But I’d been too broken to be good to anyone, and Maggie wasn’t mad anymore, so I let myself off the hook. Let myself relax.
I kept looking up to see if Rae had come in, though. No luck.
“So, you any good?” Maggie asked me.
“Huh?”
“I didn’t know you played guitar.”
“Luke’s alright,” Dave said. “Used to play more back in school, a couple years after, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just trying to get back into it.”
“Well it’ll be nice to hear you play,” Maggie said.
Lance bristled. God, that man. “I play too,” he said. No one really noticed.
Holger spoke up next. “Luke, if I sign up, can I play your guitar?”
“Sure,” I said. Holger went and signed up, so Lance had to too. Holger was being supportive. Lance was just being competitive.
The first person to go up was a gray-haired woman with a banjo and a voice that should have already been on the radio. She played three songs, none of which I knew, and she set the bar high enough that I didn’t see any way I’d reach it. Her fingers claw-hammered those strings and she sang about far-off Appalachia. Her words had me wistful for a place I’d never been, for a life I’d never had. It felt good to feel a longing for a life other than the one I’d had ripped out from under me. It felt real good.
She’d set the bar pretty high, but the next guy, he would have tripped over it even if she’d left it on the floor. I hoped he’d only been playing guitar for a couple of weeks. I hoped he had that excuse. But I cheered him on something good, because it takes a real backbone to get up in front of strangers and open yourself up. It was an open mic night. It wasn’t about being great, it was about doing your thing.
Hell, that’s what I was counting on myself.
So he finished his two-song set and I clapped fierce and so did the rest of my friends. Even Lance, because he’s not actually a bad person, I just don’t like him.
Holger was next, and he played California Girls by Katy Perry in a thicker accent than he spoke with, and he broke the ice and got everyone laughing. He just played the one song, then he came and sat back down, handed me my guitar. “Thanks,” he said.
Two college poets came on after that, and I figured listening to them is the cost of entry. Then I was up, and I suppose those poets thought listening to me was the cost of entry.
Rae wasn’t there yet, or maybe she wasn’t coming, and I thought about trying to trade spots with Lance. But everyone was waiting on me so I walked up there, took my guitar out of my case. Holger had played it a little rough, and everyone in the audience got to hear the tuning song.
“Hey y’all,” I said. “Name’s Luke Cawley, and it’s been a minute since I’ve played for no one.” I talk like that even more when I’m nervous.
“You got it!” Dave yelled.
I started in kind of rough. I knew I would, so I didn’t do anything special. Just a song I wrote a couple years back, a little after the wedding. It was kind of a love song to my truck. It was really about my granddad, though. Thanking him for the house. It’s easier to miss Granddad Cawley than it is to miss Mrs. Cawley, that’s for sure. Feels easier, coming out of the throat. But still, I started in kind of rough.
That one was for me, so I figured the next one should be for the crowd. I was loosened up, feeling alright. Glad I had that one drink in me, glad I didn’t have more. So I went for what I think I do best: outlaw country covers of pop country songs. Florida Georgia Line. The crowd knew it, was singing along. Dave hadn’t heard me play that one before, but he was standing up singing, and soon my whole table was.
Even Maggie, who hated that band. Bless her heart.
Now, to be fair, it’s not like I won the whole cafe over the way that first woman did. I just managed to put on a good show. And my friends were a little overenthusiastic.
But people were cheering when I finished, and someone I didn’t even know shouted, “One more!”
I thought, though, that I should do something real honest. Something I would have played if Rae were there, let her see who I was. Let her see I wasn’t just the kind of guy who’d throw another guy into her fence.
Johnny Cash, he sings this song, “I still miss someone.” So I did, too.
That brought down the energy, but I didn’t care.
It helped people feel how I felt, and that made me feel better.
God, it felt good to sing. It felt like I was finally communicating. Instead of just saying things. I was never any good at just saying things. This was real communication.
Then I finished the song, put the guitar away, went back down to the table.
It was all backslaps and congratulations, and I was with my friends again. It’d been so damn long, too damn long, since I’d been with my friends.
A couple more acts, then Lance went up.
Lance, maybe here’s another way he was like me, he didn’t communicate great in person. Sure, he talked a lot more, but he said even less. But I saw him play, fingerpicking on that guitar Spanish style, and that’s how he communicates too. Maggie was looking at him with the kind of eyes she’d never used to look at me. She wasn’t just hungry when she looked at him. She honest-to-God liked him.
That was good.
It even felt good. I knew I’d done the right thing, leaving her. Even if yeah, maybe I was a little bit jealous. Maggie’d come. Rae hadn’t.
I was sad about Rae not showing up, but it was alright. It wasn’t about that. I hadn’t played to impress her, it was something I did for myself. For Emily.
We stayed through to the bitter end, and I had another drink but I wasn’t looking for another long night lying in the bed of my truck.
One couple went up, a fellow with a guitar and a woman with a fiddle, and they played covers and folk songs and there was so much love in what they did that it didn’t really matter that they weren’t the best at what they were doing. Didn’t matter that her voice drifted out of key and he kept a loose rhythm. I should talk to Rae, see if she played fiddle. Maybe she’d come out and we could play there.
