Cowboy Sing Me Home (16 page)

            She wasn’t a liar.  Not to other people,
and most definitely not to herself.  And ignoring something was a kind of lie. 
Like the way she’d been trying to ignore the fact that she was jealous of Luke
and his friends.

            She could remember the day she realized
her life was not what most people lived.  She’d been seven, stopped at a
Laundromat in Flagstaff, when she’d struck up a conversation with another girl
around her own age.  They’d been playing Charlie’s Angels, running up and down
between the rows of machines with their fingers drawn as pretend guns, the
scent of laundry detergent and fabric softener on the humid air, pushing each
other in the rolling laundry baskets, until Dusty’s mother said it was time for
them to leave.  The girl – Dusty couldn’t remember her name but she could still
see her clearly – had wanted to know if Dusty could come to her house and play,
and her mother said it would be better if the girl could come to their motel
room and they could swim in the motel pool.

            “You’re on vacation?” the little girl
asked.

            “Honey, we’re always on vacation,” her
mother answered, grinning and stroking Dusty’s hair.  “We live on vacation.”

            The little girl had been very impressed by
this, and ran to ask her permission to go.  But when her mother found out they
were just passing through, and that Dusty’s parents were playing at one of the
local nightclubs, she refused, and held her daughter closely to her until Dusty
and her mother left.

            Dusty was quiet in the car all the way
back to the motel, and her mother’s repeated attempts to cheer her up did
little to drag her mind from the horrible conclusion that not only was she
different than other kids, she was not as good.  That other mother had held her
daughter like she was protecting her from certain danger.  She was the kind of
person a mother had to protect her children from.

            Her mother and father had played in the
pool with her that night, acting so desperately silly in their attempts to
cheer her up that she pasted on a smile and let them think she didn’t notice
that she had no friends, that playing with them was just as good as playing
with boys and girls her own age.

            And most of the time it
had
been as
good, even better.  They’d had great times, the three of them.  Nothing would
ever change that, and no matter what else, she could not fault her parents for
living the life they wanted to live, and showing her a world few others got to
see.  Except for a very few moments, she would not have changed her life, if
given the choice.

            She had always been on the outside,
wherever she went.  Most of the time, that was fine by her.  She didn’t need to
be surrounded by friends and family.  She was comfortable with her own
company. 

            But the fact remained that when she saw
Luke and his friends, and the easy way they had around each other, she was
jealous.  She didn’t know what that meant.  She didn’t know what she was going
to do about it.  She did know, however, that she wasn’t going to deal with it
tonight, when she had an important gig facing her.  This town was paying her to
perform, and she was going to deliver.

            She put the feelings and confusion on the
back burner in her mind, acknowledging that they were there and had to be dealt
with.  But not tonight.

            Alone under the back door light, with the
solid and familiar feel of the guitar in her hands, Dusty felt her mind begin
to settle.  Unconsciously she began to play, not more scales as she’d intended,
but flamenco she’d picked up from the months she’d toured south Texas.  Here,
alone with her guitar, she was home.  No longer the outsider, no longer the odd
man out.  Here, with the curve of the guitar beneath her breast, she was where
she belonged.

            She let herself drift with the sure
knowledge that she’d come back to the present before it was time to go on
stage.  She closed her eyes and let herself sink into the flowing notes, let it
carry her on a floating carpet to the place where the world was right, where it
was okay – good, even – to be alone.  Her fingers took over for her, the
knowledge of the music alive in her hands, and she was nothing more than a
conduit for the magic that lived in the tone of a metal string stretched across
wood.

            She became a part of the music, melded
with it and felt herself expand, thin and broad and fluid as mercury, until she
was
the music.

            Watching her from twenty yards away, Luke
had to remind himself to breathe.  He’d stopped when he’d first spotted her
under the light, her head tilted back, blonde hair free and flowing down her
back, her face serene, and he’d been unable to start again since.  It was only
then that he realized he’d never seen her peaceful before.  Determined,
scornful, laughing, challenging, and haughty.  But never peaceful.

            He thought she was unaware of his
presence, but it wouldn’t have mattered if an entire stadium of people were
watching.  She was the only inhabitant of the world she was in right now.

            The night air was still warm, but cooler
than his hot skin, and he could hear the thud of his own heart, keeping time
with the music.  Her fingers flew across the strings, untamed, the song a
living thing that showed itself through her hands.  On her lips was the
slightest – and yet somehow the deepest – smile he’d ever seen.

            If she had changed her mind about tonight,
he didn’t know how he was going to handle it.  He ached for her.  In a
physical, cerebral, and emotional way that lived in the center of him and
spread to everything in and around him. He watched her, and that want had a
taste, a smell, a feel.  And a face.  He wanted her with an intensity that
unnerved him, threw off his balance and made him weak.  He wanted to be in that
world where she was now, and felt a true sense of loss that, no matter what she
offered, he would never have that.

            He would have been content to watch her
while eternity passed, but she lowered her head, her fingers still moving but
lighter, softer, teasing notes in the night, and slowly she opened her eyes. 
Heavy-lidded, her gaze met his unerringly; as if she’d known all along he stood
there.  The mossy green of them was like a live jewel, lit from within.  She
continued to play, her gaze locked to his.  He felt drugged, as if he’d entered
a world where the air was water and the ground under his feet was gone.  He
wanted to stay in that world.

            So when Stevie poked his head out the door
behind Dusty, Luke had to fight to keep from throwing himself at him.

            “Oh, there you are.  Are you guys –”

            “We’ll be in in a minute,” Dusty said, her
eyes still on Luke.

