The Devil's Dream (30 page)

I certainly could get used to that life
, I thought to myself riding back home in the truck the next day with Pancake and the kids.

But clearly all was not kisses and Tía María with the King and Queen of Country Music, so I was not too surprised when these stories started coming out in the papers recently. Stories like this one, I mean. Tulsa is not the only engagement he's missed, not by a long shot. Dallas, Richmond, Knoxville—it goes on and on. Why, they are now referring to him as Johnny No-Show! And look here how skinny he is. For a while after he and Rose Annie got together, Johnny was looking a lot better than he used to, but now he looks awful again. I bet it's not just drinking. I bet it's drugs. See how he's dropped off, look at him from the side in this one. He's nothing but a shadow. You know, you can't expect to change a man by marrying him. You cannot. People don't change when they get married, no matter how much they swear they're going to. They just
don't
. I don't know if Rose Annie thought about that or not before she run off with him. I can't imagine
what
she was thinking about, to tell the truth. Sometimes I wonder if she's
all there
, if you know what I mean, but I wouldn't say it to a soul.

Now here's the worst one, I saved it for last, I just can't get it out of my mind. It says that Rose Annie was picked up by the police in Gainesville, Florida, wearing a negligee, incoherent, with a bleeding lip—well, read it yourself, it's just terrible. This event took place “following a disagreement with her husband, the well-known singer Blackjack Johnny Raines, who apparently locked her out of their motel room.” Although another article said that
she
had left, trying to get away from
him
. So you can't tell what to believe. Anyway, I just hope and pray that Buddy doesn't see these—I don't think he will, because folks around here realize how sensitive he is about Rose Annie, especially now since “Subdivision Wife” is such a big hit.

And you can't ever tell, all those problems might have just blown over by the time I'm supposed to take the children to Nashville for the Christmas visit, which Buddy has finally agreed to. Pancake volunteered to drive them and just drop them off and wait on them and then bring them on back, but while I can't say anything to Loney about Pancake's motives, I naturally feel that it would be best for all concerned if I go along, knowing what I know about the whole situation. Plus I certainly wouldn't want the children to witness any
scene
in that house between Johnny and Rose Annie, and as I told Buddy, I don't mind going a bit.

 

 

I'm trying. I'm trying to tell you. I'm telling it as fast as I can. But I have to get this tree trimmed right now, you can see that, anybody can see that, don't you know this is Christmas Eve? The children are coming tomorrow.
Sugar and Buddy Junior
, of course—my children.
My children
. So if it's all right with you, we'll just talk while I trim this tree, if you don't mind, I mean.

Ramon!
Where is Ramon? Could you hand me one of those boxes sitting on the sofa next to you, please? Could you maybe take the cellophane off of it first? Thank you so much, Officer, I hate to ask you, I just don't understand where Ramon is.

I got the idea for the tree out of a magazine, I always wanted an all-blue Christmas tree. Then Harry Russo, that's my decorator, found this beautiful blue tree for me. He also found the angel on the top, she's French porcelain, I don't know where he bought her, but isn't she perfect? I think that little star she's carrying is so cute. Well, it's a little light bulb, actually, but it's
supposed
to be a star. And her lovely blue dress is in the Empire style, Harry says. Isn't she beautiful? She looks just like my own little girl. Oh no, not Sugar.
Not Sugar!
My
own
little girl. I don't know. She was here just a minute ago. When you came in. She was the one who let you in, I believe.

Yes,
doesn't
the yard look pretty? Tour buses have been coming by here about six times a day ever since we got it set up. It took them five whole days to set it all up, and then when they turned it on, why it just took my breath away!

It
does
look like a real baby, doesn't it? But it's just a doll. Just a doll. That's what they used to say to me, “Rose Annie, you're just a doll.”

The way they do the tree is, they wrap each limb around and around with strings of the tiniest little lights, it takes
forever
. And then of course when they turn on the electricity you can see every branch, every twig. I think they look like lightning.

I used to live up on Grassy Branch in a house on a hill where I could look out and see a storm coming up the valley from a long way off. The leaves on the trees will turn inside out, this is how you know a storm is coming. Inside out, they look all silvery in the wind. That happens first. Then the wind picks up. The clouds get dark. Then lightning stands up like a tree in the sky. I used to sit there every day, looking up and down the valley, watching the weather, watching my children play, watching the cars pass by, waiting for him to come. Why, Johnny Rainette, of course! Laying right over there on the rug. I bet Ramon has gone out to get a carpet shampooer, I certainly hope so.

