Walk like a Man by Robert J. Wiersema

recast musical setting, say). In the case of “Jesus Was an Only Son,” the live version is a completely new song.
    Typically, when Springsteen releases a song on a studio album, it remains largely fixed in that form; subsequent live versions might take a different musical approach, or contain minor lyrical variation, 6 but the song is “done.” He’s too much of a perfectionist to give early drafts the imprinteur of official release. 7
    It seems there was something about “Jesus Was an Only Son,” though.
    Perhaps it was the lyrics. Perhaps Springsteen felt he hadn’t yet said what he actually wanted to say. Perhaps it was the experience of exploring the song for VH 1 Storytellers.
    Whatever the reason, throughout the Devils & Dust tour, “Jesus Was an Only Son” was a highlight, the quietest showstopper in the Springsteen canon. 8 Every night, he cracked the song open.
    Early on, as he’d done on Storytellers, Springsteen interrupted the song with spoken word bits between the verses about what it means to be a parent, and what it must have been like for Christ, imagining a life of running a seashore bar in Galilee, preaching on the weekends. 9 As the tour progressed, the song accreted meaning. Springsteen took to introducing the song by talking about his family, the Italian and the Irish sides, what it was like growing up in a small town in different shades of faith. 10 Within the song, he’d expand on his feelings about both parenthood and sacrifice.
    By the time he hit Seattle and Vancouver in August 2005, the stories that accompanied the song had been developing for months. I had no idea. I’d kept myself largely ignorant of the format and the setlists for the shows, wanting to maintain a sense of suspense right up to the moment Springsteen took the stage.
    Nothing could have prepared me anyway.
    SUNDAY MORNING, a little past nine. There wasn’t a car on the road, and the heat shimmered off the asphalt in gasoline waves as it stretched into the distance. Any dust I kicked up hung in the still air. God, it was hot. First thing in the morning and already my shirt was sticking to me. Again. How many times had I sweated through my clothes in the last twenty-four hours?
    It was August 14, 2005, and I was walking down to my grandmother’s house. She wanted to go to church, so if we were going to have a visit, just the two of us, it needed to be early. She’d baked muffins with fresh blueberries; they were waiting for me. She was waiting for me.
    Cori and Xander were still asleep, snuggled together in the room that used to be Dave’s, before that Mom and Dad’s. Just across the hall from my old room, now given over to storage and garage sale finds.
    My legs were killing me.
    It feels sometimes like I’ve spent my whole life walking down that road. That morning, though, it all seemed different somehow. More real. I’d only had a couple of hours sleep—Greg had dropped me off pretty late after the concert—but I didn’t feel tired, just different.
    As different as everything around me.
    I used to know everyone in all those houses. I was related to a lot of them. My Uncle Bill lived here, my Nanny, my great-grandmother, there, the Michaloskis across the street, the babysitter there. Now they’re just houses, faces closed tight against the world, blinds drawn against the heat and the light of day.
    I still flinch when I walk past the house where that fucking yellow dog used to live. Twenty-five years later, at age thirty-four, I caught myself walking on the other side of the highway, as far over on the shoulder, as close to the lip of the ditch, as I could.
    Sunday morning, and it was so goddamn hot.
    I wasn’t used to the heat any more. I’d spent almost twenty years in Victoria, where even on the hottest days there’s a breeze off the water, a hint of cool to stir the air. This dry, hanging heat . . . I hated it.
    It was the