by Thomas Cobb
“No, you’re not bad at all, but I think you’ve missed the point there somehow.”
“No. I just got a different one than she intended. I mean, it wasn’t always my fault. I finally figured that one out. Most of them were, but not all of them.”
She puts the coffee cups down and sits on the bed with him, pulling his head into her lap. “You worry about that a lot, don’t you?”
“I got a twenty-four-year-old son. I haven’t seen him since he was four. I don’t know what he looks like. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know how he did in school. I don’t know if he played baseball or had trouble with geography. I didn’t see him ride his bike or teach him how to drive a car. I think about that a lot. That’s my fault, that’s all my fault, and that’s a hell of a goddamned price to pay. It’s a hell of a thing to be fifty-six years old and not know a damned thing about your own son.”
“I couldn’t live if I lost Buddy.”
“That’s the goddamnedest part. You do live.”
“Why didn’t you find them after they left?” They are sitting propped up in the bed, naked. He is smoking. She toys with sweated strands of hair at the back of his neck.
“I tried. I tracked her down to L.A. Even in L.A. she kept moving around. She knew I’d be following her. Then the record company got involved. They convinced me that I had to give up. I guess they were still thinking about Spade Cooley and all of that. Anyway, they told me it was either keep chasing them down or keep making records and money. Records and money seemed real important then.”
“Who’s Spade Cooley?”
“Spade Cooley was one of the best bandleaders in western swing. Maybe he was the best. All during the forties, he and Bob Wills were always about neck and neck. He wrote the song ‘Shame on You.’ It was really top-notch stuff. Anyway, in about nineteen sixty, sixty-one, he got the idea that his wife was cheating on him. That she was having an affair with Roy Rogers, as a matter of fact. So he killed her. Only it was worse than that. He got his little girl out of bed and took her into the living room and told her he was going to stomp her mother to death, and she was going to watch. Then he did it. He stomped her to death.
“It made the guys in the suits real nervous. I mean, this was a guy who was like you or me, and suddenly he snaps and beats his wife to death. So when they found out they had a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound drunk running around L.A., looking for the wife that had run out on him, they got pretty worried. They sent three guys after me. I woke up in a sanitarium, where they were supposed to be drying me out. First two days, I was in a straitjacket; after that, every time I woke up I took another needle in the ass. I didn’t wake up for days.”
“They locked you up?”
“It’s true. I was worth a lot of money to them. Things were a lot different then. I mean, we all know about George Jones and his drinking, and people love it. But back then, they wouldn’t let anything like that get out. I mean, when Hank Williams died, they got the official death certificate to read ‘heart attack.’ We all knew what killed him, but they didn’t let stuff like that out.
“So Marge got smart. When she took off, she went to L.A. and went right to the boys in the suits. She convinced them that I was going to kill or at least beat her when I got to L.A. She let them know that if they didn’t want another Spade Cooley on their hands, they better protect her from me. And the sort of reputation I had been building up went a long way to back her story.
“When they finally let me out, they gave me the word. I got the hell out of L.A. and didn’t cause any more trouble, or I was back in the ward again. I don’t scare real easy, but that scared the piss out of me. Those boys knew where the button was and how to push it.
“Anyway, I lost track of Marge and Steve. I got the divorce papers from the record company. By the time things had loosened up, it was all too late. I guess they’re still in L.A., but I don’t know.”
“You could probably find them. I mean, if you looked.”
“What the hell am I going to say? ‘Hi, how you doing? What’s been going on the last twenty years?’ No. They don’t need to see me now. They were better off without me, and I guess they still are. Marge was a good woman with a good head on her shoulders. They did all right. I’m sure of that.”
“You could find them for your sake. Don’t you think they owe something to you?”
“No. She was right. Marge was right to do what she did. I was a rotten father and a worse husband. They really were better off without me. Maybe that’s what I would tell her, that she was right.”
“No. I don’t think so. I think you deserve better.”
