This is the first section--the Prologue--of my first novel, currently with the working title "Gabriel's Songbook." Thirteen chapters and an epilogue follow this opening.

          I once heard John Cougar Mellencamp say in an interview that the only reason a boy ever picks up a guitar is to get girls.  I can't argue with that.  I was seventeen and a half years old that October night when the mysteries of music and love lured me into the labyrinth.

          Her name was Eliza Garrison.  She showed up at Runion High the first day of school in my junior year.  Nobody was surprised to see her there.  Word had gotten around the teenage grapevine, as it always did when some new athlete or pretty girl moved into town over the summer.  But this was the first time I'd seen her.

          I was in love from the moment the principal escorted her through the door of Mrs. Tolley's homeroom.  Short black hair.  Silverblue eyes.  A cute nose and a dimpled chin.  She wore a white sleeveless turtleneck, a short blue jeans skirt, and red flipflops.  Her toenails were painted a reddish brown.  Her bare arms and legs were tan and looked soft and strong at the same time, and when she chose an empty desk—on the other side of the room—and put down her books, I saw a curve of breasts that made me more aware than I'd ever been before of the blood surging through me.

          A natural shyness inherited from my father makes getting to know new people a slow and sometimes painful process for me.  So I was slower getting to know her than I wanted to be.  But I at least got physically closer to her in the other three classes we had together—across the aisle in one, behind her in another, lab partner in a third.  I could work with that until my big chance came.

          I sang in a group called the Big Muddy Band, and we performed for most of the local music functions that called for—or didn't mind—a little loud rock and roll.  I already knew myself to be a more lively personality on stage, and I had an idea that one of our upcoming shows would get me and Eliza rolling.

          As it turned out, the first chance to play for the home crowd, Eliza included, didn't come around for a couple of months.  The rest of the band—Jonah, Stu, Little, and Ezra—were all graduated from school, so we traveled out of town a lot on weekends.  But in October we were booked for the Fifteenth Runion River Festival and Dam Dance, held annually in Stackhouse Park.

          I skipped school the day before and missed Runion High's Homecoming—the football game and the dance—to travel with the Big Muddy to Cleveland, Tennessee, where we played for some function at a private school.  We were back in Runion by dawn, slept a few hours, and met at Stackhouse Park.

          After the equipment was set up, the older guys headed across the Big Laurel Creek trestle to Chunn's Tavern for a few beers, and I sat on the stage and watched the bustle of the festival.

          The sun was warm but not hot, and the sky was that deep clear October blue.  Shadows got out from under their makers and started stretching toward town.  In the yellow autumn light, the burnt orange, red, and gold of the first fallen leaves lay strewn across cobblestone walks.  Transistor radios created a tinny din of jumbled pop, country, and gospel music.  People laughed and talked while they arranged their wares for the evening's festivities.  The air filled with the blended aroma of charcoal fires, hot apple cider from Avalon Orchards, baking bread, pepper-seasoned steak and onions, and chicken that'd marinated long in vinegar, mustard, and tabasco.

          Finally I hopped down from the trailer and wandered around, speaking to several people I knew and bumping into a couple of teachers who pestered me about missing school the day before.  Then I found my cousin Cutter—nicknamed after his own two-year-old rendition of his real name, Carter—under a pine tree with Wiley and Jay.

          "We got trounced as usual," Cutter said.  "Forty-two to six."

          "Yeah," I said.  "I saw that in the paper this morning.  Who got Homecoming Queen?"

          Cutter folded his hands together under his chin and rolled his eyes toward the sky.

          "Our Lady of the Red Corvette, Susie Mallard.  Who'd you expect?"

          "You're right.  Dumb question.  How was the dance?"

          "Well, let's put it this way.  It probably would've made a better story for the paper than the game did."

          "No surprise there."

          "Does every year," Wiley added.

          "Anyhow," Jay cut in, "since you guys weren't around, we had that big-mouth deejay,"—he went into his booming radio announcer's voice—"Dr. Disco Herb, from WILD-FM!  Boring as hell."

