Another Wednesday. Another day with Lucy in tow.
Rayna could hardly admit it but she was starting to enjoy the older woman's company. It was especially nice on a week like this when the girls were with Teddy. She always missed them something awful when they were gone, even though the time alone with Deacon was nice too. They usually spent most of those off weeks at his place. Where he reveled in the fact that he wasn't limited to sleeping on the couch.
"What kind of fabulous adventures are you taking me on today, my dear?" Lucy asked cheerfully, meeting her at the front door of Deacon's house on Wednesday morning.
Rayna laughed as she led her inside. "Fabulous adventures, huh? Well I don't know about that. My girls are with Teddy this week. So I need to try and get as much work done as possible. I'm headed to sound check for a planning meeting with Juliette and the new band opening for her tour. Nothing too spectacular. I'm sure with all the people you've written about, there's other lives that are a lot more exciting than ours."
"Oh, I don't know," Lucy surmised. "I've done my share of traveling around. Hell, I followed Will Sharpton around for near a year. He even got me to like whiskey. But sometimes watching a family come together is just as fun."
Deacon walked out of the kitchen then. He raised his coffee cup in salute. Lucy raised her thermos.
"I'll just be a second," Rayna said. "I have a stack of demos upstairs I need to grab, and then we'll be on our way."
Lucy was already taking inventory of his house.
"Dead animals and guitars," she said. "This is a bonafide man-hut."
"That it is," he said with a smile. "Can't lie. Lived by myself here for a long time, except for my niece on and off. Still getting used to the curling irons and makeup sneaking their way into my bathroom."
"What are the two of you planning on doing after you're married?"
"We haven't decided yet," he admitted. "I want them to move in here, Rayna doesn't want to uproot the girls again. Talked about selling both and buying something of our own. But this one…this is special though. Ray and I lived in this house together. In the beginning."
Lucy patted his arm. "Those girls will be just fine, don't you worry. They will be happy wherever the two of you are happy. Tell me about these guitars hanging on the wall over here. Must be important. Look pretty special."
He laughed softly. "I guess you could say that. That's my first guitar. That empty spot, that's for Rayna's first one. It's still Maddie's favorite, so she snags it to play a lot."
Lucy examined the beat up wooden guitar closely. "Looks pretty old."
He smiled. "Yeah, it was already old 35 years ago, so you can imagine."
"Who gave it to you?"
"Nobody," he said. "Got it myself."
"Well, who taught you to play?"
"There were these older kids down the street," he recalled. "Who had a band. Think they musta felt sorry for me. They let me hang around and watch them practice, and taught me to play."
He stared at the beloved guitar on the wall, taken back to all those years ago when he was that struggling kid in Mississippi. Just trying to figure out where he belonged…..
############################
Deacon got his first guitar out of the trash when he was was twelve years old. He could hardly believe his luck. It was just sitting there on someone's pile of junk, all broken strings and dusty and waiting for garbage day.
Without a second thought, he picked it up and carried it home. He shined it up and went around collecting cans and bottles to get money to buy strings, even know he didn't know anything about guitars or how to string them.
But Jimmy Porter, that kid down the street around the corner, he did. Jimmy was 16 and could drive, and when you went down the block and to that side of the railroad tracks, you were in the "good" part of town. Jimmy lived in a fancy house and drove a shiny black car, and didn't seem to give a damn which part of town he lived in, he just wanted to play music. Him and his friends would rehearse til the wee hours of the morning, pissing off all the neighbors, and not caring one bit.
More than once Deacon had snuck out of his house when his dad was passed out in the chair, and sat outside in the bushes behind Jimmy's garage in the dark, listening to them play.
Now, he sucked up his courage and went over there. The garage was open today and they were practicing like always, him and three other guys banging out an amped up version of a Hank Williams song.
"Hey kid," Jimmy stopped playing and put down his guitar. "What you got there?"
"I need some guitar strings," he said. "Where do I get em?"
Jimmy kind of looked at him funny. "This is a Martin D-28. Prolly worth a mint even banged up. Where the hell did you get this guitar?"
"Don't matter," he said stiffly. 'I found it and it's mine. I need to get some strings so I can play it."
"You know how to play?"
He didn't answer him.
