Page 31 of Night Songs

This was what I’d been waiting for my whole life. I thought of the promise Tima and I had made to each other my first night with the girls—I had to take my chance, no matter the cost.

But Hess was everything to me. She was my music partner, my best friend, my love. The thought of hurting her made me sick.

Clayton must have read my silence as awed agreement because he kept talking.

“First thing we’ll do is record an album together. I’ll do a few songs,and you can record “Pretty Little Lady,” and then we’ll do some duets. The one we did tonight, and a few more we can get from these great songwriters I have back in Nashville.”

With just one change to a song title, he had cut Hess out of the band.

As he continued to talk, I searched for her on the other side of the park and found her watching me. We met eyes, and she quickly turned away.

“We’ll need to change your name. Lulabelle is a little long, and it has a common feel to it. I want something with more punch.”

I looked up at him. “You want to change my name?”

“Not legally. Just for the public. You can still call yourself whatever you’d like in private. All the big stars do it. Look at Marilyn Monroe.”

He sure knew how to appeal to me. “What about ‘Lou’? That’s what everyone calls me anyway.”

“That’s too boyish. It needs to be elegant, and a little sexy. What about… Belle?”

Clayton probably thought he’d come up with this idea, that he was telling me who I was, and I’d go along with it no matter what. The helpless little hick who ate up whatever they served her.

But that wasn’t it.

I was no stranger to taking a piece of myself and giving it a new name. I’d already started to think of my stage persona as someone that could be taken on and off. It was the wig, and everything that was attached to it. Giving it a name felt natural. Logical, even. A way of separating them more cleanly. I was Lou with Hess, and at the boardinghouse with the girls, and at Darlene’s when men needed their skulls knocked. But when I walked onto that stage, I became someone else.

Belle was sweet and polished, and country like a girl raised in a grand, decaying mansion. The name looked like a body to me, with curves that gave way to long, slender legs. It was musical, but it didn’t ring so much as curl in the mouth like cream.

“Alrighty. I like it,” I said, enchanted.

“We’ll get started when we return to Nashville.”

I nodded, my arms suddenly cold.

We rejoined the group, and Clayton picked up a guitar and started playing patriotic songs. Everyone sang along to them, spreading to neighboring grill-outs, so that it felt like hundreds of voices were singing together.

I noticed Hess wasn’t singing with the rest of us. She sat next to me real quiet, staring off away from the group. She always took up so much space, was such a radiant, overwhelming presence in my life, that it was strange to see her like that. A little smaller, and turned in on herself. I didn’t like it.

One of the fiddlers, who’d grown up in the town, whispered in my ear that some of the younger kids were sneaking up to the roof of the high school to watch the fireworks. I grabbed Hess’s hand, and I could feel her spirit lift as we followed him away from the cookout across the street. We ran giddily through the darkening grass until we came to a ladder at the side of the brick building. The fiddler went first, and I climbed up after him, feeling a surge as I clung by my arms high up over the town.

At the top, I saw shadows milling about. The cherries of their cigarettes glowed on and off, and they passed bottle silhouettes in the dying light.

The fiddler told us it was about to start, and the shadows went quiet, and we were instructed to lie down on the loose rocks and look up. I reached out for Hess’s hand, and it was there, waiting for me.

I heard a sound like an angry rooster call, and then something shot up into the sky. There was an explosion of sparks, and then they fell back to the earth, like it was raining green candlelight. I’d never seen anything like it. There was another burst in gold, and then another in purple and orange. I held my breath, waiting for the next one.

Hot, dark ash rained down on us, and most of the kids got up and ran for cover. But Hess and I stayed, holding hands and letting it coat us like volcano worshippers. It was like witnessing an act of God. I couldn’t look away.

Afterward, we watched the smoke slowly drift and clear, revealing the stars above.

I told Hess what Clayton had said, and though I couldn’t see her, I could feel her spirit sink again. I’d pushed my guilt away in the excitement of Clayton’s plans for us, and now it rushed back in with greater strength. I told Hess I wouldn’t do it without her.

At these words, she sat up and gave me a hard look. “Of course you’re going to do it, Lou.” Then she jumped to her feet and held out a hand to me, her face stern and hard to read. I took it, and we followed the ladder down to the sounds of the kids below.

The group of us broke into the school, and while the others shot baskets in the gym, Hess and I went to the girls’ locker room to clean up. In the stark fluorescent light, we laughed at our soot-covered faces and clothes. We looked like chimney sweeps fromMary Poppins.

Hess’s face went serious again. She pressed me up against the sink and kissed the clean patch on my neck. She put her hand up my gingham dress and found her way to my underwear. She moved it aside and rubbed small, gentle circles the way I liked, the light touches making my body reach for the sensation. She breathed against my ear,