‘Are you nervous?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Not really. Are you?’
‘Me? Why would I be nervous?’
He looks down at the table. My drink is still almost full, but the label on the beer bottle is in shreds around the base of it. ‘You tell me,’ he asks.
‘I don’t know. I mean, I’m not nervous. It’s just…’ I pause. How to say it? ‘It’s just that I’ve never seen you play in front of people. I mean, yeah, on that video Merry showed me. But never like this. Never live.’
‘So you’re worried something’ll go wrong?’
‘No.’
A frown crosses his face. ‘Then you’re worried they won’t like me.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I guess I am. Is that stupid?’
Hale shrugs. ‘I don’t think so. It makes sense. A lot of people get stage fright when it comes to playing in front of people. Hell, I did myself, way back when. Thought the guitar was going to slip out of my hands the first time I played my own show, my palms were so sweaty.’ He reaches across the table and takes my hand in his; this time, at least, his palms are bone dry. ‘But don’t worry, Carrie. I stopped caring what people in this town thought of me a long time ago. As far as I’m concerned, the only person in the audience I care about impressing is you.’
He smiles at me again, and any reservations I had about coming out tonight melt right away.
We turn back to the Burtons then, applauding with the rest of the bar as they step down from the stage, Rhonda Burton blushing fit to bust and batting away the compliments she’s getting. Say what you want about the crowd in O’Hara’s, they’re not shy when it comes to showing their appreciation for free entertainment.
‘Well, how about that?’ Willie says as he steps back onto the stage. ‘All that hushing people in the library, and she had a singing voice like that hidden away the whole time. Who knew? I ask you, folks, who knew?’ He raises the microphone stand just a little, even though he doesn’t need it; Willie’s voice probably travels all the way down the street, and it makes short work of the extra round of applause he manages to drum up for the Burtons.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he says once things calm down again, ‘y’all are in for a real treat tonight. A real treat indeed. Seems we’ve got ourselves an actual, bona fide celebrity in our midst. Eden’s own Hale Fischer, back to play us a sweet little song or two before he heads off on a world tour. How about that, folks?’
Hale leans into me, speaking softly. ‘Should I tell them it’s only thirty-five small theatre gigs in the continental states?’
‘And break poor Willie’s heart?’ I say. ‘Don’t you dare.’
‘Come on up here, son,’ Willie says. ‘And let’s give him a nice warm round of applause, eh?’
Hale gives my hand a quick squeeze. ‘Wish me luck,’ he says.
‘Luck,’ I say, but he’s already halfway to the stage. I just hope he doesn’t need it.
The crowd claps on cue, but it’s muted, slightly; I see necks straining one by one to see him as he heads into the spotlight, to see if they remember his face. They’re not clapping the same way they did for Willie, for the Ward brothers, for the Burtons. They knew those people, as their own. With Hale, there’s a sense that they’re looking at a zoo animal: exotic, strange, perhaps dangerous. They can’t be at ease the same way they would around a family pet. It just wouldn’t make sense.
‘How’s everyone doing tonight?’ Hale asks as he drags a stool closer to the front of the stage, adjusting the height of the microphone stand until it’s resting at his lips. ‘We all alright?’
The crowd hollers back at him, buzzing with excitement and the faint aura of celebrity around him. It’s a complicated balancing act. On the one hand, I know just how down to earth Hale is. I know that the folksy, homespun charm he exudes – the sly wink, the playful grin that hangs off the corner of his mouth like a cigarette – is genuine, and not just for show. On the other hand, he looks perfectly at home on the stage, even if the stage in question is just a few square feet cleared of tables in the middle of a backwater bar in small-town Texas. It’s home to him – far more home than the rest of Eden ever was, that’s for damn sure. It’s his own private country, and damn it, it’s good to be the king.
‘Me too,’ he says. ‘I’m real glad to be here with you folks tonight. Didn’t think I’d be coming back here any time soon, but I’ve got to say you sure do know how to make a man feel welcome.’
