Supporting me as I stepped back up on the sidewalk, Sam said, “I guess I was thinking about Alan Jackson himself. Being him. You know, he dropped out of Newnan High School south of Atlanta and married his high school sweetheart. His wife was working as an airline stewardess when she saw Glen Campbell and gave him Jackson’s demo tape, which is truly how Jackson got his start: through luck and a lover.”
“Right.” I knew this story. Everybody in Nashville did. It was why we dreamed of playing the bars on Broadway, where a country legend might drop in and change our lives with one phone call. It was why my parents had instructed me to share the stage with anyone who asked, on the off chance it might be Shania Twain.
“Jackson dragged his wife to Nashville and eventually made it as a country star,” Sam said. “So when I sing his song, I’m thinking about the fact that they fell in love with each other way before he was famous. How hard it was for them at first, and how easy it is now. What a relief it must be that they can pay for their kids to go to college instead of crossing their fingers that their kids are smart enough, or good enough at music, to get a scholarship.”
“So you think he wrote the song about his real life?” I asked.
“I don’t know where else it would come from. Some of the details aren’t right, though. In the song, they aren’t getting along, but then they have kids and everything’s all right again. In real life, having a baby doesn’t solve anything. It just causes more problems.” He sounded so high-and-mighty that I was about to ask him exactly how much he’d been watching those reality TV shows about teen pregnancy when he went on, “If you’re an alcoholic, the last thing you should do is get your wife pregnant. You should go to rehab instead. Let your wife make a clean break and leave you. Don’t try to charm her back to you. She can live happily ever after and have a baby with someone else. The baby won’t know the difference. He’ll probably be a lot better off.”
“Wait. You lost me. Alan Jackson is an alcoholic?”
“No. Sorry,” he said, waving away the idea with his free hand not carrying the guitar case. “I’m talking about my dad. I wear my heart on my sleeve, remember?” He said this pleasantly as ever, but he plodded up the hill a little more quickly after that.
I wanted to change the subject as much as he did. So I teased him, “Speaking of which. Did I hear your voice break a little at the beginning of that song, when you reached the lyrics about making love to your girlfriend, how you were each other’s first?”
I’d meant the question as a flirtatious ribbing. I never meant for him to look over at me with his dark eyes wide with horror. He muttered, “I don’t think so,” quickly checked both ways for traffic, and stepped into the street.
I trailed him on my high heels, wondering what can of worms I’d opened. My first thought was that he was horrified at my flirting—and the very suggestion that he would make love to me. But that didn’t seem right. He was shocked because he’d thought I was bringing up something I knew, something that had happened to him. And it stood to reason that he’d lost his virginity with one girlfriend or other, seeing as how he’d had twenty-six of them.
“Sam,” I called.
“What,” he answered without turning around.
“My car’s back down there, and so’s your truck.”
“I am so sorry!” he exclaimed, turning around. “I forgot you’re dressed like L.A. in your . . .” His voice trailed off as he eyed my high heels, then let his gaze travel up my legs. Forcing his eyes to my face again, he said, “I just need to go right up here to deliver something, but you don’t have to come with me.”
“I’ll come with you.” When I caught up with him and we turned to resume our trek, I asked, “If you want to make it in this business, why don’t you try out for one of those singing reality shows? You’d win.”
“Those contracts are too restrictive,” he said immediately. He’d thought about this a lot, and probably got asked this a lot, too. “You’re only successful if they decide you’re going to be. Kelly Clarkson was the first. She wrote a lot of her own songs, so she had a leg up. But when she decided to do something different for her third album, the record company dropped their support. She had to struggle back. If you go on those shows, you have to agree ahead of time to whatever contract they offer you. You have no control over the exposure you get or the songs you sing, at least at first, so you really wouldn’t have any control over your own career. If you’re going to get no support from the company, you might as well not sign a contract. You go from your name meaning nothing to your name being a joke. I’ll bet we can’t even recall today who most of those winners have been.”
