Page 45 of August Lane
“Here?” August gaped at him. “He lives in Memphis.”
“I know. I was just as surprised as you. He offered to book talent. Clean the place. Even said he would serve drinks, like he has any business—” He glanced at her. “Did he talk to you about that?”
“Being in recovery? He told me.”
“Well, I’m looking after him, just so you know. He’s been going to meetings. Working the program.”
“That’s good to hear.” Luke had seemed confident about his sobriety, but that was before everyone knew he’d been lying for years. She was grateful he had help.
Silas left her to emcee the show. He called Luke “Jason,” as in Jason Randall.
His father’s name. Luke started singing “If I Could Only Fly,” the first song he’d learned to play on his own.
It was perfect for the distracted crowd, the solemn simplicity demanding stillness to be heard.
Slowly, he drew everyone’s attention to the stage.
Luke’s voice was deep and melancholic, with only a hint of the drawl he overused on his albums. It grew louder during the chorus but also felt quieter somehow.
The wish to fly was a prayer he was afraid to utter, a held breath he wouldn’t release because he knew it was foolish to want things when you’re broken.
By the time he moved into the second verse, August was fighting tears.
“Doesn’t this piss you off?”
David Henry stood behind her, cradling a highball glass. He raised it to his lips and frowned when he realized it was empty. “Why does club soda go so fast?”
“Could you stand somewhere else? I’m trying to listen.”
“Why don’t I sit instead?” He sat across from her, folded his arms, and settled in.
“What are you—”
He shushed her but focused on the crowd instead of Luke.
The applause began before the song ended.
A few people whistled. David grumbled under his breath, “Talented little shit.” He glanced at August. “Heard there was an open mic night and got nostalgic for my scouting days.” He looked around.
“It’s more depressing than I remembered.
How do places like this stay in business? ”
“It’s not usually this empty.”
“And why did Luke use a fake name? People pay good money to watch natural disasters.”
“Because this isn’t a publicity stunt.” She gestured to the stage, where Luke had started singing Rissi Palmer’s “Seeds.” “He wants to sing in peace.”
“He’s still got a few die-hard fans,” David said. “More than this sad little showing.”
“They only want one thing. A live performance of their favorite song.”
He snorted. “That shitty song isn’t anyone’s favorite. Their favorite karaoke train wreck, maybe. Or their favorite alternative to the dentist’s chair.”
“Stop calling it shitty,” August snapped. He knew she’d written it. It felt like being accused of setting Luke up for failure.
“All due respect, the song is shitty. The whole album’s terrible. Except ‘If You See Me Lying.’ That one’s just boring.”
“You know that wasn’t him.”
David leaned forward. “I don’t know that at all.
I know the man refuses to talk seriously about his music.
If I ask who his influences are, I get canned, bullshit answers his publicity team wrote back in 2010.
I know he’s so obsessed with setting you up with a record deal that he tanked what was left of his career.
Meanwhile, he’s squatting on a voice that sounds like Marvin Gaye and Hozier made a country-fried baby who can play the hell out of a guitar lick.
And I don’t respect it. I can’t respect a man who was gifted with that kind of talent and buried it in auto-tune for money. ”
August understood his frustration. She’d assumed for years that Luke had sold his dignity for fame.
But he’d really traded it for different chains.
That was why he’d looked so much happier the morning that article had been published.
He’d finally unlocked those shackles. Telling the world had been the key.
No. That wasn’t the part of David’s rant that infuriated her.
“You’re nothing like Jojo said you were,” she told him quietly. “It’s disappointing.”
David didn’t speak at first. He blinked and sat up in his chair. “What did she say about me?”
“That you were serious. The real deal. She said she never met a man with an ear like yours. That you were all about the music.” She let her gaze slide over him. “I think you’re the least serious person I’ve ever met.”
“Are we on the playground now? I poke him, you knee my balls?”
“You’re the only one playing games. This is his life. Our lives. All you do is throw peanuts. She pays you for that?”
“You don’t know what I’ve done for your mother and you. I came here to offer you—”
“I don’t want it.”
He clenched his teeth. “Listen. Jojo’s record deal is with—”
“Do you know the real reason this place is empty?” She waved at the room.
“Because of people like you, with the power and connections to make someone’s career with a phone call, sitting on your ass until you’re convinced to give a damn about someone.
We have to prove ourselves, over and over again, before you see us.
Do you know how exhausting that is? A heart can only break so many times before it quits. ”
She looked at the stage, where Luke was chatting with an older man sitting in front.
He was smiling. Living. She hadn’t realized how lifeless he’d been until now.
“Look at that wall over there,” she said.
David followed her gaze to Silas’s photo collage, filled with decades of performers at Delta Blue.
“We are blues. We are rock. We are country. And all those things are us. We’ve always known that.
Jojo said you knew it, too.” She shook her head.
“But I don’t think so. I think everyone looks the same to you.
Which makes you useless to someone like me. ”
She pushed back from the table, but David grabbed her arm.
“Wait.” She jerked away, and he lifted his hands in surrender.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I uh…” He cleared his throat.
“I’m an asshole who’s used to dealing with other assholes.
Good people confuse me, but I’m learning. Give me five minutes. Please. ”
Something about David’s tone made her curious enough to settle back into her seat. Once she did, he relaxed and attempted an appeasing smile. It made him look like a prisoner trying to convince the parole board he’d been rehabilitated.
