Long Way Gone (6 page)

A couple walking by with a daughter maybe eight or nine had edged
into the crowded bar, and the little girl was mouthing along with many of the words.

Daley pointed. “Hey, Mom and Dad? Can she sing with me? Do you mind? Okay, come on.”

The girl walked forward through a crowd that parted like the Red Sea. Daley pulled up a stool and helped her climb onto it. Feet dangling. Daley knelt and asked her, “Now what can we sing?” The girl whispered in her ear.

I've never heard a more beautiful version of “Over the Rainbow.” Daley had us eating out of her hand. I was as mesmerized as the audience, and eventually I just quit playing and listened. Again she shot me a glance, but I shook my head. Next they sang “On Top of Spaghetti.” As the crowd applauded, the girl whispered in Daley's ear, whereupon the two of them brought the house down with “You Are My Sunshine.”

Through Ray Charles, Roy Orbison, and two dozen songs, her voice showered the audience, who drank it in. Drowning in it. When she started into John Denver's “Rocky Mountain High,” the entire place joined in, rattling the windows. Once she had them in a foaming lather, she broke into the Righteous Brothers' “You've Lost That Loving Feeling.” Followed seamlessly with “Unchained Melody.” At this point, every man in the bar wanted to kiss Daley. Including me.

Daley had sung herself into a drenching sweat, which prompted Frank to bring her a towel and open one of the large bay doors, allowing our concert to spill out into the street. Daley wiped her face and arms and made a joke about how while most girls perspire, she sweats. Finally, after nearly three hours, she sat on a stool and said, “I think we've played enough, and while you all have been too kind to me, would you please”—she stepped off to one side—“put your hands together for the finest guitarist I've ever heard, much less played with, Cooper O'Connor.”

The crowd—now bordering on a hundred and fifty plus—was not quite ready for Daley to quit. Stomping their feet and pounding glasses on tables, they demanded an encore. Which Daley accommodated with a lush and sultry rendition of “Can't Get Enough of Your Love.” The
only thing missing was a disco ball and Barry White himself. I thought to myself,
I've seen everything now.

Watching her perform, I had a thought. I played a few notes and Daley turned toward me. I said, “Remember this one?”

I began to mimic the thunder and the lightning. Daley turned toward the audience and said, “It's been a long time since I've sung this one. Been a long time since I wanted to.”

I whispered, “You think you can remember the words?”

She stood up again, raised her microphone, and with a smirk said, “You think you can remember the chords?”

The audience picked up the tune, and several began holding their phones, videoing. It was some of the most fun I'd had in twenty years. When Daley finished, ringing out that last ascending high note, a pulsating, rose-vine-like vein popped out on her neck. That's when I knew she was all in.

When she finished singing, not a person was seated. The applause ran five minutes. She said, “Since we're all standing, let's end with an old beer-drinking tune. My voice is toast, and those videos you're holding will attest to that. But I need help with this one. Come on, we'll all sing.

“The guy who wrote this spent a lot of time in bars. That's where the tune came from. He wrote these words in the belly of a slave ship when he finally saw the mess he'd made of his life. I like to think he wrote this because he needed it, and if today reminded me of anything, I need it too. Maybe you sometimes feel the same.” She motioned for me to stand next to her and set the mike between us. She touched her neck, shook her head ever so slightly, and then leaned over and whispered, “Help.”

Thinking we'd already reached the pinnacle of what she could accomplish that night, I watched in wonder as Daley led a half-drunk chorus of bearded and tattooed sons of miners and truckers and river guides and ski bums and chairlift bunnies in a rousing rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

Somewhere in the second verse, she tugged on my arm and pulled me toward the microphone, as if to say,
Why aren't you singing?

My father was six foot five, deep voice, the wingspan of a Zeppelin, and when he sang hymns he always raised his hands. Didn't matter where he was. Didn't care what others thought. And when he did, everyone knew, because both his voice and his body stood out. I couldn't have been more than four the first time I stood next to him and sang that song. Came up to about the middle of his thigh. Big-Big had played the intro on the piano, and when Dad bellowed the word
A-a-may-zing
, I remember feeling it resonate and rumble through my chest like waves pounding the beach. Afraid and excited, I clutched his leg and held on, knowing something was coming. I remember staring up and watching sweat pour off his face and trickle down his arms.

