Long Way Gone

by Charles Martin

  I tried again. “Will you please tell him something for me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He pointed at the audience with his knife. “Tell him yourself.” As he said that, something in my vision changed. It was like sitting in the optometrist’s chair, and the doc is flipping those lenses in front of your eye and asking which one is better, one or two? And as you answer, the picture gets sharper and sharper until everything clicks into focus.

  In front of me, I saw the audience that had bought their tickets. Those folks, like me, had come in through the gate. And then in a blink, the image went from one to two—and five thousand turned into more than I could count or guesstimate. And standing near the front, with a guitar slung over his shoulder, smiling wide and eyes intent on me, stood my dad.

  I had not expected that.

  Daley and I were sitting on stools, near the edge of the stage. Turned slightly toward each other and facing the audience. She smiled and put her hand on my knee, proving once again that she, like my mother, was a touchy-feely person. Her eyes smiled with as much mischief as her mouth. She turned toward the audience.

  “Coop won’t tell you this, but he’s written eighteen number one hits. Five of which were mine.” She turned to me and raised an eyebrow. “You have anything new you’d like to share with us?”

  I muted the strings and spoke into the microphone. “Twenty-five years ago this month, I stood on this stage with my dad, and in my infinite stupidity and ignorance, I told him I wasn’t going to sing his stupid songs anymore, or travel with his stupid tent revival circus, or do pretty much anything he wanted. Then . . . I balled my fist and struck my father in the face. Hard as I could. Split his lip. The same father who had loved me really well and never withheld any good thing.”

  The audience responded with silence.

  I walked a few steps to where my dad had been standing. “And while he stood right here, bleeding onto the stage, I took off the ring he’d given me and threw it—along with my identity—as far as I could into the river.”

  The silence of the crowd allowed the peaceful roll of the river to flow over us.

  “Adding insult to injury, I stole everything he valued, including his life savings, his truck, and the guitar my mom gave him as a wedding gift.”

  If I did not have their attention before, I had it now.

  The next admission was the most painful. My voice cracked. “I never saw my dad alive again.”

  The entire audience came to a halt. Even the folks walking to and from the bathroom or concession stood still.

  “That night I drove to Nashville, where I learned I was really nothing special and I promptly lost everything I’d stolen. Money, truck, guitar, everything. Five years later I was shot in the chest and left to die in a building set on fire. For twenty years I have not known who pulled me from the flames. Until a few minutes ago.”

  I held up the letter my dad had written me. “It was my dad. I don’t know how he found me, but he did. He rescued me when I could not. I’d like to tell you the story has a happy ending, but . . . the price for my trip out of the flames was high. Dad died from burns to his body and the toxic effects of smoke in his lungs.”

  The expressions on people’s faces had eclipsed pity. It was more akin to understanding. To empathy. They were wiping tears. Intently listening. And what I saw for the first time was not only the impact of my story on others but how it resonated with their own. While their details were different, a lot of those folks staring up at me shared the same hurt, the same regret, same heartache, and somehow, in hearing the truth about me, they learned they weren’t alone. That they weren’t the only one to walk away from someone they loved, and who loved them.

  I gathered myself. “When I left here, I didn’t just take my dad’s stuff. I took me. My most selfish act. And that hurt him the most.”

  I walked to the edge of the stage. My fingers rolling gently across the strings. “For twenty years I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell a dead man I’m sorry. Sometimes I climb up in those hills behind us and stare out there and ask God why He keeps me around. Why not just be done with me? Zap me with a lightning bolt and be done with it. And then I hear a song. And I know that what I’m hearing doesn’t start with me. It can’t. There is no way on this earth that something so beautiful can come out of something so screwed up. So black-hearted. But somehow it does, and because it’s beautiful and I don’t want to lose it, and because there is still a part of me that would like to share it, I write it down.” I shook my head as the tears dripped off my chin. I wiped my face. “So here I am at the end of myself, asking just what do I do with the music in me?”