“I didn’t. I’m not sure I do now, but I know I didn’t then. There was the drinking, and there were pills, too. And I was on the road all the time. I mean, I couldn’t stand being home for very long. There were no lights, no one applauded. That was out on the road, that and lots of women, lots of good times. I just figured that was all mine, I mean I had it coming, and a wife and a baby shouldn’t change what was rightfully mine, and goddamn it, I didn’t let it.”
“Look. I won’t even pretend I understand how someone could let a child go. And I think you owe it to both of you to try to find him again. Don’t let what you’ve done stop you from being what you are.”
“Most of my life anyway, that’s been being a son-of-a-bitch.”
“Well, I like you. I won’t marry you, but I like you.”
“If there’s one thing in the world better than a pretty girl, it’s a pretty girl who’s gullible.”
“If there’s one thing better than a good man, it’s a good man who’s too crippled up to get away,” she says, nestling up against him.
“You’re welcome to break the other ankle.”
In the morning, he is up before she is. The road has changed his rhythms. He wakes ready to get into the van and drive on to the next stop. He tries to be quiet, but as he swings his legs out of the bed, the cast on his left ankle clunks heavily on the floor. He bites his lip against the pain. Jean stirs but doesn’t wake.
His crutches are across the room, leaning against the dresser. He stands, weight on his right leg. Slowly, he shifts it to his left. He is able to transfer only part of it before the pain flashes up from the ankle to the pit of his stomach. He shifts back to the right leg. He tries to calculate the furniture’s strength to see if he can move from piece to piece across the room. Most of it is wicker. He sinks to his knees and crawls across the floor on hands and knees.
When he reaches the dresser, he gets the crutches and moves the five feet to the wicker hamper where she has draped his pants. He gets the left leg on, snaking the pants over the cast. Then he realizes that to get the right leg on, he will have to rest his weight on his left leg. He maneuvers back to the hamper and tests it with his weight. It seems sturdy enough. By sitting gingerly on it, he can work his right foot into the pants leg and start working the pants on. When he pulls them up, though, the cuff is still caught under his foot. He shifts his weight to the center of the hamper and lifts up his foot. When his foot clears the floor, his weight shifts backward, the top of the hamper gives and he goes in, butt first.
“Jesus,” Jean screams, sitting suddenly upright. Then, “Oh, my God, Bad, are you all right?”
He is on the floor, his left leg up, sticking out of the broken hamper, his right leg splayed out and resting on top of an aralia palm in a ceramic pot. His pants are caught around his knees.
“Tell me you’re all right,” Jean says. “Please God, tell me you’re all right.”
“Help me up,” Bad says. “I’m goddamned all right. Help me up.”
“Thank God you’re all right,” she says, “’cause I’m going to bust something if I can’t laugh. That’s the funniest goddamned thing I’ve ever seen. Where’s my camera?”
“Help me up, goddamn it.”
Bad is trying to get out of the smashed hamper, and Jean is rolling in the bed, when Buddy walks in. He watches wide-eyed as Jean pulls the shee
ts up and Bad tries to wiggle his jeans up to his hips. He walks over to where Bad is on the floor and pulls the palm plant off Bad’s foot. “Can we have pancakes?” he asks.
In the kitchen, Bad gives orders and Buddy fetches for him. “You like apples?” Bad asks. Yes, Buddy nods. “Get some apples, then. I’m going to teach you the right way to cook. Let’s see, you’re four?” Yes, Buddy nods. “You married yet?” No. “Then you better learn how to cook. You know how to cook, you don’t have to live with some mean old witch just because she keeps you fed.”
Bad peels, cores and slices apples, then dices them and sets them aside. He sends Buddy to the refrigerator for milk and eggs, to the cupboard for flour, oil and a skillet. He sets Buddy on the counter and mixes the batter, explaining every step. When he has beaten the batter smooth, he adds the diced apples. When he drops the batter into the hot skillet, he shows Buddy how to wait until bubbles form, first at the edges, then in the center, before flipping the pancakes.
