Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders

by Bill Fitzhugh

  Fender Benders

  Bill Fitzhugh

  FENDER BENDERS. Copyright © 2001 by Reduviidae, Inc., Kindle Edition copyright © 2010. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information: Reduviidae, Inc.,

  6520 Platt Ave., PMB 167, West Hills, CA 91307.

  To the songwriters, who can say in a three-minute song

  what I struggle to say in three hundred pages.

  And to the musicians, who can convey more

  with the right four chords than I can in an entire book.

  And to Kendall, who is a song unto herself.

  Fender Benders

  1.

  Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana

  Fred Babineaux was halfway between Morgan City and Houma when he decided he had a brain tumor. He couldn’t think of anything else to explain the king-hell of a headache swelling inside his aching skull. It was a tumor, he was sure of it, a tumor the size of a pink Texas grapefruit.

  Fred was driving south on a narrow stretch of highway that traced the spine of a levee separating two cane fields thirty feet below on either side of the road. He was heading for Terrebonne Bay to meet with a man who wanted to buy a boat from the manufacturer Fred represented. The sale would mean a fat commission but at the moment Fred would have forfeited that plus two months salary to make the headache disappear. He picked up the can of Dandy’s Cream Soda that was sweating in the cup holder. He held it to his head for a moment hoping the cold would soothe the pain. When that failed, Fred thought maybe the problem was dehydration or low blood sugar, so he gulped half the can.

  The fields below on both sides of the highway were lush with a young crop of sugar cane flourishing in the promising Louisiana heat. It was hot for late April — eighty-eight degrees and eighty-nine percent humidity. A couple of Snowy Egrets stalked the edge of the cane fields stabbing orange beaks at their lunch. Here and there the familiar smear of armadillo slicked the road. Fred identified with one whose head had been reduced to the consistency of a thick roux.

  His dehydration and low blood sugar theories disproved, Fred took his hands off the wheel and steered with his knee so he could massage his throbbing temples. The radio was tuned to Kickin’ 98, “Classic Country for South Louisiana, playing a mix of the old and the new, because a song ain’t gotta be old to be a classic.” They were playing a ballad at the moment, soothing close harmonies Fred hoped might ease his pain. By the end of the song, however, Fred knew the cure would require pharmaceuticals.

  He leaned over for the glove compartment when, suddenly, he heard what sounded like an airplane landing on the roof of his car. Startled by the abrupt roar of the thundering engine, Fred jerked his hands back to the steering wheel, narrowly avoiding a long plunge off the road. “Sonofabitch!” Adrenaline poured into his system. His heart rate soared, turning his already bad headache into severe unilateral periorbital pain. Fred looked painfully out the window and saw the crop duster raining Gramoxone onto the sweet young cane. Maybe that’s what caused my tumor, he thought. He’d been up and down these roads so many times over the years there was no telling how many gallons of herbicides and pesticides he’d absorbed. That had to be it. You could strap Fred Babineaux to the bottom of one of those noisy old biplanes, poke a few holes in him, and spray a field with whatever came out. Kill anything it hit.

  Fred looked to make sure the plane wasn’t coming again, then leaned over and popped open the glove box. He grabbed the familiar yellow-and-red box of Dr. Porter’s Headache Powder, an aspirin product sold only in the deepest parts of the South. He’d bought this particular box at an E-Z Mart in Shreveport the day before. To Fred’s great relief, the usually impenetrable plastic shrink-wrap on the brand new box sloughed off easily and he quickly fingered out one of the folded rectangular sheets of wax paper that held the powder like a professionally packaged gram of something else entirely.

  With one throbbing eye on the road, Fred unfolded the two ends of the rectangle and then the long top. He held one end closed and, with a jerk, tossed his head back and poured the bitter powder into the back of his throat. He chased it with the remainder of his cream soda and, wincing slightly, swallowed the solution to all his problems.

  In no time flat Fred had forgotten about his headache. Sadly it wasn’t due to the fast-acting nature of the medicine. At first his face went numb and his breathing became irregular. He considered pulling to the side of the road but the shoulder was only four feet wide before dropping sharply into the boggy cane fields below. The eighteen-wheeler bearing down from behind prevented him from simply stopping in the middle of the road.

