Crazy Heart

by Thomas Cobb

  “I got the hell out the door, and I just stood there. It was my house. Hell, I spent a fortune on it, I ought to know my own damned house. And I started to go back in, and I thought about that screaming woman, so I just stood there on the front porch yelling for Marge. Next thing I know, the damned driveway is full of police cars and cops are crawling out of them with shotguns and pistols.

  “Anyway, the point of the story is that when I took off that time, she took off, too. She called the moving company, had everything taken out of the house and put in storage, and then she rented out the house on me. And she took off. I never saw her again.”

  “Never?”

  “Well, once. O.K.? That’s the story. Now can we talk about something else?”

  “I did have some questions about Tommy. Are you going to do another album together?”

  “I really don’t know. You want to find out, you’ll have to talk to Tommy.”

  “Oh, come on. People want to know about Tommy Sweet.”

  “Look, there are a couple of things I really don’t want to talk about. One is my marriages, the other is Tommy Sweet. I told you a marriage story. If you don’t mind, I’d like to skip Tommy Sweet.”

  “O.K. Fair enough. How did you get started?”

  “You sure you don’t want a drink?”

  “No, really. Go ahead.”

  “I thought reporters drank.”

  “Some do, some don’t. Some do sometimes.”

  “That you?”

  “Yeah. How did you get started?”

  “Well, I’d lay awake at nights, listening to Momma beat on Daddy. Not hit him, but she’d get on him about his drinking and how we were poor as niggers, and why the hell didn’t he do something about it besides hunt and drink. And I took a good look at him one morning. And I was just a kid but I knew he was a man who had been beat to hell, and I knew it wasn’t going to happen to me. So I left home when I was seventeen. I just up and took off one night. I took some clothes, the Washburn, fourteen dollars and my baseball glove, just in case. I hitched. I got a ride as far as Louisville with a policy salesman. I was supposed to pay a dime a week. When I died, Momma would get a hundred dollars to bury me with. Anyway, the first day I was there I walked into WHM radio and told them I wanted a job singing on the radio. They laughed, of course, but there was this fellow there, Eldon Morton, who had this idea for a group and he needed another picker. I thought he was some kind of hot stuff. Turns out he was hustling just like I was. But he talked himself into a radio show with a hillbilly band that sold batteries, and I was part of it. One day out of Judah, Indiana, not even twenty-four hours, and I was a Kentucky Bluebird. Three weeks after that I was on the road. I played guitar and sang a few of the harmonies. Mostly, I was big and I was young. I could fight the drunks, and there were always drunks who wanted a fight. It was the best damned training anybody could have. And I was too dumb to know it. I figured that was just the sort of thing that was supposed to happen.”

  “Did you make records?”

  “Oh, hell no. This was strictly a radio station band. We sang on the radio in Louisville on Sunday and Tuesday nights. The rest of the week we beat through the little towns around Louisville. We sang and played, but mostly we sold auto batteries. The Kentucky Bluebirds were employed by the Bluebird auto battery company. We would do a set, and then, during the break, Eldon would tell people about Bluebird Storage Batteries, the batteries that keep you flying in blue skies. Then we’d come back and play some more. It was a wonderful time.”

  “And you sang?”

  “Not much. I played guitar. Old Eldon wasn’t any great shakes as a singer but he did most of it, what there was of it. Mostly he talked and sold batteries. Bob Wills was still around then, and Eldon had that all figured out. He had himself a bunch of pretty good musicians, and he let us do the work. I guess his major talent was finding folks who could do what he couldn’t. He’d call on us to take solos. That was where the real training came in. We’d rehearse songs, solos and all. You were supposed to know you had certain solos in certain songs. But old Eldon drank quite a bit. And he’d get confused. Hell, you never knew when he was going to call on you. If he called on you by name, it was no problem. The guy who was supposed to play the solo would just play it. But if he called for the instrument—you know, guitar, piano, steel guitar—well, you played something whether you’d rehearsed it or not. My God, there you’d be, onstage or on the radio, and all of a sudden Eldon would announce you were going to play someone else’s solo. You learned real fast.” He takes a long pull on his drink. “I got my name from Eldon.”

