Long Way Gone

by Charles Martin

  Big-Big walked up the steps, and his presence alone commanded a hush. Five thousand people fell pin-drop quiet as a six-foot-six, broad-shouldered giant of a man with ebony skin, piercing eyes, snow-white hair, and a wide and gentle smile stood in front of the microphone.

  Big-Big wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and then cleared his throat. As he began speaking, a cameraman appeared to my left and a live shot of my face appeared on a huge screen behind him. I was looking at Big-Big onstage, who was looking at me at the far end of the audience. When he pointed and began speaking, most every head turned toward me.

  “I remember when that boy were young. I do. He was only three. Maybe four. Little towhead with hair falling down over the greenest eyes I ever seen. Quiet. Curious. Tender. But don’t confuse tender with weak, ’cause one day when he was a little older, I seen a bigger kid shove him and take his ice cream. Take his lunch money. He didn’t take to that. He jumped up, wiped the tears out of his eyes, and come unglued. Got his lunch money back. I remember laughing. Apple don’t fall far. He see black and white. Ain’t no gray. Even then he had thick shoulders. Stocky kid. Square jaw. Came ’bout to my waist. Big hands. Remind me of a puppy with big paws.

  “When I got out of prison, his daddy, the man who built this place, invited me to breakfast, where he fed both my stomach and my heart. Then he offered to put me to work. Only man who ever took a chance on me, and given my history I didn’t deserve a chance. This is back at the camp meetings. In the heyday. When the fireflies lit the fields. Before most of you were born. This boy would stand beside me beneath the big top, offstage, in the shadows. At first it made me uncomfortable. I’d think to myself, Can’t this white boy see the color of my skin? Don’t he know where I been? Don’t he know what I did?

  “If he did, he didn’t care. He just stood there, one hand hanging on my pants pocket, bracing for the impact, staring onto the stage where his daddy was speaking. Bible in one hand. Sweat in the other. Speaking ’bout setting captives free. ’Bout making all things new. ’Bout finding what was lost. Sometimes when his daddy voice get loud and booming, that boy would grab my hand. I’d look down and think, God must be good, ’cause what I held in my hand was the goodest thing I ever knowed. And while everybody be focused on his daddy, that boy seem distracted. Like he listening to something ain’t none of the rest of us can hear. Like with one ear he be listening to this world, but with the other, he be listening to some other.

  “Then the boy get older. And pretty soon I be sitting at the piano and I look out in the crowd, down below the lights, and thousands done come. They camp out in the rain. Pack the tent. People standing outside in the dark. They come to hear the man. His daddy, he had a gif ’. Ain’t never seen nothing like it. I remember the very first night we gathered in this very spot. On this ground. Pastor be talking ’bout the war in heaven. How the dragon done been cast down like lightning. How he at war with the woman. He in a great big fury. And then outside the tent, it got evil dark. Clouds done block out the moon. Can’t see my hand befo’ my face. And then high up in the sky, out of nowhere, the lightning crack. And hit the tent. That boy and me, we jump fo’ feet in the air and he wrap his arms ’round my leg. And he be shaking like a leaf. And me too. The hair on my arms stood porcupine straight. Smoke filled the tent ’cause that lightning done struck the canvas. Split it down the middle. Heaven open wide. E’rybody got saved then. Them that weren’t was, and them that was got it again. But that boy, he just stood behind me. Peeking ’round me. Eyeing the piano. And when that smoke filled that tent, and people be screaming and calling on the Lord, that boy hide beneath the bench. Ball up. Then his daddy crawl over next to him. Reach in with one arm, pull him out. Set him on the bench. Whisper in that boy’s ear. So that boy, while the world be on fire and falling down, while people be screaming and fighting and hating one another, he stretch out his arms and he touch those keys. Run his fingers across the ivory like he reading what they had to say. Like they be having a conversation but ain’t nobody else can hear it.

  “Then I look up and the tent be on fire above the boy where the lightning hit, but the boy, he don’t care. He still talking to the keys. People be running out. Screaming. Tripping over chairs. Trampling one another. Chaos. I’m thinking his daddy be right and we’re be watching the end of the world. But not that boy.

  “See it now like it was yestuh’day. See it clear as a picture. That wide-eyed boy look up at his daddy. His daddy be staring down, smiling. Waiting. Whole world coming down ’round him and he be smiling down. It be the end time. Armageddon. He closed his book, pull the handkerchief from his back pocket, and wipe his forehead. Firelight flickering off his cheek. Smoke billowing. Then he refold it and tuck it in his pocket. He nodded and whispered, ‘Go ahead.’ He glanced at the keys. He say, ‘Let it out.’

  “That boy didn’t move. He shouted above the roar of the storm, ‘How you know it’s in there?’

  “His daddy never hesitated. ‘I saw Him put it there.’ That boy be shaking, so his daddy he say, ‘Son . . . let it out.’

  “You believe what you want. You call me crazy. Call me a liar. But I was there. A few feet away. Seen it with my own eyes. Don’t know where he got it, don’t know how it happened, don’t know nothing ’bout nothing. What I do know is that boy, he look out at those people, then back at those keys, and he done what his daddy done told him. He opened his mouth and fingers and he let it out.

