The Adventures of Slim & Howdy (11 page)

26

AS THE RAIN TAPERED OFF, THE CROWD TRICKLED IN. SINCE
neither Howdy nor Slim cared one way or the other about who did what that night, they flipped a coin. Slim called it in the air and opted to take the stage when he won. Fine with Howdy. He’d work the door. They decided to alternate daily, keep from getting in a rut.

Hank Williams, Jr., kicked off the Monday-night game the way he always does with all his rowdy friends. It was Giants-Redskins, neither of which had what you’d call a substantial fan base in the greater Del Rio metro area. Still, it was football and guys’ll watch and cheer for damn near anything where people get hit or where there’s the possibility of a wreck, especially if there’s cheerleaders and beer involved.

Of course nobody at the Lost and Found was wearing Giants or Redskins paraphernalia—or anything else from back east for that matter. Sports apparel was strictly Lone Star oriented. Cowboys, Longhorns, Texans, Aggies, Owls, Horned Frogs, and even a few old Oilers jerseys. The one exception being a chesty little blonde in an Arizona Cardinals T-shirt that nobody seemed to mind.

Otherwise, fashion broke down along the three usual lines. The majority wore jeans, western shirts, cowboy hats, and boots. Next most popular was T-shirts, jeans, and baseball caps. The third was a variety of air force dress.

Howdy was working just inside the front door, perched on a stool behind a rickety podium with a small light on top for checking IDs, and a shelf below where he kept the cash box for the cover charge and his little pad for writing down song ideas. Jodie’s extra pistol was tucked in the small of his back. It was just a .22 but it was enough to keep most people from doing anything really stupid.

Every time somebody came through the door Howdy clicked his chrome counter, said, “Hey, howyadoin’?” and took their money with a smile. Flirted with the girls. Shot shit with the guys. It didn’t take a high percentage of Howdy’s concentration to do the job, so, as usual, he was thinking about other things.

In fact, ever since the conversation in Jodie’s office, Howdy had been thinking about Marilyn Justine. Where was she? What was she doing? Why had she left? How much trouble would it have been to leave a note? What was in her margaritas?

Lacking, as he was, answers to any of those questions, Howdy moved on to thinking about that first night he tried to drink her out of his mind. Started with Corona, moved on to tequila. Margaritas, of course, in her honor, alternating with a shot of gold now and then. The margaritas weren’t as good as the ones Marilyn made with that secret recipe of hers, but Howdy still managed to build a pyramid toward the ceiling with all the glasses he emptied.

The bartender that night kept saying that one more drink would make him forget. Howdy just shook his head, saying, “It’s going to take more than a margarita to make me stop thinking about her.”

Thinking back on it, Howdy pulled out his note pad. Wrote that down. That was a song as sure as he was sitting there.

The moment he put the pen down, the door opened. It was three gals looked like they’d just come from working in an office all day. Howdy tipped his hat, said, “Hey, how y’all doin?” He took their money and watched them wiggle off toward the bar, then turned his eyes back to the pad. Wrote down, “hurting, even while not feeling any pain.”

That was how it happened sometimes. He’d be looking back over a page from his life or the life of someone he knew and something would jump out at him, give him a line to work with, a foundation to build on. Other times he tried to write from the perspective of someone he imagined or somebody he’d seen in passing and he’d try to project who they were, what they’d gone through. Like once when he saw an old man standing on the porch of a weather-beaten house looking toward the sky. Or that time he saw a young woman sitting on a bus bench crying, a sheet of paper clutched in her hand. Was the man praying for rain? And what was that piece of paper? A good-bye? Bad news from the doctor?

You write about life’s trials, mama, how it’s a hard row to hoe, and the one who broke your heart so bad you thought you’d die. Songs come from a snatch of language overheard at the coffee shop, two people breaking up, maybe, one asking to be released from the other. Released. What a choice of words. And then there’s all the good times and honky-tonk girls, the fast cars and the run from the law. It’s life, the stuff you go through.

And it has to come from the heart, not the head.

Howdy knew that writing songs was funny business. Sometimes one’ll squirt out like mustard from a squeeze bottle, other times it can take months, drive you up a wall trying to find the point, or the rhyme, or the perspective. And all that before you even try to tackle a melody. But there was nothing like the feeling you got when you got hold of a good idea.

While there was a deep satisfaction in adding a good song to your catalogue, Howdy knew at least half the fun came in the actual writing. It was like life or taking a long drive—the journey itself meant as much as the destination. It reminded Howdy of something somebody said one time about how chasing a dream is almost as much fun as living it. And songs were like dreams, real and not real at the same time, a version of reality that could reveal itself at any moment.

But you had to be paying attention.

