Chinaberry Sidewalks (16 page)

I asked my father if he thought the show might be called off. “Aw, hell,” he scoffed, “this mess’ll blow over in no time. Ain’t no pissant sprinkle gonna shut this shit down.” It was times like these, I had learned, that you could always count on his refusal to accept defeat as a source of comfort. His Don Quixote commitment to harebrained notions was one of the things I loved most about him. Whether the storm passed quickly or not, I knew his sentiments and the audience’s would be the same. It would take more than the threat of electrocution to dampen the resolve of five hundred Scots-Irish wage slaves dead set on enjoying themselves.

When it became obvious that nobody intended to call a halt to the proceedings, everybody turned back to the stage. Carl Perkins responded with a rip-roaring reprise of “Blue Suede Shoes” and, inspired by the reaction, finished the song on one knee and playing an extended guitar solo behind his back, a leaky band-shell roof the only thing between him and death by lightning.

Not to be outdone, Jerry Lee Lewis shoved the Garden’s weatherworn upright piano to the front edge of the stage. And from the moment he kicked into the boogie-woogie intro to “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” the place went wild. Ducktailed Jake City Rebels dived onto the dance floor, and poodle-skirted Connie Francis look-alikes ran on tiptoes through three inches of water to do the dirty bop with them. Lightning bolts exploded behind the concession stand and in the trees across the river. Nobody cared.

An Eddie Cochran clone tore off his shirt, fell to his knees, and started thrusting his pelvis skyward, both arms flailing wildly at his sides like high-pressure water hoses, his perfectly coifed ducktail sloshing in the water like a mop. When Jerry Lee lit into “Great Balls of Fire,” I thought for a moment the Eddie Cochran guy might be having an epileptic fit, given how his eyeballs rolled back in their sockets like I’d seen my mother’s do so many times. When I asked if she thought “somebody ought to do something,” her dismissive glance suggested that everybody out there was crazy and deserved whatever happened.

Jerry Lee and the thunderstorm peaked simultaneously, and he showed complete disregard for the danger inherent in singing into a microphone less than two feet away from the downpour. In fact, he seemed to revel in the risk. Instinctively, and brilliantly, he incorporated into his performance the possibility that a gust of wind could put an end to his piano pounding forever. Five hundred waterlogged Texans took the bait and the Killer reeled us in.

There’s no denying that Jerry Lee’s brand of Pentecostal pyrotechnics rocked the ever-loving Jesus out of the Magnolia Gardens crowd that day. His determination to bend his audience’s will paid off handsomely. Raw sexual energy and death-defying audacity is a disarming combination, and when the stacatto ending to “Great Balls of Fire” coincided with the end of the rainstorm, it was as if the hand of God itself had turned off the spigot. Striding to the lip of the stage, his arms spread wide, he crowed into the microphone, “Now you see what Jerry Lee Lewis can do.” The crowd loved it but I didn’t, his proclamation of victory reminding me too much of my father’s megalomania.

The audience rained applause on him for two full minutes, and following the last splatter of handclaps came an eerie calm after the storm. The crowd milled around quietly, some soaked, some dry, as the cloudbank rumbled off to the east.

The sun burst through the remaining clouds just as Johnny Cash stepped onto the stage. I elbowed my mother and yelled above the welcoming applause, “Did you hear those voices?”

She looked at me as if I’d fallen out of a tree. “What voices?” She blew a gray funnel of Viceroy smoke out the far side of her mouth.

“All those angels’ voices I just heard when the sun came out.”

“What’re you talkin’ about?”

I was sorry I brought it up but sure was excited to see Johnny Cash step up to the microphone. Dressed in dark gray slacks and a white shirt open at the collar with the sleeves rolled up two turns, my grandfather’s favorite new singer went into “Five Feet High and Rising,” a song he’d written about the Mississippi River flood of 1937, his deep baritone booming over the public-address system. I was too young to recognize the conceptual brilliance of such an opening, but like the rest of the crowd I sensed that we were in for something special. Whereas Carl Perkins’s and Jerry Lee Lewis’s sets spread a sizeable portion of the audience across the length and breadth of the dance floor, Johnny Cash drew everybody closer, hanging on every word.

