Hillbilly Heart (10 page)

“Cyrus?” he asked. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah,” I said. But I wasn’t OK.

“You have an emergency in Flatwoods,” he said. “I need to take you home.”

He loaded me into the back of his car and drove me straight to 2317 Long Street. My mom embraced me at the door, her eyes red from crying. Neighbors had gathered inside and on our front porch. I worked my way through the crowd, past the living room, and down the narrow hallway till I got to my room. I went in, locked the door, and fell face-first onto my bed.

I could have been like that for ten minutes, thirty minutes, or thirty seconds—I have no idea—when suddenly words came to me. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. I didn’t know what the words were, just that they were there and I had to get them out of me. I raised myself up, grabbed an old notebook and pen from the night table, and my hand started to move across the page.

I wasn’t a writer. I had written a few school assignments but that was it, and I’d written them only because I had to. This was different. As far as I could tell, I was writing a poem. I’d titled it “My Buddy,” but it wasn’t like I’d made it up. Those words seemed to appear of their own accord, like I was possessed. They came so fast I could barely keep up. They just came. And that’s all I know.

Robbie’s funeral was three days later, April 28, 1980. The church was packed. It was standing room only. The entire town was there. Everyone from our football team was there. We all wore our jerseys. There were even some players from nearby high schools we’d played against. They wore their jerseys, too. People came from miles around to pay their respects to a great family who had lost a great son far too soon. His dad had read my poem about Robbie and asked if I would recite it at the service. So, despite being terribly nervous, and with Robbie’s casket lying in front of me, I started to read:

Through all the years of growing up,

My best buddy’s name was Rob,

We’d laugh, and we’d play and sometimes find trouble,

By throwing the corn from a cob,

We’d ride our bicycles and eat big icicles,

And set back without any thoughts,

And think of the things we’d had done that day,

And hope we’d never get caught.

One winter we decided to leave all our troubles,

And decided to go on a hike,

We left for the trail, the endless snow fell,

For three days we were both in a fright.

But we hung in there, my buddy and I,

Through temperatures of twenty below,

We worked together to stay alive,

To reach our strongly set goal.

We wanted to prove to the folks at home

That we both had the guts to survive,

So we toughed it out in the wilderness,

God, my buddy, and I.

My buddy once had a paper route,

And I helped whenever I could,

And people who didn’t pay my buddy

Would often end up cleaning their wood.

There’s so many times that I can remember,

From skinny-dipping to camping in a barn,

But one thing for sure, through all the years,

We never did no one no harm.

Long nights we’d spend, a pumping our weights,

And pushing each other real hard,

’Cause we both had a spot on the football team,

That our hearts had a longing from far.

We worked and we worked, and we reached our goals,

And we both got our names in the paper,

Me for the balls which I had caught,

And him for his world-known Tooley Trot.

Be we were not on a self-love trip,

We wanted to win a state championship.

So we fought and we scrapped as we followed the ball,

And in the end, we had conquered them all.

“But where does the time go?” we asked each other,

For now it was time to depart,

He went his way, and I went mine,

But we both made a deal from our hearts.

With a handshake we vowed, as we stared at each other,

To never forget all we’d been through,

And we vowed to stay the best of buddies,

No matter what else we would do.

At that point, I choked up and stopped. I stood uncomfortably in front of everyone, tears filling my eyes. I couldn’t believe we were saying good-bye to Robbie Tooley, that he was gone. I wanted to leave, and I was about to fold up the paper and walk off when Robbie’s father stood up.

“Keep readin’, Bo,” he shouted. “Keep readin’!”

I looked at him, nodded, unfolded the paper, and wiped my eyes.

So Robbie, my buddy, I hope you can hear me,

Wherever it is you may be,

I’ll never forget you, ole buddy, ole pal,

And I know you’ll never forget me.

I’ll see you in heaven, I know that I will!

And you’ll say, “Hey, God, here comes my friend Bill!”

But before I can come, there’s work to be done,

And I know that you would be proud,

Just to help a kid, who seems to be lost,

Lost somewhere out in a crowd.

You’ll always be with me, Robbie, my friend,

In my thoughts and all that I do,

And one thing I must say, before I do go,

Ole Buddy… I’ll always… Love You.

So many times I’ve tried to make sense of Robbie’s death. I’ve turned it around every which way and I can only say this: I’ve often prayed that God would somehow use my life to add a moral to the story as to why Robbie’s life ended the way it did.

I look back at the words that came that day, and at this part in particular: “But before I can come, there’s work to be done / And I know that you would be proud / Just to help a kid who seems to be lost / Lost somewhere out in a crowd.” Robbie was lost. Like a lot of kids these days. But we should never allow kids to feel so alone, especially so alone that suicide becomes the answer.
^*

*
For those needing help or wanting more information, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255,
www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
.

PART II

Persistence

CHAPTER 8

“Buy a Guitar and Start a Band”

E
VERYONE THOUGHT I WAS
crazy. It was summer, and my baseball career was red-hot. I was playing for Ashland’s team in the Stan Musial League. Teammates Cabot Keesey, Mark Moore, and Tim Holbrook had all been superstars for other schools, and I respected those guys. They dug the way I played, too.

I was all out, all the time. I would do anything to stop the ball. After practice, I had the coaches throw me extra wild pitches so I could practice knocking them down with my hands and body. At the plate, I had always hit around .300, which was decent, but thanks to my
Think and Grow Rich
studies with Dr. Bailey, I visualized myself hitting better and more powerfully, and it worked. I went on a home run tear.

My timing was perfect. Ashland hosted a Fourth of July tournament that was big among Stan Musial League teams, and our first game of the tournament was against Flatwoods-Russell. All my former teammates, the guys I’d played with from Little League through high school, were on that team, wanting to destroy me. In addition, scouts from the Dodgers and the Reds were in the stands, looking at me. Dr. Bailey was also at the game.

It was a big game to say the least—and I’m proud to say, I rose to the challenge. Flatwoods-Russell’s leadoff man got on base. He was
the fastest guy I’d ever known. I knew he was going to try to steal, and he did. After the first pitch, I popped up and threw him out at second. The next guy up chipped a pitch foul to my right. I dove and caught it—the best catch of my life. Then, in my first at-bat, I jacked the ball over the left field fence. It was probably the longest ball I’d hit in my entire baseball career.

My play stayed at that same level throughout the summer, and I heard the scouts were impressed and continuing to watch me, as they did serious prospects. I should have been thrilled.

But something odd happened in the weeks before that game and persisted through the summer. I heard a voice telling me to buy a guitar and start a band. I know it sounds crazy.

I know sane people don’t hear voices—at least they aren’t supposed to. But I did. It came to me the same way the words did to the poem I wrote about Robbie Tooley. I didn’t hear it all the time. It was simply there, lodged in my brain, like a presence, and if I was driving or waiting for Susie or ready to go to sleep, I heard the words.
Buy a guitar and start a band.

“You gotta get that out of your head,” my teammate Cabot Keesey said. “You’ve got a chance to go to the big leagues. Focus on baseball. We’re the best team in the tristate area.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

“Cyrus,” another teammate chimed. “You don’t even play guitar, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” I said, shaking my head and laughing uneasily.

I had certainly tried. My dad always had a guitar, and starting when I was a little kid, I would pick it up occasionally and try to play. It was futile. I was never able to put together the chords and a strum. I never found the rhythm, the feel.

I tried to ignore the voice. In the fall of 1980, I continued taking classes at Ashland Community College and got a job at Ashland Oil’s cigarette warehouse, driving a forklift. I also delivered crates to the company’s SuperAmerica gas stations. The following spring, Susie graduated high school, with plans to attend Kentucky’s Georgetown College in the fall. Then, after a summer of standout
baseball, Georgetown offered me an athletic scholarship. Although it was only a partial ride, requiring me to take out a student loan for the rest of the tuition, I was overjoyed. I’d be playing ball, Susie would be at the same school, and we’d be together. It would be like high school—only better.

What I didn’t factor in was the voice telling me to buy a guitar and start a band. Susie was amused the first couple times I mentioned it. Then it became an irritant. Now, my girlfriend sent a very clear message. She was tired of hearing me talk about whether to buy a guitar and start a band, period.

“Bo, you need to quit smoking pot,” she said.

“I’m serious,” I said.

A few weeks later, I told her that I was thinking about not playing baseball. Then I admitted I wanted to quit school.