by Scott Pratt
“I’m afraid you’re about to make a terrible, terrible mistake. You’ve been under a huge amount of pressure with school for the past three years. The baby wasn’t planned. The marriage was because of the baby. You got into a car accident a few months back and wound up inadvertently addicted to opiates, and God knows an opiate addiction is a tough thing to overcome. I thought you’d kicked it, but it’s obvious you haven’t. We’ll get you more help. And now you have this pretty girl going, ‘Hey, hey, look at me and how pretty I am. I can put some spice into that mundane, pressure-cooker life of yours and make you feel better at the same time.’ But like I said, she knows you’re married. She knows you have a baby. What kind of person does something like that? Answer me, Randy. What kind of person breaks up a new marriage with a young child?”
“I…I don’t know what to say. I think I’m just—”
“From what my hired spy tells me, you haven’t slept with her yet. Is that true?”
“What? Have I what?”
“Have you slept with her?”
“No. She wants to, but—”
“Then it isn’t too late. If you’d slept with her, I’d tell you to go to hell. You can fix this if you want to. You go to Lilly, you tell her what you’ve done, you tell her the girl was in your car the night you wrecked, and you tell her you’re sorry. But you only do it if you mean it. Lilly will forgive you, eventually. She’ll be angry at first, she might even kick you out of the house for a little while, but she’ll forgive you and then you can go on from there. Are you listening to me, Randy? Look at me.”
He looked up at me. A tear had slipped from his right eye and was running down his cheek. I felt sorry for him.
“You have to deal with the opiates, and you have to stop drinking,” I said. “If you don’t, you won’t have a chance.”
He nodded slowly. “I know,” he said. “I’m trying.”
“Don’t try. Do it. I have to go back to Nashville tomorrow. When I get home, we’re going to have another conversation, and you’re going to tell me that you came clean with Lilly and that you’re clean on the pills and the booze. I’ll probably already know if you talk to Lilly because the first thing she’s going to do is tell Caroline, but you and I are going to get together again when I get back.”
“Fine.”
“We’ll work through this together, Randy. That’s what families do. They face problems together and they overcome them.”
CHAPTER 25
Walking into the main hospital entrance at Vanderbilt University always gave me the jitters. I’d been there dozens of times, and I realized all the people who worked there were well-meaning and kindhearted, but I hated the place. It made my stomach churn. It made my head ache. It made my vision narrow.
Caroline had ridden down with me on Milius’s jet late on the previous afternoon. I thought we’d make a joint trip of it. I had some work to do, and she had a bone scan scheduled.
When we landed at Xanadu, I introduced Caroline to Lana and told Lana we’d rented a room at the Opryland Hotel. All we needed was for somebody to drive us to the airport so that I could rent a car. She wouldn’t hear of it. When I politely but firmly declined her offer of a driver to carry us around town, she gave me the keys to a black BMW 7 series sedan. We drove to the motel and checked in, had a wonderful dinner at a place on Demonbreun Street called Etch, and then went down to Broadway and bar-hopped through a few of the honky-tonks drinking cold beer and listening to live country music. One of the places, Tootsie’s, had three floors with a separate bar, a separate stage, and a separate band on each floor. It was a blast except for when the musicians would come around the audience and beg for money. They were aggressive about it. It was annoying because it made me feel like I was being hustled.
Caroline’s bone scan was scheduled for ten o’clock the following morning. At eight, we walked into the radiology department, and she was injected with a radioactive dye. We went out and got some breakfast and were back two hours later. During those two hours, the dye was supposed to attach itself to cancerous cells in Caroline’s body, and then later, when they ran her through the scanner, the cancer cells would light up like flashlights on the computer monitor above the scanner.
I’d sat through eight bone scans over the prior two years. Caroline would be helped onto a table that slid her through the scanner, and I’d sit in a chair a few feet from her and watch the monitor. The results hadn’t changed—meaning the tumors hadn’t grown—in nearly two years because the combination of drugs and hormones they were treating her with were working. The scans normally took about twenty-five minutes. Less than five minutes into this one, I knew something had changed, and I knew it wasn’t for the better.
The scanner started at her head and slowly produced an image of Caroline’s skeletal system. I knew there was a tumor on her skull and one in her right shoulder—I’d seen them every single time I’d watched a scan. But this time, the tumor in her skull seemed to be larger. It seemed to be brighter than normal. So did the tumor in her shoulder. I sat there and kept my mouth shut, though, because I wasn’t certain. When the scanner began to move down her body, my hands started to shake. Just below her right elbow was a bright glow that I hadn’t seen before. The tumors in her spine seemed to be unchanged, but her pelvis, which had been clear of tumors in the past, was now covered in luminescence. I nearly choked when I heard her say from the table, “How does it look, baby?”
“Looks good,” I lied. “Don’t see any change.”
There were more. On both of her femurs, on both tibias and fibulas, even in her feet. I got up and took a couple steps toward the monitor and peered at it, not wanting to believe what I was seeing.
“All good?” Caroline said.
“Yeah. Yeah, it looks the same as always.”
“You’re lying to me, Joe. I can hear it in your voice.”
“I’m not a radiologist. There are a couple things that might be a little different. Let’s just wait and hear what the doctor has to say.”
A little over two hours later, after the scan had been read and the results interpreted and passed along to Caroline’s oncologist, we received the kick in the gut.
“It’s on the move again,” Dr. Abrams, Caroline’s oncologist, said, “but don’t panic. It isn’t out of control.”
“You just said it’s on the move,” I said while Caroline cried softly beside me. “Doesn’t sound to me like it’s under control.”
She patiently explained that cancer cells sometimes morph and become resistant to treatment over time, and that was what seemed to be happening. The cancer was still confined to her bones, however. It hadn’t spread to her brain or her heart or her lungs. And there were other treatment options available.
“I want to put her in a clinical trial with a drug called exemestane and another called enzalutamide,” the doctor said. “It’s my study, it’s here at Vanderbilt, and she’s perfect for it.”
Several hours later, Jack and I were driving down Briley Parkway in his car. We’d had dinner at the hotel with Caroline and Charlie, we’d talked the latest cancer development through, and Jack and I had gone out, ostensibly to get some dip, which was a habit Jack picked up during his college baseball days and had yet to quit. The mood was dark; both of us were angry and frustrated and terrified about what might happen to Caroline. We were tired of the roller coaster ride that goes along with loving someone who has cancer. We’d talked about it a little, but mostly we were just driving around in silence, watching the reflections from headlights bounce and slide through the night. Jack had downed four beers during dinner, and I could smell it.
“I should be driving,” I said.
“I’m all right.”
“I’m stone sober.”
“I’m all right, Dad. Don’t worry about it.”
“So how’s it going between you and Charlie?” I asked. “You two getting serious?”
“I spend an awful lot of time thinking about her,” Jack said. “She reminds
me a lot of Mom. She’s just so good, you know?”
“Have you guys talked about the future?”
“A little, but right now I just want to finish up with law school, pass the bar, and then we’ll figure it out. I can tell you this, though. The future I imagine always has her in it.”
Just then, a tricked-out, silver coupe with a loud muffler raced up on our right, passed us, and cut back in front of us, nearly striking Jack’s right-front fender.
Jack swore aloud while I watched the car careen back and forth through the lanes ahead of us, cutting off other cars, causing people to slam on their brakes and blow their horns.
“Son of a bitch,” Jack said, and I felt myself being pulled back into the seat as he gunned the engine.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Wrong place, wrong time,” Jack said. “For him.”
“Don’t. Just let it go.”
But within seconds, Jack had closed the distance and was five feet from the coupe’s rear bumper. He turned his lights on bright and started blasting the horn.
“Jack! Knock it off!” I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder, but he wouldn’t look at me. I could see the anger in his face.
