From the Top (7 page)

We will leave this tent soon enough. The clunky day-to-day awaits. Boots on the ground, pickup truck to the feed mill.

But for just a little while longer, I would like to fly.

Welcome back to
Tent Show Radio,
folks, from the backstage dressing room with the one lonely little lightbulb burnin'…

Back home on the farm I just came off a little stretch where I was feeling glum. Nothing big, no need for cards and letters, doin' fine, just one of those deals. For reasons that I've previously classified as biochemical, genetical, banal, and foolish in the face of good fortune, I have off and on throughout this life found myself in the company of what Winston Churchill called—at least I think it was Winston, and I'm going with that even if it's wrong just to spite Google by not doing the instant cellphone search that has come to replace our carbon-based brain cells—“the black dog.” Now my black dog is hardly worth talking about, really. I've had friends and acquaintance whose black dogs gnawed right through their breastbone and into their vitals and in some cases ate them alive. My black dog is smallish and nibbles at my belly button now and then, or walks in all wet and shakes cold swampwater on my toes, but within a day or two or a week at most, it wanders off to hide behind the barn and I can feel the sunshine again.

I don't mind that little black dog, because he tends to direct my eyeballs inward. Not just to gaze at my navel, but deeper, into the darker corners of those mysterious inward shadowy elements of ourselves we can't really describe or put a location on but we feel with the very same heaviness as if they were clearly labeled on page 37 of some anatomy textbook somewhere. It's good, I think, for me to look in the acorporeal mirror and see
nothing looking back and wonder what's missing, or what needs sunlight. Some of the best progress I've made as a human being has come when I was brought low enough to consider the worst I might be as a human being. Wasn't any fun, but one hopes it pays off in the long run.

Clearly these ramblings require a disclaimer. The real black dog—the big, lurking, foul-breathed drooler—is no help at all. It is one thing to feel a little down; it is another to feel utterly out. I do have a nursing degree and once spent time answering a suicide hotline, so you understand I don't intend to minimize the real deal. Some battles are not meant to be fought in the dark alone. Don't do it. Don't let your friends do it. But as for me and my generally trainable black dog, I've learned to live with him, and as long as he's around, rather than let him back me into a corner I try to follow him someplace useful.

And it's funny what will run him off. Usually it's just time. In other cases the change is so abrupt it's clear some intracellular switch got knocked back into the “function” position. And sometimes exterior forces will do the trick. Like, oh, say, gathering in a big happy tent with other happy humans. Sometimes a physical remove delivers a psychological remove—it may not even last, but for a little while your brain gets pointed in another direction and your heart beats to a more lively rhythm. Maybe church will do it for you, or maybe a group of friends telling old stories around a kitchen table, or maybe just a road trip to an unfamiliar city. I can tell you I've shown up at this tent more than once with the black dog riding in the back seat, and then I'll be in here and the music will be going and the people will be rocking or swaying or applauding or just sitting quietly with their faces tilted toward the stage just so, and I'll look around and hey—no black dog. He may be waiting in the car, he may jump out from the ditch somewhere along the road home, but he for dang sure ain't gettin' in this tent.

So I look forward to the second half of the show here, listening to music that is to black dogs what that mail carrier spray bottle
is to nippy-yippy dogs. It's nice just to get together and feel the sunshine, even if you are under a tent after dark.

Oh, and P.S.: I may have made up the word
acorporeal
also but am maintaining my Google holiday and will not look it up until the show is over.

During this performance we could hear the sound of rain hitting the tent. It was lovely.

Did you hear the rain on the canvas earlier? That was nice, I thought. The thing about music in a tent is, as long as everything's battened down and buttoned up, the rain can be part of the show without wrecking the show. The click and the trickle, the tappety-tap, the steady fall of it, it's a soft carpet of sound that only adds to the coziness of the space. Outside of blizzard nights, never does our old farmhouse feel so safe and gracious as when I am tucking my daughters abed and through the hip roof just feet above us we can hear the muffled finger-drumming of rain on the shingles.

