Leander has come outside. He sticks out his hand and says, “I’m gonna go close up the shop, but you know I’ll see you at the show.” We shake, and then he’s off.
Magnolia and I have to let go of each other’s hands to get in on separate sides of her car.
“I need to make a stop,” I tell her.
55
One of the funny things about Magnolia is that she’s a real straight arrow, but she also tends to bristle at authority telling her what to do. You just wouldn’t know it unless you’d seen her around a domineering police officer. So now she doesn’t balk at ignoring Catherine’s instructions to get me directly to the stage.
I guide her across town and over the railroad crossing. We pull into the gravel driveway of my shotgun shack. They say it’s called a shotgun because you can fire a shotgun at one end, and the pellets will pass thorough every room and out the back door without hitting a wall. I’ve never tried it, but my place is real skinny and all the rooms are in one straight line.
“Home sweet home,” I say. “You want to come in?”
“Yeah,” Maggie says.
We get out and walk across the overgrown lot with the blackened fire barrel out front. The place is just like I left it: paint peeling, rusty tin roof, sun-bleached sofa on the tilting front porch.
But with Magnolia next to me, I’m uncomfortably aware of how unlivable it looks. Second thoughts about bringing her here start to creep in. I have to remind myself that I wanted her to see how I lived. And she wanted to know who I really am. I was so proud when I moved in, on my own for the first time. I’d say that before Spotlight, this place was probably my biggest accomplishment.
I grab my hidden key from under the couch cushions and unlock the padlock on the front door. “I’ll give you the grand tour, if you have, like, five seconds.”
“Great,” she says.
We begin in the living room, which I explain is “furnished with fashionably modern lawn chairs” and a television. I don’t have cable, but I like to watch DVDs. I keep a collection on a bookcase I inherited from Leander.
“Please watch your step,” I say as we move around the hole where my foot broke through the floorboards when I was dancing alone, and maybe too enthusiastically, to Kings of Leon one night. Then into my bedroom, which I explain should “technically be called the mattress room,” since it only contains a mattress on the floor and piles of folded clothes.
Magnolia doesn’t try to bullshit that any of it is nice. I love her for it.
I change my shirt and jeans as she watches. Being here, it feels more intimate than anything I’ve ever done with anybody before.
“It’s so quiet,” she says.
“Wait sixty more seconds.”
Like clockwork, the two p.m. train rumbles past the house, its cars taking up the whole view out the east windows. It lays on the horn at the crossing. Whaaa-whaaaaaaaaaahhhh. Magnolia winces, squinting one eye against the noise.
“It’s even louder at night!” I shout.
“Ford?” she says.
I wait for the train to pass. “Yeah?”
“I didn’t understand.” I automatically know she’s talking about the first conversation we had by the pool on top of the hotel, when she wanted to know how my life had been different from hers, and I shut her down because I was too embarrassed to explain. But her saying that lets me know that now she really does.
We kiss. And then it gets more serious, fast. I run my hands up the nape of her neck, digging my fingers into her hair. She reaches around to my lower back and clutches me there. We’re about to finish what we started back in her dressing room, but then I realize there’s no way I’m going to let this happen on my frameless mattress in my shack.
Holding Maggie’s face in my hands, I say, “Tonight, when it’s all over, let’s stay the night in the most expensive hotel we can find.”
“Yes,” she says.
I take her hand and lead her out of my house, shutting the door behind us.
The WPA, meaning the Works Progress Administration, built the stage back in the Depression of the thirties. The WPA was this government program that built all kinds of things back then: dams, roads, parks, bridges, so on. The general idea was just to put people back to work. My great-grandfather worked on this stage, so it probably fed my family for at least a few months. It sits on the circle plaza on Main Street, where they also put in a movie theater and this ritzy-looking library with white columns. All boarded up now, since before I was born.
