Your Killin' Heart

by Peggy O'Neal Peden

  I recuperated by watching the UT football game on my couch, the soreness creeping into the muscles I hadn’t used in way too long as the fall light faded.

  Chapter Five

  I rode my first train when I was thirteen;

  I jumped on a freight and was gone,

  And I’ve never looked back to see where I’ve been;

  I’m just ridin’ and singin’ my songs.

  —Jake Miller, “Last Lonesome Train”

  Six o’clock Saturday night, I was shivering, waiting for Stick in the Bluebird parking lot. He finally pulled up in the old, beat-up blue van he drives to gigs. Once upon a time, it was the only vehicle he owned and all he could afford. Now he drives a Land Rover except when he’s working and needs to transport the drums and things he uses to make percussion sounds. Stick says it’s economic camouflage. He thinks potential thieves are less likely to expect a fortune in percussion instruments to be in anything that looks as bad as his van.

  “Hey,” he said as he climbed out. “You ready to work? You wanna grab this?” Stick handed me a small gong.

  “Whatever I can do for the arts.”

  “Just carry that and don’t sing.”

  I helped carry in the lighter pieces—chimes, bongos—while Stick and a Bluebird employee carried the heavier stuff.

  The Bluebird has been a Nashville fixture since the seventies. Tucked incongruously into a row of upscale furniture and gift stores in the Green Hills area, with its faded sign, the place doesn’t belong. Signs in front of neighboring businesses insist that parking is for their establishments only. I always wonder why they care if somebody parks in front of a closed furniture store.

  Inside, it’s small and dark, with tiny tables crowded around a small stage area. Sometimes, as tonight, the tables and chairs are arranged around a central open space. In a rear corner is a bar and, at the back, tiny restrooms. Kris Kristofferson once said “Excuse me” to me in the crush outside those restrooms. His eyes were gorgeous—sad and knowing, but gorgeous.

  As musicians and Bluebird employees set up for the evening, I found a spot out of the way and listened while they tuned up.

  Tonight was Writers in the Round. Writers aren’t always great singers, but there’s a raw, honest quality when a writer sings his own song in a small, quiet setting like this, an intimacy between the poet and the listener that the best-produced CD with all its clean sound can’t touch. This is how I like music best. And apparently I’m not the only one. Nights like this, with writers set up in the middle of a room singing and playing their own songs, taking turns playing each other’s, have become more and more popular in Nashville.

  Stick and two guitar players took plain wooden chairs in the middle of the small room. Stick sang the song about love, the one he had told me about. There was a second’s hush before the applause—that moment when the audience catches its collective breath. You know you’ve just heard something special. And the singer knows you’ve heard it. This was that kind of night. I knew it was special. I saw a producer I vaguely recognized take out his iPhone and make notes. My guess was he was looking for material for somebody’s next album. Looked like a cut for Stick on this one.

  During a break, Stick introduced me to the guitar players. One, Randy Dean, was single and seemed a little interested in me, I began to think. He and I talked during the breaks.

  “Stick says you guys went to high school together.”

  “Yeah. I wanted to be in his band,” I said. “I play a mean tambourine. I could have been a star. But Stick said I couldn’t sing.”

  Randy smiled. “Ah, what does he know about music? He’s a drummer.”

  I looked around to see if Stick had heard, but he was across the room talking to the producer I’d noted earlier. “Yeah, lucky he’s had some guitar-pickers to keep him in work.”

  Randy laughed. “I’d better get back. It’s almost time to start again. You want to have dinner sometime soon?”

  “Yeah. That’d be nice.”

  “Okay. Great. I’ll call you.”

  The dreaded words. I’ll call you. But I like this, I thought. Eat your heart out, Doug. It was nice having someone paying attention, trying to impress me.

