Chapter 65 Levi
The Bash saved its biggest crowd for last. It runs back past the lights farther than I can see, and when they sing my choruses back at me the sound rolls up onto the stage like surf. Ten thousand of them, hats off, phones up, screaming a name.
And the man they’re screaming for isn’t even here.
I’ve played this set so many times my hands run it without me. The smile. The little laugh between numbers. The wave, the y’all have been too good to me. Lee Streeter at full wattage, while the man wearing him counts down songs.
Because Sunday’s still coming. The car at a quarter to five to pick me up. The plane. The studio. The years after.
Dante showed me the cage is mostly bluff and I believe him. But bluff takes a lawyer and a year of letters to prove. Here I am holding the winning hand with no time left to play it.
Two songs left. Then one. The band leans into the closer, the radio smash a committee wrote for a man who was never real, and out past the rail the crowd feels it coming and lifts.
I look down instead for the first time tonight.
I shouldn’t be able to find one face in a crowd this size. But I put Dante at the rail myself, told him where to stand, and my eyes go straight to him like they’ve been waiting all night for the excuse.
There he is.
Front and center. Not clapping, not singing. Not having a party like the rest of them.
Watching me, eyes steady, taking me in one more time before I go. Benji beside him, both hands pressed over his mouth.
And it comes up through me plain as the first clear note of the night.
I love him with everything I’ve got, and what I’ve got is one chance.
Only one.
I hear Sheila’s voice in my ear like she’s leaning close over the bar.
You’re not at the finish line yet, baby. Don’t take your foot off the gas.
Dante leaves his door open for me because I need him to. That’s the one mercy the dark I grew up in was built to make sure I’d never get, and it’s been standing open all this time, him leaning in it.
All I have to do is be brave enough, one damn time, to walk through it in front of everybody.
I’ve been counting down to Sunday like a prison sentence rushing at me. Standing here in the lights, it lands all at once. I don’t have to get on that plane as the same man I was before.
I’ve never been as scared and thrilled in the same breath.
My hands have already decided. I turn, catch the band’s eyes, draw a flat line through the air. Cut it. The big closer dies before its first chord. A couple of faces go confused. The bandleader mouths a question.
I shake my head and walk back to the stool, to the Martin that’s sat on its stand all night like it knew its time was eventually coming.
The beat-up guitar I actually play, the worn spot by the bridge sliding under my forearm at its old weight, the one I’ve had since before any of them owned a piece of me.
The field goes quiet and uncertain at the edges, a crowd feeling the show step off its rails. I can feel the band shuffling behind me not knowing what to do.
I drag the stool to the lip of the stage, sit down with the guitar across my knee, lean into the mic. My heart is slamming so hard I swear I can hear it come back through the monitors.
“Last one’s not on the list tonight,” I say. My voice only shakes a little. “I wrote this one myself. This month, right here.” The field is hushing now, tipping in toward me. “It’s called Breathe. First time anybody’s ever heard it, and I wrote it for somebody who matters to me.”
Then I play it.
Three chords. The truest three I own.
My own song in my own hands in front of everybody, and the second it starts I can’t hear the fear anymore over the music.
I don’t say his name. I don’t even say he.
The song only ever says you. It’s about being accepted and taken as-is.
No questions, no inspection, no list of repairs.
I’ve never once written about being wanted whole, because it never happened to me.
Now it’s pouring out in front of everybody, and it’s the most honest I’ve ever been out loud.
And then I reach the place where I need to look at him.
I lift my eyes off the strings. I look at Dante like I only ever look at him in that apartment.
I let everything sit there plain on my face.
Everything I’m feeling, everything I want.
I don’t look away. Thousands of people and cameras, and I aim every last piece of myself at one beautiful man at the rail.
At Dante.
Let the world see where I’m pointed.
This is the one move the box was built to terrify out of me. The first rule of my raising, the one underneath all the others.
Don’t ever let it show. Don’t let them see it on your face. Don’t let them know what you are.
Tonight, I let it show.
Let them see it on my face. Let them know what I am.
And I’m doing it in the brightest light I’ve ever stood in, because I’d rather be free for one song than safe for the rest of my life.
Up on the big screens over the stage, the picture changes.
The cameras have been on me, but a camera only ever hunts for whatever the singer’s looking at, and I’ve quit pretending to look anywhere but at him.
