Nashville Chrome

by Rick Bass

  Soon enough, however—too soon—they came to their bridge, the one Floyd had sought to cross back when Bonnie was a child, and they splashed out into the shallows and hauled the boat up to where the truck was parked and waiting, Jim Ed the most dependable person in the world.

  They drove slowly. Fireflies floated through the woods and crickets chirped steadily. Neither of them wanted Birdie to be kept up late worrying, but theirs was another world, and they moved through it slowly, as if unable yet to leave it, and as if looking out at or down upon the other world, the real one, from some considerable distance.

  When they finally got back, Birdie was waiting out on the porch, shelling peas, rocking. Tommy and Maxine had long since driven home, and Floyd and Jim Ed were asleep, Jim Ed half listening, in his sleep, for the rumble of the old truck returning home.

  AN OUTING

  EVERY TIME THAT Maxine has had bad luck, there has been good luck right behind it. Even as recently as this last injury, her broken hip, it was the right thing at the right time, because the hip x-ray revealed another tumor. She had a hysterectomy to remove it, the tumor was benign, she kept on going.

  It's little coincidences like these, all of them connecting across the length of her life, that remind her that she's chosen, and that suggest to her, even if in but a whisper now, that she isn't done, isn't finished, that something remains. The calling is so faint now that she can't help but wonder if she's not just imagining it, hearing only what she wants to hear. Hearing a barely audible shimmering, like the echo of sound, or the harmony above the harmony that Chet, and so many others, always insisted was there.

  Was it really there? It was—she knows it was—and all it took to achieve it was a little concentration.

  What would Chet say, she wonders, what would Chet counsel? He's been gone for almost a decade, but while he was alive, there was nothing she couldn't ask him for help with, nothing he wouldn't do for her or any of his musicians.

  Is it her instinct—the summons, the hand of fate—or only her ego that keeps pushing her desire toward a movie? How can so surficial a medium, Hollywood, be the answer to anything, at or near the end of what has been an extraordinarily long and eventful life?

  She watches for Buddy, as if he might have some answer. As if despite having had no answer and being no help in all the days before, he might one day—the next one—come trotting up to save and rescue her.

  And in what manner? A scrolled-up list of instructions fastened to his collar, like a miniature keg of brandy for a stranger lost in the snowy mountains? The contact number for a moviemaker?

  She understands she will be the last to go—she has understood this for decades—but still does not understand the meaning or significance of it, or what her responsibility is in this matter.

  The staying is so much lonelier than the leaving.

  As punctual as the rising and setting of the sun Buddy comes trotting into her yard, and her heart makes its same little leap as she beholds him, looking as frisky and engaged and interested as ever: running his same route, making sure everything is the same, then continuing on.

  She bends down and scratches his ears as he eats her offering to him. "You're such a handsome little fellow. What have you seen today? What all is going on out there?"

  She needs to go to the grocery store—she doesn't eat much, but is out of everything now—but is too tired, and too cowed by the idea, the knowledge of all that she must pass through, all that awaits her: the noise and brilliant summer-shimmering heat, the asphalt and clamor and bustle. She spends two days preparing herself for the journey, making a careful list—she has nothing left in the house but Saltines and dog food for Buddy—and deciding what she will wear, and at what hour of the day she will plan her entrance, her gambit, the presentation of herself, she whom she still believes, despite all suggestion now to the contrary, to be luminous, chosen.

  She leaves at nine o'clock on a Thursday morning, after Buddy has been fed and traveled on, and after she has finished her tea—lemon, lavender and ginger, for nerves—when she is still at her strongest, and after the rush hour of school buses and carpools has abated. It's a seam of quietness that she's noticed, keen as a hunter, one in which she's most comfortable—or least uncomfortable—going out.

