Crazy Heart Read online

  “This is the time of day I hate,” she says. “Waiting for the rush to start. It’s O.K. once it does, and after it’s over, but thinking about it, my God, I hate that. You must like to eat early and avoid the crowds. Be able to eat in peace without a bunch of people asking for autographs and stuff. Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Shoot.”

  She reaches over and taps his knuckle with a long red fingernail. “I always wondered if you had a good time singing those songs. Because, God, I hope to tell you, I had me a couple of real good times listening to them.” Her laugh is deep and a little raspy from the cigarette smoke. “Of course, I’ve had a couple of rotten ones, too, come to think of it.”

  “So have I, darlin’, so have I. Anything you want to hear tonight?”

  She bites her tongue as she thinks. Her teeth are stained red from the lipstick. “You do anything from that album you do with Tommy Sweet?”

  “A few. The standards. ‘Faded Love,’ ‘Please Release Me,’ ‘Crazy Arms.’”

  “Any of those. God, I just love that album. Memories: So Sweet, So Bad. Of course, I love Tommy Sweet, too.”

  “So does Tommy, darlin’.”

  When she laughs the raspy laugh, she reminds him of his ex-wife, Marge. He likes her.

  “You two don’t get along anymore?”

  Bad shrugs. “What the wives didn’t get off that album, Tommy did.”

  Jo Ann gets embarrassed, then flirty. She runs her finger up his forearm. “Why don’t you tell me your real name?”

  “You want to know that, you got to marry me, darlin’. That’s why so many have. Otherwise, it’s just Bad. I was Bad long ’fore any niggers thought to be.”

  Bad pushes through the door and into The Spare Room. Rock music swells up and staggers him. He moves toward the bandstand, carrying his guitar and amp. Tony and the Renegades stop as they see him approach, though the drummer continues to pound for a few more beats.

  “I hope to God that wasn’t one of my songs you were playing.”

  Tony steps down from the bandstand. “Mr. Blake, these are the Renegades.” He runs through a list of names that Bad doesn’t attempt to catch. The best thing about backup bands is that they are so easy to forget.

  “That’s it?” someone asks. “That’s your equipment?”

  “This,” Bad says, unsnapping the case, “is a Gretsch Country Gentleman. A Country Gentleman with gold plate from the head to the tailpiece and an action that would put a twenty-year-old whore to shame.” He looks at their stacked Marshall amps. “You fellows must go on the road a lot with those. Fun to tote. If you are playing loud enough to drown out this Roland Cube, you are playing way, fucking, too loud.”

  They take the play list in order. Bad relaxes into an easy set, just chording through the songs, playing simple verse-form leads at the breaks. Twice, he misses notes and wishes he had left just a little more of the Jack Daniel’s in the bottle.

  “Do some of that Tommy Sweet stuff for us,” Tony insists.

  There is no Tommy Sweet stuff. There is only Bad Blake stuff that Tommy Sweet has taken for his own. But he doesn’t feel any need or use in explaining this right now. In “Slow Boat” he obliges them, running through a break full of hammers and pulls, the style he taught Tommy and that has become Tommy’s signature.

  “I don’t know,” Tony says. “I think Tommy plays it more like this.” He begins the song again, throwing in double and triple pulls, trilling the high notes. “I think,” he says, “that’s more the sort of thing he does now. That’s the way we like to play it.”

  “Keep working on that,” Bad advises. “Someday Tommy will be playing this very same bowling alley. You all will still be here. You can show him. He’ll like it. You can buy each other drinks. You can get drunk and be a couple of guitar-picking wonders together.”

  There are two hours before the show. Bad is watching television, still without sound. He is trying to get his heart to stop pounding. On the television, men in work clothes are yelling at a man in a suit. Bad takes a long pull at his bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The man in the suit is unflappable and continues to smile. A young man in a mustache and a Beech-Nut cap is yelling so hard Bad can see spit fly from his mouth. The man in the suit smiles and nods patiently, pretending he understands rage. The young man seems to be strangling on his. Bad likes the young man. Kill the fucker, he thinks. He takes another long pull on the bottle.

