AT 29 (7 page)

Jimmy disappeared in January of 1979. I guessed where he went. He always turned up there when he was wounded. Except this time he made a circuitous route. He grew up in Massachusetts. That's where he went first. Vermont came later. It always beckoned him
.

- Alice Limoges

News that the Jimmy Button Band had broken up accompanied accounts of the Atlantic City fiasco in the trade publications. Jimmy was faulted for starting a brawl that resulted in the cancellation of VooDoo9's only tour appearance in New Jersey. Varying reports said that he was injured in a post concert fight and that his whereabouts were unknown. All of the articles included comments from VooDoo9 spokespersons, Jimmy Button would no longer appear with the group.

After two weeks he let it go. His thoughts ran deeper. He was sick of the monotonous night in night out repetition of old songs. They might have been the reason people bought tickets to see him, but he had gone cold. Death ruminated in his beleaguered mind. Not his physical demise, but his old ways, his old life. It was hard to admit that he wasn't the man he expected to be. He concluded that character was the issue. No matter what talents he possessed the promise could never be realized because he lacked the character to nurture them and give them meaning. He understood that doing right, thinking positively and speaking kindly were the foundations of patience, that patience bred self-confidence, and self-confidence was the enabler for all potential. Good people existed. They surrounded him, but he was not one of them. Succumbing to that revelation filled him with self-hate. He wanted to change, but first he had to retrace the path of the man he had become. He packed his clothes, pulled the car out of the underground garage and headed north to Massachusetts.

His real name was not Button. It was Buckman, James P. to be precise. Daisy Overton, the founder of his label, Blossom Records, coined Button on a whim, calling it cute. She wrote the name into his contract, forcing it upon him for as long as she paid the bills. At the time he was too thrilled to argue. Those who knew him had always called him Jimmy. He was a New Englander, having spent his youth in Massachusetts with four years of college in Vermont. Despite his Manhattan apartment and random concert tours across the country, he felt most comfortable in New England.

When he crossed the Tappan Zee Bridge he headed north to the narrow, winding Merritt Parkway. The Saab was equipped with low profile tires that permitted him to take the turns easily at high speeds. He came off the curves, downshifted and cranked up the RPMs with impunity, smiling smugly at the better recognized brands, idling at the roadside, a cop at the window. He did his speed thing to Hartford until it was time to exit and turn onto the less challenging Route 84. Two hours and four interstates later he exited at his childhood hometown, Chillingham.

The house was a small three-bedroom ranch on a slab in a large development of similar designs. After his mother died he decided to keep it. In part, he held on because he couldn't face the task of sifting through her things before putting it up for sale, but he also thought he might one day use the house as a retreat. As it turned out, he thought, turning into the driveway, that one day was now. He parked in front of the single car
garage, glancing up at his old rusted rim and backboard. He would shoot a few hoops in the coming days.

Chillingham was a small town situated close to the New Hampshire border and next door to the one-time industrial city of Liston. Local realtors hyped it as upscale, but Jimmy knew better, having seen real upscale communities through his concert tours. Nevertheless, he loved the town because for a time he had many friends and good memories. That time was junior high school when he grew out of his baby fat, discovered girls, sports and a modicum of freedom. He came into his own between the ages of thirteen and fourteen, achieving some successes playing sports. Like any kid who enjoyed some triumphs too soon, his head swelled. He underachieved in school and took a cocky attitude that brought warnings from his teachers. One call too many to his mother changed the direction of his life and, over the next four years, stole all happiness from his days.

The house was dark and cool. He set his bags down in the living room, turned on a light and adjusted the thermostat. A stereo console stood against the wall, nice for its day when it could pull in Bruce Bradley and Dick Summer on WBZ from Boston or play the Stones on scratch proof vinyl. The kitchen and dining room were small with furnishings past their prime. The bedrooms were even smaller with a single bathroom serving all. His old room was the smallest, but he never cared. The Gibson stood against the wall in the corner where it had been since he took his talent from Cambridge to New York. Dust was everywhere. Tomorrow he would get started cleaning the place and settle in for as long as it took for the answers to unfold.