  Randy had written two songs I recognized, one a recent top-ten single by last year’s CMA Entertainer of the Year and the last song of the closing set. During that one, he looked across the room and into my eyes, and I found myself wanting to believe the lines of his lyrics. I turned away, a little embarrassed by the intimacy I might have been imagining, and a little suspicious. How many girls had he sung that song to? It probably worked well with most women.

  Just as I turned, I thought I glimpsed a face that was naggingly familiar, but I lost it in the crowd. I edged my chair around to get a better look, and that’s when I saw the long black hair, the resentful eyes—it was the kid Doug and I had seen yelling outside Hazel Miller’s house.

  The song Randy was singing was a ballad, soft and syncopated, and I couldn’t get up to go over to the boy without making a scene. I shifted back to see Randy looking quizzically in my direction before he turned his attention to the neck of his guitar. The last chord faded into applause and acknowledgments and the scraping of chairs as people stood and began to leave.

  I tried to make my way around to the corner of the room where the boy stood talking to a couple of men. People kept blocking my way; then I’d lose sight of him. I kept saying “Excuse me” and pushing my way around couples, through conversations. I saw him move toward the exit, and reached him just as he was going out the door. “Excuse me.” I put my hand out and reached past the last two people between us to touch his arm.

  He turned toward me, habitually angry boredom already stamped on his young face. “I’m Campbell Hale,” I began. “I saw you outside Hazel’s—” I watched recognition click in his eyes, and he turned and was out the door before I could finish my sentence. I tried to follow him, but a tall man in a cowboy hat with his arm around a blonde in tight jeans had crowded into the doorway. I needed to talk to the boy, ask him what happened after I’d left Hazel’s.

  “Excuse me, excuse me,” I kept saying, trying to push through, but by the time I got out the door, I could see him rounding the corner of the Porter Paint store several doors down.

  I’m no track star. I knew I’d never catch him, and besides, I didn’t feel too good about chasing an angry man in the dark behind buildings and through alleyways, even in Green Hills. I went back inside to see Stick and his friends packing up.

  Randy was cool; he seemed a little annoyed that I had ignored the end of his song until I explained why. I told him I had seen the boy outside Hazel Miller’s house, and I was curious to know who he was. Seeing him again in this setting, with so many music people, it occurred to me that I could find out. I described the boy. Then Stick said, “I’ll bet that was Jay Miller.”

  “Jay Miller?”

  “Yeah, he was here tonight. I didn’t notice where he was when you were at the door, but he was here tonight.”

  “Jay Miller? Who is he?”

  “He’s Jake Miller’s grandson,” Stick explained. “You know, Jackie Miller’s son, except Miller’s not his real name, of course. He uses Miller as a stage name, does some rock versions of Jake’s old songs. The way you described the guy sounds like him.”

  “Yeah, he was here,” Randy added, “sitting right over there.” He pointed to the area where I had first seen the boy. Disappointed as I was at missing him, at least now I knew his name.

  “Tell me about him. Should I have heard anything he’s done?”

  “I don’t know,” Stick said. “He’s more into the rock scene than country. He’s always had a chip on his shoulder.”

  Randy added, “I think he played at River Stages this year.”

  “Yeah,” Stick chimed in, “he has a band. They call themselves Alternative Music City. They did a couple of Dancing in the Districts this past summer.”

  Not too many years ago, Second
Avenue was a run-down row of warehouses and old building-supply businesses. Rents were relatively low, and some courageous entrepreneurs began to move into the area with interesting businesses. There was an architectural antiques shop where you could find the most wonderful stained-glass panels, usually from old churches. A few restaurants appeared, then an art gallery in a gutted and renovated warehouse. The area began to catch on, and promoters began to call it Market Street, recalling its days as a commercial center when pioneer Nashville depended on river traffic.