Rain can run you right out of adjectives. It falls an infinity of ways, it sounds an infinity more. Tonight the rain is striking canvas stretched tight as a drumhead, so every little drop lands with a percussive splat. It is the sound of leprechauns applauding.

Rain on a flat rock sounds different than rain on a round rock. Rain on green leaves sounds different than rain on fallen leaves. Rain on your picnic table sounds different than rain blown sideways against a window. Rain on an umbrella sounds different than rain striking the bottom of an upturned canoe.

The sound of rain is colored by your circumstance: the sound of rain on a cold day versus the sound of rain on a warm day; the sound of rain on withered corn versus the sound of rain for the
seventh day straight; the sound of rain when you are standing in dry socks versus wet socks.

When I worked on a hay crew in Wyoming, the sound of rain on the bunkhouse roof in the morning meant I'd be trading my swather and the wide-open spaces for a paintbrush in the boss's wife's kitchen. Earlier in the season, when I was working on the irrigation crew, rain in the morning just meant I'd be wet all day.

Twenty years after I dug my last feeder ditch, my boss contracted cancer and I returned to the ranch to do the job again. He was a hero of mine and responsible for some of the few threads of good character I might possess. The day before he left for the hospital, we were working the big ditch up top and a ferocious rain blew in. We ran for the pickup truck and talked over the roar of the storm. My wife and I were only recently married; he and his wife had grown children. “Your wife,” he said. “She's a good woman.” The rain rattled on, and he grinned a little. “You and me,” he said, “we both did better than we deserved.” It was as close a moment as we ever shared, and I'm not sure it ever would have happened had the rain not driven us into the cab of that truck.

Rain is a sight as well as a sound. Think of a dry stretch, and then the first fat drops pockmarking the dust. Think of raindrops curving through a headlight's beam. Think of the streetlight rainbow slicks as the first rains raise the oil from the asphalt.

During a recent stretch of drought, clouds would appear in the hot afternoon, small and scattered as spooked sheep, and here and there thin gray streamers of rain would drape down, then seem to evaporate before hitting the ground. My brother the farmer swore the streamers would veer away from his plowed fields, perhaps brushed aside by the heat rising from the baked earth.

“I love a rainy night,” sang Eddie Rabbitt back in the '80s, and the people agreed, sending the song to number one on both the pop and country charts. Rabbitt understood the power of precipitation. In another of his number ones, he sang about driving on a
rainy night with “those windshield wipers/slappin' out a tempo/keepin' perfect rhythm/with the song on the radio …” Above all, rain is rhythm. A perfect match for music.

Hear that? Rain stopped. It's good, I suppose. The last few folks are making their way back from the concession tent for the second act, and they won't have to hike their windbreakers up over their heads or run, on the theory that fewer raindrops strike a moving target. But I'll miss the rhythm a little bit, the sound of those tiny leprechaun hands clapping. Into each life some rain must fall and then stop falling.

The one thing cozier than a tent? Home—and those who make it so.

The first time Brandi Carlile came to the Big Top tent, she was playing solo and opening for the Indigo Girls. For the show surrounding this monologue, she was headlining with her own band and the place was packed from canvas wall to canvas wall with fans she earned song by song, going way back to the days when she was recording music on her own time and her own dime. Brandi Carlile's music is built first of all on lyrics that read like true American poetry … poetry of the road, poetry of universal human connection, and, once she's got you well in for the ride, poetry for stomping yer boots. Above all, though, it is Brandi Carlile's voice you'll take with you. Her voice, and how she inhabits it. Rarely have power and vulnerability so naturally melded. It is as if the heart of a sparrow has been wrapped in brass. When Brandi Carlile sings, she can belt it or she can break it, but above all she can bring it.

