Patchwork

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  This was an outright lie—I didn’t know why she told it—but the Hilltoppers didn’t know the difference, so I didn’t know what to say. I was happy, though, showing off the Hilltoppers to my friend. Jimmy introduced both of us to the audience at a special moment in the show before they sang “To Be Alone,” in which Don did an Ink Spots–style monologue in his surprising bass voice and caused girls to squeal. (He had cherubic looks.) The Hilltoppers had a new record, “Starry Eyes,” backed with “You Sure Look Good to Me,” but they didn’t sing it. I was disappointed. I was afraid it wasn’t going to be a hit, and I was getting frustrated with the power of positive thinking. I hadn’t told the Hilltoppers about the ESP experiments I had been trying (they involved sending telepathic messages to d.j.s to play Hilltoppers tunes). I was afraid the Hilltoppers would laugh. I wanted them to think I was normal. One of the fan-club presidents I had visited in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, had a deformed back and didn’t even go to school. Another one I knew weighed about three hundred pounds, and her ambition was to be an actress. It was depressing.

  “What do you think of Elvis?” Janine asked the Hilltoppers later. Elvis was singing “All Shook Up” on the radio of the Cadillac as Jimmy drove us out to a café for hamburgers.

  “He’s great,” said Sy. “He has a fine voice.”

  “If I could wiggle like that, we’d make a million dollars,” Jimmy said.

  Don laughed. “Our manager had a chance once to manage Elvis, but he turned it down. He said nobody with a name like ‘Elvis’ would get anywhere.”

  “I like Elvis,” Mama said. “He can really carry a tune.”

  For me, there was something as familiar about Elvis as our farm, with the oak trees and the cows and the chickens. It was as though Elvis were me, listening to WLAC and then coming up with his own songs about the way he felt about the world. I tried not to think too hard about Elvis. Janine had said to me, “If I got Elvis in a dark corner, I’d tear his clothes off.”

  Janine grew impatient with me and my obsession, and we didn’t stay friends. She was going steady with a basketball player I had once had a crush on, and she had no interest in things like flying saucers and reincarnation. I had read “Reincarnation: A Hope of the World,” and it impressed me. I was filled with philosophical questions and I wrote a paper for English class on agnosticism. My teacher, Miss Florence, summoned me to her office and accused me of plagiarism. “Young lady, you have no business entertaining ideas like this,” she said. “Where did you get such an idea?”

  I quaked. “I read about it. I read lots of philosophy,” I said, which was only partly a lie. Reincarnation was philosophy, sort of. I told her I had read John Locke, which was a lie. But I hadn’t plagiarized. I really believed it was possible that God did not exist, and furthermore it seemed likely that there was no way to know whether he did or not.

  Miss Florence had lavender hair, and she kept a handkerchief tucked in her sleeve. Now and then she daintily plucked it out and snuffled into it. She was a terrifying woman, much admired by the whole town. Everyone since the thirties had been in her English class.

  “Take my advice,” she said, growing softer. “Give up these strange ideas of yours. Your field is mathematics. That’s what you’re good at. Stay away from these peculiar questions, because they’re destructive. And stick with the Bible. That’s all the philosophy you’ll ever need.”

  I was silent, rigid with fury—too intimidated to speak.

  “You have a lot of big ideas, but they will lead you astray,” Miss Florence said in dismissal.

  I immersed myself in my presidential duties, publishing my bimonthly newsletter, Hilltoppers Topics. In Mayfield, I was an outcast, but in the greater world I was suave and self-important. When d.j.s interviewed me, I spoke glibly in Billboard lingo. “Well, Ed, this new platter is slated to be a chartbuster,” I said to Ed Bonner on KXOK. I had my own stationery, with a Hilltoppers logo. Running a fan club was expensive, but the Hilltoppers sent me ten dollars a week for expenses and fifteen dollars a week for myself. I saved all my money for college. I started hating math.

