Suddenly, nothing felt right. My first instinct was to run off the stage and throw a chair.
Waylon stepped in front of the drums. “Paisley.” His shoulders were back; his guitar strap with SLIDER tooled into the leather hung across his chest. He was battle ready. “Keep your personal stuff personal. We need you to do a job. Just do it. Don’t get caught up with what the audience thinks. They think the band is done. Most of them are drunk anyway. Tonight is about us putting what we do out there and making sure our sound is solid.”
There was no point in my arguing my case anymore. Mother’s lectures to Lacey played over in my head. Stuff goes wrong in a performance. That’s just the business. And Waylon was right about the crowd. They weren’t really paying us much attention at all. I sat down in front of the snare and picked up the sticks. Nylon tips. I preferred wood. I tapped them together; the pitch matched. If my sound wasn’t even, I couldn’t blame the sticks. I slipped my right foot onto the bass drum pedal. I had this. I was good to go.
A sound like a howling wind raced around the barn. Paradise was warming up. Against his black T-shirt, the red accordion shined in the light. He held it between his muscular arms, pushing and pulling and sailing his fingers across the button keys.
“Let’s do this,” Waylon said. He gathered everyone in front of the drums. “We play like we practice. Nothing fancy. Solid. Cal, you open with ‘Sweet Child O’Mine.’ Then we move to our songs.” Waylon kept on, “We don’t have to be great, just good.” And he kept on, “This is just like the hangar.”
Sometimes I thought Waylon’s experience in performing got in the way of his actual performing. He analyzed everything down, shredding each minute detail. Being a Slider, he probably had more to lose from a bad performance than any of us, so I always tried to respect his lectures.
But Paradise was done with Waylon.
Paradise turned his back and snaked up to the center microphone. “Everybody put your hands in the air!” His voice boomed throughout the barn. Unlike Waylon, Paradise was all into the crowd.
I wasn’t sure what he was up to, but I gripped a stick in each hand. Cal and Levi scrambled to their places. Waylon’s face went scarlet. He looked as if he wanted more than anything to slap a five star on Paradise’s back and shove him face-first off the trailer.
Paradise started clapping his hands above his head until what sounded like a good many in the crowd joined in. “Give me a beat!”
OK, that was my job, and this was not at all what we had practiced. I had no idea what he’d pull next.
I watched Waylon with his guitar slung loosely across his body and his hands on his hips. I honestly thought he might self-combust. Just burst into a flame right there on the flatbed-trailer stage in the Tucker Barn.
Then Paradise did the unbelievable. He started singing. A cappela. No intro from Cal, no hint of anything we’d practiced. No nothing other than the steady, sloppy clapping of a bunch of drunk teenagers. He began flapping his arms in an upward motion, which was apparently our cue to start playing.
Cal caught up with him. Levi looked back at me, trying to lock in a beat for his bass. I went for it—hitting the bass drum and the snare and the hi-hats in regular time. I sounded like a lazy horse clopping along a brick street, but it was all I could do. So much for rocking out. No syncopations. No fancy fills. I was drumming myself to sleep.
Paradise sang his face off. I’ll give him that much. The crowd, seduced by his slow grooving cover of “Sweet Child O’Mine,” dipped and swayed. But he left no room for the rest of us. Even Cal, who could harmonize with bawling cattle, kept silent. This show belonged to Paradise. The Waylon Slider Band was just background.
Paradise rolled right out of Guns N’ Roses and straight into one of Waylon’s songs. He owned it like he’d written it himself. Had the words memorized, sang like the words meant something to him personally, and never once looked back. He never cocked his head to Cal or Waylon to transition. He just steamrolled his way through, confident that we would back him up. And when he keyed up his accordion, he became a one-man show. It didn’t matter to me how good he was. The whole thing sucked.
It was probably close to eleven thirty, and I yawned through my own boring beat. Levi shook his head at Waylon while Paradise blew into a fiery squeezebox solo. Really impressive. Even the first band crowded the side of the trailer and watched him in amazement.
Whoopee.
The crowd, drunk or not, clapped louder as he played. Stomped their boots. A hard, steady pounding that rocked the barn. He had his own freaking mosh pit. Cal tried to weave his way into the spotlight, but every time he got near a corner of that fancy rug, Paradise just squeezed the accordion faster and harder. Like one of those ridiculous Chia pets that sprouts when drenched with water, Paradise seemed to grow bigger as the crowd poured on the encouragement.