“I’ve got to go down to the paper for a while this morning,” Jean says at breakfast. “I’ll drop Buddy off at the day care center. You want me to take you somewhere, or do you want to stay here?”
“I don’t know what I could do with this ankle. I’m not much for libraries and museums. Why don’t you leave Buddy here with me?”
“You don’t want to baby-sit. Besides, Buddy will want to see his friends today.”
“I want to stay here,” Buddy says.
“There you go. We want to stay here.”
“And do what?”
“Man stuff,” Bad says.
“Man stuff,” Buddy says.
“You play cards?” Bad asks when Jean is gone.
“No.”
“You know any good fishing stories?”
“No.”
“Then maybe we ought to go take a walk and see what kind of trouble we can get into.”
“Yeah.”
He has difficulty negotiating the steps down from Jean’s apartment to the sidewalk, but by stopping often and leaning his weight on the railing, he learns how to work the heavy cast gently from step to step.
The apartment complex is made up of several two-story buildings, each containing eight apartments. To avoid a look of monotonous conformity, they have been set at oblique angles to each other. The sidewalk that connects them curves and angles off around buildings and landscaping. Buddy runs ahead, out of Bad’s sight, and then comes running back when Bad doesn’t catch up. They have been walking only about five minutes. Bad does not know exactly where they are, but Buddy keeps leading him on.
Finally, Bad turns a corner and finds himself in the playground. There are swings, teeter-totters, and lots of telephone poles cut in odd lengths and sunk into the ground. Bad can handle the swing, braced on his crutches and pushing Buddy with one hand, and he can, awkwardly, do much the same to keep Buddy going on the teeter-totter. What Buddy really wants to do is play on the telephone poles. Bad has a rush of panic. They look dangerous, full of sharp edges and splinters. Why the hell do they give kids such artsy-fartsy stuff, stuff that could bust their heads open in a second? He has visions of Buddy’s small body bent and crumpled at the bottom of the log pile, smeared with blood. How could any creature be as delicate and fragile as a child? He thinks back to what he played on as a kid. Rocks, trees and farm machinery, vines, a creek and a wooden footbridge over the creek—a miracle that any of them lived through it.
When Buddy is through with the telephone poles, he pulls Bad over to the swimming pool.
“The concrete pond,” Bad tells him. There are two women next to it, in bathing suits. “It’s a concrete pond, and they’ve got the thing stocked.”
While Buddy runs around the fence surrounding the pool, Bad chats with one of the women. She is young and friendly, and her skin glitters with drops of sweat. He tells her about his accident, about the tour. She tells him she is a student at the university, studying business administration. He watches a drop of sweat run from her collarbone, around the curve of her breast and under her swimsuit top. Become a booking agent, he tells her; there is a fortune to be made off other people’s work. When Buddy wearies of running the fence, he comes back to Bad and they head for the apartment.
“Take good care of your grandpa,” the girl says.
“Turn on the sound,” Buddy says.
“No,” Bad says, “it’s better to watch it this way. We can make up our own story.”
“She’s bad,” Buddy says of the woman in the red dress.
“How do you know that, Bud?”
“I can tell. She’s a bad lady. She has funny eyes.”
“I wish I could figure it out that easy. O.K. She’s a bad lady. What are we going to do about her?”
“Shoot her,” Buddy says.
“No. You can’t do that. That’s the code of the West. You can’t shoot a lady. What should we do?”
“You tell.”
“I suppose, if it was me, I’d marry her.”
Buddy puts his hands over his face and begins to giggle.
“That would fix her little red wagon, right?”
“You’re silly.”
“I guess you got that right, little buddy.”
“You didn’t even put him down for a nap?” Jean asks later that evening. “Even the day care center makes him take naps.”
“We were having a good time. If I made him take a nap, what would I have done? Who would I have played with?”