The outdoor stage is just a big concrete platform with a band shell, and it may not look like much, but all sorts of real acts used to play here: Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, young Elvis, Little Richard. It was the heart of the town until the acts stopped coming in the sixties. The last person to play it was Johnny Cash in ’76. He grew up close by. That’s probably how they talked him into it.
When Magnolia tries to make the turn onto Main, I get my first look at the crowd. I stare from behind the window. I am thoroughly bewildered by the mass of people. We can hear them, the hum of them talking to each other. I’ve never seen the street so crowded in all my life.
“This is all for the show?” I say, partly just to comprehend it myself.
Magnolia starts backing up the car. “Don’t freak out,” she tells me. “Don’t freak out.”
There are thousands of people. The side streets are all closed off. Not only have I never seen the town so crowded in person, but I’ve never even seen it like this in the old photographs from its heyday. My great-uncle used to say that on Sundays in downtown Calumet, “a drunk could walk without falling down.” I suppose this is the kind of thing he meant.
Times a hundred.
“This is crazy,” I say. But I wish I had something better to capture it. I really didn’t think more than a few dozen people would come out to see me. But maybe people came out because it’s a small town, because so many of them have known me my whole life. Because I’m one of their own, and they’re taking this ride along with me. I’m realizing now that someone from here could have easily gone on the Internet and revealed my family lie, but no one did. They understood what I was up against, and they protected me.
I feel like I owe it to them to do well. And my stomach feels like it’s trying to turn inside out.
Magnolia drives a loop around the crowd to get behind the stage, where there’s a barricaded entryway for production.
“Ford Buckley,” she says to a security guy in a yellow shirt, and he takes a look at me, then moves the barricade to let us park. It isn’t so much a backstage here as it is several trailers set up on the pavement. As soon as we step out of the car, Tiffany and a production coordinator named Huck immediately appear and hurry us to hair and makeup while reporting my whereabouts into their radios. “We’ve got Ford. Ford is on site.”
The makeup girl back in Hollywood usually didn’t do much besides powder me up so I wasn’t all shiny, but Tasmin, who tells me she’s from Nashville, has some work to do once she puts me in her chair.
“Do you always have this bruising under your eyes?” she asks, patting concealer on it.
“It’s usually one shade lighter,” Magnolia says from where’s she’s slouched in the director’s chair next to me. She’s trying to take a nap.
Adrenaline is the only thing keeping me awake at this point. Catherine appears, followed by a guy in a sports jacket. “This is Dr. Bursch,” she says, “vocal cord specialist. He’s going to fix your throat.”
Dr. Bursch makes a face as he looks down my throat with a tongue depressor. “They really shouldn’t be spraying people in the mouth with that stuff.”
I’m aware.
“Normally, I’d recommend rest, but if you have to sing today, then I should give you a cortisone shot. It’s the fastest way to reduce inflammation—but there’s the possibility of further damage singing wi
th your throat like this. Ideally, you would rest for a week.”
“Who am I gonna have to sing for in a week? Please just give me the shot,” I say.
He injects me in the upper arm, then slaps on a Band-Aid. “Gargle this right before you go on,” he says, handing me a small bottle of liquid. “And drink lots of water. Good luck.” He pats me on the back, and Catherine sees him out. Someone’s calling for her on her radio about the fire marshal.
When Tasmin’s done, a guy named Wesley comes in to mess with my hair. And when he’s done, Tiffany reappears to take me to wardrobe. I kiss Magnolia on the forehead to wake her, and she immediately opens her eyes and says, “I wasn’t really sleeping.” As we’re being hustled over to the next trailer, I hear someone shouting my name by the barricades.
“Ford!”
There’s a commotion with the security guys, then I see Sissy hop a barricade and dodge past them. “Ford!” she yells as one of them grabs her by the arm.
“It’s okay! It’s okay! She’s with me!” I shout, jogging over. “She’s my sister!”
Tiffany shouts, “It is okay!”
