Long Way Gone Read online

  “Loved the sound of that one.”

  We were poking around the edges of a lot of history. If this conversation went much deeper, we’d rip off a scab that had been twenty years in growing, and I was pretty sure the adhesive in my heart wouldn’t hold.

  She deflected. “You know, your long hair, gnarled hand, and jacked-up voice really disguise the fact that you’re as good as you are. This town has no idea, does it?”

  “I play some now and then.”

  She glanced in the direction of the Lariat a few blocks away, then back at me. She looked embarrassed. “Fifty-fifty split? But what’s-his-name takes 10 percent.”

  “Keep it.” Her tips-only offer told me that Frank was skimming more off the top. “And let me see what I can do about the money.”

  Her next question totally caught me off guard.

  “You ever marry?”

  I was looking up into the sun. “What?”

  She bristled, as she had with Mr. Overalls in the hospital. A self-protective mechanism that blossomed out of necessity. She pressed me. “Did you ever marry?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to know whether I’m going to turn around and find a Mrs. O’Connor pointing a gun in my face ’cause she thinks I’m an old flame and we have a new spark going.”

  A fair question. “You have some experience with this sort of thing?”

  The hair was still standing up on her neck. “Some.”

  “No.”

  “No as in, ‘There is no Mrs. O’Connor’? Or no as in, ‘She won’t think that’?”

  “Not married. Never have been.”

  Her voice and head dropped in unison. “Good.” She fussed with her hands. “I don’t mean good, you’ve never married. I just mean good as in I’m too tired to fight today.”

  Daley’s emotional posture was akin to that of a woman with her sleeves rolled up. With no protector and no defender, she’d been forced to fend for herself, and what was once soft and tender had become a thickened, distrusting hide. Sitting on that bench, she was Rosie the Riveter who had made peace with the fact that Joe was never coming home.

  Twenty years ago, when I was staring at a hospital ceiling and running through the possibilities in my mind, this one had never occurred to me. I did not like it.

  I shot a glance at my watch. “We’ve got a few hours before we need to be at the Lariat, and I need to be somewhere meanwhile. How about if I drop you—”

  “Can I come?”

  “It’s not the most uplifting of places.”

  “I won’t be any trouble.”

  “The smell can be a bit . . . overwhelming.”

  She chuckled. “You should see some of the places I’ve played.”

  “It might require a little participation.”

  “I’m game.”

  I smiled. “That’d be great. She’d love that.”

  “She?”

  “My girlfriend.”

  Daley stiffened. “I thought you said you weren’t attached.”

  “No,” I said, smiling and lifting one finger in the air. “I said I’d never been married. Never said I didn’t have a girlfriend.”

  More bristling. Her spine was ramrod straight. “She going to be okay with me?”

  I smiled. “I think you can say that.” I was climbing into the Jeep, while she had yet to stand.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  6

  Riverview Center is a five-acre, forty-bed assisted living facility set against the granite backdrop of Sleeping Indian Mountain. Picturesque and manicured grounds are both maintained and molested by a healthy herd of flower-eating deer and bordered by the Arkansas River, which produces the constant and tranquil sound of rushing water.

  I crossed the short bridge spanning the Arkansas, wound down the drive lined with giant cottonwoods, and parked. It was early afternoon, and most everybody was either napping or in their rooms watching TV. I parked and hopped out, and Daley followed. Her spine was more nimble—less porcupine.

  We walked through the lobby, and I wound down the halls until I got to Mary’s room. The door was closed. I pushed it open and found her sleeping, so we sat quietly. This was some of my favorite time with Mary. When she slept, she didn’t twitch.

  Daley surveyed the room and the wall decorations. She whispered, “You should’ve told me.”

  “After I started playing again, I was looking for a safe place to wet my toe. Folks here are just grateful for the company, and they aren’t too picky if you miss a note here and there or sing off-key. Plus, they’re rather captive. Mary was one of the first people I played for. In getting to know her, I realized that we had something in common.”

  “Like what?”

