Crazy Heart

by Thomas Cobb

  “I thought you’d live in Nashville.”

  “I could, I suppose. I’ve still got some friends there, and I go back now and again, but I couldn’t live there. I could find a lot of work as a sideman, you know. But I’m not a sideman. I know some who have gone from front men to sidemen. It doesn’t work. It drives them crazy. No. I’ve got my own band in Houston. They’re good boys and a good band. We play in a club there, and we do all right. It’s steady and we do what we want to.”

  “Does it bother you? I mean, that you’re not as big as you once were?”

  “I like what I’m doing. That’s something. There’s a world of people who don’t like what they’re doing and never have. Would I like to be back on top again? Hell yes, I would. It was good up there. I liked the money, I liked the fame. I liked it a lot. Too much, in fact. But I’d like to have another shot at it. I’d do it better this time. I’ve learned a few things over the years. And I guess one of the things I’ve learned is that I can live without all of that.

  “And then, maybe I ain’t done yet. I’ve been writing songs again. I’m doing another album with Tommy. You remember Tommy? You were probably too young, but he used to be at the house all the time. And then I have this deal cooking with a guy who’s running for Congress. I’m going to campaign for him. Things may be coming around again. You never can tell.”

  “Good,” Steven says. “It sounds good.”

  They have exited the San Diego Freeway and are on the Santa Monica, heading west. Bad looks out over the stretch of rooftops that gradually disappear in haze. “I remember this road. I remember it all purple from some kind of tree that bloomed along here.”

  “Jacarandas. They’re still here. In spring and early summer they still bloom like crazy. Some days you can see them through the smog.”

  They ride on in silence, off the freeway at Lincoln and north, up a street for two blocks, then left for another to an apartment building behind locked wrought-iron gates. “This looks nice. Good and secure.”

  “I’ve lived here a couple of years. It’s O.K. I like it all right.”

  “Close to the beach?”

  “It’s about a mile. I don’t go very often.”

  “What do you do for fun?”

  “The usual. There’s a pool here, and a tennis court. I watch TV, go to the movies.”

  Bad struggles out of the car, working his crutches from the back-seat and through the door. “No girlfriends?”

  “No. A wife.”

  “A wife? Jesus. It never occurred to me you might be married. How long? What’s her name?”

  “Judy. You’ll meet her. We got married a year ago in July.”

  “My God. I had no idea. “I guess congratulations are in order.”

  “Thanks. You’ll like her.” Then, “She convinced me to call you.”

  Steven helps him slowly up a winding wrought-iron stairway to a second-story apartment. Inside, it is sparsely furnished, mostly in white and chrome and glass. This is, Bad assumes, a sign of taste. It looks cold to him. Steven leads him to the white sofa and helps him down.

  “Mr. Blake.” A tall, thin blonde in T-shirt and shorts, barefoot, has come into the room. She reaches out her hand. “Don’t get up. I’m Judy.”

  “Judy, I don’t believe I could get up. I’m kind of scrunched down here. But I’m real happy to meet you. And call me Bad, please.”

  “Can I get you something to drink? A beer maybe? I know Steve will want a beer.” Steve is across the room at the TV set.

  “Would you have anything a little stronger?”

  “I’m sorry. We have beer and wine. We really don’t drink.”

  “Beer’s fine. And do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Go right ahead. We have an ashtray somewhere. I’ll bring it with the beers.”

  “Who’s playing?” Bad asks.

  “Rams and Bengals. They’re in Cincinnati.”

  “Who’s going to win?” Bad really has no interest in the game, but he is grateful for a distraction.

  But it is Judy who makes small talk, running for beers, getting a chair to rest Bad’s ankle on. Steven watches the football game and makes noncommittal answers. From Judy he learns that Marge spent most of her life as a buyer for sportswear at The Broadway, never remarried, though she had a relationship with another buyer that lasted nearly ten years. She died of lymphoma after a year and a half of treatment. Steven adds a comment or clarification here and there.

