Croaked
Page 5
“And it never happens around witnesses?”
“Naw. And the last few times I ain’t been drinking none, neither. Y’all could walk out of this room right now, and if I started playing, I bet you real money this girl would show up.”
Tanna nodded thoughtfully. Emerson nervously tapped his foot. At last she said, “Tell me something, Mr. Emerson. Does this girl frighten you?”
“Naw!” Emerson thundered immediately. Then he added, “Well, yeah, a little, I reckon. I mean, wouldn’t it frighten you?” He looked up at me for validation.
“I guess,” I said. “Ghosts are scary, even if they don’t try to be.”
“Exactly. That’s what I mean. I don’t get no sense that she’d try to hurt me, but damn, she is a ghost.”
Tanna said, “Mr. Emerson, I’ve got an idea about what this might be, and I’d like to try an experiment to confirm it. Do you have your father’s guitar with you?”
“Yeah, got it out in the Hummer. Didn’t want to bring it in ‘til I knew what was what.”
“I understand. I have a class that’ll go until three o’clock. After that, if you’re willing, I’d like to test my theory. It won’t damage the guitar in any way, and it won’t hurt you.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” he said guardedly. “What’re you going to do?”
“We have an observation room for behavior experiments. It has one-way mirrors on each wall, so you’re never sure where the observer is, or even if there is one. If you go in there and start playing, this girl might show up.”
“Not if you’re watching, she won’t.”
“Oh? How do you know we will be? We might be out in the hall laughing at you.”
He turned a little red around the ears and muttered, “Hell, I guess I won’t.”
“That’s the point. As far as you know, you’ll be alone. And if I’m right, she’ll feel safe to come out.”
***
The observation room was a holdover from the sixties, when psychiatrists would watch people in sterile isolation to monitor their behavior. Monitoring equipment then, such as video or audio recorders, was large and bulky, which made it impractical to go “on location,” as they say. Now webcams and tiny microphones meant subjects could be observed in comfort anywhere. Still, the old room had one decidedly unique feature: two-way mirrors on three of its four walls, so that the subject could never be sure if he or she was being observed. That was crucial to Tanna’s test.
She sent her graduate assistant Daniel and another student, Trudy, to clean the room and set it up while she taught her Introduction to Parapsychology class. Emerson was half an hour late getting back, and smelled of marijuana. But he dutifully went into the white room with the haunted guitar.
His posse, easily seven hundred pounds of sycophantic redneck, milled about in the hall. The one who’d blocked the door earlier said, “Y’all really think this’ll get him back on track?”
“Yeah, this is like that stupid bullshit they have on Haunted History,” another one added. The third hmphd in agreement.
Even though she couldn’t see them, Tanna fixed him with her glare. “You know, you’re the biggest bunch of children I’ve ever encountered. I mean that.” She turned to the one who’d played security guard. “You’re, what, six foot three, and yet you can barely go to the bathroom without Son Emerson giving you permission. You all think you’re his friends, but you’re really just fat, bloated ticks living on his money and reputation. Now, I’ve put up with a lot from you gentlemen today, but it stops right now. You just go on over to the cafeteria and ogle the pretty girls while we take care of business.” When they didn’t move, she snapped, “Go on! Git!”
They lumbered to the elevator, shoulders contritely hunched. Tanna put her hands on her hips and stood “watching” until they’d filed away into the elevator car and the doors shut after them. Then she laughed. “Did I sound like my mother?”
“Only in the best possible sense,” I said.
Daniel appeared in the hall. “Everything’s set, and Mr. Emerson is in there right now. He’s a big guy, isn’t he?”
“He’s big,” Tanna agreed, “but is he big enough?”
***
We slipped into one of the observation booths, a narrow chamber with two folding chairs and a little ledge that served as a desk. We sat carefully, not wanting to make any noise that would confirm our presence.
“Do you believe him?” I whispered. “You think is guitar is haunted?”
“I don’t think he has the capacity to make something like that up,” Tanna said, “and anyway, why would he?”
“Publicity?” I suggested.
“It’s too weird to be a publicity stunt. If he’d said his dad’s ghost haunted it, yes. But a naked child? That’s kind of icky to make up.”
“So whose ghost is it? Did his father have any children who died? Maybe illegitimate ones?”
“I don’t think it is a ghost. Remember how he said it only appeared when he played the guitar alone?”
“Yeah.”
“That doesn’t suggest anything to you?”
“That maybe heaven is a lot like Dixie?”
She tweaked my nose. “No, think. Did you ever study mythology?”
