Sarah Creech - The whole way home : A Novel

For Morri

Of love and hate and death and dying, mama, apple pie, and the whole thing. It covers a lot of territory, country music does.

Johnny Cash

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Tennessee Williams

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Shakespeare

Where Thou artthatis Home

Emily Dickinson

Good morning, Nashvillebest music listeners this world over, better than New York, better than LANashville audiophiles, those of you listening to old Floyd Masters, know the best of the best when you hear it. Yes, maam, you do. And you like it early. Five am is always a good time for real country music. Ive got quite the playlist coming your way this morning. Theres been all that hubbub about male country singers being the lettuce in the salad and female country singers being the tomatoes everybody eats around. That you cant play back-to-back songs by women on Top 40 country radio or else youll lose your listeners. First of all, thats one dumb metaphor spoken from the mouth of one dumb radio disc jockey. Not me, for once. Hallelujah for that.

Someone failed to tell him that nobody in the South likes salads. Not really. Put some salt on those homegrown, straight-from-the-vine heirlooms and well choose tomatoes over lettuce any day. Im pretty tired of the boys club on the radio, folks, where every songs about trucks, drinking beer, parties on the weekends, girls in bikinis, more trucks. All that musics written by the same handful of songwriters, all of its divorced from the rich tradition of country music. Good country music should make you feel something, should cover the entire territory of the heart.

Glad Jo Lovers speaking up about women being the unwanted tomatoes of Top 40 country radio. She had a real good interview on CMT and Good Morning America. Not that itll make that hardheaded DJ believe any different. Men might dominate the radio playlist on Top 40 stations, but rest assured, my friends, Ive got a full female playlist for you this morning and every morning for the next couple of days. Patsy will follow Dolly will follow Loretta will follow Tammy will follow Reba will follow Joanne will follow Mother Maybelle and back again. Youll see just how well these ladies follow one another.

I bet nobody will be calling in and saying, Oh, Floyd, please, please, please play J. D. Gunn and the Empty Shells. Please give us some of that lettuce music! No, I bet you wont. Even if you do, I dont have to listen because this here is independent radio. And if youre listening, Joanne Lover, which I know youre not, congratulations on your debut tonight as the newest Grand Ole Opry member. Shes preserved the tradition in her songwriting, carried on the history in that voice of hers. Finest female vocalist this side of the Cumberland River. The next queen of country, I have no doubt.

And she broke my heart by saying yes to the brightest producer Nashvilles seen in decades. Hes a handsomer devil than old Floyd Masters, Ill give him that. Joanne Lover and Nick Sullivan will make some good-looking babies. All right, folks, I guess thats enough talk from the slickest voice in country radio. Heres Your Cheatin Heart by Patsy Cline. Your first fix for the morning. Theres more to come, so keep it tuned right here to 87.3 FM, Vanderbilts WHYW morning broadcast.

Joanne Lover was ready to stand beneath the bright red lights of the Ryman Auditoriumunder those lights shed feel more herself than she did hiding here in the darkness. Her band members twisted their tuning pegs while stagehands shifted the electrical cords around like they were making calligraphy on the wooden floor. Jo rocked from heel to toe in her red cowgirl boots. Her earlobes turned pink before she walked out onstage; her upper lip could sweat more than her armpits, which amazed her; and the left side of her mouth twitched. Same thing happened to Elvis but he made it billion-dollar cool.

Jo searched for the king of seventies country music, Phil Doby, due onstage any minute now to invite her out where all of the greatslike Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, and Loretta Lynnhad once held a microphone and filled the room with their sweet melodies. Shed been waiting her whole life to be standing out there as an Opry member, and she wished to do right by all that talent tonight. Jo crossed her arms and took a deep breath, and as she exhaled, her dresss spaghetti strap slipped off her right shoulder. She returned it to its proper place, then she began adjusting every part of her outfit: lifting her boobs up in the low-cut dress, a navy one with a pattern of tiny red apples; fluffing the bottom part of the dress; smoothing it back out; fluffing it again. She shouldve followed her instincts and worn her jeans, but her stylist had insisted on this classic outfit for the Opry induction. Her mama wouldve most certainly agreed. Jo could hear her now: Youre going to church, Joanne. You will not be shameful. You will look nice before God.

Back in Gatesville, every Wednesday and Sunday of her childhood, her mama had made her dress up just like this, and just as soon as she could, Jo would tear off that suffocating dress and hike down to the creek behind their shotgun house. Shed stay down there for hours in the shade of the rhododendron and paint her face with the mud from the creek and pretend she was putting on makeup. If her mama ever saw her, she knew shed accuse her of wearing the devils mask. Sometimes she painted her feet and legs too and then washed them off in the cold water that stayed icy like that year-round. Jo patrolled up and down the creek with a wooden stick in hand. Little minnows nibbled at her feet as she passed. She stacked smooth stones from the creek to make towering sculptures in different places along the way to help mark her path. Robins and cardinals rested on her creations and kept her company. On one of these hikes Jo discovered her daddys moonshine jugs anchored in the deepest part of the creek. She helped herself to a sip every now and then. Her mama never noticed.

Jo pretended to be queen of a river that had the power to deliver her from the life she was living. The little Cleopatra of Appalachia. As long as she could remember, shed played that game. Shed wanted to be queen of something somewhere someday, and now country musics most important stage stood wide open before her. Jo hoped little girls would admire her and imagine standing up on that stage too, just like Jo did the nights her daddy turned on the Opry broadcast on the radio and her family gathered around it like it was a fire. Shed heard Dolly Parton sing there for the first time and Jos entire body had warmed with a desire shed never felt before. After that night, the little creek turned into Jos stage, the birds her audience, and she would sing and sing and sing church hymns and ballads like Barbara Allen until her voice felt hoarse. She had one spot where the tree canopy opened to the sky and she sunned herself there, dreaming of the day shed become a member of a different family.

Jo felt the audiences anticipation now, just like she always sensed a thunderstorm coming over the mountainthe air pressure dropped, the wind picked up, and the sun disappeared. Jo adjusted the silver turquoise rings on her sweaty fingers, which covered both of her hands like brass knuckles. Jo lifted her thick hair upward to cool her neck, and her dress strap fell off her shoulder again. Now a regular drumbeat was going onstage. The audience began to clap. Phil Doby walked out to the front of the Ryman Auditorium stage to thank her opening act, the Wayward Sisters. He had a mane of white hair, thick as kudzu, and he wore a silver and blue rhinestone suit so shiny he refracted himself all over the auditorium. He wore a white cowboy hat to match.