Devil Sent the Rain

by Tom Piazza

  “Wait a minute, now,” he says. He gets a black Western jacket out of the closet and puts it on, then a clip-on tie, white leather with little tassels at the bottom. “All right, hold on,” he says, and from a chair in the corner he grabs a white straw cowboy hat with feathers arranged as a hat band.

  “How do I look?” he says, now, presenting himself to me. “Huh?”

  “You look great,” I tell him. I’m not lying. Getting dressed up for these guys is a form of warfare, total plumage warfare, and Martin hasn’t been a pro for forty-eight years for nothing.

  It is not quite 6:30 by the time we leave the house. The night outside is cold, cloudless, and moonless. Just outside the carport, the limo is a long, sleek, indistinct presence in the darkness. Opening the driver’s door is a small project in itself; the seat is cold through my slacks, and when I pull the door shut it closes like the lid of a tomb. Martin is next to me in the passenger seat.

  I turn the ignition and the limo grumbles to life while I fish around for the lights. The rear window, way back there, is about the size and shape of a business envelope, so I lower my window to look out behind. I slide her into reverse, a hard shift, and ease off the brake.

  “Cut her back and to the right as hard as you kin,” Martin says. “Cut her.”

  I’m cutting her and hoping I’m not going to hit the tree that I know is back there. When I get what I think is far enough back I shift into drive and it stalls out immediately.

  “Oh boy,” Martin says. “Go ahead and start her up again.”

  I start her, pull her into gear, and move forward until the front bumper is almost against the Dodge van’s rear bumper, where it stalls again. My own car is sitting halfway under the carport, boxed in now by the limo, and I look at it nostalgically in the headlights. I try to start the limo again; Martin is saying, “Cut the lights! Cut the lights!”

  I cut the lights and try again quickly, but it won’t even turn over.

  “We done it now,” Martin says.

  I try to get it going another time or two, but the limo is dead. “Son of a bitch,” Martin says, opening the passenger door. “Crack the hood.”

  Martin disappears into the house. I get out and open the gigantic hood; I can hear the dogs moving back and forth somewhere in the darkness. My car is completely blocked in by the dead limousine.

  Now Martin reappears; he’s carrying something about the size of a shoebox, and trailing a long, heavy-duty orange extension cord. He hands me the plug from the box and the end of the extension cord.

  “Plug this in there,” he says.

  The end of the extension cord seems like it’s been melted, and the plug tines won’t fit into it easily. I’m struggling with the fit, and I feel it start to slide in when I’m blinded by a bright shower of sparks in my face. I drop the cord and the plug on the ground and stand there trying to get my sight back.

  “Which one of these is red?” I hear him asking me. I blink my eyes a few times; he’s holding out the charger clamps. I squint, but it’s hard to see them; it’s too dark . . .

  “Can’t you tell which one of these is red?” he says.

  I look at him for a second. I breathe slowly through my nose. “Why don’t you turn on a light?” I say.

  He heads off someplace again, and I try the plug again and get it in this time. Martin comes back and gets the clamps attached, and I go and turn the ignition and it zooms to life. While it is charging, Martin tells me to get the jumper cables out of his Ford pickup and throw them in the back of the limo. He disconnects the clamps and puts the charger away and we get back into the limo, and I maneuver it through its turn, and we head out, slowly, down the driveway and out onto the road. I’m trying to breathe nice and slowly.

  “Me and you are goin’ to the Grand Ole Opry,” he says now. “And your name is what?”

  “Tom Piazza,” I say.

  “Tom,” he repeats, as if going over a set of difficult instructions. “And you’re doin’ a article.”

  “Right.”

  “Okay.”

  We pull onto I-40 West, heading toward Nashville. We need to get to Briley Parkway and go north to Opryland. Outside the car, the Tennessee hills pass in the dark like huge, slumbering animals. I’m holding the limo steady right around fifty, and most cars are passing me, but that’s okay. I’m in no hurry. This is an island of tranquility here. God only knows what’s going to happen when we get to the Opry. I know Martin has feuds with various members of the Opry; he’s not crazy about the Osborne Brothers, and I’ve heard that he especially has a problem with Ricky Skaggs, one of the younger generation of bluegrass stars. Evidently Skaggs was a guest on Martin’s latest CD and wouldn’t sing the tenor part that Martin wanted him to sing because it was too high. Martin feels that Skaggs’s refusal was a form of attempted sabotage, motivated by professional jealousy, although Skaggs, of course, is the one with the spot on the Opry.