  “Bad?”

  He laughs. “Yeah. I’d only been with them for a few weeks. We were doing the radio show. He’d do that Bob Wills stuff—you know, ‘Here’s a man after my own heart, with a razor.’ Anyway, right in the middle of ‘Deep Elem Blues’ old Eldon says, ‘Let’s hear some of that guitar from…’ and he looks at me like he’s never seen me before, and he starts over, ‘some of that very good guitar from…,’ and it’s clear he can’t remember what the hell my name is, so he just says, ‘from a very bad boy.’ He was tighter than a pig that’s got into the corncrib. Everybody in the band started calling me ‘Bad Boy.’ Pretty soon it was just ‘Bad.’ I been Bad ever since.”

  “What’s your real name?”

  “That’s not for publication. I’m Bad Blake. I wasn’t born Bad, and when I die I’ll have my real name on my tombstone. Until then, I’m just going to stay Bad.”

  “That’s a long time to wait for people to find out.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I fight it, but age sure as hell catches up on you. It is going on the tombstone, though. I think I’ve got to quit being Bad when I die”—he winks—“but not until then. What time is it?”

  “Eight. Ten after.”

  “You got enough?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I have more questions.”

  “Listen. I go on in less than two hours. I want to get ready. Maybe you can come back tomorrow and ask the rest of your questions.”

  “Can you give me just a half hour?”

  “Really, darlin’, not now. I got work to do, and I got to get ready. There are people out there who’ve paid good money to hear me. I always figure when all you got is the deposit slip, you better be real nice to the folks that have the checkbook.”

  “How about after the show?”

  “Maybe; let me see. I know you got your work to do. I appreciate that. Let’s see how it goes.”

  When she goes, he strips off his boots, shirt and pants and heads for the bed. God, he needs a nap.

  Moths batter the single light bulb, strung from a wire running across the ceiling slats, held up by clinched nails. He watches the blotchy shadows skitter across the wooden floor. It is mid-June and already hot. It is early evening, still light outside, but in the house the corners where the light from the single bulb don’t reach are dark. The moths have been around for a week now, large gray moths that send up clouds of dust when you hit them. They fall to the floor dead, and then minutes or hours later they are resurrected and pounding on the light bulb, trying to break their way into the single coiled white filament.

  The Victrola next to him drones the song sad and slow. He picks at the strings of the big guitar. Now the song is too sad and slow, and he gets up and rewinds the Victrola, but only halfway so he can pick out the chords they are playing. He places the needle on the record and sits back down with his guitar. The Carter Family begins “Can the Circle Be Unbroken” one more time. A.P/s voice holds the melody with a quiver, while underneath the bass notes alternate with the brushed chords. He listens to the steady alternation of the bass and brushed chords. He follows along, C, F, G7. When the singing stops, the bass notes walk right through the melody.

  He has just come into light from a dark room. He knows, suddenly, how this thing was built, how the bass notes are picked with the thumb and the strings simply brushed with the fingers. He tries it, and he sounds right. He does
it again and again, stopping to rewind the Victrola so that the song is at the tempo it is supposed to have. He works at the tempo, and when he has found it, when the alternation is regular and his fingers move to the chords without having to stop and consider what they are doing, he gets up and runs to the backyard, where his mother is picking horn worms from the tomato plants, pinching them between thumb and forefinger until the green juice spurts across her fingers. The guitar bangs against his leg as he runs. He has to play her this wonderful song about the mother who is dead.

  Chapter Four

  The house is sparse and quiet. Throughout the first set, Jean Craddock keeps edging up to the tiny bandstand to flash a strobe light in his face. What he hears is the piano. It is like being home. It is like being home twenty years ago. Behind him it is like the smell of bread or the green of trees. Unexpectedly, in the middle of “Love Like That,” he steps back, nods to Wesley and lets him go. There is no hesitation or uncertainty. The right hand weaves the notes delicately, the sound crisp and sure. When the solo moves to the dominant chord of the progression, Bad steps back again and continues the break, playing the same themes, surprising himself with sharps and flats that simply volunteer. He runs the neck in a quick descending scale finishing with an E chord back at twelfth position and then runs the scale again with variations. When they come back to the chorus, the song takes off, soaring as if it were something he hadn’t heard in years.