When I opened my mouth and wiggled a few notes through the scar tissue, Daley turned toward me. She leaned back, stopped singing, and just listened. A tear drained out of her right eye, letting me know that my words had filtered down and in. Everyone else must have shared her amazement, because I sang the last half of the third verse by myself. Just me and the guitar.

It'd been a long time since I'd done that.

Daley and the audience applauded, then joined in again. When they did, the volume grew twice as loud as it had been before, and the night took on an organic melody of its own.

When we finally reached “Bright shining as the sun,” everybody raised their voices and their glasses, sloshing beer and foam around the bar. From my vantage point on the stage, I could see out the now-open bay door and onto the street and down three blocks toward Riverview, which sat just across the bridge. Showered in the glow of yellow streetlights, a giant of a man paced back and forth across the bridge. Hands held high.

Evidence that sound carries.

We closed the night to applause and whistles and requests for pictures and Daley's autograph. Frank, who had apparently found religion, bought a round on the house—which the house appreciated. Daley, having just signed a guy's chest and taken a picture with six college kids,
turned, hugged me, and whispered in my ear, “I thought they said you'd never sing again?”

I laid Ella in her case and nodded at Daley. “Yes, they said that.”

She locked her arm in mine. “I'm glad they were wrong.”

I didn't bother to tell her that they weren't . . .

I was twenty years younger. The doctor sat on a rolling stainless steel stool, scooted up next to the bed, and let out a deep breath before he spoke—quietly, as if the tone of his voice would help soften the blow. “You'll never sing again.” He paused, then shook his head. “Might not even talk.” He glanced at my bandaged hand. “Probably never play an instrument that involves your right hand. You may never hear out of your right ear again. And then there's your liver.”

My eyes were having a tough time focusing, and the finality of his words wasn't helping.

“The prognosis isn't . . .”

While his lips moved, and bodies in the hall scurried to and fro past my door, carrying on with their everyday normal lives, I remember thinking to myself,
He can't be talking about me. My songs are on the radio. I'm making a record. Getting married. I have plans.

He finished speaking, and a pregnant silence followed. It sank in that he was, in fact, talking about me.

My lips were chapped and swollen. I whispered, “Until then?”

“Live your life.”

A hoarse whisper. “Like an inmate on death row.”

He tilted his head to one side. “That's one way of looking at it.”

“How would you look at it . . . if you were lying here?”

He didn't answer.

I stared out the window across a brilliant blue Nashville skyline. “How much time do I have?”

He shrugged. “That's anybody's guess.”

M
idnight had come and gone when we drove west on 306 out of BV, turned south on 321, and wound our way around the Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Resort, past the chalk cliffs onto the gravel road that led to the deserted mining town of St. Elmo.

St. Elmo sits at about twelve thousand feet and thrived during the silver boom. Following the passage of the Silver Act, the price of silver plummeted, and along with it St. Elmo's population. Much like Leadville's. Overnight, 90 percent of its residents packed up, boarded up their houses, and moved out. But when somebody struck the mother lode of ore higher up at the Mary Murphy Mine, folks returned and St. Elmo thrived. Somebody had to process all that ore, and no mine was more productive than the Mary Murphy. Given their elevation, neither town was all that accessible during winter. A few hard-core locals managed to stick it out, but it took a special breed to survive a winter up there.

Still does.

Daley didn't say much during the drive; she seemed to be enjoying both the quiet and the moonlit view. By the time we rounded the curve and pull-off at the roaring Chalk Creek Falls, she'd turned sideways in the seat, curled up, and dozed off. I did my best to avoid the bumps and not stare at her. I did pretty well with the bumps.

The peroxide was a mystery. She used to have the most beautiful, silky brunette hair. The skin on her hands was cracked, and her
fingernails were bitten to the quick. Beneath the hum of the motor and the tires, I could hear her snoring slightly.

