When Last We Loved (20 page)

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Chapter 13

After two hundred one-night stands, all the highways looked the same to Cassie. She'd reached out to fans at state fairs, amusement parks, rodeos, and nightclubs from Vero Beach, Florida, to Billings, Montana.

Her fees for concerts had risen steadily—"like smoke from the chimney,” Scrappy kept crowing. She was writing up a storm, turning out potential hit songs at the rate of one a week. She'd been interviewed countless times by disc jockeys and newspaper reporters who wanted a scoop on the life of a country and western singer.

“The next time somebody asks about my glamorous lifestyle, I'm going to tell him the truth,” she grumbled when Scrappy joined her in the back of the bus. They were heading back to Nashville, but Cassie was exhausted. Only two days before, they'd finished up a gig at Gilley's, where she'd had to compete with the mechanical calf-roping machine. Then they'd driven all night to make a date in El Paso.

“I love to perform and the fans have been so nice, but I'm just not able to wind down after a concert anymore.” Cassie had been trying to rest for over an hour. It was raining, and the soothing sound of the falling raindrops created the perfect atmosphere for sleeping. But here she was, still tossing and turning on the lumpy bunk.

Hoyt kept popping into her thoughts, and she knew that he was partially to blame for her restlessness. He'd gone home to the Diamond T to oversee the capping of another new oil well. She glanced at the vase of wilting yellow roses that he'd sent when she opened at Gilley's. Despite her resolve not to, she missed him terribly.

“We'll be stopping for dinner pretty soon.” Scrappy was tired, too. He peered out at the flat Texas landscape, then pulled the shade and rolled into his bunk. “A good hot meal is just what you need to calm down.” He yawned and pulled his Stetson over his face.

“I think I'll see a doctor when we get back to Nashville. Maybe I need some tranquilizers.” She hated to pester Scrappy, but she felt like she was sitting on a time bomb of tension that was set to explode.

Scrappy sat upright, an odd expression on his face. “Don't be a fool, Cassie,” he reprimanded. “In this business, tranquilizers are the first step into hell. The next thing you know, you'll have to have some uppers to wake up so you can perform. Pretty soon, you'll be eating pills like candy, one right after the other.” His eyes narrowed.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she argued. “I'm not talking about becoming addicted to anything. I'm smarter than that.”

“I thought I was, too.” Scrappy smiled ruefully. “Do you remember that rodeo we played at Hoyt's ranch?”

She nodded. How could she forget?

“You asked me then how I stood the pace, the turmoil, the disappointment. I said I'd tell you when we both had some extra time.” He cocked a shaggy eyebrow. “I think the time has come for you to hear the truth.”

Cassie listened while Scrappy told her the story of the toll that drugs had taken on his career.

“I was touring with a band, the way we are now, and things were finally cooking for us. We were fronting for all the top names and it was just a matter of time before our big break opened up. We took too many gigs too close together and all of us were dead on our feet. You know how it is, staying awake all night to drive, catching a half-hour of shut-eye, partying at every hole in the road.”

He rubbed his chin, lost in remembering his mistakes. “None of us had any sense, of course. We were handling the fame— such as it was— like the amateurs we really were. One of the guys picked up a prescription for tranquilizers in some small town. It wasn't long before all of us were popping them. They worked— too good, as it turned out.”

He grimaced. “We took turns getting prescriptions for downers, but we were stumbling around so bad that somebody"— he shook his head—"yours truly made a contact and scored some uppers. I figured we needed the lift, and I thought that when the tour was over we'd taper off with no problem.”

“Well, you're okay now,” Cassie pointed out. “So what's the big deal about a few pills to help you make it on tour?”

“A
few
pills?” He shot an angry look at her. “Try twenty or thirty pills a day.”

“What?” Cassie could hardly believe it. “It's a wonder you're still alive!”

“A handful of pills for breakfast— washed down with a little beer— so we could sleep after an all-nighter. Another handful for dinner— uppers— so that we could clear out the cobwebs before we went onstage. A few more after a concert so we wouldn't poop out before the party ended.”

Bitterness flooded his face as he recounted the ugly tale. “Pretty soon we were nothing but a bunch of zombies. We lost everything. Wives and girl friends drifted away. Our agent dumped us and our bookings dropped to zilch.”

