Twang (39 page)

By force of habit, I searched the front desk for Roy. How many times we’d sat back there, the two of us holding each other up in a world where we were both running from our past. We’d been like wounded orphans, scrabbling to make sense of our losses, to numb them; him with food and me with dreams of fame.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” An Alan Jackson look-alike glanced up from the computer.

“Is room 316 available for the night?”

“Hmmm . . . room 316,” he said, running his finger down the screen. “Looks like . . . you’re in luck! How’d you like to pay for this?”

I swallowed. It was hard to believe that, looking the way I did, I could convince the man I had any money at all, much less enough to buy and sell the hotel ten times over. But I could not for the life of me remember where I’d put my purse. It wasn’t in the Lexus. I raked my wet hair off my face and said, “Listen, I’m Jenny Cloud, and if you’ll let me take the room on my word, I promise I’ll come back with cash tomorrow.”

He looked at me wide-eyed and slack-jawed, then nodded. “Well I’ll be! You
are
her! We need to put you in a luxury suite, get you a private hot tub! Some flowers and chocolate! You deserve—”

“No, no. Please. Thank you, though. Really, all I want is room 316. It’s got special meaning.”

“Well, okay. Wow, man. I cannot believe this, but yeah, you go right ahead, Miss Cloud. It’s on the house. But first, can I please get an autograph? My girlfriend’s a huge fan of yours. You can’t possibly know what your music means to her. Her name’s Polly Finley.”

“Of course,” I said, ripping a sheet of Best Western paper from a pad, grabbing a ballpoint pen, and scribbling, ‘For Polly, God Bless, Jenny Cloud.’ I gave it to him and held out my hand for the key card, turning quickly to the elevator.

When I got the door to my room open, I literally fell inside and flung myself face-down across the bed. “Oh, God,” I breathed, half-prayer, half-astonishment. When my heart slowed, I raised my head and looked around. Nothing had changed. The two queen beds, the long chest of drawers, the television set like a big charcoal eye, and through the door, my own private bathroom. I knew if I went inside, I’d find tiny bottles of shampoo and lotion smelling of flowers and
stacks of plush towels. I saw myself, frenziedly inhaling all the luxury, dreaming of making it in Music City. A few years ago. A lifetime ago. I remembered how naive that girl was, thinking she could dance across the ground where those things that had formed her were buried like land mines.

I lay for a while on my bed, imagining all the bones I’d buried resurrected and doing a line dance, exulting in their new life. There would be an even greater depth to my music now.

My heart was knocking around like tennis shoes in a dryer as I sat up, leaned against the headboard and reached my hand into the drawer of the nightstand. Just where I knew it would be, I found a pen and paper to let the music call me home. “You’ve really gotta help me write this one, Father,” I prayed, feeling those words shoot like an arrow up to God’s sanctuary.

I never heard the Creator of the Universe talking directly to me, but I felt the skin on the back of my neck rising and unexplained chill bumps on my arms in affirmation that this was a supernatural conversation as I heard not an audible voice, but words in my spirit saying,
Okay, daughter. I know it was hard, because even though you couldn’t see me, I was right there, permitting that even as it broke my heart. Now I want you to open your heart, and let it all out into a song. Remember, you’ve made it through the storm, you’re safely on the shore, where you can help those souls still struggling in the eye of their own storm. Help them find strength and hope and peace
.

I finished at four a.m., the verses of “When the Music Calls Me Home” spread across the bed. It was one of those songs that sprang to life pretty much from the time I got the title. The chorus especially just sort of wrote itself. I did work a bit on the verses, moving them around to get them in the right order. Though I didn’t have my Washburn, the melody for the chorus was like taking dictation from a master composer, and once
I’d written that down, I began humming a couple of different rhythms for the verses. I decided on the key of D major, the vocals spanning one octave, with a sort of twangful sound. I thought it might be nice to have a violin solo at the completion of the break.

