When the show started at eight I was mopping up a spilled Coca-Cola in the foyer. From there I moved to the men’s upstairs bathroom where a toilet was in the process of shooting stuff the wrong direction. Not pretty. That kept me busy the better part of an hour, so by the time I exited the men’s room, Daley only had a couple songs left.
I stood in the balcony against the back wall and watched the whirlwind of lights and sound envelop her. She looked as though she was struggling to find purchase amid an avalanche of stimuli. The heels she was wearing couldn’t have been comfortable, and her clothes looked more appropriate for a Super Bowl beer commercial than a girl standing on a stage singing a song. After seeing her so relaxed, so comfortable early this morning, it was tough to watch. It was like watching a voice I’d heard walking around in skin I’d never seen.
Sure, it was technically perfect, and I was sure a lot of people would go crazy over it. The media had found their next darling. But selling out had never been too attractive to me. And, sadly, Daley Cross was selling out right before my eyes. I exited the balcony and made my way backstage, where I knew I’d be needed as the show came to a close.
Daley had played fifteen or so songs, including a few well-known covers that endeared her to some of the older members of the audience. The concert ended, the applause faded, and I heard Daley’s voice. She was breathing heavily. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” A pause. “Phew. I need to start working out if I hope to make a career out of this. The guys in that booth up there are about to kill me.” She put a hand on her hip. “Does it look hard? It feels hard.”
The audience laughed.
“Sure glad my mom wouldn’t let me quit dance lessons. I’m exhausted. And I need to apologize to you folks in the front; I think my deodorant wore off an hour ago.” More laughter. She lifted her head and spoke to the folks in the sound and lighting booth. “Guys, could you bring the lights up, please? I’d like to make sure everybody didn’t leave six or eight songs ago. Right now you’ve got the sun shining in my eyes.” The lights were adjusted. Daley smiled at the audience. “Oh, hi.” She sounded surprised. “You’re still here.”
A guy in the audience screamed, “Daley, we love you!”
She was quick to respond. “You should see me at four a.m.”
The same guy responded, “Your place or mine?”
Everybody laughed. She strolled across the stage. “Guess I walked into that.”
The crowd quieted. She slid a stool onto the stage and sat down. “These shoes are killing me.” She looked at the glittering headliners seated in the first few rows. “I don’t know how you all do this. I mean, is there a secret?” More laughter. “Matter of fact . . .”
There was a pause while she took off those ridiculous heels. Daley stood and walked down the steps to a young girl in the front row. You could hear her voice away from the microphone talking to the mother. “Mom, is this okay?” Daley’s voice returned to the microphone. “Here, baby, you keep these. In about five minutes you’ll be big enough to wear them. Maybe you can teach me how to walk in them.” She hugged the girl, walked back up onstage, and shook her head. “They hurt my bunions.”
More laughter and energetic applause as the star onstage became one of us.
“I’m a California girl. Grew up barefoot on the beach. See no reason to change now.”
Another voice in the audience shouted, “Take it off!”
She laughed and aimed her face in the direction of the voice. “This is not that kind of show.” She pointed. “But if you head that way down Broadway you might find what you’re looking for.”
She possessed a seasoned stage presence for someone so young and had those folks eating out of the palm of her hand. “If you’re wondering what’s going on, I’m stalling while the guys do whatever they’re doing back there.” The spotlights circled the stage and highlighted several men dressed in black working furiously.
“Over the last several months some very talented people have taken me under their wings, and we’ve worked really hard to find the right sound. Right song. Or songs. Some you’ve heard here tonight.” She paused for applause. “During that time, I’ve listened to several hundred songs penned by some of the best songwriters in the business. During this process, I learned something interesting about myself. My management team was listening to those demos trying to find the sound that could identify me to you. The type of sound that when you heard it, you’d immediately think Daley Cross and then sing along.
“Me, on the other hand? That wasn’t my primary motivation.” She glanced at her producer. “Sorry, Sam.”
Back to the audience. “I was listening not for the song that identified me to you, but identified me with me. I was looking for a sound, a song, that resonated within me. Something that would take on a life of its own inside me. That’s not as easy as it might sound, and as a result, I haven’t been sleeping much.”
The same guy in the balcony interrupted her. “I can help with that.”
Daley didn’t skip a beat. “Does your parole officer know you’re here?” She waited while the laughter died down.
As if on cue, the lights dimmed, save a lone hazy spotlight on Daley. The image brought to mind that single swaying lightbulb the night of the storm and how it circled above the piano. I thought of my father and Big-Big and how I wished they were here to see this. Then I thought of the money, the truck, and Jimmy, and I knew they would not be.
“I’m going to sing one more song. It’s new.” For some reason Daley turned her head just then, taking her eyes off the audience, and looked to her right, where she spotted me standing in the shadows just offstage. She continued speaking to the crowd, but she was looking at me. “I hope you like it.” The way she said it suggested that I would not.