“How did you get straight?” Cassie was both horrified and fascinated. She'd dismissed the rumors of drug use by singers as jealous gossip, because she'd never had any personal contact with the problem.

“One morning I woke up and looked around my dumpy basement apartment. I was broke, with no hope of landing a job in a decent band, and I was hung over from the booze and sick from the pills.” The pain was still with him, etched in his eyes. “I was a junkie who'd lost control of his life.”

A tear fell onto Cassie's cheek. She wanted to comfort him somehow, but her vocal cords were frozen.

“I quit cold turkey. It was hell seven times over, but I've never regretted it. I found out the hard way that music is the only thing I can count on, the only good thing that ever happened to me.” He shrugged. “I also found out that my friends were few and far between when I wasn't passing out the pills anymore. I've been clean for five years and it feels better every day.”

“I never would have guessed,” she murmured. It was a rude awakening to reality, but Cassie was grateful to Scrappy for sharing his very personal tale of horror. “Thank you— I really mean that.” She reached over and squeezed his callused hand.

“I'm sorry if I've upset you by sounding like a radical. But that whole scene scares the hell out of me.” Scrappy made himself comfortable in his bunk.

“I'm not upset— really, I'm not,” she hastened to assure him. “If you want to know the truth, I'm proud that you trusted me enough to tell me the story. It's sure convinced me.” She shuddered.

Cassie yawned but she wasn't ready yet to end their conversation. Scrappy's loud snores, though, foiled her attempts to prolong their discussion and she rolled over in her bunk.

As she began to doze off, Cassie thought back on the past few months. They'd gone by in a kind of whirl. She'd lived out of her suitcase and spent most of her time on the old bus or in dim, smoky lounges. Strange faces, long hours performing and rehearsing, lonely motel rooms— Cassie felt that her humdrum life in Coyote Bend was light-years away.

She was jostled awake when their bus pulled off the traffic-clogged interstate and wheezed into a parking lot. She stretched and gazed out the window. The truck stop looked decent enough, but it still resembled a hundred others. As she stepped off the bus, Cassie noticed a flaming redhead in a tightly skirted uniform walking into the cafe. Something stirred in Cassie's memory...

“Of course!” she exclaimed. “It's Ruthie!” Cassie's mind went back to that hot, dusty afternoon when she had just begun her odyssey. Low on money, driving a rattletrap car, she had stopped at Bad Boy's for lunch. Ruthie had made sure that Cassie's stomach was filled almost beyond its capacity. In between waiting on tables and flirting with truckers, Ruthie had also shared her old dream of becoming a singer.

“As I recall, the red beans and gravy are tops here.” Cassie smiled at Ruthie when the saucy woman swished over to take their orders.

“I thought you looked familiar, honey.” Ruthie cocked her head to one side. “Let's see now. It's been a while, but... ”

“We talked about singing,” Cassie prompted.

Ruthie stared at the brightly painted bus outside the window. Her eyes traveled over Cassie's companions and stopped at the sheet music Scrappy held. “You're really going for it, aren't you, gal?”

Cassie grinned proudly. “We're doing our best. I'm Cassie Creighton, just in case you forgot. And this is my band, the Twisters— Scrappy, Mike, and Jess.” Cassie introduced them individually.

“Good for you!” Ruthie stamped her foot. “I'm so happy for you that I could just bust my buttons.”

Ruthie took their orders and rushed to the kitchen. She returned quickly with their food. While they ate, she disappeared through some swinging doors at the side of the restaurant. When she rushed back to their table in less than five minutes, she was beaming like the cat that swallowed the canary.

“Guess what!” Ruthie exclaimed. “I've got a great proposition for you. Do you see those saloon doors over there? Well, my boss says you can work out in the lounge for a while. We haven't had live music since I can't remember, and I'm dying to see you strut your stuff. How does it grab you?”

Cassie and the guys exchanged glances. Jess shrugged and Scrappy said, “Why not?”

“There's one condition, though, Ruthie.” Cassie smiled. “We've been working our tails off and I'm about due for some time off. I'll do the backup, but you'll have to sing lead.”

It had to be one of the few limes in her life when Ruthie was at a loss for words. Her eyes sparkled with suspicious-looking moisture. “Honey, the only singing I've done for years has been on Sunday mornings. And even then, it's only when Saturday night has been tame enough to start me worrying.” She patted her hair and winked. Same old Ruthie. “You don't know what you're asking of me!”