Like the next time the door opened. A few more folks came in. Howdy said, “Hey, how y’all doin’?” One guy wearing a John Deere cap. Howdy’d seen a thousand of those in his life. The guy with him was wearing a No Fear T-shirt. Howdy didn’t think anything of it at the time. But a minute later, one of the TV announcers said something about a guy in the stands giving a Bronx cheer over a dropped pass. And a second after that, Howdy heard some guy call out for a cold beer, and boom, just like that, Howdy had the idea for another song.

Might start with a low swampy guitar rhythm, grow from there. Howdy was thinking of J. J. Cale and John Fogerty and then the sly groove of Commander Cody’s version of “Hot Rod Lincoln.” After eight or sixteen bars, the band might kick in, or maybe the instruments came in one at a time. Work that out later.

Cold beer, John Deere, no fear, Bronx cheer. He wrote it down.

Yeah, like that. A series of rhymes within the lines, each line about the variety of . . . what? People, places, and things Americana. Cold beer, John Deere, no fear, Bronx cheer. Covers a lot of ground fast, includes a lot of folks, coast to coast, border to border. How about Beale Street, Times Square, juke joint, state fair, homecoming, prom night, touchdown, title fight. He wrote it all down. It needed work—they all did—and something in between, a bridge to change it up and explain it, but it was a good start.

The door opened again. Two couples. Howdy looked up from his pad, said, “Hey, howyadoin’?”

27

EARLY MONDAY AFTERNOON, BOONE TATE SLIPPED HIS
bowie knife and his .32 into his waistband and covered the grips with his shirttail. Then he walked to a nearby shopping center, stole a Ford Taurus, and headed for Fort Worth.

Foresight and preparation not being his strong suits, Brushfire still hadn’t a clue what he would do when he got there. In fact, if all Slim and Howdy had done was to take the guitar and shoot his fridge, he might not even have bothered to go after them. But causing his arrest and the trouble that was flowing from that warranted retribution of a serious nature. But what, exactly? Gun ’em down in cold blood? If he thought he could get away with it, maybe. But if things went wrong, he knew that was the sort of trouble out of which it was hard to wiggle. The sort of trouble that might not be worth it. Maybe there was some other way to get their goats, maybe even some way that was profitable. Wouldn’t that be nice?

As he drove out of Beaumont on I-10, Brushfire figured he had six hours in front of him to figure that out.

He got to Fort Worth around eight Monday night, found the Piggin’ String in the phone book, and pulled into the parking lot just before nine. According to the sign by the door, Junior Hicks and his band were playing for the next week or so. No mention of Slim and Howdy. Still, this was his best lead, so he went in and took a seat at the bar.

As always, people stared when they saw him. His scarred face was one of those things people found it hard not to look at, like a car accident or Paris Hilton. Boone had two standard ways of dealing with this. Normally he’d get up in people’s faces and cow them into an apology and a free drink. He’d raise his voice. “You want to see this? Huh? Here, take a closer look!” But not tonight. Couldn’t afford to alienate anybody.

So he used his 9/11 story instead. Said he’d been with the New York Fire Department. Was at the Twin Towers. Saved a dozen people. Went back for more and got caught in a collapse. Had to be dragged out. Alive but scarred. People like to buy drinks for heroes, and they’ll talk to ’em, too, tell them anything they want to know.

Skeets Duvall, among others, took Boone at his word. No reason not to. Had the bartender set him up, said, “Take care of him.”

“That’s all right,” Boone said, waving a proud hand. “I got money.”

Skeets shook his head. “It’s no good here, friend.”

“Mighty kind of you.” He looked up at the tube. The Giants were thrashing the Redskins. He pointed at the replay of a touchdown, said, “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” Like they were his hometown favorites.

An hour or so later, Skeets looked Boone in the eye and said, “Well, when that bull saw that monkey, he busted out of the shoot with me hanging on like dirty laundry. And you should’ve seen that monkey’s face when he saw us comin’.”

Boone faked a good laugh. Skeets’s impression of that capuchin monkey was about the dumbest thing he’d ever seen. But he slapped the bar and shook his head and encouraged Skeets to do it just one more time. Brushfire knew people tended to like you even more if you laughed at their jokes.

A little later Junior Hicks and his band got up and started a lively set that got the house jumping. After the second or third song, Boone leaned over to Skeets and said, “These guys’re all right. Singer kind of reminds me of my friend Slim who plays around these parts, or at least used to.” He left it at that.

Skeets broke into a wide grin. “You mean Slim . . . out of Del Rio?” He pointed at his eyes. “Always wearin’ sunglasses?”

“Yeah,” Boone said. “Plays a real pretty Martin D-28.”

Skeets slapped the bar. “Damn, son, you just missed him,” he said. “Him and his buddy Howdy were playing here just a few days ago.”

“Get out!”

“I swear.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Yeah,” Skeets said. “They left here heading back to Del Rio, got a two-week gig at a place down there called the Lost and Found.”

