“While I watched Daddy rip my beautiful creations apart, I kept wondering how he could be so surprised. Wasn’t I the same boy who requested a pair of white vinyl go-go boots for his sixth birthday so I could do a Nancy Sinatra impression in the church talent show? Didn’t I use wood glue, aluminum foil, and silver glitter to transform my Batman lunchbox into a beaded clutch purse when I was eight? And wasn’t I the kid who caused his fifth-grade class picture to have to be re-photographed after I managed to clip on a pair of homemade rhinestone-and-fake-pearl chandelier earrings just before the photographer snapped the picture? What were they expecting to find in my closet? Power tools and stacks of dog-eared Playboy magazines?”
As the audience chuckled, Audrey played “Macho Man.” “I thought it was funny, too. I had this image of myself lying facedown on my bed, one hand stroking a radial saw, the other paging through images of Miss February as I humped away at my pillow in a fit of youthful heterosexual passion. The picture in my head was so absurd that I laughed out loud.
“And that was it. Daddy saw me giggling and said, ‘I won’t have a goddamn sissy livin’ under my roof. You’ll never spend another night in this house.’”
“Macho Man” faded into “So Long, Farewell.”
“My father was one of those people who never went to church but talked a good game about how tight he was with the Lord. He used to say, ‘What makes us Christians superior to everybody else is our God-given mandate to forgive.’ I held out a little hope that Daddy might demonstrate some of that superior Christian forgiveness he bragged about. Even when I was dragging my duffel bag down the stairs, I thought he might stop me and tell me to come back. I kept looking over my shoulder for him to stomp up to me, yelling about how I was grounded till I graduated high school and that the sewing machine was off-limits forever. But he never said another word to me.
“My sister didn’t say anything either, even while she was holding the front door open for me. That bugged me almost as much as what my father had done, because Cherokee and I both knew that the show she’d put on in my room hadn’t really been about my dresses or me being who I am. The problem between Cherokee and me was Mr. Andre Bailey.”
Audrey played “Mad About the Boy.”
“Andre Bailey was gorgeous. Six and a half feet of muscle with a square Dudley Do-Right chin. Andre had hands the size of Virginia hams and golden-brown eyes that made you want to fall out on the floor every time he looked your way. He also didn’t have a brain cell in that beautiful head of his. He was perfect.
“Cherokee thought he was perfect, too. His parents owned a successful laundry and dry-cleaning business in downtown Plainview, and with his good looks and prospects for an inheritance, Andre was something she had to have. She did everything but dance naked in front of him to capture his attention. Cherokee worked for months, and never got anywhere with him.
“Well, at Andre’s request, I did dance for him—not naked, but in some of the dresses I made on Mom’s sewing machine. Andre and I saw each other on the down low for almost a year before Cherokee caught me hopping out of his car in a black cocktail dress late one night. A day later, I was homeless.
“While I lugged my possessions down the sidewalk in front of my house, I had a talk with my personal savior, Miss Joan Crawford. In her movies, there always came a point when Joan was scorned and abandoned and she realized that she’d have to take on the world alone, armed with nothing but pluck and extraordinary cheekbones. I turned to Joan for advice, and she told me that getting kicked out was the best thing that could’ve happened. Joan said I should be glad to escape Plainview before the town crushed my spirit forever. She said I should go to my mother’s cousin in Louisville before I lost my nerve and went back to my father, begging.
“As always, Joan Crawford was right. However, I should have asked her for more complete instructions, because I’m certain she would have told me not to do what I did next. I went to see Andre.”
Several audience members groaned in unison. Audrey played “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”
“Besides Andre, there were four people in his father’s dry-cleaning store. Mrs. Carmel Handy, a skinny old lady with big hair who used to come by the house and pray over my mother before she died, two ditzy teenage girls who were there to giggle and flirt with Andre, and Andre’s father, Mr. Bailey. Andre’s dad was snoring in a chair in the corner. He was always drunk, but everyone politely referred to him as being ‘under the weather,’ since he had money.
