by Lee Smith
“What, honey?” I asked, and then I realized she had her head cocked, listening to the radio.
“That song,” she said in a funny voice.
“I think blue,” Florine said.
Tampa’s magazine slid off onto the floor and she started to breathe real fast and make that “hunh-hunh” sound.
“No animal in nature has blue eyes,” Shirley Sizemore said, lighting another Marlboro. I went over and picked up Tampa’s magazine and got her to looking at it again.
“But for a garden,” Florine said. “Everybody knows it’s not a real lamb, Shirley.”
“Of course they know it’s not a real lamb, Florine,” Shirley said. “I know that.”
“I think you ought to make them blue if you want to,” I told Beatrice. “It’s only art,” I said. I try to be diplomatic. Belle went right on working on her own plaque, like nobody was saying a word.
“I think you ought to make them blue if you want to,” I told Beatrice. “It’s only art,” I said. I try to be diplomatic. Belle went right on working on her own plaque, like nobody was saying a word.
“What is that?” Rose Annie asked.
The song on the radio did sound kind of familiar, I had to admit. “I believe I’ve heard that before,” I said.
“Hush,” Rose Annie said.
“Now isn’t that a old hymn-song?” Beatrice Crowder spoke up, and she was right. It was hard to tell with the drums and all, but it was “Wayfaring Stranger” basically, though sung like you never heard it, with a real big sound. Some of that pop gospel stuff.
“Why, I know who that is,” I said then. After all, I am the one who stays in the shop all day long and listens to the radio, so I am generally the most up on popular music. “It’s that new star, the one that sung ‘I’m a Five-Card Stud.’ It was a big hit a while back,” I said, figuring they wouldn’t know. “His name is Blackjack Something.”
“I don’t like all this newfangled music,” Florine Pogue said, “do you? I don’t know what they see in it, myself.”
“I like a beat,” Shirley Sizemore said.
Tampa let her magazine go again, but then she sat up real straight and started humming along to the radio. She was smiling.
“Why, look at that!” Beatrice Crowder said, pointing at Tampa.
“I don’t think they ought to do a hymn-song that way,” Florine said. “Do you?”
But before anybody answered her, the song was over, and Swap Shop of the Air came on.
Then Belle Sizemore, who never says one word, as I said, surprised us all by speaking right up. “Hit sounds a little bit like that boy that used to live around here, don’t it? You all know the one I mean.” Her voice is as squeaky as a rusty old gate, from her not using it.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said, because it didn’t at all.
Tampa said, “Durwood bought me a raccoon coat in Cincinnati, it was a big surprise,” sounding real conversational.
Beatrice Crowder said, “I think I’m ready to bake my lamb.”
“Rose Annie,” I said, “you turn on the timer while I help Beatrice get this lamb,” but when I turned around to look for her, Rose Annie was gone. “Rose Annie?” I called.
“I’m on the telephone,” she hollered from the back of the store.
Now I’m absolutely sure that this is when she called the radio station and found out how to get in touch with Johnny!
Anyway, I got Shirley Sizemore to help me put Beatrice’s lamb in the kiln, and I set the timer. At least that way I could be sure it wouldn’t get burned up like those poor gnomes. Rose Annie stayed in the back of the shop for a while, then she kind of fiddled around with the alphabet letters I was starting on, then she went up to the house and didn’t come back. Buddy came by and helped me close up. As I said, this was a typical day. I didn’t think a thing about it at the time.
4
Rockabilly: Get Hot or Go Home
I’ve got a way with women,
And an ace or two up my sleeve,
I’m a five-card stud, baby,
I’m all the man you’ll ever need.