  “We’re both Daley Cross fans.”

  Daley surveyed the walls, which had been plastered with Daley Cross paraphernalia.

  “Only she’s a groupie,” I said. “It’s borderline obnoxious.”

  Mary’s dark hair had fallen over her face and drool spilled onto her pillow. I pushed her hair behind her ear and dabbed the corner of her mouth. She blinked and smiled, and immediately the twitch returned.

  Mary has severe strabismus—or crossed eyes. When one eye looks at you, the other looks perpendicular, showing you only the white. The focusing eye alternates from left to right and back to left and then back to right. Her right eye zeroed in on me and she lifted her head, allowing me to slide a second pillow beneath it. Her voice was raspy and broken, like Katharine Hepburn’s. “I was just dreaming about you.”

  I scooted the stainless steel stool on wheels closer to the bed and rested my arms next to her. “Yeah, what about?”

  “The first time you played for me.”

  “In truth, I think I played for everyone on the hall.”

  “Yeah, but you couldn’t take your eyes off me.”

  I laughed. “True.” Her right hand was starting to flop around like a fish, so I slid my hand beneath hers and held on to it. She had the softest skin I’d ever known. “Still can’t.”

  Over the years Mary has tried umpteen medications to slow the progression and effects of cerebral palsy. Little has worked. Almost nothing has stifled the twitching.

  Except one thing. When I play, she doesn’t twitch at all. And she says the ache “washes out” of her.

  Mary has been here most of her adult life. She is the darling of the house and seldom has to ask for anything.

  A nurse knocked and then let herself in. She waved at me. “Hey, Cooper.”

  “Hey, Shelly. How’s Peter?” I stood and helped roll Mary onto her side, then adjusted the privacy sheet to allow Shelly to change Mary’s diaper.

  Shelly has done this several thousand times. She could do it in her sleep.

  “That little joker switched from tuba to drums. Says he’s got more rhythm than the other three percussionists put together and it’s about time everybody knew it.”

  Mary’s arm rose up from behind the sheet and interrupted us by pushing my chin away from the bed, thereby averting my eyes. “You better not be looking. I’m still a woman, you know.”

  I spoke toward the wall. “No more important member of any band than the drummer. Everybody lives and dies on the beat. Don’t always get a lot of respect, but they are the tether that holds everybody together.”

  Shelly rolled Mary onto her back and carried the wet diaper toward the door. “That may be, but if the Energizer Bunny don’t get his chemistry grade up, the only rhythm he’s liable to hear is my foot kicking him in his—” She mouthed the final word.

  “Can’t help you there.”

  Shelly left Mary and me laughing. The laugh brought about a congested cough—something I’d not heard out of Mary in a long time. She coughed some more and broke some stuff loose.

  I gave her my stern face. “Has Dr. George heard that?”

  “He was in here last week and again this morning.” She pointed at a bottle on the table next to her. �
��Nuclear antibiotics. Supposed to kill the plague.” Her focusing eye now switched from right to left. It rolled away from me toward Daley, who was sitting in a chair against the wall. Mary looked surprised to find a third person in the room.

  “Oh, hi. Didn’t see you.” She reached for her coke-bottle glasses, put them on, and pushed them up her nose. Her head tilted sideways as she studied Daley’s face. Taking her time, Mary’s head reversed direction. Finally it came to rest in the middle. “It’s you.”

  Daley stood and held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Da—”

  Mary grabbed Daley’s hand with both of hers. “I know who you are.” She waved her hand across the walls. “I just can’t believe you’re standing in my room.”

  One of my jobs here is entertainment. Actually, that’s my only job. As part of that mission, I’d repaired Dad’s bus and taken as many residents and their nurses as could fit to concerts around the area. Never an overnight. Just there and back. And Daley Cross was a house favorite. Anytime she sang within a few hours’ drive of Buena Vista, I’d hear calls for a road trip. From each of those Mary had kept ticket stubs and programs and marquis posters, and each was now framed and displayed on the walls about us. A living Daley Cross memorial.