“I strutted past all of them until I was face-to-face with Andre. Then, as only a seventeen-year-old in love could do, I leaned across the Formica counter and said, ‘Andre, I love you and I want you to come to Louisville with me. I’ve got a little money saved up and I’m leaving tonight.’
“Andre whispered that I should keep my voice down. Then, just loud enough for the other people in the store to hear, he said, ‘Mr. Robinson, please wait until I have attended to the other customers’ and ‘I’m afraid your articles are not ready for pickup just yet, sir.’
“He looked past me and said, ‘Mrs. Handy, if you’ve got your receipt, I’ll be happy to fetch your jacket for you.’
“It finally hit me that Andre wasn’t going anywhere with me, so I turned to leave. Between the counter and the door, I called on my personal savior again. What would Joan Crawford do? Of course, Joan had the right answer.
“I pivoted around in the doorway of Bailey’s Laundry and Dry Cleaning and pointed my right index finger at Andre. (Oh, how I wish I’d had time to paint my fingernails. This was truly a moment that cried out for fire-engine-red nail polish.) I said, ‘When you see my father, tell him I’ll be back. Tell that motherfucker I’ll be back for his funeral. And as soon as they lay him in the ground, I’m gonna piss on his grave. Tell him that when I do it, I’m gonna squat like a woman.’
“The other people in the store stared at me like I had just escaped from the zoo. Just for dramatic effect, I trained my should’ve-been-red fingernail on the members of the crowd like it was a gun and added, ‘God help anybody who tries to stop me.’ Then I made my grand exit.
“The story of the scene I’d made had traveled from one end of Plainview to the other before I left town that evening. I was so excited by the fuss I created that I got on the wrong bus. I meant to go to Louisville, but, by mistake, I got on a bus bound for Chicago. I was halfway to Illinois before I realized what I’d done. But that little mix-up kept me from living with another relative who didn’t really want to be bothered with me and brought me here to you fine folks. So it turned out for the best.”
As Audrey began to sing “My Kind of Town,” she wondered again if she had said too much. No, Terry might hesitate. Audrey, with her fire-engine-red nails, wouldn’t be quieted.
CHAPTER 12
“I met Lily in the woods behind Mrs. Taylor’s place,” El said. “I used to go there a lot to play my guitar. There was noise twenty-four hours a day in the house, and the forest was the only place I could get a little bit of quiet. As long as I came back with firewood, Mrs. Taylor didn’t much care where I went.”
Perched on the edge of his hospital bed, Barbara Jean held a picture of El’s band. He and Lily stood, front and center, on a small stage. He clutched his spotted guitar. Lily’s hip was thrust toward the camera. Singing, they leaned in toward each other with their mouths wide open. They looked like two children delighting in making mischief.
“I told you I was Mrs. Taylor’s favorite, right? Well, the thing that made me her favorite was my guitar. I could play her a tune and get her out of a bad humor pretty quick. That was how I made my first money as a musician. If one of the other kids was in trouble, they’d run to me and say, ‘Get downstairs fast. I need you to play something for her.’ I’d say, ‘Sure thing. For a nickel.’ Made a nice little piece of change for myself that way.”
El reached for the plastic cup on the table next to his bed. He took a long sip of water, and after Barbara Jean refilled the cup for him, he t
ook another.
“I couldn’t read music then. I used to hear songs on the radio and go out into the woods to learn ’em. I couldn’t really sing, still can’t. But I was loud. I’d set up shop under a tree and just let ’er rip.
“One day while I was singin’, I heard footsteps comin’ up on me. I turned around and saw a girl walkin’ my way. White girl, about my age, with a round, pink face and dirty blond hair. She stopped ten paces away from me and just stood there starin’. She didn’t say a word, just kept her big gray eyes on me. So I went back to singin’.
“‘Blues in the Night’ was Mrs. Taylor’s favorite song that year. I was stoppin’ and startin’, trying to get it right. I was about fourteen then and I thought I was a hotshot. So as soon as I had the chords down, I started showin’ off for the cute girl. I sat on a stump, singin’ about love and two-faced women—like I knew what any of that meant—thinkin’ I sounded pretty damn good.