How about handing me that box of little blue stars? This is what they sang when Mamma died, Tampa and Virgie standing under a black umbrella in the graveyard in the rain.
Bright morning stars are rising, bright morning stars are rising, bright morning stars are rising, day is a-breaking in my soul
. Their voices made puffs of smoke in the air, it was so cold that day, they buried Mamma in the cold rock ground, which does not matter for the soul will leave the body and rise like smoke to meet Jesus in the air. And didn't we lay in the freezing hayfield, me and him, oh did we not? in that cold dark field looking back at the fire and all the figures dancing, it was all of them a-dancing, dancing in the fiery light while we laid out in the night and watched them, and stars as big and wild as fireworks filled the sky. Johnny. It was always Johnny. He never loved nobody but me, never in all his life, no matter what he done. No matter what any of them said. No matter what
she
said.

Why, the one that was here this afternoon, I mean, that said she was having a baby. His baby, she said. Oh, I had his baby too, I told her. It was little and blue and it died, I told her, with its little fingers curled up in a tiny blue fist, I told her, it lived all by itself in a little tent in Chattanooga. We will wait for him to come home, then, I said. He will want to do the right thing, I said. Come sit by me, I said, on this sofa here we can look out the window and see all the lights come on, it is almost dark, it's time to turn them on, anyway. Just sit here beside me, I said. I've been so lonesome lately. But she started crying and ran away. I saw her go stumbling and crying through the shepherds and the Wise Men, away into the dark. It gets dark so early now, don't it? Don't you just hate it?

When we were growing up there were so many of us, there was always somebody to be with, it seems like, I never got lonesome like I do now. Christmas smelled like pine and oranges then. I must tell Ramon to buy oranges. We will stick cloves in them just like Little Virginia does every year, we will make fudge like Mamma. Ramon will be so surprised.

Where
is
he, anyway? I need some help with this tree. I am not well, I've got bad nerves, you see, I had a nervous breakdown as a girl. Officer, if you wouldn't mind, I need somebody tall to put these icicles up on the top of the tree.
Yes. Oh yes
. It is so pretty.

Well, then I sat here in this dark house waiting for him to come, of course, and looking out the picture window at the manger scene and all the lights, and then at the cars that came by on the road to see it, and I could not help thinking of those other windows, the one in Chattanooga that looked out on the little fountain which splashed so, and up on Grassy Branch where I sat for so long as the seasons passed, while I waited for him to come.

Why, then he
did
come, of course, as I knew he would, and as soon as I saw his car I knew it was him. The funniest feeling came all over me, I can't describe it. I knew I would do whatever he said, I'd go with him wherever he went. Oh, and when he parked and got out of the car he was wearing a black cowboy hat and mirror sunglasses, but I knew who it was immediately and I ran outside and he took me in his arms and kissed me and kissed me. “What took you so long?” I said, and he laughed and kissed me some more. And when I drew back what I saw was myself, Rose Annie Bailey, in his mirror sunglasses, and then I remembered who I had been all along, Johnny's girl, and so I was alive then, and I left with him as soon as we could load my stuff in the car. For we are one, you see, him and me. I'd been waiting for years and years. And now here I am waiting again, he's been gone for days, and it's Christmas. Families ought to be together at Christmas. Christmas is a family time. And I get so lonesome, for he ought not to go off that way and leave me, not at Christmas, he
ought not
, or to do the things he has done to me. Oh, awful things. But then my little girl came and sat beside me.

Right there on the sofa where you are now. By then it was really late and so she brought me that little .32 Johnny gave me for my protection. Oh no, she is
not
good, my little girl, she is willful and bad, but she takes good care of me, and I have to be taken care of. I do. Somebody has got to take care of me.

Well, when Johnny came in drunk and he was so mean, she—Hand me that string of little silver balls, won't you—
There
. Oh yes. Now if you'll plug the lights in, it's right there behind you, behind the sofa. Oh yes. Yes.
Yes
. Now isn't that beautiful? It's exactly the way I dreamed it would be, just exactly.

