I had to admit, you felt something shivery in the air whenever you heard that guitar start singing.
The next few songs went off without a hitch, and the crowd here in—where the hell were we? Pittsburgh, maybe? —was going bananas. The rowdy, rollicking songs that had made Myles North a household name within a matter of a couple years took a backseat whenever Betty-Lou made an appearance. The moment the houselights dimmed, the crowd hushed, instantly went dead silent, expectant.
My best friend picked up the guitar from her stand near the drumkit, sat on the stool I brought him, settled the guitar on his thigh, adjusted the mic, and then grabbed my arm before I could vamoose offstage. “Hey, ya’ll, how about a fine Pittsburgh how’d’ya do for my best buddy, Crow?” He clapped me on the back, forcefully pivoting me by the bicep to face the crowd. “Little known fact about this sexy motherfucker here is, he can play guitar better’n I can. Fact of the matter is, he taught me to play. You also may or may not know that he writes the music for damn near all my songs, always has. Maybe one of these days I’ll get him to stay for a few minutes and regale us with his rendition of ‘Sing Me Back Home’.”
I smiled tightly at the crowd—I could only see the first few rows, the rest being lost in the glare of the lights—and waved, once, as the crowd screamed and whistled and clapped.
“Not fuckin’ likely,” I muttered. “Gonna kick your ass for this, Myles.”
Myles just laughed and let me go. “He’s got a wicked case of stage fright, ya’ll. He’s threatenin’ to kick my ass for puttin’ him on the spot like this. Now, he could, you know, him bein’ a barroom brawler from way back, but he won’t, ‘cause he loves me like a brother, and he knows this pretty face is keepin’ him employed at the moment.”
I cackled as I thankfully regained my place out of the spotlight and behind the curtains. I gave Myles the double bird. “You’re an ugly piece of shit, Myles!” I called, more confident now that I was offstage.
“Hear that?” Myles said, laughing. “Ugly piece of shit, he calls me. Mighty big words from someone offstage. Come back out here and say that to my face, you big damn sissy.”
“Just play the fuckin’ song, toolbox,” I yelled back.
“Toolbox,” Myles echoed, laughter fading. “Been his favorite insult for me since we were just kids.” He picks the strings with his first two fingers and thumb, adjusts the tuning, continues picking out the melody to his crooner ballad, “If I Could Stay.”
Damn the man, he could move from joking with me to killing the crowd with that tearjerker ballad without missing a beat, and the crowd ate it up. Of course, the way he sang it, every woman in the joint was wishin’ it was her he was singing it to, and every man was wishing it was him singing it.
I went back to work, retuning, checking, and making sure I had strings ready in case he snapped one. By the end of the show, Myles was drenched in sweat and exhausted, but flying high as a kite on adrenaline. He’d done not one, but two encores, the last encore being mostly him doing bits and pieces of outlaw country requests shouted from the audience. Finally, he strode offstage with Betty-Lou in hand, grinning from ear to ear. He beelined for Betty-Lou’s custom-made case—bulletproof, crush-proof, waterproof, fireproof, and biometrically coded to his thumbprint, with embedded GPS tracking. He locked Betty-Lou away, and then that case went into another separate wheeled, foam-padded, locked case. Yeah, he took the security of that instrument more seriously than he did his own life.
That done, he clapped me on the back. “That was a hell of a show, buddy.”
I just glared at him, unmoved. “If you didn’t have a show tomorrow, I’d break your fuckin’ nose for that stunt.”
He just grinned, clapping me on the back again. “Crow, my friend, one of these days it’ll happen.”
“No, Myles. Not any day. I don’t perform. I just play for me, for fun. You ain’t ever gonna get me on the stage in front of people. I don’t want that attention.”
He shook his head as we went through the argument we’d been over a million times. “You have God’s own talent with a guitar, Crow. Shit, if you don’t want attention, you could be a session musician in Nashville. Everybody from John Mayer to Rihanna would suck their own dick to get you to play on their albums.”
