I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

by Steve Earle

  “Yah-kee!” She beamed.

  Doc chuckled. “No, child. That’s Jackie.” He pointed at the paper and enunciated as clearly and slowly as he could. “The president’s wife’s name is Jackie. It’s like Jack—well, no, he’s Jack, but … oh, hell!” It was obvious that the little pantomime wasn’t getting him anywhere, so he finally gave up. “Never mind, child. It doesn’t matter anyhow. Any coffee left in that pot?”

  IV

  Sometimes Hank doesn’t know what to make of Doc. Just the sort of yahoo that a feller meets on his way down. There’s Hank, fired from the Grand Ole Opry, back down in Shreveport playing the Louisiana Hayride every Saturday night, just like the bad old days. He’s down on his back after the show one night, and some wannabe hillbilly singer shows up backstage with this tall feller in tow. Introduces him as Doc. He looks the part, all right: forty, forty-five, wire-frame glasses. Got on a nice suit, if a little on the threadbare side. Gives Hank a shot of morphine, fixes his back right up, and then asks him for his autograph. Oh, yeah, he’s a fan, but not like all those kids that holler for “Lovesick Blues” all night. Knows every record Hank’s ever made but his favorites are Hank’s songs, the ones he wrote himself: “I Can’t Help It,” “Cold, Cold, Heart,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.” Doc’s even a fair hand with a spinning rig, and over the summer, the pair catch their weight in bass and crappie together during long afternoons out on the lake. Then, for no good reason that Hank can figure, Doc has to go and spoil it all.

  Cure for alcoholism, my ass. What’s that Doc calls them horse pills of his? Chloral somethin’-orother, or some goddamn thing? Horseshit, in concentrated form, if you ask Hank. Oh, they help with the shimmies and the shakes and all, but they don’t do a damn thing for what’s really ailing Hank, and besides, who ever asked Doc to cure anybody of anything in the first goddamn place? Hank don’t need a sheepskin from some fancy college to know what he needs and when he needs it! Just give him steak and taters when he’s hungry, whiskey when he’s dry, pussy when he’s lonely, and maybe a little old-time religion when he dies.

  See, Hank reckons that when his time comes, he’ll see it coming. Some kind of a sign, so he’ll know it’s time to get right with God.

  But Death’s not playing fair that night, nine New Year’s Eves ago. Sneaks up on Ol’ Hank like an Injun while he’s sleeping in the back seat of his own Cadillac somewhere in West Virginia. Or is it Tennessee?

  Even Hank doesn’t know.

  He’s booked to play two shows that weekend, one on New Year’s Eve in Charleston, West Virginia, and one the next day in Canton, Ohio. He hires a kid to drive him up from Montgomery, but by the time they make Chattanooga it’s snowing like a son of a bitch. Takes more than four hours to make the hundred and ten miles from there to Knoxville and now his only shot at making the Charleston show is the three o’clock plane. The weather goes from bad to worse, and the pilot has to turn the little puddle jumper around and lands Hank right back in Knoxville where he started.

  They check into the Andrew Johnson Hotel and ol’ Doc’s waitin’ there and Hank’s never been so glad to see anybody in his life. Doc says it was Hank’s mama sent him. That she rang him up in Shreveport and told him that her boy was ailing and he’d better get his tail to Knoxville. Doc gives him a good shot of morphine and insists on him choking down one of those pills of his. There’s a knock on the door and the kid says he just got off the phone with the promoter and the Charleston show’s canceled but he’ll see them in Canton for sure, so Hank drifts away to a place nearer to death than to sleep.

  Then somebody’s pulling and shaking and slapping Hank around, hollering, “Wake up, Hank, it’s time to roll!” and then big powerful black arms, a hotel porter, maybe, scoop him up and carry him downstairs like a baby, gently but firmly, cradling him and loading him into the back seat of the car.

  Then the kid’s behind the wheel and Doc’s riding shotgun and they’re rolling and the big Caddy takes every bump and pothole in stride. Hank doesn’t mind riding when his back doesn’t hurt. Big tires thumping, windshield wipers slapping. That was where the best songs came from, that rhythm of the road.

