Twang (27 page)

“I just shrugged. You’ve got to understand I had absolutely no urge to gallop out there to say ‘Welcome home, Daddy.’ We didn’t have that kind of a relationship. But mother grabbed my arm and pulled me into a chair at the table. ‘Jennifer, just stay inside and let him have a chance to calm down. He’s not himself.’

“I didn’t have to ask what she meant by ‘not himself,’ but it was still hard to sit there, feeling about to burst with my news. Usually when I got home from school I went outside to visit with my cat or walk along the creek. That particular day, it took a minute for reality to set in because my father’d been gone off for one of his longer stretches, over six months, and I guess I’d gotten forgetful about how he could be, you know, I was used to doing what I wanted?

“At any rate, I sat there while Mother peeled and sliced potatoes for supper, mixed up some cornbread, and swept the floor. I could tell she was tiptoeing on cornflakes. After a while, I couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘Got to use the bathroom,’ I said, and she turned from the stove where she was stirring potatoes and whisper-yelled, ‘Be careful!’

“Our toilet was in an outhouse behind the cabin, so I went skipping toward the back door, and literally stopped dead in my tracks when I heard something.”

Jennifer sighed and looked down at her hands. The rest of us sat looking at each other for what seemed like forever.

“Tell us what you heard,” Tonilynn patted the girl’s wrist.

“Well, I thought when my mother said my father was not himself, he’d be knee-walking drunk, but he was sitting sort of upright. He’d dragged a kitchen chair out onto the cement off the back of the cabin, and he had a radio going near his feet. He didn’t have a shirt on, and his hair was in this greasy hank over one shoulder, and he almost looked like a painting the way the afternoon sun was on him. His eyes were closed and he was singing along with Merle Haggard to ‘Okie from Muskogee.’ But here’s the thing.” Jennifer paused a bit and her eyes got big. “His voice was absolutely
magnificent
, this really gorgeous baritone singing ‘We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse.’ I’m not kidding when I say I could literally picture
him
up on the stage at the Ryman, the audience totally lost in his voice.

“I’m not lying when I say I could hardly get a breath down in my lungs. I just stood there, absolutely paralyzed. I’d never heard my father sing before, and I had no earthly idea he was so phenomenal! People who write reviews about singing would call it ‘lush, pained notes of a rich timbre’ or something like that.

“I realized we had this beautiful connection. I was thinking
I got my singing from him, along with the Indian looks!”

Jennifer paused again. I felt my heart hammering, and it looked like Bobby Lee was in a trance. “So, what happened?” I poked her a little bit in her side. She jumped but then she took right off with the story.

“Well, apparently I made some kind of noise because my father flinched a little, turned his head, opened his eyes, and I could see this sort of slightly unfocused look in them. He held up a floppy arm, and I saw an empty liquor bottle lying on its side at the edge of the cement. If I hadn’t had this urge to connect with the man, I probably would’ve listened to my mother and beat it. I mean, I knew what alcohol did to him, but it was like some magnet pulling me out onto that warm cement.

“ ‘You’re an awesome singer,’ I told him. ‘You sound exactly like Merle Haggard. No, you sound
better
than Merle Haggard.’

“He just said ‘Whoop-tee-do’ and twirled his finger in the air.

“ ‘Seriously, you’re really good. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you sing before. I’m good at it too. I love to sing. I sing all the time. It’s my most favorite thing in the entire world, and I’m going to be a country music star. Mr. Anglin said so.’

“ ‘Country music star?’

“I stepped closer to him because I not only thought I’d finally found a connection between us but also thought it could help him make money. We never had enough money. ‘Yeah. You could be a star too. We could be a father-daughter group. You know, like The Crist Family, or The Nelons, or Jeff & Sheri Easter? We could call ourselves The Singing Clodfelters.’

“He didn’t say anything, and his cigarette burned down to near nothing so I thought it must be scorching his fingers. Finally he flicked it away into the grass. Then he coughed and spat in the yard. ‘Who’s this Mr. Anglin?’

