by Marsha Moyer
"Daddy! He's kidding," Denny said to Will, slipping her arm through his again. "He's just trying to scare you."
"It's working," Will said, giving us all a shaky smile. For a second nobody said anything, and then, to my surprise, Ash laughed.
"Go ahead, lay it on me," he said. "Whatever it is y'all came down here for. All the way from—where?"
"Vegas," Denny said, and thrust out her hand. In the fading daylight, the diamond winked like a strobe.
"So I guess this means y'all are going steady?"
"We got married, Daddy," Denny said. "Day before yesterday, in Vegas."
Ash looked from Will to Denny to me, back to Will again. A blue vein pulsed at his temple.
"Well, hell. I wish she'd waited another twenty, thirty years, but since it's a little late for that…" He stepped forward and stuck out his hand. "You're a lucky dog, Will Culpepper. I hope you know it."
"Yes, sir."
"And you know who you've got to answer to if you don't treat her right."
"Yes, sir. I do."
Ash nodded, then turned to Denny and opened his arms. "I hope you're happy, baby girl," he said as they hugged. "You've made me feel about a hundred years old."
"I am happy, Daddy. You don't know how much." She broke free of Ash's embrace, dabbing her eyes with the back of her wrist. "So, we brought champagne, and we want to take everybody out honky-tonking. Tonight's Round-Up night, isn't it? I've been telling Will all about it. I thought we could all sit in."
Ash looked at his feet, then off toward the trailer.
"What?" Denny said. "What's going on?"
"Your daddy's taking a leave of absence from the music business," I said.
"Oh, bull," Denny said. "That old band of yours really used to tear things up. You know they'd be thrilled to death to see you."
"There's a little more to it than that," Ash said. From the look on his face, I wished I'd kept my mouth shut.
"Hey, remember Curly's?" I said. "Out at the lake, where we used to go for chicken-fried steak? They've got a great jukebox, and it's not so loud and crazy there. We'd have a chance to sit and get acquainted."
Denny stood scowling at her daddy. She knew something was up, but because of Will Culpepper, I guessed, her old antennae weren't working right and the signals were scrambled. "That sound good to you, Will?" I asked. "Could you go for a cold beer and a chicken-fried steak?"
Half an hour later we were in my Blazer, with the champagne in a paper bag under the seat, headed for the lake. Ash rode silently in front beside me and Will in back, while Denny leaned forward between the seats and talked: about Will, their wedding, the tour, Will again. I kept my eyes on the road and now and then made some vague comment, but I don't think she even noticed. Her face swam in the rearview, rosy and animated; she gave off happiness in waves, like a furnace. I couldn't help thinking about the summer she'd first come to stay with Ash and me, how some days you could barely pry five words out of her with a crowbar. It wasn't twenty miles to Curly's, but by the time we got there, if I'd had a dollar for every time she'd said Will's name, I could've bought a chicken-fried steak for everybody in the place.
"You call this a honky-tonk?" Denny said to me over her shoulder as we followed the hostess to a table. She and I had changed into dresses back at the house. Hers was short and loose, of flowered cotton, a sort of sexed-up Little House on the Prairie look, and her red hair switched in front of me as we crossed the room.
Curly's wasn't much to write home about, it's true, a prefab building with tables at one end and a jukebox and a linoleum dance floor at the other, a banner over a tiny platform announcing, karaoke tonight! For years the place had been nothing but a rundown burger shack, but when the new owner, Roger
McCool, took over a few years back, he'd put in a bar and installed the karaoke machine to try to bring in a drinking crowd, which for the most part was a lost cause. Not that there weren't plenty of folks around who liked their whiskey and beer; but the locals tended to be farmers and blue-collar workers, who as a rule weren't the kind to stand up and belt out Whitney Houston tunes to a room full of their neighbors no matter how many sheets to the wind they got. Strictly speaking it was a private club, which meant you couldn't buy alcohol unless you had a membership, but anybody could get one at the door for five dollars, or you could bring your own bottle, like we'd done. Will opened the champagne, a pricey brand I remembered from our early, upwardly mobile days in Nashville, like a pro, twisting off the wire cage and easing out the cork with his thumbs and a gentle pop.