“I used to be a lawyer. Litigator. Someone accused me of loving to argue once, and I thought it meant I should go to law school. That’s how shallow my emotional well was.
Someone points out a flaw, and I build a career around it instead of trying to be a better person.
” His lips twitched into something more genuine.
“Made me miserable. It made me drink, not that I needed much of an excuse. The only solace I had was music. I probably went to every live venue in the city at least twice before I was twenty-five.”
“The city?” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you mean New York.”
“So, one night, I go to this dive advertising folk music, and there’s this Black woman onstage, singing ‘Folsom Prison Blues,’ and I think, what the fuck?
This isn’t folk. So I ask the guy managing the place about it, and he looks at me like I’m stupid.
‘It’s just a song, man’ is what he said to me.
And it made me angry.” David’s voice was tight at the memory.
“I got so angry at how small this guy’s world was that I quit my job the next day and researched talent scouting. ”
Silas appeared onstage and announced the next act.
David waited until he was finished. “So that’s my origin story.
Dave got mad. But then I lost sight of what I was so angry about, and it took some washed-up one-hit wonder to remind me.
” He stared at August. “I think I get it now. Why he threw it all away for you.”
“He didn’t,” she said. “He could still—”
“He can’t. Emma’s article inspired sympathy, but no one will touch him. They’ve got no reason to. It’s you they want.”
August frowned. “What?”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you. You’ve got all of Nashville wanting to sign you because they heard this.
” He pulled out his phone and opened a voice note.
It was a recording she’d sent Luke weeks ago, a piece of a song she’d ultimately rejected.
“I got this the day the story broke with instructions to stop playing it safe. That was a reference to something I said to him, which he apparently took offense to and proved me wrong.” He put the phone down.
“I like the guy. But I also hate him a little.”
“I don’t understand. It’s not a whole song. There’s no music.”
“Didn’t need it. I said your name, and people put everything aside to listen. That’s currency, August. That’s cash in hand. But it’s temporary. You have to use it now.”
“How?”
“I chatted with a few of those assholes I mentioned earlier. Luke is out. You’re in.
Same deal we offered him, a duet with Jojo during the show.
I’ll try to work in more, but they’re focused on leveraging the controversy of ‘Another Love Song.’ You’d perform it publicly for the first time.
Reclaim your words in front of the world. ”
August couldn’t speak. There was a strange stillness inside her.
She was so used to wrestling with the different parts of herself, trying to parse through what she should and shouldn’t feel, that the sudden quiet confused her.
But then a ripple of something new trembled low in her chest and spread until it danced along her skin.
Joy. It’d been so long since she’d felt it.
David just offered her every dream she’d ever had, including one she hadn’t shared with anyone: singing with her mother.
But the second she named it, the feeling slipped away as the reality of what he was saying sank in.
She was a replacement. Damage control. The stripped recording was good, but it wasn’t the best she could do.
They’d only heard her searching for the voice she’d lost. They hadn’t heard her find it with Luke.
August scanned the room, searching. Luke’s set had ended a while ago, and she’d assumed he’d join the crowd. “I need to talk to him.”
“About that,” David said. “Give the songwriting a rest for now. They want you focused on performing.”
He didn’t say the rest, but she knew what he meant. Luke or Jojo. Cling to the past or embrace the future. It was an obvious choice, wasn’t it?
She should have seen it coming.
This Is Our Country : Podcast Transcript
Episode 12—“Jojo Lane”
August 21, 2024
[ cont. ]
Jojo:
Birdie got saved when I was twelve and I hated her for it for a long time.
Emma:
Saved as in…
Jojo:
Became a born-again Christian. It felt like I’d been tricked into believing that the person who raised me was who she would always be.
Kids like patterns and routines. That’s what love is to them.
Something invisible that makes them feel safe.
If they can see the effort, they can see all the ways it can be taken away.
My mother started reading the Bible after my father died.
Really reading it, not just flipping to the scripture when a pastor told her to.
I’d been doing pageants and shows for a while and something in those pages convinced her it put my soul in jeopardy.
I mean, I wasn’t driving myself to these things. I wasn’t buying the costumes.
Emma:
Did she stop taking you?
Jojo:
There was money coming in, so no. But she started giving me these warnings about how I should act around the men in the building.
It was mostly women who worked directly with us, but men ran everything, the pageants, the concerts.
The whole ride over, I had to listen to all the ways these men could hurt me.
How they could damn me to hell before I became a woman?
It messed with my head. All these folks smiling in my face were secret demons?
And I was just a little girl, so how was I supposed to protect myself ? How do you fight a demon?
Emma:
That sounds horrible.
Jojo:
I didn’t know any better. It’s probably why I liked Theo. He never hid what he was. And when you’re scared of the unknown, a known danger feels safer, even when it isn’t.
Emma:
Have you ever talked to your mother about this?
Jojo:
I tried. It never went well. Eventually I had to let it go. Birdie had early-onset dementia. Barely recognized anyone when she died.
Emma:
I’m sorry to hear that.
Jojo:
I found this nurse who grew up in the next town over to help take care of her. Birdie always remembered her. Never forgot her name. But she confused me with August all the time.