1
Blackjack Johnny Raines and the Pig-Brain Theory
Loretta’s Club outside Shreveport, Louisiana, on a Saturday night in late spring, and it’s raining the way it seems to do most of the time in Louisiana, a pee-warm drizzle that don’t do much to cool things off, at least in Blackjack Johnny Raines’s opinion but hell, what does he know? What the fuck does he know, anyway? He’s the entertainment. He grinds out a Camel butt under the heel of his boot and lights another and washes two pills down with a shot of vodka. Vodka don’t have no taste, it’s just like nothing, nothing at all, but you can feel it in your system going all the way down, it’ll keep your blood running good and get your arteries cleaned out. For some years now, Blackjack Johnny has relied heavily on vodka. He likes to buy it in those little pint bottles; he’s got about thirty of them out in the trunk of his car right now, wrapped up in an old army blanket. Those little pint bottles fit real easy in your hand and other places too; in fact, Johnny knew a man one time that always kept one down the inside of his boot, but this does not strike Johnny as a real good idea, what if you got in a fight or something, and it busted up in there, it could cut your foot pretty bad, maybe you couldn’t even get your foot out of your boot. That could get bad. Johnny prefers to keep his bottle right here, in the inside pocket of his western jacket, his trademark black Nudie jacket with silver piping, silver studs; it’s that dark dangerous look the women like, that’s what Johnny’s going for, kind of a cross between Porter Wagoner and an undertaker.
He’s worn all black ever since his big hit, “I’m a Five-Card Stud,” two years ago. Shit. Two years is a lifetime in music. He’s dead, in other words, dead in the water right now, only those girls don’t know it, those three girls over there at that table by the jukebox, big old factory girls out on the town, giving him the eye. They think he’s hot stuff. So do the older women at the booths in the back; they’re here because he’s here, they don’t come out to a place like this every night, you can tell. They think he’s hot too. This young bass player that Vic lined up for him, this Gene. Somebody local, he don’t know no better either, waiting so respectful by Johnny’s elbow, clearing his throat, trying to get up enough courage to say something.
“They told me to tell you it’s about time for the third set, Johnny,” the boy says finally, and Johnny nods real businesslike and hands the pint bottle out toward him, but the boy looks down and shakes his head fast, declining. Well then, fuck it. Johnny takes another hit and screws the top on the little bottle and puts it back in his pocket. This boy ain’t but about sixteen years old, never mind what he told the management to get hired, and he’s good. Damn good. He don’t even know how good he is yet. He don’t know shit, in fact. If he knew anything at all, he’d know enough to take a drink. If Johnny still had his band, he’d take this boy along, he’d show him some things.
Of course if you ain’t hot, you ain’t got your own band, and the Deck of Cards—see, it used to be Blackjack Johnny Raines and the Deck of Cards—is shot all to hell now, Lewis doing session work, whatever he can find, living pretty much hand to mouth in Nashville, Dewey back in the auto parts business with his brother in Memphis, Dewey flat gave it up. Well, Blackjack Johnny Raines ain’t gonna give it up anytime soon, that’s for sure, he ain’t got what they call a secondary skill, all he took in about electronics in the army is exactly what he needs to know to run a sound board, to fix an amp, to wire a mike. He ain’t going to wire nobody’s kitchen, forget it. He ain’t gonna hook up nobody’s stove. Shit. The only other thing out there waiting on anybody’s horizon is some land someplace, seems like everybody else is always singing about going home. Well, forget that too. Because Blackjack Johnny has fucking been there. He hates farms. He hates dirt. He hates waking up in the middle of the night out in the country and when you look out your window it’s all dark, man, no lights. Blackjack Johnny likes a lot
of lights. He also likes a woman like that woman who just took a seat at the bar over there, a substantial woman with a little flash to her, big blond hair and pointy tits.
“Johnny?” the boy says again, and Johnny adjusts his black cowboy hat and follows the boy to the bandstand, nodding as he passes through the crowd. The drummer, what’s-his-name, this boy’s buddy, is already over there behind his drum set, real hyper; he’s real young too, got a ducktail, trying to look like Elvis. They’re all trying to look like Elvis these days. Well, fuck him.
The Cajun gets up from a table when he sees them coming. The Cajun is drunk, but Johnny knows he’s the kind of player that stays drunk all the time to function, and what the hell business is it of anybody else’s, he’s good on steel. Some towns, you can’t get nobody on steel, it’s a definite loss. This little old Cajun kind of tickles Johnny anyway: he’s dyed his hair, you can tell, it’s real flat on top and real black; he’s got a round little belly and skinny little old legs, like some kind of a Cajun bug. “Doodlebug,” Johnny names him in his mind, which sounds kind of good, and so he files it away someplace up there in his head away from the vodka, it’s always another song, another hit on the way. You never know when it might come to you either. Doodlebug. Johnny grins at the Cajun’s whole family, he’s sure that’s who they are, they fill up a table.
