Free Hillbilly Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus, Todd Gold

corner, I was back in my old bedroom on Long Street and taking courses at Ashland Community College, a branch of the University of Kentucky. Susie was ten minutes down the road at Russell.
    It was all good, I suppose. But things felt different. Not in a bad way. They were just different.
    Just before spring, I got a job managing the campground at Greenbo Lake, one of the most picturesque spots in the area. To get there, you had to go up one Appalachian mountain, then down to the lake, around a half horseshoe-like shore, up another mountain, and then you dropped down to a little piece of land where there was a boat dock and the entrance to the campground.
    Since not many people went camping before summer, I usually had the remote location to myself. I was stationed inside a ten-by-ten shack, a tiny wood building with a couple of small glass windows that let me deal with approaching cars. I also stored the clubs and balls for the miniature golf course, where I played whenever I had the chance.
    Mostly it was too cold out there for anyone trying to keep warm. The wind would come howling off that lake. I kept a tiny electricheater going. Despite the chill, it was a cozy setup. It felt like my camp, and I liked being out there by myself.
    I did have a phone in the station in case I needed to get in touch with someone or vice versa. It was old and black, government-issued from the ’60s. An operator connected all calls in and out. Susie would call me every day around lunchtime from the pay phone at school. We would catch up and make plans to see each other later on.
    One night I was running late, and I stopped at the state park’s main lodge to turn in the money and receipts I’d collected from the miniature golf course. They had a small souvenir section inside, and on my way out, I picked up a stuffed bunny to give to Susie. Since the office was closed, I couldn’t pay for it. I made a mental note to pay the next time I saw someone behind the counter.
    I hurried to my car, which happened to be my dad’s four-door Cadillac; I’d borrowed it that day. It was about 10 p.m., and Susie’s parents wouldn’t let me see her after eleven. I knew if I drove fast, I could make it to her house in about twenty minutes. So I went flying down the two-lane highway leading out of the area, and lo and behold, a drunk driver came down the road on the wrong side, headed straight for me. I swerved to the side and went spinning down a modest slope. My head went through the window and I got beat up pretty bad. I still have a scar on the middle of my hand where a vein was cut.
    I staggered out of the wreckage, looked around and saw a trailer nearby. I knocked on the door and next thing I knew, I was in the back of an ambulance, heading to the hospital. As I lay on the gurney, with EMT workers cleaning my wounds and wrapping me in bandages, I heard a voice: “Cyrus, both of us know you stole the rabbit. But because you said you were going to pay for it later, it was a kind of gray area.”
    The circumstances were different the next time I was racing along those roads. It was April 1980, and the first blush of spring was evident across the landscape. I was late for work at the lake, hence thereason I was driving fast. I had turned from Route 207, a connector road that led from Flatwoods to Argillite, onto Route 1 and I was trying to make up time when I saw a nice car stopped on the side of the road. Standing next to it was an older man. He had white hair and was in a suit.
    Despite my hurry, I stopped and rolled down my window. You never know on those country roads.
    “Sir, are you OK?” I asked.
    “Yes, I’m all right,” he said.
    He looked at me kind of funny.
    “Say, ain’t you that Cyrus boy?” he asked.
    “Yes, sir,” I said.
    “It’s unusual for a person your age to help a man in need, don’t you think?” he asked.
    I shrugged.
    “Well, I find that’s a unique quality in a human being,” he continued.
    “I just wanted to