The security guard lets Sissy go. She says, “You’re lucky my brother showed up. I was about to bust you wide open.” The security guard backs up, shaking his head.
“Can you believe this?” Sissy asks me, opening her arms like she could fit the world in them.
We hug. “I’m glad you didn’t get locked up with them.”
“Well, shit, me too.”
I pull over Maggie. “This is my girlfriend, Magnolia. Magnolia, this is Sissy.” Sissy throws her arms around Magnolia so forcefully, you can almost hear her spine realigning.
“Very nice to meet you,” says Magnolia with her chin on Sissy’s shoulder.
“You’re as cute as a bug’s ear,” says Sissy.
“Thank you?” Magnolia answers. Sissy releases her.
“Don’t you let my brother get a big head. You’ve got to keep him in his place, girl.”
“With a shiv, if I have to,” Magnolia jokes, because I’ve told her about Sissy—and let me tell you, Sissy just loves that response.
This is when I notice the guitar case Sissy has brought and put down on the ground beside her. I didn’t see it in all the ruckus. It’s the ’53 Telecaster. I know it right away.
Sissy notices me looking at it. “Those idiots pawned it, but I got it back. Snuck the last of the per diem off Cody before they dropped me in Vegas.”
“I thought it was gone,” I say, kneeling down to crack the case open. And there’s the chipped but shiny blond paint of the guitar, back home with me. “This is so amazing.”
“Well, Grampa gave it to you. I think he’d be pretty pissed if you didn’t play it tonight. I don’t need that old man haunting me.” She looks around at the trailers, the production folks running around, and she smiles. She’s got a good smile when she bothers to use it. “You know, it’s almost like being in a damn movie.”
I’m expecting to meet a local stylist hired just for the finale, but when Maggie, Sissy, and I walk into the wardrobe trailer, there’s Robyn, steaming a pair of jeans.
“You came out?” I say.
Robyn looks up and smiles. “I told you from the beginning, I always have a favorite.”
I couldn’t be happier to see her. I introduce my sister and start taking off my shirt. “So what am I wearing, a jacket made of lasers or something?” Sissy wanders over to the shoes to check them out.
Robyn shakes her head. “No lasers. I don’t want anyone to be thinking about the person who dressed you. This is your hometown—I’m gonna let you do you. With maybe a little Marlon Brando thrown in. T-shirt and jeans, man.” She pulls out a vintage T-shirt for the Pine Mountain Jamboree in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. “I mean, yeah, it’s a vintage T-shirt and designer jeans, but still.”
I change into Robyn’s outfit while Sissy asks her questions about what famous people she’s seen naked. “That guy who plays Thor?” she wonders hopefully. Magnolia’s lying on an extremely furry fake blue fur coat I guess the show provided just in case the T-shirt didn’t fly. It’s so furry, she almost disappears into it.
The door to the trailer bangs open. We all look over to see the crazy blank eyes of Spider looking back.
“This is bullshit” is what he enters with. Magnolia sits up. “All they have over in craft service is granola bars. You know what it is? I don’t think they have stores here. This place is the asshole of America.”
“You’re the one who insisted on coming,” Robyn says. She doesn’t look at him. It seems like they’ve already been fighting.
I have plenty of terrible things to say about my own town, but I don’t like hearing this guy talk bad about it.
“Who’s this rude son of a bitch?” asks Sissy, looking kind of nonchalantly at Spider. She’s used to this kind of demeanor.
“No, who are you?” demands Spider.
“Stop, stop, stop.” Robyn puts up a hand. “Enough! Do not start.”
“Start what?” Spider says with this innocence that also comes off as mean. “I thought one of the things you wanted me to change was for me to be more social, so I’m just trying to get to know everyone.”
“Ugh,” Robyn says. She turns her back on him to wrap a belt around my waist. “I can’t believe I let you convince me that this trip would be good for us.”