I have two daughters. So including my wife, at my house it's three-to-one girls against boys. A fellow I met recently on the road told me, “You don't have a family, you have a sorority.”

I think before I was a dad I would have appreciated Brandi Carlile simply for her music. For her art. But as a father of two girls, I appreciate Brandi Carlile far beyond her lyrics and melodies. When I hear her sing out strong, even when her voice breaks, I think of my girls growing older, and I'm glad they live in
a time when there are Brandi Carliles from whom they may seek some guidance.

I mean, Dad will do his best, and Mom (the woman I used to refer to as my wife, until the time my actual mom became Grandma and my wife became Mom—those of you out there with tots of your own will understand) is a woman of strength and virtue and qualified discretion (I say qualified discretion because despite strong evidence of her own good character she married me, which seems a bit of a theoretical chink in the ol' armor), so we'll do what we can, but no matter how parents try there are those gaps and unforeseen developments in which outside influence—for better or worse—will fill the empty space. Good to know Brandi Carlile is an option.

I was thinking about my daughters during a song Miss Carlile sings with the lyrics that go:

There are miles of hay like I have never seen
Just when you think you've had enough and
Your dreams come true
I just want to be closer to you …

I spend eighty to a hundred days a year on the road telling stories or singing songs or sometimes both. It's a blessing, this life. Better than I might have hoped or deserved. And the road is not a hardship. I was raised by and around truckers gone every week. And many of our neighbors and relatives are in the military. When I speak with my daughters about my absences, for purposes of calibration we always refer to cousin Steve, currently scheduled for his fourth deployment, and him with a wife and toddlers.

So one never wants to get too dramatic. Especially in my case, in which more often than not this thing I call “The Road” is within a half-day's drive of my chicken coop. But of course you think of your children and wonder what is learned in your absence. Or by your absence. I think sometimes, while I'm driving through the night alone, of what or whom I want my daughters to know, or believe … what I would tell them if they were in the passenger seat.

First thing: Your dad was in over his head. Constantly, and in all respects. My learning curve often lagged behind my balding curve.

I would tell them to beware youthful boys and dissolute men, who are knuckleheaded and inept in every respect except for the ability to worm their way into a young girl's heart.

I would tell them to run close to the ground because eventually we all fall.

I would tell them to get a good pair of boots. Today's woman should own a good pair of boots. (Ones that lace up and last, and steel toes are never a bad idea.)

I would tell them to leave affectionate notes for their mother as I do, but with greater frequency than I have. I would tell them that once a week they should offer their mother a blanket apology for everything in general. That one I'm pretty regular with.

I would tell them to strive for charity, and I'm not just talking about dropping a nickel in the can or boxing up your old socks.

I would tell them to doubt anyone who speaks with absolute authority. Rather, I would tell them to go to the ridge at midnight and stare into the stars for five minutes. Accept infinity, and humility follows.

I would tell them, never smoke cigarettes, but if a pleasing puff of pipe smoke drifts your way, take a whiff. This guards against prudery and furthermore there are times in the face of pleasure when we should do the obvious.

And, after what I've heard tonight, I would tell them, daughters, when the time is right and you're on your own, take to the open road yourself, and whether that road is in your soul or out your windshield, drop the hammer and run it with open heart, open eyes, and open ears. Check the mirror for your old dad now and then. He'll do his best, but he knows the time is coming when you will chase the sunrise on your own.

My elder daughter sat down at the supper table the other night and announced that for her school service project this semester she has decided to volunteer at the local humane association. Naturally I am pleased that she has chosen to combine scholarship and civic-mindedness. I am also pleased because my dear departed grandmother was instrumental in establishing the local humane association and even got my grandfather to serve on the board for a time, although he always skipped the November meeting to go deer hunting, an absence that caused some consternation among the elderly female bridge-playing members of the board, but Grandpa was a salesman by nature and trade, and by the time the money was counted from the gigantic raffle he orchestrated each January, all was forgiven.