Finally, Waylon held up his index finger. One more song and we were all done.
The Waylon Slider Band played it out. I finished it off with a soft flam, a rim shot, and a punch to the bass drum. Like the end of a bad joke. Ba-da-bing.
Waylon took his guitar and jumped off the stage. Cal unplugged his Gibson from the amp, took a rubber band from his wrist, and pulled his hair back.
Paradise turned around as if he’d suddenly remembered he forgot something important and now it was nowhere to be found. “What’s the deal?” He put his hands on his hips. “That was only a few songs. We’re not done.”
“You may not be.” I hopped off the trailer; my boots slapped the concrete. “But the rest of us are.”
Paradise peeled the accordion off his chest. “What? You’re all quitting?”
I handed the sticks to the drummer from the first band.
“You did the right thing,” the drummer said to me, then looked up at Paradise. “Quit shit, man. She stayed in the pocket for you. I would’ve left your arrogant ass up there with no backbeat.”
I forced my way through the crowd. It was getting late. I just wanted to find Lacey and go home.
Pat Green’s “Carry On” ripped through the barn. Levi must’ve loaded up the sound system, looking to get loose and lost in his playlist of Texas country.
Fine with me. Carry on was just what I intended to do. I was done with Paradise.
I stopped and asked a couple of kids I knew were in my sister’s senior English class, “Have you seen Lacey?”
They shook their heads and went right back to singing along with Levi’s soundtrack.
I stood on one of the hay bales marking off the dance floor. Thought maybe I’d find her dancing. She was nowhere in the line of couples rounding.
As I stepped down from the hay bale, the fluorescent lights flickered on without warning and lit up the entire barn. Kids began to flood out through each of the side doors.
“Paisley!” Levi yelled as he, Waylon, and Cal ran toward me. “Get on home. Sheriff’s deputies are down at the gate handing out MIPs.”
I stared up at the roof of the barn. Fought back mad tears, scared tears. Minor in Possession. I was a pasture length away from getting slapped with a ticket for being a minor with alcohol. The fact that I hadn’t been drinking wasn’t going to get in the way of a fund-raising opportunity for the sheriff. I was in the vicinity. Close enough.
Maybe this was God’s way of saying, Hey, Paisley. Listen to your mother. Drumming’s not for you. You’ll just get in with the wrong crowd and get in trouble.
How would I ever explain an MIP to my mother? How would I explain the band? Then I remembered Lacey.
“I can’t leave without my sister.”
Waylon jumped square in my face. “Get over it, Paisley. Get out,” he yelled, pointing toward the barn doors. “I’ve gotta have you on drums.”
Cal put his hand on Waylon’s shoulder. Waylon shrugged it off and stomped away, disappearing into the scrambling kids.
“I’m sorry, Paisley.” Levi looked down at his rubber boots. “Look, they’ll Breathalyze you, and you ain’t been d
rinkin’. Maybe your momma’ll cut you some slack.”
“Her mother won’t have to.” Paradise brushed against my back. “You’ve got that bootlegger road that cuts across the Jessup County line and hits the highway. Take the Bronco.”
He handed his keys to Levi, but Levi kept his hands behind the bib of his overalls. He’d had enough of Paradise too.
“Thanks but no thanks.” I had enough of choices being made for me at home. “Not your decision.” I wasn’t about to stand there and let a bunch of guys call the shots either. But the bootlegger road was a way out. “Levi, Lacey’s car is here. I can find her and drive us through.”
Levi shook his head. “That little Bug ain’t gonna make it over the trail, especially after this rain.”
The crowd inside the barn thinned. I looked past Levi. Cal was long gone, but Waylon was coming back. And he was coming back with my sister.
“Lacey!” My heart pounded. Shook my whole chest.
Barely able to sling one foot in front of the other, Lacey hung like a discarded rag doll against Waylon. Her blond curls exhausted into yarn-like mats. Her ruffled shirt buttoned awkwardly in only two places. All the rumors I’d heard about her, about my own sister, stared me in the face. Rumors are one thing. I’d blown them off because mostly they came from girls at school who looked down on us, on any rural kid who claimed a post office box instead of a street address. But there was no shirking off what I could reach out and touch.