  At the break, a woman in a low-cut blue dress approaches, smiling. He was wonderful, she says. She heard him ten years before in Shreveport, Louisiana. He hasn’t lost anything. He may, in fact, be better than he was back then. She motions to the bartender. Up near the bandstand, Jean Craddock is talking to Wesley Barnes. The woman in the blue dress hands him a Jack Daniel’s, rocks. Will he play “Crazy Heart”? Of course. Her name is Ann. She works as a legal assistant, and she has loved country music all her life. She begins to recite the titles of his songs, even some B sides. Her blond hair is cut short and falls forward over her right eye. She keeps shaking her head to toss it back. If he is not doing anything after the show, they could have a late dinner, or just a cup of coffee. Jean Craddock has gone back to her table and is writing something on a long, thin pad. He thanks Ann for the drink. After the show he has promised an interview to a reporter. That’s all right, Ann says, he will be in town for a couple of nights. Another time would be fine. She puts a business card in his hand and walks back to her table. Some other fans move up for handshakes and autographs. On his way back to the bandstand, Ann raises her glass as he passes.

  The last set is an easy swing. They work their way through the play list methodically, no frills, no additions. With a good band behind him, the set slides by like water over stone. It is only when he is ready to move into the final “Slow Boat” that he remembers he has promised “Crazy Heart.” He dedicates it to Ann, and he tries to sing it to her, though he keeps looking over at Jean. In appreciation for the drink and the damned nice thought, he plays the break slowly, bending the notes, keeping it sad and delicate. They move through that and into “Slow Boat” and out.

  The size of the audience doesn’t really suit an encore, so instead, he walks through the bar, between the tables, handshaking and small-talking. He gives Ann a kiss on the side of the forehead and in return gets his forearm squeezed so hard her nails dig into the flesh through his shirt.

  “Are you busy now?” Jean asks. When he says no, she tilts her head and gives him a smile he can’t quite read. “It looked like you were going to be busy,” she says.

  “No,” he says. “I said I would answer some more of your questions, and I will. Help me with my stuff and we’ll get started.” He packs up efficiently, stopping to chat with the band, to thank and congratulate them, to say “good night, well done, and see you tomorrow.” He has only the guitar and the compact amplifier. They will be safe here, the owner has assured him; they can be locked up in the backroom, and he can avoid lugging them back and forth each night. All he has left of the days when he traveled with a bus and a band and road managers to take care of the equipment is his guitar and this little amplifier. He keeps them with him. He starts to hand Jean the amplifier, changes his mind, and hands her the guitar instead.

  “I can carry the amplifier, you know,” she says. “I’m no fading violet. You can carry the guitar.”

  “It’s O.K. I trust you. Just don’t drop it.”

  As they are carrying the equipment, she says, “You said maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Maybe we’d do the interview after the show. You didn’t promise.”

  “How many of those do you smoke in a day?” she asks as he lights another Pall Mall.

  As soon as she asks, he begins to cough, a shallow cough at first, then going deeper until it begins to rattle and finally doubles him over. “Sorry,” he says when he is able to catch his breath. She raises an eyebrow and then looks apologetic.

  “Drink?” he asks again, fishing cubes out of the ice bucket.

  This time she surprises him. “A short one. It’s getting late.”

  “What do you want to know?” he asks as he hands her her drink.

  He moves over to the bed, pulls off his boots, unbuttons his shirt and leans back against the headboard.

  She looks quizzical, as if she hadn’t expected the question, or didn’t know what she wanted to know. “Records,” she says suddenly. “What’s your favorite?”

  “‘Slow Boat,’” he admits. “It made me a hell of a lot of money. You can’t turn your back on something that turns your whole life around like that song did. I admit I get tired of singing it twice, sometimes three times a night, but God, I’d sure hate not to have it to sing. If I didn’t have it, I might not, hell, I probably wouldn’t be singing anymore. I’d be in Muncie, Indiana, selling Bad’s Good Used Cars for my brother. And then I’d be dead, and happy to be.”

