Read Online From the Top by Michael Perry - Free Book Online Page A

he and his wife had grown children. “Your wife,” he said. “She’s a good woman.” The rain rattled on, and he grinned a little. “You and me,” he said, “we both did better than we deserved.” It was as close a moment as we ever shared, and I’m not sure it ever would have happened had the rain not driven us into the cab of that truck.
    Rain is a sight as well as a sound. Think of a dry stretch, and then the first fat drops pockmarking the dust. Think of raindrops curving through a headlight’s beam. Think of the streetlight rainbow slicks as the first rains raise the oil from the asphalt.
    During a recent stretch of drought, clouds would appear in the hot afternoon, small and scattered as spooked sheep, and here and there thin gray streamers of rain would drape down, then seem to evaporate before hitting the ground. My brother the farmer swore the streamers would veer away from his plowed fields, perhaps brushed aside by the heat rising from the baked earth.
    â€œI love a rainy night,” sang Eddie Rabbitt back in the ’80s, and the people agreed, sending the song to number one on both the pop and country charts. Rabbitt understood the power of precipitation. In another of his number ones, he sang about driving on arainy night with “those windshield wipers/slappin’ out a tempo/keepin’ perfect rhythm/with the song on the radio …” Above all, rain is rhythm. A perfect match for music.
    Hear that? Rain stopped. It’s good, I suppose. The last few folks are making their way back from the concession tent for the second act, and they won’t have to hike their windbreakers up over their heads or run, on the theory that fewer raindrops strike a moving target. But I’ll miss the rhythm a little bit, the sound of those tiny leprechaun hands clapping. Into each life some rain must fall and then stop falling.

THE INNER CIRCLE
    The one thing cozier than a tent? Home—and those who make it so.
SONG FOR MY DAUGHTERS
    The first time Brandi Carlile came to the Big Top tent, she was playing solo and opening for the Indigo Girls. For the show surrounding this monologue, she was headlining with her own band and the place was packed from canvas wall to canvas wall with fans she earned song by song, going way back to the days when she was recording music on her own time and her own dime. Brandi Carlile’s music is built first of all on lyrics that read like true American poetry … poetry of the road, poetry of universal human connection, and, once she’s got you well in for the ride, poetry for stomping yer boots. Above all, though, it is Brandi Carlile’s voice you’ll take with you. Her voice, and how she inhabits it. Rarely have power and vulnerability so naturally melded. It is as if the heart of a sparrow has been wrapped in brass. When Brandi Carlile sings, she can belt it or she can break it, but above all she can bring it.
    I have two daughters. So including my wife, at my house it’s three-to-one girls against boys. A fellow I met recently on the road told me, “You don’t have a family, you have a sorority.”
    I think before I was a dad I would have appreciated Brandi Carlile simply for her music. For her art. But as a father of two girls, I appreciate Brandi Carlile far beyond her lyrics and melodies. When I hear her sing out strong, even when her voice breaks, I think of my girls growing older, and I’m glad they live ina time when there are Brandi Carliles from whom they may seek some guidance.
    I mean, Dad will do his best, and Mom (the woman I used to refer to as my wife, until the time my actual mom became Grandma and my wife became Mom—those of you out there with tots of your own will understand) is a woman of strength and virtue and qualified discretion (I say qualified discretion because despite strong evidence of her own good character she married me, which seems a bit of a theoretical