  The morning is still tolerable, not yet too hot, as she gets in her car after folding her walker carefully and placing it in the back seat. The power of her old car—a '78 Malibu—is daunting to her as she thunks the transmission into reverse and begins backing out slowly, terrified that she can't see all that she needs to be seeing, or hear all that she needs to be hearing. She taps the brakes nervously to be sure they're still working. Is she really in control of the machine? It feels to her that the car's power is a restless one just beneath the touch of her frail foot.

  She stops and starts in cautious hitches out onto the street, and relaxes ever so slightly—so far, so good—and puts it in drive and carefully begins her glide, driving as slowly as is physically possible, with the sun bright and the neighborhood trees flashing the light across her in a slow, dreamy scroll. Am I really doing this? she wonders, and marvels at her courage, her daring. The audacity of still being alive.

  It takes a while, but she makes it to the Piggly Wiggly without incident, or none that she's aware of. At that time of morning, the parking lot is nearly empty, and she sits there in the hot car for long moments, congratulating herself on her success and girding herself for the next phase of her adventure, her bird's heart pounding furiously beneath paper-thin skin.

  Exiting with dignity then, after making certain she has her list with her, she unfolds her walker and scoots it up the slight incline of rough blacktop toward the electric doorways of the store's entrance, the glass doors hissing open and shut like the jaws of something hungry, some mindless thing that seeks only to consume whatever passes near it, irrespective of fate or plans.

  She reaches the rubberized tread plate, hesitates—the door hisses, widens, and waits—and then she forges ahead, moving as quickly as she can.

  Inside the store it's cool and pleasant. She's losing some strength but feels better mentally. Still, it won't do to dawdle. Much remains expected of her for the return home.

  She leaves her walker at the front and navigates the grocery cart up and down the aisles, half frightened by its unpredictability, its size. She gathers her meager groceries—TV dinners, raisins, sardines, prunes, tea, milk, cream, bananas—and circles back around to pay. A tremor in her hands as she does so. A nap would be nice. The glare of the parking lot, and of the day outside. The nice young black woman at the cash register is surely still a teenager. Maxine remembers being sixteen like it was yesterday.

  Another young woman helps her with her bags, but before going out through the electric doors and into all the light and heat, Maxine pauses at the bulletin board on which are posted handwritten offers of services provided or services needed. I need a movie, she thinks. Even a little one. Is it too much to ask, she wonders, for some kind of hobbyist—not even an expert, but just someone with passion, someone who believes and understands that her journey was magnificent—to produce something? Some marker, some proof, that she was ever here.

  Even a technician, a worker from a photo developing booth, could make copies of her old home movies and could interview her, could listen to her stories and resurrect the past and stir to life once more the now stilled columns of dust that were once in motion, and the people and times she most loved in the world...

  She asks the young woman who is pushing her cart out to stop and get her a piece of paper and pen. The girl does so, and in her most careful script, Maxine begins writing her ad: "Wanted—moviemaking volunteer for producing film about famous musician"—she starts to write the word legendary instead of famous but decides to be understated, even modest—and then gives the square of light blue paper—lilac, really—back to the girl, who looks at it for long moments, completely unsure of the next step, so much so that Maxine herself has to direc
t the girl, "Go on, go ahead and put it up there with the others," and so the girl takes one of the unused pushpins and tacks the ad into an available square of space, claiming its territory in a way that pleases Maxine immensely.

  They push on then, like pioneers, out into the glare and heat, and the girl, who has been so jolted out of her routine—she'll have something to talk about to her coworkers for the rest of the day—only now begins to make conversation with Maxine. "So, you're looking for a famous musician?" The girl asks her question quickly, having learned through deep experience how to time and adjust her queries and her banter to the precise distance remaining between her and the traveler's car, whether near or far, and Maxine has to correct her, smiles at the girl's inexperience in the world and tells her, "No, I'm a singer; I'm looking for someone to make a movie about me and my sister and brother."