  My mother had been serious about those Tony Martin suits. Shortly before my graduation, the Hilltoppers came to Mayfield, and Mama whisked them off to the Merit and got them measured for the suits. They picked out an off-white material with a subtle gray stripe in it. (Later, when the suits were finished, Mama went to the Merit and personally sewed in the labels.) That spring, I was a soda jerk at the Rexall drugstore in Mayfield, making fifty cents an hour, and after school that day I was drawing a Coke from the fountain for one of the regulars when all four of the Hilltoppers strolled into the drugstore. It was my big moment: I could show them off. A classmate of mine, one of those popular cheerleaders—an uptown girl who had made me feel like a shabby bumpkin—was testing nail polish at the cosmetics counter. I rushed over and told her I would introduce her to the Hilltoppers. “They’re here,” I said, pointing to the end of the counter, where I had served them Cokes.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, flashing her cheerleader smile. “I wouldn’t know what to say.” With two fingernails painted Persian Melon, she hurried out the back door of the drugstore. The Hilltoppers scared her.

  It was a triumph, sort of. I got off work early, and the Hilltoppers drove me home in the Cadillac. Mama made a huge catfish supper, with hush puppies and slaw and blackberry pie, and that evening my family and I all went to Paducah and saw the Hilltoppers sing at the National Guard Armory with Blue Barron’s orchestra. It was a perfect day. “Your mother is an amazing woman,” Don said to me.

  The Hilltoppers were so conventional, such nice guys. I didn’t know how to talk to them about the crazy thoughts in my head. I had just received a reply to my letter to George Adamski, the man who claimed in his book about UFOs to have been on a spaceship to Venus. He thanked me for writing and assured me that he had indeed been to Venus, but he failed to answer my questions about the spacecraft’s interior and the landscape of Venus.

  That summer, I picked blackberries in the early-morning dew with rock-and-roll songs like “Get a Job” by the Silhouettes and Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” blasting in my mind, and in the afternoons I trudged down the dusty lanes through the fields with the dog to round up the herd of cows. In the evenings, I worked at the Rexall. I went out with boys—boys who wanted to settle down and work in the new factories—but I wasn’t impressed. I was always dreaming. Our house was close to Highway 45, which ran straight south to Tupelo, Mississippi, where Elvis was born. I knew he had dreamed the same dreams.

  Miss Florence refused to write me a recommendation to Duke University, where I wanted to study parapsychology with the famous Dr. J. B. Rhine, so in the fall I went away to the University of Kentucky, in Lexington, where I fell in love with a boy who was interested in UFOs and mind expansion. He wrote a column for the college newspaper and had a sense of humor that reminded me of Max Shulman’s “Rally Round the Flag, Boys!” I neglected my fan-club duties and failed to get Hilltoppers Topics out on schedule. All the mysteries of the universe lay before me, and I couldn’t learn fast enough. I read “Brave New World” and “1984” and “On the Beach” and “Mandingo” and “Elmer Gantry.” I studied French and psychology and philosophy and volleyball. After hours, I still listened to John R jive-talking along with Ruth Brown and Little Walter and Jimmy Reed. Buddy Holly died that winter. Elvis was in the Army.

  Earlier in the school year, before I fell in love, the Hilltoppers played at homecoming, and I went to the dance without a date—an unheard-of thing for a girl to do in those days. But I wouldn’t have missed their show. I never tired of seeing it—even the old comic bit when the guys rolled up Don’s pantlegs without his knowledge while he was singing the solo of “Ka-Ding-Dong.” They always opened with something fast-paced, like “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” or “I’ve Got the World on a String,” and sometimes they followed up with “Toot Toot Tootsie (Goo’ Bye)”—which Jimmy sang as “To
ot Toot Tootie”—before launching into their own numbers. Jimmy was noted for his clumsy introductions: “Ladies and gentlemen, and now we want to do the song that you made possible our being here with by buying those …” That night, as he always did when I was at their show, Jimmy introduced me to the audience, and the spotlight hit my face, momentarily blinding me. This time, I was embarrassed, because I thought everyone there would know I didn’t have a date and would think I was peculiar. I felt as though I had just arrived from the moon.

