“You know what,” Jill said one Saturday morning, “I think I could manage you.”
“What do you think you’ve been doing?”
“I mean for real. Not part-time. I think if I put all my efforts into your musical career, you could really get somewhere. And I don’t mean because of my efforts, I mean because of your talents. All you need is a steady push.”
I had no arguments. Playing clubs as a stand-alone artist gave me a freedom I’d never felt before. There were no band members to contend with, no personal conflicts, no brutal ego battles. It was a pleasure to be able to think about nothing except my singing, my songs and my playing.
After Houston, Jill found a coffeehouse on McKinney Avenue in Dallas where a poet had been holding court. The owner was open to giving me a tryout. Jill, Vicky, Toby and I spent the weekend in a motel up there. The owner liked my stuff and booked me for a couple of weeks. Dallas led to a gig in Fort Worth out by Texas Christian University. Seeing that my biggest fans were college kids, Jill concentrated on that circuit. She worked like a demon.
“You know what,” she said, in her always upbeat manner, “I think we should relocate.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I think we should be operating out of a more centrally located city. Move into the big time. Better contacts. More connections.”
“What about your job?”
“I’m ready to give it up. It’s not nearly as much fun as managing you. Besides, I can find work as a bookkeeper anywhere.”
“That’s a risky move,” I said.
“No risk, no reward. Besides, much as we love Round Rock, we all need a breath of fresh air. New city, new possibilities.”
“Where are you thinking?”
“Maybe Dallas.”
“Living in Dallas would be a whole lot more expensive than living here.”
“Or Fort Worth. Fort Worth’s cheaper.”
“I like Fort Worth. How do you think Vicky would feel about it?” I asked. “We’d have to pull her out of school.”
“Every day that Vicky wakes up and sees you and me together, she’s the happiest girl in Texas. Vicky’s an adaptable kid.”
“Well, if we’re going to do this, I suppose we oughta get married.”
“What!” Jill screamed. “Why in hell would we go and do something stupid like that?”
“We’re living together. We’re already a family. Might as well make it official.”
“You’ve already tried that and it turned to shit. What’s the point of trying it again?”
“All I’m saying is that we could make it legal.”
“There’s nothing illegal about our love, Vernon. To me it’s more than legal. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt.”
“You know I feel the same.”
“Then we’re good. Like the old folks say, ‘If the damn thing ain’t broke, don’t try and fix it.’”
—
Green paper for a green light that said, “Get moving.” The move didn’t take long. When Jill makes up her mind to do something, it gets done in a hurry. We were out of Round Rock in less than a month.
It was an especially good month because Jill found herself writing poems like crazy. A lot of them were about me and our love. When she showed them to me, I immediately heard melodies. Each word seemed to carry a musical note. She called one poem, my favorite, “Surprising Love”:
Thought the dark would last forever
And night would never end
I couldn’t see past sadness
Couldn’t see beyond the bend
But then you appeared from out of the blue
Like a blessing from above
You showed up and brought with you
A beautiful surprising love
A surprising love
That changed my life in every way
A surprising love
I’ve come to cherish every day
I put the words to music, and “Surprising Love,” along with a half-dozen other songs Jill and I wrote together, became part of my repertoire.
“We’re so good together,” she said to me. “We’re good together in every possible way.”
“You’ll get no arguments from me.”
“I don’t want any arguments. I’ve had enough arguments with old boyfriends to last a lifetime. I just want harmony. I don’t want the music to ever stop.”
“It won’t,” I assured her.
It didn’t. It kept getting better. Every day in every way, life was great. We rented a small house on the west side of Fort Worth with a fenced-in backyard big enough for a swing set for Vicky and a doghouse for Toby. The elementary school was right around the corner.
Jill was forever on the phone finding places for me to play weekends. She booked me at coffeehouses close to the big state universities in Norman, Oklahoma; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Shreveport, Louisiana. We went together everywhere as a family. Sometimes Jill would take Vicky to the gigs. If you can believe it, that little girl had learned the lyrics to all my songs and, giving me the biggest smile in the world, would mouth my words as she silently sang along with me.
I was hardly making a fortune, but enough to get by. Jill, who was great at managing everything—especially money—had found part-time work keeping the books for a dress shop in downtown Fort Worth. We settled in a sweet routine that had me picking up Vicky from school during the week while, on weekends, we all headed out to wherever I was working.
Come Christmastime I’d been gigging on this circuit a couple of months.
“Let’s spend the holidays in Nashville,” said Jill.
“What’s in Nashville?”
“A club where all the record execs go to discover new talent. Turns out the owner heard about you from someone who saw you in Shreveport. Now he wants to see you for himself. Meanwhile, I’ve been talking to some execs at RCA and Capitol. I think I got them interested.”
“In a solo singer without a band?”
“You can always put a band together, Vernon. Nashville’s overrun with good musicians.”
“Everything’s going so good here in Fort Worth.”
