Free Twang by Julie L. Cannon Page A

shovel, and that very soon, like it says in that Randy Travis song, I’d start digging up bones.

4
    Mike said he’d pay my hotel bill until I got on my feet. He wanted to be sure I concentrated on my music, and not on existing, and he gave me money for food as well. At the outset I was thrilled thinking of this arrangement: staying in my cozy room, listening to music, writing songs.
    That very first night, lying in bed after I’d shared my good fortune with Roy, I closed my eyes and began brainstorming. But all I could think of was what Mike had said about a song on love gone bad, wounds of the heart and all, and my nonexistent past in the romance department. The life I’d lived to that point held absolutely no inspiration. Sure, I’d had the schoolgirl’s crush or two from sixth grade to my sophomore year of high school, but nothing had come of these, and since then I’d kept my heart sealed tight for reasons even I didn’t want to see.
    I tossed and turned. It was one thing to write songs about things you knew—honest experiences that birthed words and feelings. I’d never felt so absolutely empty. As someone gifted with writing songs, it had always come without a lot of effort. While I was picking apples or doing laundry or taking a bath or talking with someone, part of my mind was off on its ownadventure, braiding melodies and words together. Meanings overlapped from what was going on in real time, to that song always half-exposed in my subconscious. Lyrics, a new melody, could strike at any time.
    It was a crazy compulsion when I thought about it, my music constant as a mountain stream. That was why this lack of ideas was so frustrating. I wondered what I ought to do. I had no female friends, and I didn’t dare mention a sensitive subject like romantic love to Roy. For three days I dragged myself around, haunted by that elusive song, by the knowledge that this was my chance, my shot at making it in Nashville.
    “You okay?” Roy asked me as we shared a pepperoni pizza at the front desk.
    I sighed. “Yeah. It’s just that . . . I’m having trouble coming up with a song I think is good enough.”
    “All your songs are good.”
    “Thanks. But Mike wants one about a specific subject.”
    “ ’Bout what?” Roy tilted his head back to take a humongous bite of pizza, chewing as he looked hard at me with those intense blue eyes beneath the white pompadour.
    “Um, he wants a tear-in-your-ear kind of ballad,” I replied, picturing Mike’s straight, white teeth in the truck’s dome light as he held the door open for me. “A guitar-drenched, slice-of-life snapshot. A song carved from my own experience.”
    Roy nodded. “Okay.”
    “About love,” I added after a bit and felt a twinge of sadness for Roy and his loss. “Love gone bad—from a female’s perspective,” I amended quickly. “A girl in her twenties at least. He said to write lyrics that ‘convey a certain emotional arc.’ He wants tension and conflict.”
    “Smart man,” Roy said around a mouthful.
    “But I don’t . . .” my voice trailed off. I reached down for my napkin to blot my lips. “I’m just not feeling it. It’s like I’ve gotwriter’s block or something.” I heard myself using a whining tone I didn’t like. “I’ve never had trouble writing a song before.”
    “Aw, come on,” Roy said, lifting another floppy, greasy piece of pizza from the box. “This ought to be easy as pie.”
    “Really?”
    “Sure,” he said, nodding and chewing, “women love songs about men who done them wrong getting their comeuppance.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Well, in my experience, it’s a powerful emotion when a woman gives her heart to a man and he stomps it flat, so to speak. You know, she’s a virtuous woman, has eyes only for him, and he does her wrong by two-timing her with her best friend? Or by hooking up with some floozy in a bar?” Roy paused to tug another slice of pizza loose from the box. It was truly