  Sixty seconds later, with no warning, Fred threw up violently, spewing his fried lunch onto the windshield. Panic set in as his body realized he was dying before his mind could grasp the fact, let alone ask why. Desperate to see the road in front of him, Fred wiped at the vomit covering his windshield. Smearing it only made matters worse. As if his compromised vision didn’t make driving difficult enough, Fred began to hear sounds that didn’t exist and he felt his heart engage in what would best be described as irregular cardiac activity. But at least the headache wasn’t bothering him any more.

  Fred’s mind fixed on why he suddenly felt like he was dying. His wheels drifted onto the gravel shoulder, kicking up a spray of rocks that scared the Snowy Egrets into the sky. Had Fred been listening to the radio, he’d have heard the DJ introducing an old Dorothy Dixon song. “Here’s a classic country flashback on Kickin’ 98!” But Fred wasn’t listening to the radio any more. All he could hear was what sounded like a chorus of outboard motors in his head. The auditory hallucinations were part-and-parcel of the process taking place throughout his body, namely, the total cessation of his cellular metabolism. His central nervous system was so compromised that it was shutting down, and not temporarily.

  Roy Acuff was singing a tragic song about blood and whiskey and broken glass all mixed together on the road.

  Struggling to keep his car on the highway, Fred began to convulse and suddenly he couldn’t breathe at all. He began to shake like a dog shittin’ peach seeds. Increased amounts of unsaturated hemoglobin in his blood turned his mucus membranes a bluish tint. His body suddenly jerked straight as a board, causing him to floor the accelerator. His head pitched backwards and, a moment later, Fred’s car soared off into the cane field just as the crop duster passed overhead heading in the same direction.

  And Roy kept singing about how his soul had been called by his master.

  “. . .and I didn’t hear nobody pray…”

  2.

  Forrest County, Mississippi

  Mr. T’s was just off Highway 49 a few miles south of Hattiesburg. The place was named after the owner, Buck Talby, a mean old coot with an ulcer. From the outside Mr. T’s looked like it might be a dump but inside it was a genuine shithole. A filthy wooden plank floor littered with peanut shells, cigarette butts, chewed tobacco, and the occasional cockroach dimly lit by three neon beer signs and a flickering florescent tube over a pool table. The clientele consisted of local farm and forestry product workers wearing baseball caps touting brands of outboard motors and oil additives. There were also a few jar-headed looking yahoos from nearby Camp Shelby, a National Guard training facility. Grease-stained work shirts and t-shirts with yellow armpits met the dress code. It was Saturday night and the men were gussied up in the hopes of picking up on a little something the wife wouldn’t have to know about.

  It was in this context that Eddie Long stood on the tiny stage with his guitar. He was tall and lean and handsome. He was lost in his music,
playing the hell out of a rocking version of ‘Ring of Fire.’ Eddie had tuned out his indifferent audience long ago and was channeling anger into his performance, substituting a torrid run of notes for the mariachi horns of Cash’s version of the song. Every time he bent a note his face bent with it like his life was attached to the strings of his Fender DG21S. He wouldn’t dare bring his big flat top Gibson into a place like Mr. T’s. Damn thing cost too much. The Fender was his road guitar but no less dependable because it cost less. It was Indian rosewood with a solid spruce top. It produced a sturdy bass and a brilliant treble that Eddie rode like a racehorse.

  Eddie’s anger stemmed from the crowd’s neglect. He wanted them to pay attention, to hear what he was doing. He wanted them to be enthralled but he would have settled for vaguely interested. But they weren’t either one and there was nothing Eddie could do but use his time on stage to practice until he found himself in front of a crowd that cared.

  What Eddie failed to notice was a guy named Jimmy Rogers, sitting in the back, rapt by the performance. Jimmy had a pen and a pad of paper and was poised to write something. But he hesitated when it occurred to him, not for the first time, that it was impossible to describe the sound of music with mere words. Still, he shook his head and took a stab at it. Can’t win if you don’t play, he figured.