  Bad is ready to get off the bus. He is wearing his red suit with the white lightning stripe up the pants leg. They are in the new town, and Bad is ready to do the new song. This is very important. But the young man in the Beech-Nut cap won’t let him off the bus. He is screaming but there is no sound. The young man does not want Bad here. He doesn’t like Bad’s suit. He wants to know where Bad was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years ago, Bad wants to explain, he had to give concerts and make records, get married, divorced and married again. But right now, he has this new song, and if he can just sing it once, everything will be all right. The young man hates Bad’s song and his suit. He is screaming so hard he showers Bad with spit. My God, Bad thinks, his spit will hit the lightning stripes on this yellow suit, and I will die.

  Bad struggles across the parking lot of the bowling alley, carrying his guitar in one hand and the Roland Cube in the other. He is luminous in orange and white. He tries not to think of himself, an old fat man dressed in an orange suit with a white lightning stripe up each leg, white hat and white boots, and a heart doing the bump and grind.

  At the back door, Tony and the Renegades are lounging, cooling off between sets. They watch Bad lurch across the parking lot. No one offers help.

  “Hey,” Tony calls at last, “it’s showtime.”

  Bad pulls up even with Tony. He is wheezing hard and can feel the sweat dripping from under the band of his hat. The air is sharp with marijuana and Bad watches a joint go from hand to hand.

  “We were afraid you weren’t going to show.”

  The band members look at each other, smiling.

  “Son, I have played sick, hurt, drunk, married, divorced, on the run, and run to the ground. Bad Blake has never pulled a no-show in his whole goddamned life. Not even in a fucking bowling alley, backed by a band of hippies.” He takes the joint as it moves near him and pulls a long drag. He lets the smoke out and takes another deep drag.

  “Better watch that stuff,” Tony says. “Maui Wowie.”

  Bad looks at the joint and takes one more drag. “You sure they’re not paying you more than they’re paying me?”

  The bar and bandstand are dark, and Bad stumbles on the riser. He unpacks the guitar, plugs in, adjusts the volume and waits for a note from Tony. He gets an A flat.

  “Bring it up a half step.”

  “I’m in tune,” Tony says. “I got an electronic tuning meter. I’m on.”

  “I got a fifty-six-year-old ear says you’re off. Bring it up a half step.”

  When the band has retuned, Tony steps on the light switch and a single light brings up the microphone. The band moves into “Wildwood Flower,” uptempo, but rushed just a little. Back behind the amps, Bad tries to turn up loud enough to slow them down. He can’t and speeds to catch up to them.

  At the end of the first chorus, Tony moves up to the microphone and says, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Spare Room is proud to present country recording star ‘The Wrangler of Love,’ Mr. Bad Blake.”

  Bad steps forward to where the light is supposed to be turned on, but misjudges, and only his guitar neck and left hand are in the spot. He takes a sidestep into the light and swings into his jazzy instrumental, a simple melody, but quick and light, full of triplets that sound harder to play than they really are. Applause from the bar covers a couple of clinkers.

  They move through the set as they have rehearsed, but still a little fast. Between “Love Came and Got Me” and “Faded Love,” he tells the drummer to slow it down. It does no good. His throat feels full and tight, despite the Jack Daniel’s he has been d
rinking all night. After “Faded Love” he ducks behind the amps and takes a pull from the bottle.

  Back at the microphone, he tunes his slipping E string while he talks to the audience. “Thank you all, so much. I can’t tell you how good it is to be here in Pueblo, Colorado. I’ve been all over the country, and I’ve found it’s filled with good people. I want to tell you, a lot of them are right here in Pueblo.” While the bar applauds, he turns and gives Tony the A. Tony returns it, in tune. “You know, one thing I’ve learned over the years is that if you don’t give the folks what they want, they won’t want anything from you again. I believe a few of you want to hear this next song. I had a hit on it about twenty years ago, when I was, let me see, just seven years old.” He starts “Slow Boat” with the signature shift from A to D-flat minor to D and back to A.