We’d followed the coupe for about fifteen seconds when it suddenly veered off to the right and shot down a side street. Jack was still right on the car’s tail. Although I couldn’t be certain, it looked like there was one person in the car, a male wearing a baseball cap.
“I hope he pulls over,” Jack said. “I’m gonna stomp him flat.”
“Calm down,” I said, but I, too, had started to feel an adrenaline rush. Like Jack, I was looking for an excuse to unleash some pent-up anger, and this unsuspecting thug seemed to be just the ticket.
Suddenly, the coupe did a ninety-degree turn into a parking lot and stopped. I looked around. It was a church. Zion Baptist. I saw the driver’s door open. Jack clicked out of his seat belt and was out of the car. I did the same.
The guy who came out of the car was wearing jeans and a black jacket. A Cincinnati Reds baseball cap with a straight bill sat at an angle on his head. He was maybe five feet ten and stocky, around a hundred and eighty pounds. He had a narrow, closely trimmed beard. In his right hand was a tire iron.
“I’m gonna take that thing away from you and shove it up your ass,” I heard Jack growl. Before I could get around the car, before I could do or say anything, Jack was on the guy. Jack was about an inch shorter than me at six feet two, but he was a lot thicker. I’d seen him bench press three hundred and fifty pounds like it was a toothpick. I’d seen him squat six hundred pounds and deadlift more. He was quick, too, and at that moment, he was eaten up by anger. He was frightening, even to me. He charged the guy like a bull and had him off his feet before he could swing the tire iron. Jack’s right arm wrapped under the guy’s hips while his left hand controlled the arm that held the tire iron. Jack lifted him in a fireman’s carry, took two steps, and slammed the guy across the back windshield of the coupe like a wet towel. I heard the guy let out an “Ugh,” and the tire iron clattered off the roof of the car and onto the asphalt. Jack stepped back about a foot, grabbed a handful of jacket with his left hand, pulled, and punched the guy in the mouth with his right fist so hard that I heard his teeth crack. He was reloading his fist to hit the guy again when I jumped between them and locked up Jack’s shoulder.
“Enough!” I said. “Enough! You’re going to kill him.”
He was so amped up that he tried to throw me aside, but I clung to him like a bull rider.
“Easy,” I said. “Easy, easy. Get a hold of yourself.”
He looked at me, recognized me, and I knew he was back. He was breathing heavily, and his eyes looked as big as silver dollars.
“Get in the car,” I said. “Passenger side. We need to get out of here.”
I took him by the arm and walked him around the car. The passenger door was still open, and I stood there while he slid inside. Then I walked over to the thug. He was still lying on his back, his eyes open in a blank stare. His mouth was bleeding heavily and I noticed a couple bubbles as he breathed. I grabbed the front of his coat and pulled him off the trunk of the car.
“Can you walk?” I said as he moaned in pain. “Yeah, that looked like it probably hurt. My guess is you’ve got a broken rib or two. Probably have to get some work done on your grill, too.” As I was dragging him to the front seat, I spotted the tire iron lying on the asphalt a few feet away. I dropped him onto the driver’s seat of his coupe then walked over, picked up the tire iron, carried it to where he was sitting, and set it in his lap.
“Might want to watch how you drive in the future,” I said as I closed his door. “You never know when somebody’s mother might be sick.”
CHAPTER 26
Jack had been making the rounds in the country music industry, and after he went ballistic on the thug in the parking lot, I asked Jack to tell me about his latest interview. He’d mentioned it earlier but we hadn’t had a chance to talk, so I rolled the car onto Briley Parkway and cruised while he talked and wound down.
