Chapter 18
NINE YEARS LEFT
I can only describe it as a fever. The constraints of day and night, of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, did not apply to us. We ate when our thoughts turned to vapor, and we slept when we could no longer think at all.
When we needed a break, we lit a joint and fucked on the couch or the floor. I thought it’d be hard to sleep with someone after Hess, but it was different with Tate. It wasn’t charged with so much love and devotion; we each did it to serve ourselves.
But what we mainly did was write songs.
Me, in my bedroom on the mattress, and Tate in the living room on the couch. Every so often, one of us would come into the other’s space, and they’d share what they’d written, and the other would give feedback, and then we’d separate once again.
I was burning up with this idea that had sprouted during the acid trip and now grew inside me like kudzu.
I wanted to make a concept album about a figure I was calling “the cursed woman,” starting with the song my mama sang to me in the womb, titled “Lullaby for a Demon Child” and that old murder ballad from the holler.
There’d also be several original songs, like the one Hess and I had written years ago when we first met.
Tate had gone to college in the northeast before he became a songwriter, and he’d studied the great literature.
He taught me how to elevate my writing without sucking the life out of it.
One of the songs he helped with, the hardest one for me to write and what would become the title track, was about accepting one’s fate, even reveling in it.
I imagined Hess listening to each song and the notes she might have given. I did everything I could to keep from thinking about her.
But I was also committed to telling the goddamn truth this time. That was the way to make real art, to expose the truth at the core of you.
I was finally bringing my night songs into the light.
One morning I woke and Tate was gone. There was no note.
No answer at his house. Martha didn’t know where he’d gone, but she told me this was what he did.
He would disappear for weeks and show back up with stories of poker games with cross-country truckers and riding rodeo bulls and selling a new song to a rock star in San Francisco.
It was a good kind of pain to feel abandoned by Tate, wondering if he was with someone else out there. If he’d ever come back. I reminded myself that this was what I wanted: someone who didn’t need me. I was the Cursed Woman, fated to walk the earth alone.
Without anyone watching, I stayed up for days at a time working on the songs. I painted the lyrics on the walls in thick black letters. I only went out at night, when everyone else was asleep, and I could walk unobserved for miles in the cold, clear air, dreaming up my next song.
Three weeks later, Tate showed up at my doorstep with a small cooler in hand.
He acted as if he’d just gone out for groceries, the way he casually stepped inside without a hug and strode to the kitchen.
He took out a bundle wrapped in paper and unfurled it with his back to me.
Then he turned around and presented a dark-red knot of meat on a plate, his face reverent.
“My goddess, I’ve brought you the heart of a deer as an offering. May I cook it for you?”
I nodded in surprise, and he pulled out a long, sharp knife from the cooler and cut thin, bloody slices from the heart. They went into the frying pan with butter, and the smell of it was dark and loamy, like hot, fertile soil.
When he was done, he fed me a piece from a fork. The meat was blood rich and lean. I could taste the leaves and berries the creature ate, its power and wildness. He fed me another, and another. The juices ran down my chin.
When I’d consumed the entire heart, he put down the plate and carried me into the bedroom.
The meat had only made me more hungry for him, the desire painful and moaning.
I tore off his shirt, and he took off his pants, and then he pulled off my dress, finding me naked underneath.
He buried his face between my legs and licked me like an animal. I bucked at the tender force.
Afterward, he lit a joint and we lay there in the dark. He told me about deer hunting in Minnesota, not as an explanation for his absence but as a good story. I didn’t ask for any details, or whether he’d gone elsewhere in his time away.
He noticed the words in black on the walls, and he turned on the lamp to read them.
Any other person would have thought I’d lost my mind.
In all fairness, it looked like a satanist was squatting in my house.
But he only stood up to get a better look and remarked, “You figured out the tree metaphor. It really works now. Feels consistent all the way through.”
I’d struggled with this song. I’d kept the images real loose when I first wrote it, and Tate had encouraged me to tighten it up, make sure I wasn’t mixing my metaphors like many did in songwriting. It was called “Black Gum Tree,” and it was about my mother’s death.
I was serious—this time I would tell the goddamn truth.
When the album was ready to record, no label wanted to make it.
I hadn’t recorded or performed in a year, and my face was already fading from the collective mind. They said I didn’t have value without Clayton, and even Clayton himself wasn’t so valuable anymore. His latest solo album had done mediocre at best.
What they didn’t say was that my new look might not have value, either. I’d stopped wearing wigs and slapping on the makeup, and Phoebe had made me these long, flowy black dresses after listening to the demo. I was no longer the child bride.
I was the Cursed Woman.
Then there was the music. I knew it wasn’t the clean, easy sound they were used to.
But I’d seen so many musicians break out and expand over the last few years.
I thought, surely there was space for it.
And yet, I could feel their fear. I was a hardened, haunted woman they couldn’t control. A real outlaw.
Martha told me the house where I’d met Tate was also the home of a small label and recording studio, different from the big labels on Music Row.
The owner, Don, had a vision for a country music that wasn’t afraid to get its hands dirty.
There were no suits milling around, calling the shots.
Just a few guys plucking strings and trying to make something special.
I was skeptical of something so slapdash after I’d spent years recording in Nashville’s best studios with Clayton. I didn’t want to move backward, or look like I couldn’t make it without him.
But, of course, that was only the fear talking.
In the daylight, the unassuming yellow ranch looked like any other modest family home.
You’d never suspect people were making music in its rooms. The studio itself was just a soundproofed basement with instruments and microphones scattered about.
That first day, Martha and I set up while Don’s regular guys got situated.
They all had the same long hair and beards, and it was hard to tell them apart.
The first song we recorded was “Lullaby for a Demon Child.” The sound felt off for some reason, and instead of stuffing my concerns like I’d done with Clayton, I told Don it wasn’t right.
So he asked me what we should change, and we did another take, and I realized there were voices missing.
I could hear their absence. The song needed to be three female voices harmonizing together.
I was lucky Tima was in town because she spent most of her time touring. I went over to her house that night and played her the song and described how I heard it in my head. We sang it through a few times, and we could both feel it. We really had something.
We got in Tima’s car and went over to Mom’s uninvited.
She had a whole new crop of girls living in her house, but we still felt like her real girls come home.
It was late, and she was already in her curlers and robe.
We sat on the back porch like old times, and we sang it for her.
It took a bit of cajoling, but eventually she agreed to sing with us on the record.
The next day at the studio, we all gathered around the mic.
I’d decided I only wanted voices on the track.
So all the boys and Martha were hanging out in the makeshift booth with Don.
He had his doubts about recording a country song with no instruments, but bless his heart, he was willing to walk into the fire with me.
I asked him to turn out all the lights, and the studio plunged into darkness.
I sang the first line, and then Tima came in with her voice, and then Mom. Then we all sang together, and repeated the round. Goose bumps prickled up my arms and a shiver ran through my shoulders.
Baby, don’t be ’fraid
When I leave too soon
Baby, don’t be ’fraid
I’ll be your moon
The studio faded away, replaced by a dark, log-lined room lit only by the moon, and us three women rocking babies in our arms. The sound was round and berry-tart with that vein of mournful truth running through.
We consoled our babies for the suffering they would have in this life and perhaps the next.
When it was over, the sound lingered in the air like smoke from a candle. The booth was quiet, and some of them boys looked like they’d seen a ghost.
Don said, “Well, goddamn, Lou. I mean… goddamn.”