Page 66 of Night Songs

“Wait, I’m—”

But I hung up before she could say anything else.

For the next few weeks, Micah and I stayed in Georgia and plotted what we would do with our lives. He had seen a glassblowing demonstration in North Carolina during a day in town, and he wanted to apprentice at a hot shop. I was interested in going to college now, though what I would major in still eluded me. With my mother’s money, I could take my time.

After applying around the country, Micah was offered an apprenticeship in Arizona. There were plenty of colleges there, and after our trek through the wilderness, I was intrigued by living a simple, brutal existence in the desert. It was a series of decisions that we made together, and I saw that this was what marriage would be.

I imagined an alternate reality in which I’d never met Micah, and I’d completed the journey solo and now planned my life alone, according to only my desires. The reality of marriage, that it was a decision that cut off all futures where I might be alone again, started to sink in. I had been lonely for as long as I could remember, but I’d never been on my own. Iwondered if I was making a mistake, and if I should be chasing my freedom as my mother once had.

But I really loved him. And when he looked at me, he saw the best version of me—someone worth loving. Maybe through the force of his belief and my desire, I could actually become that person.

In that way, I would be free.

20lulabelle

1974

EIGHT YEARS LEFT

WhenThe Cursed Womancame out, good Lord, you couldn’t imagine the noise it made.

You’d’ve thought I’d posed forPlayboythe way people carried on. It was justtoo muchfor a lot of country fans. Maybe it made them feel something they didn’t know what to do with. But instead of digging deeper into their own selves, they called me a devil worshipper. A witch. This made me laugh. I’d known a real witch in the holler. She was an old woman who lived in the woods and healed people all day. She was like your grandma if she lived a little more free.

But there were those who loved the album. People outside the country world, like folk music fans and young people. I wondered if Hess had bought it, and what she thought about each song. I’d never recorded anything without her, and it was strange not having her there, as if it wasn’t quite real.

Don helped set me up with a manager, an old veteran who’d gotten tired of the system and started working on the fringes. Only taking clients he really believed in. He organized a tour across the country for me, and Martha and I put a touring band together, with Tate tagging along for the experience. I’d only ever toured in the South and a bit in the Midwest. Theconventional wisdom was those were the only places people listened to country music. Of course, that was horseshit. People listen to it anywhere there’s sorrow, and a yearning to hear a story that we all live. A story we all tell ourselves.

New York was not what I expected. It was dirty, and everyone seemed poor and desperate. Even some of the famous people Tate wrote songs for were hollow. Strung out. It was the first stop on the tour, and I was fresh. Maybe a little too bright-eyed for those folk, but I could tell they kind of dug it.

One night Tate, Martha, and I went to an apartment in SoHo called “The Loft” and paid $2.50 to get in. It was dark, and Aretha Franklin was playing. I’d never seen so many people of different races in one place, grooving together.

Tate pulled me into the bathroom and tipped out a little powder from a tiny glass vial. He raked it into a single line with his license and showed me how to suck it up my nose without blowing it away. It was bitter in the back of my throat, and it wrapped me in a fuzzy shine. We giggled and made out in the stall.

When we finally made it to the dance floor, I could feel it. That elusive collective rhythm. We grooved together like limbs on the same body: foreheads glittering with sweat, cheekbones sharp and glowing, curves haunting with their swing. I’d lose Tate for a song or two, caught up in my own movement. But then I’d catch a glimpse of him, of his beauty in the darkness, and I would feel love in its heady, all-consuming warmth.

I forgot I was ever going to die.

Performing my music became its own kind of drug. Tima and Mom couldn’t tour with us because they had their own lives, so I recruited local singers at each stop to perform “Lullaby.” At the first show in New York, both singers didn’t show up. I thought,shit. Then I looked out in the crowd and saw all these women, and I thought,hell yeah. We saved it for the lastsong, and I invited anyone up who knew the words and wanted to harmonize with me.

Then I asked them to turn off the lights.

The boot scuffing and drink clinking ceased, and it was silent in the club as all those voices came together, pooling into a deep well, telling their babies the truth.

I thought I might cry.

Our next stop was New Orleans, which always reminds me of back home in a way. The veil over the natural world is thin there, and I have loved it since Clayton and I visited on our first tour. They understand curses, the power of the land, the different planes of existence. I could feel it at my show that night; we were all mourning our own curses, but also reveling in them. Taking a drink, and toasting to them. I was serious in “Old Crone”—in another life, I would have happily settled down there. Let myself go dry and gray like the Spanish moss hanging from the trees.

And then, there wasAustin.

Austin was like traveling to the future. They were years ahead of Nashville. There were actual country fans there who understood my album.

When I played at the Armadillo World Headquarters, I got to feel seen by my own people. We were all dirty outlaws screaming into the void, looking for some comfort in the strange.

Just before Christmas, Tate and I came off the road and played it straight in Nashville for a week as a half joke. Neither of us wanted the easy life of cocktails in the den, five p.m. dinners, a kiss before bed.

What we didn’t admit was that we both needed it.

At some point on tour, the music had gone quiet in my head, and I needed to dry out and vibe on that sober high for a bit. Martha had been hinting that I should slow down, and I knew she was right. When you’remessed up for long stretches of time, sobriety becomes its own drug. A world that is still and washed clean. Intriguing for its solidity and simple images.