  Now there’s a Hard Rock in place of the hardware store that carried every obscure bolt or bit you might need. There used to be a huge faded mural of a painter on the wall of the hardware store, which smiled encouragingly over the roof of a liquor store where Broadway crosses Second Avenue. The liquor store is gone now, and so is the painter, replaced by a giant Les Paul Gibson guitar. The Les Paul is a fine guitar, but it was the instant history that bothered me, I suppose. The painter is gone, replaced by a guitar. It’s classic, historic in its own way, but not the painter who’d been a Nashville landmark as along as I could remember. The merchants who made the street fashionable can’t afford the rent anymore, and it’s tough to find a place to park. I don’t go down Second Avenue very often anymore. I miss the painter. I keep thinking I need to go to the Hard Rock. They have a sweater of Buddy Holly’s and an entire James Brown suit on display. But there always seem to be too many tourists around. I did go to the Wildhorse Saloon one night when Kris Kristofferson was making a rare appearance. His music was as raw and real as ever, but it seemed out of place in that artificially rustic saloon with fake horses drinking at the bar.

  Now they call the area The District. Dancing in the District is a weekly summertime event, with decent bands, usually rock rather than country, and not always local ones. If Jay Miller’s played Dancing in the District, he must be pretty good—or at least he must have somebody good promoting him. And River Stages, Nashville’s annual street festival, held most Junes during the first stiflingly hot week of the year, attracts Nashville’s top performers. I had probably heard Alternative Music City play without realizing that Jake Miller’s grandson was in the band.

  I thought back to his encounter with George Lewis at the house. Just what rights did Jay Miller think George Lewis was denying him?

  Chapter Six

  It took three calls before I got through to Doug.

  “How can I look up a will?” I asked.

  “Whose will?”

  I really didn’t want to answer that. “Jake Miller’s.”

  “You never stop, do you? Is there anything I can do to get you to leave this alone?”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to leave it alone. I wanted to know what happened to the sad, lonely woman in the bed, or I wanted to know that nothing had.

  “I guess not,” he answered himself. “Well, I have to be in court in the morning. If you can be there by eight forty-five, I’ll show you what to do.”

  I had plenty of vacation time built up. I could take the morning off. “I’ll be there. Thanks, Doug.”

  This time he didn’t say anything.

  I made sure I was early the next morning. By eight thirty I was waiting with the pigeons on the steps outside the courthouse, struck once again by what a leveler this place was. There were lots of suits hurrying in, lawyers doing their jobs. Then there were the people whom the courts exist to serve arriving for nine o’clock dockets. There were power brokers and prosperous people, but there were also the poor and neat, the dirty and sloppy. I wondered if no one, not even their attorneys, had told them that the legal system is not entirely unbiased, and they’d make a better impression with new haircuts and clean clothes that covered a few tattoos.

  It must be hard not to become cynical, working in that building every day. The stories you hear in there are not about heroism and kindness and generosity, but greed and lies, broken covenants, pain, violence, and selfishness.

  It’s not like the small town where I grew up, where the courthouse was the center of civic life, where old men gathered to whittle and talk on Saturday mornings. People renewed auto tags, registered deeds. Kids registered to vote for the first time; hopeful couples applied for marriage licenses. In Nashville, though, as in most large cities, government is more compartmentalized. For voter registration and auto tags, you go to the old Howard School building or convenient new community offices; marriage licenses, the current Howard School. The courthouse is reserved for crimes, lawsuits, divorces, and probate.

  Standing on the steps, I could barely make out the spire of a church on Broadway, peeking over the tops of buildings. What a great gulf, I thought, between here and there.

  While I waited, I read the bronze plaque set into the courthouse wall between the huge Art Deco doors. It commemorated the thirty-fifth anniversary of the bombing of then Councilman Alexander Looby’s home on April 19, 1960. Many people don’t know about Nashville’s role in the civil-rights movement in the sixties. Selma, Birmingham, Little Rock, and Oxford had more violence and got more media attention. But the bombing here was an important milestone, drawing a moral line that illuminated the issue and forced people to choose a side.