“About halfway through the song, she joined in. I’m tellin’ you it was somethin’ else when that girl sang. She was a year younger than me, I found out later. She probably weighed about seventy-five pounds. But when she opened her mouth, she sounded like a big-boned blues shouter. Shut your eyes and you heard the bayou and smelled moonshine. It was crazy.”
El picked up his guitar and strummed a few chords. He sang, “Take my word, the mockingbird’ll sing the saddest kinda song.” Then he positioned the guitar on the sheets beside him. “Believe me, she sounded a hell of a lot better than that.
“I started back at the beginning of the song, and she showed me what she could do. When we were done, she turned around and ran. I started wondering if maybe I had dreamed the whole thing. But when I got back to the house with my guitar and the firewood, she was there, standin’ in the kitchen.
“Mrs. Taylor turned to me and said, ‘This here is Lily. She’s gonna be living with us.’
“Harold Taylor was in the kitchen, too. Even then, he stared at Lily like a starving man lookin’ at a platter of steaks. His mother must have noticed it, too, ’cause then she said, ‘And I don’t want any of you boys gettin’ any ideas. You’ll keep a good distance from her, if you wanna keep your balls.’ While she was talkin’, she picked up a kitchen knife from the counter and waved it at us so we could tell she was serious.
“That was how it all began. After that, Lily would follow me out into the woods to sing almost every day. Harold would trail along after her and clap and whistle after every song she sang. Those days with the two of them out under the trees were the first good times I can remember havin’.”
In the three days since his second surgery, Barbara Jean had become a constant presence in El’s room, spending almost every minute of the hospital’s visiting hours with him. As El had foreseen, his second operation had resulted in the loss of more of his foot than the surgeon had expected. The pack mule was lame, for sure.
Decay was easier to take now that he had a plan in mind for how this would all end. The previous surgery had caught him unaware. This time around, all he had to do was bide his time till the day he could leave this place and escape watchful eyes. Until then, he had a beautiful woman to make him feel useful and allow him to pretend that he was a better man than he knew himself to be.
There were dangers to talking about the old days. After he’d slipped and told her that he’d once had a son, he’d worried that she might hound him for information until he slipped again and maybe even said James’s name out loud for the first time in years. But Barbara Jean never pushed him to tell more than he wanted to, even when it was obvious that he was leaving out names or fudging on dates so he wouldn’t give away too much of his history. He liked that about her. She was curious, but she understood that there were stories, or parts of stories, that were better left untold. Loretta’s child would have had to learn the importance of keeping secrets early on.
Barbara Jean said, “So how did another woman’s name end up on your guitar? You were in love with Lily, right?”
“No, plenty of folks thought there was something goin’ on between us, even those who should have known better. But it was never like that with me and Lily. She was good-lookin’ enough. I wasn’t half bad myself in my youth, but back then, even the dumbest black boy kept his distance from white girls if he valued his life. Besides, we were like brother and sister. Since I was the favorite, I ran interference to keep Mrs. Taylor off of her. When that didn’t work and both of us got whooped, we’d haul our bruised behinds out to the woods and sing up a storm. Me and Lily had something better than a romance.”
Barbara Jean said, “So that song you sang at the wedding wasn’t about Lily?”
“No, ‘Happy Heartache’ is about another lady altogether. She was a real killer.”
It was just past Memorial Day. The grass outside was lush, and the trees were fully leafed. Every afternoon, the sun brought that late-spring green into El’s room. He knew from the tint of the light on the walls that a nurse would soon arrive with a dose of the all-important pain pills. He enjoyed Barbara Jean’s company, but the delivery of those little white pills was the true highlight of his day. Those junkie ways never fully left, no matter how long a man stayed clean.
Barbara Jean asked, “Do you have any pictures of your parents?”
“My mother died when I was a week old. Daddy is the only family I ever had.”
He sifted through his bag of photographs and removed one. “That’s him.”
