and your momma and daddy was. How unfair that was to you and your brothers.” I took handfuls of Hayes’ shirt and pulled him tight against me.
“Your brother and my momma are looking down at us right now from heaven and I bet they wouldn’t want us to be doing all this crying. They’d want us to celebrate seeing each other again. Right? My memories of sneaking away to listen to you sing that summer are some of the best in my life. And the thing I remember most about Kevin is watching him score that 37 points in the state semifinals his senior year. We were all there; my uncle drove us to Bozeman for the game.”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and gave Hayes a smile. “That was one of his best games. He always said he’d trade every one of those points to have won it, but I know he was proud of how he played that night.”
Hayes stood up and pantomimed dribbling a basketball. “When he had that dunk in the fourth quarter, you remember, the one when he drove in from the right side,” Hayes performed a phantom crossover dribble to get past an imaginary defender and then rose and threw down a two-hand dunk with his invisible ball. “We thought he was Michael Jordan. My brothers and I, when we got home, we shoveled the snow off our little court in the side yard and we each did our best version of that dunk. We had that low rim back there, and we were just tickled to think that a kid from Whitmer could do something like that. I tore up my h
ands and wrists hanging on that rim doing my best Kevin Acres dunks.”
We both laughed. Kevin had cried and cried that night, having come so close to a state championship, and even though he had the best game of his life, he felt like he’d let his team down. Let the town down. But that was Kevin, no matter how much he did, or gave, he always felt like he could have done more.
“I’ll never forget the sound Grover Calder made when Kevin had that dunk. He lived up in the mountains, he was a distant cousin of my momma’s, I don’t think you knew him.”
Hayes shook his head.
“He must have been in his eighties then. He rode up to Bozeman with us for the game and he was sitting right behind us. He jumped up and screamed, and from how loud he was, you’d have thought he just realized he had a winning lottery ticket. He was delirious.”
“Was he at Kevin’s funeral?” Hayes asked. He’d sat down on the porch next to me, holding my hand.
“No, he was gone by then. He died in the winter time, alone in his cabin up there. Some hunters found him in the spring.”
“What an awful way to go,” Hayes replied.
I shrugged. “I don’t know, he was in the mountains, right where he wanted to be. And it’s just a short trip to heaven from there, you know?”
“Maybe so,” Hayes answered. “Do you still sing, Sarah?”
“Only in the shower.”
Hayes perked up. “That sounds like the perfect definition of ‘killing two birds with one stone’ to me,” he said, breaking into his trademarked smile. “Do you take requests? Miranda Lambert or Carrie Underwood?”
“Easy, Hayes, if you think you’re going to get me in the shower under the pretense of listening to me sing…”
“It was worth a shot,” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders.
“How did you get home that night? The night of the funeral, I mean,” I asked Hayes, changing the subject. I hadn’t come home just to fall back into the arms of Hayes Calloway, no matter how appealing they looked. And felt. And how much my body was reacting to his proximity, in ways it hadn’t reacted even rubbing elbows with Hollywood’s hunkiest leading men.