"Tell you what," Jimmy said as he lit up a cigarette.
Deacon couldn't believe that Jimmy got to do that. He was just standing outside in front of that fancy house smoking cigarettes like it was nobody's business. He wanted to be like that. Just do whatever you want and not give a damn and nobody could stop you.
"I'll put some strings on it for ya. I got lots of extras laying around. Come back tomorrow. Same time."
Deacon didn't want to leave it. He was afraid he'd never see it again.
But Jimmy kept his promise. He did a hell of a lot more than that. He taught him to play, and he taught him to put words to music.
And in the end, that was what got him out.
###################################
"Sounds like a real nice kid," Lucy commented. "You know what ever happened to him?"
"Yeah," Deacon said slowly. "He died. He joined the Air Force after he graduated high school and I never saw him again. Guess that was his way out. Got killed in a training accident when I was about 15 or so."
"Oh what a shame. A Real shame."
"It sure is," he said. "I woulda been nothing I am today without that kid around."
"Funny isn't it," Lucy said quietly. "How random people shape your life in little ways that have such a huge impact."
"You're a pretty smart old lady."
"I've been around for a long time, Mr. Claybourne," she said. "I notice things."
"You might as well be calling me Deacon by now," he said. "You know enough about all of us, that I would guess you're gonna be called family by the time this book is done. And this family is hard to get out of."
"What about you?" Lucy asked. "Your family? What ever happened to that mom and sister you mentioned a few weeks back."
He got sort of a funny look on his face. "Let's save that one for another day, huh?"
Rayna came back downstairs then, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. "See you later, Babe. Lucy and I are going to Soundcheck. Get some writing done, huh? Enjoy the peace and quiet."
He watched them go and sat down with his guitar on the back porch. And started thinking.
Thinking about the parts of the story he'd been reluctant to let Lucy in on…..
##########################################
His mother died when he was 16. She didn't have cancer. She didn't have a heart attack.
She had a broken neck, two black eyes, and a ruptured spleen.
He'd tried to stop him, but it hadn't done much good.
By the time the cops and paramedics showed up, it was too late to help her. He had a cut on his forehead, and his ears were still ringing a little from getting his head slammed against the floor earlier. They wanted to look him over, but he waved em away.
Instead he stood on the front porch and watched as uniformed officers hauled his father off to prison. Beverly sat nearby on the top porch steps crying as officers tried to ask her questions about what happened.
He didn't care what the happened to the bastard as long as they hauled him away. He was more concerned with the "what the hell were they going to do now?" part of the equation.
Beverly was 18, so after that she was stuck with keeping him in line and trying to keep a roof over both of their heads.
He tried to help her out and do his part. They both did. His sister dropped out of the community college she'd been enrolled in on scholarship, and took 2 jobs, working as a nurse's aid all day and working half the night as a grocery store stocker. The rent got paid. They got to eat. The lights stayed on. But barely. There wasn't extra money for much else. He wanted to drop out and get a better job than the job fixing cars and pumping gas that he had, but there wasn't much in this town for anyone, let alone a 16 yr old kid.
Beverly insisted he wasn't doing nothing til he finished high school, and they argued about it constantly. It went on this way for a year after his mother died and they gave his father 50 years in the state penitentiary.
Then his sister started dating Doug. It wasn't long before Beverly wanted to give up on renting the house and move in with Doug.
No way in hell, he told him, was he living with another jackass that reminded him a little too much of his daddy.
"He has a house and a good job. He'll take care of us, Deacon," Beverly reasoned with him.
"Yeah, I bet Ma thought that too, the day she met him," Deacon said, unable to hold back the bitterness. "And where the hell is she now? In the ground, that's where." In the ground, with two black and blue handprints around her lifeless neck. She'd worked her ass off her entire life, and that was how she'd spent eternity.
"Why you wanna stay here anyway?" Beverly cried out, standing in the doorway of his room. "It's nothing but bad memories, Deacon. He killed her on the other side of the wall where you sleep at night."
"You're right," he said, continuing stuffing clothes in his duffel bag. "I don't want to stay here. This house or this town. I'm leavin. You can come with me if you want, but I'm getting on that bus this afternoon come hell or high water."