  The applause starts again. “This song is for all of you who have been so good to me for a long, long time now, but I also want to send it out special to a couple of my dear friends, Bill and Barbara. God, I think the world of them.”

  The band comes in behind him and forms a pocket for Bad to fit the melody into. Bill Wilson and Barbara, in matching shirts, jeans and boots, move out onto the floor. Barbara is a handsome woman, young and strong-looking. She is a full head taller than Bill. Bill, Bad figures, must be one capable son-of-a-bitch. Barbara leans her head down on Bill’s, and they begin to turn across the dance floor. Bill beams. You may not be able to sell out a concert anymore, or cut a hit record, Bad thinks, but by God, you can still jerk them around.

  When the song is over, Bad walks back behind the amps and takes another long pull at the bottle. Back at the microphone, the whiskey starts to push back up his throat. Tony starts “Please Release Me,” and as Bad comes in behind him, he feels a flush of cold pass through his body. He intends to sing the song the way Lefty always did, bending the notes, taking them up and suddenly dropping them, but the first time he tries that full octave drop on “go,” the whiskey comes up again. He fights it down, but loses the next two bars before he is able to open his mouth again. He starts low, and keeps it there, half a key below what the band is playing.

  When he finally drags the song to a close, he says, “I’m awful sorry about that, folks. I’ve got me a frog in my throat that just don’t want to behave. I believe I’ll take a quick break and see if I can’t send him back where he belongs. Tony and the boys here will do a couple of songs and then I’ll be right back. We’ve got a long time and a lot of good songs we want to do for you yet.”

  As he moves away from the microphone, unplugging his guitar, he stumbles, and lands on one knee on top of his Roland Cube. When he looks up, all he can see is a red amplifier light, pulsing in the dark like the neon red heart of Jesus.

  The next sensation he is aware of is a ridge of cold metal in his hand. He is outside the back door of the alley, on his knees, holding the rim of a garbage can. He pulls himself up and looks at the sky, a wash of stars. He is cold and shivering. He wipes his face with a handkerchief, then checks to see if he’s kept his suit clean. It is soaked with sweat. He bends down, picks up his hat and brushes at a streak of dirt that smears across the crown. He leans against the building and looks up. Stars spin slowly, but when he looks down he can focus and hold his field of vision. He coughs once and finds his throat clear.

  Tony and the Renegades are just finishing some two-step he’s heard on the radio when he climbs back up on the riser and begins the applause for the band.

  He is shaky for the next two numbers. His voice wavers, and his playing is mechanical. He concentrates on staying on tempo with the band. They are still playing too fast, but it is easier to accept the tempo than to fight it. The band is getting edgy, bored with the steady progression of chords in the simplified play list. On “Cold, Cold Heart” Tony cuts in on him in the break and takes over the lead himself. Bad falls back into the rhythm pattern behind him.

  By the time they are to the end of the play list, Tony has established a pattern of taking the leads. He plays verse form, full of the trills and pulls that he played in rehearsal. Bad’s voice has steadied, but his hands are still cold and sweaty. He moves up to the microphone. “I’ve had a special request for this next song. Old Ray Price did it first, but I did it a couple years ago with a friend of mine.” The bar starts to applaud. “Now, Tommy can’t be with me tonight, but I want to do our version of this song, and send it out to Jo Ann, bless her pretty little heart.”

  He begins “Crazy Arms” chording the rhythm part, but determined to do his own lead. Between chorus and verse he plays a bridge of pedal-steel licks, playing three notes, bending the third while playing the other two straight. Dancers swing across the floor, including, he notices, Jo Ann on the arm of a tall, angular man with a high-crowned hat.

  At the second chorus, he starts the pedal-steel licks again, intending to build a break based on them, connected by hammered runs. By now, Tony has caught on to the structure of the break and begins to play the melody line an octave higher. The result is a fine break, but it is Tony’s lead, though Bad has created it. At the end of the song, Bad invites Tony to introduce the band. Tony finishes by introducing himself as lead guitar.

