This Life I Live

by Rory Feek

  Maybe fifteen minutes or maybe three hours later, I don’t know, an officer came and got us and told us he was taking us to the police chief’s office and that Aaron’s dad was on his way too. We each took a chair in the corner of the room and slunk our bodies way down low in the cushions, upset at how we’d been treated. Those officers had used curse words at us. Bad ones. And told us we were lying when we said we had never done anything like this before. I thought to myself, Wait ’til Uncle Rod gets here. He’s gonna set them straight! They’ll be sorry for arresting and being so tough with us.

  But when he got there, it didn’t go the way I thought it would. Uncle Rod just listened as the gray-haired man with the stripes on his sleeves told him what we had done and that someone had been breaking into the boxcars over the last few months and stealing things. More than just cereal. And he told him that this was a federal offense. We had broken a railroad seal and could go to federal prison for our crime.

  When the chief was finished talking, I expected Uncle Rod to lay into him. To tell him he couldn’t treat his boys like that, and that we were innocent until proven guilty. I even thought maybe he was gonna sue the city for the hardship that they caused us. But he didn’t. Instead, he just said, “Excuse me for just a moment.” Then he turned to Aaron and me and said, “Sit up. You boys show some respect to this man and the difficult job that he has to do.” Aaron and I bolted to attention in our chairs. Then he asked the police chief if he could take us for a drive, to talk to us. He said he’d be back in an hour. By then it was two in the morning, and, surprisingly, the chief said, “Okay. Have them back here in an hour.”

  Uncle Rod drove us back to the scene of the crime and while driving said, “They want you to tell them who the other boy was that was with you. They’ll let you go if you tell them who you were with.” Both Aaron and I were hardened criminals by now, and Scotty was our friend. We would never rat on a friend. But then Uncle Rod said something that would devastate even the hardest criminal: “I’m disappointed in you boys.” And we caved.

  Through the tears pouring down our cheeks, we told him it was our new friend Scott, and since he said he had done it before, we didn’t think we would get into any trouble. We were so sorry. Then he asked, “Where does he live?” And the next thing we knew, it was three in the morning, and we were knocking on the door of the preacher’s house next to the big Baptist church. An older, balding man and his wife came to the door in their nightclothes. “Tell them,” Uncle Rod said.

  So we told them the story and about how we’d been in jail most of the night and how the other boy had run off in a different direction. We were sorry, but we had to tell them the truth—the other boy was their son. They were horrified. They didn’t believe us. They called up the stairs to Scotty, and he came down, wiping his eyes as he stepped to the door and saw us. “Hi, guys,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  Scotty denied the whole thing. He said we were bad kids from another state and were making it all up. I don’t remember what happened after that. I think we got community service and Scotty got away with it. But one thing I do know: we weren’t friends anymore. Just like that, we were out of the club.

  I saw Scotty years later on a trip to Kentucky. It was around a bonfire. He was in his thirties, handsome with a big smile. He was a car salesman or a preacher or both. I can’t remember. But he seemed like a really nice guy. We sat around the fire that night and laughed about that story together. I think God had been working on his character, like He had been working on mine.

  We all get the chance to be someone else. To start over and put the past behind us. And God gives us another one every day. I love that.

  A few years later, when I was seventeen and joining the Marines, they almost didn’t let me in because I had a felony charge on my record somewhere. Then they almost didn’t let me in when I explained to them it was for robbing a train . . . for Froot Loops.

  Ten

  NASHVILLE

  My first trip to Music City was a disaster. I darn near starved to death and quit playing music forever. All in thirty-six hours.

  I love this town. Nashville.

  I have spent the last twenty years chasing and grabbing hold of my dreams and seeing most of them come true in bigger and better ways than I ever could’ve imagined as a youngster. Nashville has been my home for two decades. Whether living in an apartment complex in the suburbs of Bellevue or in the big white farmhouse forty-two miles south of the streets of Music Row . . . Nashville is home.

