Run, Rose, Run

by Dolly Parton

She spread out her arms as if she were flying. And weren’t flying and falling the same? Maybe, she thought, except for the landing.

The safest thing to do was to play a cover—she knew that. Something old and beloved, or else a song the middle-agers in the room would’ve sung in high school. “Strawberry Wine,” maybe, or “Friends in Low Places.”

“She sang like an angel who’s been cast out of heaven, yearning to fly back up to where she belongs.”

“Every livelong day there’s a new face asking me if they can perform in my bar. Is there a farmer growing a whole field of you somewhere? Some bumper crop of wannabes?” AnnieLee bristled. “You can just say no. You don’t have to call names.”

She’d been in the spotlight so many times that she shouldn’t have been nervous. But it was different to speak than it was to sing; she felt like a bird forced to walk when its job was to fly.

Because books, my friends, are true magic bound between two covers.

One of these days she was going to tell him that a bullet wound and a Purple Heart didn’t make him hard as nails. They made him just like everyone else. Sometimes you could see the scars and sometimes you couldn’t. But everybody had them.

“She’s a hell of a lot ornerier than your average fairy godmother, but that woman can work all kinds of miracles.”

That is a perfect way of describing Dolly Parton, which this character definitely has to be based on.

Am I really about to meet the queen of country music?” “Now, honey, that’s what they call Loretta Lynn.

When a girl didn’t have anyone to stand up for her, that girl had to stand up for her own damn self.

But I’ve seen her, and she’s something else.” There was a pause. “Is she pretty?” Ruthanna wasn’t at all surprised by the question—everybody liked a good-looking package to promote—but it still bothered her.

“I don’t know why you’re putting words in my mouth, Billy,” Ethan said. “Because you’re too chickenshit to put them in there yourself.” “Oh, yeah? Is mind reading a talent of yours?” Ethan asked. But he made no effort to deny that it was true. “Every bartender on earth has an honorary PhD in human psychology, son. No mind reading necessary.”

That’s what a good country song is: a story about real things and real people and real emotions, set to a really good tune.”

“They’ll mold you into whatever they think the market wants and turn you into someone you don’t want to be. And you’ll be so seduced by their promises that you’ll let them.

Fate granted some people their wildest, greatest wishes while leaving the simplest pleas of others unanswered.

She felt cared for—a feeling so unfamiliar that it brought the sting of tears to her eyes.

“Maybe I’m jaded, but it seems like too many people around here just want to be famous. They don’t even care if they’re talented or not—they just want the attention, and as much of it as they can possibly get.”

“…and that’s how you do a blue yodel, y’all, practically a century after Jimmie Rodgers first recorded his versions. There’s been many an imitator, but no one can compare to the Singing Brakeman.

Oh, look, a local legend is mentioned.

She wasn’t stone broke, not anymore, but handing over a solid three figures still wasn’t what she’d call enjoyable.

People loved them, even more than she’d dared to hope, and an influential music critic tweeted that AnnieLee would be the next Taylor Swift—“but fierier and fiercer, with a voice so raw and gorgeous it’ll make your jaw drop or your eyeballs leak. Or both.”

"You look like Taylor Swift in this life, we're loving it!"

she’d never met but took an instant liking to. I’m sure it has nothing to do with his smoldering good looks,

“You look like an absolute queen,” he said. “I’d fall down at your feet, but my knees don’t allow that kind of thing anymore.”

“Sweetie,” Ruthanna said, “when you were little, just learning how to sing along with the radio, women musicians sang about a third of the songs played on country stations. Now they’re barely above ten percent. Things haven’t gotten better since Tomato-gate—they’re getting worse.”

I just want what’s best for you. Maybe this is it, but maybe it isn’t. There’s more than one way up the ladder.

“The writer said I had the eyes of a saint and the voice of an angel.” “Did they happen to mention your heart of a hellcat and tongue of a serpent?”

“All we’ve ever done is try to help her. But sometimes I get the feeling that she’s not used to being helped.”

Was he one of the men from the black truck? The driver of the Impala? Or someone so frightening that he was only now making himself known?

“Best of luck,” he said. “Go with God.” I’d sure like to, thought AnnieLee. But it’s the devil’s help I need.