  The last song is “It’s Strange.” The last couples take the dance floor. Bad has the lead, but he feels Tony crowding behind him, waiting for a chance to move in. The band’s attention has revived, and they are playing tight and purposefully for the first time all night. At the break, Bad takes a simple lead, adding in the hammers and pulls he used at rehearsal. When he reaches the end of the verse, Tony picks up the lead and plays it back, adding a blues riff at the end.

  Bad accepts the riff and expands on it, remembering nights spent on Maxwell Street in Chicago, listening to the blues in the tight, packed clubs, the smell of smoke and sweat, and deep into the night, the nearly manic playing of bluesmen, entranced and glistening with sweat, picking up each other’s leads, expanding and elaborating on them as he sat as close to the little bandstands as he could get, studying the technique, the intensity of some of the best players he had ever heard. He bends strings, first one note and then two. He runs a scale up the neck and then slides back down, making the guitar cry. He creates a shell of sound and climbs in and finds room to breathe. The dancing couples stop, stand and watch.

  Tony starts to pick up the blues lead, falters on one note, then two. He swings uptempo, moving across the line between blues and rock, into his own territory. Bad catches the direction of the riff, finds the tempo and moves in on Tony. He takes the rock riff for a couple of bars and then adjusts his pickup controls and jerks hard on the tremolo bar. The big guitar shrieks. Bad rips through scales and lets the guitar feed back. Sweat pours from his head and splashes on the guitar. His heart pounds. He does not know what he is playing, but he keeps going, sure he will find his way through this. The guitar understands rage. Bad alternates chords and single-string leads. Tony stops and backs up a step. Bad finds an opening and begins a run, moving easily up the neck, keeping the tempo, but working his way back, winding down the furious tone of the song until he finds the spot he is looking for and moves into a quick, delicate reprise of the melody, playing triplets like a mandolin player.

  He looks over to Tony and arches an eyebrow. Tony shakes his head and Bad accepts. “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been wonderful with you tonight. You all drive safely now, and the Lord willing, we’ll get together again real soon. Good night.”

  As they settle into one last chorus, Bad shifts the key down a half step so he can end up in basso profundo. Tony steps to the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, the star of the show. Let’s hear it for the great Bad Blake.” He lets go of his guitar and leads the applause. Bad plays a quick riff and steps back as Tony cuts the stage lights.

  Light is just starting to come through the window next to the bed. He has slept for a couple of hours without dreams. He is not sure what this means, but his heart has stopped pounding and his head is clear.

  Jo Ann is still
asleep. Her makeup has worn off, and her hair is tangled around her hand. She looks older, a little drawn, but Bad has always loved them, all of them, best this way. He dresses quietly and carries the white boots and hat in his hand. He waits until he is outside and pisses behind the open door of the van. He figures he has a couple of hours before the sweating starts again.

  Chapter Two

  By the time the sun is full in the sky, he is starting to climb the hills. He is, he figures, another hour away from New Mexico. Along the side of the road the scrub brush has begun to turn to trees, and Colorado looks more like what he remembers from years earlier. He thinks about last night. He has played drunk before, drunk, sick drunk and stoned. But he has never let go that far in front of a bunch of kids. There is a certain pleasure in taking the boy to school, in showing him just how much he doesn’t know about the instrument, but that sort of thing shouldn’t be necessary. He shouldn’t have to prove himself to a twenty-year-old.

  Still, it has been a long time since he has played like that, and it feels good to get in and cut. There is a quick progression he played last night, just the smallest snatch of a melody, no more than four bars, that he still hears this morning. He hums it to himself, seeing if there is anything he can connect it to.

  He is getting hungry. He still has only ten dollars and two hundred miles to Las Vegas, New Mexico. The melodic phrase keeps coming back to him, but he doesn’t find the note that will carry it anywhere that seems to interest him. How much of his life has he spent just this way, tinkering with a few notes, looking for the next one in the series, looking for the one that will lead him to find the whole from the piece?

  God bless credit cards.

  A skinny boy with snaggled teeth takes Bad’s card and runs it through the machine that stamps his Texaco number on the receipt. It is one hell of a thing when fifty-six-year-old men are sent out on the road with only ten dollars.