Bird After Bird (30 page)

“I’ll always be sad that Rod died. He was too young and it wasn’t fair. Just like with Sylvia…neither one of them should have died young. But when I saw José’s happy face, I felt like a weight lifted.” I chuckled at the memory. José had been burning up my email from the moment I’d left town, and we were currently engaged in a back & forth, sending our latest drawings to one another. I’d send a bird, he’d send a stick figure tableau of a monster. I’d send a monster, he’d send a scribble of a cartoon figure. And so on.

“To be honest, Generose, I started singing on the way home. I think I wrote a song.”

Sister Generose clapped her hands, a gesture so carefree and childlike I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, that’s fabulous, Laurie! When can I hear you perform?”

“Well, to be honest, my friend Billy’s asked me to stand in for him at some gigs…so if you’re up for a road trip…”

Chapter Fifty-seven

Laurie

Billy and I met when I was in sixth grade, and he was in seventh, when he moved here from Kentucky. It was just him and his mom and a collection of musical instruments she stored in the third bedroom of their double-wide, about six miles down the road from my cabin.

I didn’t find out about the instruments until Billy invited me to get off the bus at his house one day. He’d signed up for choir, and although the teacher, Mrs. Davis, had welcomed another male student, Billy had trouble singing harmony. She corrected him often and he’d gotten mouthy. He might have been the only kid in the history of Birdseye Middle School to get detention from the choir teacher.

I had trouble keeping a straight face about it. “Two days detention ought to set you right, as well, Mr. Byrd.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You didn’t have to,” she said.

At lunch, Billy railed at length about the vile Mrs. Davis, and invited me back to his house. We were best buds from then on out. On pretty days we’d fish, chase foxes, or ride our bikes through the fields behind his mom’s house. On rainy days we’d play video games, or Billy would pick at the banjo.

He dropped out of choir, but played the school talent show. After that, it was pretty easy for him to make friends. The banjo was kind of weird and a lot of kids thought it was corny, but Billy said it was a Kentucky thing and held firm to it. Hank came out of the woodwork in eighth grade with his guitar obsession, and Fred transferred to Birdseye in high school when his parents couldn’t afford private school tuition anymore, let alone the two hour commute each day to Louisville. Fred’s classical violin days were over, but he brought his fiddle to Billy’s house and the three of them had been playing together ever since.

They’d always pressed me to sing. I told them I didn’t want to—that my mom pressured me too much to sing. One day she showed up at Billy’s house looking for me.

“Sweet heavens, Laurie. I had no idea you were spending so much time with trailer trash.” She jerked me off the living room floor where the boys were practicing and pulled me to her car by the ear.

After that, they didn’t pressure me anymore. Not as a group, anyway.

As an adult, I was learning that my talents were my own to do with as I chose, but I still wasn’t totally over that feeling that if I sung in public, it was giving in to Mom’s pressure.

The truth was, Billy had been asking me to sing with his band for years. That’s Billy. He never really gives up.

“I really just like watching y’all do your thing,” I said. “Just let me. C’mon—I don’t bug you to paint with me, do I?”

“I’ve never been good with harmony, man. At least just get up there and do some backing vocals once in awhile. It would add so much. Or do that song you worked on for Wren.”

“I don’t know, man.”

When he saw the look on my face, he let it go.

A couple of weeks later, he called.

“Dude, Lynette’s in pre-term labor. You’ve got to fill in for me. You’ve got no idea how important this gig is.”

I groaned. I was sitting sideways in my chair, my legs off one side until my toes touched the floor. I’d worked that morning, putting in some overtime fat the boss’ request. I was dirty and rumpled and had no interest in a shower and shave, let alone the drive all the way up to the north side of Indianapolis.

“I don’t know all the songs, Billy.”

“Please, Laurie. C’mon. How many times this year did I watch that dog of yours so you could leave town? My wife is in labor.”

“Shit, you’re right. I’m sorry. Of course I’ll go. I’ll…I’ll figure it out.” I could hear Lynette moaning in the background. “Don’t worry about the gig. Just take care of your girl, okay?”

“Thanks, bro. I’ll text you later.”

I suppose it was a good thing I’d worked with the Boys on that song. I really hadn’t had any instruction since middle school, when we’d been forced to limit art class to one semester, and take choir the other.

I warmed up my voice on my way to the set. I guess it was a good thing I’d been to so many of their shows. I knew their entire list.

I was expecting a hole-in-the-wall with an open mic sort of set-up. Billy said the gig was important, but I didn’t realize how important until I saw the TV trucks and video equipment.

Hank slapped me on the back. “Thanks for coming, man. You play at all? I’ve got to cover banjo and we could use another guitar.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, man. I can barely
sing
.”

Hank laughed. “Bullshit, man. But, whatever. Glad you’re here. If we get through this round there’s a national competition in New York City. Not much of a prize, but the travel’s paid, and we could use the exposure.”

“New York?”

I felt a lump in my throat. Sure, it was the biggest city in the world, but it was Wren’s turf. “I can’t make you any promises about that.” Surely Billy would be able to travel by then, anyway.

I guess the thought of seeing Wren was just the bittersweet touch I needed to make it through the set with The Boys. Fred managed to sweet-talk another guitarist to fill in Hank’s part while Hank picked away respectably at Billy’s banjo. We were allowed to perform three songs, and the boys shocked me by picking “January Wedding” as the lead-off.

