Crazy Heart

by Thomas Cobb

  “I don’t know. Maybe. He a singer?”

  Wilks laughs. “No, not really. He’s a state representative from Dallas. You’ve seen his name in the papers, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, sure. Right.”

  “I think you’ll be pleased to know that Larry’s a big fan of yours. And that has given me an idea.”

  Bad winces. He doesn’t like ideas. They always come from someone else, and they always cost him money. There doesn’t seem to be a way to stop people from having ideas. “I’m trying to get my house cleaned up,” he says.

  “I’m imposing. I understand. But I think you’re going to like what I have to say. This seems to be one of those fortunate situations where everybody stands to benefit. You know, of course, that Representative Rounds is running for a congressional seat this fall?”

  Bad doesn’t know. “Sure,” he says.

  “Well, it’s a close race. We’re five points behind in the polls right now, but we’re closing. In these last two months, we are going directly to the people, where Larry’s real strength lies. And that’s where you come in. What I’m putting together is a series of old-fashioned rallies around the state, Sunday afternoon barbecues, really, to let the people meet Larry, get to know him, to understand that he is one of them—not one of those rich Harvard lawyer politicians, but a real Texas boy, just like them. And what I would like, what Larry would like, is to have you be a part of those rallies.”

  “Well, hell,” Bad says, “I’m just a singer and a picker. I don’t know…”

  “Exactly. That’s what we want. We want you to perform at the rallies, to entertain the folks, give them a good time, and to introduce Larry.” Martin Wilks leans back, stretches his arm across the top of the sofa and crosses his legs. He is wearing the round, heavy loafers college students used to wear. His smile is broad and open.

  Bad sighs and relaxes. He settles back into his chair. “Well, old buddy, the guy you need to be talking to is old Jack Greene of Greene and Gold Productions. He’s my manager, he makes all the arrangements for me. I have his card here somewhere.”

  Martin Wilks pushes forward from the sofa and holds up his hand, palm outward. “What we’re talking about here is not really something for your management. We’re talking about a more personal kind of commitment rather than a strict business arrangement.”

  “I see. What does that mean?”

  “Well, this campaign is not a business. It’s a personal commitment on Larry’s part. It is about ideals and virtues, traditional American values. We’re conducting a real personal, Texas-style campaign here. And we are looking for the kind of straightforward, traditional people who will commit to our kind of political vision, and I think you’re our man. So does Larry.”

  “You’re saying you’re not going to pay me?”

  Martin Wilks laughs. “You get right to the point, don’t you? I like that. I really do. No, we couldn’t pay you as such, but we would make it worth your while.”

  “I’m a professional musician,” Bad explains. “It’s how I make my living.” He motions to the wall to the left of Wilks. “I have gold records, four of them.”

  “Of course, of course. I understand you completely. Like I said, we are prepared to make this worth your while. We aren’t trying to take advantage of you. We can pay your expenses, and you will be performing before thousands and thousands of people. We expect to draw nearly a half-million people to these rallies by the end of October. I’m not involved in music. I’m involved in politics. And that makes me uniquely aware of the value of exposure and publicity. While Larry is getting his message across at these rallies, you’ll be getting yours, too. Don’t you see? You’ll be working together. You’ll help us, we’ll help you. Lots of musicians have thrown their support into political campaigns—Willie Nelson, Charlie Daniels, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne—and believe me, it hasn’t hurt their careers one bit.”

  “It sounds more like something for Willie,” Bad says.

  Martin Wilks shakes his head and waves his hand. “No, no. This isn’t for Willie Nelson. That ‘outlaw’ business, the dope and all that. No, you’re the man we’re looking for.”

  “Well, hell, let me tell you, old buddy, I’m just not much for politics. I don’t really think I’m the boy you’re looking for.”