He picks up his all-gold Fender Telecaster electric guitar off its stand, look out now, here’s a star guitar even if he ain’t a star at the moment. Johnny had to pawn this guitar one time in Nashville, it like to gave him a heart attack. Johnny hits a lick or two, then fiddles with the Peavey amps while the rest of them settle in. Diddly-shit amps; it figures. He nods and starts out with some old Lefty Frizzell tunes, then “Jole Blon” for the Cajun, then hits it hard on Bill Haley’s “Rock the Joint,” now the kid drummer and the kid bass player are really grooving, this is what they wanna do, and before you know it, the whole joint is rocking. Even those big old factory girls are up there shaking it around, dancing in kind of a circle with each other, they don’t need a man, they don’t give a damn. Blackjack Johnny runs right on into “Mystery Train,” which he does more like Junior Parker than Elvis, and then slows things down some with Thomas Wayne’s “Tragedy,” always a surefire number for getting everybody up on the floor and rubbing up against their woman and groping her some. Not that a man in his right mind would want to grope most of these women. About a third of the dancers are the kind of beat-down old couples that keep a place like Loretta’s in business, the kind that like to go out dancing on a Saturday night two or three times a month, and even though they don’t look like they’re having any fun right now, they are. This is the most fun they ever have, in spite of how flat their faces look. They’re having a great time. Johnny reflects that if he ever gets this way, this sad-ass and beat-down, he hopes somebody will just shoot him in the head and put him out of his misery. Hell, he’ll shoot himself.
The crowd also includes some oil riggers in from the shore, throwing their money around, and some girls they’ve got with them, the kind of girls that know exactly what to do with this money, and then of course your basic poor old drunk here and there, and a couple of guys hanging out on the edges of things, looking for something—maybe a woman, maybe something else. Johnny doesn’t like the looks of one of these guys in particular, you can’t be too careful, which is why he carries a little .32 stuck in the back of his belt right where he can grab it real easy if he wants to; he doesn’t like to go without a gun. The guy he doesn’t like asks the blonde at the bar to dance but she says no, so maybe she’s married, having a fight with her husband, just drove over here to piss him off, maybe he’s waiting outside in his truck with a deer rifle right now, out in that warm Louisiana rain. Just getting more and more pissed off. You never know. You can’t tell by looking. You never know a damn thing about women.
These young boys ain’t familiar with Bob Wills, so Johnny and the Cajun do pretty much of a duet on “Cotton-Eyed Joe” and then get into some stuff they’re all more comfortable with: Pee Wee King, Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, some boogie, some nigger blues. By then Johnny isn’t feeling too good, he hasn’t been sleeping much lately, he’s breaking a bad sweat. It ain’t the heat, it’s the fucking humidity. He needs a drink. Or something. He needs something.
So he ends the night (maybe a little early, but hell, they got their money’s worth) with the song that got him this rinky-dink gig in the first place, the record that will always be identified with him, “I’m a Five-Card Stud.” As soon as they hear the intro, people here and there all over Loretta’s start clapping. Cheers ring out. Shit, why not? It’s a damn good song.
Like most good songs it came easy, came one day when Johnny wasn’t doing shit but riding around in his car with a girl, and she said something about her daddy being a compulsive gambler or something, and all of a sudden he remembered playing blackjack around the old claw-foot kitchen table in Lucie’s kitchen with R.C. dealing, him and Rosie and Georgia and Katie and Pancake and all the rest of them, and everybody else throwing in while the ante went up, and him saying to R.C., “Hit me,” and “Hit me again.” Well, R.C. hit him all right. Shit. He sure did. Then right out of the blue, just riding in the car feeling of a girl’s leg and remembering stuff he didn’t want to remember, right out of the blue, the words of a song started coming to him, he heard them in his head. “I’ve got a way with women, and an ace or two up my sleeve.” He pulled right over to the side of the road and said, “Have you got a pencil, honey? and something to write on?” which pissed her off, as she thought they were pulling over so he could pay more attention to her assets, which were considerable.
