Page 95 of Night Songs

“What about where she came from?”

“Yes, I promise I was telling the truth. She made it clear she never wanted to go back there, and I didn’t push her.”

Was there anyone who had really known her?

“What are you trying to find?” Hess asked quietly.

“I already told you—I’m working on a documentary about Belle.” I avoided meeting Hess’s eye.

Hess was quiet for a moment, then she said, “I don’t think Lou would want anyone knowing about this.”

“I know that. I would never put this in the piece. But I need the full story in order to figure out which parts to tell.”

Hess nodded, still studying me closely.

“So do you think she was on drugs when the plane went down? Is thatwhy she crashed? You lied about that, too.” It was a convenient explanation for what had happened—so much easier for people to believe than an old curse.

Hess’s brow furrowed. “It’s the most logical conclusion.”

I nodded, pretending to absorb this information.

“When she left you in that trunk, she wasn’t herself—she loved you so deeply, honey. I never want you to think otherwise.”

I nodded again, and I let Hess put her arms around me. As much as I hated the lying, I knew she meant well. I had already forgiven Belle—I knew she had done it to protect me, though I still wasn’t sure of the details. And it was nice to think of the good in her, especially after spending so much time focusing on the damned part.

But as Hess walked me upstairs to bed, I did not think about Belle’s love for me. I thought of Hess’s story, and my mother’s week-long disappearance before she died, with two questions repeating in my mind:

Where did she go?

And more importantly—

What did she find?

33lulabelle

1982

SIX MONTHS LEFT

Home is a fickle thing for a demon child; it’s always changing.

A few months ago, we returned to Nashville for a show at the Opry. I’d been touring for most of the year, and I was looking forward to coming home to my city.

I remember driving through downtown with the window down, passing the Ryman. I’d been back many times, and it was the closest thing I had to a church.

But it’d been a few years since the final show there, when the Opry moved to the new complex out by the highway, and as I got closer, I saw the old theater looked abandoned. It was cracked and sagging with age, like a great uncle left to rot in a nursing home.

A deep wrong settled over me as we turned left onto Broadway, and I searched for something else to ground me.

The street had changed over the last few years, with many of the old honky-tonks replaced by adult bookstores and nightclubs where music wasn’t the main draw. As I passed open doorways, I saw people with their heads down on bars and laid up in the booths like corpses. The air smelled like dirty crotch and sewer sludge, and the light seemed to dim, the color filtering through a different lens.

Something had happened to Nashville. It was going bad at the root.

At the show that night, I shook off the dread and went out onstage like I always did—I can perform half dead with one eye closed if I have to. It was the Opry, after all. Even in the flashy new theater, it still felt like my church.

Usually when I play, my mind turns off, and whatever song I’m singing flows through me. But that night, right in the middle of my set, I heard a new song slowly crawl into my mind with a spider’s delicate steps. At first it was faint.

Then the music grew louder, the melody underneath it dissonant and unsettling. Then lyrics emerged, rising to the surface of the sound.