The lights cut to black, and Daley walked off the stage, where she was met by a woman wearing a headset and holding a shirt in one hand and a headdress that resembled a tiara in the other. She accomplished an eight-second costume change and then stood just a few feet away from me as the intro began to play. When the lights began to flash and thunder crack, Daley turned to me, grabbed my hand, and whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
What surprised me was how someone so confident in the spotlight had become so fragile in the dark. The transformation was immediate, and I wondered which was the real Daley.
Compared to other venues, the Ryman stage is not that big. Originally designed for a preacher and a choir, there’s not a lot of room to maneuver. Nor was it originally wired to handle large productions. The stage had its physical limitations, and from where I stood it looked like the guys in the booth were pushing them.
The manufactured thunder and lightning lit up the back of the stage, along with a giant video screen showing a dark storm rolling in. Smoke machines blew white smoke from both underneath and above, blanketing the stage in a cloud. Fans created wind, swirling the smoke. When they’d achieved total whiteout, Daley walked to the center of the stage, where the wind tugged at her hair. She stood in the storm waiting for the smoke to clear and the music to crescendo.
She never got her chance.
The increased load of lights, electric, smoke, and wonder overtaxed the already overworked motherboard and, with one giant cluster of sparks and bang, blew every fuse connected to light and sound. In response to what sounded like the first cannon shot at Armageddon, the stage went black. Immediately, the yellow-tinted emergency lights lit the auditorium. Daley stood on a silent stage in a clearing cloud staring out at a snickering audience. A voice a few rows from the front said, “Reminds me of my ex-husband.”
The band exited the stage, leaving a disbelieving Daley alone with the audience and a few remaining sparks. A music critic with a camera snapped a few photos. She spoke around her camera: “Honey, you’re only as good as your last song.” She slung the camera over her shoulder and said to no one in particular, “It’ll be awhile before she recovers from this one.”
Daley tried to speak into the mic
rophone, but it too was dead. So she stood there, frozen, unsure what to do.
The only word to describe the activity backstage and up in the sound booth was pandemonium. The same cold breeze that had blown through the Ryman earlier this morning blew now across the stage. Daley crossed her arms to ward off the chill.
The only light in the balcony came from the On Air sign above the radio broadcast booth. Evidently the panel that handled radio transmission hadn’t been affected, and the microphones hanging from the ceiling were still capturing the sound onstage and broadcasting it across radio waves.
There was still hope.
I walked out onstage and found a tearful Daley just seconds from meltdown. I lifted the stupid-looking tiara off her head and pitched it back behind the drum set. Then I took off my flannel shirt, exposing a stained white T-shirt, and wrapped the flannel shirt around her. I said, “You want to sing that song?”
Her eyes were darting five different places at once. “Yeah, but—”
“Yes or no.” I glanced at the people walking out. “You’ve got about three seconds.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Yes.”
I pulled up two stools and slung her guitar around my neck. Then I turned to Daley, whose eyes had grown large and round. I leaned in close so she could hear me. “Just take my words and sing them back to me.”
Her hand bushed my arm. Another touch. A sonar ping. She nodded.
My fingers hit the strings and I began making a series of seven repeating whistles that grew louder—like the wind. In my mind I heard the echo of my father . . . The great players aren’t great because of all the notes they can play, but because of the ones they don’t play.
Given years of practice, and the mystery of the beautiful, cathedral-like acoustics of the Ryman, I created a cacophony of noise to grab everyone’s attention. Whistles by their very nature do that. And while I might have stopped the exodus, it was Daley who turned the people around and pulled them back into their seats.
That was the night the world changed.
24
Daley rang the last note off the balcony to roaring, raucous applause. She’d turned them. Done what no one thought she could. She’d won them. Every one. When we walked off the stage, she was mobbed. I was met by a single person. A man. Her manager.
He smiled at me, and I immediately did not like him. Nor did I trust the look in his eyes. I gathered he was the one responsible for the attempted adulteration of my song. He extended his hand. “Sam Casey.”
“Cooper O’Connor. Folks call me Peg.”
“So I’ve heard.” He nodded toward the stage and said, “How’d you like to sell that song?”
Daley wrapped her arm inside mine and pressed her chest against me. She was floating. Cloud nine.
I looked at her. Back at him. “It’s not mine to sell you.”
He looked confused. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t sell you what I already gave away.”
He clearly wasn’t expecting that. “Some would call that naïve.”
“Others would call it selfless. Kind, even.”
“Twenty years in this business, and kind is not something I’ve experienced.”
The last few years flashed before my eyes. He had a point. “Five years in, and I tend to agree with you.”
“You have others?”
“I do.”
“Are they as good?”
“Some are better.”
He lowered his voice. “Could I hear them?”
I glanced at Daley, then back at him. “You have any openings in the band? I can play guitar and piano. And thanks to an evil, beady-eyed woman back home, I’m probably better at the latter. My vocals aren’t too bad.”
He laughed. “Funny you should mention that. We just happen to have an opening in all three of those areas. You’re hired.”
Okay, maybe he wasn’t so bad. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you two come around for dinner this weekend. We have a lot to talk about.” He turned to walk away, then paused. “Oh, and if you have any plans for the next year, you may want to cancel them. You might be traveling. Do you have a passport?”
