Crazy Heart

by Thomas Cobb

  “Nine here.”

  “God. I’m hung over. I called him last night.”

  “Steven? You called Steven?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How is he? What did he say?”

  “Marge is dead. Two years.”

  “Oh Bad. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. God, my head. I think my skull is going to crack.”

  “What did he say? I mean, what did he say about you?”

  “He didn’t want to talk. I can’t blame him, I guess. I wouldn’t feel real good about me, either, if I was him. He’s not real happy with me.”

  “Bad, I’m sorry. I think this is my fault. I pushed you into this. I should have minded my own business.”

  “No. It’s not your fault. I did what I had to. You just reminded me that I had to do it. But listen, I can’t talk. I feel like stepped-on shit. I’ll call you later. I’ve got to go.”

  When his foot hits the floor, he figures out that he is still drunk. He can’t make his knees carry him in a straight line. When he puts his weight on the cast, it throws him off balance and he lurches violently. He bangs into the dresser and then drops to the floor. He crawls into the bathroom on hands and knees. He is hanging on to the rim of the toilet, in the middle of his retching, when the crying starts, and he can’t stop either of them.

  He wakes still on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. His left arm is numb and his body is wet with sweat. He doesn’t try to get up but crawls back to the bedroom and hoists himself back into the bed, pulling the still damp sheets and bedspread over him, so cold he’s shivering, and falls back to sleep.

  This time when the phone rings, he comes wide awake. His head still hurts, but it is clearer now.

  “Bad,” Terry says, “you O.K.?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Two-thirty. We’re waiting on you here. We were supposed to start at two. You forget?”

  “Shit. No. I didn’t forget. You all started yet?”

  “We’re waiting on you.”

  “You get them started. Run through as many of the standards as you can. Run through all the songs you and Ted sing. Let Al and Howard get in as much work as they can.”

  “You coming?”

  “Hell yes, I’m coming. I’ll be a little bit yet, but I’m coming. Now you get everyone going. I’ll catch up when I get there.”

  “Jesus,” Terry says. “You had one hell of a time last night. Good or bad—one hell of a time.”

  “I hope to God,” Bad says, “none of you ever feels like this. I really mean that. If you ever do, God help you, remember that I came to work and so will you. I really mean that, too.”

  When they have run through an hour and a half of practice, Bad breaks it up. The bar is starting to fill. When you rehearse in a bar, it’s inevitable that people are going to be around, but he has never gotten used to rehearsing in front of an audience. You rehearse in private and you don’t play for an audience until you are absolutely ready.

  While the others are packing up and leaving, Bad goes to the bar for a beer to settle his stomach and clear his head. Kim is behind the bar, cleaning up. She draws him a draft. “Wayne says you got a girlfriend in Albuquerque.”

  “Santa Fe.”

  “Whatever. He said I’m supposed to explain to you about geographic desirability.”

  “Kim, darlin’, I got a stove-in head. I don’t think I want to hear this right now.”

  “It’s simple, really,” she says. She goes on to explain a complex mathematical formula, based on how much you want a person, divided by the number of miles away they live. It involves factoring in a number of variables including drinking patterns, drug use, number and ages of children living at home, and number and gender of roommates. “Now,” she says, “let’s say there’s this guy—in your case, a girl—and he’s about an eight and a half, because he’s really good-looking and you figure you can have a pretty good time. Now, let’s say he drinks a lot. A lot is enough so he gets down to serious partying but not so much that he can’t follow through, right? O.K., that’s another half a point. Now, he may be married, though he says he’s divorced, but you’re not sure, maybe, maybe not—that’s a half a point off. Anyway, he’s got a place where you can go, so that’s the half a point back on. So he’s still a nine, right? And there are no children, so that’s a full point added. But say there’s a roommate. Only the roommate is also a guy, and he’s cool, so that’s only a half a point off.”

  “What if the roommate is a woman?”

  “That’s beaucoup points off. Unless she’s cool, too, and you’re into that sort of thing, and then you add points, how many is up to you. Anyway, now you’ve got yourself a nine and a half, and anything over an eight is a definite ‘go for it.’ Are you following all this?”

