High Strung

by Jacki Moss

  His mandolin playing was more tolerated than wanted, appreciated, or needed. His only redeeming marketing quality: the younger girls, the ’tweeners, loved him. He was cute in a goofy, schoolboy sort of way. Their parents approved and enabled the celebrity crush, deceived by his all-American looks. So Chad pandered to his fan base: doting adolescent girls.

  The Jump Steady brothers were the rich kids of a wealthy cosmetic dentist to the stars. Their dad had crafted the smiles of some of the most famous people in the music, movie, and television industries for decades. They secretly traveled to the small, rural Kentucky town’s exclusive dentist office, where they could sneak in and out without the paparazzi getting wind. When they left, they had camera-worthy smiles and beaming self-confidence. They paid him handsomely for his stellar dental work, but they paid him more for his confidentiality and trustworthiness.

  The dad had assumed the boys would follow in his footsteps and go into dentistry. They had, reluctantly, unofficially apprenticed in his cosmetic dentistry practice, unenthusiastically observing procedures and making tooth implants, bridges, crowns, veneers, and so on, since they were able to reach a spit bowl.

  Chad, the baby of the family, showed the best aptitude for the profession. He had an eye for perfection, strong, steady hands, and a skillful wielding of the tools. What he didn’t have was the temperament. He was impatient, rude, a hot head. He possessed neither compassion nor sympathy for people. He couldn’t even feign kindness. If someone had a problem, they were a problem.

  He had a persistent habit of getting his nose out of joint about anything, any time he didn’t get his way. When he lost his temper, which was quite often and mostly unwarranted, it was like he was freebasing anger. The angrier he got, the more unstable he became. Feeding off his own rage, he’d work himself into a fury over the most minor of perceived injustices. He’d wind himself up to the point that the target of his wrath usually tried to retreat, fearful of how much his tirade could possibly escalate. Chad’s response to the retreat was to intensify his verbal attack on his victim, sensing he had them on the run, when in fact he had just proven again how unstable and unpredictable he was.

  He neither recognized his grievous behavior nor believed anyone who took him to task for it. Rather than try to better himself and become a respectable young man, he was captivated with his fantasy of being one of the celebrities his dad helped, not being the person to help them.

  Chad considered dental work beneath him. In fact, any work he didn’t like was beneath him. When he graduated high school and refused to go to college, his parents insisted he have some sort of job, even if it wasn’t with his dad, while he lived in their house, so he ostensibly complied. But then he sabotaged job after job so he didn’t have to do anything he didn’t want to do. He either got fired due to his obnoxious behavior or quit for some manufactured, self-aggrandizing reason, blaming his employer or other employees for the demise of his employment. His failures were never his fault; he was always the victim.

  In contrast, while in high school, his brothers took music lessons, practiced, and held down menial jobs when they weren’t playing the local charity events. On the weekends, they commuted seventy-five miles down to Nashville, where they busked for tourists and collected small change on Second Avenue in front of the family restaurants. There on the sidewalks of Music City they honed their songs, learned how to interact with an audience, and became seasoned performers. When they were old enough to get into the bars legally, they worked anywhere they were invited and would be paid.

  Meanwhile, Chad was playacting at being a star, in his bedroom at home. He viewed himself as famous, bigger than life, a celebrity looking for an audience. In essence, special.

  His love affair with himself was fueled by his unanticipated success in high school on the basketball court. In spite of being average height, he was quick as a subway rat, which gave him an advantage on the court. He could scoot around the court and under the basket for a short shot before the lumbering giants knew what was happening. His feats earned him a letter jacket, a blind eye from his teachers for his weak grades, statewide media exposure, and the adoration of just-blooming girls only a teen jock or musician warranted. He was named Mr. Basketball in the state of Kentucky and exploited all the accoutrements that came with his title.

  Even in high school girls were the foundation of his success. He wasn’t dirt-floor ugly, but he wasn’t exactly model material, either. He was just average. Average height. Average brown eyes. Average brown hair. Average intelligence. Average everything. He blended in like high school camouflage.