He took us on a tour of Depression-era America. We were shown flooded cotton fields and cabarets where dark-haired boys played flattop guitars. Freight trains rolled through the faraway night, filling the thoughts of a death-row inmate, whose mother had begged him not to take his guns to town, with visions of cigar smoke and fancy dining cars. Autumn leaves fell around sad memories of lost love and a blond, blue-eyed teenage queen who’d run off to Hollywood only to find her true love was the boy next door who worked at the candy store. This was the kind of storytelling in which working stiffs like my father could recognize where they’d come from. Johnny Cash spoke the language of common people with uncommon eloquence.

Snappy patter was beneath him. He said nothing. He didn’t have to. His songs did the talking. Though not yet eight years old, I could tell that, in Jerry Lee’s case, it was the music more than the man that was making those women dance nasty with Jake City Rebels. With Johnny Cash, it was the music
and
the man. Both women and men listened quietly, as if receiving instruction from on high. Stillness engulfed the Magnolia Gardens like never before. Lest I give the impression no one danced, let me tell you this: They danced, all right, just not with each other.

Johnny Cash brought his performance to its logical conclusion just as the sun began its plunge into the pine-forested expanse of Channelview’s western horizon. It was one of those pink and gold southeast Texas sunsets when the last rays of the day probe the blue-gray heavens like Hollywood searchlights. Having graciously shared the spotlight, Johnny Cash and the setting sun bid the Magnolia Gardens good night.

The drive home had the feel of redemption. My parents seemed lighter, more talkative, than was usual. I myself was sifting through images of the candy store and the imminent return of my blond, blue-eyed teenage queen.

By now I hope it’s clear that apart from his manhandling my mother, I idolized my father and had learned at an early age to view his fragile self-imaginings with bemused detachment. And it’s safe to say I fostered some pretty flamboyant delusions of my own. One was the reason I was playing a shoddy set of drums in the sweltering heat of Cal’s Corral in the first place. For me—and this is something my father could never grasp—it was the off chance that, should I measure up, I might receive the benediction of his approval.

.  .  .

Pondering the subtleties of my love for him early in life, I realize there’s no definitive answer to the lingering question of whether he was an angel or an asshole. The thin line between his heartless insensitivity and harmless self-absorption was never more finely drawn than in 1962. Until then, more often than not, he was given the benefit of the doubt. But on the Saturday night when my mother nearly jerked Nelda Glick baldheaded, something else began to surface. Watching my father struggle to regain his composure, it occurred to me that I was sick and tired of his big-time, honky-tonk, singing-star act. It also occurred to me that falling on his ass was just reward for the vulgarity of his little song and dance with Nelda. Knowing he was more interested in saving face than in my mother’s health sent a flash of hatred through my body that, had I not been paralyzed by the frenzy of her attack, might well have caused me to bury a drumstick between his shoulder blades. This, of course, I wouldn’t do, but I didn’t have to. The crowd skewered him with dispassion.

I was proud of my mother for taking Nelda Glick down. That she was knee-walking drunk did nothing to diminish the thrill of seeing her stand up for herself. Her willingness to defend what was rightfully hers showed signs of self-respect missing since the day, in the middle of Hurricane Carla, she swore to kill my father if he ever hit her again. Within her makeup was a seldom seen fuck-you attitude that was a source of great comfort to me, and my anger at her for withholding this comfort kept me from wanting to be as close to her as to my father. Since neither father nor son was as forgiving of her shortcomings as we were of his, a pattern had been established whereby my love for her took a backseat to my need to please him. But Nelda Glick changed all that.

A woman from a neutral corner helped my mother to the bathroom. But for a few scratches on her neck and a torn dress, she was in pretty good shape. But when the adrenaline began to wane and embarrassment set in, she could be heard bawling through the bathroom walls. Eventually the woman led her out to the parking lot, where she passed out in the backseat of our Studebaker.

The inclination to quit my post and go looking for her was held in check by my father’s dogged determination to reclaim center stage. He intended to finish out the night. Within a few notes of “Why Baby Why,” the burning question was whether Elbert, Edward Lee, and his little drummer boy could keep up with his frantic pace. I played the set out dutifully, my best ever as a Rhythmaire.