  As Eddie reached the mid-point of the song he was snarling and distorting his good looks. He wouldn’t be doing it tonight, but when Eddie smiled it was so beguiling you couldn’t look away. His eyes were the same Cadillac Green as a 1958 Gretsch Country Club Stereo guitar, and he was a right dresser too. He was wearing Wranglers, pressed, with a crisp white t-shirt under an open, untucked denim work shirt. A dark pair of calculated sideburns dropped from underneath his silver belly Stetson, tapering to point down at a pair of cowboy boots that had been selected to convey a heritage that didn’t look nearly as store bought as it was. Halfway between the hat and the boots was a shiny silver belt buckle the size of a butter plate. The result of all this was a sort of disinfected rodeo look. It was the latest in a series of styles Eddie had tested for his stage persona.

  Eddie was on the last chorus of the last song of his last night at Mr. T’s when he looked down and noticed a change in the expression of the National Guardsman at the front table. The guy’d been drinking boilermakers all night and had just finished eating an oyster po-boy and a side of tater-wads. Suddenly he had the look of a man who couldn’t hold it down any more. Eddie would have gotten out of the way except the stage was the size of a bath mat and if he jumped off he figured he’d get pelted with a beer bottle. It had happened before. So he just kept playing.

  A moment later the guy’s mouth opened like a yawning dog. What followed was a pleasant surprise, relatively speaking. A single oyster, still intact, popped out of the man’s gaping maw and landed on one of Eddie’s Durangos. Eddie didn’t miss a beat. With a deft flick of his boot, Eddie launched the oyster back at the guardsman, missing his mouth by mere inches. The man wobbled a bit then, wearing an oyster eye patch, landed face down on the table. Eddie just kept singing about how he fell into that burning ring of fire.

  This wasn’t the worst gig Eddie had ever played but it ranked. He’d been playing bars like this one throughout the South for the past seven years, paying his dues. He hoped to move up to the relative glamour of the Mississippi Casino circuit and eventually to Nashville, but his immediate goal was to finish this set, get his money, and get the hell out of there. Eddie had decided he was going to do whatever it took never to have to play at a Mr. T’s again.

  Eddie lived in Hinchcliff, up in Quitman County in the delta, the birthplace of the blues, but he was a serious student of all things country, especially Nashville fashions, grooming habits, and music trends. He subscribed to Country Music Weekly, Billboard Magazine, and had his satellite dish aimed plum at TNN. It was all part of Eddie’s plan to become a country music star.

  In the meantime Eddie worked and took classes part-time at Quitman County Junior College. At twenty-seven, he was the oldest guy in his class. He’d taken a few years off after high school and had resumed his education only after figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. Eddie was a good student, taking business courses with an emphasis on marketing. He could have taken electives in composition or music theory down at Delta State but the way he figured it there was more to becoming a superstar than playing the guitar or being a good songwriter. You could hire people for that sort of thing — ‘outsourcing’ is what they called it in his business management class. There were talented people who supplied those services, helping make stars what they were. And those people in turn depended on the stars for their own livelihoods. It was symbiotic like many host/parasite relationships, though in the music business it was sometimes hard to tell who was which.

  Eddie had picked up the guitar pretty quickly and, thanks to some lessons, he was good and getting better. He practiced daily, though he tended to use practice as an excuse to avoid doing the things he didn’t want to, like getting what his wife called a regular job. But that wasn’t to say Eddie didn’t work. He brought in money from his singing gigs and from working part-time for nearby property owners. He helped out on the Hegman farm during harvesting and, during the spring and summer he tended a small peach orchard owned by the Lytle family. But, to his wife’s eternal aggravation, Eddie was far more dedicated to his dream than to hers.

  Her name was Tammy, and lately all she wanted to do was start a family. But that hadn’t always been what Tammy said she wanted. Before they married, she had promised to support Eddie until he made it as a singer. “I believe in you Eddie,” she used to say.