“No.”
“Get one. Expedited.”
With a crowd buzzing around us and effusive congratulations coming with every hug and handshake, Daley pulled me aside, pressed my hand to her heart, and kissed me on the cheek, then again on the corner of my mouth. And it was there, backstage at the Ryman, that her trembling, tear-soaked, salty, warm lips answered my question of which Daley was the real one.
My boss told me I could have the rest of the night off. Actually, she said I could have the rest of my life off. She hugged me and said, “Come see us sometime.” It was a much-needed acknowledgment and, coming from someone who’d seen the best in the business, I took it to heart.
It was only after Daley and I had walked out onto Broadway in search of dinner that the thought occurred to me. Everything had happened so fast, and given that I’d been up most of last night and this morning, my days and nights were all backward.
I turned to Daley. “What night is this?”
“Thursday.”
I whispered, “Ryman Radio.”
“What?”
“He was right.”
“Who was right?”
The rush came in a flood. When Daley asked me why I was crying, I couldn’t tell her. I hit my knees on Broadway, and couldn’t talk at all.
The morning headline read “Cross My Heart,” and the picture of the two of us covered the front page. It had been taken near the end of the song when Daley hit the highest note she could, popping a vein out on the side of her neck. The picture did a great job of depicting the power and strength of her voice. The story described in detail the electrical explosion that left her unamplified, without a band, “vocally naked” before an imposing audience. The writer quoted many of the stars who said they couldn’t believe she’d gathered her composure and pulled it off. Others said they’d have walked off the stage. All praised her courage and resilience. The story talked about her “incomparable voice” and said the song had perfectly showcased her “unparalleled range” and labeled her “the next great one.”
One local media outlet had managed to film our performance. Given that the Ryman AV feed had been blown, the grainy video was offered to multiple news outlets around town, and was then picked up by the national outlets. The poorly shot nature of the video only added to the mystique. By late afternoon, the story and the song were everywhere.
When I came into work the next morning, Riggs was reading the paper, wearing a smile wider than his ears. He looked at me over his reading glasses. “What’re you doing here?”
I was tying on my apron. “Working.”
He shook his head, laughing. “No. No, you’re not. Sam Casey’s courting you. Get out of here. I can’t afford you anymore.”
“You’re firing me?”
He took the apron out of my hands and hung it up. “Absolutely.”
“Why?”
He was still laughing. “ ’Cause you been lying to me.” He tapped me in the chest. “Also to yourself. And to everyone else.”
“What!”
“I knew you could play. I didn’t know you could play. And sing? Where did you get pipes like that?”
“You’re really firing me?”
Riggs put his hand on my shoulder. “Son, I’m trying to tell you what everyone else knows and you’ll figure out soon enough. Your life is about to change. Go live it. Bring me your guitars when you need some work done on ’em.”
I pointed upstairs. “And that?”
“Stay as long as you like. When you’re on the road, I’m going to sell tickets to all the tourists. ‘Peg Lives Here.’ With a voice like yours, the girls will eat that stuff up. I can retire off ticket sales.”
Riggs was a good man. He’d helped me when no one else would.
“Well,” I said, “could I collect my last paycheck? I’m gonna need i
t to get from here to there.”
Daley and I became inseparable. She showed me the high-rent world of Franklin, where Sam had put her up in a four-thousand-square-foot condo complete with gate, twenty-four-hour security, gym membership, and leased Mercedes. The world on a silver platter.
When she wanted to see my paper-plate world, I hesitated. Looking back was painful, and I didn’t want her to know. She hooked her thumb in my belt loop and pulled me to her. Wrapping her arms tight around my waist, she said, “Tell me.”
So I started at the beginning. Colorado. Mom, Dad, Big-Big, the tents, the storm, Miss Hagle, and my growing discontentment with my father. I told her about my high school band and about the fight with Dad. Stealing the money, the truck, and Jimmy. She was driving, so I directed her to the motel where I’d stayed my first night in town and where I’d hid the money. Then to the parking lot along the river where I’d slept in the cab of the truck. The Laundromats. I bought her a dog at the Sudsy Schnitzel. We parked under the overpass and I showed her where I’d slept. The woods. The soggy mattress. The dog park where I bathed. The street corner where Jimmy was stolen. Printer’s Alley. Riggs. And finally, the Ryman.
When I finished, Daley was holding a handful of tissues. She couldn’t stop the tears. The further we went down my story, the more they flowed. It was tough watching those beautiful eyes cry. Outside the Ryman, she just shook her head. She whispered, “How’d you do it?”
One of the things I came to love about Daley was the degree to which she empathized with others. Something in the hardwiring of her heart felt with acute sharpness what others felt. If you cried, tears dripped down her face. If you laughed, the ends of her mouth turned upward. It was both her greatest strength and deepest weakness.
I pulled out my wallet and unfolded the map Dad had wrapped around the money I’d stolen. It was frayed and white in the creases. “Hope is a tough thing to kill.”
“Hope for what?” she said.
“That I can find a way home.”
Long Way Gone Page 17