Crazy Heart Read online

  CRAZY

  HEART

  Thomas Cobb

  Dedication

  For my mother and father

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  About the Author

  Praise

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  He’s standing in the bowling alley parking lot in front of his 1978 Dodge van with burnt valves. He pulls his shirt away from his skin. Soaked, it sticks to him as fast as he pulls it away. Above him a sign announces: “Winter Leagues Now Forming.” Below that it says, “Country Record Star / Bad Blake / Here / Friday, August 12.”

  He is trying to shake a dream. At a rest stop in New Mexico he dreamed he crouched before a low stone wall. Behind him was a man with a gun. On either side was one of his ex-wives. Bad understood they were to be shot, slaughtered like pigs. He wanted to run, but he could not decide whether to run or try to save one or both of the wives. He could not decide and he could not run. He remained crouched and waiting. He can still feel the pressure on the tendons in the backs of his legs.

  He goes for his Pall Malls. The pack is nearly empty, loose and slick with sweat. He gets one lit and looks at the sign. A fucking bowling alley, he thinks. They got you in a fucking bowling alley, right in the fucking middle of fucking nowhere Colorado. You should have known, you’re old and fat, and now you are bowling alley material. Oh, Jack, he thinks, Jack, you bastard.

  Inside, the bowling alley is full of light and the smell of wax. The air-conditioning hits hard and turns his soaked shirt icy. He is breathing fast, his heart pounding in shuffle time. He reaches for another cigarette, thinks better of it, and goes off to find the manager. A single bowler is working in the middle of thirty lanes. Bad hears the drop, the steady, straight tone of the roll, and waits for the impact. When it comes, it is a hollow thump like a drummer’s wood block as the pins drop.

  “Bad Blake!” the manager exclaims. “I’m proud to meet you. God, I used to listen to you when I was just a kid.” Bad’s heart thumps. He manages a wheeze and a smile and pumps the manager’s hand.

  “Have a good trip?” the manager wants to know.

  “Long,” Bad says. “Long but good. Played Clovis, New Mexico, last night. Saw some real pretty country. Glad to be here.” Momentarily, he has forgotten where the hell he is.

  The Spare Room is dark and quiet, though Bad can still hear the faint hiss and thump of the lone bowler. “Down there is the band stand,” the manager explains. Bad notes the shadow of a drum kit and microphones on a raised platform. He heads for the bar. Among the bowling trophies and beer company gewgaws behind the bar, enormous fish swim back and forth in a lighted aquarium. Bad slides onto a barstool, careful of his hemorrhoids.

  “Darlin’,” he calls to the barmaid, “bring me a J.D. up, beer back.” He smiles and points to the fish. “Buy one for the boys in the backroom there, too.”

  “Three twenty-five,” she says when she brings his drinks. She is young and pretty in a sullen way. Bad winks. “On my tab, darlin’.”

  “No tab.”

  “I’m Bad Blake, little darlin’. I’m with the band. Hell, I am the band.”

  She turns and walks away. A minute later the manager is at Bad’s side.

  “Mr. Blake, we have a real nice room for you over in the Starlight Inn, and of course your meals are taken care of, but we can’t let you run a bar tab. It’s in the contract. Mr. Greene of Greene and Gold put that in himself.”

  Bad reaches out. For a second he is ready to grab the gristly knob of the manager’s Adam’s apple and crush it. Instead, he touches the man’s shoulder and squeezes gently. “If you and Jack have an agreement, we’ll all have to stick by it. Don’t worry yourself about it, old buddy.”

  Jack, he thinks, you heifer-fucker, someday I will purely kill you. When I’m in your office you’re on my leg; when I’m on the road, you’re on my back.

  “How much?” he asks the barmaid.

  “Three twenty-five.”

  Bad looks hard at the shot. He’s sweating. The cigarette between his fingers is wavering. His throat is raw from the Pall Malls. He wants the whiskey, but he has almost no cash left, and he knows he will want the drink even more later on. Still, right now he wants it more than he ever wanted any of his ex-wives. He digs four dollars from his pocket. When the barmaid brings back the change, he keeps it.

