by Thomas Cobb
“O.K. But I was really having a good time with the toys. I didn’t mean any harm, really. It’s been a long time since I had a boy to buy toys for.”
There is a long pause before she says anything. “Bad, I’ve been thinking. Now, I understand that this is none of my business. And you can tell me that. I don’t want to meddle, but I just have to say this. Don’t get mad, but I think you ought to find your son. I think you need to look for him and find him. You need to know who he is.”
His heart thumps. “I’ve tried, Jean. You know I’ve tried. I can’t.”
“You can hire a detective. You can spend some of the money you’re spending on Buddy now, and you can find him. A detective in Los Angeles can go through court records and things and find him. It probably won’t be that hard.”
“It’s not that. Oh hell. About ten years ago, I looked her up in the L.A. phone book. And I found her. She retook her maiden name. It was that simple. But I couldn’t call her. I even dialed once. The phone rang before I hung up. I just couldn’t do it. It’s been too long. What would I say? What the hell do you say to the wife who ran out on you twenty years ago because you were a goddamned low-down drunk, so bad she couldn’t stand to have your little boy see his daddy like that? What the hell do you say?”
“Say you want to see your son.”
“But he don’t want to see me.”
“You don’t know that. I think he probably does want to see you. He may not know it, but he wants to see you.”
“I can’t, Jean, I just can’t.”
“Bad. It’s not my business, but I think you’ve got to.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see. Listen, you understand these things better than me. There is this guy running for Congress named Rounds. You know him?”
“No. From Texas?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know anything about Texas politics since Johnson and Rayburn died. Why? What’s up?”
“He wants me to sing at rallies for him. I think it might be a good idea. He seems pretty good. He believes in the President and the little guy.”
“No. He can’t do both.”
“What? What do you mean? Sure he can. It’s right here in his paper.”
“Bad, think about it. This is the President who cut every major social program in the country and increased defense spending through the ceiling. That’s not a people’s President, Bad.”
“But that’s what the people want. And he’s for women. He’s against pornography and abortion because they both hurt women.”
“Oh God, not that crap. Jesus Christ, Bad, stay away from that guy.”
“But you’re not for abortion. You had Buddy, you didn’t…”
“I chose to have Buddy. Chose. I chose. I had Buddy because I wanted to, not because some self-righteous bigot waving a Bible told me I had to. I had the right to choose. Everyone should.”
“But pornography. It says here that there is a direct link between pornography and violence.”
“Maybe. I’m not crazy about it myself, but I’ll tell you, I’m a lot more afraid of these right-wing politicians than I am of a bunch of guys sitting around a cheap theater with their hands in their pants.”
“I don’t know, it makes sense to me.”
“How can this guy be for women on one hand, and against them on the other. That doesn’t make sense. You can’t have it both ways, Bad. You can’t have it both ways.”
In the Los Angeles phone book in the Southwestern Bell office, there is no listing for Marjorie Reynolds, but he finds two listings for Steven Reynolds. He copies both down.
He calls Al Lovett to tell him he has the job. Al embarrasses him with gratitude, even putting his wife on the phone to tell Bad how happy she is that Al is going to being playing with him. Bad understands that he has made the wrong choice, but he is willing to live with it. He will have to make Al understand that his vocals will be strictly harmony. He will have to make Terry and Howard understand that this is his band, and he makes the final decisions. Jim is the better player, but he has a job. When someone is hurting, you do what you can.
At rehearsal, Terry is cooperative, but Howard is reticent. Al is a little tentative, but that owes more to nerves than to ability. “You’re not listening to me,” Howard says, bringing his left hand down hard on the snare to emphasize the tempo.
“Howard,” Bad says, “why the hell are you doing that? I don’t want to hear that Bruce Springsteen crap here. We play country music here. Grab ahold, son.”
Howard looks off in the distance with obvious disgust.