Barbara Jean took the picture from him. The man in the photo was tall and thin, like El. He wore a striped vest and a bowler hat, and he stood next to what appeared to be a very tall leopard.
“Daddy’s name was Joe. The leopard was called Raja.”
Barbara Jean held the photo at arm’s length to try to bring it into clearer focus. After studying the picture, she said, “Is he petting that thing?”
“Yep, Daddy and Raja were close. Daddy worked on a riverboat. That was before I was born, so I’m just repeatin’ the little I remember him sayin’ and what Mrs. Taylor told me later. It was a gamblin’ boat with shows and girls. The usual stuff. Totally low-rent, except the boat also had a circus. They had a boa constrictor, a couple of chimps, and a leopard. The leopard was so vicious that it wore a muzzle twenty-four/seven. The customers had to stay a long ways away from the cage or Raja would get edgy and tear up the trainer who went into the cage with him for every show. At least, that’s what the guy who ran the attraction said.
“My father told me how he and the other guys who worked on the boat used to get drunk and dare each other to sneak into Raja’s cage. The closest they ever got was pulling back the curtain the animal trainer used to throw over it at night. Somebody would get brave enough to lift that tarp, but as soon as the leopard turned his head, the guy would lose his nerve and take off runnin’.
“Anyway, the boat sank during a storm one night. My old man had to swim for shore. Daddy said that as soon as his feet touched land, he decided he was done workin’ on the river. While everyone else from the boat stood by in the mud waitin’ for the rescuers, he started walkin’. He’d heard there was quarry work in Plainview, so he headed here.”
Barbara Jean said, “It’s a long way from the river to Plainview.”
“Sure is. And it was worse because the whole time he was walkin’, he kept hearing somebody or something walkin’ along with him in the trees beside the road. He’d planned to bed down somewhere out of the rain that night, but the thought of whatever was stalkin’ him made him keep goin’.
“Around dawn, Daddy was cold and wet and could hardly get his legs to move. And he knew he was still bein’ followed. He was just outside Plainview when he heard a rustling in the brush right to his side and he knew something was comin’ his way real fast. Before he could get his tired legs in motion, he saw it. It was the leopard from the riverboat. A second later, the leopard was on him. It rammed Daddy with its head and knocked him to the ground. Then it went straight for his throat.”
Bar
bara Jean reflexively brought her hand to her neck. “Oh my God.”
El said, “It didn’t bite him, though. Raja got a mouthful of Daddy’s collar and started to chew. And the whole time, its leopard spots were drippin’ off. Raja the leopard turned out to be a big-ass goat that the circus owner had painted spots on.”
Barbara Jean said, “You’re telling me that people believed a painted goat was a leopard?”
“My hand to God,” El said, lifting his palm. “As soon as Daddy found a place to stay, he painted the goat’s leopard spots on again and took to the road with his own wild animal act. That’s what he did for the rest of his life.”
Barbara Jean looked at the picture of El’s father and the leopard again. She squinted and then smiled. “I’ll be darned.”
El said, “I traveled with Daddy, too, but I barely recall it. He taught me how to play the guitar, though.”
“This guitar?” Barbara Jean asked, pointing at Ruthie.
“No, the one my father had was an acoustic. He won it in a poker game. He couldn’t play it, but he helped me to pluck out a couple tunes, and I was playin’ pretty good a few months later. Daddy and Raja were both dead by the next year. Nobody ever told me exactly what happened to ’em. Not too long after that, I was in the foster home. All I got from my old man was this picture, a guitar he couldn’t play, and a story about a leopard that was really a goat.”
Barbara Jean looked at the guitar in the case that lay open beside El on the bed. She said, “So your father is why you play a leopard-spotted guitar?”
El touched the tip of his nose with his index finger. “Exactly. I saw that guitar in a pawnshop and knew it had to be mine. I was there to sell the guitar Daddy gave me. See, I’d found out I was gonna be a father myself, and I decided it was time I got a real job. I was good with my hands, and one of my buddies said he could hook me up with a job in construction. But then I saw this guitar. I’d never seen another one like it. Still haven’t.
The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues Page 10
