Chapter 5
Five
Bridge (minor key): Girl has feelings. Non-orgasmic ones.
Dixie
“Goddammit!” I snap at the empty page. I really thought I’d beat my writer’s block tonight, but it’s five in the morning and my brain is officially fried. Pretty sure God’s cackling up there in the sky and, seeing as I’ve just ditched his favorite kid, Jack the minister, I probably deserve it.
After the sneak of shame out of Jack’s two hours ago, I’ve barricaded myself in my van, sitting cross-legged on the air mattress like some kind of broke meditation guru.
My A/V equipment is shoved to the side, and I’m wrapped up in blankets like a mummy, waiting for the world to warm up (come on, global warming!) and the creative juices to flow.
It’s been months since I’ve written a whole-ass song.
My dad’s professional take on this failure?
“Just put your butt in the chair and write, Dixie!” As if twenty more minutes—or two hundred hours—will magically unlock my brain.
Easy advice from a man who wrote one Christmas novelty hit twenty years ago and acts like he cracked the code to songwriting.
My agent hasn’t weighed in on the failure—she knows my mind is an empty sheet of paper. A single note plunked out on a piano.
I’m not going to cut it.
I stretch my leg out, trying to work the stiffness out of my hip.
Jack is something else in bed (the adjective I’m looking for is devastating), so I totally don’t regret the residual effects on my body.
These include spectacular beard burn on my chest and thighs, the sexy postcard version of JACK WAS HERE. Or maybe X MARKS THE SPOT?
His prowess deserves to be immortalized in song. Right?
Except I have nothing. Nada. Zero inspiration despite getting thoroughly inspired mere hours ago.
Sweetgum Auto is darker than an auditorium in a blackout.
I’ve dug out my tea lights and my current plan is to not set my van—and all my earthly possessions—on fire.
February in Tennessee is colder than a witch’s left tit.
Come on, Muse! We’re writing by candlelight!
Don’t you want to speed-write a soulful ballad?
“Oh, God,” I say out loud, because Jack’s a bad influence and has me praying. Sort of. I’d be more of a sacrifice-to-Diana pagan lover if I had to choose.
Great. Wonderful. Now I’m thinking about Jack. He’s a hungry man, which is flattering. Or maybe it’s just that it’s clear he doesn’t pick up women in a bar as a general rule, and I always like being an exception and a broken rule. It’s a fabulous two-for-one.
There’s more to him than just a broad pair of shoulders, although I definitely like the way his muscles come gift wrapped in flannel.
He screams I am a rock! Lean on me! The half smile that he only half hides behind his beard promises that he’s on your side no matter what.
He’s supremely capable of carrying and burying any bodies I might create.
I like how he thinks before he speaks, slow but deliberate, one word following the other in a neat, orderly train, in a way that says he’s aware that people listen to him and, why yes, he has earned that trust. In short, the man is horribly, wonderfully capable, and it would be way too easy to lean on him like everyone else in this ridiculously small town probably does.
It’s a good thing I’m out of here just as soon as my van is functional.
Plus, there’s the whole man of God thing that I might, just possibly, have not come to terms with. I have no idea what draws me to him.
My phone buzzes loud enough to jolt me out of my brooding, and I nearly crack my skull on the van’s metal ceiling when I sit up too fast.
It’s Dear Old Dad. The Begetter. Sir Talks-Too-Much.
He’ll lecture me about my life choices. Give advice that’s on point but supremely annoying. Make me actually consider singing his stupid song with him.
I groan, flopping back onto my pillow (aka bundled-up hoodie). My joints feel like they’ve been stuffed with gravel overnight, and my fingers don’t want to cooperate when I jab at the screen. If I let this ring through, though, he’ll just call again. And again. And again.
I swipe to answer and press the phone to my ear. “Dad! This better be good.”
“Dixie! Finally! Thought I was gonna have to send a carrier pigeon.” Dad’s voice is way too loud. “You sound like you’re not awake yet. You gotta early-bird it if you want to get that worm!”
I’ll get right on that. Maybe Hawaii or Arizona have viable country music circuits.
He clocks my answering silence as hostility and moves on. “You sleeping in your van again?”
I roll onto my side, curling into myself against the cold. “What do you want?”
“I wouldn’t have to call at the crack of dawn if you’d answer your phone at normal hours.” That’s rich, considering the time difference between Tennessee and…
“Where are you?” I ask more to delay the inevitable than out of real curiosity.
“The Maldives.” He announces this the same way he would say that cute little coffee shop down the road or my McMansion that’s twenty miles outside Nashville and sits on an acre but I pretend it’s a ranch and I have horses because I am a Big Star.
“Beachfront bungalow. Five stars. Sun, sand, drinks with tiny umbrellas. You’d love it. ”
He’s right. A giant, heated ball of gas sounds perfect.
“Anyway,” he continues, oblivious to—or uninterested in—my irritation, “I’ve been thinkin’ about this Christmas album, and I really believe you should do it. It’ll be great for your career, give you some exposure. A nice cash infusion, too. You could use that, right?”
We both know the answer, but I won’t give him the satisfaction of saying it out loud.
“Dad, I told you—I’m not doing your Christmas album.”