“I found her on the bench outside.” Waylon shifted his eyes from Levi, got defensive. “She was just like this, I swear. I guess whoever she was with figured that she couldn’t run.”
I heard Levi mutter something that sounded an awful lot like “I’ll kill ’em.”
I brushed the matted hair away from Lacey’s face. A black mascara smudge darkened her cheekbone and temple. I wiped and wiped as much away as I could with my fingers. But I couldn’t wipe away the pain that someone had used her and tossed her like trash. I wanted to make her right.
No way could I let our folks see her like that.
“Paisley, take the Bronco.” Paradise put his hand on my shoulder. The muscles in his neck quivered. “I want to help.”
9
ON THE RUN
My heart set its beat to the warning light cadence from the police cars barricading the pasture gate. Blue—red. Blue—red. Blue—red. I slipped around the back of the barn. Following Paradise and Levi. Staring at the ground. The rain-soaked night wrapped around me like a cold, soggy towel.
It occurred to me to quit.
Just.
Quit.
It wasn’t like I could name any rural girls who’d ever gone off and made a name for themselves drumming. I could do other things. Things I wouldn’t have to hide. Things that maybe even made more sense. Practical things with predictable outcomes.
Truck doors slammed all across the pasture as our footsteps pounded the ground in a half-time shuffle. I could so play that groove; just hit the snare on the third beat.
A sharp chill cut through me, but it was no night wind. I could quit the drums, but rhythm would haunt me forever.
I ran to catch up to Levi and Paradise. Drumming was in my core, and I knew that I couldn’t let it go. No matter what happened on the other side of the two-rut road leading into the pines.
Levi had hoisted Lacey over his shoulder, carried her from the barn. He laid her in the backseat of the Bronco. He knelt over her for a long time, smoothing her hair, until finally slamming the door shut.
Paradise opened the driver’s-side door. “I’ll be at the bottom of the hill just down from your uncle’s place. Where that wooden bridge is.”
Lacey’s key chain, the one with the giant silver heart, dangled from his middle finger.
I scooted behind the wheel. “I owe you for this.”
Regardless of how selfish I thought he was onstage, Paradise was willing to drive Lacey’s car past the sheriff and take an MIP for me. And I was desperate enough to let him.
Lacey moaned from the backseat; then she giggled some. As if it wasn’t bad enough that her shirt was buttoned wrong, the top button on her jeans was undone. Nothing about this night was right. One big cluster bomb.
I tried to put it all out of my head—the band was screwed, my sister was screwed. If I couldn’t make the cut through the woods, I’d be screwed. I hunted around for the ignition, but I just couldn’t find it, and my legs weren’t nearly long enough to reach the pedals, and I thought in that moment that I would scream. Scream my lungs out. I slammed both hands on the steering wheel.
“Easy now.” Paradise pitched his hat into the passenger seat and took the keys from me. He leaned in, reaching toward the floorboard, jerked on a handle, and popped the seat forward. “Put your foot on the brake and push the clutch in.”
Brake. Clutch. I tried to think of it like my drums—just working the hi-hats with one foot and the bass pedal with the other.
Paradise stuffed the key in the ignition and cranked the engine. Then he grabbed the doorframe with one hand and pushed himself out. “Don’t take whatever’s going on in that blond head of yours out on my ride.”
“Levi!” someone hollered from the barn. “Two sheriff’s deputies are headed this way.”
Levi stared through the window at Lacey sprawled in the backseat. He let down the straps to his overalls, slipping them from his sturdy shoulders. Levi took off his shirt, opened the side door, and covered her.
Paradise held open the door as if he was having second thoughts, like maybe driving Lacey’s car out and taking an MIP wasn’t such a smart move on his part. “Stay in the ruts and out of the brush,” he said. “Try not to bounce around too much.”
He locked his eyes with mine, pursed his lips, and blew a soft whistle. “My accordion’s in the back.”
“Get on out, Paisley.” Levi stood behind Paradise. “Keep your lights off as long as the moonlight holds out. And don’t stop in that thicket for nobody or nothin’.”