In protest, I named the winner who’d become a household name in country music: “Carrie Underwood.”
“Exactly,” he said, pointing at me, “and what song did she get?” He gestured to the church we’d reached on our hike up the hill. “ ‘Jesus, Take the Wheel.’ That is a great song. It has a good melody and a good story hook, plus Jesus. Country music fans love their Jesus. If all she’d had was ‘Some Hearts’ or ‘Good Girl,’ I don’t know that she’d be as big today, but the record company saw fit to give her Jesus.” He turned and walked up the sidewalk toward the church’s front door.
“So you might not get the Jesus tune with the great hook,” I acknowledged, following him, “but somebody would be feeding you songs. At least you’d have a chance. You’re so talented, Sam.” Out of the blue, I was pleading with the back of his T-shirt, wanting him to be successful, wanting him to pursue that without threatening my college career as collateral damage. “You could make it big with your band, or more likely as a solo artist. I honestly don’t see what you have the band for.”
“Help me out here.” He shoved his hand in the pocket of his shorts and pulled out his handkerchief, which he gave to me. “The thing is, I don’t want to be this big head.” He curved his hands around either side of a wide imaginary circle to show the potential for his big head, possibly on an album cover. Then he pulled an empty plastic bag out of his pocket and put that in my outstretched hand, too. “I want to jam, like last night. I want to look behind me to see if Charlotte’s ready, and look over at Ace to see what he’s going to do, and point to you for a solo, and listen while you take off.”
I understood. I’d always thought of bluegrass musicians as interchangeable, like the tribute bands at the mall, but that’s not what he wanted. I said, “You want the band to be like a family.”
“The one I have at home definitely isn’t working, so, maybe.” After a glance around the sidewalk to make sure no scary men were lurking, he pulled wads of cash, his take from busking, out of his other pocket. He dropped them in the plastic bag I was holding out for him.
“The problem with feeling like your band is a family,” I said, “is that when you have another kind of relationship within the band and that relationship goes south, the whole band suffers. Ace and I were talking about you and Charlotte.”
“That’s . . .” Sam was tactful, and I could tell he was searching for a polite way to explain as he shoved his hand deep into his pocket to make sure he hadn’t missed any bills. “That’s on Charlotte’s end.”
“No matter whose fault it is, it’s there. And for that reason, if you and I are going to play together, I don’t think we should pursue another sort of relationship.” It pained me to say it, but better to cut us off now than later, when he’d broken my heart.
I expected him to gape at me and then protest there on the church steps, but he only gave me a baleful glance and murmured, “Thank you,” as he took the bag from me. Sealing it, he said, “Luckily, you have repeatedly stated that you’re not going to be in my band. We can pursue any kind of relationship we want.” He turned and stuffed the bag through the mail slot in the church’s massive front door.
Now I gaped at him, then shoved the door, then jerked the large iron ring that served as a handle. The door was locked. “Sam! How much money did you just give to that church?”
> He blinked at me, then lifted the mail flap and peeked through the slot. “I didn’t count it. Why?”
“I didn’t peg you for a religious person.”
“I’m not.”
“Or a giving person.”
“Thanks.”
“I just mean—”
“That you’d expect me to buy a new amp with it?” He shrugged. “I’m cheating a homeless person out of panhandling money. This is my way of giving it back. The church feeds them sometimes. You’re not supposed to give cash to the homeless in case they buy booze with it. Come on.” He took my hand.
I didn’t pull away. We really were playing with each other, toying and testing. I let him swing my hand a little as we made our way back down the hill toward the lot where we’d parked.
“You have a great voice, too, you know,” he said. “It’s not very strong, but if that was your goal, you could take lessons.”
This wasn’t what I’d expected him to say. I walked beside him in stunned silence. His hand around mine now seemed ironic.
“That didn’t come out right,” he said. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“You’re not taking it back, either.”