  I had heard my parents and grandparents talk about those times. Most people had been more concerned about their own lives, paying bills, what to cook for dinner, than larger social issues. Which might be why it took so long to change things.

  * * *

  The plaque quoted Joshua 6:20: “When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city.”

  I saw Doug’s black BMW pause at the entrance to the underground parking. Eight forty-two. By eight forty-five, he was walking up the steps toward me, his face unreadable. His lawyer face, I called it.

  “Hi. Thanks for meeting me. I know you’re busy.”

  “No problem.” He didn’t sound like there was no problem. He opened the door for me, then led me through the airport-like x-ray security equipment that clashed with the marble and brass lobby.

  “It’s on the right,” he said as we took the corner. He pointed to the door marked PROBATE CLERK, ROOM 105, in gold letters. “You’ll need the DOD.”

  I looked at him blankly. “DOD?”

  Doug shook his head. “The date he died. If you have any problems, I’ll be up on the fifth floor in the circuit court. I can help you when I’m through. I just don’t know when that will be.”

  “Thanks.”

  He turned to go, then turned back. “Umm, if you have time to hang around … we could have lunch.”

  “Okay. I’ll find you upstairs.”

  I opened the door and found myself facing a long counter, bored-looking women at desks scattered around the room. The woman at the desk nearest me checked to see if anyone else was going to get up and help me. No one made eye contact with her or me; everyone looked busy. She sighed, pushed herself up from her chair, and ambled over. Her head was tilted to one side, and her eyes dared me to complicate her day.

  “I need to look up a will,” I ventured.

  “You need the date of death; then you can look it up in the index.”

  I had expected a computerized database. I looked over the counter to see that she was pointing toward shelves under the counter that held ancient-looking oversize ledger books. I knew the year Jake had died, but not the exact day. I had thought I could search by his name.

  Embarrassed, I mumbled, “Okay. Thanks,” and retreated. DOD.

  I pulled out my phone and searched for Jake Miller. It took a while. My reception wasn’t great inside the stone walls, with who knows what kind of electronic stuff buzzing around.

  Jake Miller died on July 4, 1969.

  I went back to the probate clerk’s counter armed with my own information. This time the clerk refused to look up and make eye contact, determined to outwait her coworkers. A young woman finished explaining so
mething to a visitor and turned to me.

  “What can I help you with?” It was a pleasant enough start.

  “I need to look up a will.”

  “You know the date of death?”

  I told her the date of Jake’s death.

  “Okay. You need to come around here”—she pointed to the waist-high gate as she knelt behind the counter—“and look in this index book.” She pulled out a huge ledger as I opened the gate.

  This was a revelation. I had never imagined the public would be allowed behind the counter, touching actual records.

  She set the ledger, labeled with the year Jake died, on the counter in front of me.

  “What you’re looking for is the Petition to Probate. That’s usually one of the first entries, and it should be soon after the date of death. Just look for the name in this column.” She pointed. “Call me over if you have any questions. I’m Shana.”

  She went back to her desk, leaving me to feel a little better about the civil-service salaries my tax dollars were paying.

  The index listed each case in the order in which it was heard by the probate judge. I started on July 4, the date of death, running my finger down the column. Each entry was handwritten and revealed the date of probate, the legal name, the docket number, and the attorney or agent of record.

  I found what I was looking for on the third page I examined. August 23, 1969, Jacob Elijah Miller, docket number 436085, attorney of record: Franklin Polk.

  I walked over to Shana’s desk. “I’m not sure what the next step is.” I gave her the information I had copied from the index ledger.

  “Let’s see,” she said. “Okay, what I need is the docket number, 436085. Those records are stored downstairs. I’ll be right back.” In about fifteen minutes, she was back with several papers.

  “Okay.” She handed me a sheaf of photocopied pages. “This shows all the filings in the case.” The page on top listed several dates with notes beside each. “These others are copies of the will itself and the subsequent petitions. That should be everything.”