When at last I turned out the lamp, I held the song to my heart, almost weeping from relief. At the start of my intensive night of songwriting, my heart ached for that young girl I was, writing about the shame she’d endured. But, as I continued, all the hurt and rage and bitterness dissolved into the lyrics, and I was flooded with a sweet and comforting sense of peace.

Tonilynn was right. Freud was right. Webster was right. God was right.

It was cathartic.

That morning of Thursday, June 10, 2010, the first day of the festival, was hot and humid. The Judds were giving the kick-off performance at Riverfront Park and I didn’t have to be up on the stage until two p.m., so I decided to walk around downtown awhile, trying to look like a regular person until my noon appointment with Tonilynn in the Hair Chair at Flint Recording. I figured I was pretty safe from getting mobbed since I had on my ball cap pulled low and my bag-lady clothes. I felt sweat beads trickling down my spine as I walked along Commerce Street past the Chamber of Commerce then the huge exhibit hall of the Nashville Convention Center.

I turned and walked down Fifth Avenue South toward the Country Music Hall of Fame, thinking of greats like Reba McEntire, Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Patsy Cline, how much I used to dream of my portrait hanging with theirs. I recalled how desperate I was for that particular stamp of approval as I stopped and stood in that sweltering sun, looking at the quote from Conway Twitty etched into a foundation stone: “A good country song takes a page out of somebody’s life and puts it to music.” I thought of all the pages of my past that had sculpted me, and I knew those were gifts
bestowed on me right along with my voice and my songwriting ability.

I walked on in the gathering heat of that June day, marveling at the resilient spirit of club owners, shopkeepers, and restaurateurs, businesspeople who despite the losses and the traumas from the recent devastation—though there was still a great amount of work to be done, some recovery yet to happen—were filled with graciousness and expectation. The great American city of Nashville was indeed rising again, and no matter how much she’d been damaged, she would unquestioningly offer her song of survival.

I felt a little nervous about singing my new song in public for the first time, so I whispered a prayer of thanks that I’d survived, too, that I didn’t have to live like I was just plopped down onto some crummy path I had to walk the rest of my life. Maybe I couldn’t predict what life would hand me, but now I knew how to respond, and I was free to dance!

That’s what was circling in my brain as I climbed up on the Riverfront Park stage after Neal McCoy’s show. I began my performance with a calm and happy spirit, strumming my Washburn, singing and occasionally strutting across the stage. Tonilynn had made me beautiful and put-together on the outside, and I was feeling beautiful inside, tossing my hair, enjoying the applause of my fans. The spirit of survival and freedom hit me even stronger as I began my encore song. From the minute I strummed the first chord, belted out the first verse of “When the Music Calls Me Home,” I could see the crowd connecting.

I went down to the waterside,

climbed into my little boat of memories.

The music called me home,

And I was rowing happily.

But then the storms began,

the water surged up high,

The skies above turned gray,

and I lay down to cry.

That’s when I faced the music,

of my innocence torn away.

Fifteen, not yet a woman,

Bad memories made big waves.

Dirty words that tore my heart.

Teardrops fell like rain,

All alone in the eye of the storm,

Bad memories made big waves.

I rowed my little boat through the dark,

Saying, “I want some sunny days.”

Nobody seemed to hear me,

Bad memories made big waves.

Then I saw Jesus, walking on the water.

I saw Jesus and I rowed harder.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, stepping into my boat.

“There’s a rainbow up ahead, and you’re not alone.

You got the three men you will need the most.”

CHORUS

There may be thunderclouds above me,

I may be drifting in the pouring rain,

But there’s a rainbow up ahead,

And my Father holds my hand.

My guitar pick was firm in my fingers as I twanged away, pouring my heart right up and out of my open throat, watching people’s eyes well with tears, many in the audience pulling tissues from pockets and purses, me so gripped by the intensity of my own story that as I finished I flung the microphone stand down to the stage and yelled, “Yeah! My Father holds my hand!” Whistles and whoops erupted, and I stood there bathed in a long, loud ovation.