  “Bad. Can I call you Bad? I feel like I’ve known you for a while. Bad, everyone’s involved in politics, whether they know it or not. Do you believe it’s right to murder babies? Do you believe we should encourage deviates to go around raping our wives and daughters? Do you believe that when they do rape someone we should just slap their wrists and ask them, pretty please, not to do it again? Do you think I should take your money and give it to some wino dope fiend so he can just hang around and maybe break into your house and steal your television because he thinks you didn’t give him enough? Do you think those things are right, Bad?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Of course not. And do you think that we should let a bunch of Arabs and Communists go around murdering innocent people and not do anything about it? Do you think we should apologize to the Russians because we have weapons to defend ourselves with? Or that the Congress should just ignore the President that the people elected? Elected by the largest majority in history?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Well, there you are, Bad. You are involved in politics, just like all the other people, and do you know what? You believe just what Larry Rounds believes. You see, Bad, what we are running here is a real people’s campaign. We are standing up for the little guy, the guy who is the real backbone of America. You are a voice of that real America, and we want you to lend your voice to ours. Together, we are going to do great things. We can get America back to where it belongs, and when Larry is doing that, he’s certainly not going to forget the help you gave him.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

  “O.K. I understand that, and I don’t want you to join with us until you are really sure. I’m going to leave you some position papers. These are the same things we give our staff members and release to the press. We don’t hide anything. Read these over, and when you have questions, you call me.” He takes out a pen and writes a number at the top of a sheaf of papers labeled “Foreign Policy.” “It’s my number in Dallas. Call collect.”

  The auditions serve as rehearsals, too. As good as his own bed and his own cooking is his own band. Even with the succession of bass players, rehearsing is comfortable. Howard is steady on drums, moving automatically to the correct tempo, pulling the rest along with him. Terry plays rhythm guitar exactly as Bad has taught him, and Ted is good enough on steel to move on to studio or road work, but he has no desire to leave Houston, and that suits Bad fine.

  As they rehearse, they suggest songs, ones that are getting airplay and are likely to be requested. They have been together long enough that they know which ones they should consider and which ones to ignore. Terry brings tapes and they listen to each song twice and then play it through, stopping only to straighten out the lyrics or work through tricky bridges. Both Terry and Ted sing, and Bad is careful to let them bring in new material they want to do. They, in turn, suggest only things they figure will be acceptable to Bad.

  They reject the kid bass player first. He is pretty good, but he’s wrong for the band, a little too flashy, a little too punk. Howard and Terry favor Jim Mitchell, who has been playing in clubs around town for a couple of years. He is accomplished and serious. He has a good voice on harmony. Jim is a high tenor, and he can cover material that the rest of them can’t. Even though he has been playing contemporary covers and a lot of straight jazz, he’s interested and good enough to pick up their material easily.

  “He’s just not right,” Bad says.

  “You mean because he’s black,” Terry answers.

  That has nothing to do with it, Bad insists. He is just too contemporary. He’ll get bored and quit on them in a couple of months and they will be back where they started. He’
s a nice enough kid, but Bad doesn’t quite trust him. He seems unreliable.

  “Because he’s black,” Terry says.

  “Listen, goddamn it, black doesn’t have anything to do with anything. If it wasn’t for Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker, I’d still be playing pluck and strum, and you wouldn’t be playing at all. I learned to play listening to the meanest blue-gum nigger blues I could find, and I’d drive all night to find it. I don’t have a damned thing against niggers.”

  “But you don’t want one in your band.”

  “My band. Remember that. My band. If I want it to be all white, it’ll be all white, or all purple, or all green. But that’s my decision, not yours.”

  Bad prefers Al Lovett, just down from Michigan, a welder who is out of work. He is in his late forties, and down on his luck. He has been playing honky-tonks on weekends for years and knows traditional material pretty well. His playing is unspectacular, but he keeps the beat and only misses an occasional shift. Rust, Al explains; he hasn’t played in a couple of months. His voice isn’t as steady as Jim’s and he’s a baritone, close to Bad.

  That’s a real problem, Terry points out. He can handle harmony, but if he wants to do solos, he’s going to be walking in Bad’s territory.

  Still, he may be the right choice, Bad thinks.