  Now Briley Parkway comes up, with the sign for Opryland, and this is the last definite turn I know; from here on I have to rely on Martin. I take the exit and follow the curve along to the right.

  “Do I look all right?” he asks.

  I tell him he looks great.

  “When we go down here I want you to be close to me now, and everything,” he says.

  “I’ll be right next to you the whole time,” I say.

  “Tell ’em who you are.”

  “Okay.”

  “You a magazine man—Tom, right?”

  “Right.”

  Now, off to the left, Opryland appears, a city of lights in the darkness. Big tour buses pass us as we make our way along in the right lane; the traffic is much denser now. We go under a bridge, exit, and curl up and back around over Briley Parkway, and there, ahead of us, are the gates to Opryland. I’m happy to be somewhere near civilization. I follow the line of traffic through the entrance. “When’s the last time you came to the Opry?” I ask, breathing a little easier now that we’ve found the place.

  “I can come down here anytime I want to,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say, “but when’s the last time you did?”

  “I’d say it’s been about six months,” he says. “But they’ll know me well enough. They’ll know me. Just walk in there with me. Your name’s what?”

  We’re being funneled into Opryland, with giant tour buses looming outside the windows like ocean liners over a rowboat. “Boy, ain’t that got it?” he says. Out the front windshield, spread all out before us, is a huge jungle of tiny white Christmas lights among the trees of Opryland. “Ain’t this Opryland? Huh?”

  After a few wrong turns we find a service road that takes us alongside Opryland to a place where the chain-link fence opens and a guard, bundled up and holding a clipboard, stands in the middle of the street under bright lights.

  “Pull over here,” Jimmy says. “Lower your window. Roll your glass down, now. Roll your glass on down. You need to talk to this guy right here. Hold it . . .”

  We pull up to the guy and I say hi and he says, “Hi, y’all,” and bends down to look in my window, at which point Jimmy yells out “HEY ” in a happy greeting, and the guy says, “Hey, Mr. Martin!” cheerfully, and Jimmy, looking across me out my window, hollers back, “Mister Martin? Mister? Just say Jimmy . . . I’m goin’ rabbit huntin’ tomorrow . . .”

  A woman comes over, another guard, also bundled up and carrying a clipboard; she approaches, hollers, “Hi, Jimmy. You got you a driver now?” and Jimmy says, “Who is this? Candy?” “Yes,” she answers, coquettishly, and Martin says, “Candy . . . I love you,” “I love you too,” she answers. Jimmy says, “Can we just pull in over here some place?” and the guy says, “Just pull in the dock, over on the other side of the van,” and Candy says, “Over on the other side of that van, there by the canopy in that second dock,” and Jimmy says, “Just where I can get out of everybody’s way,” and they both smile and say, sure, go ahead, and as we start pulling away, Martin hollers, “LOVE you . . . MERRY CHRISTM
AS . . .” As we pull away I breathe deeply in relief; they knew him, they were happy to see him, he was on good terms with them, and I begin to think that the evening might smooth out after all. A tall, rangy-looking guy in denim with a cowboy hat and carrying a guitar case is walking in front of the limo, toward the entrance in front of us, and I slow down a little. “I don’t want to run over this guy with the guitar, here,” I say.

  “Fuck ’im,” Martin says.

  I get the limo situated right next to a loading bay; before we get out Martin finds the bottle of Knob Creek, which he has been looking for, and we both take swigs, then get out and head for the stage door.