“Only when I had to. Am I mything something?”
Tanna sighed and gave up for the moment. I returned to watching Emerson for both of us.
He sat on a folding metal chair in the all-white room, a high-tech aluminum guitar case open at his feet. He gently wiped a chamois rag across the weathered six-string acoustic guitar. The sight of such a large man behaving so delicately and precisely was, in its own way, kind of touching.
He settled the guitar across his lap and looked around the room, trying to tell if in fact he was being watched. Then he dug a pick from his pocket and began to strum.
We heard the music clearly through the glass. It was one of his own songs, not his father’s, and I wondered if that would make a difference. Then he began to sing.
Son Emerson could carry a tune, I had to give him that. Even in this bizarre circumstance, his voice was strong and sure. I felt a weird kind of sympathy for him all of a sudden: here he was, talented enough to stand comparison with just about anyone except his own father. No matter how good or successful he became, he’d never be free of that legend. Hell, he was even called, “Son.”
Then the air directly in front of him grew thick and hazy. An outline formed. It was the shape of a slim naked girl, somewhere between eight and ten years old. Emerson hadn’t noticed her yet, and as he played she became more substantial.
“She’s there,” I whispered. Tanna squeezed my hand in excitement.
Emerson stopped playing. He looked up slowly, like he was afraid of what he might see, which I guess was the case. He stared, open-mouthed, at the apparition.
The girl’s ghostly face, which had appeared with a rapturous expression, now looked worried, and as Emerson stared at her it grew worse. Her hands pressed against her stomach as if she were suddenly in pain.
“Keep playing, you idiot,” Tanna hissed at Emerson through the glass.
As if he’d heard, Emerson began playing again, just random strumming without rhythm or melody. The girl’s sad, tortured expression softened. One fog-like arm reached out for him. The fingertips touched his face, and he started humming, not along with the guitar, just nonsense notes. His eyes never left the girl’s.
The girl’s face was right up against his now, her hands on either side of his head. She put her lips softly against his forehead.
The strumming changed. I suddenly caught a melody, one of such simplicity and power I got goose bumps. The girl threw back her head in a kind of ecstasy.
With a jarring CHANG of guitar strings the spell was broken. The girl vanished like warm breath on a cold day. Emerson huddled over the guitar, his big frame heaving with sobs.
Tanna just shook her head and said, “Oh, wow.”
“Were you right?” I asked. She didn’t answer.
; ***
We stepped into the hall just as Emerson burst from the room and ran straight for the men’s restroom. He didn’t look back or acknowledge us. After a moment, Tanna said, “Well, go check on him.”
“Me?”
“That sounded like the men’s room door. I can’t go in there.”
“Yeah, but--”
“Just make sure he isn’t too freaked out, and tell him to come to my office when he’s ready.”
Two young men came out as I reached the door, both looking nervous. One warned me, “There’s a big drunk redneck in there crying, you might want to wait.” I went in anyway.
Except for Emerson, the bathroom was empty. He leaned on the sink, his big shoulders still heaving. His sobs were mostly silent now, and he looked up at me as I entered. His voice was ragged when he said, “It’s you.”
“It’s me.”
Without his dark glasses, I could see that his eyes were red from old dope and new tears. “What was your name again?”
“Ry.”
“Like the bread?”
“No, like Cooder.”
He nodded. “I know him. He’s a good picker. Played on one of my albums once.”
“Are you all right?”
He took a paper towel and blew his nose. “Depends. Did you see her?”
“Yeah.”
He let out the sigh of a man reassured of his sanity. “What was she?”
“I don’t know. Tanna said when you get yourself together, come on down to her office.”
He wet a fresh paper towel and wiped his eyes. “You close to your dad?”
“He’s dead.”
“How about when he was alive?”
I thought about all the times he’d passed out drunk on the couch, and how everyone in my family always assured me he was just tired from working so hard. “I never did know him very well.”
“Me, neither. Mine died when I was five. Although I reckon you know that. Everybody does.” He laughed, without humor. “Except it’s like he never did die. He’s always looking over my shoulder, shaking his head at me. You know how that feels?”
“Yeah,” I said. I hadn’t expected this at all.
“I shouldn’t have become a damn singer. I should’ve just been an accountant or a mechanic or something. I just let my mama and everybody push me into this, and now I don’t know how to do anything else.”
“You’re not bad at it.”
He chuckled. “That ain’t the same as being good.” He washed his hands, then said, “All right, let’s go visit your wife. Does she know how hot she is, by the way?”
“She might have some idea,” I said, annoyed at the sudden return of his old self.