The industry was a tough nut to crack because people in the business were cliquish and paranoid and self-important. Jack, however, was able to say he was working for Paul Milius’s lawyer, and because he had developed some pretty good telephone skills, he wasn’t afraid to be assertive when the need arose. He’d also had the good sense to go out and get some official-looking identification made, so he was granted a few audiences. The only one of any real value was with an up-and-comer named Derek Birch, a long-legged, dope-smoking, Jack Daniels drinker who considered himself a rebel, an artist, and the most important country music icon of the young century. Kasey Cartwright had toured with him for two months during the summer when she was sixteen, but Birch had since switched from Paul Milius’s label to another record company. Jack had been told that Birch didn’t much care what anyone thought about him and would give an honest—if not drug-and-alcohol-addled—opinion on most anything. Jack didn’t audio or videotape his conversation with Derek Birch, but he took detailed notes, and I was satisfied that he recounted it for me accurately.
Jack walked into Birch’s backstage dressing room at around nine thirty on a Friday night at the Bridgestone Arena in downtown Nashville. Birch was the headliner, wrapping up a six-month tour, and was scheduled to go on stage at ten thirty. There was a large makeup mirror in the antique-white room, a couple stools, a leather couch against the far wall, and two acoustic guitars on stands. Birch was sitting near the mirror with a red Solo cup in his hand, wearing a denim shirt, denim jeans, and cowboy boots. He had dark, aviator sunglasses on and a John Deere cap pulled tightly down over his head. He had a male model chin, with a jawline and teeth to match. The air in the room was thick with marijuana smoke. Jack noticed a tall, decorative glass bong sitting on the counter near the mirror. Next to it was a handle of Jack Daniels, a two-liter bottle of Coke, and a small cooler filled with ice.
“Yo, what’s up?” Birch said as Jack walked cautiously into the room. “Close that door behind you and lock it so we can have some privacy.”
A band called Buick Five was on the stage, and the rockabilly was blasting. Closing the door didn’t muffle the sound completely, but it made it possible for Jack and Birch to talk without having to shout. Jack, who had dressed in country music concert gear—jeans, flannel shirt, boots, cowboy hat—shook hands with Birch, who motioned for him to take a seat on the couch. As soon as Jack was seated, Birch picked the bong up, walked over, and offered it.
“No, thanks,” Jack said.
“Don’t smoke?”
“I’m working tonight.”
“So am I,” Birch said. “You ain’t one of them tight asses, are you?”
“No, no,” Jack said, but then he smiled. “Well, maybe. I’m wound pretty tight most of the time.”
Birch laughed. “At least you’re honest,” he said. “Sure you don’t want to hit this? It’ll mellow you right out.”
&nb
sp; “Not right now,” Jack said. “Maybe later.”
“So my agent tells me you’re working for the lawyer who’s defending Paul Milius,” Birch said. “Says the lawyer is actually your dad.”
“That’s right,” Jack said. “I’m in my last year of law school.”
“You’re a big dude, so please don’t get up and kick my ass for what I’m about to say, but I’ve never met a lawyer who had a soul, man. Do they surgically remove it in law school, or do you lose it later on?”
Jack shrugged his shoulders. “I know what you’re saying,” he said. “But I think my dad’s okay. He’s been at it for a long time, and I think he’s been able to keep his soul. Most of it, anyway. And I don’t think I’ve lost mine. At least not yet.”
“Then you’re as rare as a well-lived life, man. Hope you can keep it that way. I was just thinking about our culture and how bankrupt it’s become before you walked in. Gave me an idea for a new song. I’m going to call it ‘Empty Malls.’”
“Empty Malls?” Jack said. “What’s it going to be about?”
“I’m just going to write a tune about an empty mall in the South, and how it’s this big, empty shell covering the scattered shards of our broken retail dreams.”
“Sounds depressing,” Jack said.
“It is depressing, man. We’re depressing. But it’s the freakin’ truth.”
“Speaking of truth,” Jack said. “There are some things I’d like to talk to you about.”
Birch popped off the stool and started pacing in a circle.
“Now that was lame, dude,” he said. “Bad, bad segue. We’re sitting here rapping, establishing some trust, talking about empty malls and bankrupt dreams, and you go and try to slide that awful segue in there. I should just go ahead and have the security guys come toss you right now.”