          "T.W. and Moose got hold of a jar of 'shine from old Bell-Eye," Wiley said.

          "Yeah," Cutter said.  "They ended up puking hot dogs all over the dance floor, and Loose Lucy slipped and fell in it."

          "Good God, Gabe," Jay said.  "You should've seen her when she skated into it, arms and legs going ever-which-a-way and trying to keep her balance before she finally went down."

          "Sounds like her usual dance steps to me," I said, laughing.

          "Really, man," Cutter said.  "Anyways, she put on her skimpy gym clothes out of her locker and burned her dress and unmentionables out in the parking lot.  With all that homemade alcohol in them they went up like she'd been pissed on by the Sinclair dinosaur."

          "Then Johnny and the Pine Ridge Bombers took turns driving her home," Jay added.  "If you catch my meaning."

          "So I really didn't miss anything unusual," I said.

          "Nothing but Eliza."  Cutter flashed his wicked grin at Wiley and Jay.

          "Dear Eliza," Wiley said, patting his heart with fluttering fingertips.

          "Sweet Eliza," Jay echoed, slowly sliding the zipper on his jeans down, then up.

          "Who?" I asked.  But I knew—and they knew I knew—who they were talking about.

          "Come on, Gabe," Wiley said.  "We all seen the drool shower your pig got when you and her were cutting it up in Mr. Raney's class."

          "And we've seen the way she bats her eyes at you, boy," Cutter said and punched me in the arm.

          "Ah, the new girl," I said.  "Now I know who you're talking about.  She go down in the hot dog pool too?"

          "No way, man," Wiley said.  "I don't think her feet even touch the ground when she dances.  Course, she only danced with that little Billy Dean from Cosmetology."

          "The rest of us guys was too scared of catching lump-jeans," Jay said.

          I looked down at the ground, kicked at a little pine cone, and grinned.  The Homecoming Dance was the first big school social since Eliza moved to Runion, and my biggest fear had been that she'd take up with somebody there while I was out of town with the Big Muddy.  Since that hadn't happened I figured I still might have first shot at her if she showed up at the Dam Dance.  I imagined there'd be others who, after a long Homecoming night with her filling their restless dreams, would find the courage to ask her to dance tonight.  But I'd be the one on stage.  I saw myself come down from that high place and find her starry-eyed among the dancers.  The sea of people would part and recede to the other sides of the world, and the two of us would stand alone together on the glittering shore of Heaven.

          I was such a romantic young man.

          The day took its sweet time getting over with, but finally the sun dropped behind the mountains across the river, leaving Stackhouse Park in the blue shadow of Pine Ridge.  For a few minutes light stayed on Runion.  Brassy brilliance reflected from the windows in town, and, higher up and all around, the wooded slopes glowed with the gold and rust of October.  Directly behind Runion and its house-dotted hill, Lonesome Mountain stood lit like a bonfire.  The shadow swelled.  Twilight climbed the mountain sides to join the darkening purple of the eastern sky.  The low lamps along the walks in Stackhouse Park stuttered and warmed to life, and strings of white lights in the trees appeared like a sudden waking of angels.

          At last Runion's tower clock struck nine, and the stage lights came up.

          For the next two hours, Stu and Ezra's guitars jangled and cried.  Little's drums and Jonah's bass cracked and boomed and rumbled like thunder rolling across the sky above Runion and the French Broad River.

          I sang.  And for the first time—as I scanned the crowd in front of the stage in hopes of seeing Eliza's face turned up to me like a flower to the morning sun—the songs I sang became my own.  I hadn't written them, but for that night they were mine.  I caught glimpses of the inspiration that had seeded them, felt their note-to-note and line-by-line creation, saw behind that creation the hundreds of possible thoughts that could be fleshed out to create a hundred more songs.  Ideas and hints of ideas rose to swirl around and through me like the glowing millers that with powdery wings danced in and out of the blue, red, and yellow stage lights.

