by Don Keith
"Houston?"
"Yeah, too bad, too. That big old tower that K-Rock broadcasts from? They should have kept a better watch on the guy wires on that thing, what with all that salt air and stuff. A couple of the wires must have had the anchor bolts rust clear through. Whole damn thing's just a pile of scrap-iron now. They’re lucky nobody was killed!"
Jimmy’s face burned like fire while the rest of him was taken by a sudden cold shiver. His mouth was open, but no words came out.
"I hear their transmitter and the building it was in are flatter than a flitter. They’ll be be back on the air in a day or so, I imagine, but with about as much power as that light bulb in your desk lamp there. They might as well stay signed off for all the good it’ll do them. And with that rating book just starting and our new station giving them some strong competition and all, it's a damn shame. A real tragedy."
Jimmy Gill managed to stand then, his hands held outward in questioning desperation. DeWayne’s face was set hard as concrete, the evil serpent’s grin frozen on his lips.
"It wouldn't do for them to take too close a look at the damage, though. Especially with the pictures I got of our man doing some late-night maintenance work out there. I’d hate for them to connect that awful accident with the new owners that just come to town." He paused for effect, letting the implication sink in, twisting the knife another turn. "I'll give you a call with the exact stations we want to start in with and you can get the ball rollin' on this end. I imagine you know what to do."
He was slithering toward the door now, but turned suddenly, to leave one more pregnant thought with Jimmy Gill.
"Oh, and tell that hillbilly-singer gal-friend of yours to be careful out there on the road. Accidents do happen, you know."
Twenty-eight
A trio of persistent mockingbirds was singing their hearts out from their perch in a persimmon tree down by the church. The fussing and cawing of a playful flock of crows somewhere off in the distance was the only other sound Jimmy Gill could hear. The air was still and warm, the sun out beyond the shade of the big elms so bright it was almost blinding. He was sitting on a sixty-foot-long, hand-built picnic table, his feet propped on the bench that ran its length.
The wooden tables were used for “dinner-on-the-ground” and cemetery decoration day and other special days at the nearby Holiness Church. Jimmy Gill sat there in the shade of the elms, with the mockingbirds for a choir, the crows doing all the preaching, while he drank a warm beer and let the calmness of the moment wash over him.
Twenty feet away from where he sat, at the edge of the cemetery, the graves of his mother and father were barely discernible in the high weeds and twisted vines and piled-up pine straw. Most of the other plots near them had much bigger markers. They boasted colorful pots of flowered plants placed there carefully by remembering family, probably on the most recent Decoration Day. Or Fathers’ or Mothers’ Day. Or on a birthday counted even after the particular loved one had long since quit having them.
But his folks' tombstones were simple flat slates tenuously balanced on a chipped cement base. Their names had been crudely chiseled in, and were now almost erased by the elements. The weather and the undergrowth had tried to take away any proof of their existence. Only a wild dogwood sapling rooted at their heads adorned their neglected graves.
Jimmy could not imagine what had brought him to this calm, quiet spot, just up a hill from the Tennessee River. What unknown force left him with red clay mud on his three-hundred-dollar shoes. Yellow pine dust streaking his custom-tailored pin-stripe suit. Here in an elm grove a million miles from the clutching grasp of the business that was about to stifle him, threatening to claim what sanity he had left.
The company airplane was over in Memphis for its annual inspection for three days. The only commercial flights out of Nashville were booked solid with country disk jockeys fleeing their annual convention. So, on an impulse, he decided to drive his new car down to the Atlanta stations for some meetings, the way he and Detroit had once done a hundred years ago. To use the time out of reach of the office and the car’s mobile telephone to think about where the hell it was that he was headed. He never considered a detour through a country church cemetery, though.
Detroit reluctantly offered to ride down with him, but he had already lined up appointments with equipment vendors all day. They would be clamoring to sell them more studio equipment for the new satellite channels, and decisions had to be made soon. Detroit finally decided that he would have to take the early flight out of Nashville the next day to join him so he could get everything done that had to be done.
