by Amy Sorrells
“What I mean is, I’ve been dreaming about Nashville as long as I can remember. At night, on my front porch, I look out into the fields and pretend all that corn’s an audience. And when I sing in front of folks and they start moving and swaying and singing along with me, well, there’s somethin’ pretty special about that.”
The two men continued to exchange looks Noble couldn’t interpret; then they focused back on him. Thomas glanced from Noble to Cass and back to Noble again. “I think I can speak for all of us at Mountain Top Studios. You’ve got a spot here if you’d like one.”
Noble whistled long and loud. “You kiddin’ me?”
“Would I kid about something like that?” Thomas grinned and extended his hand.
29
James pulled up to the Burdens’ home in plenty of time to help with the evening milking the day Noble went to Nashville. He watched the golden cows move lazily across the pasture, seemingly unaware of the approaching thunderclouds. Humidity had been building all day and would no doubt result in another late-afternoon storm. Paint curled and cracked, revealing raw gray wood around the frame of the front screen door, which rattled as James rapped.
“Coming!” Laurie called from far inside, and he watched as a butterfly, blue like the sky and trimmed with black and white, flitted across the tips of the last remaining lupine growing beside the front porch steps. He swatted at what he thought was a larger insect as it swooped beside his ear, only to see that it was a hummingbird when it slowed to sip from the pink hibiscus at the corner of the house.
He startled when Laurie swung the door open.
“Just in time, Reverend. The girls don’t like to wait.” She waved her hand toward the cows already sauntering single-file toward the barn. “Come on and have a drink before we get started.”
Eustace sat at the kitchen table working on a butterfly collection.
“I didn’t know you collected butterflies, Eustace.”
Laurie raised an eyebrow. “There’s a lot folks don’t know about him.”
James watched as Eustace worked his blocky fingers carefully to remove a blue butterfly from between two pieces of paper where it must’ve been drying. He took a silver pin and pierced the middle of the butterfly’s body, then pinned it to the velvet-covered display.
“Teachers said he’d never be able to do anything involving small motor skills.” Laurie looked at her son adoringly. “Teachers said he wouldn’t be able to do a lot of things, didn’t they, buddy?”
“What kind is that one he’s working with?” James asked.
“It’s a Karner blue. Unusual for these parts because they like to live where there’s more water, sand, and such. Noble looked it up and said my lupine must’ve attracted them somehow. Maybe they followed Sugar Creek down from the north. I don’t know. But it’s endangered. One to be proud of, for sure.”
Eustace, who held his face awkwardly close to the display case, closed the cover and latched it. Then he sat back and began flapping his arm, staring off into the distance, his countenance smooth with something like satisfaction.
Laurie put her arms around him and squeezed, then kissed the side of his face. “I’m so proud of you.”
James noticed the chipped edges of the Formica countertops, the avocado-green stove, and the worn veneer of the cabinets as Laurie stood at the sink making lemonade. Nothing had changed in the many years he’d known the Burdens. The breeze coming through the window above the sink blew Laurie’s hair back off her shoulders to reveal her long, suntanned neck. James didn’t realize he was staring at her until she turned around.
They both blushed.
Laurie dried her hands on a stained dish towel and stuffed it over the handle of the stove. She grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and handed one to James. “I do appreciate you coming to help. What I said the other day about not feeling sorry for me, well . . .”
“I get it. Really. Although I must admit that not taking notice of your needs ranks right up there at the top of my list of guilts.” James studied her fingers, long and soft, and felt a long-dormant urge to reach out and put his hands around them. “Anyway, I’m happy to help.”
Her eyes met his and she smiled in a way that put him more at ease. “Well, we could both stand to be a bit more neighborly.”
Out in the barn, Eustace shoved a couple bales of hay from the hole in the floor of the mow to near the door to the milking parlor as Laurie called outside the sliding door to the cows. Several were already waiting at the gate to the holding area.
“In a hurry, ladies?” Laurie patted them on their rumps as they moseyed past. “Basil, Ginger, and Paprika. Since birth those three have always been inseparable.”
“Where’s Thyme and Rosemary?” James said jokingly, only to see those very names appear on the ear tags of the next two cows to come in the barn. “Must’ve been a spicy year.”
Laurie didn’t reply, either too focused on the work or finding his attempt at humor ineffective. She shoved a spray bottle with brown liquid into his hands. “Here. You clean the teats.”
He felt himself blush, scolded himself for thinking like a middle school boy, then approached Ginger, who’d claimed the first empty stall.
“Don’t stand right behind her. She behaves like a lady most of the time, but not if she doesn’t know you’re behind her.”
James walked gingerly around to the side of the cow, knelt, and cleaned each teat, then stripped them as Noble had shown him before he left town. Then he moved on to Basil.
Laurie came behind him and attached the milking unit, then turned the radio on to a country station out of Lafayette and grinned at James. “Cows give more milk if there’s music.”
Eustace moved along the outside of the stalls, securing and opening the stanchions as each cow came and went, and tossing an occasional armful of hay into the trough in front of them.
