Hillbilly Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus, Todd Gold Page B

been under water for a few days during the great flood of 1937, and on certain nights when the humidity was high, it felt like it had never thoroughly dried. As for rough, well, we could count on at least one fight breaking out before the night ended. Liquor, rock and roll, good-looking women… and somebody always had a knife or a gun… it was a recipe for trouble.
    As such, I was uncharacteristically nervous before our first set. I placed a lot more significance on the show than anyone else. Once we began to play, though, those jitters disappeared and I turned into a party animal, easily winning over that night’s crowd. As word spread, we drew bigger crowds on subsequent nights.
    We played at the Sand Bar for the next seven weeks straight. Our sets included covers of songs by Billy Idol, George Jones, Lacy J. Dalton, Bruce Springsteen, Merle Haggard, Loverboy, the Eagles, Kenny Rogers, Bob Seger, ZZ Top, and Johnny Cash. We alsopulled from my ever-expanding list of originals, including “Suddenly” and “What the Hell Is Goin’ On,” plus the fun honky-tonk rave-up “Mom Called Dad a Mother,” “Take a Ride,” “This Beer’s for You,” and “Babysitter.”
    My basic rule was if I liked it, I played it—and I played it loud. I took requests. If we didn’t know the song, we learned it and played it another night. We never had a set list; I just tried to key in on the crowd’s vibe. As a result, no night was the same other than the fact that we made a lot of new friends, including plenty of good-looking women.
    One night in late September or early October, I was hanging out after the last set. We had played a packed house. In fact, we became so popular, the club was preparing to move us from the nightclub into the hotel’s upstairs ballroom, a much larger room that must have been a jewel for the area’s upper crust back in the 1930s. Now it needed refurbishing, and they were taking care of that before we plugged in. At any rate, it was closing in on 2 a.m., and I was cooling down from the night. The bartender and one of the waitresses were cleaning up, and I was staring off into space when a woman in her mid-fifties tapped me on the shoulder.
    “Excuse me, Mr. Cyrus, but I was wondering if I could read your cards,” she said.
    I was confused.
    “I don’t have any cards with me,” I said, thinking she meant business cards.
    “No, no,” she said, smiling. “Tarot cards.”
    “Huh?” I said.
    “I don’t want to call myself a fortuneteller, but I tell fortunes,” she said. “It’s kind of like a game. I lay down cards and tell you the things I see in your future and maybe some things about your past.”
    “Really?” I said. “Now? At what… nearly two in the morning?”
    “I know,” she said. “It sounds pretty weird. But something told me that I’m supposed to do this with you.”
    She sounded kind of kooky, but I was kind of kooky, too. I was half drunk and high as a kite. So why not?
    We sat at a table in the corner. She reached into a large hippie-type canvas bag and took out a deck of cards. After a quick shuffle, she dealt several on the table.
    “I see you have a brother,” she said.
    “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Two of them. And one’s in the band.”
    “And your parents—”
    “I have them, too,” I cracked.
    “They’re divorced.”
    “How’d you—”
    “Your mother… does she have an R in her name? A Ru… Ruth?”
    “Ruthie,” I said, warily. “How’d you know?”
    When she had mentioned my brother, I thought, Lucky guess. I mean she had a fifty-fifty chance there. Or she could have said I didn’t have any siblings, I suppose. But she didn’t. Coming up with my mom’s name? That was good. Then she laid down a few more cards and suddenly, out of nowhere, she jumped backward, startled. She looked straight into my eyes.
    “I don’t believe this,” she said. “What I’m seeing… I don’t believe it. I’ve never—”
    “What?” I asked, leaning