“Come on now, Dixie, don’t be like that. I’m just tryin’ to help you out here. This is a real opportunity for you. A little boost from your old man won’t kill you.”
I stare up at the van’s ceiling, counting the specks of rust along the edges. “I’m not singing ‘Jingle Bell Dash’ with you.”
His version of that perennial Christmas favorite snuck onto the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart in the fiftieth spot twenty years ago in a true Christmas miracle.
It’s a hyperactive ditty about Santa street racing his sleigh and features such outstanding lyrics as “Reindeer hooves on the icy road, Santa’s got a need for speed, lock and load!
” and “Giddy-up, Dasher, don’t be slow, we got presents to throw, let’s go, let’s go!
” It has both an extraneous banjo solo and an a cappella section where Santa raps about “leaving Frosty in the snowdrift dust.”
“It’s a great song!”
“It’s a terrible song.”
There’s a pause where we both silently admit that I’m right, then he leans into it. “Well, it charted higher than any of your songs ever have.”
That lands like a kick to the ribs, seeing as how exactly none of my songs have charted. Even though I should be used to his criticism, I have to bite the inside of my cheek and take a steadying breath lest I go supernova on his oblivious, suntanning self. He doesn’t mean to be cruel. He just is.
“You don’t have to do my song.” He’s generous in victory.
“We could pick something else. Or co-write! The point is, you need a push, Dixie. You’re not a solo act—never have been.
You need direction, a team. I mean, look at you—still spinning your wheels, still playing those same old dive bars after almost ten years on the road.
You really think that’s gonna lead somewhere?
Those gigs are supposed to be the on-ramp to somewhere, not the only road you take. ”
My fingers curl into the blanket, the RA making my knuckles ache at the movement. “I’m fine.”
“Look, honey, I get it. You’re stubborn.
You wanna prove something and you’ve got your old man’s grit.
But the reality is, you’re running out of time.
You’re not twenty anymore. You’re tired, you’re broke, and let’s be honest—you ain’t makin’ it big on your own.
Just do the album. You need the money. And I could use a good singer on it. ”
He thinks he’s helping. But every word out of his mouth is another cut, slicing away at whatever stubborn dignity I have left.
The worst part is that I do need money. And exposure.
And yet, the idea of tying myself to him musically, of stepping into the twenty-year-old shadow of his single, minor hit, makes me feel as if I’m drowning.
“Shoot,” I lie. “My phone’s about to die.”
“Dixie—”
“—losing you—” I make static noises with my mouth. This is a shame-free zone.
“Don’t hang up on me, baby girl—”
I end the call and then turn my phone off for good measure. How much longer can I afford to refuse? How much longer before even he gives up on my career?
I sit there for another minute, stewing in my own irritation and the lingering sting of his words.
I do a quick search online for preacher erotica to check out the obvious answer to “Why are priests hot?” and discover multiple historical romances to add to my to-be-read pile.
I realize it’s not weird that I jumped a priest-guy!
Not at all! I’m just living out a really kinky fantasy without the broody, half-naked-man-chest covers.
Jack is nothing like other guys I’ve hooked up with, who were mostly other musicians.
I’d met them in smoke-filled bars where we’d knocked back tequila shots, licking salt off our wrists, laughing hard about nothing.
We’d played tiny stages, split tinier door takes, and then stayed up all night to work out a new melody.
Driven from one club to the next, crisscrossed the South in the van, and played anywhere and everywhere because musicians never had money.
After a few gigs, we’d always parted ways.
What would have happened if I’d met a man like Jack, back when I was shiny-young and optimistic? What if I’d been as deliberate about my dating choices as I had been about my music?
A soundtrack to that thought pops into my head, a new melody playing in my imagination.
I bend over the guitar, coaxing the music closer until I can pick out individual notes and scrawl them down. It feels as natural as breathing, translating unwelcome, uncertain feelings into black notes on white paper. The words come fast, angry and honest and raw:
“She’s not one of those girls
Who says yes to a preaching man
Walks down the church aisle
Wears white on her big day
Could have been, should’ve been?
That’s what they say
Ask her to be yours, she says, ‘No’
Because she don’t stick
No place for her in that life
No safe spot for her heart
Pretty preacher man makes her hot
But she’ll keep on walking
Right on out of his life
Never gonna be preacher’s girl
Not gonna wear his ring
Not gonna share his life, be his one and only
’Cause she’s not one of those girls
That’s gotta trust a man
Just gonna kiss him good and go
She’s a once-upon-a-time girl
Who’s gotta keep on walking
Right out of reach
Once upon a time she could have been preacher’s girl
Could have been that trusting girl
No, no, no
She’s not tryna fit that life
Now she’s nobody’s girl
Her own girl
Not one of those girls.”
The melody’s beats flow as I finger the guitar.
Before I can lose the moment, I record it on my phone.
The quality isn’t ideal, but I need to know if it’s any good.
I upload it to my Instagram, along with a stock photo of a black sweater casually discarded on a bed and add a caption: “When you accidentally hook up with a preacher man and have to own your poor life choices. Am I hot for preacher?”
Boom. Click. Done.
Like my hookup.