  “Mr. Blake.” The manager is back at his shoulder. “Let me personally offer you all the free bowling you want.”

  Bad nearly chokes. He swallows it, but the whiskey still burns in his nose.

  “I just want you to know you’re real welcome here.”

  “I can tell that, old buddy, I can tell.”

  In his room, Bad punches the air conditioner to “max.” He hates air-conditioning, but he can’t stop sweating. He strips off his soaked shirt and falls across the bed. He runs his hands across his broad belly and groans. Two orders of griddle cakes and sausage he ate in New Mexico have turned to pure, burning sulfur. The bedspread, some sort of cigarette-burned nylon over a thin foam-rubber backing, sticks to his skin. He longs for the old days and chenille bedspreads with zigzag patterns.

  On the TV, a man and woman in fluorescent colors embrace. When they part, their lips move but no sound comes out. Bad considers getting up to turn up the sound, but decides it’s good enough this way. The couple, he supposes, is talking about what a prick Jack Greene is. He doesn’t want to find out any different.

  Bad is in the back of his old Silver Eagle touring bus, almost asleep, listening to the bus’s wheels on the blacktop, a sound like the softest set of brushes he has ever heard. He loves the sound even more than he loves silence after a night of playing. He calls to Marge and gets no answer. Then he calls Suzi, though he was married to her years after Marge. There is still no answer. He gets out of the bunk and heads for the front of the bus. He wants to know where he is and who he is married to. “Tommy,” he calls, but Tommy Sweet doesn’t answer. Everyone on the bus is asleep and he cannot wake them. The bus driver is his father, and he can’t wake him, either. He returns to the back of the bus.

  Bad’s heart lurches as though it is coming loose from its moorings. He blinks and groans. Despite the air-conditioning, he is still covered with sweat. The hair on his chest and belly, sweated flat, radiates like a thousand needles from his heart. On the television, a woman throws up her hands in joy as a flock of bluebirds flies from her washing machine. The birds have, he hopes, just crapped all over her clean clothes. He gets up and takes his damp shirt into the bathroom to wash it out in the sink.

  “Mr. Greene is still on the other line, Mr. Blake.”

  “I’ll wait, darlin’.”

  The highlight of this evening looks to be dinner in a restaurant with thin redwood paneling and ferns that drip down to the salad bar.

  “Darlin’, you ever been in Pueblo, Colorado?”

  “I don’t believe so, Mr. Blake.”

  “Well, I wish you were here right now, Sweetness, because you’d sure as hell be the best thing Pueblo ever had to offer.”

  When she laughs, Bad sees an image of Brenda walking across the plush carpet of Jack’s office, bringing him a cup of coffee to take the edge off his embarrassment as Jack makes him wait. He hears the
shush of her stockings under her tight skirt.

  “Matter of fact, Brenda, I really wish you were here tonight, because I just might be the best thing that Pueblo, Colorado, has to offer.”

  Her laugh is efficient. “Here’s Mr. Greene.”

  “Bad, how’s Arizona?”

  “Colorado.”

  “Right, Colorado. So, how’s Colorado?”

  “You ever seen Colorado?”

  “Yeah, years ago.”

  “It’s still here. Listen, Jack, I got some problems.”

  “O.K., what can I do?”

  “Jack, last night I got a call from Suzi.”

  “How the hell did she find you?”

  “I was going to ask you that, but obviously you don’t know where the hell I am.”

  “Jesus, Bad. I got six acts on the road right now, including a rock group that just trashed a Ramada Inn in Memphis. I get confused, O.K.? Now, which one’s Suzi?”

  “Four. The little brunette. The one that whines.”

  “Oh, right. She was a doll, Bad.”

  “I can’t stand whiners.”

  “Then why the hell did you marry her?”

  “I thought she’d stop whining if I did. Jack, she says she hasn’t gotten a check in quite a bit. She’s whining again.”

  “Right. Well, receipts are a little slow coming in off this trip. I guess they still use Pony Express out there.”

  “But there are royalties.”

  “Yeah, but…Oh hell, Bad, I didn’t want to tell you until you came in off this swing. J.M.I. cut out So Sweet, So Bad.”

