by Steve Brewer
And Megan. Somehow she’d gone from flirty, enthusiastic fan to worming her way into the center of my damned life. Then she tricks me into fatherhood and now she’s plowing through my money quicker’n a dog can lick a dish. Well, she’s going to have to terminate the pregnancy, he thought, it’s simple as that. He paused. Or maybe she’s not even pregnant. Eddie slapped the soundboard. I have got to be the king of fools. There’s no way she’s pregnant. Just isn’t possible. She’s taking me for a ride. Wait a second, a song idea. Something about crowning the king of fools? He sat down, snorted another line, and wrote it down. King of fools. Crown. Oh, shit. He threw his pen across the room when he remembered somebody had already done it.
Eddie jumped when he heard the kitchen door open, followed by two voices. There was a moment when he considered bolting for the front door out of fear it was the cops. But just as quickly he realized it was Megan and Sean, the image consultant she hired to help deal with the aftermath of Jimmy’s book. They traipsed into the living room, chatting about the importance of proper media spin.
Sean was a self-impressed little prick in his late twenties wearing a suit with a single-breasted jacket. It looked to Eddie as if someone had accidentally sewn two extra buttons near the top of the coat and, making matters worse, Sean had them fastened, resulting in a look so laughable it had to be intentional.
“Hey, we’re back,” Megan said. She had several large shopping bags with her. “I can’t wait to show you the dress I got for the CFA thing. Sean helped me pick it out.”
“I’m not in the mood for a damn fashion show,” Eddie said. He watched as Sean casually dabbed his finger into the coke on the table then rubbed it on his gums. “Hey, do you mind?” Eddie shooed Sean away from the table. “I just talked to Herron. He’s acting like Jimmy’s book’s the best thing that could have happened to me, if you can believe that.”
“Well,” Sean said, “he’s right insofar as it gets your name in the press which never, I repeat, never hurts.” He looked to Megan. “Is now a good time to talk about this?”
Megan was pulling clothes, shoes, and jewelry from the bags. “Sure. Tell him about the research.”
Sean perched on the arm of the sofa. “We’ve finessed some terrific information out of our polling data,” he said. “Seventy-two percent of those polled, who identified themselves as country music buyers said they’d buy the next Eddie Long cd, even though they knew about the claims in the book. Twenty-two percent said they’d wait to see if charges were brought before deciding whether they’d buy it and the remaining six percent said they could forgive you but wouldn’t buy the new cd.”
“Forgive me?”
“The focus groups we did indicate we need to spin your image to the right,” Sean pinched his thumb and forefinger together, “tant soit peu.” He arched his plucked eyebrows.
“What?” Eddie looked at Megan who nodded as if she knew what Sean had said.
“I suggest we go with a hint of Christian façade.” Sean made a gentle brushing gesture with his hands over his face. “Not too far right, of course, nothing extreme enough to alienate urban country buyers.” He contorted his face and wagged his tongue. “Nothing Pentecostal or anything, but in your next interview you need to work in something about how your faith in God has always pulled you through hard times, that sort of thing.”
“What?”
“You know,” Megan said, “talk about how Jesus had to deal with false accusations and doubting Thomases and Judas and blahblahblah, all that stuff. Oh, and wear a cross on a chain or something, maybe a St. Christopher.”
Sean nodded. “A lot of our country clients use this very effectively.”
Eddie had never been particularly religious, so it wasn’t Sean’s suggestion that bothered him. It was a culmination of other things — the book, the lawsuit, the press, the image consultant, the pregnancy (or not), Megan’s leeching, Jimmy’s betrayal — everything. It simply added up and Eddie snapped. “Get the fuck out of here,” he yelled at Sean, gesturing violently with his Fender. “Get out!”
Megan turned, a pair of bright red pumps in her hand. “Eddie, calm down.”
Eddie turned and pointed at her so hard the bone almost came out of his finger. “You shut up!” He tossed his guitar onto the sofa, grabbed Sean by his goofy little lapels, and forced him toward the foyer, popping the top buttons along the way. “You and your stupid fucking suit are fired.” Eddie shoved him out the door and slammed it behind him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Megan sounded like a demanding housewife. “We’ve got to get the right spin on this thing. You can’t just stick your head in the sand and hope it goes away.” She dropped the pumps and came at Eddie wagging a finger. “If you don’t start listening to what I tell you—”
“I thought I told you to shut the hell up!” Eddie wheeled to face her and landed a fist to the side of her head. It spun Megan around and she stumbled, falling across a small end table and landing awkwardly on the floor. “So just do it!”
88.
“How the hell can it be under control if they’re suing me for ninety million goddamn dollars?” Jimmy asked his agent. “I am screwed six ways to Sunday!”
“Jimmy. Would you please take a pill? I told you I’m on it. I’m not going to let you down.”
“I don’t have ninety million dollars, Jay. In fact I don’t even have the three hundred thousand Atlas owes me on the first half of the advance. I’m fucked. I can’t believe I let you talk me into putting that stuff in the book.”
