The Devil's Dream (2 page)

It's Christmastime at the Opryland Hotel, and you never saw anything like it! Strings of the most beautiful little bitty colored lights—miles and miles of lights—are wrapped around and around every single twig on every branch on every tree, hundreds of trees, millions of lights; it must have taken them months to do it. You can't get over it! Not to mention the hotel itself, all lit up like some fairy-tale city—hell, it's as big as a city anyway, hundreds of rooms, all those restaurants, ballrooms, pools, you name it
.

There's special displays, such as those darling life-size elves over there hammering away on little red high-heel shoes, or the animated ballerinas dancing
Swan Lake
forever and ever on the mirror pond in the middle of the lushly blooming Conservatory. There's real strolling singers, such as the Merry Gentlemen, the Seven Singing Dwarves, a trio of snowmen, and a mysterious swashbuckling baritone in a cape singing “Silent Night.” You can't quite place him. But it don't matter. Maybe he's some lunatic out here on a day trip. Maybe he's a real star. This place is full of real stars, you have to keep an eye out. You might see anybody. And if you do, it's a good bet they'll give you their autograph or maybe even the shirt off their own back. Country stars are real nice. They love their fans in a deep way. They will give of themselves till they drop. This very afternoon, Minnie Pearl is scheduled to read “The Night Before Christmas” out loud by the giant fireplace. Every child there will get a free gift, not to mention hot chocolate
.

But look—right now, right over here, flash bulbs are popping like crazy on the porch in front of the old-timey Pickin Parlor. You better hope you've got some film left, honey. It must be somebody big
. . . .

And sure enough, it's Katie Cocker! One of the real superstars of country music, looking just as natural—looking just like herself! But you know they all look smaller in person than they do on TV, that's a fact. And their heads are all a little bit bigger than they ought to be, you have to have a big head to look good on TV. Of course, Katie's wearing a wig, too; they all wear a wig. Nobody's hair has got that much body. But hers is naturally blond, that's a fact, you can look back at old photographs from when she was a Raindrop with Mamma Rainette and the Raindrops, and see for yourself. Thick yellow hair, farm-girl looks—level brown eyes, honest as the day is long; a wide, full mouth; that easy smile. Red lipstick. Katie Cocker don't put on airs. She don't have to. She don't have to take off those twelve extra pounds if she don't want to, either. She looks okay. She looks fine! She's made it, and made it her own way
.

God knows she's paid her dues, too. Some of the events of her life are just tragic, but she's weathered them. She's still here. She's still singing her heart out. It does seem like more things happen to country artists than to anybody else, have you ever noticed? It's like they have more events in their lives. God knows she's lived through some events. Katie Cocker is well over forty now and looks it. There's something about her that says, “Hello, honey, this is who I am, and I don't give a damn what you think about me. Take it or leave it!” she says. This sassy attitude, coupled with her down-home warmth, has made Katie a big favorite with men and women both. She wouldn't let anybody walk all over her, but she likes men, you can tell. You can always tell
.

Of course, she's gotten real religious in recent years, all the big stars get religion at a certain point. In fact, that's Billy Jack Reems sitting up there at the table with her, he's the little one wearing the robe, they call him the spiritual leader of the stars
.

It must be some kind of a press conference. Katie sits up on a stool, surrounded by regular reporters plus one prim, snippy virgin from the BBC, holding a microphone
.

“What's the name of the album?” somebody asks
.

“Shall We Gather at the River,”
Katie says. “That's the name of an old hymn we used to sing in church up on Grassy Branch
.”

“Is it going to be all religious songs?” somebody wants to know
.

“Oh no, not at all,” Katie says. “It's going to have lots of different kinds of songs on it as a matter of fact, all of them associated with my family—that's the Bailey family—down over the years
.

“Well, ‘Down by Grassy Branch' will be on it for sure”—Katie answers another question—“and ‘Livin' on Love' and ‘Melungeon Man.' R.C. Bailey wrote both of those, and they were big hits for the Grassy Branch Girls. We'll do ‘White Linen,' which has always been one of my favorites. It's an old ballad that came into the family when my Grandaddy Durwood Bailey married Tampa Rainette in 1910
.

“Yes, Tampa is coming! She really is! My cousin Little Virginia is bringing her and R.C., too. RCA is flying them all over here in a private plane.—Lord, I don't even know! About a hundred, I reckon. They're both bound to be pushing a hundred
.

“And ‘The Cuckoo Song,' it's another old ballad that goes way back
—

“Yes, she is. Rose Annie is definitely coming too. They're releasing her from Brushy Mountain State Prison just to cut this album, that's one reason we're going to cut it live.—I don't know. I just don't know. I'd sure like to have ‘Subdivision Wife' on here if she wants to sing it
—

“No, I'm producing this one myself. Yes, that's right. I've formed my own company. This is Carole Bliss, my associate
.”

Heads turn toward Carole Bliss, a trim, dark-haired woman in a red business suit, but no flash bulbs pop
.

Katie keeps answering questions. She's real patient with the reporters, she acts like she's got all the time in the world, but Carole Bliss keeps looking at her watch and rolling her eyes, like she's saying, “Oh, brother!” in her mind. Young RCA employees circle the scene, facilitating things. They are good at communicating and facilitating. You can tell them by their sculptured haircuts. Christmas carols float through the air. There are so many people crowded up to the porch to watch this interview that strolling hotel guests can hardly push past. A lot of them just stay, in fact, swelling the crowd
.

“Any minute now,” Katie says. “We're expecting them any minute
.”

