Gary and Lester left the motel intent on visiting Graceland. Angela and I used the time to be alone, lying in bed wrapped in the tangle of each other’s arms. I wanted her, but was too shy to make an advance. We’d been together at least a hundred times by then, but the old fear of rejection stayed with me. It was always her touch that started things. I never considered that perhaps she wanted to feel my hands on her first.
Her body felt stiffer in my arms that night. When she wouldn’t rest her head in the great dip of my chest, I knew something was wrong. Angela always found that disfigurement an inviting hollow. It let her listen to my heart.
“We gotta talk,” she said.
“Okay.” I expected it to be the end, but she didn’t have the sadness of separation in her voice.
“I’ve been late all month.”
It seemed impossible. Not only because we’d been careful, always sheathing me, but because I’d never considered the possibilities of fatherhood. It seemed a horror too unbelievable to face. What did I know about parenting? My own father could only provide a negative example. The practical things about childcare didn’t worry me. Diapers, bedtime and bottles I could learn, but the genetic inheritance I’d likely pass on remained outside my control. How do you protect someone from what you are?
When I didn’t respond, Angela slid away from me.
“Are you mad?” she asked.
I was angry at myself. I should’ve taken the precautions to keep another life like mine from the world.
“What are we going to do?” I asked. The wrong words.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
There were multiple arguments I could’ve given, speeches both altruistic and selfish. I could’ve told her that we didn’t have money for a child or that any chance at making our music career flourish would be over. The baggage of motherhood would push her from the stage. She’d never sing again aside from lullabies. The truth was I feared my contributions. Even if I possessed a strong mind, the form we mutually constructed would bare all my flaws. Willing it into existence out of my own need to love something entirely my own was a sin I couldn’t commit. Sometimes when I look back on that night, I miss that chance to be a father, but this never lasts long.
“We can’t,” I said.
Tears tumbled from her eyes. “How can you say that? We made it, Hollis.”
“I can’t make anything good, Angela. I’m not capable.”
I expected protest. For her to offer another declaration of my worth, but we didn’t talk any more that night. I sat outside on the hotel balcony, looking down on a pool filled with children. They splashed waves onto the concrete deck, ran screaming in circles around the edge regardless of their mother’s half-hearted warnings. Angela never joined me. I smoked cigarettes stolen from her purse until she fell asleep, then slipped back inside to draft my note on cheap hotel stationery.
I read it twice. Whatever poetry I can create with strings was absent in those words. I folded the letter lengthwise and laid it on the nightstand. I didn’t stay to watch her sleep. At the van, I found the Folgers can hidden under some blankets in the back. I took fifty dollars, a minuscule amount of my percentage, and locked the van doors. I hid the keys atop a back tire. Not the best place for them, but I couldn’t face Gary or Lester.
I walked down random streets. The lights of Memphis shone bright, intruding in a way I’ve never acclimated to after so much time in the dark provinces of the hills. I remember wishing I’d given her hair a final caress and stolen a cigarette for the road. The sky pissed rain. The drizzle turned to stinging diagonal showers as I put out a thumb. Eventually, a blue Corolla slowed. A man with road-raw eyes rolled down the window. He was a bit drunk, his suit coat emitting the stench of gin and sweet vermouth. His breath reeked of alcohol-infused olives.
“Where you headed?” he asked.
“Coopersville, West Virginia.”
“Never heard of it,” the drunk said, scratching his beard. “I’m heading to Ashland. Take you that far.”
I climbed in realizing I’d forgotten my guitar. The man drove fast as if daring the rain to wreck us, outlaw country playing as he offered sips from a bottle stowed in the floorboards of the passenger seat. As soon as the city was behind us, the man quit watching me in the rearview and spoke up.
“Look,” he said. “I might be outta line here, but I just gotta know. What the hell happened?”
I didn’t know where to begin.
* * *
• • •
Returning home was like walking barefoot into Hell. Since I’d no one to say good-bye to when I left, there was no one to greet me on my return. I found the camper the way I’d left it, aside from a few broken windows. Rocks that had sailed through the panes still lay on the floor when I entered. I sat on the bed and held them, wondered what sort of heathens had thrown them and what spooky stories they’d told about the twisted man who’d lived here with his murderous father. I’ve heard incarcerated men say how the first night is the hardest. That eventually, you grow accustomed to the bars, constant sounds and smells of a jailhouse. It wasn’t like that for me. The first night, I bedded down in total relaxation, not comfortable but accepting the familiar defeat of my home. I only felt the haunt of my father the next morning when I went to walk among the burned planks of the church.
And that’s how it went for a few months. I made infrequent trips to town, walking to the store to spend what little money I’d squirreled away on canned food I hauled back across the creek. I lived the life of a mountain hermit, spent nights sitting in the absolute dark of the camper, wondering if something would ever intervene on the slow, boring decay I’d decided upon.
The guitar arrived a few weeks later. A nervous UPS man delivered it in the early morning. He stood on my camper’s small porch looking perplexed, uncertain anyone could be inside the little hovel. I came out of the shadowed bedroom to accept the package, and he left without bothering to wait for my signature. I’m sure he still tells the story. There was a small letter explaining that it wasn’t my guitar, just a replacement since mine had been pawned for band funds. That was something Angela would apologize for years later. At the time, I was less excited about the old acoustic Fender with its tobacco sunburst than knowing that the band had settled somewhere in Nashville. I could picture Angela sitting in the cafés, writing music out as she sipped café au lait. I took the letter and tacked it to the bedroom wall.
The guitar opened a floodgate of song. I spent days composing new pieces, writing some of the music on the tiny bathroom wall. When the first songs were finished, I traveled to town, bought a small tape recorder and made a cassette of the material. I dropped it in the mailbox with a note that I wanted the band to have them, a personal thank you and apology for leaving in the night. I warned myself that it would probably come back “Return to Sender.” Instead, I received a note from Angela, an eight-hundred-dollar check and a request for more. That was the start of our new relationship.