"Y'all celebrating something special?" the hostess asked as she brought a tray of glasses. Denny showed her ring, and the woman slipped an arm around Denny's shoulders and gave her a squeeze, even though they'd never seen each other in their lives and likely never would again. Will poured the bubbly and passed it around. "To happy ever after," Ash said, and cut his eyes at me. "Amen to that," Will seconded, and we clinked our rims together and drank. The fizz went up my nose and I sneezed, and everybody laughed. The hostess came back around with menus and a basket of cornbread and a round of Bud-weiser, on the house. We ordered chicken-fried steak plates, salads with ranch dressing, mashed potatoes and cream gravy.
"Man, I miss eating like this in Nashville," Will said as he buttered a square of cornbread. "Things there've gotten so uptown, seems like there's nobody left remembers real country cooking."
"Where are you from, Will?" I asked.
"Mississippi," he said, pronouncing it like a native, without the second syllable. "Little dot on the map called Hub. Not famous for much of anything, unless you count all the people like me who couldn't wait to get out."
"Your folks from there?"
He nodded. "My daddy used to run a cotton gin. Him and Mama retired a few years ago, moved to Gulfport."
"How long have you been playing music?"
"Pretty much all my life, I guess. I picked up my uncle's guitar when I was eight or ten. I wasn't that good, though, so I switched to bass when I was in junior high."
"Will writes songs, too," Denny said proudly.
"Have I heard anything of yours?" I asked. In Nashville, everybody was a songwriter. You'd be standing in the buffet line at a party and fall into conversation with some mousy-looking guy who, it would turn out, had written four number one hits for George Strait, or last year's Grammy Award-winning tune for Martina McBride.
"Not yet," Denny answered for Will, who was picking at the label on his beer bottle with his thumbnail. "But you will. The next record will have a couple of Will Culpepper originals."
"Your next record, you mean?" Ash said. We all looked at him. It was practically the first thing he'd said all evening.
"Will hasn't got his own deal yet," Denny said. "But all that's gonna change when folks hear what he can do." Ash opened his mouth, then glanced at me and shut it again.
"Speaking of music," I said, "why don't y'all see what you can find on that old jukebox?"
Denny and Will slid off their chairs and crossed the room and stood scanning the playlist on the old Select-O-Matic, their hands resting lightly on each other's waists in a way that gave me a pang. Will dropped in a handful of coins, and a few seconds later a velvety voice started to sing "A Rainy Night in Georgia," and the two of them moved out onto the dance floor and fell into a clinch. Ash and I sat silent for a while, watching the newlyweds.
"I don't know what kind of songwriter he is," Ash said, "but he's a hell of an actor."
"Maybe he's not acting," I said.
Ash flicked his eyes at me. "Trust me. He's gonna break her heart."
'And you know this how? Oh, right, I forgot. Takes one to know one. Isn't that what they say? Like you and your new friend Heather Starbird."
This time Ash's eyes fixed on me and stayed there.
"Look, you're the one who kicked me out of the house. Seems to me you gave up your right to criticize the company I keep."
We were interrupted by the waitress, who slapped down platt
ers of meat and potatoes and gravy.
"Never mind," I said to Ash as she walked off. "Forget I said anything. I just want this to be a nice evening for Denny."
"I don't think you have to worry about that," Ash answered. Denny and Will continued to sway, melded into a single comma, on the dance floor. "Think we should tell them their supper's getting cold?"
"He's awfully good-looking, I'll say that for him " I said. "Not that that's necessarily a recipe for happiness or anything. I mean, look at you and me." I took a sip of champagne, but it was warm and flat. "Next time I think I'll just marry some fat old bald guy."
Ash smiled a half-smile. "Last I heard, you already had a husband."
"A piddly little detail."
Denny and Will came back to the table, flushed and sweaty-looking. For the first time it occurred to me to wonder where they were going to sleep that night. The only double bed in the house was mine, but the thought of the two of them together in my bed, married or not, made my stomach queasy.