  “Kim, I had a headache before you started this.”

  “Wait, wait. This is the crucial part. Now let’s say that you live in the FM 1960 area like I do, and this guy, he lives in Bellaire. Now, that’s about twenty miles. That’s a good forty-five minutes when the freeways are clear, but a good hour to an hour and a half when they’re not, like early in the morning when you’re trying to get home. O.K.? So what you do is figure one point for every ten miles, so that’s two points, and then you divide his value—nine and a half, remember—by two. Now he’s only a four and three quarters. Do you really want to waste your time on a four and three quarters?”

  “What if he’s got a great car or a nice house?”

  “You figure that in when you’re figuring in his value. I mean, a really great car is worth two or three points all by itself, and a real house, that’s really his, that can be five. I mean, this is all a real scientific formula. Now, how far away is Santa Fe?”

  “Eight hundred and seventy-nine miles.”

  “Oh, my God, Bad. You’ve got to divide her by eighty-eight.”

  “Is Wayne in his office?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “I’m going back. Bring me another draft, will you?”

  “Think about it. Eighty-eight.”

  Wayne is at his desk when Bad swings in. He doesn’t look up. “New guy sounds pretty good from back here.”

  “He’s O.K. He isn’t top-drawer, but he’s O.K. By Saturday night we’ll be pretty close to full throttle again.”

  “How’s the ankle doing?”

  “Better. I figured out how to scratch under it with a bent-out coat hanger.”

  “Bad, she’s got to be a minus number. She’s just got to,” Kim says as she sets the beer down in front of him, bending low, showing off the butterfly tattoo over her breast.

  Wayne looks up and then waits until Kim is out of the office. “Geographic desirability?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ain’t that a bitch? The first time she ran that one by me, I almost dropped my teeth. I mean, she’s got a number for everything. And this is a gal who thinks Mount Rushmore is natural.”

  “Good head for a dumb girl.”

  “You’d know more about that than me. What’s with the beer? You cutting back?”

  “Hangover. Chocolate milk shakes and beer are the only things that work.”

  “Quitting works. I miss drinking every now and then, but I sure as hell don’t miss the hangovers.”

  “I called my son last night.”

  “Your son? You mean, from back…from Marge?”

  “Yeah. He wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “How the hell did you find him?”

  “I looked him up in the phone book. It was that easy.”

  “I’ll be roped and doped. And he wouldn’t talk to you?”

  “No. He told me about Marge, though. She’s dead. She died two years ago of cancer. I never knew. I never had any idea.”

  “Jesus, Bad, I’m sorry.”

  “I loved her, Wayne. I really goddamn loved her. And now she’s gone.”

  “I know you did. I know. I’m not sure you ever actually said it, but I know. I always knew. Hell, what c
an I say? I’m sorry, really sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  “No. There ain’t nothing anyone can do now. It just feels over, you know? I’ve felt bad before—hell, I’ve felt worse than I ever thought it was possible to feel—but I never felt over before. Jesus Lord.”

  “Oh, come on, Bad. You’re not over. Hell, I know how you must feel, but you’re doing all right. You’re writing songs again, you’ve got yourself a new girlfriend. You’ve got a long way to go yet, buddy.”

  “No. I’m writing songs I can’t get recorded. And I’ve got a girlfriend who’s eighteen years younger than I am. Hell, she’s got a kid young enough to be my grandkid.”

  “Oh hell. My God, man, you were seeing Kim. She’s twenty-eight. Maybe it takes a young woman to keep up with you. I’ll tell you what. Let me call Larry to come in tonight. We’ll go do something, you and me. What do you say?”

  “No. That’s O.K. I think I’ll just go on home.”

  “Come on, Bad. I’ve been working my butt off here the last couple of weeks. I could use a night off. We can just go out to the house if you like. It’s been a while since you saw Shirley. She’d like to see you. She’s been asking about you. You ought to stop in and say hi. I seem to remember she was baking something when I left this afternoon.”