  “And when he did . . . that when the thunder done come.

  “That be the night when the thunder come.”

  The night of the storm replayed in my mind. For a split second I felt stinging rain on my cheek, smelled a pungent earthiness that only comes after the rain, sensed the song in my fingers. A growing tickle crowded my throat, forcing me to cough into my handkerchief. The blood was darker, and mixed with what looked like coffee grounds.

  Daley had miked both me and her McPherson with wireless mikes. Making me untethered, allowing me to wander. While I waited for my entrance, a man appeared to my left. Broad-shouldered, dark jacket, he took a seat in the back row. Shoulder-length, sun-bleached blond hair. Something familiar struck me about his posture. The way his broad shoulders hung relaxed. The look of his hands.

  He was reading a book, and I circled him from a few feet away, trying not to stare, but he noticed me and looked up. His skin was tanned, face chiseled but gentle, and his eyes were a piercing emerald green. I looked closer in disbelief. It’d been two decades since I’d seen him. He’d not aged at all.

  I circled him and tapped his shoulder, then backed up. “Hey.”

  He said nothing. Just nodded.

  I said, “It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you.”

  “You’ve been missed.” When he spoke, I remembered his voice.

  “I looked for you in Nashville.”

  “I know.”

  I leaned in closer. He smelled of rosemary and something else I couldn’t place. Maybe tea tree oil. “What made you come back?”

  He closed the book and stood, staring down on me. “What makes you think I ever left?”

  “You’ve been here this entire time?”

  “Not exactly.”

  I coughed. More blood and coffee grounds. He saw it too. One of his eyebrows rose slightly. I wiped my mouth, refolded the handkerchief, and stared at the stage. I asked, “You think I’ll make it through this?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “No.”

  The sound in my ears was growing louder. I stared out at all the people, at Daley alone on the stage, at Big-Big, and then down at the guitar. “I’d like to finish what was started in me.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t know how to answer him. “Last time I was here, I said some things.” The reflection of the ring caught my attention. “Did some things—”

  He glanced at the stage. “I remember.”

  I swallowed. “Those things left scars. On the inside. I trip over them a lot.”

  He did not look impress
ed with my revelation. “And?”

  “Sometimes I think if I could go back and start over—”

  “There are no do-overs.”

  “I just thought—”

  “You just thought what?”

  “I thought that the only way I know to get rid of them is to offer up what I held back.”

  “Which is?”

  A shrug. “My song.”

  “Shouldn’t you have thought about that twenty years ago?”

  “Yes. And every day since I left here has hurt more than the one before.”

  He closed the book and slid it behind him, between his belt and his back. Then he reached out and placed his finger in front of my mouth. Holding it there. He said, “Stick out your tongue.”

  “You want me to stick out my tongue?”

  He tilted his head slightly and waited.

  When I stuck out my tongue, he touched it with the tip of his finger. It was the first time he’d ever touched me, and when he did, it felt hot. Like fire. With his hand so close, I noticed the calluses on the tips of his fingers—like mine. He gestured toward the aisle in front of me. “Go ahead.”

  I pointed at the calluses. “You play?”

  He faced showed no expression. “A bit.”

  I took a step and stopped. “We should play sometime.”

  He leaned down. His face inches from mine. “We used to.” His breath warm on my face. “I’ve been waiting twenty years for you to say that.”

  “Really?” I scratched my head. “How come you didn’t say something sooner?”

  “I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs.”

  “How come I never heard you?”

  He touched my chest, just above my heart. “You haven’t been listening.”

  “Good point.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I ask you one more thing?”

  His tone was matter-of-fact. “You can ask.”

  “If this goes badly—”

  “If?”

  I backtracked. “Okay, when it does, will you please stand between Daley and me? I don’t want her to see—”

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “If my dad were here, he’d tell you that it’s never too late. That nothing disqualifies us. That no matter where we end up, no matter what mess we make, we can always turn around. Come home.”

  “So you were listening?”

  I shrugged.

  “Why does this matter?” he asked.

  I looked at Daley standing on the stage. “She’s been hurting a long time. I’m the source of a lot of her pain. I don’t want to hurt her any more than I already have.”

  A tear cascaded down his face and landed on my cheek. He glanced at Daley, then back at me, and nodded.

  I took a step toward the stage, then turned back and spoke louder. “I’m sorry about before.”

  “Me too.”

  Between us there were words still unsaid, but when I looked for him again, he was gone. Every few minutes a shiver would ripple through me. My thawing out continued. I was pretty sure I could make it through the concert and pretty sure I would not make it through the night. I needed to plan an exit that did not include Daley.

  That said, I wasn’t dead yet, and there was music to be played.

  Big-Big’s voice had just finished echoing off the cliff walls. I remembered that angry storm and Dad walking from the back toward the front with nothing and no one but Jimmy. In memory of that, I started tapping out a rhythmic percussive beat on the top of the guitar.