  He needed an edge. An angle. Something to get the girls to notice him. As the old saying went, a guitar was how ugly boys got dates. He wasn’t yet proficient enough on the mandolin (a guitar-like instrument that fit his small hands) to garner any teen groupies, so the next best option was to be a jock.

  Football jocks usually got the most babes, but in Kentucky, basketball was king. Besides, basketball was safer, less likely to get him injured, and would still get him the notoriety he craved. As Mr. Basketball, the girls fawned over him, and the colleges showered him in basketball scholarships.

  He disdainfully dismissed the scholarship offers, but he took full advantage of the girls as much as possible without getting himself in trouble. He had no time nor inclination to be part of a mess caused by a pregnancy.

  After high school graduation, much to the regret of his brothers, Chad decided he would tag along with their music group. The way he figured it, he would be a bigger star, for a longer time, with more opportunities for fame, fortune, and sex, by being a musician rather than a college anything. Plus, being a musician was just easier. If it wasn’t easy, he wasn’t interested.

  Due to his utter lack of introspection and grasp on his musical abilities (or lack thereof), he never tried to earn superstar treatment but rather demanded it. His distorted personality made him impervious to fact, reason, reality, and generally accepted standards of conduct among civilized adults. He was, simply, a brat. A narcissistic brat. That might be redundant. Maybe all brats are narcissistic. But Chad was the poster child for narcissistic brats.

  Chad’s ego blindness erupted full blown when his older brothers decided to try to make a living playing music. They were talented, hardworking, eager to learn and develop, and humble. The brat, possessing none of the traits necessary to make it in the music industry, pitched repeated temper tantrums, finally coercing them into taking him along just to shut him up.

  He immediately started creating his own myth and believing it as he fabricated it. He studied the habits, quirks, and eccentricities of famous musicians and incorporated them into his manufactured persona. He begged until his dad bought him the very best mandolin and strings, equating price with value and not understanding it’s the musician who makes fine music, not the equipment. The superb instrument, hard as it tried, could not make Chad a good musician. Everyone but he knew he was an imposter.

  All his life, Chad had expertly manipulated his parents, brothers, and teachers, so he naturally assumed his antics would work with everyone else around him. He was wrong.

  Bynum was aware of Chad’s con and was up to here with his histrionics. “Thank goodness he’s working most of the time on the mandolin he’s making,” Bynum told Cafton. “He’s doing some mighty handsome inlay work on it before he puts it all together. Looks like mother of pearl, putting his initials into the body and on each fret. He fancies himself as a modern-day luthier.” Between sentences Bynum munched on room-service triple-decker, three-cheese, grilled cheese on sourdough, with beer-battered sweet onion rings, interspersed with sips of his special tea. Bynum usually had flawless manners, and Cafton knew it, but on tour, you just have to do the best you can. Cafton didn’t rush him.

  “He’s got all the bits and pieces of it, and his tools, in a stinky bowling ball bag he keeps right by his bunk on the bus,” Bynum continued between bites. “I swear you’d think the bag was his baby. He won’t let
us get anywhere near it, like we’re gonna steal it or something. I went to pick it up for him when it tumbled off his bunk one time, and he had a conniption fit. That boy ain’t right.” Bynum was beginning to get his second wind. Some good food, a big glass of his iced tea, and talking about Chad got him wound up again.

  “So he mostly stays to himself back in his bunk? Isn’t up front with y’all?” Cafton asked.

  “Nope, except when he’s pestering me. When he’s not griping about something, he’s sitting back there by himself, carving and using a tiny drill, making the inlays just perfect. Frankly, it’s okay with us he doesn’t do it up front. Sounds like a darn dentist office. Sets us all on edge.” Bynum started on a Death by Chocolate dessert, sharing it with Mattie.

  “I’ve gotta give the devil his due, though. His work on the mandolin is impressive. He brings it out every so often so we can admire his achievement. He’s quite impressed with himself. Keeps telling us it’s one of a kind and no one has one like his.” Bynum was nothing if not fair, but Chad’s handiwork on the aesthetics of the mandolin was no substitute for talent.