Another cheer. If nothing else, Hale’s a wizard when it comes to getting an audience on his side. He strums a couple of test chords, fiddles with the tuning pegs, strums again and nods to himself. ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘here’s Wonderwall.’
The crowd laughs, but they settle down as he begins to sing.
‘I’ve… been…’
He peels off the words slowly, mournfully – soul as it’s meant to be sung. And then the guitar comes in, light at first and growing in confidence as he plays, weaving in and out of his voice.
It takes me a moment to place it, but when I do I can’t stop myself from smiling. It’s an acoustic cover of I’ve Been Loving You Too Long, the old Otis Redding number. Hale always loved music like that. It was part of his repertoire, back when we were kids – back when I’d steal private moments and listen to him practice, back when he told me that one day he’d make it big. Back in that beautiful summer, where everything was perfect until it suddenly wasn’t.
It’s not the kind of thing you’d normally play at a place like O’Hara’s, where the jukebox is made up mostly of three generations of Hank Williams – but of course, that’s the point. He isn’t playing it for the crowd at O’Hara’s.
He’s playing it for me.
Not that they’re not lapping it up, of course. Gone is the raucousness that follows the Ward brothers’ performance, and the quiet enthusiasm for Rhonda Barton and her husband. This is a different sort of quiet – of fifty, maybe sixty people coming together, not so much listening to the music as feeling it, in their hearts and in their bones and in their memories.
By the time he finishes up, there’s not a person in the room who’s not claiming Hale Fischer as Eden’s prodigal son.
‘I was hoping y’all might let me play one of my own songs,’ he said. ‘That is, if you think you can stand my company for another few minutes?’
The crowd whoops and hollers back at him. Looks like he’s good to go.
‘I wrote an awful lot of songs in this town when I was a kid,’ he says, ‘and a lot of awful songs too. But this one… well, this one I think was worth remembering. I hope you agree.’
As he speaks, I realise he’s no longer doing his crowd-pleasing trick of darting his eyes around the stage, making a connection with as many people as possible. He’s looking over them, out into the room. He’s looking towards me, and only me, and in that instant I know just what he’s about to start playing.
This one, I recognise instantly. How could I not? It’s been the soundtrack to so many of my thoughts of Hale, to so many of my daydreams of the future I once thought I had with him – and maybe, just maybe, am starting to believe I might have again. I close my eyes, and suddenly I’m right back where I first heard it: under the tree where we had our first real date, the day we first kissed. I can smell the cherry blossom and hear the sounds of the cars going by, of people living their own lives while mine was forever changing. I can see myself as I was then, young and eager and in love.
The day he played it, for me and only for me.
My song.
That’s a Hale Fischer original. I wrote it for you. After I walked you home that afternoon, I went home and started playing, and… well, that’s what came out. All you. I just remembered it, that’s all.
I can see Hale how he was too, lithe and lean and without the muscle he has packed on in the intervening years. For years, that was the only way I could see him. I didn’t know better. He was the Great
Might-Have-Been, the one that got away. Well, he’s back now, and better than ever.
Everything I thought I felt about him a decade ago is dwarfed by the way I feel about him now. It’s not even in the same damn ballpark.
The audience seems to keep expecting him to bring out some lyrics to match the sweetness of his playing, but eventually they settle into it. I can see them swaying along with the music, that simple, heartfelt little tune, enjoying it for what it is. He doesn’t look at them, doesn’t look down at the guitar. His eyes are fixed firmly on me, and on the stupid grin that feels as though it’s been superglued to my face.
When it finishes, far too quickly, I’m tempted to ask for an encore, but the audience beats me to it. The bar rings out with deafening applause and whistles and calls for more, but Hale just smiles and places the guitar gently down next to the stool, like a doting father putting an infant child to bed.
‘Thank you very much, folks,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s been real fun.’
He steps down from the stage and into a sea of people looking to pat him on the back, to congratulate him on his performance, but he barely pays them any mind at all. He’s coming straight towards me, laser-guided in his focus.