  “Amateur night,” Terry says, “but he’s white, that’s a big plus.”

  “And that’s a big mouth for a sideman,” Bad says.

  He is up early, in his underwear, trying to get the coffee brewed before his program comes on the television. He has taken most of the food from the lower cabinets and stacked it on the counter so he doesn’t have to bend down to get it. He has the coffee and coffeepot at hand, but he doesn’t have a lot of room to work. The electric can opener is behind a stack of tomato cans, and he’s using a hand-cranked opener.

  He gets the coffee started and turns on the television. There is a twenty percent chance of rain. Mostly that means hotter and more humid. The tomatoes in the backyard need rain, but he hasn’t tried to walk with his crutches on wet pavement yet. Suddenly, the most innocent things have become treacherous.

  He has a cup of coffee in front of him and a Pall Mall in his mouth when the sissy shrieks at him for the first time. He pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and tries to hide it. He is sure that if the sissy saw him smoking, his feelings would be hurt. It would be like hurting a puppy—a particularly obnoxious and ugly puppy, but a puppy. “What are you doing?” the sissy shrieks.

  “Let’s go. Let’s get that fat. It’s time to get moving.” The sissy is wearing tight gray sweat pants and a purple undershirt. His face looks as if someone had tried to compress it in a vise. A bright-orange ball of hair surrounds his head, reminding Bad of a walnut wrapped in an orange pot-scrubber.

  “Are you ready?” the sissy screams.

  Bad takes a quick drag off his cigarette and snuffs it out. He has forgotten how much he hates this little person.

  “Let’s go, count it out: one, two, three.”

  The sissy is windmilling his arms and then twisting and bending forward. The windmilling Bad can handle, but the bending and twisting takes care and concentration. He bends tentatively forward, trying hard to keep his balance. He can only bend about forty degrees before his balance begins to give and his breathing is constricted.

  “Let’s go. Keep it up. Don’t fall behind.”

  Now the sissy is hopping from one leg to the other. This one is out of the question. Bad falls back onto the sofa and takes a sip of coffee. Then the sissy is flat on the floor on his stomach. “Let’s get that fanny, now. Firm it up. Come on.”

  Bad falls forward to the floor and lifts his head toward the TV. The sissy is lifting his legs from the floor, alternating left and right. Bad’s right goes up, but the left is carrying five extra pounds. “One,” he huffs, “two, three.”

  “Don’t slow down,” the sissy warns. “Keep those legs going. Now, on your back for some tummy work.”

  Bad rolls over onto his back and tries to catch his breath. The sissy is doing quick sit-ups, coming up to upright, his arms thrust straight forward. Bad lunges heavily up, and lets himself fall back to the floor. He lurches up again, and sees that every time he comes up, his cock slips out the fly of his shorts. He adjusts his shorts, embarrassed in front of the sissy.

  “One, two, three, down. You’re slowing down.”

  “You’re speeding up, you little shit.” Bad grunts. “Tempo, for Christ’s sake.” He settles back down to the floor. It is bad that they have a sissy doing this. It’s worse that he has the personality of a Pomeranian that has eaten a Benzedrine inhaler, but it is unforgivable that he has no sense of tempo.

  “Now for the bust.” The sissy is swinging his arms from his sides, clapping them together in front of him. “Come on,” the sissy shrieks, “let’s fight those droops.”

  Bad keeps slapping his hands together in front of him, fighting his droops and imagining he is clapping his hands over the sissy’s ears.

  “You weren’t born fat,” the sissy tells him. “You weren’t born with bad habits. You did this to yourself, so don’t let up.” The sissy jumps up and begins running in place. Bad fires up a Pall Mall and sends a stream of smoke toward the screen. He has a headache and he is wheezing. He wants a drink, but he hobbles out to the kitchen for another cup of coffee.

  When he comes back, the sissy is gone, and a set of cars fills the screen. Little trucks and jeeps, with headlights that work, twist around a plastic track, up over a bridge, and then just miss each other at the intersection of a figure eight. Jesus, he bets Buddy would just love that. At the end of the commercial, he writes down the brand name so he can ask for it at the toy store.