No matter, Jimmy thought. It would be good to be alone with his own thoughts holding him prisoner for a few hours. Without Dee. Even without Cleo.
God, he was dizzy! Whipped silly from all the whirling, grinding meetings with accountants and bankers, putting together the stock offering for Wizard Satellite, the new company that would actually own the satellite channels. Conferences where a nod of the head or a decision made too quickly could affect millions of invested dollars and people’s lives and careers, too.
He managed to keep the satellite programming company separate from the radio stations, partly to shield it if his wild idea somehow went belly up. Partly, he had to admit, so the windfall would be mostly his if it hit as big as he suspected it would. If the television idea came to pass, he could fold that into the public company, too, with money easier to raise with a stock offering when and if the time came. He was satisfied that Dee, Lulu Dooley, Greta Polanski, and Clarice George were well cared for with the radio station business. They were making far more money than they could ever have dreamed, thanks to him and his vision. Now, with the satellite venture, it would finally be his turn to cash in big time. The day of the initial public offering, Jimmy Gill would be worth millions.
The radio formats and the future cable television channels were his baby. His ideas. He should be the one to reap all the rewards.
His head still ached and his stomach knotted painfully every time he thought about the grilling, the probing, and the paperwork of taking the venture to a public stock offering. That was another reason he had been smart to keep the radio business separate. It would never have stood up to the scrutiny of the bankers, the underwriters, the attorneys, the accountants, and the government. Especially with the latest involvement with the George twins.
Now that it was all about to finally happen, and despite the reassurances of those who were supposed to know, Jimmy was still teetering on the ragged edge of panic. All that was left was to stroke the group of underwriters a little more, satisfy a few more knotty questions from the feds, and it would be done. The radio channels were a success already. The first cable channel, Satellite Super Store, could be up on a bird in a little over a year, beaming bargains to millions, all in plenty of time to hit and build a viewership before Christmas shopping started that season if all went well.
"Not that any of you care," Jimmy said to a couple of thrushes playing in the dust of a fresh grave nearby.
The ride down I-24 from Nashville helped his mood immediately, just as he had suspected it would. He watched the gossamer early-morning fog lifting from roadside pastures where Tennessee walking horses ran free. The worries were left behind with the mist as he drove the winding freeway ribbon up the side of Monteagle Mountain.
The air was clean and cool when he pulled off an exit and into a truck-stop on the mountain-top for coffee and a stack of syrup-covered flap-jacks. The friendly banter between the waitresses and the truckers was so free and simple and uninhibited it reminded him of a good pop song. The words were not deep or profound, but the music of their voices made him feel happy. Their only worries were the size of their tips and whether the customer wanted the breakfast steak rare or well done. Where to go to dodge the speed traps and how to best skip the truck scales.
The waitress pouring his coffee was named Rita. At least, that was what it said on the plastic name tag over her breast. She was a
little too skinny, but attractive in a rough sort of way.
“Honey, the way you ate those hot cakes, I’d say you could use another half dozen.”
“Oh, no, thanks.”
“On the house.”
She was giving him a look that was so familiar, but he could not quite place it. Then it came to him. Though not nearly as intense, it was still the same look he had seen in the eyes of girls on the front row when he went on stage to introduce Paul Revere and the Raiders or Neil Diamond in concert. Or in the faces of the women who came to the backstage door and promised anything...anything...if he could just get them in to meet the Rolling Stones or Lynyrd Skynyrd.
“Tell you what. I could use three more after all. Maybe another cup of that coffee.”
She smiled, winked, and was back in a minute with the pancakes and coffee.
“Look, Mister. I don’t want you to think I’m being pushy or nothing, but your voice sure sounds familiar. Are you a singer from Nashville or something?”
“You listen to the radio?”
“Lord, yes. All the time.”
“What stations?”
“We get a bunch of them up here on top of the mountain. But mostly The River from Nashville. It’s my favorite one.”
“You ever hear of Brother James?”
