The Devil's Dream (37 page)

“Contractor for what?” I asked. Some little voice in the back of my mind—it sounded a lot like Mamma—was saying,
Be careful, be careful
.

“Anything you want.” Wayne Ricketts smiled a big outdoors trust-me kind of smile, and I shut that little voice off.

“I just got me a job over at the Hayride. I was real lucky,” I said. “They just happened to have an opening. A girl quit today. That's what I came down here hoping for.” Naturally I had noticed the guitar case propped up in the corner. “Is that yours?” I asked.

“Yes.” Wayne Ricketts moved over closer on the couch.

“You sing?” I asked.

“Used to.” Now his leg was touching mine. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't hardly breathe, to tell the truth.

Neither of us said anything for a minute. The sun was setting over this little putrid lake that was right next to the trailer park. Dust went around and around, slow and lazy, in the last red rays of sun that came in through the dirty glass on the trailer door. Annie May's hair was shining like real gold in that sun where she sat on the floor and played. All of a sudden she looked up from her deck of cards and said something that sounded like, “I'm hungry.”

I started crying.

Wayne Ricketts stood up. “You reckon she'd like some cheese and crackers?” he asked. “I don't keep much of a house.”

I pulled Annie May up on my lap and held her tight. “You don't understand,” I said in between crying. “She hasn't ever talked before. She can't talk. She had polio.”

“Well, I did notice that little limp,” Wayne Ricketts said. “But I'd swear I heard her say she was hungry.” He went over and knelt down in front of us and turned Annie May's little face toward his. “Honey, ain't you hungry?” he asked.

Annie May bobbed her head up and down so hard her curls bounced.

“Well, then.” Wayne stood back up. He was so tall his head grazed the top of the trailer. He crossed the trailer in one stride and opened the little refrigerator, which didn't have a thing in it but beer and Velveeta cheese and half a package of hot dogs. He got the cheese out and cut it up in little square pieces with his pocketknife, then put them all in a saucer and brought it over to Annie May where she sat beside me on the couch. “Sorry, no crackers.” He grinned at me.

Annie May started eating the cheese one little piece at a time, real dainty like she was at a tea party.

“Come on,” Wayne said to me. He pulled me up.

“Come on where?” I said. I couldn't think straight, I couldn't get over Annie May talking.

“Let's go get your stuff,” he said. “You're beat. You all can stay over here with me tonight.”

I followed him out the door like a zombie, out into Louisiana. The lake was red in the last of the sun. Strange birds swooped overhead. Any direction I looked in, I could see distance—the swamp across the lake, the little twinkling lights of the cars way out on the highway, a blue blinking neon sign. I was used to mountains, hemming me in, holding me back. But Louisiana stretched out as far as I could see. Wayne Ricketts pulled me to him and kissed me hard.

We lived right there in that trailer for the whole time we were in Shreveport. I took Annie May's starting to talk as a sign of good luck, and for a while it appeared to be so. Things were going my way at last. In those days, getting on the Hayride was a surefire way to get to Nashville, and I felt like I was on my way. I was aiming for the top. Webb Pierce had been here—shoot, he even played the Hayride for
free
at first, just to be on it! Even the late great
Hank Williams
had played the Hayride, plenty of times. It thrilled me all over just to stand on the floor where Hank had stood. And I did real well, catching the eye of Horace Logan right away. Horace started featuring me regular, and then he moved me up front—always a good sign.

Of course Wayne Ricketts took full credit for everything, everything I did, since he had elected to be my partner, my manager, and change my image to boot.

Sometimes when I think about my life, it all comes to me in pictures of the images I've had and gotten rid of—that dumb country girl in the Raindrops to start off with, and next, the girl I became with Wayne—a honky-tonk honey, which did fit the times. Wayne Ricketts was somebody who always knew what was happening. He lived on the cutting edge. He stuck me into a push-up bra and four-inch heels and the fanciest low-cut outfits you ever saw. He got my teeth fixed. At first I balked when he suggested the wig, it was so big, but then I started wearing it, too. I learned real fast, it's a lot easier to wear a wig than it is to fix your own hair up good all the time, I have to say.

“People don't want you to look like their neighbor,” Wayne told me, “or their wife. They don't want you to look like their sister, either. They want you to look like all their dreams,” Wayne said.

It was Wayne who pushed me into asking Horace Logan if I could sing one of my own songs, after I'd only been on the Hayride for four or five months. I never would have done it myself. But Wayne rode me and rode me to do it, and eventually, of course, I did everything Wayne wanted.

And when I finally did ask Horace Logan if I could sing a number, he said, “Sure, honey,” like I had been doing it all my life. Well! I decided to sing a new one I'd just finished writing. I'd been fooling around with it for a long time. At first I called it “I Don't Know What You See in Me but I Hope You Don't Go Blind,” which was the first line but too long for a title. I got the idea for it one time when Wayne just happened to say this to me right out of the blue, and I started laughing and couldn't stop. So it was a kind of funny-sweet rocker, you might say. Later I started calling it “New Eyes.”