He turned to me as we walked, watching me silently.
“Wow. Nobody ever told me that before.” With a few words from him, I was reevaluating everything that had happened between Julie and me. “I guess the record company picked my sister because her voice was stronger. And here I thought it was just because she was the one singing melody and getting the attention—and that was only because she got confused when she sang harmony. Nobody ever sat me down and said, ‘Julie is a better singer than you.’ ”
“You have the ideal voice for harmony, high and sweet, and you have perfect pitch. I would kill for perfect pitch.” He squeezed my hand. “Just because she got a development deal doesn’t mean anything is going to come of it. A lot of those deals never pan out. The singer drags herself back to town with her tail between her legs.”
That was not going to happen to Julie. Her development deal had panned out just fine. And the instant I said this to Sam, he would never leave me alone about using her as a door into the industry.
As we walked down Broadway hand in hand, I felt the strangest sense of peace. Resignation might have been a better word. Sam hadn’t meant to insult me when he said my voice wasn’t strong, and he hadn’t. He’d opened my eyes. I was seeing everything, including myself, more clearly than I had in a year.
And my relationship with him was the clearest of all. In the next few days he would start hearing Julie on the radio and find out exactly what her development deal had turned into, and how successful she was about to become. Everything would change then. For now, Sam was mine, and I would enjoy this moment.
He dropped my hand and put his arm lightly around my shoulders. “Bailey, you’ve been avoiding the subject, but please come play with us tonight. I want to play with you. And I just want to be around you. You’re the only person I know on Earth that I can have a conversation about songwriting with who doesn’t have sideburns.” He reached around to touch my other shoulder and stop me. “Be my friend and play with me, please.” He wore a pitiful face with his bottom lip poked out. “Just this once.”
“Just this once,” I mocked him. “That’s what you said last night. Repeatedly.”
“It is for just this once,” he insisted. “Every time. It’s like a movie rental at one of those kiosks. There’s no contract to sign or membership fee. I’m not asking you for anything beyond tonight.”
“Okay,” I said.
His lips parted. He was ready to argue with me. He didn’t seem to know what to do with my agreement. Finally he repeated, “Okay,” and we rounded the corner to our parking lot.
He glanced at his watch. “The gig isn’t for hours. What say we grab some dinner? Then I have to keep a promise. It won’t take long. You can come with me. And then we can swing by your place and let you change.” He nodded to my shoes.
“What about you?” I gestured to his regular-guy, not-a-country-crooner-wear.
“Normally I wouldn’t go in this,” he said, looking down and brushing an imaginary piece of lint from his T-shirt, “but nobody’s going to be looking at me anyway.” He unlocked his truck and opened the door for me. “They’re looking at you.”
9
After twenty minutes on the interstate pointed south of town, we pulled off and stopped at a meat and three that looked a bit dubious to me from the outside. Sam said he’d eaten there a million times, though, and the nearly full parking lot indicated he wasn’t the only fan. As it turned out, he was right and I was wrong. We stuffed ourselves with black-eyed peas and collards and sweet potatoes like candy.
Between bites I asked, “Is there something going on between Ace and Charlotte?”
He seemed surprised. “Not that I know of. Why?”
“They rode to the gig together last night. I got the impression they’re used to doing that.”
He shrugged. “She doesn’t have a car. He can have any car he wants on loan, anytime. They can get her whole drum set in the back of a minivan. My truck bed is open. We couldn’t stop anywhere if we wanted to. We’d be in trouble if it rained.” He sipped his tea, eyeing me over the rim of the glass. “Do you think there’s something going on between them?”
“I think Ace has a thing for Charlotte, and Charlotte has a thing for you.”
He grimaced. “I don’t want to hear it.”
I nodded slowly, thinking about the near-date we were on, and everything Charlotte had warned me about. “I hear you’ve had fifty-two girlfriends in the past year.”
