by Bryant, Tim
"Yeah," he said, dropping the smoke and stepping on it. "Crawford's known me since we were in knee pants."
"Crawford don't sound like an Indian name," I said.
"No, he's one of you," Alto said.
Come to find out, James had met Crawford Jackson while they were both attending high school in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, where they struck up a quick friendship. Alto's muscle helped scrawny Crawford through a few scrapes with the big boys, and Crawford's general whiteness helped Alto get past the guys who only thought of Injuns as the bad guys on the westerns.
After school, Crawford had come to Fort Worth to help run his mother's record shop, and, needing a roommate for his apartment, had talked Alto into coming over and trying the water out. Alto took a job at the paper and had been here ever since, even though he and Crawford had gone their separate ways after a year or so.
When he heard about my scavenger hunt for the Nu Grape Twins, James had thought about his old friend having the record store and had dropped by after his paper route one morning to see if he was still around. Finding Mr. Jackson still standing behind the counter, he'd caught up on news, including the fact that Jackson's mother had passed and left the store to her son. Then, they talked a little about the old times, and finally, Alto mentioned this obscure record I was looking for.
Crawford Jackson said not only did he remember it, but that the two guys who sang the song just so happened to live right here in Fort Worth, and that he was pretty damn sure there was a signed copy of it still hanging around the place somewhere.
So when I went to see this Crawford guy, I was going with some new notion that Mr. and Mrs. Nu Grape seemed to have more than one set of boys making the rounds. It might turn out to be the Nu Grape Quadruplets that I was hunting down.
24
Ruthie Nell had been putting in a few extra hours at the The Fort Worth Press, digging up more dirt on Cleco, Mississippi. Most of what she found, I could have gotten from Miss Vita. All the same, I appreciated the fact that she kept me from having to ask questions I didn't want to ask. And looking at it in print, right there in front of you, like it was yesterday's racing results, gave it a strange immediacy. If hearing Miss Vita talk about it would have been an encroachment onto some kind of sacred ground, then this was like spying on her unawares as the deed went down that led to its becoming sacred.
At its peak, it seems Cleco was home to about eighty-five people, all families of the men who worked at the Cleco Lumberyard and Mill.
Whitey's father, a man named Linwood Calhoun, helped operate one of two big circular saw blades at the mill. Ruthie found a copy of the Delta Democrat-Times, from Greenville, Mississippi, that printed a picture of one of 'em, a scary looking thing with a belt and flywheel, no guard or anything.
By the early thirties, most of the lumber had been harvested around Cleco, and there were whispers among the families of moving the whole damn town south a ways, close to a new railroad line. As the time got closer, the man who owned the mill, and the town too, as far as that's concerned, decided that instead of relocating his workers and their families, he'd find new workers where he went. It was an idea that didn't set well with Linwood and the other workers. Like many of them, he had a brand new baby to provide for. A meeting was called.
By all accounts, the negro workers were the only men in attendance at the first meeting. Foolishly, they started to feel strengthened by their numbers and called for a second meeting. This time, someone tipped off the boss man. He showed up with about ten of his buddies. A fight broke out that night and several of the negros were beaten up real bad. Couldn't work the next day or two. Some were out for a week. Some never did come back.
A night or two later, Linwood and another man were taking a nightshift, trying to get one of the last big projects all tied up. The boss man showed up, this time alone. Some say he had been drinking. Others say it was Linwood and his friend drinking. Everyone agrees that when the two workers clocked out and walked home, they left the boss man in two pieces, stretched out across one of the saw tables.
When it came to light, Linwood tried to claim that he had never seen the boss man that night. His friend, meanwhile, said that the boss man had shown up drunker than Cooter Brown and had fallen across the saw.
A few days later, the boss man's buddies returned with two long ropes and held a short trial. Linwood and his friend were both found guilty. They hung them from one of the last trees standing in Cleco.
Within a year, wasn't anything left of the mill town at all. Some of the families moved closer to the railroad lines. Quite a few went to New Orleans and got work on the docks. Miss Vita had had enough of Mississippi. She took her son, Terrance Linwood Calhoun, and headed west for Texas.
"What are the chances Whitey met the same fate as his daddy?” Ruthie Nell said, looking over the fading articles that she'd clipped and put together for me.
"Things like that do tend to run in families,” I said. "Know what I mean?”
I didn't think Whitey was swinging from a tree any more than I thought he'd followed through on his claim to be heading back toward Cleco. But he'd chosen to pass that information to his mother. It had to be taken as a hint. Enough, he must have hoped, to put us on track to finding him.
25
Fleck wasn't used to anyone asking for a non-alcoholic drink, so he had to scramble when me and Whitey come in on that long-ago day. Whitey was eighteen, plenty old enough to drink, and Fleck probably would have served him if he was fifteen, but Whitey hadn't had enough practice to feel comfortable with it, so he begged off.
"I'll take a water,” he said. Fleck didn't make a dime off tap water, though, so he came up with some tomato juice. Whitey said fine and took a seat at the farthest end of the bar.