28

THE LOST AND FOUND WAS ABOUT TWICE AS LONG AS IT WAS
wide, a big shoe box of a room with the stage at the far end. The main bar was along the long wall on one side, a second, smaller, bar was on the opposite wall toward the back. It was a big, open room with a pitched ceiling and exposed beams. The floor was smooth cedar planks covered with sawdust, peanut shells, and cigarette ash. Good for dancing.

By the middle of the third quarter, everybody had lost interest in the game. The Giants were spanking the Redskins like a child misbehaving at the grocery store. Jodie killed the sound but left the picture on the TV over the bar. She looked at Slim and said, “I believe you’re up.”

Slim sauntered onto the stage, adjusted the microphone to his height, and said, “Ev’nin’ everybody. Welcome to the Lost and Found. My name’s Slim and I’ll be your entertainer this ev’nin’.” He slung the guitar strap over his head and grinned like he was a waiter fixin’ to tell them about the specials.

You’d never know by looking at him, but Slim was nervous as a frog on a busy road with a busted jumper. Always had been, couldn’t help it. He’d been onstage hundreds of times and was never comfortable with it. His nerves twitched and jangled while his stomach knotted and churned. But he could wall it off, keep it hidden, using the dark glasses to create his façade of cowboy cool. You do what you can.

Slim paused and smiled at a table full of girls sitting near the stage. They smiled back. That always helped. As he started to pick something slow on the Martin, Slim looked out over the crowd, just over their heads, like he was trying to find something that wasn’t in the notes he was playing. It was a simple melody and maybe not even that, just a vague melancholy pattern that repeated after so many bars while he talked over the top of it. A bittersweet vamp.

“It’s good to be back in Del Rio,” Slim said, prompting applause from the home crowd. “I’m not from here exactly but, back when I was a kid, I lived here for a few years. My dad, he worked down at Laughlin Air Force Base.” He paused here to let the air force crowd give a hoot of recognition. He aimed the head of his guitar at them and said, “I’m sure a few of you will know what I’m talking about. I was about five or six, I guess, when we moved here. And one day I asked my dad what he did down there at the air force base, and he told me he was a jet pilot, one of the fastest in the world. And of course I believed him.” Slim shook his head and smiled fondly as he continued playing the quiet acoustic bed that his words were laying on.

“He’d come home from work and tell me wild stories about being in dogfights at Mach three and all sorts of crazy stuff that I just loved to hear. I was wide-eyed and hangin’ on every word outta his mouth. My mama, who had a thing about tellin’ the truth, she’d fold her arms real tight, squintin’ at him hard enough to crack walnuts, givin’ him a look like he shouldn’t be telling me stories like he was, but he didn’t see the harm and Lord knows I didn’t.”

Slim did a little chord change and kept vamping, still quiet and sweet underneath it all. “Anyway it wasn’t till years later that I found out some things about my dad. Among other things, it turned out he was a mechanic, not a pilot. But even when I found that out, I didn’t care. Hell, I’ve seen a jet engine, and tell you the truth I think it’s probably harder to fix one than it is to fly one.”

Some of the air force guys gave a big shout of approval that made everybody laugh. Probably grease monkeys.

Slim slowed down his picking and grew more serious as he said, “Everything my dad got, he got by the sweat of his brow. Always showed up on time, never shirked a task. I can remember him saying sometimes that he felt like he was workin’ overtime on a runaway train.”

Slim stopped playing the guitar and let the last note fade. Nobody in the room made a sound. He stood tall and said, “He was a blue-collar guy, and he was my hero. Here’s one I wrote for him. I hope you like it.”

He gave it a second or two before he counted it down, “One-two-three!” And Slim ripped a rocking riff on those strings that sounded straight out of Bakersfield. He leaned into it and the crowd couldn’t help but feel the goose bumps as Slim started singing, “He was a
hard
workin’ man . . . wore a steel hard hat . . .”

The words struck a chord with everybody in the room, and his voice was an honest messenger. The riff was relentless and rollicking and it drew a dozen dancers to the floor like they believed the only way to live was burnin’ the candle at both ends. Slim fed off their energy and they fed off his and every line in the song seemed like it was the true story of somebody in the place. Anybody who’d ever struggled to make ends meet and everybody who’d gotten real good at barely gettin’ by.

Slim got ’em worked up and then he let ’em work it out on the dance floor, stomping a boot to keep the beat. Those not dancing were tapping their toes and drumming on the table tops. Slim repeated the chorus one more time before bringing it to a close. After the last chord, the crowd gave it up for him, big time. Cheers rattled the rafters. “Thank you! Appreciate that,” he said, with a nod. They were still yelling when he continued, “Long as we’re on the subject, let’s do one from brother Merle. Here’s ‘Workin’ Man Blues.’” And off he went.

For all the nerves and acid and knots in his stomach, Slim pulled it off one set after another, all night long, the way he’d done all his life. He mixed originals with covers of everybody from Buck Owens to Leon Russell to Hank Thompson. And, as usual, he had girls waiting on him every time he walked off the stage.