Sweeter Life

by Tim Wynveen

  THREE

  Isabel sat on the sunporch nursing a coffee and staring vacantly across the front yard to the dirt road that ran past their farm. It was the first warm day of April, and the flies, stupid and fat and not long for this world, were swarming the house again. They made a sound like corn popping as they bumped against the walls and windows, not a welcome noise by any means; it heralded another terrible season of pig reek. By June she wouldn’t be able to open her windows and doors. The air conditioning would run non-stop. Even if she changed the filters every week, the smell of her clothes would make her gag.

  Gerry never minded as much; but then, after the lung-scorching stench of the barns themselves, ammonia so dense it made her eyes run, the rest of their property probably came as a breath of fresh air. On summer nights, he often sat outside on the lawn and drank a beer or two. She’d seen him take his pie and coffee out to the picnic table under the maple and eat it with a hundred flies buzzing around his head.

  When they were first married, she assumed she would get used to everything, but in fact it seemed to get worse with time. Every year from April to November, Isabel felt sick to her stomach; and now, with the warm weather on its way, she would begin again to dread Gerry’s coming to bed at night, settling his long frame on their cheap Sears mattress set, the one they had bought before they were married and that now dipped so badly she had to cling to the edge to keep from rolling into him. Even after a shower, the smell of him, the prickle of his leg hair, and especially those crazy tufts on his back, were too much for her. She tried not to think it, but more and more often the picture came to her that she was lying in the dark with a hog, and she felt stricken in her heart that she could ever think such things about the man she had married.

  Lord knew she wasn’t perfect. She had never been a beauty, twiggy as a brush pile. She knew that people talked about her, too. They would say she wore too much perfume. They’d wonder who she was trying to impress—the new clothes always, the beauty parlour once a week. And they would think it curious that she insisted on having a job when Gerry needed her there on the farm to do all the things a farmwife does. They’d feel sorry for Gerry, and she was pretty sure he would agree with them (though he would never let on).

  But Isabel didn’t care about any of that. She was proud she had graduated top of her class from the real estate course at St. Clair College. She enjoyed painting her nails. She loved her new cream pantsuit, and the older red and blue ones she had bought last summer at Dainty Miss. She loved her briefcase with its rich leather and brassy clasps, and loved how it felt to get behind the wheel of the big new Buick she leased from Rollie Marks to chauffeur clients around. She was thrilled most of all to have a job at Demeter Real Estate and to get away from the damn pigs. It seemed to her such a sensible decision. At last. At last she was moving in the right direction. And while she understood that you couldn’t turn back the clock, she felt you could at least make up for lost time, which was just what she planned to do.

  After she had finished her coffee, she lit her first cigarette, the only guilt-free smoke of the day. Then she headed upstairs to get ready for work. She had just finished putting on her makeup when she heard Gerry clomp upstairs and stand in the hallway. He pushed open the bathroom door with the toe of his boot and stood watching her awhile, his arms across his chest.

  “Be late tonight?” he asked.

  She brushed off the front of her blouse, then double-checked to see if she could do anything more with her face. At last she turned to him and said, “No, I don’t think so. No appointments. I thought we could have baked chicken and Rice-A-Roni.”

  He nodded, his mind not on dinner or her job. “About Reg Foster.…”

  She tossed her cosmetics into her little zippered bag. Without turning, she said, “I thought we’d been over this. You always said we’d never use the home farm for collateral.”

  “I know what I said. But maybe this is different.”

  “Gerry, the only thing different is Foster. Five years ago he wouldn’t give you the time of day, remember? Now he’s trying to rope you into a big loan you don’t want and don’t need.”

  “Or maybe,” he said, his face darkening, “maybe you don’t know anymore what I want or need.” Then he pounded down the stairs and out across the yard to the barn.

  JANICE OPENED HER EYES to find her mother leaning over her. It was morning; but judging from the colour of the walls, it was too early to get up for school. Her mother was still wearing her housecoat, and the look on her face jolted Janice wide awake.

  “It’s Mrs. Mitchell,” her mother whispered. “Cy’s aunt. She’s in the front hall. She wants to talk to you.”

