Hillbilly Heart (7 page)

But if I could do that, how could I be with someone as nice as Susie?

Obviously I needed to learn a lesson. I had a little car that I called the Gray Mouse. It was a Vega that I wished was a Pinto or vice versa. I got it used for around $700. It wasn’t nice, although it did have wide tires and was jacked up a bit in the back, which gave it a unique look. After Cletis and I put in some shag carpet and a decent stereo, it was a pretty good little redneck potluck.

One afternoon between baseball practices, I was driving to the barbershop in Russell to get a haircut. I was in a hurry, driving way too fast, and I hit some water in the road, hydroplaned, and flew off a hilltop.

After my car rolled to the bottom of a ravine, I sat still for a minute, figuring out which way was up. I got out and ran back up the hill. At the top, I looked back down at my car and only then did I realize how lucky I was to be alive. The Mouse was mangled. It looked like King Kong had grabbed hold of it and crushed it like a soda can. The windows were broken, doors were gone, and the frame was bent.

All I could remember was that as I rolled over and over down the hill, everything around me was white. As I surveyed the damage, I heard a voice: “Now we’re even.”

I looked around. No one else was in the vicinity. It was just me out there on that country road. I put my head in my hands and thought that in my distraught state of mind, I must have been hearing noises. But, as soon as I tried to reason it away, I heard the voice again, this time more clearly and more unmistakable.

“If you ever steal again, I’ll have to take your life. For now, we’re even.”

When I told Susie about the voice, she said what I was already thinking: “It was God.”

“I don’t know for sure,” I said. “But if I ever did hear the voice of God, then that was it. And I’m freaked out.”

“Don’t be,” she said in a tone of voice that held the comfort of a genuine believer. “He just needed to get your attention. God does that sometimes. You’re out of control, and he was watching over you.”

“I know, but—”

She put her finger over her lips. “No buts. Just listen and accept his word.”

Easier said than done. But I accepted her appraisal of the situation, along with her advice, and as the baseball season got under way, Susie and her dad started coming to my games. I think she began to feel the stirrings of a mission. She didn’t say it, not yet anyway. But that’s what I thought. Her dad, whose name was Bill, had also been a catcher back in school. Like me, he’d harbored aspirations of turning pro. He seemed to enjoy the games and watching me play.

Afterward, we’d talk about the game. He asked great questions about situations that only another catcher would pick up on. Then Susie’s family started inviting me over for dinner. A few times they let me sit at their house and watch TV when no one else was there. Basically, they welcomed me into their home.

By summer, Susie and I had grown even closer. My resistance had melted. I gave her my high school ring, and after that, as best as I could tell, we were going steady.

But then I let her down in August at Greenbo Lake. I was again in the midst of two-a-day football practices. As always, it was miserably hot. Even the gnats had gone to find shade. In between practices, I borrowed—or took, depending on your definition—Cletis’s motorcycle, a Honda 175.

Every now and then he’d let me take it around the block, but on this particular day, I decided to drive it to Greenbo Lake with a friend. I didn’t hang out much with this guy, since we came from different neighborhoods, but he’d invited me to go riding. So we
motorcycled out to a place of true Appalachian beauty: lush, dense forest covering the hills, tons of deer, and picturesque views where the scenery would reflect off the water.

My papaw Casto used to take my brother Kebo and me fishing at Greenbo Lake when we were little. Susie and I also went there to “count the deer,” and then we’d park under the moonlight. There was nothing like the feeling of our hearts beating together on a hot, humid summer night, with a thousand lightning bugs overhead giving off a fireworks show just for us.

My friend and I rode to the dam there. We parked our bikes and hiked on up to the top so we could see the entire lake.

Then he fished a pipe out of his pocket and placed some high-octane marijuana in the bowl. Back then, pot was as prevalent as the clouds rolling across the sky. You’d hear about Mexican this, Acapulco Gold, or Columbian Redbud, but the truth was, according to an article in
High Times
magazine, some of the best and most potent pot in the country was grown right in Kentucky’s own Daniel Boone National Forest—and I think that’s what we had, Homegrown Skunk.

We fired up the bowl and then a few minutes later, right in the midst of our conversation about how beautiful this place was, what a great day it was to be out riding our bikes, and wasn’t everything in our lives perfect at that moment… just when we were nice and stoned and mellow, my hands were jerked behind my back, a pair of handcuffs was slapped on, and my hillbilly ass went rolling down the hard-packed trail we’d just hiked up. And I kept rolling until some burly sheriff grabbed my shirt and pulled me upright. Talk about a buzz kill.

Another sheriff led us to their car; I knew we were in trouble. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cletis’s motorcycle getting loaded into a freakin’ tow truck. They moved a chicken coop to make room for the bike. A sick feeling filled my stomach. I knew seeing Cletis’s bike tossed up there was even worse than my ass getting hauled off to the sheriff’s station.

The two of us ended up in jail. Someone from my friend’s family got us out and gave me a ride home.

Telling my dad, the state representative, and my mom and Cletis what had happened was scary, and even scarier was telling Cletis about his motorcycle. But the worst part of all was Susie’s parents finding out. If they heard that I’d been hauled in for marijuana use, Susie’s and my relationship was over. Here’s what happened.