“Al,” Bad says, “I know this is hard. It’s going to take you a little while to find the feel of all this. But you work with Howard back there. Never mind what we’re doing on the top right now. You miss a little bitty move here and there, it’ll be all right. But I want that bottom tight enough to bounce a coin off. Now let’s all be a band here.”
When they have run through two hours’ worth of material, Al has settled down to a steady respectability. For two hours’ worth of work, Bad figures, that is pretty good. Bad has brought him in for a couple of harmonies, having him sing a half beat behind on “Hello Love” and “Crazy Heart” so that the effect is like a bass echo. Al has shown no inclination to do anything more than he is asked, but it is still very early.
After the break, Bad introduces “She’s Going to Need Someone to Walk To.” It is a basic tonic-dominant-subdominant progression in D, with a shift at the second chorus up to E flat in 2/4 time. He has no lead sheets, so he just plays through once, and Howard and Al come in halfway through the first verse. Terry comes in at the second chorus, and Ted plays a basic rhythm pattern. Later they will add fills and augments.
“That’s O.K.,” Terry says. “I haven’t heard that before. Whose is it?”
“Mine,” Bad says.
“No shit? When did you write that?”
“A couple of weeks ago, up in Santa Fe.”
“It’s nice,” Ted says. “I like it. Funny, we do all these songs of yours, but I just never thought about new songs.”
“I’m writing for Tommy’s new album.”
“You ought to write stuff for us, too. We could do an album.”
“You find the label, I’ll write a whole goddamned album. Now, let’s get back to this one.”
They break their rehearsal at quarter to four to be out in time for the after-work crowd in the bar. They have two more practices before they get back to work on Saturday night. They won’t be as tight as they should be, but they will be passable. In another week they will be a real band again.
Chapter Twelve
When he walks in the door of the house, the phone is ringing. It is a recorded message about time-share vacations. Bad lets it play for a couple of seconds, not listening, looking at the two Los Angeles numbers. He hangs up the phone. It is five-thirty, three-thirty in Los Angeles. No one is home at three-thirty.
He pours a long drink and starts to fix dinner. He scrubs potatoes under cold water, digging the eyes out with the point of a paring knife, sets them in a pot of water and puts them on the stove to boil. He has convinced himself he needs to start a diet, so he washes three leaves of lettuce, dries them on a towel, and tears them up into a salad bowl. Then he washes the carrot from his garden, slices it thin and adds it. He goes into the backyard for a green pepper and some basil, chops up both and adds that in. In the refrigerator he finds a chunk of cheese to crumble, two pieces of cold bacon, and olives—Spanish and black. He garnishes it all with slices of jalapeño peppers and a left-over anchovy he digs out of oil that has thickened into a salty gum. He puts this on the table with a bottle of Russian dressing.
By this time the potatoes are boiling well, so he takes two thick pork chops from the refrigerator. Each is ringed with a quarter inch of white fat, which he scores with a knife to keep the chops from curling in the pan. He coats them with flour, egg and bread crumbs, ladles a big tablespoonful of bacon fat into the cast-iron skillet, and when
it is starting to spatter, he lays in the chops.
While the chops are cooking he mashes the potatoes by hand, adding in big slices of butter and splashing in cold milk. When the chops are done, he pours most of the grease off, adds a couple of tablespoons of flour, whisking it with a fork until it is blended and the browned pieces of breading are scraped from the pan, and then he pours in milk and keeps stirring, adding salt and enough pepper to speckle the whole mixture in the pan. When it is thick, he ladles it over the potatoes and chops and takes the plate into the dining room to eat with his diet salad. He puts some Les Paul and Mary Ford on the stereo and eats.
After dinner, he fixes another drink. When he has put the leftovers into cottage cheese containers and liver cartons, he scrapes and washes the dishes, wiping the iron skillet with a paper napkin to keep it seasoned. He wipes off the top of the stove. He starts a pot of coffee and pours another drink while it perks.