  Big-Big quietly played chords on the piano. The choir hummed. Daley swayed beside me. The collective voice of the choir grew louder over my shoulder. Blondie and his friends had moved closer to the stage. I turned, and my dad was standing next to me. I slid the notebook from the small of my back, opened it, and handed it to Daley. Slowly I raised both hands as high as I could reach. A mirror image of my father.

  “This is a song . . .” My voice cracked. “This is a song . . . about what I hope to find when I get where I’m going.” I played the opening chord. “It’s called ‘Long Way Gone.’ ”

  So I played. And for the first time since I left this stage, I sang at the top of my lungs.

  Somewhere in the first verse, Daley’s voice rose beneath me. And then showered over me.

  When I finished I rolled into a song everyone already knew, and by the time I sang the second line, “Tune my heart to sing Thy grace,” they were singing back at me at the top of their lungs.

  We sang all six verses, and reaching the last verse, we muted all the instruments and sang a capella.

  “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it

  Prone to leave the God I love

  Here’s my heart, Lord, take and seal it

  Seal it for Thy courts above.”

  When we finished, people were leaving their seats and moving forward. Crowding the stage. Ten thousand hands waved in the air. It was a good song. Daley would go far with it. I think my dad would have liked it, and he was right, there’s just something about old hymns.

  The world seemed muted. My heartbeat was in my ears. The acrid taste had returned. I had pushed it too far. I felt the rupture and knew no river treatment would help. I only had a few moments.

  Blondie stood off to my left. Close to Daley. A cat ready to pounce. My dad stood nearby, playing alongside me. If I was going to die onstage, I wanted to die with a guitar in my hand. Playing. I put the capo on the fifth fret and started strumming a G-D-Em-C chord progression. The words were muddled, and I could tell the audience knew something was off. I tried to sing the first verse but all the words got jumbled and I lost the tune. The world took on a sepia color and everything moved in slow motion.

  Daley stared at me. A wrinkle between her eyes. Big-Big stood from the piano and stepped toward me. When the blood spilled out my mouth, I remember looking upward, then falling backward, and the only thing I could hear was a million voices singing over me.

  I watched me from above me. It was quiet up here. Chaos below. I lay on the stage. Motionless. Eyes growing dim. There was a good bit of blood. Daley was screaming. Her guitar had been sprayed red. I felt bad about that. She was holding me. Her shirt was stained.

  Big-Big was leaning over, crying. Shaking his head. I heard him screaming, “No,” real loud. He looked angry. And he too looked like he was talking to someone who wasn’t there. Then I saw him pick up my body and carry me off the back of the stage toward the waterfall. He walked my limp rag-doll body across the pasture into the darkness, away from the lights, and waded into the river where the water rose above his waist. Walking upstream. Finally he just stood there in the falls, letting the water rain down on him and me both. Washing over us. I could see his chest heaving. Letting out deep moans. Screaming at the sky. His voice seemed a long way away. He was saying, “I told you I’d
look after him and I ain’t done real good.”

  My body turned blue and pale, the light left my eyes, and the crimson trail stopped pouring out my mouth. He held me there several minutes. Finally he walked out of the water and laid my lifeless body on the ground in the lush grass, where Daley cradled me. Pulled me to her chest. Trying to rock me back to this world.

  But she could not.

  Long way gone.

  Behind me, I could hear sirens and see flashing red and white lights.

  To my right, Blondie appeared. He was lined up in a perfect row with all the others. Stretched out as far as the eye could see. He’d changed his clothes. He was wearing white, barefoot, his hair was swaying, he was sweating. I heard the faint, fading echo of music. Like the last note of a measure. Blondie looked as if he’d just finished one dance move and was waiting on the music to start for the next. Off to one side stood a bunch of folks holding musical instruments. Most I’d never seen. Dad had a guitar around his neck. Oddly, it had ten strings. Next to him was a vacant spot. I was about to step into the spot next to Dad when Blondie held up his hand and waved a single index finger. “Not yet.”