“Have you heard from Noble?” James asked as he came out from under Rosemary’s belly.
“Yeah . . .” She leaned over the top of Thyme. “He called when he landed. Texted a couple times. Says it’s pretty fancy down there.”
“I bet. Chance of a lifetime, yeah?”
“I guess.”
He heard her mumble something he couldn’t distinguish and saw her frown.
“Mind if I ask you something?” he asked.
“Not at all.”
“How has Shelby seemed to you lately? When she comes to pick up Eustace?”
The two of them stood back as the machines drew the milk from the cows, content, even relieved, to give it.
“She doesn’t visit as much as she used to. I figured she’s been in a hurry, although I noticed she and Noble haven’t been as friendly as they used to be. He, of course, won’t talk about it. I wouldn’t blame her for needing space to grieve. Why do you ask? Somethin’ wrong?”
He was grateful to see the soft spot Laurie’d always had for Shelby did not appear to have lessened. “Seems to be taken with Cade Canady.”
Laurie’s eyes widened. “No wonder Noble’s been a little out of sorts about her. Paces the room before she comes to pick up Eustace in the mornings. And he was awful bothered when she was here the other day. ’Course he doesn’t tell me a whole lot. But things haven’t been the same between those two for a while now. Ain’t no girl around here he’s ever looked at the way he looks at her.”
“So I’ve noticed. She hasn’t been herself since the accident of course . . . but lately she seems worse.” He hesitated, not wanting to reveal too much to Laurie out of respect for Shelby, but he knew Laurie had always been someone Molly had turned to for advice. And since she was a woman, he suspected she might have more insight into the way Shelby’s mind might be working. “The more I’ve tried to put my foot down about Cade, the more she thinks she’s in love with him.”
“I remember that feeling.” She crossed her arms and rubbed them as if suddenly feeling a chill. “All kind of folks tried to tell me not to see Dale, but I wouldn’t listen. Ther
e were warning signs, even back before we were married. He was so . . . jealous.”
“Do you know what happened between Shelby and Noble?”
She paused and watched as Eustace let the last cow out of the stanchions. “Eustace? Why don’t you go on and take some hay out to the troughs outside. Make sure the water tanks are filled.”
When he’d left the barn, she went on. “I don’t know, James. Before the accident, they were gettin’ real close. Molly and I . . . we used to kid around about them getting married someday. . . . I will say times when I’m hurting the worst is when I go running toward the worst thing for me. Or maybe . . . maybe I don’t think I deserve any better.”
He frowned, then noticed the radio playing one of his favorites. He fiddled with the tuner until it settled in clearer, then turned up the volume. He extended his hand toward her. “I know you at least deserve a dance.”
She hesitated, wiping one hand on her jeans, and reaching up—as if by habit—with the other to cover the side of her face as if it still showed bruises.
Stepping toward her, he reached for her hand, which felt small and fragile in his. He could feel the curve of her back beneath his hand, her warmth against his chest. The oversize dungarees and work shirt cloaked her slight frame, and as they moved in three-quarter time, he inhaled the sweetness of her silky hair. He felt the ache of guilt in his gut as he thought about Molly, but then he remembered what Susan had said to him about deserving to love and be loved. While so many memories and blessings had been buried with Molly, his capacity for love had not.
“You sure you aren’t feeling sorry for me, Reverend?”
He gazed at her, trying to memorize the green-and-blue pattern of her eyes. “And what if I was? Would it matter now?”
She leaned her head against his chest. “No, I s’pose it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t at all.”
He felt the moisture from her tears against his shirt and kissed her gently on the top of her head.
“It’s been so long,” she said, pulling back to meet his eyes. “So long since I’ve felt like a man wanted to look at me, let alone touch me.”
“Well, then, there’s a lot of men out there who’ve been missing out.”
The storm that’d been threatening blew in as they danced to that song and then to another. Underneath flickering lights, they both quit forcing themselves to survive and gave in to the grace of surrender. The thunder clapped above and around and then beyond the small white barn, until finally the sun broke through and they walked back to the house, the heat of the day gone and the dance still warm between them.
30
“You gonna tell me about it?” Laurie set a plate piled with strawberry rhubarb pie in front of Noble. The scoop of vanilla ice cream on top was already dripping down the sides.
Brock had been kind enough to pick Noble up from the Indianapolis airport and bring him back home, and he’d arrived early in the afternoon, but late enough that lunch had been done and put away. Eustace was at work. The house was quiet. And somehow, it seemed smaller than it had before he left, disappointing, the old drapes, the smell of fabric softener and leftovers, along with the perpetual faint trace of manure.
“I will, Mama. I’ve got a few things left I gotta work out with them and then—”
“And then what?” She pulled a chair out and sat across from him and held her face in her hands. “You’re gonna leave us? Or you’re gonna expect me and your brother to leave with you?”
“It was just a visit, that’s all. I didn’t even audition.” He didn’t have it in him to tell her everything, not yet. Truth was, he did have a few things left to settle with Cass and Mack, and she didn’t need to be worrying about anything until it was all said and done.