  And it is Judy who brings out the sweater box full of pictures. The pictures go all the way back to Marge as a girl. There are pictures of their wedding, pictures he has forgotten even existed. Bad in wide-lapeled western suits, always with a scarf knotted at the neck, Bad in shirts spangled with sequined wagon wheels and cactus. Marge in a dress that billows around her body and gathers in again at the knee. There is a picture of Bad playing guitar to Steven on the blue velvet sofa. The skinny kid, grinning, with a beer in his hand, is Tommy Sweet.

  In the pictures, Steven grows up, from infant to man lounging by the pool, Judy at his side. In between are school pictures, vacation pictures, several including a man Bad does not recognize. Steven as cub scout and boy scout. Steven in football gear, and standing stiffly in suit and tie next to a girl in a formal dress. Steven’s high school graduation picture could be a picture of a young Bad Blake in a green cap and gown.

  Marge ages subtly, holding her looks through most of the pictures, until near the end, sick, she becomes a very old woman. Judy takes two pictures out and holds them together. They seem to be pictures of Marge taken ten years apart. “One year,” Judy said. “It happened that fast and that hard.”

  Gradually, Steven is drawn in. “That was when I was seventeen,” he says of one picture. “We were living in Culver City then.” When Bad asks why she never married the thin, balding man who appears in many of the pictures, Steve answers. “She told me that once was enough. It changed things. So they just kept seeing each other.”

  “He ever move in?” Bad asks suddenly.

  “No. He was around most of the time. I’m sure they talked about it, but they never did. He was really broken up when she died. He comes by every week or so. He’s really sad.”

  Bad wants to say something about his own sorrow, but feels he is intruding on grief that he has no right to. Grief seems to belong to this man who watched while Bad’s son grew up away from him. “What did she tell you about me?”

  “Not much really. She never lied, and if I asked her something she would tell me, but she never volunteered much. I knew who you were. For a while, I must have been nine or ten, I told everybody I knew, everybody I met, that you were my father. No one ever believed me. I mean, we had different names, you weren’t around. Finally, I just gave up, and after that I never told anyone.”

  “Steve and I had been going out for nearly a year before he told me he was your son.”

  “It never seemed to matter very much.”

  “She told you about the drinking?”

  “Not at first. But later she did, yeah. Once, I was sixteen or seventeen, still in high school anyway, I came home one night really ripped. I thought she was going to kill me. She started hitting me. First she slapped me, and then it was like she couldn’t stop. The next day she told me about you and what she went through.”

  “I won’t lie to you, either. She went through hell. I made her life about as miserable as it’s possible to make someone’s. I was one mean son-of-a-bitch back then.”

  “Did you beat her?”

  “Once. I hit her once. I used to bust up the furniture pretty regular. I liked to throw television sets out of windows. I’d always find the expensive stuff. If I couldn’t throw it, I’d throw stuff at it. Anyway, one night I busted up most of the bedroom, and instead of running like she usually did, Marge tried to stop me. I just hauled off and backhanded her. She was such a little thing. I knocked her about halfway across the room. After that I sobered up for a while. I must have quit drinking for about six mo
nths, and then I just got started up again. It was about a year later that she left.”

  “You still drink.”

  “Yeah. I still drink. I guess I always will now. But I don’t drink like that anymore. I don’t go on benders, and I don’t get drunk. It may not be right, but it’s a hell of a lot better than it was.”

  “And women and drugs.”

  “That, too. I did all of that. I mean, part of that is road life. I mean, you can’t know unless you’ve done it, what it’s like to be on the road for a couple of months at a time, living in a touring bus with a hotel thrown in every once in a while for variety. You get bored, think you’re going crazy. And there are always women and drugs and booze, and they pass the time for you. I’m not making excuses now. There are people who go on the road and they handle it. They have it all worked out, and they deal with it all. Part of my problem was that I didn’t make it, really make it, big until I was in my thirties. And I had been doing it for fifteen years. By that time I figure I must have spent at least a damn five years of my life on a bus, mostly as someone’s sideman.

