Paradise (6 page)

“That’s a shame.” Paradise rose up off the hood and hung the heel of his boot on the Bronco’s bumper. “Can’t you dream bigger than that?”

“This isn’t about what I can do. It’s about what you can do.” I moved to the side of his Bronco. At least the bottom half of me would be out of the wind, and I wouldn’t have to look at him anymore—the flirty little way his hair curled at the base of his neck, his washboard abs. I stood still for a moment, clearing my mind with the
woooooosh
of the wind rushing through the tops of the pines edging the pasture. “You’ve agreed to be part of the band, so don’t take any more stupid chances. Don’t screw this up for the rest of us.”

“Speaking of screwing up”—Paradise opened the passenger door and pulled out a neatly folded black T-shirt—“shouldn’t you be at the Tucker Barn?” He pushed one arm through a sleeve and squeezed into the T-shirt, tight as bark on a tree.

“Are you just going to dress in front of me?”

“You don’t have to watch.” He tucked the front part of the shirt behind his belt buckle.

I spotted his murse in the backseat. A clean shirt and the accordion, Paradise was definitely headed to the Tucker Barn.

“Just you don’t be late,” I told him.

I gripped the bottom of my dress around my thighs and followed the tire tracks through the pasture parking lot, around the arena, almost to the entrance gate at the highway. I had ridden to the rodeo with Dad, but his truck was nowhere in sight. I scanned the lines of parked vehicles. Lacey’s yellow Volkswagen Bug was gone too. And she definitely would not be inside with all those eyewitnesses to her meltdown.

Near the arched metal gate by the entrance, I climbed into the bed, then onto the cab of a jacked-up Dually. I had wasted too much time on Paradise. Now it was getting dark. The lights had come on around the arena. The wind and humidity in the spring air signaled a coming rain.

I sat down on top of the cab, trying to figure out what to do. Mother and Dad surely thought I was with Lacey. If I called home, they’d come and get me. But I’d miss the gig at the Tucker Barn. I tried texting Lacey on my cell. “Where r u?” No response. I texted Lacey three more times. No response. Unless I could find a ride, the Waylon Slider Band would be minus its drummer. Waylon would replace me. No doubt about it.

The headlights from a truck coming up the trail blinded me. I shielded my eyes with my forearm and waited for the truck and its thumping music to pass by. But the truck stopped. When I looked down, I saw the top of Paradise’s baby blue Bronco.

I hopped off the cab and jumped off the side of the Dually. I jerked open the door to the Bronco and slid in.

“Don’t say anything,” I yelled over his music as I slammed the door. “I need a ride.”

With the last of the sunshine gone and the spring storm clouds pressing in, Paradise drove onto the highway with me riding shotgun. He shifted into high gear then rested his arm on the back of the bench seat. His fingertips brushed my shoulder.

I straightened my dress, trying to cover my knees. There was something about Paradise that kept me in a constant state of agitation. It didn’t help that he smelled sweet like boot leather and earthy musk, that everything about him—his perfect teeth, the jewel-toned emerald of his eyes, the little gold earrings—shimmered in the dark. It certainly didn’t help that if I turned my head my cheek would press against his hand. As if my going to the Tucker Barn wasn’t risky enough, I now had to contend with Paradise by the dashboard lights.

There were only two ways to get to the Tucker Barn. The back way, an old bootlegger road that crossed the Jessup County line, no one ever used. I turned his stereo down. “You know how to get there?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Paradise moved his hand and turned the stereo back up.

Spanish music bounced from his speakers. But not like the music at Don Caliente’s Taco Bar and Cantina. This was different.

I held my hand against one of the mounted speakers. A man’s voice rapped Spanish lyrics. It was like pop or rock or both. Then I picked up, as identifiable as a steel guitar on a country song, the sound of an accordion driving the melody. And one other thing: a dull thumping I could feel through the speaker.

“Carlos Vives.” Paradise smiled as he turned down the volume. “Hard not to like, right?”

