Free Heart of the Country by Rene Gutteridge Page B

defending you is only going to make me look like I know something or at the very least vitiate my reputation.”
    “Just get out!” I shouted at him. The suddenness startled us both.
    “Luke, look   —”
    “Get out!” My voice turned sarcastic. “Why should I expect any more from you than this? We’ve only known each other since we were thirteen.”
    “I never understood it.”
    “What?”
    “Why you left your dad’s business. I had to work for everything I ever achieved, but it was handed to you on a silver platter. Yet you wouldn’t take it.”
    “Let yourself out, you self-righteous . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence, even though a hundred crude words sat on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spewed. I couldn’t disrespect him, even though he’d abandoned me at my darkest hour.
    I heard his steps and the door shut quietly. I wanted to sob into my hands and scream and throw something, but I suddenly went completely numb and couldn’t even feel the pain of my own predicament. Only one thought wandered through my mind: How can I stay this way?

16
    CATHERINE
    I SAW A GLIMPSE of yellow and realized suddenly how much I loved color. I noticed it more than other people, I think.
    I was kind of shy as a kid. Not bursts-of-red-up-my-neck shy, but reserved, way more than the rest of my family. So to get attention, I wore a lot of bright colors. When neon was all the rage, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
    When I was eleven, I finally caught the attention of my family when they heard me singing one time in my bedroom. I didn’t realize it, but they were all in the hallway with their ears to the door. Suddenly I was like a superstar or something.
    “I didn’t know you could sing!” Ma said.
    “Don’t know where that comes from,” Pa had exclaimed.“Nobody in this family, that’s for sure. Ever heard your mother sing at church?”
    And that’s exactly where I ended up, too, the very next Sunday, singing a solo of “A Mighty Fortress.” Pretty soon I was a regular at church, in the choir, at the county fair, and certainly at any picnic or party I attended.
    I relished the attention. I hadn’t had much of it until that point, and so I soaked it in and took every opportunity that was afforded to me. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that somewhere along the way, I started defining myself by my talent. Easy to do when your family has nearly their whole identity wrapped up in you. I made a name not only for myself, but for them too.
    They never took advantage of it or used it wrongly, but I’d stand up on that stage, belt out a song, and watch tears come to Ma’s eyes. I’d walk past Pa and he’d be talking music with his buddies. I knew I had something special and didn’t want to waste it.
    But then I met Calvin, and as much as he loved my singing, he seemed to see music in my soul instead. He saw me. Really saw me. If I couldn’t carry a tune, he wouldn’t have cared. He always said we made our own music. And he said that whatever I sang first started in my beautiful soul. Looking back, he was kind of a deep guy for being so young. But he’d worked the fields, just like generations before him, and I think it does something to you when you’re out there in the quiet, with time to think. Calvin told me he watchedlots of sunsets by himself, and I always imagined his soul saturated with light.
    “Ma’am? Ma’am? Wake up!”
    “Catherine . . .”
    He leaned over me again, and I swore either he was deaf or I was imagining that I was being heard.
    “Catherine . . . ,” I repeated. Were my lips even moving? I couldn’t tell.
    “Glad you’re back with me. I need you to stay with me . . .”
    Okay. Stay with you. Boy, he had pretty eyes. My Faith would like those eyes. She was drawn in by old souls. I knew that when she came home and announced Rupert Stewart was her boyfriend. In the third grade.
    “Rupert?” I asked. The kid was nice but had thick glasses, a bowl