He spent the first few days pursuing his physical conditioning each morning and making the old house habitable in the afternoon. He was woefully out of shape and he knew it would take weeks to see some improvement. He had already changed his diet while recuperating in New York, but that was mostly eating out. Now, he intended to buy his food and cook at home. He no longer cared to sit alone in restaurants.

He used the Chillingham High School track, running three miles at an increasing pace. In time, he intended to expand the distance. His target was the spring. By then, he wanted to be in the best shape of his life. Sit-ups, push-ups and an assortment other exercises were done at home. These, too, would be gradually expanded so he would be strong for the personal goal he set before he fled New York.

Avoiding alcohol was hard. Bourbon, vodka, tequila and most of all, scotch, had been a part of his waking moments for a long time. He missed it, especially at night. Being removed from his fast paced New York lifestyle helped. He wasn't on a stage three nights a week and clubbing on the other four like a month ago. The routine of three shots between sets and a dozen after the show didn't present itself. Still, he was hooked and his body protested with cravings at the familiar times and occasionally in the morning. He did not think of himself as an alcoholic and had no intention of heeding Ellis' call to seek help. This was simply a health matter. He had spent too many years under alcohol's spell. It was time to make amends to his body. He allowed himself an occasional beer and stayed away from the hard stuff.

He did feel better. Much of the dross that had accumulated in his system was gone, both because he was sweating it out on the track and also because he was not adding more. Breathing came easier, he was sleeping better, needing less and he even believed he was thinking more clearly with a brighter outlook. He still despised himself,
however. The reckless behavior that broke up both his band and his relationship with Cindy filled him with guilt. He alone brought himself to this purgatory.

After a week the house was straightened to his liking. He found his old basketball and put a new set of strings on the hoop over the garage. Each evening, despite the cold, he turned on the lights and threw shot after shot at the rim. It was like the old days, a chance to think. In the afternoons he reacquainted himself with Chillingham. He drove around his hometown remembering the people and places of his youth. He drove by the homes of his friends, wondering what had become of them, if they were married and to whom. The drug store in the center of town was now a bank, but the exterior façade looked the same. For four years he'd waited in front of that store to catch the bus into Liston where he went to high school. Across the street the Chillingham Diner still operated as it had for sixty years. Before catching the bus he remembered cobbling together enough change to treat himself to a sweet roll and coffee, sitting at the counter in his jacket and tie, text books beside his stool, completely out of place among the construction workers, plumbers, electricians and telephone linemen who ate their eggs and bacon nearby.

By the end of the third week he could feel his body responding. He upped his runs to five miles. The sit-ups and pushups increased to twice a day. He was getting stronger and combined with his better diet, the fat that once encircled his waist, melted away. Apart from a few calls from Ellis, he had not spoken with another human being. He didn't mind. The solitude allowed him to cope with his shame. He understood that parting with Cindy was in her best interest. His, too, as he accepted the truth that he'd used her. Because she loved him she ignored and even made excuses for his bad behavior. Because he disliked facing consequences, he kept her close and led her on. She was right. It was never love.

He decided to add swimming to his routine. This meant returning to Liston, something he had carefully avoided since high school. He dreaded returning to the city with its unhappy memories, but he was on a quest to heal his spirit as well as his body. As he turned the Saab onto Liston Turnpike he debated whether to follow it to the end. If so, he would come out at Kendall Academy.

