by Lee Smith
Now here’s how Buddy knew it, which just goes to show how awful Rose Annie was—I say this because there’s a lot of folks around here now who have changed things around in their mind since the two of them got so famous, who think it’s all sweet now, who say you can’t blame her. Well, I can still blame her, not so much for what she done, mind you, but for how she done it. Okay, I’m getting to it! Here goes.
They stopped, her and Johnny Rainette, someplace on the highway between here and Nashville, and she called up Buddy’s secretary collect from a pay phone. Collect! Talked to June Osborne. Didn’t even have the decency to talk to Buddy’s own face, talked to June Osborne instead, the secretary at the cement company. Rose Annie said for June Osborne to tell Buddy that she was going to Nashville to live with Johnny Rainette, her childhood sweetheart, that she had never stopped loving him in all these years, or vice versa, that Johnny Rainette would have come back and taken her away long before this except he thought she was dead. Then Rose Annie said, “Tell Buddy he can ask Daddy about that!” sounding all wrought up. June Osborne said you couldn’t hardly make sense out of what Rose Annie said, she was crying so. And then June said you could hear them talking, the two of them, and traffic going past on the highway, and then Blackjack Johnny himself got on the phone. June said she almost died!
“Miss Osborne?” he said, real polite. “This is the only message you need to give Buddy Rush, and you be sure to give it to him. You tell him this is Blackjack Johnny Raines calling to tell him that Rosie is all right, and she is going to be all right. And you can thank him for taking such good care of my girl all these years. You tell him I appreciate it.”
Then, click! Johnny hung up the phone, and they got back in the car and headed off to Nashville, where Johnny would wrap that Cadillac around a pin oak tree overlooking the Cumberland River not three hours later, and they’d both walk away from it, lucky as ever.
But meanwhile back at the cement company, June Osborne was having a fit. You can imagine! And not a minute after Johnny hung up, here comes Buddy’s truck pulling up in the lot, and Buddy gets out, all smiles as always. He’s got the best disposition. He walks in the door and there’s June Osborne just sobbing like her heart is broken.
“Why, June, what’s the matter?” Buddy says.
But June just cried harder. She couldn’t stand to tell him.
Poor Buddy, think how innocent he was, standing there real awkward in his own office, covered with cement dust, patting June Osborne on the shoulder, not knowing what was up. People were starting to cluster around. Guys in from the different jobs, old Mrs. Spicer who does the books. Finally, since June either couldn’t or wouldn’t say what it was, Mrs. Spicer took her back in the bathroom to wash her face and calm her down some, and then June told it. To Mrs. Spicer! So Mrs. Spicer was the one who told Buddy finally, right there at the cement company, right outside of the ladies’ room door, with June boo-hooing behind it. She didn’t tell him all of it, just enough to let him know that Rose Annie was gone, and who she was gone with. The part about thanking Buddy “for taking such good care of my girl,” well, June Osborne saved that for the Midnight Star. Here she is, saying it right here on page 2, wearing those harlequin glasses. Oh, it was June’s heyday, all right! June is just lucky Buddy didn’t fire her, but of course he wouldn’t do something like that. He’s fair, Buddy is, above all.
That day, though, he went clean out of his head. Everybody said so, everybody who was over at the cement company at the time. He tore up an electric typewriter and a floor lamp, and kicked a hole in the office wall. I find this hard to imagine. By the time I saw him, he was just brokenhearted, sweet as ever, but I must say, I was glad he broke all those things at the office instead of up at the house, if he had to break them. Anyway, by the time I came in the door with Sugar and Buddy Junior, he was laying out full length on the orange shag carpet in the den, crying like a baby! He wouldn’t quit, either, or talk to me or the children either one. Finally Sugar went ahead and turned on the television and they sat there watching it, leaning up against their daddy, who wouldn’t get off of the floor. I cooked everybody some fish sticks, and burned them, and started over and cooked some more. I was real rattled. The kids came to the table and ate, but Buddy wouldn’t eat a thing. He sat up, though, after a while, and drank a beer, still crying. After the kids went to bed, Buddy’s best friend, Leon Hurdle, came over with a bottle of bourbon, and while he was still there, I went to bed in the guest room. I felt like I’d been run over by a truck, I’ll tell you!