“It’s danceable. Kind of familiar.” I kept my hand on the speaker and looked away from him, to the lightning flashes in the distance. “Like country rock.”

“It is country rock. Colombian pop music with
vallenato
.”

The headlights shined ahead spotlighting a huge oak tree to the right of the highway. A large sign with a red arrow came into view:
TUCKER FAMILY VINEYARDS.
Paradise shifted the Bronco into low, following the arrow and veering off the highway onto an old blacktop road.

Paradise slowed down and eased the Bronco over the rough, potholed road. I let go of the speaker. We were getting close to the Tucker Barn, deep in the woods where there are no streetlights, only the occasional glimpse of moonlight peeking through the treetops and the strobe-light flashes of lightning.

“What the heck is va-ye-whatever?”

“
Vallenato.
From Columbian cowboys. Think American country music. Story songs about love and loss and passion.” He came to a stop at an old railroad crossing and looked down at my hands, my purity ring, and my fingers tapping away on my knees. “You do that a lot.”

I stopped instantly, stupid nervous drumming, and moved to fidgeting with my hair. I tucked what I could behind my ears, pulling out a few little wispy pieces. I stared through the window at a distant radio tower with its red blinking lights.

“The barn’s just ahead.”

Paradise crossed the tracks. His
vallenato
played on.

I pressed my hand against the speaker again. I had to ask about the percussion. I couldn’t stop myself. A drum of some kind I’d never heard before.

“What’s that scraping sound? That beat?” I nodded my head as the speaker pulsed against my palm.

“The beat is a
caja
, a little drum.” Paradise spread his fingers out above the steering wheel as if the drumhead were the same size as his hand. “The scraping sound is from a notched stick called a
guacharaca.
” He whispered the Spanish word as if he just wanted to breathe it.

“A what?”

“A
gua-cha-ra-ca
.” He wrestled with the steering wheel as he drove down the bumpy road. “Say it,
gua
—”

I tried my best, pursing my lips and blowing air to get the right sound. “Wa—wa…”

Paradise laughed and sped up. “Paisley, you look like a guppy fish.”

I wanted to crawl onto the floorboard. Slink right out of the seat, out of his sight.
Guppy fish.
I let him reel me in when I should’ve been thinking about our gig. I should’ve been thinking about the drum setup. Would there be floor toms and hi-hat cymbals? I should’ve been thinking about that, or how in the heck I was going to get home. I shouldn’t have been so caught up in Paradise or his music.

In a huff, I folded my arms at my waist. No more distractions.

We topped the hill about a mile away from the Tucker Barn. An orange glow, probably from a bonfire, hovered between the rolling hills. A twinge of nerves gripped me. I’d only been to the barn during the Tucker Winery’s Annual Grape Stomp. I’d never come close to sneaking out to one of Levi’s parties, and now I’d be there. Center stage. Bonfire, booze, and the band. I took a deep breath.

“You’re good at drums, Paisley.” Paradise seemed to get that he’d ticked me off. He put both hands on the wheel and served up some flattery. “My grandfather says that a good drummer is the heartbeat of
vallenato
.” Paradise kept talking as if the way to this girl was through a percussion discussion. “The beat of the
caja
is the passion in the love story. The scraping of the
guacharaca
is the loss, the heartbreak. My grandfather says you can’t play them until you’ve lived them.”

“So,” I started talking to him again. “Are you Colombian or something?”

“My mother is, and my grandfather.” Paradise nodded at the murse that held his accordion in the backseat. “My grandfather is a
vallenato
king. A Colombian accordion king.”

“Let me guess, that makes you the accordion prince?”

Paradise put one hand across his heart. “No, I’m more the accordion Prince Charming.”

I could feel him catching glances at me as he drove, waiting for my reaction to his joke. But I didn’t budge or say a word. Waiting and wondering would probably do the smart-ass some good.

Paradise tried sweetening my mood with drum talk again. “You play drums for your school band?”

“Yep.” Tree branches clasped above the road making a cave-like tunnel through the wooded bottom. Paradise switched his lights to bright. I wondered about his school. “What about you? Can you play the accordion at school?”