“ ‘My teacher. He says he’s never heard anybody who has such a natural ability to write the words, hear the melody, and sing like I do.’

“For a spell I thought he wasn’t going to respond, then he cursed and spat. ‘That’s stupid, Jen. He’s probably just a horny old coot trying everything to get in your pants.’

“I’d forgotten how he called me Jen, and I absolutely hated that, because in my mind’s eye, I saw it spelled out like g-i-n. I’d asked him a million times to please call me Jennifer, and every time he just laughed. But then I realized what he was saying about dear Mr. Anglin, and his words made me sick to my stomach. ‘Liar!’ I screamed at him. ‘Mr. Anglin’s never laid a hand on me!’ It was true. He’d never made me feel what we had together was anything more than two souls who shared a love of music.

“My father threw back his head and laughed. That was when I knew this definitely wasn’t going to be like I’d imagined. My heart was pounding, so I tried to calm myself by taking deep breaths. ‘Mr. Anglin is a good man,’ I said. ‘A nice
Christian
man, and I’m not going to waste my life. I’m going to do like he says and go to Nashville and
be
somebody!’

“For a drunk, my father was on his feet quick. ‘A kid like you don’t know nothin’ about wasting life. Don’t know nothin’ about nothin’ and I’m gonna tell you something, there ain’t a thing wrong with fixing cars, or hauling logs, or toting scrap metal for a living! Who do you s’pose it is that feeds your ungrateful mouth? Tell me that,
Jen.’

“I thought I could slide past him and run to the woods. I didn’t think he could say anything worse than what he already had.”

Jennifer turned so pale I thought she might pass out.

“Take yourself a nice, deep breath, hon,” I said to her real soft. “Everything’s all right. You’re with people who love you now.”

“Yes, we love you,” said Tonilynn and Bobby Lee at the same time.

At last Jennifer cleared her throat. “He stepped toward me with this crazy sort of smile and said, ‘I’m gonna give you some real wisdom, some fatherly advice. You don’t need to be singing or worrying about making money. You don’t need to worry about working on nothing but a big chest and pleasing the men.
Then
you’ll get everything else in life you want. Females got it easy, ’cause when I see me a fine piece with a rack like Dolly’s, I ain’t got no problem whatsoever emptying my pockets out for her, buying her anything her little heart desires.’

“I started shaking. Felt like bending over and vomiting my guts out. ‘You make me sick,’ I said. It was only a whisper, but he heard me.

“ ‘What’d you say?’ My father’s eyes were wide and scary as he moved toward me, trying to unbuckle his belt. ‘You need to learn some respect for your elders! Ain’t a thing wrong with a man enjoying the finer things in this life! Girl wants jewelry, a big house, fancy clothes, vacations, in exchange for what she can give me, why not? You ain’t gonna turn into a killjoy like your saintly mother, are you?’

“He was too drunk to unfasten his belt, but it didn’t matter. The things he’d said were a million times worse than a whipping. The air went out of me and I couldn’t run. But I kept my head down so he wouldn’t see me crying.”

I have to say you really could have heard a pin drop for a spell up there on Cagle Mountain. I’d never heard such a story in my life, and I didn’t feel too much Christian love in my heart for that man.

“What happened then?” This was Bobby Lee, with his face like he’d seen a ghost.

“That night I lay down in my pallet on the screen porch, and I put my radio up next to my ear, and I tried and tried to return to living high on my dream. I even pretended I was
Mr. Anglin’s daughter, but I could not conjure up a single picture of me in Nashville. The sun was coming up before I finally fell asleep, and when I did crawl out of bed, I knew one thing. I wasn’t going back to high school.”

Jennifer squeezed Erastus so tight, his eyes bulged, but he didn’t complain. “And that,” she said, “unfortunately, was the real inspiration for ‘Daddy, Don’t Come Home.’ ”

“Heavens,” I said after a long quiet moment. “Sometimes I wonder how the Good Lord lets certain folks live the way they do. Did Mr. Angel drive you to Nashville with your music demos?”