  “You think he’s gonna be all right?” he hears somebody ask. They’re talking about him like he’s not even there, and he’s only a foot and a half away! He mumbles back, “Ain’t nothin’ gonna be all right, no how.”

  Or maybe he only dreamed that he said it.

  Or maybe nobody said anything at all.

  The morphine talks to Hank sometimes, the way that ghosts talk, in low, rattling whispers that dare him to listen and catch every single word.

  “You been headed down this road all your miserable life, Hank.”

  Sheer terror grips Hank; icy fingers close around that celebrated throat of his, squeezing him, choking him, but he manages to muster a barely audible moan that sputters and sharpens and then explodes upon contact with the night air into a whine, not a complaint, but an insistent resonant frequency that bypasses all of the sensory intermediaries and travels directly to the heart … A sound that can be made by no creature on this earth except for Hank.

  “He-e-e-y! No-o-o-o! Hell, no! Who the hell are you? Where you takin’ me to?”

  “Canton, Hank.” But it’s Doc’s voice this time, deep and soothing and familiar. “You got a show to do in Canton, Ohio.” A little penlight shines in Hank’s eyes, blinding him, but Hank doesn’t need to see Doc’s face to know that everything will be just fine in a minute or two.

  “Better pull this thing over the next chance you get,” says Doc to the kid, and when they stop he gives Hank another shot and another pill.

  And then the tires are singing again, and more miles slip by, and Ernest Tubb and Webb Pierce and even Ol’ Hank himself are on the radio cutting through the static like a brand-new Barlow knife. Up front Doc and the kid talk baseball and they must think Hank’s sleeping but they’re wrong and they damn sure don’t know he’s got a pint of whiskey hid out in the crack of the seat. Between the shot and the pill and a pull or two on the secret pint, Hank’s back doesn’t hurt and his hands don’t shake and he’s floating, drifting along like a flatbottom boat on a lazy Alabama river, and … wait a minute…

  Now it’s Christmastime and Hank’s back home in Nashville and Audrey’s there and she’s not mad anymore and there’s little Bocephus bouncing on his knee and Audrey says, “Hank, honey, go easy on that whiskey now, ‘cause you got to play the Opry tonight,” and Hank says, “Yes’m, Miss Audrey, don’t you worry none. I’ll be fine!” And the gang’s all there and they’re laughing and singing “Silent Night” and the tree’s all lit up and you can see it shining through the big picture window a half a mile down Franklin road … but then the lights go all fuzzy and fade and flicker and one by one … they blink out…

  Hank’s all by himself in the middle of the loneliest stretch of highway in the universe. He stands there for a minute and he looks all around, or maybe it’s an hour, a week, or even a month.

  He could be anywhere. There are no landmarks; there’s no recognizable terrain he can use to fix his position. He only knows that he has to find Doc somehow but he has no earthly idea where to start. There are no signs. No white lines to follow, only black asphalt threading through the shadows of unnamed mountains and disappearing into a starless sky.

  And the only visible light is the faint red glow of the taillights of his own goddamn Cadillac melting into the darkness.

  V

  Graciela was adamant.

  “Yah-kee,” she intoned again and again as she pursued Doc around the tiny room. Doc did his level best to pretend that he didn’t understand a word she was saying and continued to go through the motions of ransacking the room, all the while muttering under his breath. “Where the hell did that bag of mine get to? Manny’s got himself one hell of a dose of the clap. If I’ve told him once I’ve told him a thousand times to put a rubber on that thing when he goes with those east-side girls.”

  The game c
ontinued until Graciela finally resorted to ducking under Doc’s arm as he reached for his hat. Standing on her tiptoes on the tops of Doc’s shoes afforded her just enough reach to shove that morning’s edition of La Noticia into Doc’s face, where he could no longer ignore the photo on the front page or Graciela’s determination.

  “Yah-kee!” she repeated. “¡Yah-kee en el aeropuerto!”

  “That’s Jackie. Jack-ie, child. At the airport. I know. Everybody knows. But you don’t understand. The airport is way north of town and I don’t have a car. How would we get way the hell out there? And it’ll be a madhouse and … there will be cops everywhere and not just the local boys either. I’m talkin’ federales! Migra! And you illegal and all.”

