Crazy Heart

by Thomas Cobb

  “How did you meet Tommy?”

  “Look, darlin’, I don’t want to be cantankerous, but like I said, I really don’t want to talk about Tommy, O.K?”

  “O.K. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Originally?”

  “Yeah, where are you from?”

  “Enid, Oklahoma. Why?”

  “That’s what I want to talk about.”

  “Enid, Oklahoma?”

  “No. You. I been to Enid, by the way.”

  “Depressing, isn’t it?”

  “I’m playing in Benson, Arizona, in a couple of nights. Nothing depresses me anymore. Why’d you leave?”

  “It depressed me. And I was young and in love.”

  “You can be in love anywhere. I’ve done it in all kinds of places.”

  “I guess so, but when the one you’re in love with is hell-bent to get out of Enid, Oklahoma, and you’re not real crazy about it, either, it doesn’t take much to get you out.”

  “That your husband?”

  “Yeah. He was going to build the West.”

  “Did he?”

  “Some of it. A lot of houses here. A couple of shopping centers.”

  “Why’d you leave him?”

  “Hold on just a minute. I’m supposed to be the one asking the questions here, and if I can’t ask you personal questions, you sure as hell can’t ask me any.”

  “If I let you ask me some, can I ask you some?”

  “Why?”

  “You’re nice. I don’t get to talk to that many nice people. Another drink?”

  “One more. Short and quick. You haven’t told me the story about how dear old what’s-his-name stepped aside one night and let you be the front man for a while.”

  “What the hell story is that?” He hands her her drink.

  “The story I get from everybody I’ve ever interviewed in this business. They always start as a sideman, then the star gives them their big break and they become stars.”

  “And I forgot to tell you that one? My lord, the Brotherhood of Nashville Nose and Guitar Pickers will have my behind for missing that one.”

  “You mean it never happened?”

  “Not exactly. When I was cutting those rockabilly records in Houston, we were sending them out around the country. I cut a couple of straight country numbers, too, and Wilson Cruthers from Federation heard one and offered to let me cut a demo for Federation. They liked it and signed me. The third one I cut for them was ‘Cheatin’ Night Tonight.’ Things kind of went from there. I was a sideman and all, but not for anyone famous, and those I played with wouldn’t have stepped aside when the Red Sea parted.”

  “What ever happened to Federation?”

  “J.M.I. bought them out in nineteen sixty-two. I recorded for them for another five years, then they cut me loose.”

  “And now?”

  He looks around the room. “And now, this. I’ve cut a couple for a little independent in Houston, but mostly I’ve given up on that. The independents can’t compete with the conglomerates. It’s a whole bunch of people who bust their asses to put out a quality product that can’t get airplay. That’s controlled by a bunch of yahoos with gold jewelry and Mercedes cars who only care about Jacuzzis and each other’s secretaries and how much money they can stick up their noses. Music is just a diversion for them. Hell, I ain’t going to sweat for them. Except for the duet with Tommy, I don’t really record anymore. What else?”

  “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know, still early.”

  “It wasn’t early when we started this. It must be three or four by now.”

  Bad digs his watch from the drawer beside the bed. “No, it ain’t that late.”

  “How late?”

  “It ain’t four yet. It’s hardly three.”

  “It’s late enough. I better go.”

  “I thought reporters stayed with a story until they got it.”

  “I’ve got an awful lot now.”

  “There’s a lot more. Hell, I’ll tell you stories that will make your readers laugh, cry, shiver, scream and lock up their daughters. I’d keep digging until I cave in and confess, if I was you.”

  “Really, I better go. You’ve been awfully nice. I’ve enjoyed this.”

  “Me, too. Honestly.”

  “You know, it’s odd finally meeting you and talking with you.”

  “Odd?”

  “Odd. I’ve heard you for years. Wesley is a real fan of yours. I listened to him talk about you and play your songs. I sort of felt like I knew you.”

  “Now you do. And I know you, and that’s my pleasure.”

