Chapter 34 Dante #2
“Panama City Beach!” The Tennessee drawl comes out over the PA bigger than any sound Levi ever made.
“They told me y’all know how to holler. Prove it.
” The field proves it. He laughs into the mic, loud, open, nothing like anything I’ve heard from him.
He works the rail. Points at signs. Tips his hat to the crying girls section.
He’s more at home with them than he ever was with me.
Benji has my arm in both hands before the welcome finishes.
“Who the fuck is that guy?” he screams in my ear. “What is happening right now? I did hours of research. I zoomed in on his jaw at four hundred percent. Nothing on my laptop prepared me for this. That guy was sleeping in your guest room, wrapped up in our cashmere throw.”
“I don’t know him.”
“I need to sit down.” Benji grabs my shoulder again. “Fuck! There’s nowhere to sit down. I’m going to jump instead. Maybe that’ll help.”
He jumps on the toes of the boots while I can’t drag my eyes off Lee Streeter.
His voice is huge and clean. It never snags. He’s flawless. Every mark hit, every cue on its beat.
And it’s all wrong.
I’m the only one who can tell.
The bonfire voice cracked with emotion. One flat spot, then clean in half on a word. This voice doesn’t crack anywhere. I listen for it through three songs and it never comes.
That’s all I know about his voice, and it’s enough. He hits every note dead center and no one is home behind any of it.
A massive crowd, and he’s the loneliest person in the field.
Benji is having the night of his life four inches to my left.
He’s swaying with both hands up. He’s wide-eyed at the screens.
He learns every chorus by its second pass and sings it back wrong with total commitment.
He films thirty-second videos, takes selfies, sends them to Mickey with ongoing commentary.
Samantha’s party migrates over during the third song and he receives them like family.
The fringe on the white jacket never stops moving.
I stand in the middle of it with my arms down.
Not swaying. Not singing. The one still thing in a field of screaming people, watching a stranger wear a face I thought I knew.
He can’t see me. He doesn’t even know I’m here. He’s somewhere a long way behind his own eyes. I rubbed his back so he could breathe. Tonight I’m a stranger in his field.
And then I notice the women. My God, they’re insane.
I don’t see it all at once. It builds. The front of the pit is women, packed to the rail, and they are losing their minds. They’re screaming his name with their entire bodies. Throwing things. A bra goes up onto the stage and a roadie sweeps it off without breaking stride.
The woman next to me is maybe twenty-five, in a t-shirt with his face on it, and she has been sobbing since he walked out.
She screams “I LOVE YOU LEE” into the noise like it might reach him, and the man beside her with his arm around her screams it too, for her.
Happy to be there while his girl loses it over the heartthrob.
Lee Streeter.
The straight bad-boy. The one they built from nothing.
The front row is a wall of women who want him, who’d marry him, who’ve fantasized about him in private. Every one of them wants a man who does not exist.
I stand there and I understand what the lie is for. All of this. The entire operation runs on him being the man on that t-shirt, the truck-radio voice, the fantasy those women want. The day they find out he isn’t, it all turns on him in an instant. What he stands to lose is the size of this field.
I spent a day furious he didn’t hand me the truth as if the truth was simple and easy. It isn’t simple, and the lies were never pointed at me. They’re pointed at all of this.
In my life, I never had to do any of that. I stood in my mother’s kitchen and was exactly what I am, out loud, and got loved for it. I never grew a beard to hide myself. I got to be free. He’s never been free.
Levi is being buried alive.
Somewhere in the middle of a song the field jumps together and Benji doesn’t. He’s not watching the stage anymore. He’s watching me, still for the first time all night. He looks at me, soft and sad, leans his head on my shoulder, and says, “Yeah. I know, babe.”
He knows the coldness in me was a lie. He’s known it longer than I have.
Then the next song hits, and he puts his hands back up, and lets me stand inside the noise.
On the last song, Lee Streeter holds a long note out over the field. The man underneath the voice is a long way from here.
So am I.
The set ends, the stage goes black, and thousands of phone lights come up. I turn for the exit lane, ready to get the hell out of here. Benji grabs my arm.
“Where do you think you’re going? The house lights are down, Dante.
The band left their instruments on their stands.
He hasn’t played the song these people drove four hours to hear.
There’s a scheduled encore, possibly two, and leaving before a scheduled encore is leaving a wedding before the cake.
I’ve never allowed guests to leave before the cake. ”
The band comes back. The first encore is his most popular song, according to Benji, and the field screams until they’re hoarse.
Benji films it vertically, wide-eyed, narrating under his breath.
By the second encore, Benji’s voice is gone too and he’s mouthing the words to a song he learned nine minutes ago, hands up, boots forgotten.
I stand next to him, arms down. Lee Streeter holds the final note a long time. Then the house lights come up and it’s really over.
Benji makes it three steps.
“Okay. Assessment time. Both heels are gone. I felt them go during the first encore and I made an executive decision to feel it tomorrow instead. Tomorrow came early. I need a minute. Possibly a stretcher. A tasteful one that makes me look pretty.”
I crouch over in front of him. “Get on my back.”
“No, Dante, you’re not carrying me out of a country music festival.” He’s already climbing on and wrapping his arms around my neck. “You’re carrying me out of a country music festival. Don’t drop me! These boots were four hundred dollars and I’m not losing them in a field.”
He’s light and he’s loud. Someone starts a chant and Benji conducts it from my back, boots swinging. He yells the fake name with the rest of the field. The eagle-shirt guy salutes us on the way past. Benji waves back at him, almost kicking me in the side with the enthusiasm of a five-year-old.
I carry my best friend on my back across a sandy field, his voice spent on a stranger’s name. I don’t say a word, and Benji, between yells, lets me not.
Ten thousand people scream into the dark, and every scream is another shovelful burying Levi. They love him so much they’ll never let him out.
I came here to prove I could stand here and feel nothing.
I’m leaving it as the only person here who knows where they buried Levi.