  My first trip to Nashville was not a great one. Though I had dreams of arriving there, guitar case in hand, taking the town overnight and the music industry by storm, it would be years before I would get the chance to try and fail.

  It was the fall of 1982, and my sister Marcy and her husband-to-be, Phillip, made the hour-and-a-half drive from where we lived to drop me off at the Nashville airport. I was to fly to Texas to visit my brothers. My oldest, Joe, was having big success, or having some trouble—we weren’t sure which yet. He evidently had come into some money in his new business and wanted me to come visit. Blaine, my next oldest, wanted me to come help him figure out what was really happening.

  On a collect call days before, Joe had said he was going to wire a plane ticket for me to fly to Dallas, and it would be waiting for me at the airport. All I had to do was get there. He would take care of everything else once I got off the plane in Texas. So I waved good-bye to Marcy at the Nashville airport, and they pulled away, and I was off on a big adventure. I had no idea how many things could go wrong, and in the era before cell phones were invented, and with no phone at our family’s house, it would get even harder to figure out what to do.

  I made my way, with a yard-sale suitcase and a guitar case carrying my prized Bentley guitar, to the American Airlines terminal and found a spot in line. When I got to the counter, I told the lady that my brother had bought a ticket for me. I gave her my name, and she searched her records but didn’t find anything. I asked her to try again. The flight wasn’t for another hour and a half, so she told me to come back in a little while; maybe it just hadn’t come through yet. So I found a seat nearby and waited. When I tried again, there was still no ticket. Soon that flight left, and I was still there. I got in line for the next flight that was headed to Dallas, and the same thing happened. Then I tried a different airline but still nothing. So I just waited. I had six dollars and some change in my pocket, and two phone numbers. One for Joe and the other for a house where Blaine was staying with his girlfriend.

  Every hour or so, I picked up the pay phone and tried making a collect call to the numbers. No answer. Again and again. The next day I was still there, and starting to get worried. I spent two of the dollars on candy bars and Mountain Dews and was starting to get really hungry. I had no way to pay for a meal and no way to get ahold of anyone back home or where I was going. Finally, at the end of the second day, my brother Joe answered. He said there must’ve been some mistake because he had paid for the ticket. Then he said I needed to head to the bus station. He would have a ticket waiting for me there. I asked how to get to the bus station . . . I didn’t know where it was, and I had a feeling it was a long way away. He told me to catch a cab and that he would put some extra money in with the ticket that I could use to pay for the taxi.

  So that’s what I did. I waved down my first taxi and rode the ten miles or so to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Nashville. The driver was a middle-aged black man who asked me if it was my first time in Music City. I told him it was and shared with him how there had been a problem with tickets and how my brother was getting me a bus ticket instead. He watched me in the rearview mirror and listened. Skeptically, I’m sure. Probably knowing better than I did that he was about to get stiffed. When he pulled into the busy downtown station, I told him I would run in and get my ticket and come back out and pay for the taxi ride.

  When I got inside, there was a long line. I had been carrying my suitcase and guitar for two days and ne
eded a break. So I sat them down beside a bench and got in line. It took a few minutes to get to the counter, but just as the lady said, “Can I help you?” out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man pick up my guitar case and take off running. He bolted through the front door before I could even figure out what was going on, and when I turned back to the lady, she said, “You need to keep your things with you at all times, sir.” I went and grabbed my bag and came back over. She could tell that I was heartbroken. “You’re not from around here, are you?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am, I’m not,” I said. And I told her about the airport and the mix-up and how my brother had sent the ticket here and how there should be some extra money for cab fare and for food. She looked up my name and said, “I’m afraid someone is pulling your leg.”

  Beyond brokenhearted, I made my way over to the bench again to find a place to sit down and die. Then, looking out through the front door, I saw the cab driver. And I remembered. Oh God, what am I going to tell him? But when I saw him come in, he was carrying something. My guitar case. He had seen the man run out the door with my guitar, and he chased him down the street and got it back for me.