"What you doin' these days, when you ain't hangin' around with old white guys like me?” I said. He was already thinking about trying to get the job at the newspaper at that point. Said he felt like it was a good fit for him, on account of him preferring the night to the daytime.
"Well, you're like me,” I said. "Far as I can tell, all the good stuff happens in the night. But let me tell ya, it can sure lead to trouble, ya don't watch out.”
I felt about as uncomfortable as a whore in church, sitting there making conversation with him. Not that I didn't genuinely like the guy. I did.
I suppose there was some kind of common bond there, both of us growing up without fathers. For the most part, though, he had it a heck of a lot rougher than I ever did. He was brought up knowing he had a fine daddy, but that some assholes had come along and taken the man's life from him. I grew up knowing that my father was the asshole, that he'd decided me and my mom was bad luck. He got out while the getting was good.
"You know,” I said to Whitey as I watched him slurp away on his drink. "My father left my mother and me when I was eight years old. Sometimes I kinda felt like he took my life, took my mother's life, when he took off like that.”
"Yessir,” he said.
"I use to come into the store your momma worked at, over in Quality Grove. You weren't nothin' but a little squirt then. But your momma had a smile for ever'body walked in the door. Nobody could of ever guessed all that woman been through.”
Whitey smiled a smile that didn't look much at all like his momma's, so I was guessing it must have come from his daddy's side. He was a momma's boy through and through though.
I wanted to tell him not to ever let nothing come between him and Miss Vita, but who the hell was I to tell him something like that? I hadn't spoken a handful of words to my own mother since the day Noreen packed up and left. When she took Noreen's side, I had walked out and swore my father would set foot on that damn porch again before I would.
"Mister Curridge,” Whitey said, "Momma says you had a little sister die when you was a boy.”
It's something I don't really talk about much. Haven't talked about it but a time or two in all the years since.
"They had a real bad polio outbreak bac
k, 1918, I think,” I said. "Lots of people around here got it. She was five, and I was eight. We both got it, only I got well, for the most part.”
"You remember her?” he said. Part of me wanted to clock him.
"Like yesterday,” I said.
"I wish I could remember,” he said. "Momma gets to tellin' stories, sometimes I almost think I can.”
"On the whole,” I said, "I don't recommend it.”
Whitey caused me all sorts of grief that evening. I knew, even as we sat there, that, sure as the world, I'd end up back out on that dusty road into Weatherford. It was high time I checked on everything out that way, just to make sure it was all getting along okay.
That time, I went on out to the crash site too. One day, in 1945, a sizeable number of folks in Weatherford thought the Japanese were attacking again, and coming for them right there in Weatherford. What it turned out to be was the mid-air collision of two B-29 bombers in route to Fort Worth.
Knowing some of the police who responded to the scene, I'd come out and watched pieces of one of the bombers burn up a farm yard out on Ranger Highway. I'd seen them take away pieces of charred bodies from that same field that I sat and looked on that night.
Why did I find myself returning to the scene? There was a quietness there that suited me, a somberness. A piece of life outside of Weatherford had come crashing down into the lives there and had been wiped out, and yet, Weatherford continued on. Weathered it.
One man had survived the crash as well. He'd gotten up from the wreckage, dusted himself off, and walked to the nearest house, where he knocked on the door and asked for a glass of water.
As I sat there in the Chummy that night, I wondered what that man was up to. And I hoped that, just maybe, Whitey Calhoun had found the same good fortune.
26
Dandy's family came around a few days after the episode at the Dance Pavilion and hauled him off to the veteran's hospital in Dallas, leaving me to wonder about and puzzle over what all he'd said over on White Settlement Road.
"I took care of him. I did what I had to do, Dutch. I took care of him.”
"That's what he said,” I said. "Word for word.”
Ruthie Nell sat across from me at Tootie's and nodded her head, then shook it. I had gone over the words again and again. Took them apart and put them back together. Dreamed about them. Finally, I decided to take them to someone who dealt with words for a living.
"Someone tells you that,” I said, "what do you take it to mean?”
"Well, he said he was on a rescue mission,” she said. "The objective of a rescue mission is save the person, right?”
It was, but I didn't like the part about him not being able to bring Whitey out. If he'd tried it, he said, neither one of them would've made it. Certainly sounded like maybe one didn't to me.
"But if he said he did what he had to do,” she said, "then, isn't what you have to do, on a rescue mission, normally saving the person?”
"Ruthie,” I said, "you're startin' to sound like Cisero Dearlove.”
I was hanging with her because I liked what she was saying. Not because I believed a word of it. "Normally," she'd said. Normal and Dandy O'Bannon didn't go together, even at the best of times.
When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure I put any stock in what Dandy said either. He'd been gone for almost a week. I couldn't believe he'd hung out inside Top O' The Hill that whole time. Not with Stub's boys hanging around out there. And the more I thought about it, the less I could conceive of Dandy finding Whitey in the first place. What were the chances? It was too easy an answer. I determined to continue the search as if Dandy had never said a word.