  The curfew was extended to 2 A.M. that night, because the Hilltoppers’ show was late, and Sy walked me to my dorm. We sat in the parlor, surrounded by sorority pledges and their anxious dates. Some of them stared at us. Sy was the only one in the room in a tuxedo. I was the only one in the room who seemed to have a date with a member of the famous singing group that had just performed at the big dance. The lights in the parlor were bright, and the elderly housemother patrolled nervously. I got a fit of giggles when she looked at Sy suspiciously, as though he might be secretly organizing a panty raid. She had drilled the dorm residents in the horrors of panty raids, making them seem something like acts of terrorism.

  A year later, I saw the Hilltoppers for the last time, at a night club in Louisville, where they were performing with Mel Tormé. I had driven over with some girls from U.K. The Hilltoppers’ popularity had declined drastically. It wasn’t my fault, though. They were being eclipsed by rock and roll. In their tuxedos or in their Tony Martin suits, they never really got the hang of it. That night in Louisville, I remember Don and Sy sitting at a table in a corner with me. They were as kind as ever—funny and generous, the way I always remember them. I had on a black cocktail dress with a taffeta balloon hem. “Those U.K. boys better watch out,” Don said, teasing me.

  Shyly, I told them about my boyfriend. By then, he was going with some other girl and my life was in ruins, but I didn’t go into detail. I apologized for letting my club work slip. The newsletter was two months late.

  Don smiled. “It’s about time you forgot about the fan club,” he said.

  “No, it’s not,” I said loyally.

  “You’ll have other interests,” he said. “You’ll get married, and have your own family.”

  “I don’t know.” I knew I could never love anyone but that boy with the sense of humor. I would never get married.

  “People change and go on to something else,” Don said. “We won’t stay with this forever. It’s no way to live—one dinky ballroom after another. Travelling around all the time isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

  “Even in a Cadillac?” I asked.

  “Even in a Cadillac,” Don said, smiling again. “By the way, we’ll drop you off in Lexington tomorrow.”

  “Thank you,” I said. It was my last chance to travel in their Cadillac, I thought—a good way to end my national presidency. They had traded in the blue Cadillac for a newer, black model. I imagine it even now, rushing through the night, unrestrained in its flight, charging across America.

  It was after midnight that night when Mel Tormé finished his set, but the band wouldn’t quit. The crowd was wild. Jimmy took the microphone again. He sang “I Can’t Get Started,” a droopy-drawers sort of song. He had had a couple of drinks, and he was in mellow spirits. Then he eased into “St. James Infirmary.” As the deep sadness of the song emerged, he suddenly became real to me, not a star. “St. James Infirmary” was slow and bluesy, but it wasn’t a droopy-drawers song. It was the meanest, low-downest, saddest song I ever heard. I thought I would die. It was after hours, way down South in Dixie. It was 1959.

  The Hilltoppers rode their behemoth Cadillac and played one-night stands only a while longer. Sy worked in a tobacco warehouse for a time, and then he and Jimmy became sales representatives for Dot Records. Don settled in Lexington. I lost touch with them. In the seventies, during the nostalgia rage, I heard that Jimmy Sacca was on the road again with a new Hilltoppers group. After college, in the sixties, I went to New York and got a job writing for a fan magazine—the same magazine that had once listed my fan club in its Betty Burr column. I found out that Betty Burr, who had once been an honorary member of my club, was only a name, like Miss Lonelyhearts. Part of my job at the fan mag was to write Betty Burr columns about fan clubs. I did that for about a year, and after that I left New York.

  Reading Between the Lines

  Featured in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 2014

  When I was about ten, I received a five-year diary for Christmas. It was a small green leather-look book with a little lock and key. My grandmother, who had briefly kept a minimalist diary, insisted that I record the weather. In her diary she wrote things like “Wind in the north. Went down and helped Mrs. Hixon with her hog killing a while.”