  Maxine knows better than to tell the girl her name and ask if she's heard of her. It's happened too many times, is too painful. And she's still and always too proud to traffic on Elvis's name—to do so would threaten in but a moment to crush the friendship they had, the special quality of it—and she's too proud also to list any of the others. She was on top, dammit, not them, she thinks. She opened the gate for all that would come, not just Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, but for the whole crossover industry—for the young men, too, guitar wizards like Keith Urban and Brad Paisley, multimillionaires like Kenny Chesney and Garth Brooks. She sees their pictures in the magazines and anguishes over their torn jeans—not a one of them is presentable—but she covets their easy fame and feels that every one of them owes her a thank-you note, that it was she and her family—no one more so than they—who opened that gate and let the past and the present spread into the wider bright future.

  They look like grandmother and granddaughter, the girl with her grocery cart and Maxine with her walker. They reach the car with questions unanswered and answers that have raised more questions, but all the girl knows to do is to turn around and go back to where she came from, to smile and say "Have a nice day!" after unloading the bags into the back seat, and off she goes in a whirl, running.

  Maxine stows her walker, and with the fatigue of a shipwrecked sailor washed finally ashore, eases into her car, rolls the windows down to let the dizzying heat out, and just sits there, resting, her heart sprinting again. When will that particular race ever end, and what was she thinking, to have been so ambitious? Too much, too much, and with her journey only half over.

  She imagines there are old women and even old men in more or less her same predicament who are checking into rest homes for the remainder of their days, or hiring assistants, but that's irrelevant: even if she did get so worn down finally that she would accept or even seek out such a thing, she couldn't afford but a week's stay, and she might have years of exhaustion left. What should I have done differently? she wonders. What could I have done differently?

  She has pushed beyond her limits, but there is a guiding hand or fate somewhere out there that gets her back to where she needs to be. In some ways it's almost like the alcoholic blackouts of long ago, from the period after she had stopped being able to record any albums—when the contracts vanished and the Browns disbanded—and before she made her uneasy peace with that new accommodation, the cessation of fame.

  She's aware of honking horns, a rude screech of tires, angry drivers, sunlight and heat—but as if in a dream, she makes it back to her neighborhood, the familiar sun-and-shade patterns are flowing over her windshield, and she's so relieved to be back that she almost careens into her garage, as if into a cave, and lowers her head to the steering wheel and cries, though only for a moment—crying never helped anything—and then she sleeps, too tired to even get out of the car, much less carry the milk in to the refrigerator. It will keep for a little while, she thinks. I'll just nap for a few minutes.

  She sleeps like that for a solid hour, the engine ticking quickly at first but then more slowly, and then not at all, and she dreams of her childhood.

  She would sleep longer, but gradually her dreams of long ago—she is walking down a narrow road through the forest, Jim Ed and Bonnie are on either side of and slightly behind her, they have no goal or destination, are merely out walking—are intruded on by the present, the sleepy awareness of where she is now, with groceries that need putting away, and—this is what awakens her and gets her going—the phone in the kitchen, still silent but capable of ringing, capable of conveying the voice of another, inquiring about her note on the bulletin board.

  Once back inside, she naps again, lies down on the couch and sleeps so hard that she doesn't awaken until dusk, and feels completely off-balance. She's slept right through Buddy's afternoon passage, and, she fears, past any phone calls that might have come in. She doesn't have an answering machine and certainly doesn't have the money to spend on one, or the space left in her mind to learn how to use one. She'll just have to hurry a little now when she goes out to check the mail each day.

  There's no telling how hard she's slept. It's probably a little too soon for anyone to have seen the ad, she thinks, and she tells herself to keep her hopes low, not to expect anything on the first day—but still, she's excited to be putting her longing out there again, just like in the old days. She wonders if the current will pick up that hope just as it did back then, and carry her forward, with no effort at all.

  I had a big life, she thinks, but the thought is hollow; it doesn't attach to anything, not pleasure or pride or even regret, and the thought floats away as if none of it ever happened. The only thing that matters is the waiting, and the possibility of the call. And it is enough.