He rolled his eyes. “I wish people would stop saying that. I don’t know who started it, but it’s an exaggeration. I doubt I’ve dated half that.”
“So, more like twenty-six?” I echoed Ace.
Sam shrugged noncommittally, then busied himself with scraping the last forkfuls of food off his plate. He changed the subject to a new song we’d heard on the country station as we drove down here . . . and in midsentence a tune came to me, and lyrics using the trope of the twenty-six girlfriends. I pulled my notebook out of my purse. Angling it carefully so he couldn’t see the staffs, but holding my body casually enough that I hoped I didn’t look like I was trying to hide anything, I scribbled this idea. The illustrations in colored pencil would have to come later. “Just writing something down,” I said defensively when he spoke, though I hadn’t registered what he’d said.
“Bailey.” He put his hand on my shoulder. Looking up from my notebook for the first time, I realized the restaurant crowd had thinned. He was holding a to-go box like he’d had time to go all the way through the buffet line again.
“Still hungry?” I laughed. Quickly I flipped my notebook closed and slipped it into my purse.
“I promised my mom I’d pick her up some dinner.” When we got back in the truck, he handed me the foam box to balance on my bare knees. “I could tell she felt down when she went in to work today. She’s worked a month straight at the car plant without a day off.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “Why?”
“They have a lot of orders. The opposite problem is that they get laid off because they don’t have enough orders. This is hard, but trust me, it’s better.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I thought auto workers had unions to protect them from that kind of thing.”
“They have unions up north, in Detroit. But the car factories moved to the South to get away from the unions. Maybe the workers don’t need them anymore. I mean, yeah, my mom has to work all the time, but she gets paid for it. She gets time and a half and sometimes double time, and I guarantee you no hourly worker in Tennessee has ever seen base pay like this before.”
He slowed down and waved to the uniformed man in a guardhouse, who grinned. He parked in an open space on the fringe of the largest parking lot I’d ever seen. The asphalt gave off waves of heat and scent as we hiked across the lot towar
d the vast factory building. Out front, workers in jeans and uniform polo shirts smoked cigarettes or played peekaboo with visiting toddlers or accepted dinner from family members. As we approached, a tiny, pretty blond lady who looked nothing like Sam left her chat with a group of workers and came toward him with her arms out.
He hugged her without embarrassment and kept his arm around her as he pointed her toward me. “Mom, this is Bailey Wright.”
“Oh! Very nice to meet you.” She shook my hand. Her eyes drifted to the right and took in my asymmetrical haircut. Immediately she turned back to Sam. I knew what she was thinking. She wanted to be nice, but she saw no need to invest time in getting to know me, because I would be replaced next week. I was Girlfriend Twenty-seven.
“You know that job your father wanted you to get?” she asked him.
The smile never left Sam’s lips, but he wasn’t smiling with his eyes anymore. “Yeah, I know that job my father wanted me to get.”
“Jimmy says he has an opening for you on the loading dock, but you have to come in for an interview tomorrow or Tuesday. He wouldn’t grill you or anything. The interview just has to be down on paper. The Japanese want things done a certain way. It’s not like a Ford plant.”
Still smiling, Sam nodded. “I have something else to do tomorrow and Tuesday and every other day Jimmy is available to interview me.”
His mom gave him a warning look. “You have to do something this summer, Sam. Your father thinks this job would be great experience when you switch your major from music to engineering.” She grinned, a joke, and showed him her crossed fingers.
“If my father thinks working on a loading dock would be such great experience,” Sam growled, and I took a step back because I’d never heard this angry tone from him before, “my father should come interview with Jimmy tomorrow or Tuesday. I’ll bet he’s not busy.”
His mom looked hurt, like he’d insulted her as well as Mr. Hardiman. Her gaze slid to me, then back to Sam. “Seriously, Sam. He’s going to make you get a job or get out. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the music career you’re not supposed to be pursuing, would it?”