“Fort Worth is a stepping-stone. We can’t stop here. We gotta go on. One of those A and R guys even knew about Good Friends. He’s originally from Austin and remembered when ‘Faith’ was on the radio. He’s ready to give you a fair hearing.”
“I’m not sure.”
“I am. I told him about all this great new material we got. I told him how the college kids go crazy for your stuff. What do you say?”
“You got your job.”
“They’re letting me off the week between Christmas and New Year’s. No problem.”
“I guess it makes sense.”
“Perfect sense.”
With that, Jill hugged me tight and hurried to the kitchen to start dinner.
—
No more pretty paper. If I could write on black paper, I would. Dark gray will have to do.
We left the day after spending Christmas with Jill’s whole family. The night before, I had a nightmare. I can’t remember what I dreamt, but it was so terrible I woke up in a sweat and must have screamed because I startled Jill. She kissed me gently on the forehead, put her arms around me and told me to go back to sleep. I slept uneasily and awoke at dawn, feeling shaky and unsettled.
We packed up the station wagon and headed out early. I was driving, Jill next to me and Vicky in the backseat with Toby on her lap. At first we were to leave the dog with Jill’s mom, but Vicky threw a fit, so we figured we’d just have to find a motel that allowed pets. We stopped in Texarkana for a late lunch at a barbecue joint. I can still see Toby going to town on those rib bones. Must have been three or four p.m. when we headed into the low-rise mountains outside Hot Springs, Arkansas. That’s when the
rains began. A drizzle quickly turned into a steady downpour. Then the downpour turned into a deluge.
Sensing I was a little nervous, Jill said, “I love the rain. Love to watch the rain against the windshield. Love how it makes us feel so cozy inside. Let’s sing the rain song, Vicky. What do you say?”
Together, they sang:
“Rain rain go away
Come back another day
Little Vicky wants to play
So please make everything okay.”
The last thing I remember is the sound of them singing. I still hear that sound every night when I go to sleep.
“Rain rain go away
Come back another day
Little Vicky wants to play
So please make everything okay.”
I blocked it out. I blocked out all the events that were explained to me when, days later, I woke up in a Hot Springs hospital. I blocked out the sight of an eighteen-wheeler barreling around the mountain bend. I blocked out the explosion of the truck crashing head-on into us. I blocked out the station wagon flipping over on its side. I blocked out being thrown from the car. I blocked out the truck driver, who wasn’t hurt, yelling at me not to crawl under the station wagon where I was trying to get to Jill and Vicky. I blocked out the station wagon collapsing on my legs.
My legs.
I could feel them but I couldn’t see them. I reached down to touch them. Was it all just a bad dream?
“We had no choice,” the doctor said.
A lightning bolt of terror struck my heart. “Where’s Jill? Where’s Vicky? Where’s Toby?” I asked.
“It was sudden. They experienced no pain.”
No pain—I thought to myself.
No pain.
They experienced no pain.
“Rain rain go away
Come back another day
Little Vicky wants to play
So please make everything okay.”
NO MORE PRETTY PAPER
It’s hard for me to cry. Maybe it’s just a man thing. Maybe it’s ’cause I’m used to sitting on my emotions. Whatever the reasons, I can count the times I’ve actually wept.
This was one of those times. I put down the last sheet of gray paper with Vernon’s story and felt hot tears streaming down my cheeks. The rain song that Vernon heard little Vicky sing was ringing in my ears.
Sitting in that worn-out easy chair in the Western Hotel, I felt drained. I felt frustrated that I had no more papers, frustrated that I didn’t know where Vernon was, and even if I did know, I wouldn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t know how to help him. Feeling foolish and hopeless, I wiped away the tears. I stood up and went to the window. It was a dark, gloomy October night. The neon of the Leonards department store sign lit the spot where I had first seen Vernon. I stared at that spot for a long time.
Now I knew why when he cried “pretty paper” there was so much pain in his voice. Now I knew what he’d gone through, what he had gained and what he had lost.
I went back to the easy chair, sat down and looked at the pile of paper I’d just read. I sighed a big sigh. All I could do was go to sleep, get up the next morning and, together with Brother Paul and the rest of the band, hit the road. It chilled me to remember that our next gig, my last for a while, was in Little Rock, where, on the way, we’d be driving through Hot Springs.
I don’t know what to make of the fact that our van broke down in Hot Springs. Piston and spark plug problems. We had to be hauled into a repair shop. They said it’d take a couple of hours to get us back on the road and pointed us to a café four blocks away. Walking those blocks with Brother Paul and the boys in the band, I looked up and saw that the café sat directly across the street from St. Joseph’s Hospital. I imagined that’s where Vernon had been brought after the crash.