  “Now if he could just figure out how to keep his fancy mandolin strung, and how to play it,” Cafton snorted.

  “Amen. Fortunately this craft project obsession keeps him from constantly yapping at me about his album, and his career, and his fans. I am tired of hearing how we are ruining his career by not releasing Jump Steady’s album right now!”

  “He just thinks he can stomp his magic foot and we will all jump in line and do what he wants.” Cafton snorted. “His magic foot may work with his parents and brothers, but I am immune to its powers.”

  “Yeah, I told him to come on down off his throne; we will release the album when it’s ready. He got all pissy and told me the only reason he allowed ‘his’ band to sign with us was he thought we would cut his record quickly and he could tour on our dime to support it. Cocky little bantam, isn’t he? Sheesh.” Bynum’s slow burn about Chad’s behavior had turned into a pretty good flame.

  Neither Bynum nor Cafton had any use for anyone who was so selfish, so enamored with themselves, especially a brat who had so little substance to back it up. They both had worked hard and sacrificed to get where they were today. Over the years, they had built a self-contained record label, unheard of at the time. Bringing together the jobs of dozens of usual label hangers-on re-routed the profits right back into the business and had been putting a lot of cash in their bank accounts.

  They each continued to work hard to maintain and grow their business. The very idea this lazy, disrespectful punk thought he was somehow owed a place at the table, somehow entitled to a place alongside people who had paid their dues and earned it, irritated them to no end.

  “Did you tell him Dangcat is missing, and we won’t release their record until it gets Dang’s final touches and blessing?”

  “Yep. He said Dangcat told him, just before we left, that it was done, and you were just holding it up for no reason. Said Dang told him all it needed was either me or you to give him the nod to release it. Said Dang had asked us weeks ago for us to let it drop and Dang was really ‘pissed off’ with us for making him wait.”

  Cafton’s jaw clenched. He hated a liar. There was no way Dang would have thrown them under the bus. No way. “I call bullshit on that. That doesn’t sound like Dang. There’s something just not right about this.” Cafton got the “gift” wim-wams again. “Wonder when, exactly, he supposedly told him that,” he continued.

  “I don’t know, but Dang knows we will back him up no matter what this brat says.”

  “Last time I talked to Dang was the evening before he came up missing. He said he had just finished mixing Chad’s tracks down, because he stunk up the place.” Cafton slowly stretched his neck side to side to relax his cable-tight muscles.

  Bynum nodded in agreement. “Uh-huh. Makes sense. Chad stinks up just about everything he touches, except for his dadgum hand-made mandolin, but even the bag he totes it in stinks! It just floors me he thinks so highly of himself—and is the first to tell you—even though everyone around him tells him he needs to put in more work and get better.”

  “Yup. That makes me think it’s futile to keep trying with him. He lives in his own fantasy world. Reality is meaningless to him, unless of course it reinforces his warped viewpoint. We’ve tried and tried, given him chance after chance to do what’s right, but he pisses them away every time. And what’s insult to injury is the more you try to help him, the more of a jerk he becomes. He’s just a user.” Cafton was settling into the decision Chad would have to be weeded out of the tour and off the album. The why was settled; it was the how that would take some deliberation.

  “And his crap saying you’re holding it up—you haven’t even heard the album, have you?” Bynum knew the answer. Dang always got Cafton and Bynum into the studio together for a good, final listen to an album on a mix tape before sending it to be mastered. That had not happened.

  “Nope. You?” Cafton knew the answer.

  “Nope. Didn’t get a chance, getting the tour together. I told Dang since I was on tour, you could take care of it, and when you were happy, to let ’er fly.” Cafton and Bynum had an easy, comfortable, intuitive relationship. Total trust. No ego. No competition. Designed for low stress and maximum efficiency.

