Great Are the Myths - Episode 11

Great Are the Myths – Chapters 24–25Birdie spends the early summer at Tilly’s parents’ house in New York, where plans for the season begin to take shape. She arranges to spend time in Newport with Cornelia, whose parents will be abroad, leaving them free to host friends and drift through the long summer days. Topper hints he might visit as well—his grandmother has a house nearby—and when he holds Birdie’s gaze a moment too long while saying so, she feels her cheeks warm.In June, Birdie receives an unexpected phone call from Memphis. It is the boy. Breathless and laughing, he tells her Sun Records has called him back. Marion Keisker wants him to return to the studio to record again. Birdie congratulates him, surprised that he has called her first. The moment turns awkward when he confesses he misses her and has been trying to keep busy to avoid drowning in the pain of losing her. Before Birdie can respond, he hangs up.Soon after, she receives a letter explaining that the recording session did not go well and asking her to come home. Birdie decides to return to Memphis for practical reasons anyway: her grandfather insists she learn to manage her finances, and she wants to see Miss Mary before continuing her summer elsewhere.When she arrives on July 3rd, the boy meets her at the airport as though nothing has happened between them. He talks without stopping—about work, music, his girlfriend Dixie, and the recent death of a singer he admired—until Birdie finally asks him to pause so she can catch her breath. For the first time since her arrival, they truly look at one another. In that quiet moment, something familiar between them returns.That evening they go to the Hippodrome for a double feature: Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Marlon Brando’s On the Waterfront. Halfway through the film his mother calls him out of the theatre—he has received a message from a guitarist named Scotty Moore at Sun Records. After returning the call, he grins and tells Birdie that everything seems to start going right again whenever she is around.Back at Birdie’s house, she discovers the boy has effectively moved into her room, using it as a place to escape and clear his head. The space is chaotic with his belongings, and Miss Mary quietly confirms he has been coming and going for weeks. Birdie is too exhausted to argue and falls asleep almost immediately.The next morning he wakes her with coffee and a new plan: they must visit Scotty Moore. Birdie agrees to come along, though she insists she is not there simply to steady his nerves.At Scotty’s house, the boy runs through every song he knows while Scotty and bassist Bill Black listen carefully. Birdie senses they are not entirely convinced, though the boy seems strangely unbothered. Later that day Sam Phillips calls with good news: a recording session has been scheduled for the following day.That night Birdie and the boy drive down to Riverside Park for Fourth of July fireworks. Memphis feels electric—alive with music, possibility, and tension. On Beale Street, the rhythms pouring from clubs seem more alive than anything Birdie has experienced on the East Coast. The city’s energy is intoxicating, though the deeper realities of the American South—segregation, inequality, and the uneasy politics of the Cold War—linger just beneath the surface.As fireworks burst above the Mississippi and music spills from the car radio, Birdie dances barefoot in the grass while Sh-Boom plays. For a moment, the world feels full of promise. America in the summer of 1954 seems to glow with movement and change.But Birdie will later understand that the dream was always more complicated than it appeared.