Page 28 of Rebel Moon

Gramps had also told me to be careful of a woman’s heart. Kiss her only if you mean to keep her close. He’d followed up with a story about how he’d waited to kiss my grandmother until the moon was full. So she knew I meant it.

I pulled my guitar from its case and sat in a chair by the fire and picked out a melody, lines coming to me as I did so.

I played around, my fingers finding the notes, then jotting them down on a music sheet, fully in a creative zone, until I was too tired to keep my eyes open and crawled into bed. Then, remembering Gramps and all he stood for, I pulled back the covers and got down on my knees by the side of the bed. It had been too long since I prayed out loud.

“Thank you, Lord, for this life. For the music and all the things Gramps taught me. For bringing me to Montana and showing me that not everything is always as it seems. Help me be a better man. Show me the way. Amen.”

I got back under the covers, grateful for the warmth of the down comforter. Closing my eyes, an image of Madeleine alone in her room came to mind. Tomorrow I would tell I was sorry for being such a pain in her neck and that I would do better. With that decision made, I rolled to my side, facing in the direction of Madeleine’s cabin and fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning, I was asked to report for my interview with Blake Bennett. They’d set it up in one of the little meeting rooms off the lodge lobby, with a couple of leather chairs angled toward each other, a lamp, in front of the window where snow fell softly. Blake sat across from me with a notepad which I had yet to see her look at. Nick stood off to the side behind the camera, so quiet you forgot he was there. Which I figured was all part of his job.

“You can talk to me or the camera,” Blake said. “Whatever feels natural. And if you want to stop, we stop. No hard feelings, no gotcha. That’s not the movie I’m making.”

“What movie are you making?”

“An interesting one, but always authentic. That said, I never really know what it’s about until I’m finished interviewing and researching. The story unfolds that way for me.”

“Kind of like writing a good song.”

“That’s right, I imagine it’s similar.” She smiled. “You all set?”

I shifted in the chair. I’d played in stadiums, but I hid behind my guitar and my playing, without fear of exposure. However, one-on-one like this, answering questions about myself or the band? Much harder. “Let’s get it over with, then.”

She started with easy questions. “Tell me how you became part of Jack’s band?”

“That’s all Rhett. He found us. I was playing in a band in some seedy bar nowhere near music row. Rhett was on a mission to find the best in town to play with Jack. Rhett thought I was the guy. He approached me after a set. Believe me, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. I remembered Jack from the singing competition and had listened to his first album so I knew the potential. Then I met him and the rest of the guys and I knew I’d found a home.”

“Kind of like winning the lottery?”

“Exactly like that,” I said.

She tipped her head and asked, “When did you first pick up a guitar?”

Here we go. “My grandpa gave me one.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I turned my coffee cup a quarter turn on the arm of the chair. How much should I say about Gramps? My first instinct was to keep him to myself, but then I thought about what he had meant to me, how he’d shaped my life, and suddenly I wanted to talk about it. “I was ten. I was already obsessed with music by then. He used to spend hours with me, playing his records for me. All the stuff he’d loved when he was young—and current stuff too. He didn’t have much but he had a record collection fit for a museum. When I was in fifth grade, I had the chance to join the school band. My folks didn’t have money for an instrument but the school had a piccolo available.” I chuckled. “Me at ten, sitting with the girls in the wind section. I was in heaven.”

She laughed.

“And listen, I wasn’t the greatest student ever. School kind of bored me. But the minute they started teaching us how to read music, it all clicked. It was like a language I didn’t even know I knew. I practiced that piccolo like it was going to save my life, you know. Gramps saw that, and that Christmas there was a used guitar under the tree. Used but perfect. From then on, it was just me and my guitar.”

“Did she have a name?” Blake asked.

“Carmen. Don’t ask me why. Later on, I learned Gramps had sold part of his record collection to buy it for me.”

“When did you know what he’d done?”

“A few months after Christmas. I knew that collection like the back of my own hand. I could see that some were missing. He admitted it to me then. He said, ‘Kid, you remember that every time you pick it up—that’s how sure I was that you had the gift. You make sure you respect yourself enough to use what God gave you.”

“And he was right,” Blake said.

“Yeah, he was right. He died when I was fourteen, so he never saw how far I took it, but I know he’d be proud.” My voice came out rougher than I wanted. “Where I come from, you don’t dream big. You take the job at the plant, or the line, or the mine, and you’re grateful for it. You don’t go getting ideas you can ever rise above your raising. But Gramps said, don’t you let them talk you small, kid. You’ve got something. You go on and dream past this place. Nobody else ever said that to me. Nobody.” I turned the cup again. “Not my dad. Not my mama either. But her dad, my Gramps, he made sure I knew that before he left this earth. I’m grateful.”

“It must have been hard to lose him at such a young age,” Blake said.

“Yeah. Not a good age to lose the one person who thinks you hung the moon and vice versa. At fourteen you’re not a kid anymore and you’re not a man yet, and the one person I always turned to—gone, just like that.” I snapped my fingers, quiet. “So. Yeah. But I had my guitar and this secret mission to show him he’d been right.” I paused for a second. “Music saved my life. I’m not being dramatic. My family didn’t get it, but they left me alone. Didn’t tell me no, just acted like it was something I’d outgrow the minute I got some girl pregnant. But I knew different. I knew it was my ticket to a new kind of life. I’d take that guitar out to the woodshed where nobody’d bother me and I’d just—play. For hours. Till my fingers bled, some nights. But I got good. Then great.”