Will ordered another round, and we ate and made small talk. The alcohol went straight to Denny's head, making her giggly and more talkative than ever, while Will drank steadily but silently, with no apparent effect. After the first beer and the champagne toast, Ash had switched to iced tea, which surprised me. Maybe he really was determined to prove he could control things, like he said. Or maybe he was saving up for later. I wanted to relax and enjoy myself, to bask in Denny's good mood, but I didn't like the way Ash kept staring at Will Culpepper across the table, the way Will kept his eyes down and didn't look back.
The waitress cleared our places, and Denny got up to use the ladies' room. A few minutes later I saw her over at the bar, talking to the owner. I'd gotten to know Roger McCool a little bit the last few months, ever since the first time Jude and I had stopped in for supper and he'd seen the karaoke setup. It was early, the place more or less empty, and Roger had been more than happy to demo the system for us, performing a soulful rendition of Charlie Rich's "Behind Closed Doors." Jude was exhilarated, and had to get up there and try it for himself that very minute. Ever since he could talk, almost, he'd had the ability to hear a song once or twice and remember every word and inflection, so the fact that he was too little to read the words off the monitor didn't faze him a bit; he climbed up on the platform and sang, "I'm a honky-tonk man and I can't seem to stop," like a veteran of the Grand Ole Opry. "Your boy's really something," Roger said to me as he delivered Jude along with two catfish platters to our table. After that, Jude begged to go to Curly's every time we left the house, but I tried to be careful about overindulging him. For one thing, he was impossible to live with afterwards, sulking and flouncing around like a runner-up on Nashville Star.
Suddenly Denny's amplified voice came through the speakers at the far end of the room, making the rest of us jump. "Testing one two," she said, and tapped the mike with her thumb, the sound reverberating in the small, high-ceilinged room.
Will Culpepper spun around in his chair. "Uh-oh," he said. Sure enough, Roger McCool was fooling with the controls of the karaoke machine, and Denny stood on the platform in her little prairie dress, swaying and grinning under a row of colored spotlights.
"Hey there," she said into the handheld mike. "How's everybody out there doin' tonight?" The only people present besides us were the staff and maybe half a dozen folks lingering over the remains of their supper, but Denny seemed to be under the impression she was onstage in Vegas.
"Y'all go on ahead with your business," she said. "I just thought I'd get up here and sing a song to my brand-new husband, Will Culpepper, who's made me feel like the luckiest girl on earth."
A few people clapped uncertainly. Denny tossed back her hair and nodded at Roger, and a prerecorded track started up, the old Otis Redding song "That's How Strong My Love Is."
She started out soft, almost tentative; but as the verses spooled out, her voice, like I'd heard it do so many times before, began to take on a force of its own. It was too much, really, for such a sweet little song; it was too big, not just her voice but what she was feeling, too big to be trapped inside pretty words about sunshine and rainbows. She didn't sing it like a love song, but like a sort of lament, laid out raw and bloody, stripped bare. It tore at my heart, hearing her; I wanted to run up and grab the mike out of her hand, to lead her outside and sit her down and say, "Now listen here. Don't give yourself up this way. No good will come of it. Save a piece back for yourself." But I, like the rest of the people in the room, sat listening, mesmerized.
When it was over, everybody applauded like crazy. Under the pink and blue lights, Denny stepped back and bowed. Then she took the mike again. "How 'bout another one? Any requests out there? Hey, maybe my daddy will get up here and join me. What do you say, folks? Can y all give it up for Cade County's own Ash Farrell?"
More applause; faces swiveled in our direction.
Ash's chair scraped on the linoleum as he got to his feet. But instead of making his way toward the stage, he dropped his napkin on the table and turned on his heel and quickly strode across the dining room and out through the front door.
Will and I exchanged a glance, and wordlessly he got up and he headed for the stage. I could tell he was trying to talk Denny down and that she didn't want to hear it, that she was ready to stay up there and sing all night, with or without her daddy.
Eventually he succeeded in leading her back to the table. Her good mood had evaporated; she was red-faced and cranky.