Then she got really pissed when he took her straight home so he could go get his guitar and finish the song. Didn’t take long either. It was done by sundown including the bridge, which gave him the most trouble. By dark he was running through it with Dewey, who kept saying, “Where’d you say you got that song, Johnny? You bought it offa some guy, didn’t you? Come on, man, come clean.”
But the song was his, and as soon as Sam Phillips heard it, he knew they had something too. “All right, boys,” he said, poker-faced as ever. “Let’s get you some drums.” The rest is history: Number One in Memphis, Number One in the South. But hell, there’s no figuring it. “Wayfaring Stranger” didn’t do shit; neither did the novelty tune Sam talked them into putting on the back of it, “The Robert E. Lee Rock”—it was kind of funny but it just didn’t catch on. Plus there were several other records you might as well forget about, everybody else has.
But “Five-Card Stud” is over, and Johnny needs a drink in the worst possible way. He gets the boys in the band to take a bow, they haven’t done too bad for a pick-up band, and Johnny tells them all that they can get their money from Loretta and does not say, Because Vic don’t trust me to keep the fucking money, that’s why. They shake hands all around. Johnny feels like he’ll be seeing the young bass player before long, but for some reason he doesn’t tell him that. Doesn’t want to give him the big head.
Finally Johnny gets to the men’s room, where he takes several long, slow swallows from that little pint bottle, so he’s ready when he goes back out to the bar and sits down next to the blonde. He orders a beer and a double shot of bourbon on the side. She doesn’t turn around, but she knows he’s there. Johnny can tell from the way she holds herself, a woman who knows when a man’s around.
Johnny’s order comes, and he takes a long drink of the beer and leans forward and taps the blonde on the shoulder. “Excuse me, honey,” he says, “but I got to tell you something. You look just like my sister. My favorite sister, honest to God.”
The woman swivels around on the bar stool and he sees that she’s older than he thought, but still nice, real nice-looking close up, big blue eyes with a lot of makeup. There’s no point in a woman that looks like a man, Johnny has always thought.
“Really?” She sounds a little wary.
“Yessir,” Johnny says. “She died when
I was twelve. You look just exactly like her.”
This line has never failed to have the desired effect, and now it’s no different. She bites her pouty red bottom lip and says, “Oh, that’s awful,” then “I’m so sorry,” sucking in her breath.
“So I reckon you’ll just have to have a drink with me,” Johnny says.
“I reckon so,” she says. Her name is Sheila Calloway and she was supposed to come over here with a girlfriend who couldn’t make it at the last minute, but since her sister had already planned to baby-sit for her, Sheila came on anyway. “I’m a big fan of yours,” she says shyly to Johnny, who doesn’t ask her how big of a fan can she be on the basis of one hit. Instead he orders her another gin and tonic, she looks like she’s had one or two already, and then she tells him that actually it’s her anniversary, that’s why she and her girlfriend were coming over here, it’s been exactly six months since her husband left her.
“Where is he?” Johnny asks. You can’t be too careful.
“Alaska,” she says. “He went to Alaska on a pipeline. He’s kind of crazy,” she says.
Johnny moves over so that her thigh is touching his. “He must be crazy if he left you,” he says.
By the ragged way Sheila sucks her breath in, Johnny can tell she’s hot. Real hot. She probably hasn’t been laid in the last six months. They get some more drinks and Sheila tells him she’s in dental hygiene, and Johnny says he could use some dental hygiene himself; then he imagines her leaning over him in a dentist’s chair someplace, wearing a white dental hygiene uniform, brushing her tits up against his arm, putting her pretty fingers inside his mouth, rubbing his gums. Oh shit.
While Johnny pays the bill, Sheila looks at her face in the mirror of her compact, puckering her lips up and wrinkling her forehead as if she’s asking herself some question, to which the answer is obviously yes, since when she turns back around she’s got fresh lipstick on and she’s smiling a big red smile. Johnny keeps his arm around her waist as they go out, and he’s relieved to see that she speaks to nobody, nobody knows her in here, so nobody’s going to worry about her. It’s drizzling outside and some people are having an argument over in the corner of the gravel parking lot. The yellow neon lights spell out “Loretta’s” against the warm wet darkness. Johnny opens the passenger door of the blue Ford for her. “Now you just make yourself comfortable,” he tells her. “I’ll be right back.”