  Swarms of people mill around inside the brightly lit reception area, under the gaze of a security officer and a tough-looking middle-aged lady at the security desk; people are greeting each other, coming and going, musicians walking in with instrument cases, and the first impression is of a high school on the night of a big basketball game. The lady at the desk knows Jimmy and waves us in, and before ten seconds have gone by, he is saying, “Hey! Willie!” to a short guy with short, salt-and-pepper hair and a well-trimmed moustache. His name is Willie Ackerman, a drummer who played on a number of Jimmy’s recordings in the 1960s. “I put the bass drum in bluegrass music,” he says. “Good to meet you,” I say. We mill along together for a few moments in the crowd and he and Martin exchange some small talk.

  I am at the Grand Ole Opry, backstage. It feels, indeed, like a big night at the high school, down to the putty-colored metal lockers that line the hall, the dressing rooms off the hall, with people crowding in and spilling out into the general stream—laughter, snatches of jokes and gossip overheard as you pass along—the halls even have the same dimensions of a high school hall, crowded with people, men and women, men with very dyed-looking hair and rhinestone-studded suits and guitars around their shoulders; at one point I recognize Charlie Louvin, of the Louvin Brothers. I follow Jimmy, who is alternately oblivious and glad-handing people as if he’s running for senator. He attracts a fair amount of attention, even here, where flamboyance is part of the recipe.

  Eventually we come to the dark, cave-like stage entrance, with heavy curtains going way up into the dark rigging above. The curtains at the front of the stage are closed, and I can hear the audience filing in out front. People in this area come and go with a more focused sense of purpose than out in the noisy halls; by the entrance to the area stand a guitarist and another young man and woman, harmonizing a bit. We walk into the bright, comfortable green room, just to the left of the stage entrance, and someone, a big man with stooped shoulders, comes over to Jimmy.

  “Jimmy, how you doin’ there?” he says, putting his arm around Martin and shaking his hand. “How’s the old Hall of Fame member?”

  “Well,” Jimmy says, “I’m a Hall of Fame member, and the big booker ain’t booked me shit.”

  Glancing at me a little embarrassedly, the other guy says, “Well, you never know; tomorrow’s a brand-new day.” We stand for a minute listening to the little group singing their song. “They’re singing some bluegrass right over there,” the man says. Martin grunts. This must be difficult for him being here, I think, like crashing a party. He seems to go in and out of his drunkenness; sometimes he’s lucid, other times he has trouble putting a sentence together.

  Now another man comes up and asks him, “Are you on the Opry tonight?”

  Martin says, “No. They won’t let me on it.”

  “Well, when are you going to get the hell on it?”

  “Hey, Charlie,” Martin says, grinning, “I can get out there and sing it and put it over!”

  “I know it. I’ve seen you do it. Get out there and sing one.”

  Martin seems pleased by the encounter. He gets the two guys seated; he’s going to tell them a joke. Two women are walking around a shopping mall, carrying heavy baskets full of all the stuff they bought. They get tired at one point and they sit down. After they’ve been sitting fifteen, twenty minutes, one of them says, “I tell you, I got to get up here; my rear end done plumb went to sleep on me.” The other one says, “I thought it did; I thought I heard it snore three or four times.”

  Great laughter at the joke. “Now you beat that, goddamn it,” Martin says, triumphantly. We walk away, toward the stage area.

  This is going okay, I think. He’s seen some old friends, his ego’s getting stroked, people seem to like having him around. Who knows? I think. Maybe they will invite him to join after all.

  We approach the small group that had been singing, and Jimmy stops. He says, “You’re going to play on the Grand Ole Opry?”

  “Yes, sir,” the young man with the guitar says. He puts his hand out and says, “How are you doing, Mr. Martin?”

  “What are you going to sing on it?” Jimmy asks.

  “I’m playing with Ricky Skaggs,” he says.

  “Yeah?” Jimmy says.

  “Yeah,” the young man says. “Gonna play a little bluegrass tonight.”

  “A little bluegrass,” Jimmy says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well,” Jimmy begins, “he’s about the sorriest fuckin’ bluegrass you could ever hope to be on with, I’ll tell you.”

  All three look at him, still smiling, but a little stunned; the woman says, “Ohhhh,” as if he must be trying to make a good-humored joke that he has just taken a little too far, and the young man with the guitar, smiling more broadly, says, “Well, bless your heart . . .”