  Janice threw on some clothes and followed her mother down. Sure enough, Ruby Mitchell was standing by the front door in her brown cloth coat. She looked so tired and wired that Janice knew immediately that something terrible had happened.

  Ruby’s face brightened with hope the moment she set eyes on her. “Cyrus,” she said, “have you seen him?”

  Janice turned to her mother, and then back to Ruby, but it was Cyrus’s face she saw, outside the Three Links Hall last night. He was smiling like an idiot, drunk on his own good fortune. She had asked him to be careful. Like a lot of guys, he got stupid when he was happy.

  “I haven’t seen him since yesterday, Mrs. Mitchell. We met at the hall after school and had a pizza. I came home about ten, I guess.”

  “Well, I was just at the hall. I thought he had maybe slept there last night. He does that sometimes when—well, you know, he was a little upset—and so I went there and the door was locked, and I called his name and pounded on the door like I sometimes do, but he didn’t come down, and I started wondering if he was okay, or maybe he was hurt or sick or—” Ruby covered her mouth with a liver-spotted hand and took a deep breath. “I was wondering if maybe you had a key I could borrow …”

  “I’ll come with you,” Janice said.

  To a stranger, the change at the rehearsal space would not be apparent. It was a dusty room filled with drums, microphones, amplifiers and a threadbare collection of flea-market furniture. But Janice and Ruby understood right away. Cy’s equipment was gone. They walked together to the spot where his amplifier usually stood, and they stared at the bare wooden floor, which showed a clean rectangle the size of his Fender Dual Showman, outlined in dustballs and picks and broken strings, candy wrappers and crumpled set lists and song lyrics. It was like his gear had been vaporized, leaving only its shadow behind.

  Janice turned in a circle to see if perhaps Cyrus had moved his amp to another spot. Beside her, speaking in a dream voice, Ruby said, “His amplifier, his little suitcase for his cords. It’s all gone.”

  Janice walked to the window and looked out on the street. It was a sunny day, as fresh and clean as the morning after a storm. She and Cyrus had talked for hours last night about his quitting school and heading off soon to find a full-time band, maybe in Hounslow or even Toronto to start with, one day making a name for himself. But she never imagined he meant so soon. It didn’t seem possible. A part of her found it hard to believe he’d even been serious. He was good, probably the best musician in Wilbury; but there were any number of guitarists in Hounslow who could play circles around him, and Hounslow was as far away from the big time as you could get. Did he really believe he would become a star?

  She turned to Ruby and said, “The amp weighs a ton. I know. I’ve helped him carry it. So he couldn’t get very far without wheels. He must be at someone’s house. You know, Seth has a car …”

  Ruby felt a wave of relief. How could she have been so stupid? Cyrus had stormed out of the house, followed moments later by Isabel. Mystery solved. Izzy had picked him up and offered to let him stay at her place. Then they came to get his gear. What else could it be?

  FOUR

  Ronnie couldn’t sleep. He had tucked the boy into bed, gone to check on the rest of the crew and come tiptoeing back to the room just as the sun was beginning t
o paint the sky pink. But as exhausted as he felt, he still couldn’t close his eyes. It saddened him to see the boy sleeping there so fitfully. The twisted sheets and the grinding teeth reminded Ronnie of another hotel room in another town, and the night he met Jimmy Waters, one of the world’s anxious sleepers.

  Back then, Ronnie had anxieties of his own. He had walked out on the Aaron Maxx tour in Staghorn, Alberta, and was renting a room in the Queen’s Hotel, a room that smelled of smoke and stale beer, and throbbed all night with the red glow of neon. He was also running desperately low on cash and wondering what to do with the rest of his life now that he had more or less tossed his career down the dumper. Then one morning he flipped on the black-and-white television bolted to the wall and, there amid the snow and flickers, he saw Dick Clark: the sharp suit, the slicked-back hair, the youthful good looks. Just the sight of him—not to mention those fresh-faced Californian kids with the white smiles and crisp clothes and wholesome energy—made the day seem a little brighter. Better still, Dick was talking to Gil Gannon and sharing a good laugh.