          That evening, the journey through each song brought me—from different directions and always for only a moment—to the border of a shadowed place I sensed existing in the middle of the music, some otherplace where songs lived whole before they flowed or dripped from a songwriter's heart.  I wanted to find and map that place, learn to shape my own notes and line my own words.  But each glimpse was fleeting and echoed, escaping before I could discover whether the place was in me or on stage with the Big Muddy or somewhere high in the starry heavens.

          At times during the dance, my mind was jolted out of these musings when I thought I'd caught a glimpse of Eliza.  But then the crowd would wash one way or the other and she would be lost in the small sea of shiny faces.  Then toward the end of the final set, while Jonah thanked the three hundred or so folks who'd been gathered around the flatbed trailer all evening, I let my eyes wander over the crowd.  Not listening to Jonah.  Not seeing the people.  Thinking only that Eliza wasn't there, and trying not to think that she was in some Asheville movie theater with Joe Powell or Paul King.  Then as Jonah was wrapping up, a sudden movement caught my attention, and my eyes focused.

          Eliza waved again.

          My first thought was that she must've just arrived.  I couldn't believe I'd missed her all night when now she stood out in that crowd as if she were a glowing hovering angel bringing me a message from God Almighty.

          I finally looked away from her long enough to glance at the set list taped to a stage monitor.  Two more songs before the end of the Dam Dance.  The next song, the next to last song, was the Big Muddy's homespun version of a Moody Blues tune called "Nights in White Satin"—always reserved for the last-chance-slow-dance.

          When the intro started, Eliza didn't leave the area in front of the stage.  With a sweet smile for each boy, each man, each girlfriend, she stood in the middle of the dancers and refused every invitation and plea.  She just stood there, a slight flush coloring her throat and cheeks as she watched me step to the microphone and sing the first verse.

          I felt a heat in my own cheeks and knew they had to be blazing red.  Everybody would notice.  Still I stared at her and didn't care who saw what.  But when I hit the refrain—"And I love you.  Oh, how I love you"—I couldn't bear it any longer and looked up and away just as a light streaked east to west across the dark October sky.

          Another followed.  Then another and another.  The next one was big enough for me to see the trail of flames and sparks it dragged behind.  For a moment it flared brighter than the moon, its greenwhite glow ghosting Runion and the surrounding hills, its heated descent seemingly reflected in those pale blue eyes my star-struck gaze sought out again.

          I finished the vocal sections of the song, but the band would be playing several more minutes of the sensual rhythm for the benefit of the dancers.  I turned to Little's drum riser and swallowed a quick drink of water and then turned again and took three loping steps toward the front of the stage.  I passed my microphone stand and jumped.  I felt like I hung in the air, a sprawl of faded jeans and denim shirt tinted yellow-purple above the blended colors of the footlights and backed by blackness and shooting stars.

          "I've been looking for you all night," I yelled above the music.

          Eliza smiled and said something too soft to be heard.

          We both laughed and shook our heads.  Then I held my arms out in the air, standing in a formal dance posture, an invitation.  She looked away for a moment, turned back, and placed her right hand in my left.  My fingers touched the wetness of her back.  In the breeze off the river, I felt my own sweat soaking my shirt.  I smelled her perfume, something of honeysuckle and musk.  My arms were shaking, and I felt a shaking in her too.

          Our dance began.

          In the purity of that moment—filled with music and Eliza—I discovered a light.  A guiding star, as I always imagined it.  Over the years, even in times when I felt most earth-bound, I kept sight of that star in the heavens.  When I sat in some darkened room with my guitar in my arms, trying to fit words to music, it hovered above me like an invoked muse, a guide, a promise.  And when I finally got a real stage and an audience made up of more than friends and family, it became a spotlight, or the spotlit reflection of myself in some pretty woman's smiling eyes.

          I followed that star.  Not that I'm making any claims to wisdom.  I just followed it, without question, through a great wilderness and some of my wildest dreams.