  “When it got to where it was finally my bus, my sidemen, my show and my songs, I just figured everything else was mine, too. I knew I had paid my dues, a hell of a lot of dues, more than a lot of people do, and I also knew that the world owed me. All that stuff was just interest on a great big debt that the world was going to have to start paying back to old Bad Blake. And I guess I figured that Marge was supposed to understand that, to understand that I was just collecting on my debt, just like a banker. What she understood that I didn’t understand, didn’t understand until years and years later, was that she and you were the payoff, principal and interest. It’s the damn shame of the world, the way you don’t figure things out until it’s too goddamned late to do anything about it.”

  “Is that what this is?”

  “What?”

  “Trying to do something when it’s too late.”

  “Steve. Bad,” Judy says, “let me get you guys another beer.”

  “Maybe,” Bad says, “maybe that’s just what it is. It’s too late to do anything about Marge, that’s for sure.”

  “What were you going to do for her?”

  “I don’t know. Tell her I loved her, mostly. Tell her I never stopped loving her. You know, I had two more wives after her. I’ve had four altogether. But damn, I really loved her.”

  “And what do you want to do about me?”

  Bad waits, then digs in his pocket. He pulls out a sheaf of bills in the gold money clip.

  “I don’t need money. I make good money, so does Judy.”

  “No. Not money. I bought this on your eighteenth birthday. I was going to send it to you, but I didn’t know how. I’ve been carrying it ever since, just in case I ever found you. Here, it’s yours.” He hands Steven the money clip. “It’s a little worn, but it’s real.”

  Steven takes the money clip, holding it by its edges as if it were delicate or dangerous. It is battered and scratched. He keeps looking at it as if mystified. Then he tosses it back in Bad’s lap. “Keep it,” he says. “I don’t want it. I don’t want anything from you. I gave up wanting from you years and years ago.”

  Bad looks at the money clip in his lap. He picks it up and sets it on the coffee table. “Why the hell did you call me back?”

  “I told you, Judy convinced me I should meet you.”

  “How. How did she convince you?”

  “She said I needed to.”

  “Is this what you wanted to see, an old, fat singer, pretty close to broke down? The busted ankle is an extra, no charge. I don’t know what the hell you want. I know what I want. I wanted to see my son, to know he’s all right. I wanted to know that you grew up and you did all right. I’ve seen that. I guess I better go.”

  Bad gets his crutches and works his way up. “I’d appreciate it if you’d call me a cab.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “No. Call a cab. I don’t want to put either of us through any more of this. You think maybe you want an apology. All right. I apologize. I understand what I was, and I understand my fault in all of this. But if you’re thinking that I was having a wonderful time during the last twenty years, let me explain a couple of things to you.

  “There may have been a day or two in those twenty years that I didn’t think about you. There may have been. But by God, I don’t remember a single one. I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life wondering what happened to my wife and son, and at the same time, I knew that whatever happened was my damned fault and there was nothing I could do about it. Not a damned thing. I wondered what you were doing and what you were thinking, what you looked like and what you liked to do. I bought that damned money clip because I didn’t know one goddamned thing about you. I didn’t know if you were short or tall or skinny or fat, if you liked sports or cars or what. I went to get you a present for your eighteenth birthday, and all I could find was a goddamned money clip, and then I didn’t know where to send the fucking thing.”

  “Crap.”

  “What?”

  “I said ‘crap.’ That’s all it is. You come here after twenty years and find me because you say we’ve got to talk. But you aren’t talking to me, you’re giving me a load of crap.”

  “Call me a goddamned cab.”

  “No. Sit down. You’ve had your say. I’m going to have mine. You didn’t know anything about me. You didn’t know where I lived. Well, I lived right here. Right in Los Angeles, where you found me when you tried to find me. As long as I can remember, Mom had her name in the L.A. directory. It would have cost you a dime to call information and find us anytime you wanted to. If you were so damned concerned about my birthdays, all you had to do was make two phone calls. I don’t think you ever cared enough to even make a phone call to me. I don’t think you cared twenty cents’ worth.”

