18. The Honky-Tonk
The Honky-Tonk
ANGEL
Sycamore Ridge — Monday
I do not go to the fence line on Monday.
This is a choice. I am aware that it is a choice. The fence line has been part of my morning routine for two months, and I am not going to it on Monday because I need to not go to it on Monday, and that is as honest as I am willing to be with myself about it at five-forty-five AM.
I sang outside in the Panhandle.
I said “not yet” on a porch under the stars in the dark, and then I let him cover my hand with his, and I drove home thinking about the word yet . I have been thinking about it ever since.
The problem is not that I regret it. The problem is that I don't regret it, and I am not sure what to do with a door that opened without my fully deciding to open it.
I do the morning feed. I do the water checks. I do the session prep for Kit’s nine o’clock. I stay in the barn, and the office, and the south paddock, and I don't look at the fence line more than is strictly necessary, which is once, and he is there, and I go back to the supplement chart.
* * *
He leaves a coffee on the feed room shelf.
I find it at eight-fifteen, in the spot he has been leaving them for two months. Lid on. Still warm. No note, because Cash Wilder does not write notes on coffee cups. He just leaves them.
I put it on the shelf and go to check on Clover.
I drink it at nine-thirty, after Kit arrives, when the session is running, and there is a good professional reason for me to be in the feed room alone for five minutes. I drink it then, when it is barely warm, and I don't enjoy the quality of doing something furtive about a cup of coffee.
This is not a sustainable situation.
I know that.
* * *
On Wednesday, he is at the south paddock gate when I finish the afternoon checks.
Not waiting, exactly, but standing as if he has decided to be somewhere and is not going to pretend otherwise.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” I keep moving. Not rudely. Just efficiently. “Kit has your Thursday notes ready. They’re in the office.”
“Angel.”
I stop.
He is looking intently at me, his face slightly puzzled, which I have been avoiding looking at all week. Not the managed version. Just him, at a gate, being direct, as he always is, when he has given something time and decided it needs to be said.
“I’m not going to press,” he says. “I just want to know if I did something wrong.”
He did not do something wrong. He did something right, which is, in some ways, harder to account for than doing something wrong.
“No,” I say. “You didn’t.”
He holds my gaze for a moment.
“Okay,” he says. Not pushing. Not relieved exactly. Just receiving the answer and standing with it.
He goes back to the farmhouse.
I stand at the paddock gate a little longer than I need to.
On Thursday, his truck is in the drive when I arrive at five-thirty, the kitchen light is on, and I think about the fence line for a long time before I go in to start the feed rounds.
I don’t go to the fence line.
But I think about it. That is different from not thinking about it.
I am still thinking about it when Hayes calls on Friday to mention the Bluebird on Saturday.
I tell him I’ll be there before I finish deciding.
That is also different.
CASH
Hayes calls on Tuesday.
He has a specific tone for calls that aren't about what they claim to be, and this one has it.
“There’s a songwriter night at the Bluebird on Saturday,” he says. “You should come. Get out of that farmhouse.”
“I get out of the farmhouse.”
“You get out of the farmhouse to go to the barn.”
This is accurate.
“Ivy’s coming,” Hayes adds. “And whoever else wants to.”
Whoever else. The vagueness of it.
“Fine,” I say.
Hayes makes a sound of satisfaction that he does not try to conceal.
* * *
The Bluebird Cafe - Saturday Night
The Bluebird is not a honky-tonk.
It is small and serious, and the acoustics are remarkable; they will ask you to stop talking if you talk during a song, which has always appealed to me. It is the kind of room where the music is the point: just a guitar, a voice, and people paying attention.
Hayes is already at a table in the back when I get there, which means he arrived early enough to secure a good spot and was more invested in this evening than his casual phone call implied.
I sit down across from him.
“Whoever else is coming?” I say.
He grins. “Ivy. Angel. Lila Chen, apparently, because Ivy invited her since her program ends next week.”
“So the entire program.”
“Just the interesting parts.”
I take a sip of my beer.
Hayes Sterling has been my friend for over ten years, and he has never once been subtle about anything.
“You called this thing,” I say.
“I called a songwriter night. Perfectly normal.”
“Hayes.”
