Chapter 55 Levi
They build Lee Streeter one piece at a time, dressing a man that can’t dress himself.
Boots first, a girl kneeling at my feet to work the fancy pair up over my calves.
The shirt with the pearl snaps, pressed stiff enough to stand on its own.
The buckle the size of a saucer riding my hip, heavy, somebody else’s idea of a strong man.
The black cowboy hat goes on last, set square by a guy whose only job tonight is my head.
He steps back and there’s a stranger in the mirror wearing my face.
Thousands bought tickets to see him. Not one of them knows the difference.
“Chin,” says the woman fixing my collar, and I lift it. Her name’s on a laminate on a lanyard and I’ve already lost it. “There. Don’t sweat through it in the first song, you’ll go translucent under the lights.”
“No promises. It’s a hundred degrees in here.”
“Ninety-four and climbing.” This from the stage manager, headset on, tablet up, the calmest person in any room she’s ever stood in.
“Heads up, everyone. We’ve got a storm cell offshore the weather guy doesn’t like.
Anything tracks inside eight miles, we pause the show on a lightning hold.
If I pull you off, Lee, you go, no hero stuff. ”
“You’d pull the headliner?” I ask, knowing she will in a heartbeat.
“I’d pull the Pope.” She doesn’t look up. “Twenty minutes to the opener. You’re good?”
“I’m good,” I say, which is the biggest lie of the night.
Under the pearl snaps and the big hat, I’m still standing in yesterday’s kitchen hearing Freddie’s words.
I’ve always known. I don’t care that you’re gay, Levi. I never have.
Through the load-in door, the sky over the Gulf flickers white and shuts off. No sound with it. Just light popping down inside the clouds, way out over the water, off and on. Heat lightning, and nobody back here gives it a second look. I give it several.
“Two minutes,” the stage manager calls, and the band’s already moving past me toward the lip of the stage, a backup singer slapping my shoulder, a musician saying kill it. The noise out there is the kind you feel in your bones before you hear it.
I put my hand flat against my hip where the burner phone sits. Dante’s out there somewhere. He’s here with me even if I can’t see him.
I move toward the stage.
Damn, the heat’s wrong.
I feel it walking to my mark. I can’t say why, only that it’s not the heat of a hot night.
It’s heavier than that. The air’s gone thick and still, the flags up on the rigging hanging dead, and underneath the fog machine and the crowd there’s a smell riding in off the water.
Wet metal. River-bottom. Rain that hasn’t landed yet.
I know that smell from a long way back. My body’s already surging ahead of my head. Chest tightening, the hair on my arms up, a low animal hell no starting somewhere below thought.
Barometric pressure. That’s all it is. The pressure dropping ahead of the front. I know what it is.
My body says bullshit.
The lights hit. The roar comes up like a wave that’s been waiting for me. The wall of phones, more eyes than anybody was built to stand under. I find the first chord and the grin. Lee Streeter walks out of me and up to the mic like he’s done a thousand nights.
I sing the song about the truck. I sing the song about eating homemade churned ice cream on a porch with a rocking chair. The committee that wrote them both are off somewhere proud. My voice does what it’s paid to do. My feet hit the marks. For two songs, I’m running clean.
Out past the wall of phones the sky keeps flickering, closer now, the big clouds lighting up from the inside. Between verses I catch myself counting the seconds between strikes anyway. Old habit. Nothing to worry about yet.
Then the sky over the venue goes green, yellow at the edges, the color a sky goes right before it opens. The first gust of wind comes through off the Gulf, cool for the first time all day, and the crowd cheers it like it’s part of the show.
It turns the flags, lifts a setlist off the stage tape, lands the first drops of rain on my hands, fat and warm, spotting the stage black around my boots. Far off behind the lights the first real thunder rolls in, long and low, taking its time. And the grip I’ve held so tight lets go of the rope.
I’m not in this heat anymore.
Oh God, I’m in another one. An older one. The kind that sits down right on top of you.
An aluminum shed holds a July day the way a cast iron skillet holds grease. Eight feet by six. Dirt floor. The push mower with grass caked sour under the deck, the gas can, the feed sacks, the wasp nest gone gray and papery in the top corner.
I knew every inch of that shed. Walls thin enough to flex when you leaned on them, hot enough you learned quick not to lean.
And it’s dark. A dark with no edges, no give. Daylight came in at the nail holes and the seam under the door, pinholes of it, and when the lightning got going every pinhole fired at once, the wall lit up for half a second, and then it was blacker than before.
The door had a quarter inch of play. I know because I pushed and pushed. The padlock on the outside knocked once against the tin, and that was the end of the conversation.
Rain starting somewhere above, on metal, that flat tin hammering that drives into your skull. The smell. Hot dust, hot metal, mower gas, that stale green grass smell gone wrong.
And the air.
The air’s going fast, all used up, breathed down to nothing in a space too small. Knees drawn up. Hiding in the back corner.
No crack for air. No exit.
No!
I’m not back there. I’m on the stage. The phones are still here. The band’s still going. The next line’s coming and I’ve lost track of the words.
Lightning strikes again, close enough to throw shadows. For one white second I can see the field, every face in it, and then it’s phones in the dark again.
I count the same as I did back then.
One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.
The thunder roll hits my teeth, the bones in my chest. Shorter than the time before.
Which means it’s coming.
Which means it’s close.
And the years collapse together, pouring into me now, no line left between them.
I’m small. I can’t breathe. The aluminum wall is blistering against my back, the count between strikes keeps getting shorter.
There’s no way out of here.
There’s no air.
I can’t get out.
It’s what my body has always needed. A way out. Somewhere I can see it, air I can reach, the count of steps to the nearest open door.
None of it’s here.
I’m gonna die on this fucking stage. Tonight. Right in front of Dante.
Except they stop the show for lightning. Eight miles in and she pulls everybody. Stage manager said so. She’d pull the Pope.
I make the worst bet of my life, standing in front of thousands with a grin nailed to my face. I start praying to God for the fucking storm. For the lightning. To come down fast and close, put its hand on this stage, and end the show before it ends me.
Because it’s the only way out.
I’ll take the thing that terrifies me over one more verse up here.
Come on. Strike again. Come closer. Strike now. Please.
The boy who used to count the seconds and pray for them to get longer is up here begging them to get shorter.
Another flash. Come on. I can’t breathe.
One Mississippi.
The crack comes before the two. The world goes white at the edges. My hands quit the strings. The grin’s gone, I can feel my face slack and stupid with nobody home behind it.
I’m gone.
A long way off the band stumbles, a guitar hitting a chord I didn’t give it.
Closer, the front rows have started to change.
I can see it even from inside the white, the lit screens tilting up.
The ones who came to watch Lee Streeter are watching something else happening on stage now.
Watching it go wrong, live, at the center of their night.
The mic’s right there. I have no idea what to do with it.
The rain’s picking up, drumming on the stage roof behind me or on an aluminum shed, I can’t tell which anymore.
The heat’s got both hands on me, the metal’s against my back. I can’t get a breath past the top of my chest, the count’s down to nothing, the flash and the crack the same instant.
The past is swallowing me now.