Aunt Virgie used to say, “Be good, girls, and if you can't, be careful.” Then she'd give us a big sly wink and close the door behind her, real soft-like. And even if we didn't know where she was going exactly, we had a pretty good idea of what she was going to do when she got there. We'd sit on the old iron bed in the boardinghouse in Richmond and giggle, me and Georgia, and not say out loud what we were thinking. Or at least I didn't say out loud what I was thinking, and I
know
what I was thinking. I reckon I've always had a dirty mind, or at the very least a mind which is
down-to-earth
. I will call a spade a spade. I will tell it like it is. I can't kid myself, or not for long, anyhow. Oh, I guess we all kid ourselves a little bit.

Actually, I'm not sure why I remember this so good, Virgie going out the door in Richmond and winking at us that way when she left. But I do. I remember her dark red lipstick and how she wore her hair pulled up in back with combs, like a Spanish dancer, those dyed black curls like bedsprings all around her face. Virgie still had a hard country Kewpie-doll prettiness about her at that time. Twenty more pounds and she would lose it, her cute little turned-up nose and pouty mouth squeezed in by those big old cheeks.

This must have been right when we first got to Richmond, me and Georgia, ready to hit the big time, fresh off the farm. But it wasn't long before we were going out too, with our own boys. I hadn't been much interested in the boys around home, to tell you the truth, or vice versa. I was related to most of them, and I believe I was just too big and definite for the rest. I spoke my mind a lot in school, maybe because I had to keep so buttoned up at home, for reasons which I'll get to. But oh Lord, those Richmond boys! I hadn't ever seen nothing like them. Slow-talking, big-spending rich boys in vanilla-ice-cream suits and open cars; fast-talking, chain-smoking young salesmen in plaid pants just on the verge of making it big; boys that worked in stores; boys whose families owned some of that flat rich black land right outside town, that land so different from where we'd grown up on Grassy Branch. I knew a rough boy from Oregon Hills that worked in the ironworks down by the river, I knew a pale sweet boy that was in school to be a lawyer, I knew a boy with a glass eye that shot pool for a living. I didn't discriminate too much among them, to tell you the truth. I liked them all. There were more boys in Richmond than I had ever dreamed of, twiddling my thumbs up on Grassy Branch—this is one reason I jumped at the chance to go off with Virgie and be a Raindrop.

The other reason is that I was just dying to leave home. Even when I was a senior, Mamma wouldn't hardly let me out of her sight, not that I had any particular feller to go off with, either. So I got this idea that if I could find me a husband in Richmond, I wouldn't ever have to go back home. Doesn't that sound crazy now? What a reason to want a husband! But that's what we thought back then, us country girls, that's the way we were raised. We thought we had to have a husband to do anything. This sounds especially crazy to me now, since I've had several. Oh Lord. If I could just know what I know now and feel like I used to feel! Anyhow, I was wild to leave home, I was wild to get me a husband—I guess I was wild in general, but ignorant as a post.

Two of my best friends, Dessie Hudson and Shirley Bell Cameron, had gotten married before we finished high school, and I'd never even had a real boyfriend. Dessie was the head majorette. She got married one week before the whole band went to Roanoke to compete in the Battle of the Bands, so then she had to drop out of school, and naturally the band didn't win. Dessie Hudson was the best head majorette we ever had at Holly Springs High, but it didn't stop her from getting married. We all thought it was romantic, of course. Dessie and her boyfriend, Jerry Lindsay, ran off to South Carolina in a school bus, because he was a school bus driver. The board of supervisors voted not to prosecute him, though. Then there was Shirley Bell Cameron, who was pregnant and dropped out to marry Roland Jolly, and then brought her little tiny baby girl to graduation. Only a few people in my class—mostly the town kids, like the doctors' kids from Holly Springs and Cana—planned to go on to college, which really hadn't even been mentioned in my case. I thought I would probably try to get a job working for the veterinarian in Holly Springs, since I'd always liked animals and I couldn't think of anything else to do. Mamma had already said flat-out that there was
no way
she was going to ever consent to me trying to be a singer, which was what I really wanted to do. “They is enough singers in this family already,” Mamma had said absolutely. “Too many to please God,” she said, for she was convinced that most singing was a sin.