So, they swing. They follow me off the stage, out into the crowd, and they find the face I found.
Throw it thirty feet tall across the field.
And for one second, the longest second of my life, longer than any night I ever spent in that black, it’s done. And I feel so fucking free. I’ve said it to all of them. I’ve told them who I am.
I don’t know yet whether there’s anything on the far side of tonight, or whether I’ve just set fire to my whole life for a fella who never promised me a single day.
Does he want me?
I’ve just bet it all on yes, out loud, where I can never take it back. Because the risk is worth it if there’s even the smallest chance.
And then I see Dante up on the screen.
The controlled, polished man. Never a hair out of place. His handsome face is wide open, hiding nothing. He’s openly crying. Down at the rail with the tears running down his face. Benji sobbing into his shoulder, both hands knotted in his shirt.
Dante looks up, finds me past the lights like I found him, and he nods. Once. Slow. Certain. Then he points at me and puts his hand on his heart. He holds it there.
My heart now.
Both eyes locked on mine, not hiding from a single lens, not stepping back into the safe place. The most careful man I’ve ever known, choosing right now, no warning, the world watching, to let himself be seen wanting me back.
After the box, after the belt, after a father who taught me with his hands that the real me had to be beaten down into something else.
The answer comes back, up in lights, on the face of a man who could have anybody alive, standing down front crying and nodding at me.
I drop my eyes to the strings. I can’t see them through my own tears. I don’t need to. I keep playing. The song isn’t finished, and neither am I.
By the last chorus the crowd has worked it out. You can hear it move through them like wind through a cornfield, the crowd turning over the same card at once.
Somebody who matters. The man up on the screen. Hold on, isn’t that the realtor, the one in all the videos, the one everybody’s been talking about? Oh. The #whoisthisguy.
And the sound that comes back isn’t one sound.
Some of them roar for it, that good thunder that means yes, we’re with you.
Some have gone silent and stiff. Off to the right a group of people start in booing.
Off to the left others are crying, holding each other up.
A fella in a seed cap turns and walks for the exit.
Two kids grip the rail with their faces lit, tears coming down too, like I just flipped a light on in a place they’ve been living dark.
Here’s the curious part of it all. I don’t really care which way it breaks.
I just blew up Lee Streeter in front of everyone. The brand, the lie, the straight golden boy off the radio. Country radio doesn’t play a fella who looks at another fella like I just looked up on a screen.
The label will scramble. Freddie will have a stroke. The machine that’s owned me since I was seventeen is crumbling in real time, and all of it is the price I’m gladly paying with both hands.
Because none of it was ever what I wanted. Not the fame, not the money. Lee Streeter was a costume they stitched onto an abused kid.
What I wanted is this. My own song in my own hands. A man down front who leaves the door open. The right to stand in the light and want what I want where anybody on earth can see me do it.
I’m trading fame and fortune for those three, and it’s the best deal I’ve ever made.
And then I sing him the last of the song, eyes up on his face in the lights. The field is still arguing with itself when I start the verse, and it dies away row by row. Even the ones booing want to hear how it ends.
I’d been counted, kept and sold till I forgot I could care.
You left the door open, and I remembered air.
I let the guitar carry the next part by itself. The three chords going around, no words, the field holding its breath with me. Then I lean back into the mic for the last of it.
My whole life I was for sale, every note, every string.
You left the door open.
And then I do the last thing Lee Streeter would ever do. I lay my hand flat on the strings and stop them. No guitar. No band. Ten thousand people gone silent, and I lean into the mic and give them the last line the way you’d tell it to one person.
You can’t hold your breath and sing.
The words go out over the field. Over ten thousand held breaths, over Dante’s wet face down at the rail, over the beautiful wreck of it.
And I breathe.
I stand up, pull the air all the way in, and nothing reaches out of my dark past to stop it.
The boy they locked in the box for letting it show, just let it show. To everybody. The sky didn’t come down on him. Or maybe it did. But it doesn’t matter.
He’s free now anyway.
I set the guitar down. Out past the lights, down at the rail, Dante’s still looking up at me, still smiling and crying, Benji sobbing against his shoulder.
The box is open.
I broke the padlock myself.
I walked out of it, in front of everybody, and left the door standing wide.