  Gil was short, a little heavy and not nearly as handsome as Dick, but he had all the swagger and self-assurance you’d expect of a major star, even though he hadn’t had a hit in years. He had massive gold rings on his fingers. When he laughed, he shook from head to toe.

  Dick waggled the microphone playfully and said, “What say we talk to the animals in the band.” Immediately the musicians began to mug for the camera, cutting up like teenagers, even though they had to be thirty or older. They were dressed in identical black suits with narrow collars, white shirts and skinny ties, way behind the fashion curve for 1968. They had short greasy hair.

  The drummer held his sticks to the top of his head, like Martian antennae, and Dick laughed and said, “I guess we know why they call you Moonman.” That got a rise out of the girls in the audience. Then Dick angled closer to the keyboard player, a pale, slouching giant whose solemn attitude was entirely at odds with the rest of the band. He had a neatly trimmed beard, black hair and beady eyes. Dick sat beside him on the piano bench and said, “James Waters, I presume.”

  “That’s right, Dick. But you can call me Jimmy.”

  “Welcome back to American Bandstand, Jimmy. What’s it like being voted the best keyboard player of the decade by Songmaker Magazine?”

  “It’s all right, Dick. An honour, I guess.”

  “I bet it is. And well deserved. That solo of yours on ‘Don’t Look Back’? Wow. You’ve been playing how long?”

  “All my life, Dick.”

  Dick was getting frustrated with the mopey one-note answers. He moved in close, really working, and said, “You fellas have been on the road non-stop, what, going on three years now. Japan, Europe, Australia—I don’t imagine there’s anyplace you guys haven’t seen. What’s it been like?”

  A nearly unbearable silence built as everyone waited for Jim to respond. The guys in the band grew watchful. Though Gil was still jiving and posing, his eyes had lost their playful spark. And Jim just sat there shaking his head as if he were in pain.

  Dick, the consummate pro, laughed like it was all some kind of gag. He nudged Jim with his elbow and said, “Seriously, now, how’s it going?”

  And something strange happened then. Jimmy Waters, the man who had brought music into Ronnie’s life, this sad-faced giant with the bad posture, grabbed the microphone, stumbled from behind his keyboard and edged up to the camera, his face nearly pressed to the lens. And in the hushed smoky voice of an all-night DJ, he said, “It’s going great, Dick. In fact, it’s all gone. I’m done. I’m history.” Then he dropped the microphone to the floor and shuffled through the stage curtains and away.

  Ronnie watched the entire scene with a breathless fascination: to finally see the man, the author of his joy, the genius of his time, and to know he really existed; then to watch helplessly as he self-destructed before the eyes of the world. And that much was clear just watching the show; Jimmy had been virtually quivering onscreen.

  A few days later Ronnie found a brief article in the entertainment section of the newspaper, describing how Jimmy Waters had walked off the set of American Bandstand and disappeared without a trace. Two concerts had been cancelled so far, and the rest of the U.S. tour was in jeopardy if he didn’t show up soon.

  That was all the news Ronnie needed to shake off his dark mood. If ever there was a purpose in his life, a meaning to be grasped, this was it. Maybe there was nothing he could do, but he had to try. At the very least he had to one day tell Jimmy Waters to his face what a difference his playing had made in one man’s life.

  Next day Ronnie set off for New York. He thumbed a ride as far as Winnipeg and, with his last few dollars, caught a bus to New York. After one night in his apartment in Brooklyn, he cashed a small bond he’d put aside for emergencies and hit the road again. His first move was to contact Gil Gannon’s booking agent, Nate Wroxeter.

  “That bastard is costing me a fortune!” Nate shouted into the phone.

  “I understand,” Ronnie said. “That was my thinking exactly. If there was anyone who wanted a piece of Jimmy’s hide, it would be you. And that’s why I called. I thought we could assist each other. I plan to spend the next few weeks tracking him down. It would help to know who else is interested should I find him, and just how interested they are.”

  Nate was two-hundred-dollars interested and gave Ronnie all the information he had on Jimmy: born in Port Swaggart, Pennsylvania, on the south shore of Lake Erie; last known address, Bleecker Street in New York.