But Buddy was up early, pale and set-faced, in the morning. He went to work and then came back to the house and started crying again, so I called my brother Roman to come over here and talk some sense into him. Now Buddy has always been real close to his Uncle Roman, not having a daddy around here and all. Roman was the one that learned Buddy to hunt, that bought him his first gun, that I called to come over here and thrash the devil out of him the time him and Toy Biggers got so drunk and wrecked my car when they were not but fifteen, didn’t even have a driver’s license.
Roman was Buddy’s best man when he married Rose Annie Bailey. I will not forget how handsome the two of them looked standing up so straight there at the front of the Chicken Rise church which she had picked to be married in, both Buddy and Roman wearing tuxedos we’d rented in Holly Springs. The whole front of the church was filled with flowers, mostly dogwood and sarvis and redbud from the mountains all around, which is what Rose Annie wanted. Rose Annie always got what she wanted, I reckon. Well, it never struck me as a problem at the time. Because she did seem real fond of Buddy then, and so pretty and sweet, and Buddy was just wild for her, I’ll say that. He was crazy in love.
And as any mother can tell you, whatever your son wants, this is what you want. You want him to have whatever it takes to make him happy, above all else in the world. As Buddy and Roman stood in the front of the church that day waiting for R.C. to bring Rose Annie down the aisle, Buddy’s face shone like the sun. He stood real tall and proud, and looked toward the front of the church, at the door she would come in. His eyes were bright and shining, like he could see his whole life laid out before him and it was fine, and he just couldn’t wait for it to start. Then when the door finally opened and she came out, and everybody else in the church swung around and started saying “Ooh!” and “Ah!” over how pretty she looked, I just kept my eyes on Buddy, for a look came over his face then that I can’t even begin to describe. It gives me goose bumps right now, to think about it. It was too much. He loved her too much—I guess something was bound to go wrong. For it is best to stay in the middle of the road, I reckon, in all things.
Anyway, I called Roman and he came over. Now Roman is a big, slow-talking man that inspires confidence, this is how he’s sold so much insurance over the years. He makes you feel like you can plan for the future, like you can see the years ahead. Well, Roman came in the door that day, took one look at Buddy, and then said to me, “Gladys, why don’t you go on down to the ceramics shop and check on things, see how Tammy is making out down there with Rose Annie gone,” and I was glad to do it. I know they needed to talk man to man. Because no matter how close you are to a son, there’s times when you can’t say a thing, when he needs to talk to a man. I knew that. So I went down the hill with butterflies in my stomach, and the awfullest sinking feeling. For at that moment, I feared Buddy would not be able to take it, and would lose everything—his heart, his business, his whole life that he had worked so hard to build for Rose Annie. And this meant that I would lose everything, too, for I have built my life around that boy.
And I admit, as I drove down the hill that morning, I had no faith, none whatsoever, that things would work out in the end. For a moment there I had forgotten that God works His own mysterious will on the earth, and it is not up to us to understand our life, or complain about it. It is up to us to pitch in and do the best we can, no matter what happens. For God knows more than we do—He does! And it is not up to us to questio
n why, but to bite the bullet and get on with it. I myself thought I would die when Henry did, when he ran his car off that mountain twenty-five years ago, on his Jewel Tea route, July 17, 1934.