            Stevie took one look at Luke, bobbed his
head and jerked inside so quickly he banged his head on the doorjamb.

            She slowly stopped playing and sat still,
looking at him, he looking at her.  The cocoon they’d been locked together in
ripped silently at the seam, letting in the rest of the world by bits and
pieces.  He heard the jukebox, the crowd inside, even crickets from the field
behind the club.  He could breathe again, smell cigarette smoke and exhaust
from the cars in the parking lot.

            “Well.”  Her voice cut through all other
sensations and vibrated in him.   “Are we really going to do this?”

            She wasn’t talking about the gig.  He knew
that as certainly as he knew what lived between them was special, a
once-in-a-lifetime kind of special.  He’d known plenty of women, had enjoyed
their company.  Never had he felt this connection on a primal level.  The only
thing that kept him from turning tail and running, terrified by the enormity of
it, was the surety that she felt it too.

            “Yes,” he said, his throat closed so
tightly he could barely squeeze out the word.  “We are.”

            She was silent for a long time.  Then he
saw – even though he couldn’t see – something shift inside her.  Sensed
something halt, and back up.  She looked off, took a deep breath, and lifted
her gaze to his again.  And when she did, the connection was gone.  Gone so
completely that he had to wonder if it had ever really been there at all. 

            It was 9:30 p.m., eighty-five degrees
outside, and the night air chilled his skin when she stood, turned away, and
said over her shoulder, “Okay, let’s do it.”

            The room inside was filling up when they
came back in, a sea of cowboy hats and big hair.  Luke surveyed the room with
satisfaction.  He saw many familiar faces, but some strangers, too, which meant
the money they’d spent to advertise Rain Fest in the surrounding areas was
paying off.

            He looked at Dusty, who had one eye on the
crowd while giving the stage a last going-over, too.  She gave the band a
two-minute warning. The jukebox played, but wasn’t loud enough to be more than
a faint tune under the crowd.  Dusty had decided earlier that they’d launch
into a fast song and then she’d introduce them, rather than having Rodney come
up and do it.

            When it was clear they were as ready as
they were going to be, Dusty nodded to Rodney across the crowded dance floor. 
He unplugged the jukebox.

            Dusty counted them off, and they launched
like a top into “Whiskey River.” 

            It was liquid magic, Luke thought.  The
adrenalin pumped through the band as if they were one body. 

            Dusty opened her mouth and that voice –
that powerful, smoky, sexy voice – came out, and he knew immediately they had
the crowd hooked.  By the end of the first verse, every eye in the house was on
Dusty.  Luke looked down at Corinne and Becca, who were stared drop-jawed at
her.  Toby elbowed Corinne and mouthed, “See.  I told you.”

            Luke couldn’t help but grin.  He’d played
this bar more times than he could count, but they’d never sounded this good. 
He looked back at Stevie, who looked utterly stupefied with satisfaction.

            By the end of “Whiskey River,” they had
the crowd’s attention. 
She
had their attention.  When the last note
sounded, a whoop went up, and Luke heard no less than three declarations of
love from rowdy cowboys.

            “Thank you,” Dusty said when she could
finally be heard.  “Thanks so much.  I’m Dusty Rhodes, and this, of course, is
the talented and infamous Black Horse Band.”  Again the crowd whooped, and Luke
watched with inexplicable pride as Dusty visibly relaxed.  She smiled and
nodded to the crowd, comfortable and easy, as if they were just a few friends
in her living room, rather than a crowded bar full of strangers.  “Aren’t they
great?   It’s a pleasure to work with such talented musicians.”  She adjusted
her guitar strap.  “And it’s a pleasure to see all of you turning out for the
First Annual Aloma Rain Fest.  It’s good of you to come out in this heat.”  She
turned to Luke and gave a barely perceptible nod.

            As they’d rehearsed earlier, he stepped up
to the mike to do his spiel.  “We are thrilled to have such a turnout on our
first night.  We have great shows lined up for tonight and tomorrow night, and
you’ll want to come back next weekend, too.  Tumbleweeds has generously agreed
to donate a portion of the proceeds from the door and from the bar to the Rain
Fest collection.  So drink up!”

            The crowd roared and Dusty counted them
down to the next song.  The dance floor filled immediately, and Luke settled
into the energy that flowed through the room.  He watched Dusty as she sang,
feeling an odd sense of de ja vu.  Not as if he’d been here before but as if,
now that he was here, he’d always known he would be.  His fingers moved over
the strings of his guitar automatically, the rhythm of the bass beating in time
with his heartbeat.  But the rest of him was taken up with watching Dusty.  Her
throat muscles working as she sang, her lips gliding over the words, her hair
swinging in a sheet of gold down her back as she moved.

            Some people were born to be on stage. 
Luke knew that, and knew that though he did his best and wasn’t half bad in
public, he wasn’t one of them.  Dusty was.  She kept the crowd eating out of
the palm of her hand, conveying an easy, intimate attitude that said they were
all friends.  She kept a short but steady stream of banter going in between
songs, calling a few of the townspeople by name, keeping them engaged, and
making that connection between the stage and the crowd that was so crucial.

            This was her home, he realized.  Monday
night when they’d first danced, she’d said the road was her home.  But she was
wrong.  The stage was her home.

            They flew through the first set like they’d
been playing together for years.  Luke could feel the high spirits of the rest
of the band, could see it in the smiles on their faces and hear it in the
confidence with which they played.  When Dusty announced the last song of the
set, the air of triumph they all felt was palpable.

            Before she could count them down to the
last song, Luke leaned into his microphone.  “I have another idea.”