Nashville Chrome (25 page)

She wonders idly if there was some point in time at which everything began to turn inexorably and subtly from great to poor; if in the path of her life and their lives there was some precise switchplate that was activated, taking them off one path of wholeness and fullness and directing all of them down a lonely, splintering path toward failure and isolation.

What day, what event, what hour? She tries to remember the day they scattered Norma's ashes but isn't even sure she was there. The middle is so foggy; once the quick fame was gone, she lost her way entirely.

Was there one exact day when the fire went out and life changed over from wonder into a cold, long march? Where is the heat, where is the warmth, where is the recklessness they all once possessed, in a time when there was no envy or fear or longing? Is she imagining it, that she—they—had once had that, and walked away from it?

As much as she'd like to blame it on Tommy, she doesn't think that was it. She thinks the subtle flexure, the infinitesimal leave-taking—the whisper of betrayal, whisper of failure—must have come at some earlier point in her life.

There's nothing to be done about it now; no way to go so far back and fix or repair that mistake. She remembers how Chet, always concerned with their welfare, saw that in her instantly, the regret and guilt and fear that in stepping from one land to the next, she might not step forcefully enough and might fall through the cracks, ending up in neither land—abandoning home but missing great fame.

She remembers a late-night talk she and Chet had near the beginning of the middle part of her career, when she first suspected things might be changing. He would have known it long before she even suspected it, and would have been doing his level best to keep that slow creep of obscurity from happening; and he would have been working also to keep her from the terror of suspecting it.

They were recording an album—she can't remember which one—and they were staying at his home in the country. Bonnie and Jim Ed had already gone to bed after but a single nightcap, exhausted from the perfection that Chet had requested of them all day—but Maxine was still wanting to stay up and be kept company, still sipping from her shot glass and telling stories. She wanted to hear stories, too—but that evening Chet didn't want to talk about other musicians, or even the Brown trio and their sound, but instead wanted to visit about Maxine.

She remembers that he kept asking her, with real concern—with too much concern, she thought—how she was doing, how she was
really
doing. It was not his way to probe into their private lives—for all its intimacy, their relationship was about the music they shared and made together, with everything else being so secondary as to almost not even exist. But that one night he was not talking about music and kept asking her that same question—"How are you really doing?"—with a gentle insistence that told her that he cared, and that he did not want to let her off the hook this time with banter or more whiskey or stories.

She almost buckled. She almost told him. Her eyes watered, though she allowed no tears to spill over, and gradually the tears dried without falling. She didn't say she was fine—she wouldn't lie to Chet—but she wouldn't tell him the truth either. Better to keep it inside and burn it up in the slow smoldering, the incineration. She told him nothing, acknowledged no fear or weakness, and in so doing, fell ever deeper, tumbling.

She remembers how he kept pushing: the one and only time he ever attempted such ministrations. It made her eyes water again, remembering how close what he was saying was to the counsel or warning that Birdie had given her some years earlier. She had already begun to have her various illnesses by this time, but Chet wasn't so much worried about those—the hysterectomy, the appendectomy, the bleeding spleen, the bladder tumor—and instead was zeroing in on the critical thing, the way his genius (was it its own curse, like hers, or only a blessing?) allowed him to do.

"You know, Max," he said, "regret can eat you up worse than any cancer, can leave you riddled like a piece of Swiss cheese." He paused then, to ease the tension in the room—what exactly was he accusing her of?—and poured the tiniest bit of whiskey into a shot glass for himself, and gave her another splash.

He took a sip of his own, though he did not offer a toast, and she could see him pulling back, drawing inward, giving up, disappointed, even as she wanted him to ask her just one more time if everything was all right, and how she was really doing.

He was talking about music now, not about her. It was still her music he was talking about, but he wasn't speaking entirely to her. He might have been speaking to himself, or even to his God or the Muse that nurtured him yet kept him captive.

"You can hear that kind of regret in a song," he was saying. "It's one of the loneliest sounds there is. You can hear it like the wind whistling through an old board filled with holes. It's a different sound from longing or wanting. It's the loneliest sound there is, and it's not comfortable, listening to it. It's raw and cold and it needs adjusting, too." He took another small sip, finishing his glass. He was becoming almost clinical now, looking at her with not so much concern or even pity but instead just the old cool studiousness. The admiration, but maybe not love. Maybe a protective step back from that now.

"It's a tricky business," was all he said, and they never spoke of it again.

This is no good,
she thinks,
this damned downward spiral.
Maybe there is a reason she can't remember the middle years; maybe it's a mercy.
All right, then,
she tells herself,
what was the best day of your life?
When, on the other side of the switchplate, did the best day of her life occur? Or if not the best day, then the day when she had begun to think of herself as selected or chosen, and in need of pursuing whatever the name of it was, the thing that still, even now, lies just a little farther on.

She's trying to remember a day without singing—a day before singing, when someone, or the world itself, might have seen her or known her for anything other than her voice—but she can't; not even as a child. Her identity is her voice. Was her voice. Not even her fame is her identity, but before that, her voice. How in the world can she ever possibly expect to get back to that? What a miracle that it ever was once that way.

There was almost such a day. There was part of such a day. She had been six—was already a singer, and loved it, but still possessed a freedom, was not yet owned by it but simply still in partnership with it. She had been able to walk toward it and yet able to walk away.

It was late October, her favorite time of year. She had started school; there was that wonder and newness to deal with, though Jim Ed and Bonnie had not yet begun, and so there was an extra freedom, an extra bit of the pioneering spirit she always carried. She was coming home from school; the school bus, a marvelous adventure, more luxurious to her then than any limousine she would ever ride in subsequently, dropped her off every day at the end of the county road, still a mile from home. There was certainly no gas to be wasted by having a car meet her at the end of the road, nor was there time in either Birdie's or Floyd's schedule for that extravagance. Birdie had met her at the top of the road the first day and had walked back with her, asking how her day had gone and making sure that Maxine remembered the way home, but after that, the journey had been all Maxine's.

