Juliet, Naked

feel rather giddy.

It seemed to be genuine. There was no mistaking the man from the infamous Neil Ritchie photo—the same long gray dreadlocks, the same discolored teeth, although this time the teeth were visible because Tucker was smiling, rather than because they were being bared in anger.

It was incredible that anyone who’d ever heard of Tucker was in the crowd to see it: the band were, as far as it was possible to tell, a distinctly ordinary bunch of pub-rockers who played bars all over Pennsylvania but not much farther than that. It turned out that the young man who got the scoop was in the middle of the same sort of Crowe pilgrimage that Duncan and Annie had embarked on in the summer. He, however, had set out to try and find Tucker, and it looked as though he’d struck it astonish ingly lucky. But why “Farmer John”? Duncan would have to think about that. A man as deliberate and as thoughtful as Crowe would be trying to say something with the song that broke a twenty-year silence, but what? Duncan certainly had the Neil Young version; he would try to find the original before he went to bed.

There was more, however. The witness, who identified himself only by his initials, ET, had managed to speak to Crowe when he came offstage, and Crowe had spoken back.

So I thought well I have to try and I went up to him and I said Tucker I am a big fan and I am so happy to see you singing again. Dumb I know but you try and think of something better. And then I said Will you be singing your own songs onstage anytime soon and he said YES and also he had a new album coming out. And I said yes I know Naked and he said no not that piece of shit.

Duncan smiled to himself. The self-deprecation proved—perhaps, in a strange way, with even more certainty than the photograph—that this was indeed Tucker. It was an old pattern, exemplified in countless interviews from the old days. Tucker knew that Naked wasn’t a piece of shit, but it was entirely typical of him to describe it as such on its release, to an overeager fan. Duncan decided he wouldn’t pass this part of the story on to Annie, though. She’d misunderstand, come to the conclusion that Tucker was validating her opinion of the album, when in fact he was doing the opposite.

I have a new album coming out an album of covers of Dean Martin songs but done kind of roots rock and I kind of went WOW and he smiled and then went to sit with his friend and I thought I can’t bug him again. So I know the Dean Martin bit sounds weird but that’s what he said. I cannot tell you how amazing it all was I am still shaking.

It seemed wrong that he couldn’t share any of this with Annie. Gina would be excited when he told her in the morning; but then sometimes he wondered whether her excitement was entirely genuine. Occasionally it felt to him as though it were a little theatrical, although maybe he wouldn’t have arrived at that word were it not for her background. But then, she was a performer, and she performed, even when there didn’t seem to be very much motivation for her character. She couldn’t possibly understand what Tucker’s reemergence meant—she hadn’t put the time in—but she would jump up and down and shout “Oh my God” anyway. Perhaps it would be better if he didn’t tell her, and then he wouldn’t end up disliking her for her phoniness. Annie, however, had lived through the entirety of Tucker’s disappearance, and she would grasp the emotional impact of the news immediately. Did his relationship with Gina prevent him from sharing things like this with Annie? He thought not. He looked at his watch. She wouldn’t be in bed yet, unless her habits had changed profoundly since his departure.

“Annie?”

“Duncan? What’s the matter? I was in bed.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

He hoped she wasn’t going to bed early on his account, but he feared it might be an indication of depression.

“Listen. Something rather amazing has happened,” he said.

“I hope it is something amazing, Duncan. I hope that normal people would share your excitement.”

“They would if they knew what it meant.”

“It’s going to be something to do with Tucker, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She sighed heavily, which he understood as an invitation to continue.

“He sang. Live. In a bar. He joined a, well, an apparently rather mediocre band for an encore of ‘Farmer John.’ Do you know that song? ‘Farmer John, I’m in love with your daughter, whoa-oo-o-ah.’ And then he told someone in the audience he was making an album of Dean Martin cover versions.”

“Right. Good-o. Can I go to bed yet?”

“Annie, you’re cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I know you can see how amazing this is. And you’re just pretending it’s boring because you think you can get back at me. But I’d hoped you’d be above all that.”

“I am excited, Duncan, honestly. If we were on video-phone now, you’d see I was beside myself. But it’s also late, and I’m tired.”

“If you want to be like that.”

“I do, really.”

“So you don’t really see us being able to build some kind of friendship.”

“Not tonight, no.”

“I suppose… Stop me if you feel this analogy is inappropriate, or, or, off. But I do feel that Tucker is our child, in a way. Maybe more mine than yours… Maybe, I don’t know, he was my son, but he was very young when we met, and you adopted him. And if my son, your stepson, had done something remarkable, I’d want to share that with you even if…”

Annie hung up on him. He ended up writing an e-mail to Ed West from the website, but it wasn’t the same.

* * *

For the next few days, the message-board regulars shared everything they knew about the song, in the hope that they could decode Crowe’s message to the world. They discussed whether the “champagne eyes” of the farmer’s daughter were significant—was Tucker acknowledging the role alcohol had played, and maybe was continuing to play, in his life? Even with all the critical ingenuity they had at their disposal, there wasn’t much they could make of the rest of the lyrics, which were of the “I love the way she walks/talks/wiggles” variety. Could it be that he was simply announcing his love for a farmer’s daughter? There were probably several in his immediate vicinity, so why couldn’t he have fallen for one of them? (And of course it was impossible to imagine a farmer’s daughter without imagining a pair of apple-rosy cheeks, and perhaps even a becoming heft around the waist and the bottom. Compare and contrast with the pale, size-zero beauty of Julie Beatty and her ilk! If he was truly in love with a farmer’s daughter, then the old, unhealthy West Coast days were really over.)

There was much talk of the Neil Young connection, Young being a musician Crowe had always admired, and an artist who had managed to grow old creatively and productively. Was it an expression of regret for all the time wasted? Or was he saying that Young had taught him a way forward? The song’s inclusion on Lenny Kaye’s influential 1972 Nuggets compilation, alongside the likes of the Stand ells and the Strawberry Alarm Clock, provoked comment, too, although nobody could make anything really coherent out of the connection. The real point was that, for the second time in a few days, they had been given something to debate. Naked and now this… It really did feel as though Tucker’s hibernation might be drawing to a close.

Annie printed the picture of Tucker and Jackson at work, took it home and stuck it onto the fridge with the Sun Studios fridge magnet that she supposed Duncan would one day reclaim, if he were ever again in a position to think about the smaller details of a home life. It was a lovely picture anyway—Jackson was a beautiful child, and Tucker’s pride in him was obvious and touching. But Jackson and Tucker weren’t up on her fridge simply because they looked happy, she knew that much, and, whenever they caught her eye, she ended up thinking about what they did for her, and whether it was all terribly unhealthy. There was definitely a sad-sack fantasy element to it, she couldn’t deny that: Tucker had mentioned in his e-mail that he was single again, so… she didn’t need to spell it out. (She wanted to be honest with herself, but honesty didn’t mean having to complete every sentence, not when the missing subordinate clause suggested so much emptiness.)

Anyway, there was another, less embarrassing explanation for the cheering effect of the picture: her