On the dark ride home, anger got hold of my tongue. I was surprised by how quickly “It’s all your fault” went from something I was thinking to something I said aloud. When “If it wasn’t for you thinkin’ every woman in the world was in love with you, none of this shit woulda happened” poured from my mouth, there was the possibility that I’d just signed my own death warrant. Then came the kicker: “I hate you and I hate playing the drums like a damn idiot.” As if to signal I’d gone too far, my mother moaned in the backseat.

My father ignored the tirade; but for the part about my hating the drums, he’d heard it all before. He drove home in silence, stopping once so my mother could vomit in a ditch.

This catfight brought her career as cover-charge lady to a halt, and that was the last night she ever assisted his quest for stardom. Moreover, at the same time, the Rhythmaires outgrew their child drummer. Without my mother around to babysit during breaks, I was an eleven-year-old impediment and only too happy to give up my seat in the rhythm section.

A series of drummers, nondescript and of no interest to me, filled my vacant slot. The Rhythmaires’ cover charge reached the all-time high of three dollars a head in early 1963. Al Snider took over the lead-guitar work, leaving Elbert Smith free to concentrate more on singing duet harmony than playing lead mandolin. Ever the gentleman, Elbert took the demotion in quiet stride.

By late 1964, my father’s dream of a honky-tonk career had all but run its course. Eventually, he and the Rhythmaires settled into a loose pattern of jam sessions at friends’ houses around town, with an occasional paying job cropping up as late as 1966. Although she complained constantly about his drinking, this period was more to my mother’s liking. She might not have cared for the wife of whichever friend of a friend was hosting a particular session, but to her way of thinking, a living room, converted garage, or some pea-gravel patio was a more fitting venue for her husband’s music than any of Satan’s lairs. That the music he loved was tailor-made for those very places didn’t figure in her reasoning.

My father’s passion for the honky-tonk spotlight waned quickly. Knowing how much he craved the attention, I couldn’t shake the notion something wasn’t adding up. For nearly thirty-four years, thanks to what must have been a blood-sworn pact never to reopen this chapter of their lives, both my parents left me to my own conclusions. On the surface, the begrudging support my mother afforded my father when he voluntarily abandoned our house to the wrath of a Category 4 hurricane didn’t extend to his musical ambitions. The pleasure she took, as often as possible, in pointing out that his pretending some piss-hole dive was the Grand Ole Opry made him look like a fool was impossible for me to ignore. I don’t, of course, hold her responsible for his honky-tonk withdrawal, but I confess that for a prolonged period the onus was clearly on her.

It bears mentioning that the spotlight in eight out of ten icehouses where the Rhythmaires set up to play consisted of nothing more than the 75-watt bulbs my father rigged into two large Campbell’s Soup cans and hung from the ceiling with baling wire. Nonetheless, it never registered on the undisputed math champion of Kentucky that the resulting laser beams produced a less-flattering light source than a state trooper’s flashlight. But he did seem genuinely grateful when I suggested he use rubber bands to strap green and red gels over the ends of his soup cans.

At the age of seventy-one my mother flatly stated she was afraid my father’s love of music would take him away from her and that she used epilepsy to “keep him from runnin’ off with other women.” When I pointed out, sarcastically, that he would’ve had to been around when a seizure actually occurred for this to make sense, she stared blankly into the middle distance beyond the sliding-glass door of her ninth-floor assisted-living apartment, as if to give my father’s ghost equal time to argue his side of the story. This version required her to remove her glasses and carefully wipe away a small flood of tears with her left thumb. “What you never knew about your daddy, son,” she continued, glasses in hand, “is how much he hated not bein’ there. He never got over it.”

I doubted whether he hated having missed out on twenty-eight years of violent body-thrashing, jaw-clenching, mouth-frothing, tongue-swallowing epileptic seizures, but out of respect for her need to cut him some slack, I resisted saying so. This I did in spite of thinking she’d lost her mind. My choice to remain silent on this subject was rewarded with the realization that my mother had spent the six years since my father’s death reframing the events of her life so her memories of the young man she’d fallen in love with held more sway than the poisoned images of what the middle years of their lives together would ultimately become. And with this gentle epiphany came the understanding that my tendency to state the obvious had outlived its usefulness. To blame her Pentecostal priggishness for the collapse of my father’s musical aspirations wasn’t only far too easy but also simply wrong. It undeservedly absolved him from his crimes while it laid at her feet his failure to define for himself what he wanted in life and how to get it.