  My tapping and fingerpicking brought five thousand to their singing-whistling-clapping-shouting feet. I walked forward slowly, remembering how Dad had done it. Taking his time. Weaving around people. One spotlight framed Daley on the stage. The other shone on me. As I walked closer to the front, the choir started humming. Then I heard the piano bleed in. Big-Big’s timing, his touch. His sausage-size fingers were playing a melody around me. The effect of that tapestry was all encompassing. But while there was beauty in it, it held little glory, and no majesty, until Daley opened her mouth and let her words rain down.

  I climbed the stage. Mesmerized. One side of me played. The other side watched her empty herself. The smile on her face was the final expression of an emotion that enveloped her entire body. Every muscle, impulse, heartbeat had a singular focus—the song erupting out of her. As my fingers played the chords and picked the strings, the floodgates inside me opened and began letting out the song I’d held back for twenty years.

  36

  An hour in, Daley paused long enough to take a breath, and a natural break occurred in the set. Out of the lull some guy yelled, “ ‘Son of a Preacher Man.’ ”

  Daley looked at me and shrugged. “I’m game.”

  I stared from the stage to the venue the Falls had become—the place my father built. “I think Dad would be okay with that,” I said aloud to myself.

  “What’d you say?” Daley asked.

  “I said, ‘You’re beautiful.’ ”

  The voice in the audience had sounded familiar. I scanned the front row and found a guy in a hoodie. He was sipping on a soda, eating a hot dog, and his feet were propped up on the stage. Close enough for me to catch a whiff of the dog. The smell was familiar . . . cabbage and some nasty-smelling cheese.

  I leaned down. Blondie looked up at me from beneath the hood. I said, “That was you?”

  No response.

  “But I thought you said you weren’t in Nashville.”

  He took another bite, smearing mustard across the corner of his mouth. “Never said that.”

  “You did too.” I pointed to the back of the audience. “You just said—”

  “I said, ‘What makes you think I left?’ ”

  “Exactly.”

  “Cooper, I wasn’t talking about a place.”

  I scratched my head. “Then what were you talking about?”

  “I wasn’t talking about a what or a where. I was talking about a who.”

  I was about as confused as I could be. “You are making no sense whatsoever.”

  He took another bite and hopped up onstage. He brushed past me and whispered, “Some have entertained . . .” Then he sat atop the piano just behind me, opened his pocketknife, and began whittling. “Therefore since we are surrounded . . .”

  I shrugged. “I’ve heard this one before. Lots of times.”

  He stopped whittling and tapped me on the edge of my ear with the tip of his pocketknife.

  “You might have heard it, but were you listening?”

  In a matter of seconds, Blondie’s face transformed to look like the old man in Dietrich’s Wiener schnitzel car wash, then the policeman who woke me in the street after I was mugged and Jimmy was stolen, then the bouncer in Printer’s Alley who gave me the sheet music denoting the Nashville Number System, and finally to the little kid with his father in Leadville who asked for my autograph.

  He leaned close enough for me to feel his breath on my face. “What makes you think I left you?”

  “You were with me all along?”

  “Don’t let it go to your head. You’re not any more important than anyone else, but the gift in you . . . well, that’s another thing entirely.”

  “Do you talk this way to everyone?”

  “How’s that?”

  “So flippantly.”

  “What makes you think I talk to anyone else?”

  “But you just said I’m not special.”

  He shook his head. “Never said that.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “Nope. I said you weren’t any more important than anyone else.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  I stepped closer. My face inches from his. I spoke through gritted teeth. “Why are you here?”

  He smiled, stood, and took off his sweatshirt. “It’s about time you asked that question.”

  I was about to object when Daley started singing in that raspy, powerful voice t
hat would melt most men in the audience. She further grabbed my attention when she inserted my name in the first line. It was true. I was, in fact, the son of a preacher man, and by her own admission I’d been the only one to “reach” her. Just before the last chorus, she leaned across the guitar and kissed me beneath the spotlight. I don’t know who loved it more, the audience or me. From there we played a mixture of covers and her own stuff. Or, I should say, our own stuff. We sat on stools and accepted requests while Blondie sat on the piano and whittled.

  During a lull I pointed at the pile of wood shavings at his feet. “Nice mess.”

  He eyed the pile beneath him. “It’s not nearly as bad as the one you made.”

  “Touché. But do you have to do that right now, right here?”

  He hesitated. “When I’m not babysitting you, my day job is instrument repair. Lately you’ve required a lot of my time, so I’m behind.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded matter-of-factly.

  “What’s that you’re working on?”

  He held up the piece of wood in his hand. “When finished, it’ll be the neck and headstock to a guitar.”

  Evidently I’d entered an area he didn’t mind talking about. His work.

  “It’s a custom fit. Rather time-consuming. I take some measurements, then do some hand-fitting to make sure it works perfectly with the player’s hands.” He lifted it so I could see it. “This one happens to belong to your dad.”

  “You talk to my dad?”

  His face was expressionless. “All the time.”

  “Can you tell him something for me?”

  “Yes, I can, but no, I will not.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re not real accommodating?”

  He never looked up from his work. “Accommodating you is not my job.”

  “Well, you have a unique way of determining what is your job.”

  He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. His look was one of tolerance but not necessarily interest.