  Bad sinks back to the sofa. “That’s not true. I cared. I always cared. I was scared, mostly. I came looking for you right away. The record company stopped me, afraid that between grief and booze I might finally snap. Later there were injunctions—court orders to keep me away. After that I was just afraid to face up to what I had done. I pretended it was all Marge’s fault. The longer it went on, the worse it seemed. In nineteen sixty-nine I came to town for a show in Inglewood and I found your mother, but she was a step ahead of me and she had shipped you off somewhere. You were staying with one of her friends. I followed her for two days but she never got near wherever she had you stashed. And she called the cops because I was following her. I spent two hours in the North Hollywood police station, glad-handing cops and talking my way out. But mostly I was afraid. It all comes down to that. I was afraid of what I used to be. I didn’t want to look at that again.”

  Steven walks over to the television set, adjusts the volume and then switches it off. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter how much you talk. You can’t talk away twenty years. When I was a kid, I’d hear you singing ‘Slow Boat’ and I’d think about you coming back, and we’d all get on this boat and just sail off someplace together.”

  “Did your mother tell you I wrote that song for her?”

  “No. And that’s not the point anyway.”

  “I did. Right after we were married. I still sing it. God, do I still sing it. And I never sing it without thinking of her, and you. Everywhere I go, people want to hear ‘Slow Boat,’ and I keep doing it, and every time I do it, it hurts. It’s like this little burr that keeps sticking me. Funny, isn’t it? That’s the one song everyone will remember me for.”

  “What are you telling me this for? What do you want from me?”

  “My son back.”

  “You’ve come to the wrong place. I’m Marge’s son.”

  “I guess I’ll go, then. There doesn’t seem to be any more to say.”

  “I guess there isn’t.”

  “Well, you take care of yourself. Judy, it was real nice to meet you. Think it over. Call me if you want.”

  “I d
on’t think so.”

  In his motel room, he wakes to a woman’s voice. It is still dark and smoky in the room. “Bad,” she says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would be like that. Forgive me.” Gradually, he recognizes the voice and face as Judy’s. She is sitting on the edge of the bed. She reaches out and touches his forehead. “I wanted to do the right thing,” she says. Things just don’t work out, Bad explains. No matter how much you want them to, they just don’t work out. Her hand is soft and warm, stroking his face. She leans to him, as if comforting a child. He reaches his left arm around her shoulder and pulls, his right hand going naturally to her breast.

  He sees the flash of light and his face goes cold. Steven is standing at the side of the bed, Judy at his side, the bloody razor in his hand. Bad holds the flap of skin to his cheek, trying to reattach it. Everything is slippery with blood, and the skin keeps sliding off his face. “Things just never work,” Steven says as he and Judy walk out the door. Bad does not know how to hold the blood in.

  “It is seven o’clock,” the voice on the phone says. He is covered with sweat and the air conditioner works with a steady rush of cold air over him. He lies still, trying to orient himself. He is in California, but he is leaving.

  He gets a standby seat on the noon flight. Buckling himself in, he calculates that it is a three-hour flight, but he will arrive in Houston at five o’clock tonight. Yesterday he gained two hours and walked into his past. This afternoon, he gives them back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He has three days before Jean comes to town, two weeks before he gets the cast off. What he has to do is clean the house up before she gets in. When he looks, he sees dirt he hasn’t seen before. The furniture is old, the pictures on the wall are crooked. There are records scattered over the floor. The walls need paint, the wood floors are scuffed and scratched. There is grease caked around the burners of the stove, the kitchen faucet leaks.

  He could, he supposes, hire someone to come in and do this. He is, after all, a cripple. But he starts, first just straightening up, sweeping and vacuuming. Then he begins to wash the door and window frames. He moves to the kitchen and works on the stove, the refrigerator, the cabinets. This done, the floor looks even grimier than it had. He gets a bucket and a mop. He mops with one hand, balancing on his crutch.