Jimmy Buckman's destiny changed with high school. He always expected to go to Chillingham High where the teams had won championships in football and basketball for four years running. He and his friends dreamt of continuing the school's winning ways and reaping the glories it would bring. The dream was shattered when his mother announced that he must take the entrance exam for Kendall Academy in Liston. Until that moment Jimmy had never heard of Kendall Academy. He flatly refused. He knew he could not win, but he protested vigorously day after day until the morning of the exam when his father drove him to the school. Sitting together in the Kendall parking lot with the car ignition turned off, Jimmy made it clear that he would flunk the exam on purpose. This resulted in the only act of violence his father had ever shown. With a sharp whack to the back of Jimmy's head the reply came quickly and firmly, “Do that and you'll wish you hadn't!” Jimmy passed.

Disappointment proved severe that first day when he entered the aged confines of the school. To the unaware the name Kendall Academy might have summoned pictures of ivy-covered buildings in a tree-lined campus. Reality was precisely the opposite. The school was housed in a single, unattractive three-story building with turrets forming all
four corners. The turrets were a reminder that the forbidding nineteenth century block-long edifice originally served as the city jail. On one side was a drab factory, spewing smoke and cinders from tall stacks that jutted into the skyline. At the rear, beyond a short parking area, was a long, high brick wall that secured the old jail's perimeter from the Boston & Maine railroad tracks on the other side. Worst of all for Jimmy, was the school's lone playing field to the left of the building. It was nothing more than a vacant lot with patches of weeds growing like islands in the midst of dusty, brown dirt. Rusting goal posts stood at either end.

Inside was more depressing with dim corridors and dark stairs leading to classrooms on the upper floors. The dreary main hall was arrayed with yellowed class pictures dating as far back as 1910. It opened into a bandbox gymnasium that served as lunchroom, assembly hall and basketball court. On the second floor was the headmaster's office and at the ends of each corridor were small circular rooms housed in the four corner turrets that once contained the sharpshooters who watched over the jail's grounds. Jimmy felt like a prisoner that first day and for all the remaining days he spent at the school.

Kendall Academy was a down on its luck Catholic school run by a religious order that had not seen a novitiate in ten years. The order was fast running out of manpower and money. The Aponius Brothers were a tiny teaching order that specialized in educating young men in need of discipline. Unlike prestigious private and military schools that catered to wealthy families, Kendall drew its young men from Liston's five middle class neighborhoods and a few surrounding towns. At one time, early in the school's history, boarding students were accepted, but that practice had long since ended. Rumors circulated among the students that a scandal involving a group of later to be defrocked Brothers, had been the cause, something hushed and unspeakable. The truth of these rumors would never be confirmed, but new students soon learned that there were some Brothers to be avoided. Exiting at Kendall Street and slowly driving by the school, one name, Bucinski, entered Jimmy's thoughts, as he knew it must the moment he made the decision to return to Liston.

The building was no longer a school and had been turned into apartments for the elderly. Now, it was called Kendall Manor. As he wound the car around to the back he was surprised to find the driveway freshly paved. He parked, turned off the motor and got out to look at the old field. It was landscaped with pathways winding among shrubs and small trees. Jimmy smiled, remembering that it was hard to believe he had practiced football on that field, often bruising and scraping his limbs on the hard ground festooned with hidden rocks. No sense walking into the gardens, he would not recognize anything from his school days. He looked over to where the locker room once stood, just off the field in a bunker-like building dug halfway below ground level. Like the main building, it was refurbished, almost attractive, but it was still a bunker. Not much can be done with a building originally designed to house prison armament.

The bunker was also George's home. His mind's eye summoned a picture of Kendall's lone custodian, short of stature and hunched from decades of manual labor. He lived alone in the bowels of the small building, but he spent little time there except late at night to sleep. Otherwise, he roamed the school, doing his best to keep things clean and in working order with the meager resources the Aponians provided. George paid no rent and took his meals with the Brothers. In return, he received a tiny cash payment
whenever the Aponians could afford to pay him. No taxes taken, no Social Security, just a little money every few weeks. As the seasons faded one to another George watched every practice and attended every game of the four sports the school could afford to offer; football, basketball, track and baseball. A few students guessed that there was more to George than a good heart. They sensed wisdom that belied his circumstances. Jimmy was one.