I let up on the clutch and leaned on the gas. I stayed in low gear as I followed the old bootleg road into the woods. Nobody, nothing. Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers. Maybe clowns. I hate clowns.
I pushed on. Rolling over the deep ruts was a little like crawling across gravel on my hands and knees. And it hurt like that too. It hurt because this shouldn’t be how chasing a dream goes down for me or Lacey or anybody else. If I didn’t have to hide my drumming or the band, I wouldn’t be in this mess. Lacey might even be sober.
The trees crowded against the Bronco. The moonlight disappeared. I’d driven downhill, deep into the wooded bottom, into a cave-like darkness so black that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The night’s rain pooled in the bottom, turning it into a soaked swamp. Water sloshed against the tires. I had to hit the lights or lose the trail.
I grabbed for the headlight switch but got the turn indicator. Blinking left. Blinking right. I slowed to a creep as I hunted for the lights.
With no warning, just a jarring thud, the right front tire slammed into a hole. My neck snapped forward as I hit the brake. No clutch. The Bronco coughed and choked to a dead silence in the deep woods. Levi’s warning not to stop snuck up on me. I pushed my back hard against the seat, sinking lower.
Lacey started singing, “Oh-o, say can you see-eeee…”
“Shut up, Lacey.” I pushed in the clutch, turned the ignition key, pressed the accelerator. The engine roared.
“By-y the dawn’s early li-ight.”
With one foot on the brake and one on the clutch, I hit the blinkers again. Still no lights.
Lacey hummed for a few seconds; then she grunted as if she was trying to get up.
No way would I be able to drive us out and corral her at the same time.
“Shut up, Lacey. Please. Just lay down.”
I tried clearing my mind, focused on finding the freakin’ lights. But she just wouldn’t stop moaning and grunting.
I whipped around.
Lacey w
as flat on her back across the seat and silent. Not a movement. Not a word. But the grumbling, a deep huffing grunt, continued all around the Bronco.
I slammed the lock down on my side, reached across, locked the passenger door.
Twigs snapped in the darkness. A sliver of moonlight sliced through the trees. The thicket shook. Whatever was coming was heavy footed. Not alone.
Sweat dampened my neck. A cold bead snaked down my spine.
I revved the engine and slapped at the dash. I found a knob, twisting and turning it and finally pulling it out.
The headlight beams burst into the thicket. I shrieked. Four. No. Six feral hogs—the size of stocky bulls—darted in the brightness and charged the Bronco.
“I gotta go pee,” Lacey mumbled.
WAP. WAP. Lacey slapped at the door. If she got ahold of that handle, got out, the hogs would mangle her.
“NO! God, Lacey please.” Keeping my foot on the brake, I shifted into neutral and let off the clutch. I reached over the seat and grabbed her arm. “If you never listen to me again, just lay back down.”
Lacey looked at me like she didn’t know who I was. Then she fell back. Passed out.
When I turned around, I could see the trail ahead blocked by a hulking black hog. A male one with tusks. Pissed off. Its nostrils flaring with every angry huff.
I pushed in the clutch, wrestled the stick shift into low gear, goosed the accelerator. Nothing budged. Not the Bronco’s right front tire. Not the wild hog.
“C’mon.” I tried reverse. Maybe back out of the hole. The tire barely budged. The other front tire squealed as it spun deeper into the mud.
“Crap.” I knew what I had to do. Gun it and get out of the hole. But I didn’t know if the hog would move. Hitting it would be like hitting a wall head-on.
I couldn’t honk. If I did, the sheriff’s deputies would know we’d hightailed out the back way. Lacey and I would be in trouble twice as deep for running.
I had no choice.
I gutted it up, squeezed the steering wheel with both hands, floored the accelerator. The front end heaved as the Bronco shot out of the hole, straight toward the hog. I hung on, but I could feel the back tires losing traction on the wet, red clay trail. The hog bolted into the brush as the Bronco slid into a sideways drift. Like we’d hit ice. I turned the steering wheel into the slide, trying to counter the drift, trying to keep out of the trees. The tires spun. Clods of mud hailed down on us. Pummeling the roof. I fought the slide with everything I had. Staying off the brake. Holding the steering wheel steady. Wrecking was not an option.
Paradise Page 6