Beyond the crowd I could see the sun streaming down through clouds like cotton stretched thin, and below those, I knew sunlight shimmered on the surface of the Cumberland as it wound serenely alongside downtown. Picking up the microphone, waiting until the applause at last died, I said, “Thank you very much. I’ve been blessed with a career I adore, and over my years in Nashville, I’ve found country music fans to be some of the most generous and caring folks on this planet. That said, I’m not surprised to see the CMA joining the efforts to help Music City rebuild after the flood.

“I was walking around our city this morning, and I saw proof that Nashville is rising again, and I believe we’ll fully recover from this disaster. In fact, I believe we’ll emerge even stronger! Tennessee is the Volunteer state, and if there’s ever a time you could see people actually living out that name, it’s now, in the aftermath of the flood! I’ve heard tons of stories of people caring for each other during the flood, about the compassion of our great city and how we came together as a community.

“This afternoon, my dream is to spread the word about ongoing relief efforts. There are still people who need our support, and we can all help by making a donation to flood relief. Personally, I’ve decided that every single cent of profit from ‘When the Music Calls Me Home’ will go to flood relief efforts.”

A few days later, Mike told me someone in the audience caught “When the Music Calls Me Home” on video, and it did one of those Internet phenomenons they call “going viral.” Mike said it had spread worldwide to more than a hundred million people. “It’ll go platinum,” he said, “believe you me.”

He was right, and I’m proud of the proceeds that have gone to flood relief. It’s two years later and my career keeps me so busy I hardly have time to think about the fact that induction into the Hall of Fame hasn’t happened yet. I’m in no rush, because I know being invited into the Hall of Fame is usually what you call ‘a lifetime achievement acknowledgment,’ and most inductees are past their performing years, or the main part of them anyway. They didn’t even induct Elvis until 1998!

However, I was added to the Walk of Fame. When I think back to that day I walked along Music Row, knocking on doors with my demos, I never could’ve imagined standing on the sidewalk in front of the Country Music Hall of Fame while Mayor Karl Dean kicked off a ceremony where I got my name in a big red star on the concrete.

This year I’ve got forty shows on my touring calendar, traveling with an entourage that includes my beautician and mother-in-law, Tonilynn Pardue, and a really sexy driver for the Eagle who goes by B. L., which is short for Bobby Lee. B. L. also runs my merchandising operation, and we’re the proud parents of Erastus, a dog who travels with us and has his very own Murphy bed on the bus, but prefers to crawl into bed with his people.

In the linen closet on board the Eagle is a stack of patchwork quilts from the hand of Aunt Gomer, a woman who seemed to have saved every scrap of clothing she ever owned, and
who cut them up over the years to sew together into wacky patterns, revealing this sort of practical and organic beauty in each interlocking piece of fabric, leaving in them a part of herself for us.

The night Bobby Lee worked up the nerve to ask me to marry him, he said, “More than anything, I want to spend my life with you, Jennifer. But sometimes I feel like I ought not ask you, because what if you say yes but later wish you’d married an able-bodied man? What if you get sad, thinking you’ve gone and squandered all your youth on somebody like me?”

I didn’t have to think a second. I said, “Bobby Lee, in my opinion, no other man on this earth is half the man you are! And anyway, it’s too late now to think about all that because I already love you.” I honestly didn’t see his disability and hoped he would not see my disabilities and love me less for them.

Neither one of us saw the point in a long engagement and we decided to get married that very next day. Bobby Lee thought we ought to aim for something a little more special than going to the courthouse. I told him, “Hey, I know just the place! It’s on Music Row, near Bobby’s Idle Hour Tavern.” And so we went to the Vegas-style Rhinestone Wedding Chapel on Sixteenth Avenue. Tonilynn did my hair and makeup and dressed me in a pretty white tea-length gown. Bobby Lee looked gorgeous in a gray tux. You could choose to have your ceremony done by the house wedding official or, for no extra charge, an Elvis impersonator. “Elvis,” Bobby Lee insisted with one of his smiles I simply cannot resist, and I figured we’d be just as married, so I said okay.