He picks up his beer and looks at the stage. “The first act starts in ten minutes.”
* * *
Ivy and Angel arrive together.
Ivy arrives with the focused calm of someone who has assessed the room before she walks in. Angel arrives, places that are not the barn, with the ease of someone who is comfortable in their own skin and does not need the room to acknowledge it.
She is wearing her hair down and looks beautiful in an understated way.
I have not seen her hair down outside of the Panhandle. It is not a remarkable thing. I am apparently not capable of being objective about it.
Hayes notices me noticing. He says nothing because, on this occasion, he chooses discretion.
Lila Chen arrives two minutes later with the energy of someone who has been looking forward to this and isn't hiding it.
“Wilder,” she says, sitting down.
“Chen.”
“Last session Tuesday.”
“I know.”
“You’re going to miss Emmett.”
“Emmett’s not going anywhere.”
She looks at Angel. Then at me. Then at Hayes. Then she picks up the menu with a look that says she has gathered all the information she needs.
* * *
The songwriter night is good.
Three writers in the round, trading songs, the kind of Nashville night that does not make it onto anyone’s social media because you have to be present for it to work.
The first writer does two songs about a truck, a woman, and a long road, which covers a significant portion of country music’s thematic territory.
The second sings about her grandmother in a way that becomes universal.
The third plays a bridge that makes the whole table go quiet.
Hayes has his arm around Ivy. Lila is watching the stage with the focused attention of a musician listening for what lies beneath.
Angel is beside me.
Not pressed against me. Just beside me, at a small table in a small room, close enough that I am aware of it. I can feel the heat from the outside edge of her arm to mine, almost an electric current running in the space between us.
She is watching the stage with the same complete attention she brings to the sessions, the same quality of listening that takes in more than the surface.
I watch her listen.
Between the first and second songs, a woman stops at our table on her way back from the bar.
Maybe thirty. Her expression is one I have been seeing since I was twenty-four, the recalibration, the confirming blink, the decision to act on it.
"I'm so sorry," she says, low enough not to disturb the room. "I just wanted to say the first album got me through a really hard year. I needed to say thank you."
The door opens. I turn toward her.
I thank her, ask which song it is, listen to the answer, and say something that makes her smile. Thirty seconds. She goes back to her table with the particular look of someone whose evening shifted in a good direction.
I turn back to the group.
Hayes has his arm around Ivy. Lila is watching the stage.
Angel is looking at me like she looks at things she is in the process of understanding. The professional attention. Reading the gap between what I present and what I am.
She just watched the door open and close.
"Sorry," I say.
"Don't be," she says. Easily. No edge in it.
She turns back to the stage.
I feel the discomfort of being observed at the exact moment I was performing, not by the press, not by the industry, but by the one person at this table who has been cataloging the difference between my versions since October.
She said it easily. Don't be.
Which means she has already filed it and is not making it a thing. Has probably understood something about it that I have not said out loud yet.
Two songs later, someone recognizes Hayes.
A man at the next table leans over and says something. Hayes turns, shakes his hand, and says a name back. No performance. Just present, then back to Ivy before the next chord.
Fifteen seconds, maybe less.
I watch Angel watch it.
She does not say anything. She turns back to the stage the same way she turned back after mine.
But I saw it. The brief comparison her eyes made without meaning to: two men, same room, same situation. One of them has come all the way home to himself. The other one is still working out the route.
The distance between her arm and mine has not changed.
I look at the stage.
I know which one I am.
I can still see the Panhandle and hear her voice going out into the open air.
And she hasn’t come to the fence line for days.
Between songs, Hayes leans over and says quietly: “How’s the album?”
“Done.”
“Good done or done, done?”
“Done, done.”
Hayes looks at me, and then he nods, like he does when something confirms what he already believed.
“Good,” he says. “I’m glad.”
He means it. Hayes always means what he says. It is one of the things I have always respected about him, and the thing that makes what Brad did to me stranger, in retrospect, because Hayes was right here the whole time showing me what genuine friendship looked like.
I should have paid more attention.
I am paying more attention now.
Ivy catches me looking at Angel sometime between the second and third songs. She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me knowingly, like it’s time for me to catch up.
I have spent many weeks catching up.