Chapter Nine
Mackenzie
As soon as I finished the song, my hands started shaking. I couldn't believe it, I still couldn't believe it, even though it was happening, even though it had totally happened. One of my musical icons here, up on this stage, with me! Playing his song, singing a duet with him! This was absolutely mind-blowing and was, without a doubt, one of the highlights of my musical career. James Masters was one of the reasons I'd first picked up a guitar, and Thunder and Rain was one of my favorite songs of all time, so much so that I'd reworked it into my own version and played it as a staple in almost all of my shows. And here I was, playing it with the very man who wrote it!
I couldn't believe I'd gotten through the song without slipping up, but somehow I had. All the nerves and jaw-dropping shock I'd felt when James had walked out onto the stage had vanished as soon as I had started strumming those familiar chords, and when I sang with him, all my notes had been perfect. It had been as if the audience had just vanished, and it was just James sitting with me in my teenage bedroom where I'd spent so many lonely hours learning that song.
I almost couldn't hear the thunderous applause as it resounded all around me, the wild cheers and the adulation of the crowd. None of that mattered – just the joy of this moment. I knew it would be a moment that I'd remember for the rest of my life. I glanced down at one of the tables near the stage and saw Chance smiling up at me as he applauded, and he had a cheeky gleam in his eye – and then I knew that somehow this was his doing. He had somehow arranged for James to come here and play the song with me.
I was surprised, but also happy. Perhaps the rumors about him weren't true. Would he really go to such lengths for someone he just intended to take to bed a few times and then ditch? It couldn't have been an easy task to get someone like James Masters to come out and play with me, a relatively unknown musician, in a bar like this. But he had done it – and he had done it for me.
I beamed a huge, genuine smile and he winked and sipped on his beer. He and I were going to have a good chat when I got off stage, I knew that much. But first, I absolutely had to have a chat with James. Sheesh, I mean, here was one of my musical heroes mere feet away from me! I leaned forward into my mic before James could say anything.
“Ladies and gents, that was the one and only James Masters!” I exclaimed.
The crowd cheered again, and James chuckled and bowed as they applauded. Then he took his mic and spoke.
“And that, ya’ll, was Mackenzie Shea!”
The crowd roared their approval, and I couldn't help but blush because they cheered almost as loud for me as they had for James.
“I want ya’ll to remember this night, because one day when this young lady's name is in lights, and she's playing on festival stages with the best of us, ya’ll can say, 'I saw her before she got big.' And trust me, with a voice like that and songs like hers, she's goin' places! Big places!”
I got off my chair and gave James a big hug, and felt almost as if I was going to burst into tears. I leaned away from the mic so that the audience couldn't hear me speak.
“James, thank you, thank you, thank you! I can't believe that you came out here and did this. You've made a childhood dream of mine come true. You're... you're my hero, you really are.
“It was a pleasure to perform with you, young lady,” he replied with a warm smile. “And I'll tell ya what, with a voice like yours, you're going to be a musical hero to plenty a' kids one day too. And I ain't just sayin' that – I really do believe that you're going to be big. Ya just gotta keep at it, believe in yourself, and never, ever give up.”
We took one last bow for the audience, who applauded again, and then the MC came on stage to announce that the headlining act was about to start. James and I walked off stage and headed into the backstage area, and there I found Chance waiting for us with a grin on his face and three fresh, cold beers in his hand.
“You're done performin', so you can have this now,” he said as he handed me a beer.
“Thank you,” I replied as I took it, smiling broadly at him.
“And this one's for you, old friend,” he said as he handed a beer to James.
“Thank you kindly, young Mr. Lawson,” he said as he took the beer from Chance.
We headed over to a large sofa with a coffee table and sat down on it. It felt good to kick back and relax after the intensity of being up there on stage.
“So you're responsible for this, are you?” I asked Chance. I really couldn't get the grin off my face. The moment was still so surreal.
“He is,” replied James. “I owed Mr. Lawson here a favor or two, and he called one in. I happened to be in Nashville for the weekend, so it all worked out pretty well.”
“Sorry to be so star struck, if that's how I seem, but how is it that you owed Chance a favor?” I asked.
James chuckled.
“I wasn't always a famous country singer, ya know. I ran away from home when I was fifteen. My father was an awful man . . . used to drink all the time, beat up on my mom and sisters. And my mom, she just wouldn't leave him. Couldn't, I guess. He hated me, that man, and I felt the same about him. Got to the point where I just couldn't take it no more, so I took my guitar and a few clothes – only things I owned in the world – and hopped on a timber train with some hobos. I hopped trains all across the country, buskin’ in small towns until cops chased me out. It was good to be free, but it was takin' a toll on my health. I'd sometimes go for days without eatin’ and sleepin' rough in the back a' train cars or under bridges wasn't too good for me neither. I was buskin' one time in Nashville, and Luke Lawson – this man's granddaddy – saw me. He was impressed with my singin' an' playin' but saw that my health was in a real bad way. He told me I could come stay on his ranch if I was willing to put in a hard day's work every day and in exchange for that he'd give me board, lodging, and weekends off to play my music. It saved me, that ranch. It really did. I was able to get healthy again and focus on playin' without havin' to worry about bein' hassled by cops or roughed up by other hobos or bein' robbed and beaten up on the streets. Workin' on the Lawson ranch is where I wrote the songs that would make up my first two albums.”
“Wow!” I said, genuinely impressed. “That's quite a story.”
“And that's why I say to you, Miss Shea, persevere. Stick with your talent. Give it everything you've got. If I can come out on top, comin' from where I came from, you can too. Trust me on that.”
“He speaks words of wisdom, this man does,” interjected Chance. “And he imparted plenty of that on impressionable young me when I was growin' up on the ranch.”