  “Well, thanks. You’ve been kind. Maybe I’ll see you again before you leave?”

  “Can I ask you one more of those personal questions?”

  “I guess.”

  “Will you stay? Here? With me?”

  “I’m sorry. No. I can’t. You’re very nice, but no. Really. Thank you.”

  “I’d like you to.”

  “I know. I mean, I believe that. But I just can’t.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  “No. Boy, four. He’s with a baby-sitter. I’ve got to go rescue both of them. You turned that woman in the bar down. I’m sorry. I really am. I didn’t mean to spoil anything.”

  “Don’t be, it’s O.K. I get offers in bars most nights. I don’t get nice reporters from Enid, Oklahoma. This was better. I mean that. You go on home to your boy. It’s O.K.”

  He pours himself a drink while she packs up her recorder and notes. “I hope that comes out well.” He nods to the recorder.

  “I put in new batteries.”

  “See, not only nice and pretty, but smart, too. Make sure I get a copy when you get it done. Here, let me give you my address.” She hands him a pad and her pencil. He writes his Houston address. Then he hands it back to her. When he leans, she leans. When he kisses her she moves in tight. He runs his hand along the twin ridges by her spine. She holds the kiss, then breaks.

  “Oops. Sorry, cowboy. I guess I got carried away. I have a baby-sitter to rescue.”

  When she is gone, he begins to straighten up. He takes his coat from the back of the chair and puts it in the closet. He reaches into the side pocket and pulls out the business card. Ann Ralston, Legal Assistant. Above her work number, she has inked in another number. He looks at the card and then at his watch. It is a quarter to four. He puts the card back in his pocket. Oddly, he doesn’t feel any regret.

  It is mid-June, sticky hot in the white clapboard church. He has come in late, squeezed onto the wooden pew next to his sister. Around him he hears the drone of flies, lazy in the heat, describing wide sloping arcs above their heads. Around him, pasteboard fans on thin sticks are snapped by the fat wrists of sweating women, breaking small breezes against thick night air.

  “The Old Rugged Cross” is winding down, the last notes descending into the lower register, rumbling in the throats of men whose faces, red from neck to forehead, white from forehead to hairline, are glistening with sweat. He gets in the last note, and with the rest, sits down.

  While the others look to the front of the church where Brother Randall is slowly easing his bulk up to the podium, he looks down, checking his fingers for yellow tobacco stains. He keeps his head down, avoiding breathing in his sister’s direction, where she might smell the corn whiskey.

  “The time has come,” Brother Randall says, “for us to make a choice. This is the time. Not tomorrow or the day after or the week after or the year after.” He drops his voice to barely a whisper, but a whisper that rushes out and covers the whole church. “This is the time. And it is a simple choice. You don’t have to mull it over. You don’t have to think on it, sleep on it, or discuss it with your neighbor or the banker. The choice is clear. It is the choice, brothers and sisters, of spending all eternity wrapped in the arms of those you love, those who love you, especially in the arms of Jesus Christ our Lord, whose love is greater than an
ything you and I can even begin to imagine. A choice to move into the light of that promise, the greatest promise ever made, the promise that will be kept now and for all time.”

  Around him, the air has grown denser and wetter. It sinks into his lungs and he has to push it out. When he has pushed it out, more wells over him and sinks into him and he pushes. Sweat gathers and drips in his ears and from the tip of his nose, and the smell of his sweat gathers and combines with the smell of other sweat and the smell of his sister’s lilac toilet water. It stings his eyes and clogs his nose. And beneath it all, the other smell that comes welling up from him. He is getting sick with it; he folds his arms across his stomach and bends forward.

  “Such a simple choice. To rest yourself forever and all time in the greatest love, or to fall naked into the everlasting flames that burn and blacken but never consume. The flames that keep biting and burning. And there is no way out. There is no water that will drown the flame, no blanket to smother it.