  I looked down at me, at Daley, at Big-Big, at the chaos and frantic movements, but all I heard was the most beautiful singing coming from the voices around Blondie. I pointed down at me. “But I’m dead.”

  “You were dead.” He paused. The book he’d been reading in the back row of the audience he now held in his hand. It was a black notebook. Like mine. He’d scribbled some words on the inside. His handwriting was the most beautiful I’d ever seen. He tucked it between my belt and back and then reached inside me and took something out. Something dark and painful. Then he squared up to me, pressed his lips to mine, and exhaled. The breath filled me. Warmed me. He said, “Now you’re alive.”

  At that second the world of light that I’d been standing in became dark, and I felt cold like I’d never known. Except my lips. Which felt warm. Moist. And they tasted salty. That only meant one thing.

  Daley’s tears.

  And somewhere in that darkness, I heard the whisper of my father.

  For obvious reasons, the opening of my eyes caused a bit of a ruckus. Paramedics appeared a few minutes later, placed an oxygen mask on my face, inserted a needle in my arm, and started asking me questions I couldn’t answer then and can’t answer now. I’ll tell you the same thing I told them: I was doornail dead. Looking down on myself. No pulse. No nothing. Then in a blink, I felt grass beneath me, felt cold, and tasted salt. Then I started getting warmer and turned from blue to a better shade of red. I don’t understand that. One second I was gone. The next second I was not. I have no words for that. I do know this—somewhere between here and there, whatever had been broken in me was made no longer broken, and however it happened, I didn’t cause it and I didn’t deserve it. I’m not certain about a whole lot, but I know two things without a doubt: I’m alive and I didn’t fix me.

  As I was riding in the back of the ambulance, with Daley’s arms wrapped around me, Blondie appeared. He sat next to the paramedic who was squeezing the IV bag to force fluids into my system faster. It was the first time I heard a softness in Blondie’s voice. He said, “You don’t have to understand this. But you do have to live.”

  I woke in front of the fire in my cabin. Wrapped in a sleeping bag with Daley intertwined around me like a vine. I could not have extracted myself if I’d wanted to. Big-Big sat on the couch. One leg crossed over the other. He was sipping coffee, waiting on me. When my eyes focused, he stood, ran his fingers along the inside of his suspenders, and then looked down at me as he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, which he then folded and refolded.

  “Look here, you little squirt, I told your daddy I’d look after you.” He set down his coffee cup and turned toward the door. Palm down, he sliced his hand sideways through the air. “I’m done.” He stood staring out across a cloudless blue sky. “No mo’. I’m getting too old to be caring for you. It’s time we start doing this t’other way ’round.”

  “What way is that?”

  He laughed. “The way where I don’t go in the river no mo’. Nothing but a crazy man go in that thing. It’s too cold. You’ll catch the pneumonia.”

  He pulled open the door and looked at Daley. “Three o’clock?”

  She smiled and pointed at the porch. “We’ll be here.”

  Big-Big shut the door and I heard his truck engine fade off down the mountain. I asked, “Three o’clock?”

  Daley nodded matter-of-factly. “And not a nanosecond later.”

  She snuggled closer, which I hadn’t thought possible moments before. “What’s happening at three?” I asked, though I had a feeling I knew the answer.

  She closed her eyes, pressed her ear against my heart, and tapped her finger on my chest. “The beginning of you and me.”

  EPILOGUE

  It was Sunday evening and a Christmas Eve snow feathered the street, muting the excited voices and giving an amber reflection to the flickering gaslights. I’d asked Frank to be in charge of parking cars. Tanned from the islands, he’d gladly agreed.