When Katie Cocker answers a question she leans forward on her stool and speaks right to the one who asked it. She looks you dead in the eye. “That's a pretty complicated question for me to answer,” she says now, slowly, to the woman from the BBC. “I have to admit, there was a time when all I wanted to do was get out of that valley. I was just dying to get away from home. What I didn't understand, all those years when I was waiting for my life to start, was that it had already started. I was already living it! Those were the most important years, and I didn't even know it. But I was real young then, and foolish, like we all are. I wanted to be somebody different, I wanted to be
me,
and I thought that the way to do this was to put as much distance as possible between me and Grassy Branch. So I did that. And I took some chances, and I got knocked down flat a couple of times—I guess I'm Phi Beta Kappa at the School of Hard Knocks!—but I'd get right back up, and keep on going. I made a lot of mistakes. I thought I had to do it all by myself, see. It took me a long time to understand that not a one of us lives alone, outside of our family or our time, and that who we are depends on who we were, and who our people were. There's a lot of folks in this business that don't believe that, of course. They think you can just make yourself up as you go along. The trick is to keep on moving. But I can't do this. I come from a singing family, we go way back. I know where we're from. I know who we are. The hard part has been figuring out who I am, because I'm not like any of them, and yet they are bone of my bone
. . . .
”

That the one you mean? Speak up. Well, that thar's “The Preacher's Son,” and I'll play it plumb through fer you by and by, but first I'll tell ye how come I was to write it in the first place. A song don't just spring outer nowhere, ye know, hit'll grow in yer mind like a honeysuckle vine just a-wrappin itself around all the times and all the people and places that is yer life. Or that is how hit is fer me. A song will grow up in my mind unawares, and one day I'll just pick up this here dulcimore and hit'll be there whole and good, and springin to the tongue.

—Well then, I'll
sing
it, a course! And let me tell you one thing, there ain't nothin in the world to compare with the feeling that comes over you then, hit's like, Well,
this
is what happened, I see it all clear now, this is who done what, and who said what, and how it fell out in the end. Fer we go through this world with blinders on, just like that mule over yonder a-plowin in Navy Cale's newground.

Hit ain't often we are given to see.

Seems to me hit'll come to me in a song most likely, that is iffen hit comes atall, which mostly hit don't, a course. This life is a dark valley, hit's a vale of tears as the feller said, don't let nobody lie to you and try to tell you any different.

Now I know this to be a fact. Seems like I was borned knowing it, may be that is why I got along with them Baileys bettern most folks, even old Preacherman Bailey who was mean as a snake and twicet as fast, he'd come at you like lightning right in the middle of meeting, he'd grab you up and yell right in yer face. I've seed folks run outer the churchhouse just a-hollerin when he come towards em, hit was nearabout comical, but you daren't laugh, you know, nor smile, fer then he'd turn on
you
!

Big old face like a lantern he had, and a big black hat that he never took offen his head, and that hook fer a arm, it was the hook that scared folks the mostest, I reckon. He'd haul you up by your collar and say, “Ira? Ira? Air ye among the elected?” But you couldn't do nothing about it iffen you
wasn't
but wait fer a sign from the Lord. Hit weren't no use trying to lie about it neither, old Sid Bailey could smell a lie like the rest of us can smell a polecat. Hit weren't no use trying to say you hadn't done something you had done, neither, iffen he was churching you fer it. Lord, he used to church everbody when he was over here a-preaching. He'd church you fer running liquor or walking drunk or saying a bad word, or dancing, or fiddling, or shoeing yer horse on a Sunday. I weren't nothing but a shirttail boy back then when he was a-preaching, but I knowed bettern to lower my eyes not to fidget. I thought Sid Bailey was God Hisself then, and fer aught I know, he might of been.

He might of been.

Fer I haven't seed hide nor hair of Him since, I'll tell you that! Not in this here vale of tears.

But Sid Bailey was a hard man, and hit was a hard doctrine he preached. His church was a church built betwixt a rock and a slick place.

“God don't need you,” Sid Bailey used to say. “God will work His mysterious way whether or no.” And God ain't necessarily
with
you, neither. As the feller said, you've got to walk that lonesome valley by yerself. You'll see temptation to the left of you and temptation to the right of you, but you've got to keep on a-going. This world is not yer home.

Now God might come down and give you a sign, or He might not. Hit don't depend on you. Hit depends on God. You ain't got a thing to do with it. You can pray till you're blue in the face, and do fer others till you're nearabout dead, but God don't give a damn. He is going to do whatever He takes a mind to. And iffen He does give you a sign, that is, a dream or a vision or such-like—well, old Price Warren that lives over there on the mountain, he swears he saw God come rolling at him outen a laurel slick in the form of a great hoop snake—well, then you can be baptized, you can join the church,
iffen
you could convince old Sid Bailey you was not telling a tale, that is. And then hit mought be, hit just
mought
be, mind you, that after you're dead and buried, and iffen Jesus Christ comes in the air like he's supposed to on Resurrection Day, and
iffen
he calls out yer name, why then you can rise up outer the dirt and fly straight up to Heaven like a jaybird.

Hit's a long shot, ain't it?

But that is what Sid Bailey preached, and what he believed, and all them hard-shell Baptists down at Bee church believe it to this day, you just go down there and ax them. Hit ain't no different today, nor will hit be no different tomorrow, for they is some folks that wants a doctrine they can't live with, that's a fact. Human beings is nothing if not contrary. They don't want nothing easy, and this is hard, hard.

But I can kindly see it, in a way, even iffen I never could hold to it too good myself. What I figger is, any God worth His salt is not going to have no truck with me, nohow.