All this meant, of course, that I couldn’t stop thinking about Vernon even if I wanted to. I wondered if, once again, there was some cosmic conspiracy at work to keep Vernon right in front of me. And if there was, what did the cosmos want me to do? I thought back to my Sunday school class and remembered what I had told the kids when they asked me what good deeds I was doing. “I’m working on a good cause,” I had said, “and you all have inspired me to keep at it.”
Well, what exactly was I keeping at? Reading Vernon’s story inspired me more than ever to help the guy, but how can you help a guy who’s disappeared without a trace? And besides, I still didn’t know what kind of help he needed. I was stuck.
“You talk to Crash?” asked Brother Paul after downing a cheeseburger and a big slice of apple pie.
Crash Stewart was the promoter booking our gigs.
“Not for a while.”
“He called you in Fort Worth when you were out. I slipped the message under your door.”
“Didn’t see it.”
“Maybe he’s got something up his sleeve,” said Paul.
“He usually does.”
The apple pie looked good, and I ordered a piece for myself. I drank a cup of coffee, got a couple of bucks’ worth of change and headed to the pay phone on the back wall of the café.
Soon as Crash picked up, I asked, “What you got cooking?”
“The Longhorn Ballroom in Dallas.”
“When?”
“Thanksgiving holiday. Four nights. Thursday through Sunday.”
“That’s a long ways off.”
“Ain’t that long.”
“How do I get by from now till Thanksgiving?”
“Go back to Nashville. Write songs.”
“I’m fresh out of ideas.”
“You’ll get an idea. You always do.”
“This time I’m really dry,” I said.
“Have a drink.”
“Drinking doesn’t help.”
“Helps me.”
“But you’re not writing. You’re promoting.”
“Promotin’ ain’t all that different from writin’. It’s creative as all hell.”
“Well, if you create some more work for me, lemme know.”
“Will do.”
The news of work, even though it was a ways off, helped my disposition. The car got fixed in time for us to make the Little Rock gig. Next morning we drove to Nashville, where I got reacquainted with the wife and kids and did manage to write a batch of new songs.
More good news came in the form of a hefty royalty check from my song “Pretty Paper” that Roy Orbison had sung and released. The tune was a hit. Of course cashing that check was another reason I couldn’t get Vernon off my mind. It’d been ten months since I’d first spotted him in front of Leonards—and not a day had passed in those ten months without me wondering about his fate.
One morning in late October, I was driving out to my publisher’s office in Goodlettsville, some twenty miles outside Nashville, where I was paid to sit and write songs. I had the radio on one of the country stations when the deejay said how happy he was to have Bambi Love in the studio with him to talk about her new release.
“It’s called ‘Crazy Love Is Good Love,’” she said. “Proud to say it’s something I wrote myself. Well, truth is, I cowrote it with my fiancé.”
“You’re talking about your producer, Slick Walters.”
“I don’t really write music. That’s Slick’s department. But I wrote the story. I’ve always been a storyteller. Slick says I’m a natural.”
“Speaking of stories,” said the deejay, “tell me something of your story. Where’d you grow up? What’s your background?”
“I’m a country girl from Wyoming. Daddy was a cowboy who worked the rodeo circuit. He roped the calves and rode the bulls. Mama was a beauty queen. She wanted me to follow in her footsteps and put me in pageants from third grade on. She’s the one who pushed me into show business.”
“How’d the music thing start?”
&nb
sp; “Slick heard me singing the national anthem at one of Daddy’s rodeos in Arizona. He said I had the best voice he’d heard since Brenda Lee. He said he’d make me a star.”
I couldn’t believe it. She was making the whole thing up.
“Looks like he’s making good on that promise.”
“He sure is,” she said.
“I know Slick has his studio right here in Nashville. I’m guessing you’ve made Nashville your home.”
“It was for a while, but right now I’m just passing through to introduce my new single. Slick knows I don’t love the cold, so he found us a place in Miami for the winter.”
“Tennessee’s loss is Florida’s gain. Thanks for dropping by, Bambi, and best of luck with the new single. Let’s give it a listen right now. Here’s Miss Bambi Love doing ‘Crazy Love Is Good Love.’”
It was an up-tempo catchy kind of tune with lyrics that didn’t make a whole lot of sense—as if that mattered. Lots of hit songs don’t make sense. And if I had to guess, this song, a dance number, was gonna be a hit. The minute it was over, I turned off the radio.
Talk about a devil woman, I thought to myself. Hell, this gal gave poison widows a good name.
Couldn’t write any songs that day ’cause my head was filled with “Crazy Love Is Good Love.” When I got home that night, I listened to that second Good Friends album and discovered the same rhythm and melody in Vernon’s song called “Wild Country Night.” All Bambi and Slick had done was slap on some silly new lyrics.
I got good and mad. I cussed out Slick and I cussed out this hussy Bambi. There wasn’t anyone around to hear—the house was empty—so all this cussing felt a little foolish. But I did it anyway. I slammed my hand down on the table. I went out to the garage, where I kept a punching bag, and I pounded the thing till my knuckles hurt.
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