“Oh, hell, I’m just yanking your chain.” He put a brotherly arm around my shoulders as we left the restroom. “You ever heard what Mark Twain said about redheads? ‘While the rest of us came down from apes, redheads came down from cats....’”
***
The three of us sat in Tanna’s office. If Emerson wondered where his boys were, he didn’t ask.
“You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Emerson,” Tanna said.
“Lucky? Dang, I just seen a ghost, I don’t feel very damn lucky.”
“That wasn’t a ghost. Have you ever read any mythology?”
He looked blank.
“Well. The short version is, the ancient Greeks believed that every true artist was visited by a spirit called a muse.”
“You mean this shit’s supposed to be funny?”
“Not ‘amuse,’ ‘a muse.’ They’re totally dedicated to inspiring happiness, mainly through music.” She paused for effect. She was good at that; it made sure that she had her listener’s attention. “That girl was the muse that inspired your father to write all those wonderful songs. And, for whatever reason, it seems that when you play his guitar, she’ll come to inspire you.”
He stared at her, then took a deep breath, slowly let it out and said, “Well, ain’t that slicker than clean socks on a waxed floor.” Then he started laughing.
***
The next night I attended Emerson’s concert to shoot pictures for my newspaper, and he put on a hell of a show. He was loud, obnoxious, sexist and all the others things his fans expected. He drank whiskey from a big bottle throughout the show, so that by the end he was staggering and could barely speak, although his music didn’t noticeably suffer. The crowd loved it. And truthfully, as sheer spectacle, so did I. He kept the crowd on edge, wondering if and when he’d finally blow it. He never did.
I stayed around after the house lights came up, talking to one of the arena security people, who I’d known since high school. The crowd filed noisily out, the occasional “YEE-HAH!” rising above the clatter of cowboy boots on concrete.
“Did you see the rack on that blond we had to carry out?” my friend said.
“The one who kept flashing the stage?” I said.
“Yep. Boobies that like don’t occur in nature, I tell you what.” Then he frowned as he saw something on the stage behind me. “Now what in the hell is he up to now?”
I turned. Son Emerson strode to the center-stage microphone, his father’s guitar in his hands. As the first fans noticed and spread the word, the crowd began flowing back to their seats.
Emerson cleared his throat. He wasn’t nearly as drunk as he’d been acting during the show. “Ah...listen, y’all, I...this here’s my daddy’s guitar.”
The crowd voiced its approval.
He looked down at the instrument. “My daddy died when I was five. He was the greatest performer in the history of country music.”
There was more applause, and someone yelled, “Dad kicks ass!”
“Yes, sir, he does,” Emerson agreed, “and I’ll never be anywhere as good as he was.” He took a deep breath. “But...I figured out that all I can do is be as good as I can be. That seems to be enough for y’all. It ought to be good enough for me.”
More cheering and applause greeted this.
“So, if y’all want, I’m going to play a new song I just wrote today. Y’all tell me what you think when I’m done.”
The song he played that night was released as a single about two months later, and was his biggest hit to date. It wasn’t a terribly spectacular song--just a simple story about two brothers in love with the same woman, and one brother’s noble sacrifice--but once you heard it, it stayed with you.
Son Emerson continued to behave like a jerk, being acquitted of both statutory rape and cocaine possession the following year, with no loss of popularity. But his music lost the flaming redneck arrogance that had characterized it. It was as if some magical change had come over him and removed the pressure to outdo his famous father.
What brought about this change? I can’t say for sure. But whatever the cause, Lorenzo Emerson, Jr., now sold the song, not the singer.
For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles.”
--Hesiod
About the Author
Photo By: Steven Stack
Alex Bledsoe grew up in west Tennessee, an hour north of Graceland and twenty minutes from Nutbush. He’s been a reporter, editor, photographer and door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. He now lives in a Wisconsin town famous for trolls, writes before six in the morning and tries to teach his two sons to act like they’ve been to town before.
FUN FACTS
about the author
- Alex is an award-winning portrait photographer
- He once held the actual job title “American Friend”
- He went to high school with the critically-acclaimed country musician Dale Watson
- He can clean a catfish with just a hammer, a nail, and a pocketknife
- He’s been bitten by a brown recluse spider
- He once sang a country arrangement of “When Doves Cry” in an actual redneck bar
- He once spent a day fighting a forest fire
- He’s organized creek and woodland cleanups
- He once caught a wild rabbit bare-handed
- He’s been in two tornadoes and a hurricane
- He played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a professional production of Shakespeare’s “Twelve Night”