It was only a thirty-minute walk—forty if she dawdled—but it was all hers, the first time in her life she had had such space and time to herself, with neither the obligation of watching after or caring for Jim Ed and Bonnie. Sometimes she would hum and sing on her walks home, other times not. The best part was always after the long bus had made its groaning big turn and headed back away from her and she was left there, standing alone, as if on a stage. It's hard for her to remember now the girl who had thought that was such a treasure, such a treat.

She would stand there in the first silence after the bus had gone away and look around at the immensity of the lane down which she would be traveling, and at the blue sky beyond the tops of those trees, and she would be seized with a happiness, a joy so fierce as to be almost frightening: a joy that was as unquestionable as it was inexplicable and unearned. She had done nothing to deserve such upwelling, she knew, and knew also that no one in the world had ever experienced such euphoria; certainly, she had never witnessed it in anyone in her family. It made her feel alien and secret, but in no way did she want to give up the secret. It was almost always there, in the silence, and in the walking.

On warm days there would be box turtles on the trail, the red and orange and brown patterns on their skulls perfectly matched to the hues and tones of the fallen leaves, so that it was impossible not to understand that the earth had made them, had breathed them up from the soil with a desire for there to be a perfect match and fittedness. The turtles moved slowly through the leaves, in that mild sunlight, as if there were so little difference and distance between the animate and the inanimate as to render any of the old rules and laws of life irrelevant, or inaccurate—as if she had stepped into a new land, new territory, where other, better laws applied.

Birds flitted in the roadside privet, birds with names she did not know, and the sound of the birds she did know: crows fussing over something in a language so familiar to her that she no longer thought of it as fussing, instead found it only a comfort, and the ax-like drumming of woodpeckers back in the swamp, the smaller flickers and the showy pileateds. Floyd had talked about seeing the Lord-God woodpeckers, the ivorybills, when he was younger and working in the woods with his father, but they were gone now, and she supposed it was no one's fault—they had simply been too rare and special, and went away.

Perhaps best of all was the dry, gentle rustling of the leaves as the breeze stirred them, and the slightly louder rustling of them as she trudged in a straight line through them, chosen for happiness.

The creek, then, with its broad gurgle as she approached it, and, gradually, the faint sounds of the mill. Every sound in the world was hers, every sound surrounded her, was made for her, poured into her, and gave her the power of her joy. She could barely stand it, and although she would soon enough become accustomed to her duties and obligations of watching over Jim Ed and Bonnie, she was not yet fully enmeshed in that identity: she was just a girl singing, other times walking, and free from everything.

The day she remembers singularly from all the other walks was little different from any other, with but one exception. It was the day the sandhill cranes went over, birds she did not recall having ever heard before, or certainly having ever seen.

She heard their cries from a long way off, and at first confused them with the much-familiar honking and braying of geese.

As the sound drew closer, however, she quickly was able to discern the difference. The cranes' callings were a rhythmic, gravelly croak, sounding both exultant, like the geese, and labored, somehow more primitive. Not imperfect, but rough; and in that roughness, there was power. In no way did they seem to fit the sky—instead, they seemed to be fighting the sky—but in that conflict, they seemed also to be imbued with tremendous power.

They came closer—she could see them through the trees now, wings rising and falling slowly, long necks outstretched, and long legs—and she had never seen anything like them. They looked like dinosaurs—as if they had come flying in from the past—and she realized with a mix of excitement and some small fear that they were coming her way. She watched them draw closer and thought about calling out to them, even trying to imitate them, but for some reason dared not. They flew low over the tops of the trees, still croaking, and instinctively she pressed tight against a tree and watched as they flared, circled, then began landing in a small field on the other side of the hedge, their long legs outstretched like those of men and women, and long wings uplifted.

Landing heavily in the field, more like paratroopers than birds, with no transition or settling-in whatsoever, they began striding and strutting, flapping their wings and bobbing their heads with their long beaks as if moving to some music only they could hear, even as the sky still held the echo of their croaking calls.

Some of them began pecking at insects in the field, crickets and grasshoppers made sluggish by the October sun, and Maxine remained motionless, watching and listening, as the birds muttered to one another.

Finally—frightened, yet rapt at witnessing this other nation, this gathering, unobserved—she made some small inadvertent movement that one of the cranes noticed. The bird's eyes widened in fear, and with a great rasping shout it took three quick steps across the field and launched itself into flight, with all the others following it immediately, unquestioning as to what had alarmed their compatriot, understanding only that they had to leave, though not knowing how or why; and at such leave-taking, Maxine felt a small, deep pleasure, a pride and power, though some shame as well.

The birds rose around her with a clapping of wings, bodies awkward at first and brushing against one another—though in seconds they had gained grace, had sorted themselves out and were in a flock once more, circling low over the field and flying away, spying her now with their keen eyes—and then they were gone and there was only their sound, as beautiful as before.

Maxine leaned against the tree moments longer, feeling weak-legged, partly wanting the birds to return but also wanting to be going before they returned, if they did decide to return. She pushed away from the tree and hurried home.

And when Birdie asked her what had taken her so long, Maxine was surprised by her evasiveness, saying only that she had gotten tired and stopped to rest.

For some reason it seemed important to her to hold on to her secret. As if it was some slight distance she could keep between herself and everyone, even her beloved family. As if that distance was something she felt she might somehow need someday, despite the way things would turn out, and the way they would be drawn together, woven into the brittleness of what lay waiting.