In the end, there were too many people—extended family and friends, musicians, members of Ghost’s touring team—crowding in for Clay to see the casket being lowered into the ground. And too soon everyone was dispersing, some in tears, some talking broodingly, others checking their phones and hurrying off to their next commitments.
Savy’s brothers and her band stayed behind to accept final condolences before they made the long, slow procession back to the waiting limos. And that was when Mo stared subtly out across the rows of graves and gave Clay an even subtler nod. When everyone had gone, the funeral director and his assistant broke down the canopy and folding seats and grabbed the corkboard of pictures that had been set out at the head of the grave, before they too departed—another day done in the business of inevitability.
Mo had informed Clay that there would be a respectful fifteen minutes from the time the last cars left to when the gravediggers showed up to fill the grave.
Clay used a few of those minutes to double back and retrieve the guitar case he’d stashed in the bushes.
Then he climbed the hill to Savannah’s grave and sat down. The headstone wasn’t in place, so there was only a rectangular pit. With the casket waiting at the bottom. Clay stared down at the red roses strewn across its black lid. In a show of reverence, the attending musicians had dropped their picks and bows and drumsticks down there too.
A breeze wandered through the treetops and was still. The latches on Clay’s case clacked and he lifted the guitar out and held it in his lap. “I was playing a show in Boston last year,” he said. “There was this girl in the audience who looked a little familiar.” He plucked at the guitar, found it slightly out of tune, and tweaked the keys. “I blinked and she was gone. But a few others noticed her too, hiding under a newsboy cap with a pair of Clark Kent glasses. After the show, I went back to my motel and wrote a song for that girl….”
Silence held, thirty seconds, more, before the first chords rose from the guitar. The breeze carried the sudden melody over the grounds, but there wasn’t anyone else to hear. Not gravediggers or mourners or fans. No one heard the words that Clay sang to Savannah that morning. And in the years to follow, Clay would never again perform the song or utter the lyrics. It was hers—theirs—and would remain a secret between them.
When it was over, and silence returned, Clay shut his eyes and felt the sunlight on his face. How hard it was to touch the past again, he thought. Half the point of being young was enjoying it; the other half was surviving it. But in surviving it, you realized no one ever survived completely. Because when your youth was gone, a part of you was lost. And those certain songs that reminded you of who you were, the dreams you’d had, and all the good things you’d once taken for granted, even those songs seemed fleeting and insufficient.
The guitar fell from Clay’s hands and landed almost soundlessly on the flowers in Savy’s grave.
Clay gripped the manicured grass in both fists, as if to hold back the turning of the earth and the rapid march of time, if only for a moment.
After a while he lifted himself and walked on….
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the love and support of my beautiful wife, Angela, and our incredible music-loving boys. Thank you to my Jersey Mom (Reader #1, Beatlemaniac) and my father (who saw Zeppelin open for Iron Butterfly), and to my family and friends for their encouragement through the years.
Extra special thanks go out to the William Byrne Experience and the Jonah A. Goldstein Band for taking this project, and its visual trailer, up to “11”!
For steady inspiration: Bruce, Bad Religion, The Gaslight Anthem, Tool, Dave Grohl, Rise Against, Mike Patton, The Lords of Thunder, and that band in that club whose name I never learned (you ruled).
And to every writer, musician, and artist who’s hungry for it and grinds for it every day, this book is dedicated to you!
Last, but most importantly--a big shout-out to YOU, steadfast reader, for flipping all of these pages, and flipping them still, reading even these liner notes. Please scrawl your name nice and big HERE:
About The Author
Larry Caldwell
Larry Caldwell studied writing at the University of Maine and Emerson College. Originally from the Land of Springsteen, he's now lost somewhere in Los Angeles. His ghost friends are cooler than your ghost friends.
Connect with him at larrycaldwell.net