“Pretty sure Rihanna doesn’t have a dick, dick.”
He just shoved at me. “What if you faced away from the crowd and just played?”
“No. We been over this a million times, Myles. I’m content being the tech. Quit askin’.”
“I ain’t askin for you, I’m askin’ for me. For the world. Talent like yours oughta be shared, man.”
I went to work packing up the rest of his guitars. “Well, you and the world are gonna have to suffer without me, because I—do—not—perform.”
He leaned against a stack of sound equipment cases. “I’ll figure it out. One of these days.”
“You been tryin’ for years, Myles. Give it up.”
“Never.” He laughed. “I did get you to play once, remember?”
I snorted. “Yeah, once, and look how that turned out.”
“Hey, that wasn’t my fault. You were shitfaced.”
“I was so shitfaced it was a miracle I could walk. I’ll never forget that, by the way. Most embarrassing day of my life. One of those days I wish I’d blacked out.”
“Thank god for us both it was in a dive bar in the middle of…where the hell was it? Kentucky? Alabama?”
“Fuck if I know, man,” I said. “It was a couple years ago, and we were both obliterated.”
“I think it was Alabama. Tuscaloosa, maybe? Honestly, it’s a wonder there’s no video of that. I keep expecting to pull up Twitter or YouTube and see someone’s posted some grainy-ass footage of that night.”
“Well, let’s pray that never happens, because you fell on your ass, as I remember, and I couldn’t even see the strings enough to manage a basic chord. Crowd laughed their asses off, though. They were as drunk as we were.”
“Good times, man.” He gestured out at the dispersing crowd as he guzzled another bottle of water. “Far cry from that, these days, huh?”
I finished snapping the last guitar case closed, and then began arranging them in their dedicated storage box. “Yeah, it sure is. You’ve come a long-ass way, brother.”
He grabbed me and I straightened; the jokester, the charming Texas grin was gone, a rare serious moment with Myles. “We’ve come a long way, Crow. You’ve been with me since the day this shit started blowing up for me.”
“I got your back, Myles. You know that.”
He shook his head, frowning. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.” A pause. “Literally.”
I sighed. “The bridge doesn’t remember waters long passed, Myles.”
He laughed. “The fuck does that mean, Confucius?”
“It means that shit is history, man. Not worth remembering.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s well worth remembering, to me.”
I started coiling cords. “Myles…” I just turned away, went about my work. “What’s our next stop?”
He consulted his memory, glancing up and to the right, grinding the toe of his boot against the floor. “Um. Illinois, I think. A festival near Chicago.”
“Who’s all there?”
“Everybody, bro. Sam Hunt, Luke Combs, Dustin Lynch, Kane Brown, Miranda Lambert, Old Dominion, Parker…somebody new on the scene, can’t remember his last name, but he’s pretty good. Single is ‘Pretty Heart.’ Shit, who else? Fuckin’ a bunch of acts. Gonna be a good time. We go on Friday, and don’t have to be in Denver till Tuesday. One of the little breaks we’ve got built into the schedule.”
“Nice.”
I had the last of his personal guitars, cords, and amps stowed away the way I liked them, and that was it for me—the rest of the crew would break everything else down. We’d been doing this together long enough that Myles was already heading for the bus as I c
licked the latches on the last of the crates, knowing I’d be right behind him.
He stepped up onto his bus, and I was only moments behind him. We splayed out side by side on the couch, and just sat for a few moments, soaking in the silence.
This was a ritual.
After the setup and mic check and rehearsal, after the opening acts and the side-stage drinking and bantering, after the show was over and the crowd was largely gone, we both needed a few minutes of just…quiet. Stillness.