  I didn’t know what to say. The cab driver made it easy for me. “It’s okay, kid,” he said. Then he wrote down his name and address and said if I ever got any money, I could send him the cab fare, and he walked out. I so wish I still had that piece of paper. I’d like to go back in time and send him a thousand-dollar bill. Instead, I lost that paper, along with all hope.

  I tried my brothers a few more times from the pay phone there. Joe never answered. But Blaine did. He explained that this was why he needed me to come to Texas. “Something’s going on with Joe, and it’s not good,” he said. Blaine and his girlfriend found fifty dollars and had a bus ticket wired to me, along with an extra five to buy something to eat. By the time I got to Texas, I had probably dropped ten pounds from my already-rail-thin 140-pound frame. I can still taste those eggs and that bacon I had when I arrived in Arlington. Wolfing it down and asking for more. Man can’t live on candy alone . . . but I gave it a good try. All I’d had to eat was Snickers bars and soda for almost five days.

  It was good to see my brother Blaine. And even good to see Joe when he finally came around, in his hundred-dollar track suit and driving a brand-new Camaro.

  I soon learned it was hard drugs that Joe had come into, not money. And that caused him to believe he had money when he really didn’t. I was still only seventeen at the time and didn’t understand much of the world. During the two weeks I was in Texas, I became more confused than ever. But for now it was enough just to be somewhere I was needed, even if it was to help get my older brother arrested so he could get some help.

  The next time I would come to Nashville, I would again have a guitar in my hand, but I would be older. Wiser. And though I would find crooked sharks ready to steal my music and people who’d promise me money and never come through, I would be more prepared. I was going to take my time getting there, so once I got my foot in the door, I’d never have to leave.

  Nashville would be my town.

  Eleven

  JOINING UP TO SING

  His name was Gunnery Sergeant Bell, and God placed him and me in exactly the right, or wrong, place at the right time.

  At seventeen, after graduating high school a year early, I worked a few odd jobs around the little town in Kentucky where we lived: painting handrails and hallways at the junior high and mowing the schoolyard. But soon I found myself bored and ready to begin life. Ready to find my way to Nashville, even if it meant taking a few detours on the way.

  My brother Blaine had joined the army the year before and was back home now in the Army Reserves, painting houses and going to meetings one weekend a month. He told me lots of stories about boot camp, how they had weekends off, how the drill sergeants were hard, and how it had changed his life, and I could see that it had. I could hear it in his voice with every story he’d tell.

  So I decided I’d join the army too. My dad had been in the army back in ’59 and ’60, and though he said he was trained as an artilleryman, he had been given the chance to play music for his job and even played guitar for Steve Lawrence one time. His stories were so romantic, and I had seen a few black-and-white photos of him in his uniform, doing push-ups with his buddies and with pretty girls on his arm. I decided that was the life for me. I would serve two years, like Dad, save a little money, then get out and move to Nashville to pursue the fame and fortune that surely awaited me. All I had to do was take a few tests and sign on the dotted line. I took the tests they give all prospective recruits and did well. The Army Recruiter told me to come back on Saturday, and we’d be all set. I could ship out for my basic training.

  The following Saturday afternoon, I made the twenty-two-mile drive to Madisonville and walked into the recruiting office, but the Army Recruiter’s door was locked. No one was there. I was disappointed. Before I could even register what to do next, I heard a voice behind me say, “Have you ever thought of being one of the few and the proud, son?”

  I turned to see a huge hulk-of-a-man in a dress uniform with an eagle, globe, and anchor on his collar. “I’m going into the army,” I said, and I turned to leave. But he stopped me and asked if I’d sit down and talk to him for five minutes. No problem, I thought. I had done enough research to know that the Marines didn’t have two-year enlistments, and besides, they were the toughest branch. I wanted a walk down easy street, same as my brother, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to listen. I’m gonna do two quick years in the army. He ain’t gonna change my mind. Little did I know, he would.

  He started the whole conversation by saying, “What do you really want to do, kid . . . more than anything?”