He looks at the phone, and then at his watch. It is seven, five in Los Angeles, still too early to call. He takes his drink into the living room and turns on the television. Young and beautiful people are busy solving crimes. In their few quiet moments, they fall into ill-fated love. On the other channels, their sisters and cousins are doing the same. He gets a cup of coffee, smokes a cigarette and watches.
When he can’t stand another variation on this, he gets his guitar and Pignose amplifier and starts with scales, working his way up and down until a note opens some door and he touches a melody he faintly remembers. Still hearing Les Paul, he plays it blue, sliding chords with lots of bends and vibrato, keeping it harmonic. For a long while he just plays, letting one movement lead him into the next, not considering what he is doing or what he might do. He moves from harmonic to melodic and comes back, responding to signals he is not conscious of. It is as though his fingers have taken charge and all he needs to do, must do, is listen to what they are doing.
As he plays, a passage begins to repeat more and more frequently. At first he is dimly aware of it, later he seems unable to escape it. The more insistent it becomes, the more annoying it becomes, as if it is beating against the limits of the possibilities he finds to move it somewhere else. He keeps taking routes out of the progression, and none of them seems right. He gets up and pours another drink and walks out into the backyard. In the sky, a few stars are faintly visible against the overcast and the reflected lights of the city.
The simple answer is that the passage moves straightforwardly, I, IV, V, but then not back to I but up to II, then in half steps back down to I again, a three-beat descent. He goes back inside and tries that a couple of times. It is simple and clean, more from jazz than from country. He plays it again, adding lyrics as he goes: “Lately, I get to thinking of times back then, / And I ask myself, ‘Is this going to hurt again?’” He jots it down and keeps working, getting up only for drinks. It’s not, he knows, what he wants, but it is closer than he has been.
When he stops for the night, it is eleven-thirty. He turns on Johnny Carson. His throat is raw from cigarettes and he has drunk half a bottle. He feels empty, and the cigarette in his finger wavers.
He looks at the phone and then picks it up and dials. At the first number there is no answer. He has not considered that he might dial the right number and still not get an answer. He tries the second number.
“Hello,” a man answers.
“Yeah,” Bad says, “hello. Is this Steven Reynolds?”
“Yes. Who’s calling?”
“Well, actually, buddy, I’m on kind of a hunting trip here. I’m trying to find a Marjorie Reynolds from Lima, Ohio, who lived in Nashville, Tennessee, from nineteen sixty to sixty-five. Are you related to her, by any chance?”
There is a pause. “She was my mother. She passed away two years ago. Who is this?”
Bad feels that his heart has contracted to the size of a walnut. His body goes cold. When he first speaks, his voice is between a croak and a whisper.
“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you. Who is this?”
He whispers, louder this time, “Your father.”
There is a longer pause. “Who is this?”
“Bad Blake, in Houston, Texas. I’m your father.”
There is a pause. “I know.”
Bad doesn’t know what to say, so he goes to the obvious. “How are you?”
“Fine. What do you want?”
“I want to know how you are doing. You’re my son.”
“I’m doing fine.”
“Marge is dead,” he says as the realization sinks in. “When? How?”
“Two years ago in October. Cancer.”
“Was it bad? I mean, did she suffer?”
“Yes.”
“Oh God. I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I loved her. I swear I did.”
“Yeah. What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you. I want to know who you are. I want you to know who I am.” He begins to choke. “I want to say I’m sorry.”
“Look. I know who you are. I know all about you, and I don’t want an apology.”
“No. You don’t know who I am. I don’t know what all you do know, but you don’t know me. And I don’t know a damn thing about you.”
“My name is Steven Reynolds, I’m twenty-four years old. I work as an operations officer at PacifiTech. I’m six feet two inches tall, I weigh one hundred and ninety pounds. I have brown hair and brown eyes.”
“And you’re my son. My only son. You left that out.”
“I’m Marjorie Reynolds’ son.”
“Haven’t you ever wanted to know who I was? Haven’t you wondered about me?”