Me more than him—he’d sit here with me a while, but inevitably he’d head out to find where the crew was partying, and there’d always be a few girls, and he’d have some fun. Me? I wasn’t much of a partier, these days. I’d have some fun now and then, sure, but I liked my solitude, my privacy. Myles? He lived for the spotlight, lived to be the center of attention. He just drew the eye, wherever he was. He came alive when there was a crowd around him.
He reached up over his head, blindly opening the cabinet above the window, and pulled down a bottle of sixty-year-old scotch. Handed me the bottle, and reached up again for the glasses. Found them, and I poured us each a couple fingers.
“To another good show on the books,” he said. “Closing in on two hundred and fifty shows, now, you know.”
I sipped. “You in this for life, Myles?”
“What, touring?”
I nodded. “Yeah. This it, for you?”
He sighed. “You know, I don’t know. I’m just milking it for all it’s worth, right now. Dad, Granddad, they loved this shit, you know? They’d be fuckin’ stoked as hell to see me successful like this.”
“They see, brother. They see you.”
He eyed me. “You believe that? For real?”
I hesitated. I didn’t like talking about this shit. But this was a moment you didn’t ignore, a time you couldn’t puss out on saying the real shit. “I mean, yeah, man. You know how I was raised. Who raised me. I didn’t have much to believe in, those early days. Then I went to live with Mammy and River Dog and all that shit. So yeah, I believe our ancestors are watching.”
He was silent. Absorbed. He knew I rarely ever discussed my past. Or myself at all, really. “I like that idea, I guess. Dad and Granddad watching over me. With me on the road, on the stage with me. They never got to see me blow up, you know?”
I nodded. “They’re with you, Myles.”
“What about you?”
I growled in my chest. “What about me?”
“Are your ancestors with you?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, they are. Dad’s are, at least. I see them in the mountains, the trees. The rivers. The road itself, in a way, I guess. My dad’s people lived in all those places and I believe they are still there. Never knew too much about Mom’s side of things. I guess I get that from her—she never talked about herself or her past. Her family, none of that shit. Don’t know jack.”
“She was Native American, too, though, right?”
I nodded. “Comanche. Dad was Apache.”
We finished our scotch, and Myles leaned forward. Took my glass from me, rinsed his and mine, dried them with paper towel, and replaced the glasses and the bottle in the cabinet, secured against the movement of the bus. This, too, was ritual—I worked for him on stage, brought him guitars and tuned them, kept them maintained. Replaced strings and all that. Then, in these quiet moments, he always served me scotch. Reminding himself and me, I think, that we were equals. Brothers.
He eyed me. “Coming out?”
I shook my head. “Nah, I’m good.”
He just huffed a laugh. “Yeah, you’re way too melancholy anyway. You’d kill the mood.”
I kicked at him. “Get the fuck out of here. Go, have fun. I’ll see you later.”
“You riding with us, or riding your bike?”
“I’ll ride the bus till we stop, probably.”
He nodded, exiting the bus. Paused at the bottom of the steps, slapped the doorway. “Crow?”
I eyed him. “Yo.”
“You belong on stage, man. You’re the most talented motherfucker I’ve ever met.”
I shook my head. “That’s your thing, not mine. I’m happy the way things are.”
He sighed. “Waste of fuckin’ talent, man.”
“How about I write something, and you can tell ’em it was me?”
He grinned. “I need new material anyway.”
I reached across to the couch across from me, where my guitar lay. Snagged it. Strummed. Felt something bubbling up, and let it out.
I stopped, glanced at Myles. “Get out of here, man. Can’t feel it with you watchin’.”
“Think you can have it done in time for the festival? It’d be fun to debut a new song there.”
I nodded. “Probably, yeah.”
“Sweet.” He smacked the doorway again. “Well, you have fun.”
I just snorted. “I’m stayin’ my ass on the bus. You’re the one going out partying.”
“Lame-ass.”
“Party boy.”
