NINETEEN
Fallon
By the time we’d checked in to our hotel, which for a midnight staff took longer than it damn well should have, Augusta was wide awake, singing full songs under her breath and interjecting her own, often more clever lyrics into the stanzas.
Just as the clock was inching past three in the morning, she was breaking into a rendition of Queen I’d never quite heard before. “This performance has been truly awe-inspiring, but a few hours of sleep would probably be the adult thing.”
“Let’s go for a walk.” She dug through her backpack and found something long-sleeved to pull over herself, and she was opening the door, eyes on me and waiting.
“You’re shittin’ me.”
She shook her head, grin widening by each aggravating second.
I shoved a hand through my hair, not even considering for more than a half a second tellin’ her no.
I grinned, pullin’ my own jacket back over my shoulders and followin’ her out the door.
After dropping into an all-night convenience store for hot coffee and a bag of the freshest donuts I’d ever sunk my teeth into, we crossed the river and ambled through neighborhoods and rows of old homes.
She told me about the girls she’d gone to school with in Mississippi, how she kept in touch with none of them because the reminder of why they were all there was just too much. She filled me in on her favorite professors in college, and how she’d never spent so many sleepless nights as she did in the hours leading up to her biology exams.
And she kept writing.
Music felt like the one thing pullin’ us together. Was it the thing that would eventually pull us apart?
We watched the dawn come up over the horizon, church steeples as far as the eye could see, our bottoms planted firmly on the little front porch of the tiny white clapboard home Elvis was born in. She’d thought it was ridiculous that the museum didn’t open until nine, and when I pointed out that was pretty par for the course with museums, she stated defiantly that I was ridiculous.
Augusta Belle, tellin’ me the sky was green just to argue.
Augusta’d peeked into all the windows, hands up to the glass and nose pressed to the pane like a little kid, and hell if experiencin’ it all with her hadn’t made my heart skip a beat.
Being with her again felt like seein’ the world through new eyes, and damn if that didn’t feel good after living gig to gig all alone on the road.
Maybe that old man was right. Maybe I had seen too much, but who the hell hadn’t?
And what could we do about it?
Not a goddamn thing. My own crime had been spendin’ so much time dwellin’ on what I’d thought happened.
“It’s amazing all the things this guy did so young.” She referred to Elvis with a swipe of her hand, gesturing to the house behind us. “Some people are just born to break every mold.”
“My mama was always singin’ along to old Elvis songs when I was a kid—before she got hooked on things she couldn’t get away from. We’re only as strong as our weakest vice, I guess. This man made all that music in only twenty years. Changed the game the way he brought blues and bluegrass sounds together and created rock ’n’ roll. Imagine all the ways he could have kept revolutionizing if…” I trailed off, mind runnin’ wild as I thought about my own experience in Nashville. “If the machine wouldn’t have eaten him up.”
Augusta Belle edged herself a little closer, her soft scent invading my nostrils. “You excited for the show tonight?”
I was pulled from my thoughts, rubbing a hand through my beard. “Don’t really get excited anymore.”
“Really?” she asked. “Isn’t that a problem, then?”
“A problem?” I laughed. “Not that I know of.”
“I mean…” She uncrossed her legs, recrossing the opposite way as the shadows turned to light around us. “Aren’t you supposed to like your job?”
“I do.” I shrugged.
“Well, do you ever want to do something in music that excites you again?”
“Meaning what?” I rubbed at the back of my neck, the three hours in the truck finally catchin’ up to my old bones.
“I dunno. I guess I just mean you’re better than sticky dive bars and watered-down whiskey.” Her eyes focused on a point off in the distance.
“Those sticky dive bars are my home,” I replied.
“Sure, but maybe there’s something else.”
“Nah, there’s not.”
She shook her head, exasperation creeping into her voice. “One bad experience in Nashville doesn’t mean the whole industry is bad.”
“If you’d been there, you’d realize that, yes. Yes, it is.”
She continued on. “Carve your own way in this business, that’s all I’m saying. You have way more talent than even you know, Fallon Gentry. Whatever happens, don’t ever doubt that.”
I turned her words over in my mind, wondering if she was right. I loved being onstage, but maybe that time of my life was over. I suddenly didn’t feel the burning desire to chase something off in the distance—or to run from a past that wouldn’t stay there.
“First light of day is always my favorite,” she mused, arms pressed into the worn wood of the old but recently painted porch we were probably illegally trespassing on at that moment.
“Somethin’ about mornin’, starting over, sunshine on your face, can’t be beat.” A beam of sunlight peeked over the steeple of the church across the street, splitting the light into two fractals and creating a halo.
“It’s beautiful,” she said, voice sounding far off. “It’s the most peaceful moment of the day. I never knew what the next minute might bring when I was growing up in such a chaotic situation, but in that split second, I always knew I was okay.”
I looped one of my fingers with hers, giving her a quick nod before lookin’ up to the sun and wishin’, not for the first time in my life, that Augusta Belle and I could just be left alone. We didn’t need any more shit the universe had to throw us because we were really fucking good right here, just like this.
“Come on, Augusta Belle. Nothin’ good came of the last time I kept you out till dawn.”
She shook her head, threading her fingers between mine before, hand in hand, we stood and walked down the little tree-lined path that led up to Elvis’s house, no looking back for either one of us from that point forward.
And for the first time, I thought maybe music was the blessing that knit her and me together, not just the glue we relied on.
No woman had ever understood me the way this one did. It was true then and even truer now.