"Y'all are nothing but a bunch of party poopers!" she said, pawing through the bottles on the tabletop, looking for one that still held a swig of beer. "I thought we were going honky-tonking!"
"Sit down a minute, sweetie," I said, and pushed a glass of water toward her. "Take a break."
"I don't want to take a break! This is supposed to be a party! Where's Daddy?"
"Denise. Sit down."
My use of her given name got her attention. "You, too, Will," I said. I felt a little bit sorry for Will Culpepper. I wondered when he'd hopped into that limo with Denny bound for the Happy Together wedding chapel if he'd had any idea what he'd be getting into.
"Look," I said. "It's probably not my place to be telling your daddy's business, but I think you ought to know. He lost his record deal. Tony Amate called him in the rehab and told him they're dropping him from the label."
"What?" Denny screeched. "They can't do that! It's—it's criminal!"
"I think so, too. But it is legal—some loophole in the contract. At least that's what Vern Bellamy says. He's supposed to be talking to his lawyer, but he didn't sound too hopeful."
"Vern Bellamy's a dickhead," Will said. "Everybody in Nashville knows that."
"Daddy's just got to find another manager and another label. Forget Arcadia and start over from scratch," Denny said.
"He says he doesn't want to play music anymore."
"Oh, right. He's gonna do what instead? He can't just lounge around a trailer in East Texas for the rest of his life." Denny seemed stone sober now. "Where'd he go, anyway?"
"He took off when you called him up onstage."
"Shit," she said. "He's probably halfway back to Mooney by now." She pushed back her chair, throwing her hair over one shoulder. "I'm gonna go find him. See if I can talk some sense into him."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
I sat looking at her, trying to think where to start. Her daddy's love for her was only one point of a triangle along with pride and envy, and tonight, I knew, the talent and ambition he'd bequeathed her had already scraped a nerve.
"Because it's your honeymoon," I said instead, and stood up. "Y'all stay here, feed some more money into the jukebox, dance a little. I'll go see about your daddy."
chapter nine
found Ash slumped against the front fender of my Blazer, one ankle crossed over the other, his eyes on the ground.
He had to have heard me crunching toward him across the oyster shells, but he di
dn't look up till the last minute, till I was standing right in front of him.
"You all right?" I asked. It was a clear, cool night, a quarter moon along with a handful of stars tossed as carelessly as gamblers' dice across the dark blue sky.
He kicked a stray pebble with the toe of his boot.
"What are we doing here, Luce? Why, after everything we had going for us, are we sitting in a fucking karaoke bar in the middle of nowhere, listening to our daughter blow the roof off the joint for some asshole who doesn't even know what she's worth?"
"You don't know that. Why won't you give Will a break, for the time being, at least? They've only been married two days." Ash shrugged. "I don't think this is really about Denny and Will," I said. "This is about you."
He laughed sourly. "I guess I'm still trying to figure out how something I wanted so bad and worked so hard for for so long could turn out to be so different from how I expected it to be."
"How's that?"
"You really want the whole sad story?"
"Yes. I do."
He pulled in a breath, held it a second, then let it out again. "Okay. I always knew I had the goods. That I could write good songs and sing them the way folks wanted to hear them. I just thought the rest was automatic—that once I got to Nashville and got signed, I'd get a chance to put my music out there and I'd learn what I needed along the way, about all the stuff I didn't know, the business.
"But I guess I was dumb, or maybe just unlucky. It was like the train left the station without me. I mean, I could see my face up there on that train, but I never felt like I was in the driver's seat, you know? And by the time things slowed down enough for me to look around, I couldn't get my bearings anymore. It seemed like the farther along we went, the harder it got for me to recognize the territory."
He lifted his head and looked at me. "Go on," I said.
"It's like, on the one hand, all of a sudden you've got about five thousand new best friends, telling you how you're the greatest thing they've ever heard. Then at the same time there's all these other folks—the record company guys, the promoters— and they're smiling, like everybody else, and shaking your hand, but at the same time they're running these little calculators they have in their heads, tallying up their score sheets. It's like they're talking out of one side of their mouths but you never really know what they're saying.