He left, then, cackling, whistling. I noticed he had a Sharpie in his back pocket, as always, which meant he was heading for the front gates where hangers-on tended to gather, hoping he’d make an appearance for photos and autographs—he usually did show up, most nights, and his fans knew it, which is why there was always a crowd gathered, waiting.
He’d sign autographs and take photos, hug and shake hands until they were all gone, and then he’d finally head off for wherever the after-party was, and he’d find a friend and a bottle.
I didn’t envy him—but I was happy for him.
I had what I needed, and it was enough.
Most nights, at least.
There were times when the loneliness got the better of me, and I’d follow Myles off to the party, and assuage the loneliness with a pretty, willing, friendly face for the night. That would tide me over for a while, but it never lasted long.
In the end, you see, it was always how it had always been—just me. Old Crow, off by himself, stoic as the mountains.
I snorted at my own melodrama, but put it into lyrics and let it be.
I fell asleep at some point, with the guitar on my chest and the notepad on the floor. When I woke up, the bus was rumbling, and I heard Myles back in his room, making noises I didn’t want to think too much about.
I went back to sleep knowing, when we stopped for coffee in a few hours, she’d be gone and we’d be back on the road for Chicago.
Charlie
“Charlie.”
I was lost. Stuck in sludgy darkness, dreamtime tar wrapping me up in syrupy-slow lucidity. I knew I was dreaming, but I was drowning in the dream. It was a dream of nothing—just me, in the dark. Wandering. Someone behind me, trying to pull me backward—someone ahead of me, needing me. It was recurring, maddening, meaningless.
“Charlie.”
The darkness was shaking me. What do you want? I couldn’t speak, couldn’t form thoughts—it was a whisper of a thought, a breath of an idea, but the dream-sludge had my mouth fused.
“Charlotte. Charlotte Grace.”
Insistent shaking.
What? What do you want from me?
“Charlie!”
Smack!
My eyes flew open, my cheek stinging. Lexie was in the driver’s seat, eying me warily.
“There you are.” She reached out and palmed my cheek. “You okay?”
I sat up, touched my cheek—looked in the mirror: my cheek was pink. “Did you…slap me?”
“You were screaming bloody fucking murder, Charlie.”
I blinked. “I…I was?”
“Thrashing around, screaming, kicking. You almost hit me in the face—while I was doing eighty-five on I-90.”
I looked out my window, and realized we were on the shoulder, emergency flashers on. It was eight in the morning, and I’d been asleep for two hours. We’d switched after four hours, stopped for gas and a quick meal, went another four. Shared a bed in a sleazy no-tell motel somewhere in Penns
ylvania, slept a few hours, and gotten back on the road around dawn. I could tell Lex was antsy to put as many miles between us and New York as possible, so I’d pushed us along. Now, though, I could tell she was getting ready to talk.
The quality of her silence was different. Pensive, restless, thoughtful.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Close to Chicago.” She glanced at me, and then checked traffic, accelerating and merging. “I need coffee and an omelet and shopping.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
Thus, in another forty-five minutes or so, we found ourselves parking on the street outside a breakfast place in Chicago. We got coffee, ordered omelets, and relaxed.
I let the silence breathe, knowing she’d start talking eventually.
We were in a corner booth, and the restaurant was crowded, noisy. This was the best place to have a private, sensitive conversation.
Lex stared into her coffee, leaning over it. “I broke all my rules. I don’t have many, but I broke them all.”
I held my tongue.
“The rules.” She ticked them off one by one, tapping a finger on the table for each. “No one more than ten years older than me. Never be the other woman. Never let a man dictate or pressure me into doing something I don’t want to. Never be a secret.”
I bit my lip. “Oh god, Lex.”
She nodded. “Yeah. I broke every single fucking one. All with one guy.”
I waited.
“Professor Marcus Tyne.”
“A professor, Lexie?”
She nodded. “Yep. I’m that bitch.” A sigh. “It’s hard to talk about.”
Not So Goode Page 3
