Book Excerpt: Let It Be – Chad Gayle
Today Chad Gayle stops by to share an excerpt from his book, Let It Be.
Excerpt from Let It BeOne After 909
When my brother was ten years old, he almost killed a man. No one in my family has ever talked about what Joseph almost did, because we’re Texans, and Texans rarely talk about what might have been, but it’s something that I’ve thought about quite often, something I’ve had to think about since my mother passed away.
It happened the year my parents got divorced, which was also the year that my mother fell in love with the music of the Beatles for a second and final time. Her favorite album that year was Let It Be.
There’s a track on Let It Be called “One After 909,” a groovy tune about a guy who’s trying to get with a girl that’s on a train he can’t seem to catch. To a thirteen-year-old girl like me, it seemed like a cool number, even though it was old news, and I had fun with it whenever it was on; I thought it was a great song. Joseph hated it, however; for my little brother, “One After 909” was a meaningless, worthless lyric that wasn’t about anything, that was nothing but a ruse, and he was willing to argue this point for hours if he had to, which should tell you something about my brother. He was a smart kid, but he was a smart kid who could be ruthlessly stubborn when he was convinced that he was right and that someone else was wrong.
Not talking about what Joseph almost did has preserved that long gone year perfectly in my mind. What we might have said never had a chance to chip away at its sharp edges or to reshape it into something new, and that’s why it’s hard for me to make excuses for what my brother did to us back then. Now, when I listen to Let It Be, I remember it all, the whole sordid mess, and I know that he was much more aware of what he was doing than we thought at the time.
Love is its own kind of wisdom, but Joseph never understood this. He thought he had all the answers, and he was so busy chasing after a version of himself that would be wiser than the person he was, a person who would be able to reduce the world and all of the people in it to a series of simple questions, that he never learned the lesson that mattered most.
He was like the singer in that song, “One After 909.” He was trying to catch a train that would take him to a better place, a place where every heartache would be explained away, but he couldn’t swing it, and he never realized that he was trying to make the wrong train, one that would always pass him by.
Let It Be (2013)
LET IT BE is a novel with a soundtrack, a story that’s intimately linked to the music of the Beatles. Part family saga, part coming of age tale, LET IT BE is a touching tale of loss, longing, and forgiveness that chronicles the breakup of a marriage, the destruction of a family, and the struggle to come together in the aftermath of what remains.
Amazon USGoodreadsShelfari About Chad Gayle
Chad Gayle has written for literary journals, trade publications, and newspapers; he has a Masters in English from Texas A&M University, and he taught English at Meredith College in North Carolina and worked at Poetry Magazine in Chicago before he moved to New York, where he lives with his wife and his two children. LET IT BE is his debut novel.
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Book Excerpt: Let It Be – Chad Gayle | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave
