Mockingbird Songs (16 page)

TWENTY

With no certain place to go, Henry Quinn pulled over in front of the Checkers Diner. He went on in, took a seat at the counter, and ordered a Coke, if only to get the taste of Clarence Ames’s coffee out of his mouth.

It was here that Carson Riggs found him. It was somewhere not far from noon, and once Riggs had ordered coffee and been served, they had the place to themselves. The woman tending seemed to understand that this conversation was not her business to overhear.

“Seems to me you got a mind to pursue this thing,” Riggs said.

Henry nodded, looking straight ahead at the row of flavored syrup bottles against the back wall. “Seems to me I don’t have a choice, Sheriff Riggs.”

Riggs took a sip of his coffee, set it down again. He reached right and moved his hat along the counter just an inch. Slow motion, every action, as if all the time in the world was available for him to make his point.

“Man can get himself tied in knots if he doesn’t have choices. Man can keep walking down a road that just has bad news waiting at the end.”

Henry turned and smiled. “You have a way of saying things, Sheriff,” he said. “They don’t sound like threats, but they sure feel that way.”

“I’m just talkin’ the way I talk,” Riggs replied. “Same way I always did.”

“So, what do you want from me? Tell me straight.”

“What I want, son, is for you to leave this well alone. This is family business, and you ain’t family. Never have been, never will be.”

“A promise is a promise, Sheriff Riggs.”

“Depends. Circumstances change, son, sometimes as much as the weather. People make decisions based on information that they then discover to be false or misleading.”

“Are you telling me that your brother is a liar?”

Riggs smiled, but there was no warmth in it. It was the smile of a spider when the web shivers with prey.

“You and I had a civil word about this matter,” Riggs said. “From what you said, I believed we had an understanding. Seem to recall we took the girl’s feelings into consideration. Also seem to recall that we were of the same mind.”

“You recall correctly, Sheriff.”

Riggs nodded slowly. He lifted his coffee cup, paused before he drank. “Glad to hear that, Mr. Quinn. Wouldn’t want you thinking I was a liar as well.”

“And Evan?” Henry asked. “What about him? Do you not think he deserves some real consideration in this matter?”

“I have been giving my brother real consideration for more than twenty years. Our father was dead when this business happened in Austin. Some say that the loss affected Evan, perhaps contributed to his behavior, but his father and my father were the same man, and I was right there when he died. Did I get drunk and kill a man, Mr. Quinn? No, I can’t say that I did. You have any idea how it broke our mother’s heart? She loses her husband, and then her younger son goes to jail for the rest of his life. People can die of a broken heart, Mr. Quinn … far more easily than they can die of a broken promise.”

“You want me to leave Calvary, don’t you?”

“I have no concern whether you leave or not, son. All I want you to do is drop this little investigation of yours. Whatever consequence you might suffer as a result of failing Evan …” Riggs’s voice trailed away, and again there was that look in his eyes. The rest of the statement wasn’t required for Henry to get the message.

There was no uncertainty now. Riggs really did not want him in Calvary; his mission to find the long-lost daughter was meeting clear opposition. The threat, though not directly stated, was as obvious as daylight. Continue along this line, and Sheriff Carson Riggs of Calvary would be having harsher words with Henry Quinn, late of Reeves County.

Later, after some time to consider how he’d felt in that moment, Henry realized that stubbornness had played a major part. Wherever that stubbornness came from, it was a strong thing, possessed a will all its own. It rose in Henry’s blood, and he could not calm it. The determination to defy Carson became as strong as the promise he’d made to Evan. Instinctively, he rested his hand against the scar on his side. He remembered—all too clearly—the certainty that he was going to die, the way his body seemed bathed in blood, how Evan Riggs had shouldered him and crossed one gantry after another to get him to the infirmary.

“I understand,” Henry said, which was true. “I will leave it alone,” he added, which was not.

Carson Riggs looked at Henry Quinn, and there was a light in Riggs’s eyes … a light of suspicion, a light of near certainty that Henry was lying, but perhaps an element of doubt borne out of Riggs’s self-belief that he could back Henry off with a handful of edgy words. Perhaps he was not used to be contradicted and challenged; perhaps the mere fact that Henry had already spoken with Clarence Ames had set him on an unerring path to Henry’s certain failure. There was something about the kid that raised his hackles, and this would not do. Not at all.

This was some kind of standoff, and both were resolute.

“So, where will you be headed?” Riggs asked.

“Back home, I guess,” Henry said.

Riggs drained his coffee cup, reached for his hat, put it on. He rose from the counter stool and hitched his Sam Browne. He looked down at his boots as if checking their sheen, and then he looked up at Henry and smiled.

“Been good to straighten things out, Mr. Quinn,” he said. “Glad to see that we are not headed in two different directions on this.”

“We are not, Sheriff Riggs.”

“So this is goodbye, I guess.”

“Guess it is.”

Carson Riggs extended his hand. Henry got up from the stool, faced the man, and shook.

“Want to believe that I was right to trust you,” Riggs said.

Henry said nothing.

Riggs turned and left the diner.

Henry Quinn stood there, believed that never in his life had he felt so set on something. To hell with Carson Riggs. To hell with the veiled threats and menacing intimidation. Fuck him.
Fuck
him.

Henry took his seat again. He looked back toward the wall, through and behind the bottles of flavored syrup to the mirror that sat behind them.

For a moment he did not recognize himself. Was that the expression of a man afraid?

Henry looked away.

What was he getting into? Not only with Riggs and the lost daughter, but also Evie Chandler, her father, the people of Calvary.

He thought of his mother, back there in San Angelo with Howard Ulysses Morgan, drinking a hole through her liver out of which she imagined she’d escape the banal reality of existence. Or the disillusionment of it all.

Henry knew he’d contributed to that disillusionment, her only child little more than a dumb kid with a six-pack and a handgun. What was he thinking? What problem was he solving? Was he no different from her, stumbling blindly from one day to the next in the vain hope that one day he would write a song, earn a fortune, make good his escape? His escape to what?

Was his promise to Evan Riggs nothing more than a means by which he could avoid confronting and taking responsibility for his own life?

No, he could not accept that.

He owed Evan Riggs his life. That was the truth. He owed the man his life, and this was the very least he could do in return.

Carson Riggs was an obstacle, sure, but wasn’t the accomplishment of anything merely down to a man’s ability to recognize, acknowledge, then surmount whatever obstacles appeared en route?

Henry finished his Coke. He headed back out to the car. He drove in the direction of Ozona. He wanted to tell Evie of his latest confrontation with Sheriff Carson Riggs.

The sense of being watched was there as he headed for the highway. How he knew, he did not question, but he was certain that Carson Riggs knew exactly where he was going and why.

TWENTY-ONE

San Antonio was a kick in the balls. It was a swift right hook into the very substance of Evan Riggs’s ego. In San Antonio no one gave a good goddamn about some hick country singer from Calvary with a bagful of old-timey tunes.

Money, lack of it, was the first order of business. Playing juke joints and straw-floored saloons gave him barely enough to cover the rent on a small room in a boardinghouse. Food came second, liquor came third, but it wasn’t long before liquor took precedence. It was no consolation, no reprieve, however. It was not a replacement for God or love or anything else. Liquor was a remedy for disillusion and the fear of failure. What he believed he might fail in, Evan was not sure. He didn’t even know what it was that he was trying to attain. Fame, money, attention, adoration? He began to question why he was even pursuing this uncertain goal, but any attempt he made to divert his attention to some other plan, same other means of survival, was met with the same feeling: He could not help it. He could not alter his personality. He was who he was, and who he was would never change.

There were girls, of course. There were always girls. Put a good-looking guy on any kind of stage and he became something that he was not. What the girls saw and the reality could not have been further from each other. However certain and confident and charming Evan Riggs might have been with a guitar around his neck, he was a desperate young man with a heavy burden of self-doubt. None of the relationships he undertook lasted long; the veneer wore thin, the drinking became noisy, even violent on one occasion when a woman by the name of Carole-Anne Murphy broke a whiskey bottle over Evan’s head, saying, “Lousy good-for-nothin’ asshole of a man … Christ, Evan, anyone’d think you had some talent, the way you go on …”

It was a cutting jibe, and she said it merely to hurt him, knowing that such a line would bury its claws in his skin and burrow beneath the surface. Whatever Evan Riggs needed, it was not further fuel for those fires of self-doubt. It was also clear from the first moment and through every moment beyond that no girl could ever be Rebecca Wyatt. They were substitutes, replacements, stand-ins, and cameos. They would never make the grade. Such a thing was not possible.

Evan stayed in San Antonio for less than a year. He returned to Calvary for Christmas of 1946 and was swiftly reminded of all the reasons he’d left in the first place, so much so that he never even made it to the farm. He sat in his car at the side of the highway and smoked three cigarettes. He then turned around and drove back the way he’d come.

He called his mother the following day.

“Something came up,” he lied.

“I don’t understand, Evan … You said you’d be back for Christmas. We all expected you. Are you coming today?”

“No, Ma. I’m not coming today. Can’t make it all. I’m sorry.”

She was silent for a while. He could feel the sense of dismay at the other end of the line.

Eventually, “Is everything okay, Evan?”

“Sure, Ma. Everything is fine.”

He could hear his own voice. He sounded like the liar that he was. Perhaps not a liar, but certainly a son telling a mother what he believed she wanted to hear.

Her reply reminded him of his complete transparency.

“If you need a little time to get your thoughts together … you know, a little break from all the work you’re doing, then you could always come and stay for a while. There will always be a bed and a place at the table for you. You know that, don’t you, Evan?”

“Yes, Ma. I know that.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Not only was he disappointing himself, but he was now disappointing his mother.

“Your father would like to see you. He will be really upset that you won’t make it. He worries about you.”

“Tell him not to worry. I’m fine.”

She fell silent again, waiting for him to say something that would fix things.

“And Carson?” Evan asked, wanting to change the subject, if only to find a reason to get off the phone.

The hesitation at the other end of the line said more than any words. Evan knew then that he should have done as he’d promised and gone back to the farm.

“Carson is Carson,” Grace Riggs said. “He has his own way of upsetting things, just like you.”

“Who is he upsetting, Ma?”

“Who’s he not upsetting?” she replied, and immediately regretted it. “Pay no mind to me, Evan,” she added. “Carson is just fine. Carson just has his ways and means, and sometimes they grate on folks.”

“You need me to come back and speak to him?”

“I need you to come back and visit your ma and pa, like you were darned well supposed to, Evan Riggs.”

“I’ll come soon,” Evan said. “I promise.”

“Well, maybe for the New Year or something, huh? Or even for Carson’s birthday in January.”

“I’m thinking of moving to Austin,” Evan said.

“Things are not working out in San Antonio?”

“Why do you assume that things are not working out, Ma? Why do you fret so much about me?”

“Because you’re my son, Evan. It’s my job to worry about you. That’s what mothers do. Of course, they worry less if their sons come home and visit every once in a while.”

“Point taken, Ma. You’re starting to sound like a scratched record.”

“So, Austin, is it?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And when are you moving to Austin?”

“I’m not sure. I need to save up some more money.”

“Do you need some help, Evan? I can send—”

“No, Ma. I’m not asking for any money, and I don’t want you to send any.”

“It’s okay to accept help, Evan. It’s not a sign of weakness.”

“It’s better to stand on your own two feet. That’s a sign of strength.”

“Sometimes you are so like your father.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Grace laughed gently. “A terrible thing, Evan, just terrible. After all, he is such a wicked and dreadful man.”

“I gotta go, Ma.”

“I know you have, sweetheart. So, you’re not going to visit anytime soon?”

“Let’s see what happens, okay?”

“I think we have no choice, do we?”

“Say hi to Carson for me, and Pa, and I send all my love and everything.”

“I’ll tell them, Evan. You take care now.”

“Sure thing, Ma. Love you.”

“I love you, too, s-son.”

The line went dead, but not before Evan heard her voice crack on the last syllable. She was upset, no question about it, and he hated to think that he’d made her feel that way.

So how is that different from how you make everyone else feel?
he could hear Carole-Anne Murphy saying, and he wondered if he was becoming the sort of man that even he wouldn’t much care to know.

His final thought as he walked away from the telephone was that he had sent no message to Rebecca. He wondered if word had gone ahead and she had been expecting him, too. He wondered if he was on some subconscious mission to drive her into Carson’s arms so as not to face the reality of what he had done. Make her decide what to do, and he would not have to make the decision. That was the attitude of a weak man. This much he knew.

Evan moved to Austin in January of 1947, and it was the sea change that he’d long hoped for. There was something in the air in Austin, and for a while it suited his mind, his temperament, his mood. Evan Riggs wrote a good deal of songs within weeks of his arrival, as if the change of air released some pent-up creativity within him. He found a residency at a small club on the outskirts of the city, and after three or four months had gathered quite a following. It was at one of these weekly performances that he met Leland Soames. Soames and his younger sidekick, Herman Russell, the pair of them from a small record label by the name of Crooked Cow, came down a number of times to see Evan play. They broached the idea of Evan heading out to their recording studio in Abilene to cut a disc.

“Maybe next year,” Soames said. “We have a whole bunch of things on the calendar, and we couldn’t really look at it until maybe the fall of next year, but what you’re doin’ sounds mighty good, and I think you could get yourself some radio play, son.”

This possibility lifted Evan’s spirits markedly, for he had seen himself tiring of Austin. He’d been playing for six months in the same venue, seeing many of the same faces, and those same faces were now talking through his set. The potential of cutting a disc with Crooked Cow also coincided with a fateful meeting. Her name was Lilly Duval, her mother, Angeline, a French-Creole, her father an itinerant longshoreman who had blown through Angeline’s life like a bold and brief squall. Lilly was a handful of years older than Evan, a woman of experience in many ways, and yet possessed of a naiveté and simple charm that belied her appearance. To say she was beautiful would have been misleading. The girl broke hearts crossing the street, married men wondering if they could just shoot their wives right there and claim self-defense. It was Texas, after all.