“But...you wouldn't have even been alive at that time,” I commented, feeling a little confused.
“No, I don't mean when James was a young man, working there. I mean when he came to visit when I was a boy. He was already long since famous and accomplished by then, but he still came to the ranch to stay and visit whenever he was passing through Nashville.”
“That's right,” commented James. “I always paid my respects to Luke whenever I came through this town. And, of course, I wanted to see Chance's dad, Bryan, who was just a few years younger than me. He and I spent a lot of time together on the ranch when I was a young man, and we became fast friends. Friends for life, in fact.”
“That's amazing,” I commented. “All this time I knew a personal friend of James Masters and didn't even know it!”
I glanced across at Chance who winked and smiled at me.
“There's a lot you don't know about me,” he commented.
“And a lot you don't know about me,” I countered, smiling.
“And, judging by the looks I see passing between the two of ya’ll,” interjected James with a cheeky smile, “that's a situation that the two of ya’ll need to remedy!”
I blushed, and Chance just chuckled knowingly.
At that moment, the door opened, and Jason and Lilly walked in. Lilly smiled as James stood to greet her. She wasn't star struck at all since she had met him a few times before. Of course, having met plenty of country legends during her time in a famous band, it wasn’t much of a big deal to her. Jason, not being much of a country fan, didn't really know who he was talking to, so he just gave James a polite smile and a handshake. He then greeted Chance, and I could detect a little coldness in the way he greeted him. Perhaps he still believed the rumors he had heard about him.
“Ah, Lilly Wright,” said James with a smile. “One of the most talented sticks-men – or sticks-women, I should say – that I've had the pleasure of seeing perform. Are The Wild Oats ever gonna get back together?”
“I'm not sure if that's gonna happen anytime soon,” Lilly replied. “But I'll let you know if it does.”
“I hope it does!” he exclaimed. “I was one of your biggest fans!”
We all laughed. James' manager then came in and whispered something in his ear.
“Ladies and gents, it's been a pleasure,” he said as he finished off the last sip of his beer, “but I have some pressing engagements I need to attend to, and a few fans waiting outside for autographs.”
A sudden impulse struck me, and I jumped up off the sofa.
“Wait a second, James,” I blurted out. “Before you go and do those autographs, can you do one for me?”
He smiled. “Of course, lovely lady. You got a notepad handy?”
“Not on paper – on my guitar.”
He raised an eyebrow. “But that's a beautiful instrument you've got there. Are you sure you want to mar it with writin'?”
“Trust me, James, it's not marring it. It'll only add to its beauty. Like I said, you're one of my musical heroes, and after hearing the story about where you came from, seeing your autograph on my guitar every time I pick it up to play will inspire me more than anything else could.”
He nodded. “Since you put it like that, why, I'd be honored to autograph your guitar.”
His manager found a permanent marker pen while I went and fetched my guitar. I watched with a smile as I handed it to him, and he signed his name in the thick, black ink of the sharpie. I then gave him one last hug, and then we all said farewell to him.
Jason, meanwhile, had gone off to fetch us a fresh round of beers. When he returned with them, he set them down on the coffee table.
“You two sounded amazing up there,” Lilly said. “You really did.”
“It was a dream come true,” I gushed. “And Chance here made it happen.”
Lilly turned to him and nodded. “That was a real decent thing to do, Chance,” she said.
“Well, you have to admit, she did deserve it after I was so rude on the first date,” he replied.
“I'm the friend who went and met her at the restaurant and ran up such a big tab on your card, by the way,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
He chuckled. “No, no, no. No need to apologize for that. I told ya’ll, I deserved it.”
Lilly had always been a more direct person than me, so she cut right to the chase.
“Can you tell us now, at least, why you got up and left like that?” she asked.
I hadn't expected her to be so abrupt about it, but now it was out there, we could only see how he would react. He didn't seem to mind, though.
“Sure. It's like this. I'm sure ya’ll have heard of Circle B Beef.”
Jason nodded. “One of the biggest producers of beef in North America, yeah.”
“Yeah. Well, they want my ranch, ya see. And they've been tryin' their darndest to get their paws on it by any means necessary. They wanna take over all the ranches in my area, and use ‘em for one gigantic mass feedlot. I've refused every offer they've made on the land though. That ranch had been in my family for generations, and that land is my daughter's birthright too. I sure as hell ain't gonna sell it out to corporate interests like that – especially not a corporation like Circle B. They'll destroy the land and pollute the creek with their feedlot. And it's not just the fact that it's my ranch – there are people on the ranch who have been there almost their whole lives, like my foreman Andy. That ranch is all he knows, and if it were taken away, I don't know what he'd do.”
“I see,” replied Lilly. “But what does all of that have to do with you running out of the date that night?”
“Everything,” replied Chance. I could see the same look of anger beginning to darken his features as he thought about the events of that evening. “Y' see, seeing as their conventional methods of negotiation had failed with me, those bastards at Circle B started resorting to more, shall I say, unconventional methods to try to persuade me to part with my land. And on the night I went out with Mackenzie to the restaurant, someone came onto my ranch and poisoned my favorite stallion.”
“Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “Is he all right? How could they do such a thing?”
“He only barely survived, but he's slowly regaining his strength.”
Before the conversation could continue, however, my phone rang. I checked to see who it was, and saw that it was my mother. I knew that I had to take this call.
“Hi. Mom,” I said.
I could hear right away that something was wrong – and I knew what it was. This was the call I'd been dreading getting for a while. This was what had been gnawing away at me for months, ever since I'd found out about my dad’s condition.
“It's your father,” she said, her voice shaky with emotion. “You better come now, Mackenzie, you better come right now.”