  That was the wrong question, I thought. Once I tell him, he’ll realize he’s talking to the wrong guy, and I’ll be out the door and headed for home. “I want to play and sing country music,” I told him, as I reached for my coat . . . sure that our conversation was over.

  But he stood up before I could leave and said, “Wait here.” He walked out of his office, then into the parking lot to his car. Then he popped open the trunk and pulled something out . . . a guitar case!

  When he got back inside, he opened the case and started strumming. He and I sang Merle Haggard songs all afternoon. By five p.m., I was signed up for the Marine Corps for four years of active duty. All because he played guitar and loved country music as much as I did.

  I had no idea how ridiculous that was, and I wouldn’t really come to my senses about it until I was in boot camp a few months later as the drill instructors threw trash cans down the center of the barracks at four a.m. each morning to wake us up. I started to wonder if maybe I should have looked into this a little more before signing on the dotted line, right after a chorus of “Silver Wings.”

  The truth is, I love that story. I love that that’s how I enlisted. It was foolish and silly and perfect. And it was also naive and innocent, something that wouldn’t be a part of my life for too much longer.

  Twelve

  YOUR FIRST TIME LASTS

  I was eighteen, and it was my first time. I don’t think she knew that. Maybe she did.

  It wasn’t special. It wasn’t good. Honestly, it wasn’t anything. It was in a car parked beside a long-closed gas station. She had ten minutes, she said, before she had to be back home. I wouldn’t need a tenth of that.

  She smelled of cigarettes. I hated that smell. I had grown up with it everywhere. I should’ve known it would be there for that too. I had met her a couple of years before; her family played music, and I’d been around them some in high school. She was older than me, and I think she had a boyfriend. A few of them. Some guys picked her up on Harleys, and they went away for weekends. She said they were just friends, and I believed it at the time. I didn’t know any better. I thought that, maybe, what she and I had was love.

  But it was clear in the front seat of that car, that wasn’t love. It was something, for sure. Bu
t not love. I didn’t see her much after that. Not sure why. Maybe that experience with me disappointed her, or me. Either way, it didn’t matter. It left me more confused than ever. I had a wound. I wanted someone to love me. I wanted to feel love, be loved by anyone. Anyone who would have me.

  It isn’t that my mom didn’t do something or give me something that a young boy needs, and it wasn’t some deep-seated thing from my past that caused it. It was just always there. Like it was in my mom. And my dad, probably, and my siblings. The need to feel needed. At any cost.

  I could’ve fallen in love with lots of girls in high school, but I was shy. Really shy. And I didn’t know how to get from here to there. From sitting beside a girl in art class to holding her hand at a basketball game. That was a valley I could never seem to cross. Actually, I fell in love lots of times, but the girls didn’t know it. One did. Kim something-or-other. We went steady for a little while during my junior year, and I really liked her. But I came home one day from visiting my dad at his house in Kansas, and my brother Joe was sitting on the couch, holding Kim’s hand. And that was that. I don’t think I ever knew what happened. They were just together, and we weren’t.

  After I joined the Marines, I started to learn more. A lot more. The guys would take me out drinking, and we’d end up at a drive-in theater, watching some movie with lots of skin and no plot. It was pretty eye-opening for me. I’d been fairly sheltered overall, I think, compared to most of them.

  We had some things happen when I was young. Things that weren’t good. I had. All of us kids had. Experiences with neighbors or strangers that shouldn’t happen to kids. But those were hard times, and there was really no one around to watch us and keep us from such things. Mom was busy trying to make a living and find her own self-worth, so we had to figure out a lot on our own. I don’t blame anyone, and I don’t let any of those things affect me or use them as an excuse for who I am or who I’m not. But I know they left scars. Inside. Deep down. Wounds that you can’t see with your eyes. Gaping holes in my soul that I’ve spent a lifetime trying to fill with sex and booze and fame. You can have all those things and still be empty. I know. I’ve been there.