“He really likes you. It’s amazing.”
“It’s not. I’m a good guy. He knows that. Kids can tell.”
She curls into him on the sofa. On the television, Shane has traded in his guns to be a peaceful farmhand for Jean Arthur and Van Heflin. “That’s bullshit,” Jean says. “Maybe it’s right bullshit this time, but it’s still bullshit.”
“What are you going to do?”
“When?”
“Anytime. From now on. What are you going to do from now on?”
“Write. It’s what I do. I’m going to keep on doing it. What are you going to do?”
“There’s only one thing I can do. But you’ve got a boy.”
“That’s right. And I’m doing O.K. He look underfed to you? Look, I ended up at thirty-four divorced and alone. I started writing, and I took care of myself writing. Then Buddy came along, and now I take care of both of us. I guess I can keep it up. Buddy and I are doing all right. There will be better jobs, better papers, magazines.”
“But kids are expensive, and they get more expensive. They want clothes, cars and college.”
“Hold it just a minute here. Are you suggesting that I need a man to help me, that I can’t raise my own son? The only thing I really needed a man for is over and done with. I can do the rest quite well by myself, thank you.”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m not going to give you advice on how to run your life. I sure as hell didn’t do so great with my own. I like you. I like Buddy. I was just wondering, maybe worrying a little. No harm meant.”
“You want to do something for me, help me out?”
“What?”
“Hold me, touch me. That’s what you can do. That’s nice. It’s been a while since I have really had someone to touch and touch me back. I miss that part. Help me out.”
On the television, little Joey persuades Shane to bring out his guns, to teach him to shoot. Shane looks moody, regretful, but he brings out the guns. In the yard, he shows Joey how to wear them, not too low, but up on the hip so they come out cocked and ready. Then he draws both and sends a rock spinning across the yard, firing the six-guns with both hands.
Jean Arthur comes running into the yard, terrified of the gunfire, furious that Shane has shown little Joey how to use a gun. “A gun is just a tool,” Shane says, “like any other. A gun is as good or bad as the man using it. Remember that.”
“Remember that,” Bad says.
“Why?”
“Damned if I know. He said it, not me.”
&
nbsp; Later, as Shane has strapped on the guns for real, ridden into town and killed Jack Palance and the rest of the outlaws, then ridden away, leaving little Joey behind, crying, Jean reaches up and touches Bad’s face. “Is that the kind of crap you believe? That you’re going to ride off and me and Buddy are going to stand here crying, wondering how we are going to live without you?”
“What the hell is that for? I just asked you a goddamned question.”
“You’re right,” she says. “I’m sorry. It was stupid.”
“Besides,” Bad says, “every time I see this picture, I kind of figure I’m Joey, standing there watching him ride off.”
“Can you tell me something?”
“About what?”
“The road. What keeps you going back?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just like pissing in gas stations.”
“I mean it. Why do you do it? Why have you done it all your life?”
“Well, it’s my life, at least the only part of my life that makes any kind of sense. Musicians are like patent medicine sellers. They got to keep moving or folks are going to figure out what’s going on. So you see, we really haven’t got a choice. We do what we have to.”
“Yeah, but you like it.”
“Most of the time, anyway. I know what you’re asking, and I’m trying not to answer mostly because I don’t know. It’s good on the road, I know that. Every night it’s a different town, different folks, and they’re always interested in what you’re doing. Maybe you’re tired of it, but they’re not, and that keeps you interested. It’s like starting over all the time.”
“Like love?”
“Maybe. It’s like part of the excitement of being with someone new. They’re different, and you feel different. You get to tell about yourself and you come out a little better than you did the time before. You got a few more good things to say, and you get to leave out more of the bad stuff.”
“It’s like running away.”
“I don’t know. I haven’t run away since I was seventeen.”
“I know. I did a few years ago. It was exhilarating. I left my problems behind. I didn’t care that there would be new ones; the old ones weren’t my problem anymore.”