  “No. I suspect I wouldn’t be real good company tonight. You tell her I’ll be by to see her soon.”

  “Well, let’s go to a movie or something. I haven’t seen a movie in God’s own green time. We’ll go see Clint Eastwood or something. There’s always a Clint Eastwood picture around.”

  “Wayne, I appreciate what you’re doing here. But I’m O.K. I just need some time to myself, you know?”

  “The hell you need time alone. The last thing you need is time alone. And I ain’t going to leave you alone. You and me are going out and have us a good time. You can fuss about that all you like. But you ain’t going home to pick at your scabs.”

  Bad protests and Wayne insists. “I’m right,” Wayne says as he climbs into the van, “you’ll see. If you go home, you’ll just brood, and then you’ll start drinking; tomorrow morning you’ll wake up feeling worse than you did today.”

  “No,” Bad says. “This morning I woke up a half step above dead. An hour later, I’d slipped back a quarter step. It’s not possible to feel any worse.”

  “I never wake up like that anymore.”

  “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. They wake up knowing that’s as good as they are going to feel all day.”

  “Jack Lemmon. The Apartment. Funny line as long as you don’t believe it.”

  “No temperance lectures tonight.”

  “Right. What do you want to do?”

  “I want to go home. You want to do something, not me.”

  “How about a movie?”

  “No. No movies.”

  “Well, we can’t play golf or go bowling. How about baseball?”

  “I’ve seen baseball. The Astros don’t play it.”

  “Hell, I know. Take a left here. Get on Forty-five and head north to the house.”

  “Wayne, I love you, and Shirley too, but I really don’t want to sit around and visit tonight.”

  “No. No, Bad. We’re going fishing.”

  “It’s getting dark, I got a busted ankle. We can’t go fishing. I don’t have any equipment.”

  “We’re going night fishing. We’re going to stop at the house and pick up tackle, and then head for the lake. It’s forty-five minutes away, my boat’s there. We’re going fishing.”

  On the lake, the slight breeze moves across the water and cools them off. They are both rank with Cutter, but the mosquitoes keep at them anyway. Bad is in the prow of the boat, wearing the orange life jacket Wayne insists on. At first Bad objects, figuring that if they went over, the cast would take on water and pull him down anyway, but wearing it shuts Wayne up. He sips at a beer and looks up at the sky.

  “Stars,” he says. “That may be the best thing about the road. Jesus…Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah. You should have seen the stars.”

  “Right here,” Wayne says, “right here there are the biggest damn catfish you ever saw.” He pulls a chicken liver out of a plastic container and smells it. “Damn,” he says, pulling his head back. “It’s too fresh. I told that guy I wanted old. He gave me fresh.” He works the chicken liver onto the hook, attaches a lead sinker on another ten inches of line below the hook and lets the line out overboard, then reels up the slack. “Here,” he says, handing it to Bad, “that one’s yours.”

  “You ever go froggin’?”

  “Nope, never have.”

  “I used to go out with my daddy and later my brother. We’d go out when it got good and dark, with a lantern and gigs. You got to keep walking the bank with the lantern toward the water and try to see beyond it. All you see is the frog’s eyes sticking out of the water. But as long as the light’s in his eyes, he won’t move. You aim the gig right under the eyes, and just pull him out.”

  “It doesn’t seem hardly fair, sticking a poor damn blind frog.”

  “That’s what the frogs keep saying. But it takes some skill. You got to be good to get close enough for the light to be right in their eyes. And they’re damn good eating. I used to love that. I’d walk along behind my old man all night, and he’d never say a word to me. He’d gig the frogs, and I’d carry the croaker sack for him. He’d never say a word. I mean, even when we got back to the truck, the most he’d say was ‘You got them frogs?’ and I’d say ‘Yessir’; he’d sling them into the back of the truck and we’d drive home. The next morning, he’d go out and skin them, and Momma would fry the legs for dinner. And every damn time, when he’d sit down at the table, he’d look at me and say, ‘The boy got us a mess of frogs last night.’”

