So I didn’t.
I looked through Lauren, saw Jim-Billy watching me and felt his hand grab mine and give it a squeeze as I walked past him and heard the stilted clapping that got less and less stilted, stronger and stronger, until there were a couple of hoots and a couple more hollers as I took my first step on stage.
I smiled my stage smile, giving handshakes to the band, getting their names, feeling them move close in a huddle and one of them handed me a guitar.
Then he handed me a pick.
“Extra,” he said. “Amped you up. You’re good.”
Fabulous.
“‘Chain Link,’” the lead singer declared. “Vibe’s for rompin’ stompin’ but it would be fuckin’ amazing, Justice, doing ‘Chain Link’ with you.”
He was jazzed. I saw it. He was beside himself he was standing onstage with a Lonesome.
But no way in hell I was doing “Chain Link.” I didn’t want to let the guy down, not any of them, but that was just not happening.
“This vibe, this bar, boys, I got a better idea,” I told them.
They huddled and they must have more than known me because they were all fired up to give up “Chain Link” to do what I always did at my own gigs.
An homage to my mom.
I pulled the guitar strap over my head, settled it on my shoulder.
I moved to the mic stand, adjusted it for my height.
The boys moved to their places.
I looked out at the crowd and put my mouth to the mic.
“Hi. I’m Justice.”
Everyone shot to their feet, cheering and shouting, even if they didn’t know me, the word had gotten around from those who did.
Or they just felt it.
Onstage, Jerry, Johnny, Justice, it just seeped out of us.
No holding it in.
Shit, crap, shit, crap, shit.
“Gonna give you a little bit of what my dad Johnny gave to me and do it through some songs my mom loved,” I told them.
More cheers.
I looked down to the guitar, took the pick to a few strings.
Standing on that stage in front of that crowd, the nothing notes flowed out of the amp.
And right through me, filling me, saturating me, adding something to my system as integral as water, calories, oxygen.
When I felt that—a feeling that was like a lost limb had grown back, or four of them—without hesitation and with a need I’d denied for half a decade, I shot a glance over my shoulder at the band, turned back to the mic, put my fingers to the frets, played two notes and sang three words into the mic…
Then those two notes again and two more words…
And it happened.
A broad smile spread on my face and the Lonesome shot right out of me as I played and sang Linda Rondstadt’s “When Will I Be Loved.”
The crowd went crazy.
And with a band of boys whose names I didn’t remember, to a group of locals I’d have to live among, smiling no stage smile but feeling the rapture of rock ‘n’ roll shine right through, we gave them Linda’s country rock anthem.
Two minutes of pure brilliance.
And dancing, clapping along and shouting the words, the crowd gave it back.
Everyone was out of their seat when we finished so I could offer what anyone onstage feeling what I was feeling, giving what I was giving, getting what I was getting, the two words that said it all but never near enough.
“Thank you.”
More cheers.
One of the boys threw out the beginning of “It’s So Easy” and I went right back to the mic, drawn to it in a way I didn’t even try to resist.
We hadn’t cleared the first verse when I looked out the sides of my eyes to take in the audience to my right and I saw him.
Deke head and shoulders above the back of the standing crowd pressed close to the tables.
No.
Shit, no.
The show went on. It had to.
No matter what.
So I kept singing, turning my head and staring at his blank face.
His expression showed nothing but his eyes were glued to me.
It was a great song. I loved that song. My mother loved, then hated (due to Dad and what that song turned into), then loved again that song.
But right then, staring into Deke’s eyes, it said way too much.
I kept singing it right to him. I couldn’t stop. Music was moving from me, communicating through me (this time right at Deke), and I was a Lonesome. That was in my DNA. If I could use it to say what I had to say, I would do it and my brain couldn’t stop it.
You’d have to rip the guitar from my hands and gag me.
And “It’s So Easy” didn’t have a lot of different words.
But for Deke, it still said it all.
I managed to tear my gaze away during the twanging guitar solo.
But during the harmony at the end and my final notes, my hair flew everywhere as I yanked the guitar strap over my head, holding the guitar out to no one, saying into the mic when the song was done, “Thank you. Thanks for listening. Now keep enjoying this awesome band.”