  The town was quiet and shut down save the Ptarmigan Theatre, which was packed to overflowing. We’d brought in a few dozen extra chairs, but they had filled quickly. Those without a seat stood along the sides or in the back two and three deep. Mary sat up front. Wrapped in a blanket and a new Mellie that Daley had bought her. Her new BFF. She was beaming. Big-Big sat with one leg crossed over the other. Content and full of life.

  Daley and I were recording our second album in a free concert. A live acoustic version of both old and new. Our producer, a midthirties sound genius named Andy, had brought in the best engineers from Nashville and LA to capture what he called the “exquisite acoustics” of the old stone walls. Given the success of our first album, Live at the Falls, anticipation was high. At five minutes to seven, the orchestra was seated and tuning. The choir stood backstage awaiting their entrance, swaying in purple velvet robes that would have made my dad smile. Andy wanted to create an environment as much as a sound, so in the days prior he had installed a lot of indirect lighting, giving the room a warm, firelit feel.

  Daley sat on the stage talking quietly with folks in the audience. Answering questions. She loved this part. I, on the other hand, was looking for someone who didn’t want to be found. But I had an idea where he might be.

  I pulled up my collar to shield me from the cold and walked out the fire exit into the alley behind the theatre. My no-show had built a fire in the fire pit and stood warming himself against the single digits. Over the last year, when we’d finished our lessons, we’d do this. Standing by the fire had become our thing. The place where my heart poured into his. And his into mine. Snowflakes hung in his black hair. He heard me coming but didn’t look. I stood next to him warming my hands. “Hey, big guy. How you doing?”

  Jubal shook his head once and didn’t take his eyes off the flames.

  I’d been where he was. No need to rush him. They’d wait for us. When he looked up at me, I said, “You scared?”

  He nodded. The confident and verbal kid I’d met at his grandfather’s graveside and the kid I’d gotten to know over the last year had been replaced by a muted, squirming boy looking for an exit. A bench to crawl under.

  A minute passed. Finally he whispered. “What if I freeze up? Forget everything?”

  I shrugged. “We’ll start over.”

  “What if I freeze again?”

  I chuckled. “We’ll start over again.”

  “What if—”

  I gently tapped his temple. “Song doesn’t come out of here.” I tapped his chest. “It comes out of here.” I inched closer to the fire. “Your heart will remember what your mind forgets.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Music just works that way.”

  “You ever get scared?”

  “Not now.”

  “Were you ever?”

  “Once.”

  “Where
?” He was stalling, but I understood.

  “First concert.” I pointed south. “The Falls. My dad found me hiding under the piano bench.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Set me on the bench, lifted my chin, and told me that, no matter what, he was proud of me. That I could do no wrong. That all I had to do was open my mouth and let out the breath I’d been holding my whole life.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yep.”

  One side of his mouth turned up.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I said.

  He nodded, but he still had his back turned toward the door.

  “You don’t have to play tonight.”

  He looked both relieved and confused. “Don’t you want me to?”

  “Of course. But the world won’t come to an end if you don’t.”

  “So I can stay here?”

  “Yep.”

  “You won’t be mad?”

  “Nope.”

  “What about Miss Daley?”

  “She won’t be mad either.”

  His shoulders relaxed. When I turned to go, he grabbed my arm. “That’s it?”

  I turned around. “Jubal, can I let you in on another secret?”

  He waited.

  “The secret is that we play music. We don’t work music.”

  His nose wrinkled. “What do you mean?”

  “Making music isn’t something you have to do. It’s something you get to do. It’s fun.”

  “You won’t be mad if I mess up this recording and tick off that guy back there with the headphones looking at all those lights?”

  I looked at him with a wrinkle between my eyes. “Where did you get the idea that you had to be perfect? I didn’t teach you that.”

  “But all those people on the TV shows always get raked over the coals by the judges as soon as they finish singing or playing.”

  “Is that where this is coming from? TV? I’m going to talk to your mom about canceling the cable.”

  He laughed.