  The laundry list of excuses went on for another half an hour but Graciela continued to press her case, alternately pleading and pouting and occasionally stamping her tiny bare feet on the linoleum floor. Mercifully, Doc finally managed to locate his bag and, pointing at an imaginary wristwatch, somehow slipped out the door.

  But there was no escape. Manny was sitting at Doc’s table in the back of the beer joint reading the Express-News, which featured the same wire-service photo of the First Lady as its Spanish-language counterpart. As Doc approached the table, Manny tapped the paper with a short thick forefinger.

  “Yah-kee!” He grinned.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen it already. Just drop your pants and lean over the table there and shut the fuck up.”

  Manny complied and it was all over in an instant. The ritual had been repeated countless times, and Doc, as usual, had preloaded the syringe with an adult dose of penicillin. Manny hauled his suspenders back over his shoulders and walked off the cramp, cursing under his breath. Doc dropped the empty syringe in his bag and snapped it shut for emphasis.

  “Oh, did that hurt? Well, good! Maybe next time you’ll use your head before you go stickin’ your dick where half of the Fourth Army’s already been. Those Nigra gals on the east side all got the clap and everybody seems to know it but you, Manny. Hell, they work right outside the back gate of Fort Sam Houston, and for the life of me, I do not understand why you think you need to go all the way over there when there’s plenty of girls right here on the south side who would gladly shine your knob for a dollar’s worth of dope.”

  Manny gingerly sat down and retreated behind a shield of newsprint.

  “I told you, Doc. I don’t shit in my own backyard. It’s bad for business. Next thing you know every puta on South Presa’s lined up at my spot with their hands out and their skirts up.”

  “Point taken. But at least put a bag on it, son. There are some maladies that a man can contract with his pants down that are beyond my limited abilities to cure.”

  Manny shrugged and kept right on reading. “It says that the president’s comin’ here to talk about space medicine. What’s space medicine, Doc?”

  “That’s aerospace medicine. He’s coming to dedicate some new buildings at the Brooks Aerospace Medical Center. It’s a place where they study the effects of space flight on the human body, I suppose. A research facility. It’s out at Brooks Field.”

  Manny finally dropped the paper. “Brooks Field? That’s right down the road, Doc. Maybe five, six miles at the most.”

  “So what.”

  “Think about it, Doc. Yah-kee! Right here on the south side!”

  Doc lost it. “Yah-kee, Yah-kee, Yah-kee! I swear to God if one more fool so much as mentions the name Yah-kee, I’ll go screamin’ down the road to the state hospital and turn myself in … and would you listen to me? Now I’m startin’ to say it! It’s Jackie, goddamn it. Jacqueline! Christ! Graciela can’t talk about anything else and just exactly what is it that you people find so fucking fascinating about the First Lady? The president’s coming. The president of the United fucking States of America. He’s a war hero, a great man, and all you people want to talk about is his wife. I mean, she’s a lovely woman and all but, well, what the hell is that, anyway? Some kind of Mexican thing?”

  “It’s a Catholic thing,” suggested Teresa, the barmaid, as she made her way across the room, sweeping and setting down chairs as she came.

  “A wh-what?” Doc stammered, taken by surprise.

  “He’s a Catholic, this president. A Catholic man. He may think he runs the world but men ain’t nothin’ without women. Animals. Beasts.”

  “Now wait just a goddamn minute!” began Doc. “There’s no need to—”

  “Oh, no offense, Doc. I know you don’t mean no harm. You can’t help it. God made you that way. You got to get dirty, to root around in the dirt like pigs. Oh, you go to Mass and give confession when you’re children, but once you’re grown you go to work and then you don’t never set a filthy foot inside a church again unless it’s for a wedding or a christening or a funeral Mass and then … maybe. But that’s okay. Praying is a woman’s work. Men would only mess it up. It is a woman’s job to keep the shrines and light the candles and pray for the soul of her man so that he can do what a man’s got to do in this fucked-up world. Maybe it will be different in the next one, maybe it’ll all begin and end with men up there, but here, it’s women who give ‘em life and it’s women who clean up the shit and the blood. Rich man. Poor man. President. Priest. No matter. The bigger the man, the bigger the mess. She’s a saint, our Yah-kee.”