“Don’t turn your back on me,” Spider says, and he goes to put a hand on her again. This time it’s her neck. I can tell you my thought process in this moment. I immediately wish I could land a punch right between Spider’s crazy eyes. I want it to be solid and real and to feel his nose give way under my knuckles.
But instead I open my hands and I place them on his chest, and I apply only the force I need to get him off my friend. Because this time, I’m not going to do the stupid thing. I’m not going to put myself at the mercy of all the disappointment in myself, all the regret. Because I refuse to watch the finale slip away from me like a light that’s being dimmed.
Spider stumbles back toward a rack.
After I’ve pushed him, I learn that his eyes have an even crazier setting. “That was pitifully stupid, man,” he says. “I think I might just have to call the police and tell them you assaulted me. Yeah, that was definitely assault.”
“No, it wasn’t, Spider,” Robyn says.
“You have no one to back you up,” Maggie says.
But Sissy says, “Go ahead and call them. I’ll confess I hit you.”
Spider cocks his head. “What?”
“Yeah, I hit you.”
Spider looks confused as Sissy punches him right in the nose.
Spider staggers back into a rack of clothes. Nose bleeding. He screams, “What the hell?”
“You had it coming.” Sissy shrugs. “You have a face that needs punching.”
“Sissy, you still have a record,” I say. “You could get in real trouble.”
She looks at me with something tender in her eyes. “This is what family’s for. And also to win singing contests and buy their older sisters a top-notch lawyer.”
I look at her with something tender in my eyes too. So maybe I’ve changed, or am trying to change, and Sissy probably never will. Maybe she’s set firm, like a kid’s name carved in the sidewalk. But in her case it just feels like something I can always find my way back to.
Sissy turns to Spider. “But thing is, I’ll just tell the police I was defending your woman from you—”
“I’m not his woman,” Robyn says.
Sissy continues. “And that will get even uglier for you than your nose.”
Spider stares at her from atop his cupped hands. “I need to see a doctor.”
Robyn’s voice is all ice toward him now. “There should be a medic’s tent right outside the trailer.”
“I’ll escort y
ou, bud, since it’s the least I can do for hitting you,” Sissy says, going over to open the door for him. Spider pauses like he’s going to do something else here, but then he just turns and steps out.
Before she leaves, Sissy says to Robyn, “I want you to introduce me to Thor.” Once she’s outside, we can hear her telling Spider, “Don’t worry, could have been worse. Could have been a pair of scissors in your knee.”
“I don’t know, you would think a guy named Spider would be tougher,” Magnolia says. The tough thing for me was not punching him, but I know now I just can’t keep having the same reactions over and over.
A girl with a clipboard peers into the trailer, looking freaked out, probably about the guy with the bloody nose who just passed by. “Uh, fifteen minutes to show time. They want you in the wings.”
“I hope this incident doesn’t cause you more problems,” I say to Robyn.
She smooths the collar of my T-shirt and makes a shooing motion toward the door. “It’s called a restraining order, and it’s so way overdue. Now, there’s no point in you looking great if you don’t win.”
“Thank you for everything,” I say.
“Go get it.”
Magnolia and I follow the clipboard girl out of the trailer, through some tents, and toward the back of the stage. I can hear a warm-up guy working the crowd, firing Spotlight T-shirts out of an air cannon. It’s cheesy, but sometimes cheesy is all right. It sounds like an actual concert crowd. I can sense the size of it before I see it.
I feel outside my own body. Crew members ask me questions about staging and placement because there’s been no time for a morning rehearsal. I’m saying stuff back, but I’m not sure it makes sense. Catherine appears and passes me the bottle of liquid from the doctor, and I throw it back and gargle before I spit into a plastic cup.
Maggie and I take steps up to the side of the stage. We’re concealed, but now we can see the crowd. It stretches back as far as I can see down Main Street in both directions. The sun is gilded. My dying town, exploding with humanity, totally alive.
Everybody Knows Your Name Page 26