  Eddie took Tammy at her word and, over the past seven years, he had hustled together a string of clubs in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas where he performed on a semi-regular basis. He was also hot on the college circuit, playing frat parties at every university in the Southeastern Conference. He was especially popular at Ole Miss and Auburn. His repertoire was limited but smartly chosen. In addition to some catchy originals, Eddie played the classics from the pop and country charts. He had a good voice too. It didn’t make you bolt up and marvel at its distinctive qualities, rather it was a country-lite tenor, perfectly suited to the songs he chose.

  But the folks at Mr. T’s didn’t care about any of that. Eddie was just background noise for their Saturday night. Most of them talked straight through his sets and nobody was afraid to yell out their order to the bar in the middle of a ballad. It was the sort of thing that usually pissed Eddie off but tonight he was past caring. He’d done this for too long and was too good to have to put up with this kind of shit any more. He finished his song and got off the stage as fast as he could, heading for Mr. Talby’s office to get his cash. He’d been counting heads for four nights and by his reckoning was due at least three hundred dollars.

  “Hey, Eddie!” a familiar voice called out.

  Eddie turned and, for the first time that night, saw a friendly face, the one he’d missed earlier. It was Jimmy Rogers, a freelance writer he knew from Jackson. Jimmy had reviewed several of Eddie’s shows. “Hey, how you doin’?”

  “Not bad,” Jimmy said with a shrug, “I heard you were playing down here so I convinced The Hattiesburg American they should hire me to write a review.” Jimmy had been following Eddie’s career for several years and had become something of a fan. “Lemme buy you a beer?”

  Eddie looked towards Mr. Talby’s office. “I’d like to but I’m driving back home tonight. Can I get a rain check?”

  “Sure, no problem.” They shook hands. “I’ll send you a copy of the review.”

  “Thanks, man. Say nice things about me.” Eddie turned and headed for Mr. Talby’s office. It was a cramped space with liquor boxes and broken stools stacked around the perimeter. Mr. Talby was sitting behind a desk in the middle of the room looking every bit like the fat sixty year old mean-ass backwoods cracker that he was. He was pouring whole milk into a glass of ice and sc
otch when Eddie walked in. Next to the glass was the tray from a cash drawer, a rotary phone, and a .38. Sitting on the edge of the desk was a bouncer who answered to the name Hummer.

  Mr. Talby looked up at Eddie standing on the other side of the desk with his guitar case in hand. “I suppose you’re here for some of my money.” There was nothing friendly about the way he said it.

  “Just what I’m owed,” Eddie said. “By my count it’s about three, three-fifty, somewhere around there.”

  Mr. Talby’s head jerked backwards. “Three-fifty! You must be seein’ double or something.” He took a gulp off his drink and winced. “Hummer, what was your count?”

  Hummer shook his head. “More like two hundred.”

  “That sounds more like it.” Mr. Talby peeled ten twenty dollar bills off a stack and held it out to Eddie.

  “Two hundred?” Eddie couldn’t believe it. He looked at the money, then at Mr. Talby. “That’s not right. Can’t be.” He pointed out toward the main room. “I counted every night.” He pointed at the cash register tray. “It’s at least three.”

  Mr. Talby put the two hundred dollars back in the stack. “Well now, what’re you sayin’ son? You callin’ me a cheat? ‘Cause I don’t take that kinda bullshit from faggots like you.” He slid his hand over to the gun, pulled it towards him. “You want the two hundred or you want Hummer to show you the fuckin’ door?”

  3.

  Quitman County, Mississippi

  Eddie and Tammy Long lived in northwest Mississippi, in a small two bedroom brick house not far from the Tallahatchie River. The living room was appointed with a rent-to-own sofa, love seat, and press board entertainment center. There was a faded ‘God Bless This House’ needlepoint on the wall by the front door. Over the sofa was an unframed watercolor of a cow in a cotton field done by Eddie’s Aunt Theda who lived down in Greenville. The master bedroom was given over to Tammy’s grandmother’s four-poster bed, a dresser, and a vanity, all in naturally distressed pine. The window unit air conditioner worked non-stop from May ‘til mid-October.