Oh, how I questioned God then, and moaned my fate, for I loved Henry with all my heart. He had the bluest eyes. But God never does something like that without giving you the strength to bear up under it, and I’m sure my eternal soul has been improved as a result—for I was a flibberty-gibbet girl when I ran off with Henry, truth to tell. Then I thought I would die when he died. But I did not die, for I had Buddy to raise, and God gave me the strength to go on, and a good job at the courthouse in Cana to boot. So I adjusted. I got along. I raised that boy and did a good job of it, too. If you look right over in this corner cupboard, you’ll see some of the little statues Buddy got for sports, and the awards he won. He did just fine in Korea, too. The single-minded way he set to courting Rose Annie after he got back was almost like the way he went after these here trophies, and I don’t think it ever occurred to him that he wouldn’t win her in the end. Oh, I was all for it at the time, the Baileys being naturally the most famous family in this valley, and one of the most well-to-do. I’d been keeping my scrapbooks on the Grassy Branch Girls for years. Right here is when they got in the paper the first time, and here’s when “Melungeon Man” was a hit, now notice Lucie’s nice suit. Lucie was a good woman through and through. It is just too bad Rose Annie did not take after her more, is all I’ve got to say. And you have to wonder—if Lucie was still alive, would Rose Annie have done what she done? Somehow I doubt it. For I believe Lucie was the civilizing influence in that household, as a woman often is, and things just went to hell in a handbasket when she died. But that’s all water over the dam. What happened, happened. But anyway, as I said, I got Roman to come over that day and try to talk to Buddy.
When I went back up to Buddy’s house, he was gone, and Roman was fixing to go, too. Roman stood leaning against his car in the driveway, having a smoke, and waiting for me I reckon.
“Well, Roman?” I asked with my heart in my mouth.
Roman shook his head. “I tried to talk some sense into him,” Roman said. “I told him a grown man with a business and two children can’t just up and go all to pieces. ‘Son,’ I told him, ‘as I see it, you’ve got two choices. You can go over there to Tennessee and get her back, or you can shut up and go on with your life.’”
“And?” I asked.
“I reckon he went,” Roman said. “So we’ll see what happens.” He got in his car.
“We’ll see, all right,” I said. I had the darkest feeling about all of it.
So Buddy went—he tried—but he never has said one word about that trip! Naturally I stayed up at his house the whole time he was gone, keeping Sugar and Buddy Junior, but then Tammy came over and took them to the PTA carnival over at the high school, and that Saturday night when Buddy came back from Nashville looking all beat down, like he’d lost his last friend, why, here came Tammy and the kids in from the carnival not ten minutes later.
“Daddy, Daddy, looky here!” Buddy Junior was squealing. He had won a sword cane from Japan, which looked like a walking cane but had a sword stuck down inside it.
“Let me see that, son,” Buddy said, and went and made over the sword cane like it was really something, and like Buddy Junior was really something to win it. Buddy Junior told how he had won it by throwing baseballs, how he kept getting so close and then kept having to pay again until finally he won it.
“So,” Buddy said, standing up, you could see he was bone-tired, “so where did you get the money for all this baseball throwing?”
Buddy Junior looked at Tammy, who turned bright red and looked down at the rug. Buddy looked hard at Tammy, too. Tammy has that kind of blotching complexion that does not look good when she blushes, plus she is such a large girl, but that Saturday night she was wearing a navy blue overblouse and her red hair had come loose from the ponytail she wears it in, and she looked almost pretty, I swear she did.
So Buddy looked at her, too. “How much?” he asked.
“You don’t owe me a thing,” Tammy said.
“Now Tammy,” Buddy said.
“Nothing. I won’t take it!” When Tammy makes up her mind, it won’t do to argue with her. All the Burnettes are that way, famous for stubbornness.
Finally Buddy grinned. “Well, thank you, then,” he said.
Tammy was fixing to leave, but Sugar chose that very moment to burst into tears because she had gotten her cotton candy all stuck in her hair, and only just realized it. It was a mess, too. So Tammy stayed long enough to wash out Sugar’s hair at the kitchen sink. Buddy Junior was fighting a private duel over in the corner with his sword cane. “On guard!” he hollered. He is so smart for his age. While all of this was going on, Buddy paced the kitchen like a wild animal in a cage, back and forth, back and forth, smoking one cigarette after another. I sat at the table drinking ice tea and watching him. I knew this was a real important time for Buddy—either he could be heartbroken forever, or he could go on to something else, and up until that very moment it wasn’t clear to me which one he would choose. But as I watched him, while Tammy was toweling off Sugar’s hair, something shifted in his face. It was as clear as day. Something changed, you could see it change. Buddy stubbed out his cigarette and went over and picked up Buddy Junior.
“Come on, cowboy,” he said. “Time for bed.”
