Coming Home Read Free Page A

pulled on his shoes and began lacing them up. “To buy your
sister a cup of coffee,” he said.
     
    ***
     
    The Jackson Diner was deserted at this time of night, except for a
lone trucker who sat at the end of the bar, sipping coffee and reading the
newspaper.  Elsie Cameron was washing out the pie case with a wet rag, and from
the kitchen came the scratchy buzz of Todd Whitley’s radio, tuned, as always,
to a country station out of Portland.  Their coffee sat forgotten before them
as Danny Fiore traced a pattern on the chipped Formica with his spoon.  “I
tried to fit in at B.U.,” he said, “but I wasn’t like the other kids.  Most of
them came from money.  I came from Salem Street.  Little Italy.  I was there on
an academic scholarship, and I had a chip on my shoulder the size of the Tobin
Bridge.”  His smile was rueful.  “I didn’t even dress like the rest of them. 
The other guys had ripped jeans, scraggly beards, hair down to their asses.  I
was the only one wearing chinos and a DA.”
    “So,” Casey said softly, “what happened?”
    “I lasted one semester.  I had a straight 4.0 average, and I
dropped out of school.”  Playing with a packet of sugar, he said, “It wasn’t
more than a couple of months before Uncle Sam caught up with me.”   His voice
grew tight.  “I was one of the lucky ones chosen to fight for truth, justice,
and the American way.”  He shoved the sugar packet aside.
    “Vietnam?”
    “I wasn’t exactly what you’d call politically astute.  Up to that
point, Vietnam wasn’t much more to me than a name on a map.  I never did figure
out what we were doing there.  Fighting Communism, they told us.  I spent
thirteen months in that hellhole.”  He stared into the depths of his coffee
cup.  “When you come back from there,” he said, “everything’s out of sync.  The
whole world has moved forward, but you’ve stayed in one place.”  He looked at
her with those blue eyes.  “You know what I mean?”
    Frowning, she nodded.  He ran the fingers of both hands through
his long hair.  “And the worst thing is, it’s still with you.  It’s with you
when you close your eyes at night and when you open them in the morning and all
the time in between.”  He stopped abruptly and looked at her in surprise.  “I’m
sorry,” he said.  “You don’t want to hear all this.”
    “Yes,” she said.  “Yes, I do.”
    “I didn’t mean to spill my guts.  I never do this.  You have a
strange effect on me.”  He studied her quizzically and cleared his throat. 
“So,” he said, “how long have you been writing music?”
    His abrupt change of subject startled her.  “Oh,” she said, “since
about forever.  I come by it naturally.  Mama was a concert pianist.  A very
good one.  By the time she was sixteen, she’d already toured Europe.  When she
was eighteen, she came down with pneumonia, and her parents sent her to
recuperate at her Aunt Elizabeth’s house.  She met Dad when he came over one
day to complain that Aunt Elizabeth’s sheep dog had gotten loose again and was
chasing his heifers around the pasture.  Trying to herd them.”
    Danny grinned, and she responded in kind.  “Six weeks later,” she
said, “they were married.”
    “And she gave it all up for love?”
    Casey smiled ruefully.  “When I was twelve, I thought it was the
most romantic story I’d ever heard.”
    “And now?”
    “Now,” she said, resting both elbows on the table, “I wonder how
she could have given up that much of herself.  Even for somebody she loved.”
     “I’m dead serious about this,” he said, leaning forward intently
over the table.  “I’m going all the way to the top.  I’m going to be a star,
and I don’t want just anybody’s songs, I want yours.  I don’t intend to give up
until you say yes.” 
    I’m going to be a star .  He spoke the words as casually as though he’d said he was going
to be a doctor, or a