“Echo!” comes the response from the crowd. “ECHO!”
My girl is giddy, beaming, bouncing on her toes. The house lights and the stage lights go black, and Echo trots out on stage in darkness, takes her place at the microphone. Atticus hammers a thudding beat with his kick drum—BOOM…BOOM….BOOM—and then Brayden picks a delicate, intricate melody that loops and dips and swirls around the beat for several seconds. Vance saws a long, low note which is mirrored by the deep, throaty, mellow note of Mim pulling a bow across the strings of her upright bass and then, lastly, Will sends a bent and wavering high note from his dobro to finalize the weaving, interlocking melody. The audience is screaming nonstop now, and they only go silent when the stage lights come on, bathing each member in a spotlight, Brayden and Echo sharing a pool of light and the microphone.
Echo’s voice lifts into the air, rises and washes over the packed auditorium, a dulcet and magical note that carries and carries, looped through a digital effect for several more measures.
And then the note dies and she sings, harmonized every few lines by Brayden and Mim:
“An instant, oh just a single fragment
Is all it takes to turn my long lament
Into a song of dizzy joy,
To shake the sorrow from my bones
And know that I am not alone.
An instant, oh just a single glance
Just a single touch, by chance,
And I know I’m not alone.
All the sorrow, love of mine,
Oh, you take it all away,
You send it with the wind,
All the sorrow, love of mine,
All the sadness, oh, all the guilt,
The tower of my solitude,
It’s falling, falling, falling away.
An instant, oh, just a single fragment
Is all it takes to turn my long lament
Into a song of love,
To shake the sorrow from my bones,
And know that I am not alone.
An instant, oh, just a single kiss
And I’m raptured, oh, oh, I’m drowning in your bliss,
My senses drown in the brown of your eyes
And oh, all the history is buried by our sighs,
All the sorrow and oh, all the guilt,
It’s all pulled down, down with all the walls I built,
It’s falling, falling, falling away,
Love of mine, oh
Love of mine, oh,
I’m falling, falling away, away,
I’m sinking into you, oh, and I’ll forever stay,
So take me now and lay me down,
Fall with me, oh,
Sing with me, sigh with me, lie with me,
Because it’s you and only you,
Whose kiss, whose touch, whose love,
Who with a single word, oh, a single glance,
Can change the vagaries of chance,
Can sweep me up and make me dance,
Can shake the sorrow from my bones,
Show me that I’m not alone,
With just an instant, oh,
With just a kiss and I know,
It’s going to be okay, oh, going to be okay,
Because
We’re falling, falling, falling away.”
The band jams for a couple minutes after the harmonized vocals fall away, Echo dancing at the mic, swaying and nodding and turning to watch her friends as they play, and then all the instruments drop out one by one, in reverse order of how they came in, until it’s just Atticus slamming his kick drum, and then the stage lights drop and the crowd is howling in the darkness. The lights come back up to reveal Brayden and Echo hugging, laughing, and then Echo grabs the mic off the stand.
“It’s so good to be back on stage. It’s been a long time, feels like a lifetime in a lot of ways, actually.” She turns to glance at me, smiling, and then returns her attention to the audience. “So much has changed for me since the last time Echo the Stars performed live. Everything, really. Me, most of all. I found love, you see. What happened is…I woke up, and I looked around me. I had to hit bottom, and hit it hard enough to shake me before I was ready to see what’s around me.” She turns and points at each of the band members. “These guys, my family. Atticus, Vance—” Her voice drops and she says the next name with a dramatic flair, “William Wolf…my girl Mim, sweet, beautiful Memphis, and of course, my best friend, my brother-in-arms, Brayden. They’ve all been there for me all along, I was just…I had my head too far up my own ass to see it. Guys…? I see it now. So thanks.”
She points at me, smiles, crooks her finger at me. I shake my head.
Echo turns to the crowd. “Ya’ll want to meet the other reason I’m up here? The person who has been most instrumental in helping me wake up to the beauty of life?” She strides across the stage and grabs my arm, pulls at me. I resist, but I go with her because I can’t deny her anything. She hauls me front and center, beneath the spotlight. Brayden rests his hand on my shoulder and leans against me, and Echo hooks her arm around my waist on the other side of me, rests her cheek against my chest, and speaks into the microphone. “Isn’t he gorgeous? Yeah, you have no idea. He’s the reason I’m here. I think if it hadn’t been for my man Ben, I wouldn’t be here. I’d have drunk myself to death. Ben and Brayden, both of them, are amazing. I quit drinking, by the way. Thirteen months, not a drop.”
I stare out at the crowd, and for a moment or two, I see what Echo sees when she’s up here, what Kylie and Oz see, what Colt and Nell see: thousands of faces grinning and cheering, hands raised, cell phones flashing, a sea of humanity and noise. It’s exhilarating.
I’m tempted to spin around right now and drop to my knee, pull out the ring I’ve had with me for weeks. But I don’t. Yeah, I’ve seen Colt and Nell’s proposal video, and even Oz and Kylie’s. Those proposals are cute and romantic and whatever. But it’s not me, and it’s not us. When it comes down to it, I’m a more traditional guy. I’ve got a plan and I’m going to stick to it; I’m just waiting on some official news.
I let the moment pass, and when Echo turns to me, I cup her face in both hands and kiss her until the crowd starts whistling and Brayden makes an amused yet disgusted sound. I laugh, and make my way off-stage, where I watch the rest of their set. When they’re done, I help the band tear down their gear and load it into the back of the semi trailer waiting to take them to the first stop of the tour, in Memphis. By the time all that’s done, The Harris Mountain Boys are jamming onstage, and the band and I cluster off-stage and watch.
I finally catch a moment alone with Echo, deep in the shadows backstage. I pin her to the cinderblock wall and kiss her breathless. “I’m proud of you, Echo,” I tell her. “And I love you.”