That night, I dreamed that Dandy and I followed a pack of squirrels through the woods out on the Jacksboro Highway and found Whitey tied to a tree. His white hair had been scalped clean from his head, exposing a skull that had seen the action end of one pissed off son of a bitch.
"One of us has to take care of him,” Dandy said, before raising a shotgun and plugging him full of lead. When Whitey's head exploded, I nearly jumped out of my bed. Spent the rest of the night laying there, looking for figures in the stains on the ceiling.
Another night I dreamed I was walking through the streets of Fort Worth with a dead baby under my arm. The farther I walked, the heavier the damn thing got. I finally looked down to see what the problem was, and come to find out, it wasn't no baby at all. It was Dandy O'Bannon.
I never was a person who needed a lot of sleep, but I started getting by on less. I had enough crap to deal with when I was awake.
27
Dandy had a brother named Doyle who lived in Bohunk. Me and Slant decided to pay him a visit. We found him working at one of the meat packing plants over there. He made it real clear he didn't have time to discuss Dandy's mental condition.
"I don't have any interest in that,” I said. "What I need to find out is what he was doing in Germany during the war.”
Doyle looked at me like I was crazy.
"You sure you know my brother?” he said. "Cause if you knew Dan, you'd damn sure heard his war stories.”
"Believe me, I've heard 'em, one and all,” I said. "Want me to start with the one about the French soldiers leavin' 'em all high and dry at the Battle of the Bulge or whatever?”
"Wrong war,” Doyle said. "Battle of the Mame.”
"You've got to know your enemy, Dutch,” Slant said.
Doyle was on his lunch break, so he took a sandwich out of some wax paper and bit into it. I could smell fresh tomatoes, even over the gamey smell of the place.
"Dandy was never at the Battle of the Mame,” he said, "Actually, it was the second Battle of the Mame, if you wanna get it right. But he wasn't at that one neither.”
He pulled a tomato from his lunch sack and cut into it with a pocket knife.
"He sure tells it like he was there,” I said.
"He was supposed to be there," Doyle said. "Probably would of got his ass killed if he had. Most of his battalion come back in wooden boxes.”
"But he was actually in the war?" Slant said.
"Oh hell yeah," Doyle said. "He was there all right. Germans trapped him and his company and gassed 'em. Sent 'em all to some camp. Reslatt, Raslett. Somethin' like that.”
"He there 'til the end?” I said.
"End of the war?” Doyle said. "No, no, no. Americans sent the whole cavalry in after 'em.”
"Any of 'em get killed?” I said.
"Dandy got sprayed pretty good during the rescue,” Doyle said. "Course, that's where he took the shrapnel to the head, y' know. Gassed by the Germans on the way in, shot by your own boys on the way out.”
"Gotta be tough,” Slant said.
"Well, Dandy's tough as they come," Doyle said, "but he's said it a hundred times if he's said it once. Better to of been killed right there where he stood than lived another day in that goddamn German camp.”
There was a whistle blowing somewhere, and Doyle was making it real obvious that he was needed back on the floor of the plant. There was one last thing on Slant's mind though.
"Doyle,” he said, "your brother always talks about how his battalion got set up by the French.”
"Dandy hates the damn French, don't he?” he said, laughing. "The French might of had somethin' to do with the Battle of the Mame. Damned if I even know.”
"But you said he wasn't there at the battle.”
"Nah. They had 'im locked up in that damn war camp with some French cook. A fuckin' French cook, that's why he hates the French. Said he got so damn sick of eating French food, pastries and shit, the thought of it makes him wanna puke to this day.”
28
"Verbal and Noble Nu Grape," I said.
Crawford Jackson laughed like the scrawny schoolboy he once was and slapped his leg. He was standing in front of a stack of 78 records, old ones that looked thick enough to use for tires on the Chummy.
"Those are the ones," he said, pointing at me as if I'd won some kind of prize.<
br />
"Well, excuse me for being a doubting Thomas," I said, "but I've known those guys for nearly twenty years, and I've never known 'em to be anything but Verbal and Noble."
"Don't believe me," Crawford said. "The record is around here somewhere. You can see it for your own self."
"See what?" I said. "An old 78 with their names scribbled on it? I'm really not sure that goes very far in proving anything. Although I am surprised either one of them can write their names."
"People don't believe what a rich musical heritage we have right here in Fort Worth," Crawford said. "T-Bone Walker, Bob Wills."
"I'm well aware of both Mr. Wills and Mr. Walker," I said. I briefly considered showing him my cigarette lighter but decided against it.
"I also have a record here that several of the Lighcrust Doughboys signed," he said.
"Well, if I find that one first, I may take it too," I said. "What kind of deal will you make me?"
Crawford tried to explain to me that, seeing as these records were true one-of-a-kind pieces, never to be made again, he just couldn't let them go, except at a premium. Collectors' records, he said they were. I didn't bring up the point that I failed to see any line of collectors waiting for them, and, as they seem to have been sitting there in his place of business for a considerable time, it might appear that their collectability was being slightly oversold.
"I just received this collection here," he said. "Let me register them, and I will be happy to help in your search."