Paradise turned his music down. “I used to. Anytime, any day.”

“They kick you out for that?”

“
They
would be my grandfather and a tutor.” Paradise sat up straighter when he mentioned his grandfather. “My parents traveled a lot. My dad didn’t want me left in Colombia. My mother didn’t want me left in Texas.”

I shifted in my seat. “So you’re homeschooled?” The thought of it terrified me. School was my solo venture out of the house and out of the Dripping Springs community.

“More like travel-schooled,” Paradise started to explain but a loud rumble surrounded us.

I glanced at the side mirror. A car raced behind us, tailgating with the lights on bright. Paradise swerved to the side of the one-lane road, sending us into the brush and tall weeds that crowded the blacktop. A jeep full of kids zoomed past as Paradise stomped the brakes.

The sudden swerve slammed me into the side door. Before I could blink, Paradise reached across the seat.

“You all right, Paisley?” He gently squeezed the top of my leg, his fingertips pressing against the inside of my thigh.

“Yeah.” I moved his hand off my leg and felt a sudden prickling of goose bumps. “I hope we … I just hope we get out of the Tucker Barn alive.”

Paradise eased back onto the road.

Maybe it was the moment, the talk of homeschooling, or my hand on his and the purity ring reflecting the moonlight, but I thought about my mother—at home, filling my and Lacey’s Easter baskets with little-girl trinkets. Lacey would have hair ribbons; I’d have barrettes. We’d both have some new lip gloss and summer pajamas. She’d give Lacey a collection of samples from the gift-with-purchase promos run by the makeup counters at the mall. And even though it pained her, she’d place in my basket new drumsticks for me to use at school. She couldn’t possibly imagine that I was out roaming backcountry roads with a boy, an older boy at that, on my way to drum for the Waylon Slider Band’s first gig.

“You sure you’re all right?”

I nodded.

We sped through an
S
curve, coming out of the woods into wide-open river bottom. Cars and trucks parked along the road and in the pasture. On a rise about two hundred yards inside a barbed-wire fence, the Tucker Barn—with its roof painted like the Texas flag and outlined in Christmas-tree lights—twinkled like Barbie’s Redneck Playhouse.

I forgot all about Mother and steadied myself for a party in the pasture.

7

PASTURE PARTY BREAKDOWN

The burning end of cigarettes pulsed like the orange flash of fireflies among the cars lined along the fence row. In the low part of the pasture, jacked-up mud trucks circled a raging bonfire—flames firing at least twenty feet into the black night. And one tip end of Moon Lake glowed in the distance. Kids from all over the tri-county area showed up. From the blessed to the broke. Paradise stopped at the cattle guard and handed one of Levi’s brothers ten bucks. Between the band and the kegs, the Tucker boys turned a profit.

Paradise followed the dirt road up the hill and around the barn, parking on the back side. I opened the door to the Bronco. The minute I put one boot down on Tucker soil, lightning struck, splitting the night sky in two with its jagged white bolt.

Paradise jumped. His hat slipped off, and the wind sent it bouncing like tumbleweed between the parked cars and trucks. I chased it down and handed the dusty Stetson back to him.

I loved the crash of lightning, the cannonball rolling of thunder—even the brushing of a soft rain or a crackling hailstorm. I stood, lost in the rumble, gazing at the white Texas moon slowly disappearing behind the churning gray-black storm clouds.

“God’s a drummer.” I smiled at Paradise.

He ran his fingers through his black hair and pushed his hat firmly down on his head. “Maybe so.” He swung his murse over his shoulder. “But the angels play accordion.”

I had to laugh but I didn’t want him to see it. He’d certainly be hard to handle if he thought he could get to me. I shook my head and looked down at my boots, the ground, anywhere but his face. But he caught my grin anyway and took my face in his hand. The tips of his fingers rested on my cheek. “You should laugh more, Paisley.” He slowly stroked his thumb along my bottom lip. “This crooked little smile of yours is…”