My mom told my dad that he had to take me to court. “Ruthie, I’d be glad to… if I’m in town,” he said. Miraculously (not), he was out of town when I was due in court, and so my mom took me (pissed off as hell, I might add). By then, Cletis’s bike had been returned to 2317 Long Street, though I don’t remember how. In court, I faced Judge James “Jimmy” Lyon, one of the area’s great men.

He was the judge in Greenup County, Kentucky, for as long as I can remember. He was born without arms, worked his way through law school, and became one of the most respected men in the Kentucky judicial system. He’d handled my mom and dad’s divorce and knew my family well.

I have a feeling Judge Lyon saw my mother’s angry face and decided to cut me a break. He said the arrest would go away and not even appear on my record if I wrote a five-thousand-word essay on “da ebils (the evils) of mar-i-won-a” (a speech impediment made him sound like Elmer Fudd with a Cajun twist).

“Biway Cywus,” he continued. “I know yo’ family. I know yo’ papaw Cywus. He da preacher man. I know yo’ parents. Dey good people, too. You should be ashamed.”

“And I am ashamed, sir,” I said.

He was steamed.

When he said the word
marijuana
—“I want you to wight a five-thousand-wud essay on da ebils of mar-i-won-a”—he slammed his gavel down three times and seemed to gesture at me with his arms, though it looked to me, at that insensitive stage of my life, like his arms were flapping out of control. I got the message anyway.

I went to the library and researched marijuana…
in books.
Despite all my experience with pot, I needed actual facts to fill up twenty pages. From my reading, I learned that eastern Kentucky had some of the best and most fertile soil in the world for growing the plant. During the Civil War, the state had been the leading producer of hemp, which was used to make rope. The plant grew similar to tobacco.

Huh, I wondered, what would happen if the government taxed it like cigarettes and alcohol?

“Maybe they could pave roads and build schools with all that money,” I wrote.

Susie proofed my essay before I turned it in. She believed that pot was the doorstep to the devil’s living room, but dang if she didn’t put down the last page and say, “Bo, I don’t agree with you, but this kind of makes sense.” Fortunately, Judge Lyon also thought I did a good job, and he told me so.

Once football season began, I put that ordeal behind me and played the best ball of my life. We won the Kentucky State AAA championship that year. It felt like we won the Super Bowl. A bunch of our wins came down to Robbie Tooley at center snapping the ball to me and Keeno, our kicker, putting the ball through the uprights.

Robbie was the team’s star player. He had a cocky way of prancing from the huddle to the ball, which the local newspapers called the Tooley Trot. It got under the skin of opposing players, but our fans loved it. Robbie was our school’s Burt Reynolds, the guy with the extra sparkle. Everyone loved him.

My best moment that year happened during Christmas break. One day, just before the holiday, I came home and found my mom very sad. The lady she cleaned for on Fridays was selling her piano. That was the only piano my mom had to play since selling her own piano to pay some bills when we were young.

For her, music was like breathing. She couldn’t imagine not being able to play. Even that one time a week was like physical and emotional therapy for her, much like it is for me today.

I had saved nearly $2,000 from doing odd jobs and yard work over the years. Without telling my mom, I visited the lady she worked for and asked how much she wanted for the piano. Her price was way more than I could afford. Seeing my reaction, she asked why I wanted it. When I told her it was for my mom, she asked how much I could pay, and upon hearing the amount, she said, “It’s yours for that price.”

I shook her hand and wrote a check. Although I was now broke, I couldn’t have been happier. My mom was going to have her own piano again.

Every year on Christmas we went to Cletis’s mom and dad’s, where Kebo and I would each get a pair of socks, eat dinner, and watch TV. It wasn’t much, but it was our tradition. This year, however, I told my mom that I was going elsewhere. She was furious! I disappeared, and that made her even madder.

While she and Red and my little brother Mick were gone, my buddies and I loaded the piano in a truck and put it inside the new little room Cletis had made a while back by walling up the carport. We’d put a stereo in there, along with a potbellied stove. The piano fit perfectly.

Late that night, Ruthie and Cletis and Mick came home. My friends’ cars were in the driveway, so I knew Ruthie would be pissed off, thinking I’d spent the night partying, and she was right. But when she came through the door, we all yelled surprise—and she saw the piano.

“Merry Christmas, Ma,” I said.

She was speechless, which wasn’t like Ruthie. She may have even wiped a tear from her eyes.

“Well, don’t just stand there,” I said. “How about a little ‘Red Headed Stranger’?”

We put the song on the stereo, and she played along to the entire album. It was like she had joined Willie’s band. And thanks to the way some of my friends enhanced the party atmosphere, it smelled like it too.

That spring, I took Susie to the school’s Sweetheart Dance, where she was up for Sweetheart Queen. It was already a special night, but Robbie and I planned to make it even more special. We arranged to meet midway through the dance outside the back door, where we’d stashed a pint of Jim Beam and a big fat doobie. It was enough to get a buzz before the queen was announced.

As we slipped out, I used a brick to lodge the back door open a bit so we could get back in. Then we got pretty dang high. Unfortunately, when we tried to get back into the school, the door was closed and the brick was pushed to the side. I picked up the brick, smashed the window above the door, and reached through the glass for the doorknob. Genius.

As we reentered, we walked straight into Dick Baker, the school’s principal and a deacon in Susie’s church. The vice principal, Ronnie Back, the only person who’d busted my ass more times than Ruthie, was standing next to him.