Her hand flew to her mouth and she shrieked so loudly the whole truck-stop turned to see who had been pinched on the ass by which truck driver.
“I knew it! That voice...well, I’m so pleased to meet you in person. I’m Rita. Rita Thornburgh.”
“Glad to meet you, Rita. You know, I haven’t been on the air in quite a while. I’m really flattered that you remembered.”
He caught himself. He had inadvertently lowered his voice and enunciated just a tad more, the disk jockey coming out in him instinctively. Rita looked around her, as if checking for eavesdroppers. No one was sitting in either of the booths on each side of his.
“God, I don’t want to seem loose or nothing, but...uh...I get off work at nine. My husband is at work, and if you want to go to my place and talk or...”
For an instant, he shocked himself. He was on the verge of accepting her offer. Lord, what was he thinking? But it had been a long, long while since someone had recognized his voice. It felt just as good as it always had.
“Look, honey, I’d really love to. But I’ve got a roomful of people waiting for me down in Atlanta. Maybe next time I’m through here, I’ll take you up on it, Rita.”
She smiled a disappointed smile, produced an order pad for an autograph, and then was gone to another impatient customer. He left her a ten dollar tip.
As he fell off the back side of Monteagle Mountain, past the runaway-truck escape ramps and the gaudy fireworks stands that occupied every cross-road, he surprised himself once more. He suddenly swerved to take a deserted-looking exit that fed down onto a narrow, two-lane, patched stretch of black-top that eventually lead him to the bench in the cemetery. He had no idea then where he was going, what his immediate destination might be. Or why such a side-trip was worth the risk of being late to the crucial pending business in Atlanta.
He only knew that he was winding through doorknob-shaped hills, past rusty mobile homes propped precariously high on wobbly stacks of cement blocks. He had to brake for ‘coon dogs sleeping lazily in the middle of the warm roadway. He knew, too, that he was completely lost and was aimlessly searching for anything familiar. The miles and minutes had been slipping away like ill-spent money when he suddenly realized he had been off the interstate, blindly navigating through these stunted hills for an hour already, and still had no idea of where he was or where he was going or what he was looking for.
When he hit the next high spot, he managed to get a dial tone on the car phone. He called Atlanta, lied that he had had car trouble, and postponed their noon meeting until late afternoon. He had just wrecked the schedules of a dozen highly-paid pencil pushers, but for some reason, he did not care. He was the boss, after all.
Certainly, he could not have told them what he was really doing. He could not explain this impulsive detour to himself, let alone a room full of land sharks in expensive suits.
Finally, there was a half-rusted-away road sign, almost covered with honeysuckle vines, but it pointed the way to some road whose number seemed familiar. Then, an obscure landmark caught his eye. A light came on. He realized exactly where he was.
The town was totally different from the hazy way he remembered it. The shack he had lived in when his parents died was gone. Some kind of junky metal- fabricating factory in a Quonset hut now claimed its spot. The one-room school had been replaced by a convenience store and a gas station. He stopped, filled the gas tank, and bought a six-pack of beer.
The little town was so dilapidated, so lacking in anything warm or familiar that he felt left empty, saddened by the absence of something he remembered being a part of. It was clear. Jimmy Gill no longer had any roots in this ramshackle place.
That decided, he turned the car around, took the river road, skirted the shore of the Tennessee River for a half mile, and sped back toward Chattanooga and the interstate highway that led to his postponed meeting. He had seen all he wanted to see. There was nothing more there for him.
But as he rounded a sharp curve, lost again in thoughts of business, he suddenly caught sight of something painfully familiar. He was going so fast that he shot on past it a half mile or so before he came to a turn-around. Then he had to wait for a truck loaded with paper timber logs to creep by before he could backtrack.
And there it was. The rock church house and the cemetery behind it, tucked back among the elms just as he remembered it from the last time he had seen it. Exactly as he had watched it fade away into the river mist, looking like a bad television picture out the back of Wiley Groves' pickup truck.