“Are you through?” Jay spoke to Jimmy as if he were an unruly child. “I wanted this to be a surprise, but if you’re going to be a cry baby, I’ll tell you now. It’s going to be in the news tomorrow anyway.”
“Now what?”
“We had a conference call today with Eddie’s people and the Atlas attorneys. I got them to agree to a compromise. Herron and Peavy will drop the lawsuit in exchange for an undisclosed sum, which will be paid by Atlas’s insurance company. We will also issue a statement explaining how you were simply experimenting with a new form of biography and you never intended to say Eddie was guilty of anything other than having a remarkable set of circumstantial events in his life—”
“What?”
“There’s a gag order on the settlement. The insurance company insisted on it, so I can’t even tell you the details, but suffice it to say you not only aren’t fucked but, with the sales all this publicity generated for the book, you are probably looking at a two to three million dollar royalty when all the money’s counted. Plus you get the bonus for getting sued.”
That shut Jimmy up. The whole scenario was so far-fetched he couldn’t think of what to say. The words ‘two to three million’ were rattling around his head so loudly he could hardly think.
“I told you to trust me, didn’t I? Haven’t I always come through for you?” Jay’s tone was both smug and joking. “Listen, I’m over-nighting a check to you for a hundred thousand. So pack your bags and get to Nashville. I booked you a suite at the Vanderbilt Plaza.”
“What the hell for?”
“You’re covering the Country Fanfare Awards.”
89.
Franklin was at Owen Bradley Park sitting on the same bench where he and Big Bill had spoken days earlier. It was a nice day, not too hot, a slight breeze coming from the east. He was watching the clouds drift above the Nashville skyline when he noticed a man approaching him.
“You Mr. Peavy?” The man’s face was hard as a prison wall. “Otis sent me.”
“Sit down,” Franklin said. “You know why you’re here?”
Chester nodded. “Otis said we needed to have a little conversation ‘fore we could do this thing.”
“That’s right,” Franklin said, pulling his recorder from his breast coat pocket. “You understand there’s no guarantees this’ll work.”
“Otis told me everything,” Chester said. “It’s a chance I’m willin’ to take.”
“All righ
t. I’m going to ask you some questions and make some statements, you just respond anyway you want to them, doesn’t matter how. Just don’t step on my lines.” He handed Chester a piece of paper with some phrases typed on it. “Then I’ll need to you to read these. Understand?”
Chester looked at the words. “Uh huh.”
Franklin pushed the ‘record’ button. “You ready?”
Chester shrugged. “Go on.”
Franklin slipped the recorder back into his pocket. “Thanks for coming,” he said.
Chester looked at him with coal black eyes. “No problem,” he replied. They talked for about ten minutes before Franklin had Chester read from the piece of paper. “I understand you wanna take out a contract,” was the first line he read. A few minutes later Franklin had all he needed. He handed Chester an envelope containing some cash and an ‘all-access pass’ for the Country Fanfare Awards.
90.
Later that afternoon Franklin was sitting at the controls of his ProTools rig feeling inspired. His system featured a d24 audio card, a DSP Farm card, TDM and AudioSuite Plug-Ins including high quality multi-band parametric EQ, dynamics (compressor, gate, peak limiter, etc.), digital delay, and lots of other computerized goodies. It was a digital beauty and capable of feats recording engineers would have considered science fiction fifteen years earlier. And all for less than the cost of a brand new pickup truck.
ProTools did all the things they used to do with multi-track tape recording, only much faster. For example, both recording methods allowed you to take a verse from one take of a song and put it together with a chorus from another take and then let you go back and stack guitars and background vocals and so on. But with ProTools you could do it about ten times faster because there was no waiting for reels of tape to rewind and locate before starting work on the next track.
The magnitude of the benefit of the computer manipulation was like the difference between writing a novel with a typewriter versus a word processor. If you want to move a paragraph from page six to page two hundred you just pushed a few buttons and it was moved. There was no need to retype the thing, no literal cutting and pasting with scissors and tape. And with all the fudging of information that computers make possible, ProTools also allowed you to do things like make an off-key singer, sing on key. With its advanced editing features, like it’s non-adjacent region selection, command key focus, TC/E while trimming, scrub while trimming, clip replace, fit to marks, fill paste, and other innovations, a reasonably adept engineer could do remarkable, almost magical things.
Franklin downloaded the recording of his conversation with Chester into the ProTools system just as he had done with his recording of Big Bill. He compared them. The ambience matched. Then he set about doing the same thing engineers all over Nashville did, which is to say he started to create a recording of something that had never happened.
91.
After his last conversation with Big Bill, Whitney had entertained some violent notions. He had vivid thoughts about how he would kill the fat son of a bitch but his hostility eventually waned. The anger remained but the urge to act on it gradually submerged in the rest of Whitney’s emotional soup. He realized he wasn’t capable of the violence he wanted to visit on Big Bill and he wondered if that proved he was rational or if it just made him a coward like he’d been before.