There is another pause. “Yeah, some.”
“I just want to talk to you. I don’t want anything from you, I don’t want to try to be your best buddy. I just want to talk to you, to see. I want to know who you are. I want to know that you’re all right.”
“I’m sorry. I really don’t think I want to talk to you.”
“How the hell can you not want to talk to me? You’re six feet two and weigh one hundred and ninety pounds. You’re that way because of me. Your mother was small and had red hair.”
“And you left her.”
“She left me. And she had reason to. I never would have left her. I don’t blame your mother, and I’m not going to try to convince you that what she did was anything but right. She didn’t owe me anything, and I guess you don’t, either. Except you’re my son, I’m your father. Maybe we owe each other something on that score.”
“Why are you calling? Now? After all these years?”
“I can’t explain to you why after all these years. Maybe someday, but not right now. And I’m trying to explain why I’m calling. Look, write this down.” Bad dictates his address and telephone number and makes him repeat it back. “Think about it. Sleep on it. Then call me or write me a letter. We need to talk to each other. Call me collect. Come here, or I’ll come there. But goddamn it, let’s do something.”
“I’ll think about it, but I really don’t think I want to talk to you.”
“Right, you think about it.”
He doesn’t sleep. He sits up in bed, the lights off, with a bottle. He pulls the sheet up over his waist. The ceiling fan, turning slowly over his bed, evaporates the sweat that keeps coming. In the middle of September, it is eighty-five and he’s cold. He keeps pulling at the bottle, trying hard for a good drunk that won’t come. The clock next to the bed reads three-thirty.
Of the memories that keep at him, one is persistent. It is his wedding night, late August nineteen sixty, east Texas. It is early in the morning. He and Marge lie in the dark, exhausted and happy. But they can’t sleep.
They’re in a rented cabin, deep in pine woods, twenty miles from the highway. In the pines outside, a mockingbird is busy staking his territory, loudly moving from one call to another, trilling, rising and falling. Bad jumps up from the bed. Naked, he takes his guitar, a Martin D-28, and unpacks it. He sits on the edge of the bed and tunes it. “What are you
doing?” Marge asks. “Just wait,” he tells her, and heads for the door.
“You can’t go out,” she says, “you’re buck naked.” He stops and comes back for his boots, a pair of tooled black-and-white Justins, and his new Stetson 4X beaver, and then he goes out the door. Outside, he pauses, listening to the bird, trying to find the direction. When he has it, he moves slowly forward. There is a full moon that lights the ground in front of him. About thirty yards from the cabin, he finds a large rock and sits on it, the surface cold and rough against his bare skin.
He waits until the bird has run through another round, and when the pause comes, he begins picking “Listen to the Mockingbird” in C. He plays a verse through and waits. The bird starts up, louder than before, runs through a series and waits. Bad gives it another verse, and for several minutes he and the mockingbird swap tunes back and forth, until Marge comes up behind Bad and wraps both arms around him, drawing herself into his broad back. “What in hell are you doing?” she asks him.
“Being happy as I’ve ever been in my life.”
“I’d never be able to not love you,” she says, “thinking of you out here, bare-assed in the moonlight, playing for a damn bird.”
Somewhere near daylight he gives up and sleeps, dreamless.
When the phone rings, he does not know where he is, or what the noise is. When he leans over to take the receiver, pain thumps inside his head.
“Buddy, I made the cars go real fast. Real fast, then the jeep went around the corner and it went BOOM.”
The noise hits the center of his head like a fist. “Buddy? You got the cars?”
“Yeah. I make them go faster than anybody. And then they go crash. I’m going to make them go again.”
“Bad?”
“Jean.”
“He didn’t say thank you. That’s why he was supposed to call.”
“I think he did. I think that was thanks enough.”
“He’s going wild. He just loves them, Bad. You really shouldn’t have. And you’re not going to send any more, right?”
“What time is it?”