  “When I was just a boy I watched a barn burn. And in that barn, there was a horse trapped. And there was no way to get through that fire to save that poor animal. And I still think of the horse, caught in the burning barn, screaming and terrified. And I think of the sound and the smell, the terror and the pain of that horse. But then I think, those flames, brothers and sisters, consume. And after the minutes of that animal’s terror and suffering, he was released, and it was over, and it will never return. And then I think once more. I think of the flames that do not consume, that burn and burn, and the smell and the terror and the agony that is never over. The burning from which there is no release.”

  The whiskey is moving now. It begins to churn in his stomach and crawl up his throat. And from his crotch the smell of sex keeps rising, overpowering the sweat and the lilac toilet water and coming up in great waves that roll over him. He crouches over harder, trying to keep the smell and the whiskey contained in himself.

  “But there is release, and the release is now. Make the choice, brothers and sisters. Open your hearts and receive Him here, tonight, this minute, and you will have your release. He asks so little of you. Open your heart to Him, and He will open His heart to you. The heavenly release is yours for so little. Step forward and take Him for your savior and have your release. Know that your trials, your pain, your suffering, will find release and you will be free. Step forward now. Accept Him. Let Him accept you. Step forward now.”

  His sister’s elbow catches him in the arm and straightens him up. As she rises, he rises, and she pushes him out of the pew and into the aisle, where the people are beginning to move forward. Around him, they move, their eyes locked forward, up toward Brother Randall, up toward the salvation and release, and the smell and the whiskey push upward at him and spin him around until he is facing the people moving forward, all people he knows, who do not show any sign of recognition but keep their heads forward, eyes locked toward the front. He begins pushing his way through, easing past a woman in a cotton dress with small light-blue figures, and then square into a man in white cotton shirt and Cant-Bust-Em overalls. He pushes past and runs into more, as the congregation starts moving forward. He pushes and pushes until he is running, down the aisle and out the door and onto the dirt in front of the church.

  The air is suddenly chillingly cool on his sweating skin, and he runs a few more yards toward the maple tree before he lurches forward onto his knees and begins to puke whiskey. It keeps coming, more than he could possibly have drunk, burning his nose and throat. Finally, he is convulsed. The waves coming up from his stomach bring nothing with them. He pushes away, then falls again and rolls onto his back, looking up at the stars that burn forever.

  And then his mother is standing over him, her jaws clenched in fury. “How dare you,” she says, “how dare you come into the House of the Lord like that. You get out of here, get. You are no better than him. You are no better than your father. You don’t care about anything but liquor and women. And you are growing up just like him. Neither of you are any better than a damn nigger. You’re going to spend your life nigger poor, just like he done.”

  When the phone rings, Bad does not know where he is. “Mr. Blake,” the familiar voice says, “hold for Mr. Greene.” Bad rolls over for his watch, then a Pall Mall. It is eleven o’clock.

  “Bad,” Jack says, “how are you?”

  “It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, Jack. I’m dead.”

  “How’s Santa Fe? It’s a great town. You been to the Palace of the Governors yet?”

  “Jack, it’s eleven o’clock in the fucking morning. I haven’t even been to sleep yet.”

  “Wake up, Bad. I’ve got great news. You’re going to like this. Get out of bed and get a pencil and paper.”

  “Shit.” Bad rolls out of bed and stumbles to the dresser. In a drawer, he finds a postcard of the motel. He looks for a pencil, but he can’t find one. He can’t find his glasses, either. He goes back to the phone. “Hold on, I can’t find a goddamned pencil.” There are pencils out in the van, but it is downstairs and a couple of hundred yards away.

  He lights another match and lets it burn. Then he blows it out, and goes back to the phone. “O.K., what do you have?”

  “Cancel Benson, Arizona, on your itinerary.”

  He still hasn’t found his glasses, so he scrawls in big letters on the back of the postcard, “CAN BEN,” with the burnt match. “What the hell is so great about canceling another stop?”

  “Wait till you hear what I’ve got for you instead. Are you ready for this? Are you writing this down?”