“I ain’t a cowboy,” Buddy Junior said, riding high on Buddy’s shoulder, “I’m a knight.”
“Time for bed anyway,” Buddy said, carting him off.
Tammy said good-bye then and left, and as I put Sugar to bed, a great thankfulness came up in me, for until that moment I did not really understand how much I’d feared that Rose Annie’s leaving would destroy Buddy. But now Buddy had given her up, just like that, and it would be the saving of him. For whenever Buddy does something, he does it all the way, he puts everything he’s got into it. And when he gave her up, he gave her up—just like when he was a boy and he worked so hard raising that little goat for the 4-H competition, but when she lost, he never said another word about it, and took just as good care of her as he had before the contest.
He can adjust, Buddy can. This is the most necessary ingredient for a happy life, I read it in Reader’s Digest.
And now he’s downright happy, even if he’s gained until he’s close to being as big as Tammy. They’re big as a house, the two of them put together, and happy? They’re happy. You bet.
I can’t say the same about the King and Queen of Country Music, however. Oh, they’re rich all right. After the first album went gold, the second one zoomed right on up the charts the minute it was released. That’s the Two Hearts album, with them on the cover in that big red heart, I think it’s tacky myself. Look at Rose Annie with her bosoms hanging out. Obviously she’s wearing one of them push-up bras. Anyway, this is the album which Johnny’s song “If Drinkin’ Don’t Kill Me, Your Memory Will” came off of, and of course they all said it was written while he thought Rose Annie was dead, and made a big thing out of it. People are just so curious. They love to gossip, they love to learn the private lives of the stars. This drives Buddy crazy, all the publicity about Rose Annie, but I understand it. It’s purely natural, I say. People don’t mean any harm.
Still yet, Buddy would not let Buddy Junior and Sugar go to the wedding, which took place at Johnny’s agent’s house in Nashville, outside in the garden, next to the kidney-shaped pool. See, here it is. Look at those matching white cowboy wedding suits with the sequin fringe. Johnny and Rose Annie had their picture in every newspaper in the country, wearing those suits, and she wore a rhinestone tiara. This is when everybody started calling them the King and Queen of Country Music.
The only people from the family that went were Virgie, naturally, trying to get some of that publicity for her own self, and Little Virginia. Little Virginia snuck off and gone over there, and R.C. got so mad at her when he found it out, he
liked to kicked her right out of his house. As if he could even function by himself, hateful and old as he is! R.C. ought to thank his lucky stars every day that Little Virginia is willing to put up with him, and run that house, and cook for him. They say he won’t eat a thing but ham biscuits. Anyway, none of the boys went, not even Bill, who always appeared to have such a soft spot for Rose Annie. They stuck right by their daddy, to a man.
I really thought that Buddy ought to have let Sugar and Buddy Junior go to the wedding, I really did. I still think he made a mistake. For it is something that they would have remembered all their lives. It is history.
Rose Annie called up on the phone and cried, begging Buddy to send them. But he stood firm. I told Buddy that I would have been glad to go over to Nashville with the children, and I would, too. I would have taken them to the wedding. I wouldn’t have minded a bit to be there. I told Buddy this. But nothing doing. He and Tammy took the kids to Rock City for the weekend, and that was that, leaving me here to read about it in the news. See, look here at the stars that was present—Eddy Arnold, Ferlin Husky, Porter Wagoner—why, I think it was practically criminal not to let Sugar and Buddy Junior go, they would have had little white suits of their own and been in the ceremony, and then they would be in these pictures, too. It is a part of their heritage which has been denied them, the way I see it. Of course, I never have said this to Buddy, not in so many words.
And Buddy has softened up some. Last summer, after Rose Annie begged and begged, he let me take the children over there for a visit. Pancake drove us, and then disappeared the whole time we were there, only showing up in time to drive us back home. He said he was going to be staying at the Holiday Inn, but I don’t know where he was. When I’d call over there, he was never in his room, not even real late at night. But naturally I didn’t mention this to his wife, Loney, after we got back. The closer you get to the Baileys, the worse they look. I have learned this over the years.