This one woman, she must have been seventy or ninety, she walked up and took the mic in a tattooed hand. She had a six-string in her lap and a biker’s jacket on. She was my favorite, because she was so damn weird.
Turned out, the owner of the place was that tattooed old woman’s husband. He stepped out from behind the bar when I was getting a glass of water, cornered me.
“You could come back here anytime,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, you do country music right. At least, the way I like it. Entertaining but you’ve got your heart in it. You could play a set sometime, if you’d like. I could get you opening for someone. This ain’t like your big break or anything, but you’d be welcome to it.”
“I appreciate that, sir,” I said. “I might be back for an open mic sometime. But not a full set. It’s just a hobby, is all.”
“Best thing in the world is a good hobby,” he said.
His wife came up and joined us, and I tipped my hat.
The two of them were happy and they were old as all hell.
Maybe I’d get that too, someday. I headed back toward the table, water in hand. Just then my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, thinking maybe it was Rae saying she was on the way or had just parked her car, but instead it was my dad on the caller ID. For the first time in God knew how long, I picked up.
“Dad?”
There was a pause. Maybe he’d hung up already. “Luke. How’s it going?”
I looked around the café, at my table full of friends, my guitar case resting on my chair, the soft light still spilling over the stage. “Good,” I said. “It’s going good.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Woke up early the next morning, because there was something that needed doing. I felt good about it, too. I stared into the mirror, stubble was getting a little thick, moving closer to “beard” than stubb
le, but I ignored it. Brushed my teeth, showered. That hot water, it does me good every time.
“Hey King,” I said, and the beast followed me down the stairs into the kitchen. He knew what was up. I wish it wasn’t so cut and dry that a happy Luke gives his dog bacon, but that’s the way it is.
Because a happy Luke cooks the hell out of some bacon and eggs and I even cut up some spring onions and grated some cheese, because I was going to do breakfast right.
Because I was going to get my not-even-a-job back.
Got my jacket, got King and went out to the truck and opened the door.
“Load up,” I said. He looked at me, and I met his eyes, then looked into the truck. He hopped in.
Hell yeah I could train a dog. I was Luke Cawley. I could do anything.
It was one of those mornings. I live for those mornings.
It was getting warmer all the time, too. I put the stereo on so loud my speakers complained, rolled down the windows, and drove.
Passed an overturned tractor-trailer on the shoulder, right in the middle of town. I ain’t never seen a wreck like that. Ambulances and cop cars and only one lane of traffic sneaking by. I rubbernecked as bad as the rest of them, and King howled his damn fool head off when he heard the sirens. Smoke was coming from the cabin.
My granddad had driven a truck like that.
Trucks like that, they didn’t crash much.
Whatever, it wasn’t going to do nothing to my mood.
I pulled into the parking lot a couple minutes later than I’d hoped to, though, but I caught Morris on his way to his truck in the lot.
“Mr. Cawley,” he said. He wasn’t angry or nothing. Maybe he’d cooled down as much as I had.
I got out of the truck, and King came after.
“Sit,” I said, and King sat down right next to me.
“Morris,” I said. “I’ve got a whole slew of excuses that you don’t care the slightest bit about. If you ever want to know, I’ll give them to you. They’re good ones, even. But they’re excuses. A man shouldn’t act like how I was acting. I walked in here like I’d be God’s gift to Heartland, like I was doing you some kind of favor just by showing up.”
Morris nodded. “Keep talking.”
“But you was doing me the favor, weren’t you. You were giving me the chance to do something that matters and could help people. And I didn’t act like it. I treated you like you were the boss instead of the man in charge. I don’t know how to explain how those are different, but I think we both know they are.”
He nodded again.
“And then worse than that, I chewed out Nathan. He didn’t deserve it, and if he should have heard anything bad from anyone, it should have been from you. I’m not the guy in charge, you are. But I’m sorry, I’m damn sorry. I like volunteering here. I like building. I gotta decide that I like myself, too, and then maybe I’ll be worth having around. If you take me back, you won’t regret it.”
Morris chewed that over for awhile, or maybe he was just leaving me hanging as a last little bit of punishment.
“Get in the truck, Mr. Cawley,” he said. I helped King up into the back, then climbed in the passenger seat smiling.
We drove off. We still didn’t say a word, and I just watched Kansas go by and thought about all those damn fools on the coasts who don’t know that where I’m from is beautiful.
Apologizing to Nathan was simpler in some ways, harder in others. I figured that man had gotten the wrong end of the stick for most of his life, and when he saw me get out of that truck I could tell you he was afraid. People had hurt him, that’s what I realized. A man like me, yelling angry, made him think that I was going to hurt him too.
My mother had tried to tell me about that, but boys don’t listen. I guess it was good she told me, even if I didn’t think it over for a decade at least.
“I know you’d never hit anyone who didn’t deserve it. Never hit your girlfriend even if she did. I know that because you’re my son and if you ever hit a girl you’re with you wouldn’t be my son anymore. You wouldn’t be anyone’s son. Wouldn’t barely be a man.”