  In high school, the habit of chronicling my life history seized me, probably at about the same time I was seized by a teenaged self-importance. Jottings from early 1957:

  Memorize 12 quotations from Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”

  “30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary”

  Geometry theorems. Make 12-pointed star.

  Read “Oliver Twist”

  Tab Hunter on Steve Allen Show

  Elvis Presley “All Shook Up”

  “The Report on UFOs,” E. J. Ruppelt

  I’m still doing this. Since high school, I have kept a calendar diary, a brief account of each day. It is not a planner, where a schedule is set forth. And it is not a journal, for it is not really intimate. I’ve recorded only things I thought I wouldn’t be embarrassed by—books, movies, trips, places, work.

  The desk diaries are almost always visually appealing calendars, from museums perhaps. In recent years I have relied on the New Yorker desk diaries, because they offer more writing space and a pleasing format. The aesthetics of these notebooks is very important. They may be the only objects in my life that I treat with any specialness and reverence.

  In high school, the little books were plain and I wrote sparely. The notation “5–8:30” simply meant that I worked at my regular job as a soda jerk at the drugstore during those hours. I didn’t have to explain that to myself. In time, I scribbled more elaborate notes, yet never offered much clarity for a reader.

  These notes were meant to trigger memories, but when I look back now I discover that many of the memories have vanished. For instance, during my second year in college I seem to have spent a lot of time hanging out with George Clooney’s parents, but I hardly remember this. I knew some local DJs, including Nick Clooney. I remember Nick’s fiancée, Nina, and I remember riding in Nick’s red Corvette, which apparently now belongs to George. All I can say is that Nick was cuter than George is.

  And I’m astonished to realize that I saw Miles Davis play at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1966. I like knowing that this happened, but how could I have forgotten even a moment of this?

  I look back at these little daybooks rarely. But lately I have been perusing the annals of high school and college. I’m mortified! Most people have a grip on their past through memory and souvenirs—photos, home movies. My past is recorded in outline form. Normally we can fashion a narrative of our lives out of our murky memories, blocking out our callow youth, but I have evidence—record books—of it.

  What stands out, ludicrously, is the ongoing list of movies I saw, sometimes juxtaposed improbably with my current reading.

  June 5, 1961

  Jerry Lewis, “Ladies Man”

  Sartre, “Age of Reason”

  July 14, 1961

  “The Parent Trap,” Hayley Mills

  Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist”

  Looking back at all the TV shows and movies, I cringe. Here is proof of my shallowness, misdirection, foolishness, vapid pastimes. There’s more.

  Some of the books I read in 1958, my last semester of high school and first semester of college: The Hills Beyond, Ape and Essence, Brave New World, All the King’s Men, Mandingo, Gidget, Animal Farm, Forever Amber, Les Misérables, Cri
me and Punishment, On the Beach, and A Certain Smile. Books I bought just before high-school graduation: Philosophy Made Simple, Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, The Universe and Dr. Einstein, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and Teacher’s Pet.

  I’m a product of a poor (criminally skimpy) grade-school education. For the first eight years I attended a country school in Cuba, Kentucky, a small school with no art, no languages, no music. There was no library! My mother bought me the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew series books, and in sixth grade I discovered a copy of Little Women.

  I remember now how hungry I was to learn, grasping for knowledge. What I wanted was an intense, intricate experience—like weaving a tapestry. Or reading novels! My mind was active, but I had few examples or role models. And no creative glimmer of possibility—only workbook rules. Not a scrap of creative encouragement. For art we colored outlined pumpkins and Santas. I was absorbed in coloring books and paint-by-numbers. I tried to write my own Nancy Drew–style mysteries.

  By the time I got to high school, I was rebellious, headstrong. It was too late for guidance or role models. My artistic and intellectual development was stunted. My main outlet was music on the radio. No wonder I was drawn to DJs and kept tabs on Pat Boone’s hit songs. The radio was my guide to the world. I plunged into an alternative life, ruled by the radio, and I spent my high-school years running the national fan club for a popular music group, the Hilltoppers. Pen pals, mail, and promotion projects filled my days.