  “Jack, that fucker was still selling.”

  “It had slowed, slowed a lot, and Tommy’s got nine albums right now and a new one next month. That’s a lot of product to rack and the chains don’t like crowding.”

  “Fuck the chains. The chains have got less brains than I got ex-wives.”

  “Them and most of the world, Bad.”

  “What about Tommy, what about the new album? I’ll be off the road in a couple of weeks. I can go straight to L.A. or Nashville. We can get right to work on it.”

  “Tommy wants to know if you’ve got new material.”

  Bad is looking at a cardboard painting above the television set, sailboats on a stormy sea. The colors are streaked and blotchy—red, blue and white against black and gray. He can’t figure why anyone would want to look at such a mess, much less paint it.

  “You know I don’t have new material,” he says. “Hell, I’m not new material. There’s nothing wrong with the old stuff. We did real well with it the last time out. A hell of a lot better than he did with his goddamned gunfighter albums.”

  “Tommy thinks he’s leaning too hard on the old stuff. He doesn’t want people to think he’s riding the gravy train.”

  “That son-of-a-bitch has a lifetime pass on the gravy train.”

  “Come on, Bad. Remember who’s asking who to do a record here.”

  “Jack, you jerk-off. You get out here in, in, Clovis, goddamned, New Mexico, or Pueblo, kiss-my-ass, Colorado, and you play in a piano bar or a bowling alley, backed by a bunch of old bastards with brush cuts and string ties. You look out on a bar full of blue-hairs who’ve checked their teeth at the door. You smile and sweat and sing ‘Slow Boat’ three times a night. You get up the next fucking morning at five o’clock and drive three hundred miles with piles so bad it feels like you’ve got a nest of fire ants up your ass, and then you tell me about riding the goddamned gravy train. You and Tommy Sweet both try it sometime.”

  “Bad, Bad. Calm down. Tommy says he wants new material. I’ll keep talking, but he’s holding the cards. You know that, I know it, and Tommy Sweet sure as hell knows it.”

  “You keep talking, Jack. And you tell Tommy for me that he wouldn’t know country music if it came up and kicked him in his world-famous ass. And tell him that one of these days, it sure as hell is going to.”

  Jack keeps talking, and Bad puts the phone against his belly and looks back at the painting above the television.

  “Jack, is it true they’ve taught monkeys how to paint?”

  “What? What the hell are you talking about? Monkeys?”

  “Jack, I’m broke. I need money.”

  “I sent you money when you were still in Texas. I sent you plenty.”

  “Wasn’t enough, old buddy, I need more.”

  “Bad, if I send you money, you’ll go on one of your famous benders and wind up back here, who knows when, sick, broke and married.”

  “I ain’t going to marry anybody.”

  “Look, you’re going to build a nice piece of change out there on the road. Even when your exes get their cut, you’ll have a little left over for once. I’m going to make sure you keep it for a little while.”

  “I’m down to my last ten bucks.”

  “That will get you to Santa Fe. You’ve got cards for gas, and you’ve got expenses all the way. You’ll be there soon. I’ll have some cash waiting in Santa Fe.”

  “Jack, I’m fifty-six years old and I only have ten bucks.”

  “Spend it wisely, Bad.”

  “Jack, did I ever tell you that your mother used to bite when she gave head?”

  “I love you, too. Bye-bye.”

  Bad hangs up the phone and rolls over onto his back. Why the hell would someone want to paint a streaky, piddling-ass little picture like that that didn’t mean jack-shit to anyone?

  In the liquor store, Bad lusts for the short, square bottle of Jack Daniel’s. He stoops to the pint bottle of Heaven Hill and something drops down his back. He wears an old shirt that Nudie himself designed. It is full of beadwork, but the thread is rotting and beads drip down his back into his pants.

  “Mr. Blake?”

  When he stands, beads fall through his pants and into his boots. His heart stutters.

  “Goddamn. It is you. It really is Bad Blake right here in my store.” A short, balding man reaches out his hand. “I’m Bill Wilson. I’m a big fan, and just real pleased to meet you.”