  Mary looked at me, wiped her hair out of her face, and reached for the lipstick next to her bed. “You should have told me.”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “No. But you should’ve tried.”

  She pulled off the lipstick cap, but her hand was shaking too bad. She was about to make a mess. Daley sat next to the bed. “May I?”

  Mary tried to lie still while Daley applied her lipstick. Mary’s body expressed the emotion her face could not. When they’d finished, I laid my guitar case across the foot of Mary’s bed, released the brake that stopped the wheels, and began pushing her through the wide door. “You ready, honey?”

  “I guess you’re not going to tell me what’s going on, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  She held Daley’s hand as we walked down the hall.

  “Cooper O’Connor!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You owe me.”

  I laughed. “Then consider this my propitiation.”

  Her nose curled upward. “Pro-pitchy-what?”

  The hallway ended in a large open room where a large black man wearing a suit and black patent leather shoes sat quietly warming up his fingers on an upright piano. He spoke over his shoulder. “Propitiation.”

  Mary turned. “Not you too.”

  He began playing louder. “His dad loved that word,” he said. “Used it all the time.”

  Mary spoke above the music, and the space between her eyes narrowed. “You know I can’t follow you when you start using fifty-dollar words. What’s it mean?”

  “It means a payment that satisfies all debts. It also describes a seat on a rather important box, but that’s another story.”

  “Big-Big,” I said to him, “this is Daley Cross.”

  He smiled, his huge hands walking up and down the keys, and made an effort to glance over his shoulder. “Ms. Daley Cross. I knowed that name. How you doing, honey? Welcome to the hymn sing.”

  The nurses were gathering residents in their beds, wheelchairs, and favorite chairs in a circle around the piano. Ms. Fox sat with her knitting on her knees, mumbling to herself about Renny and when he was going to pick her up. Mr. Barnes was standing in the corner wearing his customary logging boots and gown and that’s it. Nothing else. Ms. Phillips was sitting in her wheelchair, taking her teeth out and putting them back in. Ms. Anderson was sleeping in her bed, which the nurses had slid up against the wall. And Mr. Simpson was sitting on a stool looking expectantly at me. The rest were talking quietly amongst themselves. To my knowledge, the only things all these people had in common were that they all lived at Riverview and they had all known my father.

  I reached into the closet and pulled out a few extra instruments. I placed three five-gallon buckets upside down in front of Mr. Simpson and a set of sticks in his hands. Then I handed one tambourine to Ms. Fox and laid another beside Ms. Anderson’s sleeping hand. Ms. Philips received a single handbell. I started tuning my D-35.

  Big-Big didn’t wait for an answer from Daley. “Now you just sit down right here next to me,” he said, “and let me hear that angel’s voice I done hear’d so much about. Let’s you and me school this young’un in how a real voice makes music.”

  Big-Big was still independent enough to live on his own, but a few years ago he’d sold his house in town and I’d helped him move into one of the condos scattered around the Riverview property. Single-unit dwellings with a fabulous view of the Collegiates, they’re close enough for a resident to get help if needed. But he could come and go as he liked, and either make his own meals or eat inside with everyone else. It was independent living for the I-don’t-know-how-much-longer-I’ll-be-independent.

  One of the nurses had lit the projector and was sitting at a laptop to scroll the words on the wall. Daley sat down next to me and was about to whisper something when Big-Big rolled into one of my favorites. His voice was custom-made for this one. “When the roll is called up yonder . . .”

  I came in behind him, filling in the empty space with my guitar as his peace-filled bellow reached down inside me and made every wrong thing right. Within a few words, Daley came in quietly, singing harmony. Big-Big smiled and swayed his head. After waking everybody up, he transitioned into “I’ll Be a Sunbeam” and a perennial house favorite, “In the Garden.”