We climbed up through the aspens toward St. Elmo, turning onto dirt road 295 that led up to and past the Mary Murphy Mine. The road grows steep there, so I stopped, shifted to four-low, and eased off the clutch.

She woke, palmed the drool off her face, and buckled up her seat belt. “You live up here?”

“Not far now.” I downshifted into second. “This was one of my mom's favorite places. My dad used to laugh and tell me that God made me up here beneath the aspens. Took me a few years to figure out what he was talking about. They were in the process of building a cabin when she got sick. We buried her in the spring, and Dad and I moved up here when I was five. Each year the summer got longer, and we'd stay up here until the snow drove us back down. When I . . . when I left Nashville, I wandered west. Spent a year staring at the Pacific while my body healed. Once I was physically able, I started working odd jobs. Whatever would occupy my mind for a few weeks. Then I'd bump into something that would remind me of my rearview mirror, and I'd take off again.” Another pause. “A few bumps later and I found myself circling closer to the only home I'd ever known. Been here ever since.”

She put a hand on my arm and tried to push the words off the tip of her tongue, but there were too many and she was too tired. And Daley wasn't just tired like she needed a good night's sleep. She needed to sleep for six weeks, wake up, eat, and sleep for six or eight more.

A mile later, we leveled out on the ridgeline and then crossed the creek below the cabin. Mom's aspens lined the road. The breeze filtered through, causing the leaves to clap gently, flashing green and white in the headlights.

I pointed. “Hear that? Dad used to joke and tell me that was all the applause he ever needed.”

When she saw the cabin rising up out of the hillside, she pointed. “Your dad built that?”

“He started it when he and mom were dating. After she died, we finished it.” I smiled. “All the comforts of home. Electricity. Hot and cold running water. And decent cell phone reception if you stand in the right spot on the porch.”

We climbed the steps to the porch, where she stood waiting on me to unlock the door. My hands were full. I spoke over four bags of groceries. “It's unlocked.”

I set the groceries in the kitchen, lit a fire to knock the chill off, and then found her on the back porch, staring out across the world. It was a clear night. Moon high. I extended my arm and allowed her to look along the end of my finger. “That peak is about two hundred miles away. Dad would stand right where you are on nights like this and say, ‘The veil is thin up here.' ”

She whispered, “He was right.”

She leaned against me and locked her arm in mine, too tired to talk. I held her hand and led her to the spare bedroom, where I cracked a window, and she slipped off her boots and lay down. I covered her with a blanket, cut the light, and stood at the door.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Anything.”

“Why didn't you sing any of your own stuff tonight?”

“With my third album, Sam thought I needed to become more edgy. More”—she raised fingers in the air to form quotation marks—“
relevant
. A few years passed, and I was standing on a stage somewhere in California, or maybe Washington, and I realized the folks in the audience didn't know the songs. Didn't know the words. Didn't sing along. And between the lights, the lasers, the makeup, and the explosions, I didn't blame them.” A self-effacing admission. “The songs were no good. Junk. Why should they care? I certainly didn't, and they could tell when I sang them. But I had to make a living, so I began singing what they did know. Covers. Songs they cared about.” A pause. “It paid the bills . . . for a while.”

“Speaking of Sam, how is he?”

Her eyes dropped. “Haven't talked in a long time. When I call him, he'll call me back, but . . . I don't think he ever forgave himself for shooting you. If he'd known it was you, he'd never have pulled the trigger. He thought it was just two guys . . .”

I let it go. Figured this was not the time to correct her view of history. “What happened between you two?”

I could hear embarrassment in her voice.

“I looked at Sam like an uncle. He looked at me like, well . . . I was young. It took me awhile to realize that a man thirty years older could want something physical from me.” A shrug. “A few months after you left, he came to me with some excitement and said he'd put together a collection of really great songs and wanted to make a follow-up record to release on the heels of the successful tour of the album you and I made. So we did. And he was right, it was a great collection of ballads. All right in my sweet spot. Two platinum records. Five number ones. We were all riding the wave. On the surface life was good.