  The tomatoes are sad. Terry has put water on them, but he hasn’t cared for them. Bad works his way through the rows, checking for flowers trying to set fruit in the September heat. It is starting to cool a little at night, and they should be setting again soon. He turns leaves over, inhaling their musty scent, tracing the dry, brown worm tracks until he finds the green cutworm and plucks it delicately from the stem, then with a snap of his wrist spins it splattering into the side of the house. He resets the stakes that have been pulled down in the dry ground by the weight of the plants. Then, gingerly, he eases down to his knees and begins to pick at weeds that have come up.

  The dill hasn’t held up, and the basil is starting to shrivel a little. The onions and garlic are browning at the tops, but should be about done by now anyway. Rosemary tangles through the edge of the garden. The peppers—bell and Anaheim chili—are tall and luxuriant in the heat.

  Once, in Tennessee, he had a Japanese gardener who kept his two-acre yard clipped, cleaned and trimmed. There were flowers from spring through the first frost. When a plant started to brown and wither, it was pulled out and replaced. Bad had nothing to do with it. He walked with Marge sometimes in the evening, admiring the guitar-shaped rosebed in the middle of the backyard. Marge brought cut flowers into the house, but Bad never touched a plant.

  He pulls up a carrot from the bed he has carefully cultivated, digging deep and working in sand and gypsum to break up the heavy clay gumbo soil. The carrot is pale and long, with clumps of black dirt clinging to its roots. He moves slowly over to the faucet and carries the hose back, running just a trickle, and sets it carefully at the base of a tomato plant. Guy Clark got it right, he thinks. “There are only two things money can’t buy: / True love and homegrown tomatoes.”

  He thinks about the bass player. There is no question that Jim Mitchell is the best player. And he doesn’t dislike niggers, he tells himself, he really doesn’t. It just wouldn’t work. One snappy black jazz bass player in a country band would change things. He likes the kid’s technique and his style, and he admires his ability to understand the movement of a song and augment it well. Hell, there are lots of good black bands that would love to have a kid like that.

  Bad decides on Al, and calls Terry about it. When it come
s right down to it, Jim is the right choice. He’s the better player, and his voice is a contribution, not a distraction. Bad’s choice, he says, is based on wanting to hire the guy who is out of work instead of the one who just wants to change bands. “Sometimes you’re just too sentimental,” Terry says.

  “You’ve got to stop sending Buddy all these toys,” Jean tells him from Santa Fe.

  “But damn, honey, you just got to see these little cars. The little boogers just scoot around that track like the devil was chasing them. He’s just going to get a real kick out of them. I want to be there to see him when he runs them.”

  “Bad, you’re spoiling him. He thinks you’re Santa Claus and every day’s Christmas. He’s got to understand things don’t work that way.”

  “But he’s just a little kid. He’s got to have fun. And hell, I’m having a ball buying this stuff. And he’s got to know his Uncle Bad is thinking of him.”

  “You’re not his uncle, Bad.”

  “Well, hell. Look, I think I’m hooked on toy stores. If I can’t send these things to him, they’ll just clutter up my house. I’ll be playing with them all the time, and I’ll never get any of my work done. I’m doing myself a favor, don’t you see?”

  “At least taper off, Bad. I’m serious. I don’t want a greedy little monster on my hands who thinks he’s just supposed to get toys for no reason.”

  “Jean, I got a reason. I mean, when I was a kid in Indiana, I had frogs, and pigs and chickens, squirrels, possums and rabbits to play with. What’s poor old Buddy got there in Santa Fe? You got any possums for him to hunt? There ain’t a single bullfrog in that swimming pool there, I checked.”

  “Bad, you’re making me into the villain here.”

  “Aw, no, hon. I don’t want to do that.”

  “Then just stop sending this stuff, please.”

  “The cars are already on their way.”

  “Then that’s it, please?”