  “Was it your first?”

  “Oh, hell no, I had a couple dozen before that. I put ‘Cheating Night Tonight’ in the top ten before I did ‘Slow Boat.’ My first record? Let me tell you about my first record. It was a rock-and-roll song. It was back in nineteen fifty-six. Elvis had made it. And then all those other guys from Sun—Jerry Lee, Perkins, Cash. I was in Houston then, playing with another swing band, Bill Barnard’s Bayou Boys. Word was out that this old boy who had a recording studio wanted to cut some rockabilly. I’d been listening to it, and I liked it. So I wrote this song, the first real song I had ever done, and I took it to him. He cut it—Bad Blake singing ‘Daddy Gone.’ And there I was all of a sudden, a rockabilly. I had a big pink coat with wide shoulders and lapels, and black slacks and white shoes. We never did real well with the song, sold maybe a few hundred, but I started getting out on my own, playing dances and such with my own band on the nights I wasn’t with the Bayou Boys.”

  He runs his hand across his belly. “I didn’t have all this then, but I wasn’t a little Slim Jim like Elvis was, either. I went about two-ten, around there. But there I was at all these high school and college dances, swiveling my hips and toe-stepping all over the stage, swinging that guitar like it was an ax. My God, I wish you could have seen me. No, I’m glad you didn’t. Thank the sweet Lord that I didn’t see me.”

  “You liked rock-and-roll?”

  “Hell yes. I liked it then and I still like it. Some of it anyway. I liked the hell out of being a rock-and-roll star. Even if I was only a rock-and-roll star in Houston.”

  “But you didn’t stay with it.”

  “No. No, I didn’t. Maybe I’m just country at heart. I grew up listening to country, and I started country. Even when I was doing the rock-and-roll, I was doing country, too. I mean, hell, they aren’t that far apart, at least they weren’t then. They get awful damned close now, too. And maybe I wasn’t a real good rocker, I don’t know. I know I liked it. I liked the way I did it. Maybe I didn’t look rock-and-roll enough for the other folks. I never had that look. I wasn’t skinny and swivelly like th
ey were looking for. How many fat rock-and-rollers do you know?”

  “You like country music today?”

  “Not much, to be honest. There are some I like. I like some of these new kids around. John Anderson, hell, he’s swiping Lefty’s style, but so did Haggard, right? I like George Strait, Ricky Skaggs. They play country. Not that many do anymore. You know, the damnedest thing, Chet Atkins, who is country, real country, damned near cut the heart out of the music with his ‘countrypolitan’ crap. O.K. He got a wider audience for the music. He made it what it is, but hell, he sure lost a lot of what it was, what it’s supposed to be.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Well, mostly it’s supposed to be about people, what they are and what they feel. It’s not just some cute saying laid over a nice, tight hook. Music today, you listen to it, say ‘that’s clever,’ and you forget it. I get the feeling it doesn’t have anything to do with anyone. At least no one I know, or would want to know.”

  “Who’s real country?”

  “Hank Williams was real country. Lefty Frizzell was real country. Roy Acuff is real country. Hank Thompson and Kitty Wells are real country. Hell, there are lots of real country people around. A lot of them are dead, but there are a whole bunch who are still around.”

  “Is Tommy Sweet real country?”

  “More than he’ll admit to. When he started, he was as country as you could get. He was so damned country, traffic lights confused him. He started playing country with me. I taught him country. He tries to cover it up a lot, but yes, Tommy is country. When I was growing up, I ate a lot of rabbit. Sometimes it was the only meat we got for weeks, for months—rabbit, possum, squirrel. When I left home, I swore I would never eat another rabbit or squirrel as long as I lived. Now I eat steak. I dream about rabbit, but I won’t eat it. No matter how it’s fixed. That’s sort of the way Tommy is about country music. Maybe someday he’ll come around. He did it with me on Memories. I’ll tell you this, enough of these kids doing country make some money, Tommy’ll be back in overalls and bare feet before long.”