  Soon Daley was standing next to Mary, clapping and singing. Mr. Simpson was keeping near perfect time on the bucket-drums, and the percussionists were filling in nicely with tambourine and bell. At one point Ms. Philips dropped her teeth, which skidded across the floor next to the piano. Surprised but not overly grossed out, Daley picked them up and handed them back. Ms. Philips quickly reinstalled them, smiled widely, and continued the timely ringing of her single bell. Impressed with her initiative, Mr. Barnes stepped into the center of the room and extended his hand, asking Daley to dance during the chorus of “Blessed Assurance.” She modestly accepted and held her own with a ninety-two-year-old man in an off-tempo do-si-do. Although she almost stopped dancing when he turned and the back of his gown flashed open. She covered her mouth with one hand and pointed with the other. “Oh my!”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes he gets the robe turned around.”

  She laughed and covered her eyes. “Please no.”

  All this time Mary lay in bed, motionless save her face and neck, given that she was singing at the top of her voice. Big-Big segued into “Come Thou Fount,” and I began picking my way through the intro. Doing so brought Ms. Fox to her feet, where she began clapping, staring at the ceiling, and singing harmony alongside Daley. When we reached the fourth verse, Big-Big softened his touch and backed off, making room for Ms. Fox to sing her solo. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it . . .”

  Upon hearing the sound of a second female voice—Daley singing harmony—the emboldened Ms. Fox carried us through the final verse. The Riverview Center Chorus was in full swing and almost in tune.

  After he’d duly recognized her invaluable contribution and Ms. Fox had sat down to the applause of the growing group of nursing staff and residents, Big-Big sang us through “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Then he glanced over his shoulder at Mary, who sat beaming, waiting on a solo of her own. Big-Big closed out a few chords and then fell quiet, placing his hands in his lap and allowing me to fill in the space with the intro to Mary’s solo.

  When I’d finished flat-picking the intro, I began quietly strumming, waiting for Mary’s entrance. She timed it perfectly, and her quivering voice managed, “When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died . . .” Spontaneous applause brought an even wider smile to Mary’s countenance. Daley moved around behind her bed and sang quietly next to her. Mary punched the electronic button on her bed, raising her head and shoulders up pas
t forty-five degrees, and reached for Daley’s hand, and the two new best friends finished the song.

  Big-Big thanked everyone for coming, made an announcement about the ice cream social tomorrow night, reminded everyone not to feed the deer, and then, when the room fell quiet, began the introduction to the final song. He turned to Daley and said, “Miss Cross, I wonder if you might sit here next to me and sing this one to us?”

  She wound her way through the beds and sat on the bench, her back to his left shoulder. She opened her mouth and sang with a purity and resonance I’d not heard in a long, long time.

  “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder . . .” When she reached the fourth verse, “When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation . . . ,” many of the staff were filming with their phones. Everyone else had stopped singing, and Big-Big’s eyes were closed. “How great thou art . . . how great thou art.” Her last note rang off the tongue-and-groove ceiling, and you could have heard a pin drop. Then Mr. Barnes started clapping and the entire room joined in.

  I don’t know the song’s effect on everyone else, but I know that when Daley stood and kissed Big-Big on the cheek, her shoulders had rounded, the crow’s-feet had washed out of the corners of her eyes, and whatever knee-jerk walls she’d carried in here had crumbled and lay in pieces at our feet.

  Big-Big stood, bowed to Daley, and said, “Miss Cross, please come back.” He pointed at me. “He sounds better with you here.”

  We pushed Mary down the hall and into her room. Shelly offered to take some pictures of her with Daley, promising to frame them and hang them on the already busy walls. Daley, seizing the moment, climbed onto the bed with Mary, and the two posed like long-lost sisters. Mary was radiant.

  As we were walking out, Mary called behind us, “Daley?”

  Daley turned.

  Mary reached across her bedside table and lifted a CD cover. “Would you sign this?”

  The CD was Daley’s second album. Now twenty years old, it was the album we’d cut in Nashville just before the fire. Daley signed it and handed it back, lingering next to the bed and studying me. She tapped her fingers on the handrail that kept Mary from falling out and said, “Mary, did Cooper ever tell you about that CD?”