  It was easy enough to check out the address in the Village. Ronnie spoke to the landlord and found that Jimmy hadn’t lived there for a few years and still owed six months rent. He heard, too, about a wife and kid who had grown tired of waiting for him to return and had gone off in search of a new life.

  A week later, with spring just beginning to stir, Ronnie headed for Erie, and then west along the lakeshore, where he discovered that the town of Port Swaggart no longer existed and hadn’t for years, swallowed in America’s post-war sprawl and boom. As he drove along the Industrial Parkway (what used to be Lakeside Drive) he came upon a stretch of shoreline that had once been home to fishing boats and sandy beaches and was now a bleak stretch of toxic industry. About five miles further on, between an oil refinery and an abandoned tire factory, stood a small clapboard motel, all tumbledown and spooky, like something from a horror movie. Ronnie wouldn’t have given it a second glance if not for the sign out front: Waters Inn.

  He pulled into the parking lot, which had become a dumping ground for plastic garbage bags, bald tires, threadbare furniture and grimy household appliances. Careful not to brush against anything, he threaded his way toward the motel office where a wooden slammer, completely off its hinges and missing all but a few tatters of screen, leaned against the wall.

  Ronnie called through the open doorway and got no answer. Inside he found more trash, and human excrement, but he held his nose and pressed farther into the office, past the front desk. There, a creaky stairway led to a second-floor apartment; and in the front bedroom overlooking the bay, or what remained of the bay, Jimmy Waters lay curled asleep on a bare, stained mattress, his eyes clamped shut, his jaws clenched, his face twitching to the manic rhythm of his dreams.

  All that afternoon Jimmy tossed and turned. When he finally opened his eyes, the sun had begun to fade. He looked straight at Ronnie and then sat up slowly, calmly, as if all along he’d been expecting a stranger to appear.

  Ronnie offered his hand in greeting. “I can’t tell you what an honour it is to meet you at last,” he said. “Your playing has made an enduring impression on me, that much is certain. Would you believe me if I said you had changed my life?”

  Jimmy leaned forward over his knees, his hands gripping the edge of the mattress. He was dressed in the same clothes he had worn on American Bandstand, and they had seen much better days. His beard had grown shaggy, his hair a riot of intentions. “You’re not an Amer
ican,” he said.

  “No, you are right about that, but I love your country more than my own, and I love American music more than anything I can think of. And your solo—”

  “Man, I don’t want to hear this.…”

  Those words startled Ronnie. “What I mean is your music, your solos, they lift us up, don’t they? They show us the better side of our nature.”

  Jim slumped to his side, his head resting on the mattress again, and groaned as if he might be sick to his stomach. But Ronnie pressed on. “Do you … I mean, surely you believe your music has made a difference.”

  “Difference? I don’t know what in hell you’re talkin’ about.” Then he turned toward the wall and was soon asleep again.

  Ronnie found a small wooden chair that had somehow been overlooked in the general fouling of the place, and he sat for hours and watched Jimmy sleep. Sometime before dawn, he slipped away to an all-night convenience store and bought plastic-wrapped sandwiches and beer. He brought in his suitcase and covered Jim with a sweater.

  Next morning Jim accepted a sandwich and seemed genuinely pleased when Ronnie handed him a quart of Schlitz. But he still wasn’t talking much. About noon, Ronnie tried another approach. “You’re originally from around here, aren’t you?”

  Jim’s only answer was to take a bite of sandwich. Then, with a grunt, he struggled to his feet and walked to the window that overlooked the bay. He leaned against the frame and touched his index finger to the jagged spikes of the broken panes, one by one. Finally he said, “My daddy moved us here from Arkansas. Got hisself a little fishin’ boat. Back then, we rented a cottage not too far down the shore from here. Hardly remember it myself. So long ago it’s like a dream. Trouble was he never could make the payments on the boat and he lost it to the bank. Bit of a drinkin’ problem. Drifted around some. Ended up on the docks down in Erie. Wasn’t a big man, you understand, not what you’d think of as a longshoreman, but he was stronger ’n a team of mules. I guess that’s how I remember him best, like Marlon Brando in that movie there. You know …” He turned to fix Ronnie with a questioning look.