  Bad looks at the burnt match. He figures it’s good for a few more letters. “Yeah, I’m writing this down. What am I writing?”

  “You won’t believe this. I busted my ass for this. Write it down—the twenty-ninth, Phoenix, Arizona, Veterans Memorial Coliseum, eight-thirty.”

  Bad writes “PHO, VET MEM,” before the match gives out.

  “Well?” Jack says.

  “Well what?”

  “Bad, for Christ’s sake. I just called to tell you you’re out of the Horseshoe Lounge in Benson, Arizona, on the twenty-ninth, and instead you’re in a goddamned arena in Phoenix. For Christ’s sake, Bad.”

  “An arena?”

  “A goddamned arena, Bad. Ten thousand seats. I got you opening a major show in Phoenix.”

  “Opening? Shit. I don’t open.”

  “Cut the crap. This is ten thousand seats we are talking about, and in slack times. Where the hell else are you going to play ten thousand seats? Bad, this is the biggest damned thing you’ve done in years. Don’t tell me you don’t open. There are acts up the bedudah that would kill to open for ten thousand seats.”

  “Opening for who?”

  “This is the best part. Tommy Sweet.”

  “Shit.” He can’t think of anything else to say. “Shit,” then, “Fuck,” then, “No. No goddamned way.”

  “Bad. Look. Think about this. You want to do another album with Tommy. This is a step in the right direction. Open for him, get together, talk with him. I haven’t been able to convince him, but I got him to agree to this. It’s a first step, damn it. You can convince him. Let him hear you. Hell, you can pull it off. It’s ten thousand seats, Bad.”

  “Goddamn it, Jack, I won’t do it. I’ll open for someone else. Find someone else and I’ll open, but not Tommy.”

  “Who else are you going to open for? Who’s playing arenas these days? Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers and Tommy Sweet—that’s who. Who the hell are you going to open for? Springsteen? You want to open for Springsteen? How about Madonna? Should I try Madonna? This is it, Bad. This is the break we’ve been waiting for. Don’t get stubborn and blow the whole damned deal.”

  “Oh, goddamn, Jack. I don’t know. Tommy. Hell, I can’t open for Tommy.”

  “This is a grand and a quarter for one night. This is ten thousand seats. A quarter of those never heard of you, another quarter figure you’re dead. That’s five thousand people you can bring around, a
nd another five thousand that haven’t been thinking a lot about you the last few years. This is exposure, Bad. This is the best exposure you’re going to get.”

  “I just don’t know, Jack.”

  “Look, Bad. I’m talking business here. That’s what you pay me for. I went out and busted my ass for this, and damn it, I got it. You got it. We beat a couple dozen acts on this one. You better start thinking business here and forget pride for a while. Besides that, Tommy wants you. He really does.”

  “Jack, the dream of every sideman in the whole fucking world is that someday the front man whose ass he’s been staring at for months, for years, is going to open for him. I don’t owe that dream to Tommy Sweet. I don’t owe Tommy Sweet one fucking thing.”

  “That’s right, Bad. You don’t owe Tommy Sweet a damned thing. You and I both know that Tommy owes you. Well, he’s making a payment here, Bad. He’s offering you the chance to open for ten thousand seats. He’s offering you the biggest audience you’re going to get right now. He’s offering you a grand and a quarter. Maybe he’s thinking of offering you another album. Don’t be so damned stubborn. Let him pay off a little bit. You’ve tried to take your damned pride to the bank before, Bad, and you and I both know exactly how much it’s worth.”

  “Goddamn. Goddamn you, you motherfucking, cocksucking son-of-a-bitch.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I don’t know. Goddamn it, Jack, if you were here right now, your lips would be on the back of your head. Let me think about it. I’ll call you back.”

  “No. Tell me now.”

  “I need time to think. I’ll call you this afternoon.”

  “There is no time. Tell me now.”

  “Jack, let me think. Goddamn, please let me think.”

  “Yes or no, Bad.”