"You know I can't do that. "
"Why the hell not?"
"Don't curse! Mama hated cursing."
He closed his eyes against the pounding in his temples that never seemed to go away lately.
She calmed a little. "Doug wants to get married."
"You're going to be just like her, you know," he said quietly. "Stuck here. Dead end job. With a jackass who don't give a damn about you. I'm gonna be better than that. Better than them."
"It's not going to be that way. It'll be different. Stay here at least until you finish school. Mama would want that."
He didn't bother to try and explain it to her. How he'd been "finished" with that crap a long time ago. Sitting in classes listening to teachers drone on about useless information while his mind was elsewhere, looking out the window at the river nearby, wishing he was playing the tune that he couldn't get out of his head. He did okay in English classes because he could write and he didn't mind a good book. Everything else he didn't bother to pretend like he cared.
Deacon zipped up the bag, and brushed past her and walked out the door. Searching for something. He didn't know what, but he sure as hell wasn't going to find it hanging around here.
Three hours later he was on a bus bound for Nashville, Tennessee.
The first couple years were hard. Once he finally hit 18, he picked up bartending jobs all over town. The tips would get raked in like candy when they'd get him to put down the bottles he was serving to get up onstage to play. It took weeks before he could scrape enough money for cheap motels rather than sleeping in the crappy truck he got in exchange for work, and more than a year before he got a half-ass apartment. He worked. He played. He wrote. He tried to remember to feed himself. Played open mic nights wherever he could find them. Played on street corners for whoever would listen. Made friends and slept on a lot of couches. Even played solos at a damn wedding or two. People finally started to take notice, asked him once in awhile to sit in on their bands. Met Vince one night when he was doing a gig, and they hit it off right away. Decided to form a band. He hated the idea of singing in front of people, but it worked. If that's what it took to get his songs heard, he'd get used to it until someone else wanted them.
It was hard, but he had to accept that it wasn't different than any other artist in this town, playing for free when you had to just to get heard, or living off tips in coffee cans. They were all just trying to make it.
His big break, though, was getting the bartending job at the Bluebird. In more ways than one. He could work, he could listen, and he could play. He listened to the best of the best, absorbed every moment of it, tried to learn from it, tried to make it blend with everything Jimmy Porter had taught him years ago. He wanted to be the best.
And then one night Watty White walked in and the rest was history. He had this kid with him, barely more than a girl. The white leather boots on her feet were expensive but the guitar case she was dragging around was old. She had hair the color of fire and flashing blue eyes. She didn't look to him any different than any of the others: little tone-deaf rich girls who wanted to pretend they could sing and play just to piss off their fathers, or were slumming to get attention from the poor-ass musicians.
But something about this one got to him. And they never got to him. Ever.
People started talking right away. Four or five of the big "Music Row" execs were there that night. Was she gonna play? It was harder than hell to get a spot on the open list on a night like tonight and she just walked right in and got one.
Then he figured it out . The red-head was Lamar Wyatt's daughter. Well no wonder she got a spot. Her daddy owned half this town. Literally. Must be nice, he thought.
He might have wanted a spot too, but Ginger promised him if there was time left at the end she'd do her damnest to get him in. Half the time, they were calling him up there to play requests anyway.
"I need a favor," Watty cornered him as he was restocking liquor bottles in the back.
He sighed, knowing what the man was going to ask immediately.
"She's got nerves like steel and a voice like an angel. But playing guitar? She's awful. Help a man out here, Deacon."
"Can't she go buy a guitar player somewhere else?"
"There's a lot of important people out there, kid. Could hear you play too."
In the end he gave in. And he never regretted it. For more reasons than one.
########################################
As he sat there now on the back porch picking his guitar, he thought about what Lucy had said. How your life could change in an instant and you didn't realize the impact of that moment, that minute until years after it had passed. How someone could walk into your life and stay there forever. Rayna had plowed into his life like a freight train that night at the Bluebird and stayed there. He'd never imagined all the things they would face, good and bad, how much they could hurt each other. How much they would love each other. How happy she could make him just by smiling when he kissed her.
He laughed softly, and words came together in his mind to match the tune that he had been playing with for days now. It was a special one. He was thinking he'd save it for their wedding…..