‘Well,’ he says as he draws near, ‘that was f—’
That’s as far as he gets before I cut him off with a kiss fit for the history books.
The crowd behind him whoops; up in the spotlight to introduce the next act, Willie is laughing right along with them. ‘Looks like our young Mr. Fischer has quite the fan, folks,’ he says. ‘And with a voice like that, who can blame her, eh? Anyway, next up on stage is…’
I don’t hear what follows. I’m not sure much of the audience does either, between the wolf-whistles and the giggling, but I don’t care. Let them laugh. Let them stare. Let them take photos and put them all over the internet, for all it would bother me. Where’s Meredith and her press releases now, when I finally have something I want to share?
My name is Caroline Ann Walker, I am twenty-six years old, and there is nowhere I’d rather be than right here with the man I love – the man I’ve loved since the first time I saw him, back when we were sixteen and the world was so much simpler. Anything beyond that can go right to hell.
‘Am I interrupting?’ a voice says.
Finally, I pull away from Hale to see Pete smiling down at the two of us.
‘I just wanted to say, you’ve got a hell of a set of pipes on you, son,’ he says. ‘A hell of a set. Carrie said you were good, but… hoo, boy.’ He turns to me. ‘I don’t know what your Mom’s going to say when everyone’s talking about this tomorrow, but I can’t imagine it’s going to be pretty. You know how she hates to be out of the loop on things.’
Oh, I know – but this time, I don’t feel like I’m in the mood to deal with any of her little barbs about Hale. If it happens, it happens, but as far as I’m concerned that’s a problem for Tomorrow Carrie to deal with. Besides, who knows? If I manage to get the two of them in the same room together… well, is it so hard to believe that they might get along?
Don’t get ahead of yourself, I think. Just enjoy it for what it is, for now. Just you and Hale.
‘Come on,’ Hale says. ‘I could use another beer. I’m parched.’
He leads us over to the bar, quietly accepting the approval of the people we pass on the way, and orders a couple of beers. The bartender pulls out two bottles and slides them across to him.
‘There you g—’ he begins, but the word drops from his lips in an instant and his face turns to stone. All of the jollity, all of the happiness seems to have fallen away from him in an instant.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, but he’s not frowning at me. He’s looking over my shoulder, and he’s not happy with what he sees. ‘Hale? What’s…?’
I spin around to take a peek at what’s put him in such a sudden bad mood.
There, standing behind us, is Aaron Scanlon.
And he looks furious.
Chapter Twenty-One
I can smell the whiskey on his breath almost as soon as I turn around; even in a bar like O’Hara’s, where hard liquor and beer flow like water, the strength of it is almost enough to make my eyes tear up. Scanlon has been drinking, and heavily. By the look of him, it seems as though he started the night we left him and his date at Isabella’s and he hasn’t stopped since.
‘Well, well,’ he slurs. ‘Look who it is. Everyone’s favourite fuckin’ songbird.’ He gives a slow, sarcastic clap – a one-man round of whatever the opposite of applause is. It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to send a frisson through the bar. Conversations quieten down slightly, eyes turn to us or down towards drinks. Everyone wants to see where this is going, but no one wants to admit it.
Hale ignores him. ‘Do you want another drink?’ he says, turning towards me. ‘Or should we head back home?’
I can only bring myself to nod mutely. I’m not afraid of Scanlon, but I’m no fool either; I wouldn’t let a snake like that out of my sight for an instant, no matter what kind of high I was riding.
‘Come to gloat, have you?’ he says to Hale’s back. ‘That was a real shitty trick you pulled back at the restaurant. But I guess you knew that, huh? Bet it made you feel like a big man, didn’t it?’
Scanlon is fingering the neck of an almost-empty beer bottle, peeling away the label and leaving a small heap of white paper at the base. He’s playing with it, but not drinking it. An image crosses my mind – a sudden lunge for it, the base smashed against the bar, a thrust and…
Blood. Blood everywhere.
No. I shake the thought away. Everything will be fine. Hale is fine. We’re in a full bar. Even Scanlon wouldn’t be that stupid, surely?