He had to search awhile for their graves. Quite a few people had died since they had, apparently. The additional plots had all been crammed together in a tight patch-work, and many were marked as poorly as he eventually found his parents’ to be.
But finally, there they were. They slept in the afternoon shade of the elms, near the wooden picnic tables. He could almost picture the crowds of families gathered here so close to their dead, laughing, praising, enjoying lovingly cooked food spread for all to enjoy on these rough tables. Or see the families wandering from one grave to another by memory, depositing flowers of love, prayers of hope on each one. But now, the place was deserted, ghostly still, near deathly quiet. Just him sitting alone on the bench, the crows preaching and the mockingbirds singing.
Then, a gentle breeze from down toward the river kicked up a few clouds of red dust. The wind sounded like voices harmonizing in the branches of the elms, humming a sad, sad song. He imagined for a moment that he was able to hear voices talking to him from their graves. The chattering of the dry leaves, scurrying along the dusty ground, seemed to be fussing at him, too.
Oh, God! He had only had two of the beers. What was wrong with him? A spastic shiver shook him violently. Then there was another voice. A real one. Someone speaking words out loud. It took him a moment to realize they were coming from his own mouth.
“You didn’t leave me by your own choice, did you?” he had asked, questioning the vine-choked graves, the singing trees.
But the graves were silent. The trees answered him with only another low, sad moan.
“Daddy, I know what you said after you fell into that damned saw. You knew the last of your life was spilling out of you then, but you coughed up love for your wife and your baby boy with your last breath.”
The leaves hissed for him to go on. They were listening to him.
“Momma, I understand you too. How you drifted, rudderless, to a fast life you wouldn’t have chosen otherwise. I know it was only out of pain and loneliness. That you were only searching for him. You never meant to abandon your boy or your mother. And you certainly never suspected you would die the way you did.”
He was talking t
o a pair of cold, dead gravestones. Tears, hot tears, were boiling from his eyes.
From somewhere so deep inside him that he had never suspected it was there, a fierce white-hot anger overtook him like a vicious fever. The words turned harsh, acidic.
“You ignorant, illiterate red-neck trash!” he screamed to the washed-out markers, first his father’s, then his mother’s. “You, with no more ambition beyond your two dollars a day, breaking your back, shuffling through sawdust for a living. And you, nothing but a damnable slut, a whore. Your mourning nothing more than an excuse to turn your back on your son and mother until the sorry life you were leading caught up with you.” He stomped the wooden bench at his feet, daring the jabbering leaves to talk back to him now. “I wasn’t a damned thing to either one of you. Just one more hindrance in the middle of your dreary existence! How dare you! How dare you bring me into this world, then ignore me, abandon me!”
Jumping from the table, he took three big steps and kicked his mother's headstone as hard as he could. Then, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg, he sent Daddy's marker tumbling with another sharp boot. Each one shattered like glass as it landed on the hard-packed red earth.
Standing between their dim graves, clenching and unclenching his fists, Jimmy Gill let loose a scream so loud that it echoed off the church two-hundred feet away and sent a startled covey of quail fluttering into brush at the far edge of the cemetery.
"Listen to me for once! Go on! Leave me alone for good, dammit! I can do it myself! I didn't need you! I never needed you! I don’t need anybody! Stay away from me! Stay away!"
For the first time that he could ever remember, he was crying out loud. Huge tears that rolled off his cheeks and fell into the dust like summer rain. Shoulders quaking, feet stomping in anger, fired by frustration and long-denied grief. Dropping to his knees between the two of them, Jimmy Gill now spoke quietly through his bitter sobs.
"I'm somebody now despite the both of you! You didn't count for anything at all when you were here. Just the work, the drinking, the dreariness. Now, I've made everyone listen to me like you never would. Millions know me. Millions more will. I'll be there with them in their cars, in their living rooms, inside their heads. They'll watch and listen, laugh and cry when I tell them, buy what I show them, eat and sleep and talk and make love when I let them. I got here without you and I'll go on without you. Stay there in hell or wherever you are and...leave... me...alone!"