“It’s the only one we’ve heard you do, Laurie,” Fred explained as he tuned his violin.

“We know you can nail that one. Let’s go out there strong,” Hank said.

I owed them this. Owed Billy. This was his band, his dream, his baby…

Well, his
real
baby was being born, maybe, right this minute. I’d check for an update once we were off stage. Right now, though, beneath the lights, in front of the cameras, I was going to give it all I had for my best friend, regardless of how much it hurt.

I sang about a wedding that would never happen. About a woman who could name the birds in the trees, whose heart was so much like mine, I thought we were one and the same.

My plan had been to serenade Wren that night at the winery. The night I thought every word of this song was true. The night I was so wrong, I drove the girl away.

I’d never been one for wearing my heart on my sleeve, and the military had taught me that emotions of any kind were a weakness—but here on the stage, the more I felt, the more the crowd reacted. This was what I could do for my friend in his time of need. I could bleed all over the mic.

The music trailed off, and I hung my head, relieved to be finished. The audience was mostly other musicians waiting their turn to perform. They were the competition, so I didn’t expect applause. The silence in the auditorium was palpable. I started to get nervous. Then, I lifted my head to look at the judges and dried a tear from my cheek. That must have been what the crowd was waiting for, because the explosion of sound nearly made me jump out of my skin. The Boys were bowing, smiling, plucking at their instruments or tuning up for the next song, and all three of the judges sat with their mouths agape as every musician in the house rose to his or her feet clapping. You’d have thought we were the damned Rolling Stones. It was surreal.

For the life of me, I never thought
that
would happen.

We played two more songs, one by Trampled by Turtles and the other by Old Crow Medicine Show. More applause.

 “Wow,” I said into the microphone. “Thanks, y’all. We are Billy & the Boys. Goodnight.”

The producers told us it would be a few days before we’d know if the Boys were going to the next round. We headed out for celebratory pizza, and Billy texted us baby pics while we gorged ourselves on beer and cheesy pepperoni paradise.

It was an awesome night. I didn’t expect that, either. But in those moments between leaving the microphone and filling up at the pizza house, I finally felt like things were eventually going to be okay again.

Maybe some of my dreams had died, but happiness, itself, hadn’t. And that was something, wasn’t it?

Maybe I was ready to dream again. To paint. To breathe.

Chapter Fifty-eight

Laurie

I stopped by the hospital to meet little Willie, Billy’s newborn son.

“After his daddy,” Lynette blushed.

“After Willie Nelson!” Billy boomed.

I brought Lynette some roses, figuring correctly that Billy hadn’t left her side except to visit the NICU and check on his boy.

“Billy asked me to pick these up for you,” I fibbed, leaning down to give her a hug. She was as lovely as she’d ever been, the glowing picture of motherhood. I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “How you feeling?”

“Oh, I’m okay,” she said. “Looking forward to having Willie in the room with us. They said maybe tomorrow. I’m on painkillers so I’m feeling no pain, but I think Billy could use something to eat—maybe a shower.”

“I ain’t leaving ya!” he said, slumped sideways in his chair.

“You’re falling asleep sitting up, sweetie,” Lynette warned.

“Just resting my eyes,” he grumbled. “How’d you do at the audition?”

Lynette’s parents showed then, crowding into the room and cooing over their daughter.

“Billy, I can run to your place and pick up some fresh clothes if you’d like.”

He sighed, waving hello to his in-laws. “You can drive me, I reckon, and fill me in on the gig on the way.” He hugged his tiny mother-in-law, dwarfing her, before shaking hands with his father-in-law. “You two keep an eye on Lynette while I’m gone?”

He walked me past the NICU, where little Willie was sleeping in his incubator.

“Lungs aren’t dry enough to be outside of it yet, but the docs say it’s a good thing he was kinda big for his age.” Billy jiggled his beer belly. “Takes after his dad, I reckon.”

I took him past the drive-in burger joint and bought his favorite combo: onion rings and triple Sloppy Burger. He ate like a starving man.

After he’d demolished round one, he hit the button for the waitress to come back. “Pardon me, Tracy, but I need seconds on that.”

“You want to take a nap?” I asked while we waited.

“No. Now that we’re away from the hospital I don’t mind telling you, the doctors are worried about little Willie.”

“Oh, yeah? How so?”

Billy shrugged. “Something about his heart. I was a little too tired to pick up the technical terms, but it’s because he didn’t bake long enough.”

“The lungs?”

“Yeah, his lungs, but also his heart. It’s a lot of work for a baby to finish.”

The waitress brought Billy his food. I didn’t know her, but Billy did. Billy knew everyone. “A gift,” she said, refusing his money. “Congrats on the baby. You better bring him ‘round so we can see him, okay?” Billy promised he would.

“How long does he have to stay in the hospital?”

“No idea,” Billy said, and then he was face-first into Sloppy Burger #2. I let him do his thing.

Louisa texted me on the drive to Billy’s house.

-Your fifteen minutes of fame has begun.-

Billy’s phone started lighting up at the same time. At first he was scared, then he realized it wasn’t Lynette or the hospital, but Hank.

“What the what?” he said.

Louisa’s text hadn’t made any sense to me, either, so I called her.