Whitney was unloading empty boxes from the bed of his truck when the first limousine drove past. The windows were blacked out so he couldn’t see inside but he despised whoever it was. He couldn’t help it. His mood was black as the windows. Whoever was in the back of that limousine was a member of the club that wouldn’t let him in even though he felt he belonged. For Whitney, the proof of his worthiness lay in the fact that even an ugly bastardization of something he had written had reached number one. From his perspective, the fact that his song was strong enough to survive such whorish meddling confirmed his talent. It never crossed Whitney’s mind that the song was a hit because of the changes, not in spite of them. He’d never buy that.
The Country Fanfare Awards wouldn’t begin for a few hours but the celebration had already started. It was Nashville’s big night. The night they celebrated the music and the artists who made it. Viva NashVegas! Limousines were brought in from surrounding states to meet the demand and every couple of minutes one would roll down the street in front of Whitney’s place, stretch reminders of his failure in Music City USA.
Whitney carried the boxes inside and started packing. He’d had it. After years on the road honing his skills, he’d come to town offering his talent and had been fucked for his trouble. He took a lot of pride in what he was and felt he deserved better than what he’d got so far. Whitney reached into the paper sack that was sitting on the end of the bed. He pulled out another sixteen ounces of friendship and loyalty the likes of which he’d failed to find on Music Row. He drank half of it and resumed packing. It wouldn’t take long. He didn’t have much.
When it came time for the awards show he would turn on the television. He wouldn’t be able to help it. It would gnaw at his gut to watch the parade of people with less talent than he possessed strut up to the podium like they were better than him, but he’d have to watch.
An hour or so later Whitney’s life was tucked away in the boxes. There were six empty cans lined up on the bedside table and the show was set to start in ten minutes. Whitney sat at the foot of his bed with his guitar. He looked around the forlorn apartment. Reminded of one of his favorite old songs, Whitney strummed a chord. “Hello walls. . .” he sang slowly. His intonation and arrangement was far darker than Faron Young’s and his voice bleaker than Willie Nelson at his most hopeless. He sang about his fear, about losing his mind, and about ruin.
Whitney played the song out then sat a minute looking at the ragged bandana tied around his wrist. Eventually he reached over and removed it. Underneath was the silky scar that proved his cowardice. He’d been too scared to do it deep enough. He touched it and thought about trying again, but decided he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction that they’d beaten him. As if they’d even notice. Fuck ‘em, he thought. He had to face the music, this just wasn’t where he belonged. He’d go elsewhere, try to find people who appreciated him. Maybe they were down in Austin. They damn sure weren’t here.
92.
Eddie’s punch left Megan speechless and sprawled on the floor. It wasn’t a particularly hard hit, certainly not as hard as her father used to hit her, but it caught her off guard. She stood up slowly, her mouth half open, her hand on her cheek. She tried to think what she could do or say to fix things, to take them back the way they were.
Eddie was just as shocked as she was. What the hell had gotten into him, he wondered.
How and when did he make the transition to short-tempered mean fuck willing to hit a woman for no reason other than his own frustrations? The moment seemed to last forever as the two of them stood in the middle of the living room. Eddie didn’t know what to say when all the sudden he saw Megan’s face twist slowly into confusion and pain. Her eyes drifted down and her mouth opened wider. She made a weak moaning noise before slowly bending over, grabbing her gut.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie had a sick feeling.
“Oh God.” Megan began stumbling toward the bathroom.
“What the hell’s wrong?” Eddie took a tentative step toward her, reaching out, but she swung at him.
“Get away!” Megan rushed into the bathroom, whimpering, and slammed the door behind her.
Eddie got there just as she flipped the dead bolt. “Megan?” He sounded scared. “Megan, are you all right? What’s going on?” She didn’t answer, all he could hear was Megan, apparently in pain. Then he heard the toilet seat going up or down, he couldn’t tell which. He banged on the door. “Megan! Let me in.” She made the noise again and it made Eddie sick. It was a caterwauling.
“Oh God,” she moaned.
“What’s going on?” Eddie yelled. “Tell me what to do!”
“W
e’re. . .” It sounded like she was crying. “We’re losing it.”
“I’m calling nine-one-one!”
“No, Eddie, don’t! It’ll be okay. There’s nothing they can do. It’s okay. We won’t tell anybody,” she said. “We’ll just say it hap—” Suddenly it sounded like every muscle in Megan’s body contracted to squeeze the life out of her.
“Oh my God.” Eddie slumped into a heap by the door, his face buried in his hands. He sat there for a long time, finally overwhelmed by his life.
After a while Megan began to speak again. Her voice was growing raspy and tired. “You don’t need this in the press,” she said. “I’ll protect you. I won’t tell anyone. I swear.”
93.
Chester arrived at Opryland USA four hours before they were scheduled to open the doors to the public. He was stage-fright nervous but he wasn’t scared. He parked his beat up old Impala near a couple of RVs in the Little Jimmy Dickens section of the vast Opryland parking lot for no other reason than he always liked the song ‘Country Music Lover.’ Besides, it didn’t matter where he parked. Chester knew he wouldn’t be returning to the car after the show.