So I was running through “New Eyes” the afternoon before the show, nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs, when Wayne came home and took off his work shirt that said
Wayne
on it and threw it out the trailer door.

He stood there in the middle of the trailer in his undershirt with his muscles rippling. He stood there looking at me. Annie May was over at his sister's, so I could practice. But of course he was distracting me.

“Honey,” I said, “You're distracting me. Also I wish you wouldn't throw your shirt down in the dirt thataway,” I said. That old red Louisiana dirt was so hard to get out.

But Wayne continued to stand there in the middle of the trailer flexing his ropy muscles, so I said, “You're home early, aren't you?” which he was.

“Honey, I ain't going to be wearing that shirt no more, for I have bid that job a sweet adieu.” Wayne always had such a way with words, this is one way he charmed me, I know, for Hank Smith never had hardly a thing to say. “I have told them to kiss my pretty ass good-bye,” Wayne said.

“Oh Wayne,
why
?” In the six months I'd been with him, I'd learned fast that “independent contractor” really meant “no steady job.” Oh, he'd lay carpet for a week or so, paint houses for a while, you name it, he could do it, there wasn't anything Wayne Ricketts couldn't do—but he never stuck at things. The people at work didn't appreciate him, or they tried to cheat him out of some of the money he had coming, or something. It was always something. I had really hoped he'd stick with this new job at the Western Auto store. They gave benefits and everything.

“What happened?” I asked, getting that familiar funny feeling in my stomach, as we had just gotten a bunch of new stuff for the trailer, none of it paid for, of course, all of it bought on time.

Wayne hugged me. “Aw, I figured I'd better help my baby out,” he said. Then he reached for the guitar case in the corner, and my heart sank.

For our first night on the Hayride, Wayne had gone all out and bought a flashy western suit, a secondhand Nudie. When he unbuttoned the jacket and flipped it back, it said
Hey Babe
on the lining in sequins. The first thing that popped into my mind when he walked out of the bedroom wearing it was, What in the world would R.C. think of
this
? Or Miss Lucie? Or Durwood? For the Grassy Branch Girls had dressed plain as dirt by today's standards. Sequins was not an item in that act.

“But you ain't up on Grassy Branch no more, honey,” Wayne pointed out when I told him what I was thinking. “You left Grassy Branch. You are down here in Louisiana. That's the whole idea.”

I see I have not said too much as yet about sex. But sex is a factor here, let me tell you. So is talking. A big talker who is great at sex can have his way in this world.

Wayne kissed me some more and then we went out and got in the new Chevrolet convertible he'd come home with the month before, and drove over to the Hayride.

When we walked in the door together, everybody turned around to look at us. Horace Logan walked over to me and said, “All right, Katie, who's the cowboy?”

I said, “Horace, I'd like for you to meet my husband.”

So there wasn't a darn thing Horace could do but let him sing.

We went on right after Del Wood. I was scared to death, but we were a big hit. Wayne was so natural on a stage, it was like he owned it—flashing that
Hey Babe
sign and flirting with this old lady in the front row who liked to have died from the sheer excitement of it all. The folks at the Hayride purely loved “New Eyes,” and they seemed to love us, too. “Katie Cocker and Wayne Ricketts” was how Horace Logan introduced the act.

After the show, a beady-eyed little fat man came up and proceeded to engage Wayne in intense conversation, ignoring me altogether, and then on the drive back out to the trailer park, Wayne told me we were going to cut a record.

“Honey, that's great!” I said. Of course, I was just beside myself, this was my dream. “Who was that guy you were just talking to?” I figured it was bound to have something to do with him.

“Nobody you'd know,” he said. “Forget him, he ain't important. The important one around here is Wayne Ricketts.”

Sometimes it was hard to tell when Wayne was kidding and when he wasn't

“Well, is he a producer? a scout?” They showed up at the Hayride real frequent.

“Just relax, baby,” Wayne said. He put two cigarettes in his mouth and lit them, and gave one to me. “He's just some little Jew with big ideas.”

“What big ideas?”

“Some ideas that Wayne Ricketts is going to
adapt
, you might say.” Wayne was staring real intently out into the night, his cigarette hanging off his lip. “With a little bit of initial investment, I believe we could have a hit on our hands.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Wayne,” I said.

“No, you don't know,” Wayne said. “You don't need to know, either. All you need to know is what to do with this,” Wayne said, unzipping his pants and taking it out.

“Wayne,”
I said.

“Come on, honey,” he said, all husky-voiced, waving it around.

So I went down on him, right there on the interstate highway. I always did everything Wayne Ricketts wanted.

Everything.