  “You never talk much about your old man.”

  “There ain’t a lot to say. He never had a lot to say. He spent most of his life listening to my momma rag on him about his drinking and being shiftless. He was just a dirt farmer, mainly, did odd jobs. We were stinking poor. But he kept us fed. I don’t remember ever being very hungry. You know, the damnedest thing, he never talked much around the house, but he’d go down to the store and get with his cronies, and he’d tell these big windies all day long. I remember him telling this story about running shine with friends of his. I don’t know whether he actually did it or not, but I suspect he probably did.

  “Anyway, this one night he was tearing down the road toward Mitchell and suddenly there is this trooper right behind him. He was in somebody’s car, some souped-up Ford, and this trooper was right on his tail, siren going, lights flashing, lighting up the woods on both sides of the road. They were going down these one-lane dirt roads nearly full out. When they got to the straight road, he says he just let that thing go full tilt, up over a hundred when the trooper finally got wise and backed out. He claimed he would have gone faster than that if he had to, just to spare the trooper the humiliation of it all.”

  “Humiliation?”

  “That’s right, humiliation. You see, he claimed that night they weren’t running any shine, they were just having a race, and he was running fifth.”

  “Hold it.”

  “I didn’t say it was a true story.”

  “No. I mean hold it. I got a bite.”

  Even though he can’t see, he can feel movement as Wayne sets the hook, pulling up quickly but steadily with his body. Then he hears the slight whir of the reel. “He’s on. I got you, you son-of-a-bitch.” The fish breaks the water suddenly. Bad sees only a faint gleam, and the splash of the water. His foot is wedged under the seat of the boat, and he can’t get up. He reaches forward to help Wayne with the fish. He can see it now, but not distinctly. He reaches for it. “Hold it,” Wayne yells, “he’ll cut you. Get the light.”

  Bad searches with his hand under the seat for the flashlight. He can see the blur of the fish in front of him, and he feels the spray of water on the exposed toes of his foot. When he fi
nds the light, the catfish is on the floor of the boat, still hooked and flopping. It is a decent-sized cat, four or five pounds. Wayne is trying to work the hook out. A thin line of blood trickles down his hand as he tries to get a grip on the fish.

  “Damn, those are ugly bastards,” Wayne says.

  “We’ll dress him up in a little cornmeal, and he’ll look real nice on a plate.”

  The fish is in a bucket of water, occasionally raising a quick, furious splash in the stern of the boat, and Wayne is working another chicken liver onto his hook. “You reel yours in, too, and let’s have a look. Make sure one of the bastards didn’t slip off with your bait.”

  Bad starts to reel up and the line suddenly snags. He gives a tug; it gives and tightens again. “Hot damn, hold the phone there, Wayne.” He works it up slow, and when it breaks the surface, he lifts the rod with his arms and shoulders. Even in the moonlight, he can see the rod is bent nearly double. They are more efficient this time, trapping the fish between the seat and Bad’s cast. This one must go a good six pounds.

  “He’s a nice one,” Wayne says.

  “Son-of-a-bitch was just going to stay down there with a hook in his jaw, hoping it would go away. No telling how long I had him on there.”

  “They’ll do that every now and again,” Wayne says. He baits Bad’s hook and sends it over the side again. Bad lets the line out until he feels it slack and then tightens it. He wedges the grip of the rod under his leg and digs out a cigarette. “Anything else you need?” Wayne asks.

  “Hand me one more of those barley pops and I believe I’ll be settled for a while.” He opens the beer and takes a long swallow. He looks up to the stars. “I hate to admit this,” he says, “but this was a damn good idea.”

  “Yeah, you can get awful damn peaceful on a lake at night.”

  For a while they just drift at anchor, not conscious of how their lines might be tangling with the boat, Bad drinking his beer and smoking, Wayne puffing on his pipe.

  “Listen,” Bad says, “you know anything about this guy Rounds who’s running for Senate?”

  “Congress. Running for Congress. Yeah, I know a little. Why?”

  “What do you think of him?”