‘Hey,’ he slurs again. ‘Songbird. I’m talking to you. You owe me.’
Hale’s body tenses up. ‘Oh yeah?’ he says over his shoulder. ‘And how do you figure that?’
‘It speaks!’ Scanlon crows with laughter. ‘You hear that, fellas? The fuckin’ Golden Voice over here has decided to grace us with his words. Ain’t we just the luckiest sons of bitches the world has ever known? How about we start with you cockblocking me the other night?’
‘Is that so?’
‘You know goddamn well that’s so. Now are you going to apologise, or am I going to have to find some other way to level the score?’
Even in the crowded bar, I don’t like the way Scanlon is looking at me – well, even less than usual. It’s cold and detached, but oddly lascivious. I’ve seen that look before; it’s a man looking to conquer, to claim, to ruin. It sends a shiver down my spine.
My discomfort is enough for Hale to act. He turns around fully, placing himself firmly between the two of us. His meaning is pretty clear. Some lines won’t be crossed. Threats against me – even implied – is one of them.
‘Seems to me your date got the measure of you pretty well,’ he says. ‘If she had half a brain, she wouldn’t even have turned up in the first place. Only person who’s owed an apology is her, from you.’
Scanlon lets out another harsh whoop of mocking laughter and turns to one of his buddies, who were propping up the bar alongside him as he drowned his sorrows. ‘Well, would you just look at that?’ he says. ‘City Boy over here thinks he’s better than me all of a sudden. What, ‘cause you learned how to play a couple of chords and string a rhyme together? Big fuckin’ deal. Just because you traded in your shithole trailer for some city living? Well, let me tell you something’ – I watch as he stands up as tall as his bellyful of liquor allows, and stares Hale straight in the eye – ‘I can smell the garbage on you from here. That’s a stink that don’t ever wash off. You were nothing then, and you’re nothing now, and everyone here knows it. Ain’t that right, folks?’
The whole bar is silent now; no one is willing to let themselves be drawn into this dispute, torn between their Local Boy loyalty and their newfound respect for Hale and his celebrity.
‘Oh yeah?’ he
says to the masses. None of them meet his eye. ‘Is that how it is? Well, fuck you all too. Bunch of goddamn sellouts. He ain’t nothin’ and you all know it.’
‘I think,’ Hale says, his voice slow and measured, ‘that you should sit down and get the hell out of my face.’
‘Is that right? And what are you going to do if I don’t, City Boy?’
If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that Scanlon doesn’t want to find out; if there’s a second thing, it’s that Hale is at least considering showing him. Could I blame him, really? I know how satisfying it would be to put a fist into the centre of that smug grin, to have an excuse to settle years of torment. Just say the word, I can almost hear him thinking. Throw the first punch and I’ll show you just what I’m capable of.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t even flinch. The two of them stare each other down like a couple of zoo gorillas, each daring the other to escalate things until Willie – the silverback, at least as far as O’Hara’s is concerned – steps up behind the beer taps.
‘I don’t want no trouble, Aaron,’ he says. ‘I mean it. You got a problem with anyone in my bar, you settle it with civil talk. I don’t care who your daddy is, you start fighting and I’ll bounce you out of here faster’n –’
‘Yeah, yeah, I get it,’ Scanlon says. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Hale, not even for a moment. ‘No trouble in your bar.’
Willie gives him the old side-eye for a second or two, as if to drive his point home, but it doesn’t last; there are customers to be served, and even if most of the bar has fallen silent there’s still a line of thirsty drinkers that needs to be attended to. He drifts slowly away to take a new order, casting over the occasional glance to let us know that he’s watching us, and can be back on top of us inside of a country minute.
Having him there gives me a strange sense of relief.
Scanlon, on the other hand, doesn’t seem quite so at ease.
‘So what do you say, big shot?’ he says. ‘Are we gonna take this outside, settle it like men? Just like old times?’
Reckless: A Bad Boy Musicians Romance Page 20