“Well, can you at least tell me what they thought?” She sat back and crossed her arms.
“They loved me.” He sat up straighter and grinned, taking another huge bite of pie.
“Of course they did.”
He frowned at the sound of resentment in her voice and the way her brow was knotted up like it always was when she was worried. Then he took another bite of pie. “You know, you could be a little happy for me.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. And to be sure, I am proud that they like you. But I’ll be happy when you tell me exactly what’s going on.” She glanced at the ceiling, where Eustace’s room was above them. “I don’t have to remind you that you’re not only making decisions for yourself.”
He stuffed the last bite in his mouth and took his plate to the sink, stopping to kiss Laurie on the top of her head. “I love you, Mama. You’re gonna have to trust me on this.”
Noble grabbed his guitar and headed outside. He’d only been home a couple of hours and already felt like he had to get out of the house. He didn’t blame Mama for wanting to know details, but he was still trying to sort it all out for himself. The plane ride and drive home hadn’t offered near enough time for him to sort through all he’d experienced and been offered.
Noble took his time walking across the yard. He noticed the pale-blue chicory growing near the road, the bright-orange trumpet vine blooming up the sides of the silo, and the fact that their yard had more clover than grass. He walked out to his favorite spot to think, on the far side of the barn, in the field where they put the older calves who were weaned from their mothers but too young still to be bred.
Their ears perked up, then their heads, one at a time, as if one of them had issued some sort of inaudible warning signal that a human was nearby. Stepping toward each other, they pulled themselves into a tighter group and stepped closer, like a single unit, to inspect him. Noble settled himself on a concrete ledge that was a remnant of an old outbuilding from long before their family owned the place.
As he began to strum, he observed the fields beyond, the gleaming silver tops of silos on neighboring farms, the clumps of clouds growing thicker, darker, in the sky above.
“My hope is built on nothing less . . .”
The old hymn was the first song that came to his mind, as bits of chords and lyrics sometimes did when he simply let his heart, through his fingers, wander along the strings.
“Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”
He fiddled around with the G chord the line ended on and began to improvise loosely with the melody as he contemplated all he’d seen and felt in Nashville. If he accepted the contract Mack offered, they would certainly have to move to Nashville. He’d explained to Mack in detail all of Eustace’s needs and about Mama’s potential desire to go back to school. Mack had told him they’d pay for the first month’s rent in a house downtown, where there were shops and restaurants and all kinds of places for Mama to work. He knew from other friends with special-needs relatives that there were caseworkers who really cared about and could help Eustace with everything from finding a job to getting access to good rehabilitation services Noble hadn’t even known existed.
And as for Noble, Mack had some ideas of country bands he knew needed a guitarist right away and others who would soon. He’d have plenty of commercial studio work lined up for him as soon as he arrived. And the pay was more than he’d ever imagined.
What he hadn’t expected was the sense of pressure he’d felt when money became attached to something that always, until then, had risen freely and on his own terms from his heart. He hadn’t decided if that was necessarily a bad thing, which was part of the reason he didn’t know what to say to Mama yet. The studios and the people he’d met there oozed a confidence and security that he knew came from money, knew this because no one in or around Sycamore carried themselves like that. Most of them probably never would.
He thought about the janitor in the hall outside Cass’s office at Mountain Top Studios and how he’d felt more of a camaraderie with him in the few seconds their eyes had met than he had with most of the industry professionals he’d met. And after all the fine dinin
g and compliments he’d been treated to, he’d been unprepared for the knot that had formed in his gut by the time he got on the plane to go back home.
“On Christ the solid rock I stand . . .”
“Mind some company?”
The sweet voice behind him startled him, and he turned to see Shelby. “Where’d you come from?”
“I brought Eustace home. Brock let us go early. Things were slow. Your mom said I could find you here.” She held her flip-flops in her hands and fixed her eyes on her toes as she dug them into the soft, cool dirt. “It’s nice to hear you playing out here.”
“Thanks.” He wasn’t sure how to read her, considering the last time they saw each other. He thought she seemed tentative. Definitely not the ornery Shelby he’d last encountered.
“I wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” she said, pink rising to her cheeks.
He could barely hear her and knew it probably killed her to say it. “What was that?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Noble Burden, you heard exactly what I said, didn’t you? You’re just tryin’ to make me say it again.”
“Maybe.”
She swung her legs over the ledge and sat down beside him. “So?”
“So . . . what?” he bantered. Her tanned skin, so close to his, made his head swirl. He’d never stopped caring for her, and if she asked him again what she had on the waterfall that night that seemed like forever ago, he’d surely tell her yes.
“I was thinking, maybe if you forgive me for . . . well, for the way I’ve been . . . and . . . that maybe we could sing together properly at Dad’s last service.” She fiddled with several homemade bracelets on her wrist.
Her fingers were slender, so much softer looking than his, and they were so close Noble felt the need to reach out and hold her hand, but he resisted. As much as he cared for her, Cade was still in the picture. Besides that, he needed to talk to her about Nashville, and he needed to keep his wits about him.