  Bad smiles and looks back to the cheap bourbon.

  “Here. Here, Mr. Blake. Here’s the Jack Daniel’s.” Bill Wilson pulls a full liter of J.D. from the shelf. “Being in the business and a big fan and all, I kind of keep track of what the stars drink. It’s kind of a hobby, you know. Willie Nelson and his Lone Star Beer, Haggard and his George Dickel, Tommy Sweet and his Southern Comfort, and Bad Blake and his Jack Daniel’s. Of course, I never thought I’d actually have a star right here in my store.”

  Bad eyes the bottle in Bill Wilson’s hand and wheezes with desire.

  “My wife Barbara is one of your biggest fans. She’ll flat die when she finds out you were here in the store. She’s out getting her hair done right this minute. We’re going to your show tonight. I think she’s having it done just for you. Of course”—he winks—“I expect to get the real benefit of it. But if you could sing ‘Slow Boat’ for her tonight, it would sure mean the world to her. It might”—he winks again—“mean a lot to me, too.”

  “You got it, old buddy. You sure got it.” Bad can’t take his eyes off that bottle of Jack Daniel’s. “‘Slow Boat’ for Barbara. You got it.”

  “She’ll be thrilled. She really will,” Bill Wilson says. “And here, take this. I want to be able to tell everyone that I bought Bad Blake a drink.”

  Out in the sunlight, Bad looks at the bottle and then up to the sky. Sweet Baby Jesus, thank you.

  A fighter plane trails white across a turquoise sky. Bad is already a quarter finished with the bottle when someone pounds on his door. He gets up, puts on the Nudie shirt. More beads drip down his back.

  At the door is a young man with long hair and a wispy beard. “Hi. I’m Tony.” Bad blinks in incomprehension.

  “Tony,” the young man insists. “Tony and the Renegades. Your band.”

  Of course. Bad nods. The backup band. His backup bands on the road are always of two types: young rock-and-rollers or old men who have been playing his songs fo
r years without getting them right. He supposes that if he got to choose, he would take the kids.

  “Me and the boys, we’re over at the alley, setting up. We were wondering what time to start rehearsing.”

  “Soon as you can. Start rehearsing as soon as you can and do it often as you can. That’s the secret. You can’t rehearse enough.”

  “What I mean is, what time are you coming to rehearsal?”

  Bad sighs and takes Tony by the arm and leads him out to the van. “I got lead sheets if you all can read music, chord charts if you can’t. I got cassettes and a play list. You go on. I’ll be by later. I already done my rehearsing.”

  Bad turns back to the room and the bottle. Tony follows. “Mr. Blake, it would mean a lot to us if you would come on over early. I mean, we need to get the leads down and all that.”

  “Leads?” Bad asks. “Leads? Son,” he asks seriously, “are they paying you more than they’re paying me?”

  “But,” Tony goes on, “I thought you could show us some things, teach us some of that old stuff Bad’s Boys used to do. Is it true you taught Tommy Sweet how to play guitar?”

  Bad ignores the remark about Tommy. “All right,” he says. “You all go listen to the cassettes. Listen carefully. Study the lead sheets. Give me an hour to get some dinner and then I’ll be over.” Bad doesn’t know what he can teach them. He has learned only two things as a musician he could ever put into words: keep your wrist steady, and don’t ever marry nobody.

  Bad pokes at the chicken-fried steak. Pale gravy oozes from it. Next to the chicken-fried steak is a scoop of mashed potatoes and a spoonful of corn. Road food. Road food is always neutral in color and taste. It only turns exciting a couple of hours later. He has learned to eat early and not make rude noises onstage.

  The hostess-cashier slides into the booth across the table from him. She exhales a long stream of cigarette smoke over his food. “Everything O.K.?”

  “Fine.” Bad nods. “Just fine.”

  She wears her black hair pinned in curls on top of her head, and her makeup thick. When she winks at him, a small knot of mascara sticks to her lower lash. She wears a red nylon blouse and a plastic name tag that says, “Howdy, I’m Jo Ann.” “Mind if I smoke?” she asks. Bad waves his hand.