  She boils water for tea. She is too exhausted from the day to fix even a TV dinner—she'll eat tomorrow. She pulls the phone over by her bed, her cot—it has occurred to her on more than one occasion that her hip might not ever feel strong enough for her to get back up those stairs—and as she falls asleep again, she imagines her little scrap of paper up on the bulletin board in the grocery store, and the stream of people moving past it, coming and going, and stopping, often, to look at it.

  Someone who knows someone, that's all it takes. The world has never abandoned her. The current was fast, and then it became slow and lazy, and finally no longer discernible. But she has put a leaf onto it now to see if it is moving, and it seems to her that it is.

  She falls asleep for the night, and although she awakens the next morning in time to feed Buddy, she is still tired from the rigors of the previous day and it ends up taking her nearly the rest of the week to fully recover, to the point at which soon enough she will have to go out and do it over again. She eats sparingly, trying to make her supplies last longer.

  The phone does not ring—not even Jim Ed or Bonnie call—but the silence now is a positive thing. It means only that she's moving that much closer to the point when someone will call—this is how it has always worked in the past—and at the end of the week, feeling the old magic begin to stir (That's it, she thinks, as she feels for the first time in ages the gentle hand at her back, the subtle and cunning guidance of a fate that wants something from her), she places another ad, mailing this one to an address gotten from an old issue of Country Music Today, stating the same particulars and a few more: "Looking for movie producer to make exciting film about country music pioneer Maxine Brown." To figure out how to pay for the one-month ad, she spends an hour scribbling on a notepad, juggling her budget. Her electricity bill is $250 a month, most of which is the air conditioning; a month without it will pay for the ad and bring her the further extravagance of hope.

  Not hope; certainty. The world has never let her down before. She has been waiting, but finally it is time to go beyond waiting.

  This is how it used to be. Her depression lifts slowly. She has no one to talk to, and on the outside, nothing changes. But she is merrier. What a miracle, one would think, noticing the change in her, if there were anyone to notice. A spirit pervades her; it is the spirit of play and hope and careless joy that was i
n her back in the beginning.

  Where does it come from, and why is it in her? Why has it returned? She cannot change the world again; she is done with that, has already changed it. Why then would such a thing return to her now? She called for it and it has come. It did not have to come. It possessed her; she was not in possession or command of it. And yet somehow she has summoned the summons.

  It means nothing. Her time is gone; her days are done. But she calls for it, and it arrives, not as if with the certitude of fate, but instead simply as if from habit, its path to and from her in some ways as worn and established as that of the little dog that is now her sole contact with intimacy, companionship, love.

  THE WOBBLE

  CHET BROUGHT THEM their full measure of fame, in exchange for their bringing him their greatness. For three or four years he was able to nurture and develop and perfect them—but part of their greatness was the ultimate unmanageability of the sound. No accompanists could score their harmony—Chet alone came closest, and became adept, almost in jazz fashion, at not joining them with his studio instruments but following them, patiently filling in those spaces he understood, saw, and heard, and with his help their music became even more accessible, without losing its original force.

  Television bands were frustrated by them, had never heard or played with anything remotely like their harmony, and stumbled badly when playing live; it was just a little thing, this diminished vigor that attended such performances—a disynchrony between the Browns and their host bands—but eventually it began to result in fewer appearances on television. They didn't care—they preferred radio anyway, and preferred the live performances of touring, playing as they always had with just the three of them.

  The wobble was much slower than the ascent had been rapid. Always a harbinger of the approach of the swooping low luck, another of Floyd's restaurants burned down. After the third one had burned he had been unable to find insurance, and had nowhere to turn now but back to the mill. He was too old for such work, but it was all there was. He hired another crew on speculation, and once more he and Birdie moved into the woods—even Norma was grown now, and off at college, studying music, with her perfect voice, but unattached to the tight coil of her older siblings.