  “I went by the studio last week and picked up a final mix tape from the studio. I didn’t find a thing in Dang’s office or the studio suggesting he was going to split, though. Everything looked normal. There were, however, a couple of calls in the telephone message pad for him from someone, it didn’t say who, who wanted to meet with him. Then a sticky note on his door jamb about meeting someone,” Cafton divulged. “But no one has called back about it, as best I can tell.”

  “So no one has any news on him? Nothing?” asked Bynum.

  “No. His family reported him to Metro as a missing person. They haven’t heard from him, either. I just don’t get it. I got with Chief Heckle to set up a reward,” Cafton said. “He said they are absolutely stumped. Maybe $10,000 will jog someone’s memory.” The idea of putting, in essence, a bounty on one of his friends made Cafton nauseous. It was sort of like gambling on Dangcat’s life.

  “Dang’s family is beside themselves with worry about him, and about their future. You know, his wife can’t even collect his insurance.” Cafton sighed.

  “She’s already checked on his insurance? A little quick, don’t you think?”

  “I thought so, too, but she says the insurance issue was brought up by the cops. They asked her about any insurance policies when they interviewed her to start the missing person investigation. Then Sheriff Barcheers says the insurance company told his detective they have to verify Dangcat’s death to issue a check. So far, Barcheers agrees with Heckle and thinks Dang ran away from home. His working theory is the same: Dang relapsed and he is laid up in some crack house somewhere. The insurance company won’t pay until they have a dead body as proof.”

  “Oh, hell, no!” Bynum was incensed. “Sheriff Barcheers had damn well better get the spoon out of his nose and start coming up with a real theory to work on. That is just twisted!”

  While Bynum outwardly fumed about Barcheers and Heckle both assuming Dang had relapsed, the same thought had also crossed his mind, causing him to fleetingly consider if a dealer or another junkie may have done something to Dang. Then he shook it off and stuck to what he felt in his gut: Dangcat did not fall off the wagon. But if he did not fall off the wagon, the other possibilities seemed somehow even more grim.

  Losing Dangcat, for any reason, would be heartbreaking to Bynum and Cafton on many levels, personally and professionally. He had become one of Nashville’s legendary stories of the rise and fall, and rise again, of someone in the music industry. In a town that sucked the soul right out of good people, his travails and triumphs gave struggling people hope and a role model to regain their lives. Nashville was a hard town to make it in. There were more talented people waiting tabl
es across the city than there were on the radio. The behind-the-scenes session players on records were often more talented than the artists they backed up. Dangcat was that kind of fantasy success story.

  He was the best damn producer/engineer in the business. He knew it all, soup to nuts, first hand. He had started fresh out of high school as a roadie for an A-list country music performer. His singing and piano and guitar proficiency in sound checks caught the ear of the star, who wrangled an introduction and a listen from the star’s label. Fast forward five years and he was the headliner with his own band. Fast forward another twenty years and Dangcat was famous, obscenely rich, a cocaine addict, profoundly unhappy, and ready to go sell shoes in a mall for a living just to get off the tour bus and get some inner peace.

  He dropped out of the music scene for a few years, living off his money stash. When the money ran out, he got back into the business as a recording engineer, but his downward cocaine spiral was already well beyond his control. After his saintly mama called him a “drug fiend,” he thought he had hit his rock bottom. Unfortunately, it was just a hard stop on the way down.

  His absolute rock bottom came after his former recording studio dropped him due to his drug use. He was living under an interstate bridge and found himself on the banks of the Harpeth River one morning with no idea how or when he got there. Fresh track marks. Needle beside him on the ground. No money or even a wallet on him. Pooped his pants. Missing shirt. He emerged from the slippery, overgrown riverbank like a hideous swamp monster right into the upscale Franklin neighborhood Pinkerton Park playground, sending kids and parents scurrying. Very rich and very snooty parents screamed bloody murder and snatched their kids away and fled into their imported SUVs right and left.

  Dangcat asked one of the slower moms for help. Instead of help, what he got was three Franklin police cars, a set of handcuffs, and a trip to the medical center.