“It's all up to you.” Cassie shrugged. “It's you and me or nothing at all.” She watched Ruthie weighing the idea. “You'll have a ball,” she cajoled.

The sun began to rise in Ruthie's face. “You're on.”

After dinner, the band improvised a version of their concert setup on the small lounge stage. Cassie was testing the mike when Ruthie pranced into the room, a honky-tonk vision in a black satin suit that dripped white fringe.

“I've been saving this old thing for years,” she explained, grinning from ear to ear. “And I found my camera, too. Gonna get me a picture of the two of us together if it kills me.” She pulled the camera out of its case and set it on the table.

Cassie and the band broke up. “What do you want to sing?” she asked between helpless peals of laughter.

“Well, I know every Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn song by heart,” Ruthie declared. She showed no sign of the stage fright that Cassie still experienced from time to time.

“Ruthie, where did all these people come from?” Cassie gestured at the full tables and the line at the bar. “It's nearly ten o'clock at night. Surely you aren't this busy all the time, are you?”

“Well, you know me and CB radios,” Ruthie confessed. “My boss don't know it yet, but there's a rumor going out over the airwaves that drinks are two for the price of one, tonight only.” She smiled slyly. Her eyes were shining like the prairie moon.

Cassie was truly surprised when Ruthie opened with the first Loretta Lynn hit. The waitress's voice was clear and vibrant, and the audience responded with hearty applause when she finished the number. In fact, the whole set was such a rousing success that Cassie decided to urge Ruthie to head for Nashville herself.

“You're too much!” Cassie slid into a booth and sipped a tall, cool one. “Really, Ruthie, you ought to give the business a shot. You've got a wonderful voice!”

“Oh, I don't have that drive anymore, honey.” Ruthie had a dreamy look in her eyes. “Other things are more important to me now.”

As she spoke, a tall, bearded trucker approached their table. “Road Runner!” Ruthie waved him over. “I figured you'd be halfway to the state line by now!”

“You don't think that I'd miss the biggest night in my little lady's life, do you?” He kissed Ruthie's upturned lips. “Babe, you were something else.”

Ruthie squeezed Road Runner's hand and he joined them in the booth. “My priorities have changed a heap since the last time I saw you, Cassie.” Contentment registered in her dewy green eyes. “You know as well as I do that only a few of the best singers ever make it to the big time. And then it's usually at the expense of their personal lives. I don't want to sacrifice everything that's important to me just so I can spend the rest of my days looking over my shoulder.”

“I can't build her a mansion or promise that she's going to live on easy street, but I can love her.” Road Runner hugged his lady. “And that's worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox.”

As Cassie watched the lovers exchange endearments, she felt a sharp pang of nostalgia. She had wanted the freedom to make her own decisions, so she had no one to blame for this empty ache but herself. Ruthie might not have Cassie's financial potential, but she seemed perfectly content to live on the poor side of town as long as she could do her loving there, too.

Scrappy hustled over to the table, smiling like a fool. “I just called Bo to tell him that we're on our way back to Nashville.” His eyes glistened with excitement “Cassie, our song is number one and starting to cross over. We did it! We're on top!” He pulled her out of the booth and danced her around the lounge. “Can you believe it? We're on top! Girl, this is the best thing that ever happened to me!”

Cassie smiled but her heart wasn't in it. Everything she had ever heard about the loneliness at the top was painfully true.

Chapter 14

“I've been home only two weeks out of the entire summer, Bo. It's too soon for another tour.” Cassie turned and watched in the bevel-edged mirror while the seamstress pinned the hem into the pale mauve silk dress that she'd wear when she flew to California to tape an appearance on Barbara Mandrell's weekly show.

“Besides, I'm exhausted. I hit twelve cities in two weeks last month.” Her protests fell on deaf ears; she knew that before she began. “When am I supposed to find time to finish decorating my house, pray tell?” she asked.

Cassie waved her arms at the bay windows draped with sheets and the empty spaces that she hoped her bedroom furniture would occupy in the near future. Hoyt had insisted that she purchase this mansion on the outskirts of Nashville for investment purposes. The furniture had been on order for two months now, but she hadn't been home long enough or had the time for it to be delivered and arranged.