“Then he and Bernadette divorced, and I came home from tour to a candlelight dinner, his shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, and what felt like a date. He put his hand on my thigh, I refused him, told him that wasn't how I saw him. I moved out of the apartment he'd rented for me and handed him the keys. Felt that was best for our relationship. Keep it professional. He was really good about it . . . said he wanted whatever made me happy.”

She sat up on the bed and drew up her knees, hugging them to her chest.

“Then I walked into the studio to record my fourth album, and his assistant was driving my Mercedes and the songs I was looking at were nothing like what I'd sung in the past. They were lifeless. Superficial. Pop candy. When I approached Sam, he said the current inventory of available songs was limited. It's just something that happens in the business. Life in Nashville is a function of who writes the best songs. It was the best he could do.” She looked up at me. “Then he signed a new girl and she cut a record with some songs that I thought sounded more like
me than her. Then two more girls just like her. Several of those songs did really well.”

The trajectory of Daley's career had turned sharply downward about this time, so I kept digging. “What happened to the last album?”

She leaned her head back against the headboard. “The industry changed. I was sick for about a year. Fighting an infection in my throat mixed with a weariness I just couldn't shake. I'd had some injections in my vocal cords to help me meet my obligations. That didn't help. All I wanted to do was sleep. Felt like my bones were tired. It was all I could do to open my mouth, but the notes that came out were lifeless.”

For so long I'd wanted to know what had happened after I left Nashville. Now I did. For twenty years she'd walked the earth thinking Sam was the benevolent uncle, not holding a grudge, believing she'd simply been the talent who couldn't make it in records. Sam had been the good guy who felt guilty for “mistakenly” shooting me. It's why he brushed the whole thing under the rug. Never pressed charges for a crime he'd claimed was committed. Further, he'd protected Daley and her career—or so she believed.

When she looked in her rearview mirror, she saw a very different history from the one I'd lived. In her mind, I'd rejected and abandoned her. Cut and run. Sam had stuck around to patch up the pieces.

It was the one possible scenario that had never occurred to me.

She smiled as a tear rolled out the corner of her eye and then along the line of her nose. She clutched her legs tighter to her chest. “I used to look for you in the crowds.”

I opened the window, pulled the curtain, and laid an extra blanket across her feet. “Up here the mountains sing a sweet song. It'll rock you to sleep.”

She was asleep before I shut the door.

I added wood to the fire and then grabbed a towel. Then I walked up to the creek, stripped under the moonlight, waded in up to my ears, and soaked until the frigid cold felt warm.

Given snow runoff, the water temperature in the creeks and streams
in and around Buena Vista remains slightly below thirty-two degrees in winter. Add to that the flow of the water, which brings more of that cold across your skin at a faster rate, and it's like packing a body in dry ice. Up here, on the back side of Mt. Antero and Mt. Princeton, where Boulder Mountain, Mt. Mamma, Grizzly Mountain, Cyclone Mountain, and Mt. White all run together, an odd phenomenon occurred. A deep, high-walled bowl developed—what my father affectionately called God's Shaving Basin.

Regardless of the August heat, that bowl held snow year-round and has for as long as anyone can remember. Chances are good there's snow in there from fifty years ago. Whatever the case, the snowmelt from God's Basin feeds into Baldwin Lake and Pomeroy Lake. To get there, it runs through a natural funnel in the rock, creating a waterfall of about ten feet and landing in a second basin just above our cabin. Dad named that one God's Cereal Bowl. I guess he was hungry when he named it. The creek spills out there in a showering spray that's tough to stand under, given the pressure and the cold. It feels like needles piercing your skin. The Cereal Bowl is about the size of an average swimming pool and filled with delicious six-inch trout that dart around the rocks and to my knowledge are found nowhere else in the world. The freezing cold water overflows its edges and then begins its roller-coaster descent into the valley, where it eventually bleeds into the Arkansas River.

The value for me was that God's Basin created a consistent flow of water that was technically colder than ice and just a hundred feet out my back door, no matter how hot the air happened to be in summer.

The first thirty to sixty seconds were the most painful. After that, I never really felt much. Truth is, after five or six minutes, my mind started telling me that I was warm.