That part had gotten through to me. But then it had gotten more complicated.
“But there are devils in this world that take the shape of boys like you or the man you’re going to be, and they do hurt people just because they’re angry. And anyone who’s been hit like that, it’s going to be with them from now till they’re in the ground. So a boy like you, when you yell, what they hear is that you’re going to hit them. You’ll bring it back up in them. You’ll think you’re just expressing yourself. Maybe you’re not yelling at them, even, maybe you’re just yelling. But they see someone as big as you yelling, and it’ll be like they’re there again. About to get hit.”
I’d nodded. But I wasn’t listening, not really. Because I figured I could yell when I wanted.
“Your dad gets angry, but he doesn’t snap. He doesn’t yell like I might think he’s yelling at me. Because he knows that even if he isn’t going to hurt nobody who don’t deserve it, the people who hear him don’t know that.”
That’s what I’d done to Nathan.
Hell, John Lawson I had pushed, but John Lawson probably hadn’t gotten such a bad view of the world as a guy like Nathan. Just because it don’t mess with one person doesn’t mean it’s alright for everybody.
I couldn’t say all of that to Nathan though. You can’t say all of that to someone.
“Nathan,” I said. He turned back toward me. “I’m damn sorry. You’re doing good work, and I was being an asshole.”
“It’s alright,” he said.
He didn’t fully mean it, but he wasn’t lying either. He meant it could end up alright. I was sure I wanted it to.
All that out of the way, we built a damn house. I usually get about half a week off work at a time, so I put in every hour I could at Heartland Habitat.
I’d done every step of it before, with my dad, or for clients, or just as odd jobs when I was a kid. But there’s something a hell of a lot more interesting about climbing up onto a roof you’ve just put on a house that you framed, on a foundation you poured.
Judy and Georgia, they were there every step of the way, and Nathan and his friend Gary. Another rotating cast came through, and pretty soon Morris had me helping the ‘irregulars,’ as he called them. I went from just building to building and teaching. Which meant I learned something about myself I didn’t know: I can be patient.
It wasn’t until we were hanging the sheetrock when I found out it was Nathan’s house we were building.
There were eight of us, plus King, picnicking on the warmest day of the year. I’d brought baked potatoes, enough for everyone. Coleslaw and chips and soda and fruit and jerky.
“Enough is as good as a feast,” Nathan said.
I looked up at him.
“Used to be in the Navy, and I spent awhile stationed in the UK. Heard it over there. ‘Enough is as good as a feast.’ It’s true.”
Morris grunted his approval.
“This house here is enough for me and mine. I’ve been in shelters, on couches, all of that so long. When that tornado took my last place, I spent awhile thinking I was done. My wife and I, we’ve been having trouble finding places to stay big enough for both of us and the kids. A lot of shelters won’t let our family stay together, either. But when we move back, we’re going to be a family again. I’ll get to be with my kids again.”
I looked at the house in a new light, after that. I knew it was going to be somebody’s. I didn’t know I knew the guy.
Another saying I heard at Heartland: “many hands make light work.” It’s amazing what you can do with hand tools, and I’d never seen a house go up so fast. The last day of it, there were twenty people on the job. At first, I hadn’t done well with running things because it always seemed simpler and faster to just get the job done myself than to teach some college kid or retired mom how to do it. Or convince some knucklehead as dumb as me that just because he could
build a hunting stand didn’t mean he knew how to roll paint on an interior wall or put in a fiberglass shower stall.
But it turns out that teaching people, empowering people to get things done themselves and empowering them to take initiative, that’s how you get things done. I went up to get the gutter installed and I came back down and the whole living room was floored and painted.
“Turns out you can trust people after all,” Morris said. The sun was going down on us, because we’d all stayed a little later than usual that last day as we finished the house.
“I know, right?” I said. Because, like an idiot, I was thinking about all those people I’d been teaching. But he’d meant me.
Nathan and Georgia and Judy and Gary came up to join us, and we put our arms around one another and just looked at the thing we’d built.
With my own hands, with all our hands. We’d given a homeless man a home.
“Don’t get lazy or nothing,” Morris said. “Tomorrow we’ll start another one.”
I grinned at that, and the line of us started to disperse, getting things packed away in what was left of the light.
We got into Morris’s truck and started back to the city. With the headlights on the road in front of us, Morris actually started to talk.
“We’re going to have a little Memorial Day get-together,” Morris said. “Celebrate finishing the house. Nathan’s whole family will be there, and all the volunteers. You should come. You should bring a date.”
“I’ll come,” I said. “But I don’t really have nobody to bring.”
“Bullshit.”
I paused, weighing my words before speaking. What to tell, what to keep to myself. “There’s kind of a girl, right? But I’ve been taking it slow. Holding back. My wife died.”
“When was that?” Morris didn’t have a coddling bone in his body. Right to the point, every time.
“It was a year this spring.”
“You know I know you’re an idiot, so me telling you that ain’t going to be news to you,” Morris said. “But you’re an idiot.”
He didn’t mean it to sound harsh, and it didn’t.
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