  Doc was speechless. In eight years of his seeing Teresa every day, no more than a mouthful of words had ever passed between them. Suddenly, freed from her fixed position behind the bar, the usually placid matron was not only formidable but downright intimidating. Doc looked to Manny for moral support but found that none was forthcoming. The big man only squirmed in his chair, and his downcast eyes suggested to Doc that he didn’t disagree.

  In a feeble defense of his gender, Doc asked Teresa, “Just for the record, hon, how long’s it been since you’ve been to church?”

  Teresa stood five foot four at best but Doc was seated, and, standing less than a foot away, she seemed to loom over him.

  “I have no man to pray for.”

  Only when Teresa had withdrawn to her usual place behind the bar did the men feel it was safe to resume their conversation, in quieter tones.

  “I’m going,” resolved Manny.

  “Going where?”

  “To Brooks Field. To see Yah-kee.”

  “Oh, for chrissake, Manny, Brooks is an air force base. A military installation. You can’t just walk in there, especially when the president of the United States is in town. It’ll be open to military personnel and invited guests only, the working press and the like. Hell, they ain’t about to let a couple of broke dicks like us get anywhere near that place, president or no president.”

  Manny frowned for an instant, but he recovered quickly and began rustling through the paper once again. “It says right here that ‘hundreds are expected to be on hand when the president’s plane arrives at San Antonio International Airport.’ What about the airport? They can’t keep us out of the airport, can they, Doc? That’s a public place, ain’t it?”

  Teresa re-approached the table slowly and deliberately, wiping her hands on her apron, and Doc could have sworn that she and Manny wore precisely the same determined expression.

  Doc could see it coming now but it was too late. It was like witnessing a train wreck. He sat paralyzed as two powerful forces completely and totally out of his control converged on a course destined for certain catastrophe before his very eyes; there was nothing he could do, but being no stranger to hopeless causes, he had to try.

  “Now see here, Manny, do you even know where the airport is? It’s a long damn way up there—”

  “I got a car,” volunteered Manny.

  Teresa suggested that if they got an early start, “say, seven thirty or eight, we can get a good spot right up front where we can see.”

  “But it’s on the north side, Manny,” Doc pleaded. “Have either of you two ever even been up to the north side? You don’t see many Mexicans up there, not unless
they’re diggin’ a ditch or cleanin’ somebody’s house. Cops on the north side pull over carloads of Mexicans just because they’re Mexicans. Aw, hell, go ahead then. Haul your asses up there and make fools of yourselves and see if I care. But I’m not going. No sirree. Not me. I’m staying right here on the raggedy-ass end of South Presa where I belong.”

  Doc snatched up his bag, intent on a dramatic exit, but before he could reach the door it suddenly opened and Graciela stood in his path bathed in intense yellow sunlight, a tiny avenging angel, still brandishing her newspaper like a tablet of Scripture. Before Graciela could rejoin her assault on Doc, Teresa enthused, “Graciela! We are going to see Yah-kee!”

  “Oh, ferchrissake,” grumbled Doc.

  By the next morning, the South Presa delegation to the United States had swollen to six in number due to the addition of Marge and Dallas. Dallas had overheard Doc’s last-ditch effort to dissuade Graciela and simply invited herself. Marge didn’t give a damn about the Kennedys one way or the other and found it more than a little irritating that Graciela had the whole house jumping through hoops, but she wasn’t about to let Dallas out of her sight.

  Word had reached the pawnshop around a quarter to nine, just as old Santo arrived to open up for the day, and he phoned Maria and told her to drop whatever she was doing and get her culo grande down to Marge’s. Normally, such a dictatorial tone would have cost Santo another trip up to Doc’s makeshift surgery for a dozen or so fresh stitches, but he had only to invoke the magical name Yah-kee, and Maria was dressed in her Sunday best and out the door.