My Darling Baby: 2007
Six weeks after his daughter is born, a Georgia lineman pulls into his best friend’s carport at two in the morning with a packed bag in the truck, and his friend hands him a guitar.
Middle Georgia, August 2007, two in the morning, and it has not cooled off. Tom Temple sits in a lawn chair under the one bulb in Fred Wilmack’s carport, still in the uniform he has worn for days, holding a beer he is not drinking. His truck is in the driveway with a duffel bag and a guitar case in the bed. Fred comes out with a second beer and a bag of ice, looks at the phone buzzing on the concrete, looks at the bag in the truck, and says nothing. He takes his own guitar off the wall. Tom says a line out loud without meaning to, an apology to somebody who is not there, and they start writing. Miss Eula comes to the door in her housecoat at three and sits on the step until sunrise. By five the song is done. Fred writes T. Temple at the top of the page and nothing else. Tom lifts the bag out of the truck and sets it on the concrete.
Fred wrote the bridge and left his name off the page.