She did not break Evan Riggs’s heart. His heart had already been broken beyond repair by Rebecca Wyatt. However, Lilly Duvall managed to repair it somewhat, papering over the cracks with a deft hand and making the seams close to invisible. At least for a time. The way she drifted across the dance floor in a cotton print dress and cowboy boots, the way she leaned against the bar, one foot on the rail, drinking her drink and watching him sing, making him feel like every song he sang was not only being performed for her, but had been written for her in the first place … It was not one thing, but all of them, yet—in truth—one alone would have been sufficient. And when he was done, she kept on watching him, smiling gently, a bemused expression crossing her face when it became obvious that he was walking directly toward her.

They connected in slow motion. That was how it seemed. Or maybe the rest of the world slowed down. Had it been raining, they could have walked between each drop and never gotten wet.

“You play well,” she said. “Good voice, too.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ve seen you play before … a while back, a couple of months maybe.”

“I didn’t see you.”

She smiled. “You were really drunk.”

“I used to do that a lot.”

“What happened?”

“That made me drink, or made me stop?”

“Made you stop.”

“You get up in the night and realize that you actually don’t know your own name. I mean, you really have to think hard to remember your own name. Not even kidding. That makes you think about what else you might forget.”

Lilly Duvall held out her hand. “I’m Lilly,” she said.

Evan took her hand and held it. “I’m Evan.”

“I know who you are, but it’s a pleasure to meet you anyway.”

“Can I get you a drink?”

“I only drink with drinkers, and you’re not a drinker anymore.”

“I drink,” Evan said, “but I don’t
drink
.”

“Then I’ll take another Sazerac.”

“A what?”

She laughed gently. “Sazerac. It’s a New Orleans thing. Bourbon, absinthe, and Herbsaint. Only place you can get it in West Texas is right here, so you picked a good saloon to play in.”

Lilly turned and glanced at the bartender. He was elsewhere, but in a heartbeat he was in front of her. Evan would notice that time and again. She got people’s attention. Bars, restaurants, clubs, diners, crosswalks, it didn’t matter. Lilly Duvall appeared oblivious to it, but she was candlelight and everyone else a moth.

Lilly gave her order, and Evan asked for the same. He put money on the counter.

“So,” she said, “how do you wanna do this?”

“Do what?”

“You want to go through the whole ‘How are you doing, what’s happening in your life,’ checking each other out, finding out if we’re attached, coming out of something complicated, single, available, all that jazz, or do you just want to give this a go and see what happens?”

Evan smiled. “You’re not in the wasting-time business, are you?”

“I haven’t got time to waste, Evan. I don’t mean the ‘Life is too short’ stuff, but sometimes you meet someone and you think something good could happen, and most people are too afraid to say or do anything about it. The epitaph for most peoples’ lives is ‘What if?’ Wouldn’t you say so?”

The drinks came. It was a good cocktail. Evan Riggs never thought he’d say such a thing, but he did.

“New Orleans was my mother; still is,” Lilly said. “French-Creole.”

“And your father?”

She shrugged. “Who the hell knows. Who cares? These things happen, right?”

“They do. And you live here now, in Austin?”

“Staying with friends. Came here for a week or so … oh, I’d say three months back.”

Evan laughed. “So, let me get this straight. Your friends have had enough of you. They are kicking you out, and you need somewhere to stay. So you’re not actually looking for a boyfriend. You’re looking for free accommodation?”

“Boyfriend? Really? You wanna be my
boyfriend
?”

“You are teasing me, Lilly. I’m an outlaw. You tease me, I will shoot you and throw you down a dry well for the rattlesnakes.”

“Well, I am French-Creole in my blood, and I will do some fucked-up hoodoo on your skinny white ass and then you’ll be sorry.”

Evan Riggs lost close to half his drink.

“See?” she said. “The spell is working. You are already losing control of your limbs.”

“I think I did that the first time I saw you,” Evan said.

Lilly smiled. “Is that what you call outlaw charm?”

“Maybe,” Evan said. “Why, is it not working too well?”

She reached out and touched his hand. “It’s working just fine, Evan … working just fine.”

Evan Riggs looked at Lilly Duvall. Somewhere, deep within the recesses of his mind, a light had been switched on. Felt like he could see the way to himself for the very first time since Rebecca. Felt like he’d found a girl who could not make him forget, but make him unafraid to remember what it was like to fall in love.

Before their second drink, he’d fallen. No doubt about it. Fallen like a stone.