They were present for a moment in history.
“Freebird!” someone shouted, predictably.
She laughed. “Careful what you ask for, darlin’.”
And she sang the opening line of that song in public for the first time.
The crowd howled and clapped in amused approval.
One day shewoulddo the whole song.
Maybe... even tomorrow night.
If the Stellium Records people had come into this with ideas about keeping this show predictable or in line, they were in for a few surprises. She was Glory Greenleaf Barlow and they were in Hellcat Canyon, after all, where it seemed just about anything could happen.
She looked up at Eli and told herself she would not cry because the eyelash would end up skittering down her face.
He was just going to have to do the misty-eyed bit for both of them. And she’d play “Songbird,” just to tip him right over that edge.
She rocked that crowd, as if they were in her own cradle. As if they were in their own private stadium.
And by the time she wrapped it all up with a tender version of “Permanently Blue,” Marvin Wade slipped whatever internal mental tether had kept him sedately seated for the show and got up to dance, twirling gently around the small expanse of floor like a dandelion set free into the wind. And no one stopped him, because he was just doing what they were all doing inside anyway. Maybe in particular what Glory’s and Eli’s hearts were doing.
And eight months later—on the same day that Eli and Glory first held Zachary Henry Barlow, who surprised no one by entering the world yelling at the top of his lungs and sporting a thick shock of dark hair—the rest of the world was introduced to the first video fromGlory Greenleaf: Live at the Misty Cat.
It was just Glory and her guitar on stage alone at the Misty Cat Cavern, suffused in dusty golden morning light, while Marvin Wade danced his slow, swirly dance, going around and around and around.