  “Well,” Martin says, even louder now, “I’m just telling you, he’s about the sorriest bluegrass, and tell him I said it.”

  “I’ll do it,” the young man says, smiling even more broadly, as Martin lumbers off.

  I start off after Martin, who abruptly stops, turns around, and adds, “Hey, bring him over here and let me tell him that.”

  “He’s back there,” the young man yells after us.

  Now we’re making our way along through the dark backstage area, and I’m thinking maybe I should just lead Martin out of here before something really bad happens. He’s heading for another well-lit area, where some instruments—fiddles, banjos—are tuning up, sawing away, warming up. “Didn’t I tell him?” Jimmy says to me, proudly. “Let’s see if we can see anybody back here.”

  Now we enter a brightly lit, garage-like area, with musicians milling around, and a number of older men who look like a certain type you still see behind the scenes at prizefights—slit-eyed, white-shoed, pencil moustaches, sitting in chairs, watching everything. “Hello, Jimmy,” someone says, a middle-aged man walking toward us, with a banjo, wearing a plaid sports shirt. “Good to see you, man,” the man says, with genuine warmth. They shake hands. They make some small talk, mostly Jimmy talking about his hunting plans. The banjoist seems to know all about the hunting and the dogs. Then Jimmy tells him the joke about the two women. The banjoist laughs and laughs. “I don’t want you to steal this on me, now,” Jimmy says. Everything seems to be cool again.

  Then Jimmy says, “Let’s me, you, and Brewster do a tune.” The banjoist calls the guitarist and singer Paul Brewster over. Across the room I see a big guy walk by, with a kind of combination crew cut and bouffant hairstyle, carrying a mandolin; it’s Ricky Skaggs.

  From my left side I suddenly hear Martin’s voice, loud, hollering, “Is that the BIGGEST ASSHOLE in Nashville?”

  Immediately the banjoist launches into a loud, unaccompanied solo, Earl Scruggs–style, an old Bill Monroe–Lester Flatt tune from the late 1940s called “Will You Be Loving Another Man?” and it is beautiful, ringing, pure and uncut, and, his attention distracted like a bull’s by a red cape, Martin begins singing the refrain, the banjoist and the guitarist joining in with the harmony, then Martin sings the first verse over just the banjo, his voice piercing and brilliant, then the refrain again, with the harmony, and the banjo comes in for a solo, so spangling and stinging and precise, the melody appearing out of a shower of rhythmic sequins and winking lights and now Martin comes in for another ch
orus, with the banjo underneath him telegraphing a constant commentary, goading and dancing around Martin’s melody, and it’s as if they have all levitated about six inches off the floor, pure exhilaration, and by far the best music I have heard during my time in Nashville.

  When it’s over there is that lag of a few seconds that it always takes for reality to be sucked back into the vacuum where great music has been, and as reality returns, along with it strides Ricky Skaggs.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” he says, pleasantly, walking over to our little group, strumming his mandolin, perhaps a little bit nervously. “How you doin’?”

  “Okay,” Martin says, making it sound, somehow, like a challenge. “How you doin’?”

  “Okay.” Strum, strum.

  “Think you can still sing tenor to me?” Oh no, I think.

  Skaggs laughs, strums a little more. “I don’t know. If you don’t get it too high for me.”

  “Ricky, it’s left up to you,” Martin says. “It’s not left up to me. If you want to make a ass out of yourself and don’t want to sing tenor with me, don’t do it. He can sing tenor with me . . .” He indicates Paul Brewster, who had been taking the high part in the song they had just sung.

  “He sure can,” Skaggs says, strumming, already regretting that he has come over. “He sings a good tenor to me.”

  “But you can’t sing tenor to me,” Martin persists. “You did with Ralph Stanley, didn’t you?”

  “I was sixteen then,” Skaggs answers.

  “He lost his balls, huh?” Martin says, to the few of us gathered around. “He lost his balls; he can’t sing tenor with Jimmy no more.”

  Strum, strum.

  “I can sing lead with any sumbitch who’s ever sung . . .” Martin says.

  “You sure can,” Skaggs says.

  “Huh?”

  “You sure can,” Skaggs says, no longer looking at Martin.