“No. Actually, um . . . what happened is . . . I . . . um . . . I . . .” That poor child’s words got all clotted in her throat like spoiled buttermilk. I hopped to my feet to pat her back and help them out, but it was to no avail.

“Eat your heart out, Big D,” I said in a bright voice. “You’re always crowing about your ‘exclusive, never-before-heard stories behind the songs,’ but us folks up here on Cagle Mountain, we’ve got
the story behind
the story behind the song. And now, I believe it’s time to celebrate with some good home cooking.”

We gathered at the table, I asked the Lord’s blessing and passed around my perfectly browned biscuits. Jennifer helped herself to a biscuit and some butterbeans and said, “Thank you for fixing such a nice supper and inviting me, Aunt Gomer.”

“It’s my pleasure,” I said. “Won’t be long until we get our first ripe tomato out of the garden, and
that’s
the day I’m waiting for. You’ll have to come eat tomatoes fresh off the vine with us. I’ve made many a meal on tomatoes and biscuits. I believe I could eat tomatoes every single day of my life and never get tired of them. What’s your favorite food?”

“Depends on if I’m at home or on tour. Usually I have cereal or a PowerBar if I’m at home.”

Tonilynn started talking about some restaurant they liked to eat at that made soup bowls out of bread, and I got to wondering how in heaven’s name it could hold soup without leaking.

“I don’t know what I’d do without my fried bologna sandwiches,” Bobby Lee said. “That and a Pepsi to wash it down.”

Jennifer smiled. “I’ve got to have black coffee the instant I get out of bed.”

“Well, I’m
addicted
to Diet Cokes.” Tonilynn laughed and hefted up the big Pyrex casserole dish and helped herself to the first corner. “Mercy me, this is heavy,” she said, grunting as she passed it to Bobby Lee.

I ate my beets and recalled a time when I was a little girl, no older than ten, when Mama fixed beets for supper and I was so hungry I must’ve eaten a gallon of them. That next morning when I went out to the outhouse to do my business, I thought I was bleeding internally, and I just knew for sure and certain I was fixing to meet my Maker. I decided there were some sins on my heavenly account I needed to confess, and I went running back to the house. I told my sister about cutting up her paper dolls, and my cousin, Delphine, about stealing an orange from her Christmas stocking, and my great-grandmother about switching out her vanilla ice cream with mashed potatoes, and finally I felt like my soul was clean, and I lay down to die. Mama knew something was up, and when I told her I’d made out a list of who was to get what of my earthly possessions, she put two and two together and explained to me about how beets can color your movement like nothing else. Well, I just about never lived that down, and after I got older, it was funny to me too. However, I decided it wasn’t a good story to tell at the supper table.

Nobody said anything for a while. Forks and knives were clinking on the plates, and it was real satisfying. I looked across the table at Jennifer, and I thought she looked fairly happy and that made me happy. I was trying to think up something interesting to say, as the hostess, when Tonilynn hopped up like she’d seen a snake. She was jumping on her tiptoes, and she grabbed Jennifer’s wrist and started shouting, “Don’t! Stop! Put that down!”

I followed Tonilynn’s line of vision to the end of Jennifer’s fork, where inches from her mouth was hovering a bite of my delicious casserole. I was what you call dumbstruck as Tonilynn continued, saying, “I swear it’s got tiny little faces! It’s got tiny little faces!” Bobby Lee and Jennifer sat there like statues, and I’ll be honest, it flashed through my mind that Tonilynn was crazy, or maybe possessed. I’d never allowed swearing at my table.

“Tell me that’s not the body of a
worm
curled around those fork tines!” she said. “Tell me those aren’t eyes!”

My heart was racing a mile a minute as I peered down into my casserole. I bent over closer. “That’s not eyes! That’s parsley on the end of a macaroni noodle! The recipe calls for parsley.”

“Is too eyes,” Tonilynn said, and then her chest started heaving and she was holding her stomach like she was fixing to vomit. Then so help me, Bobby Lee and Jennifer started heaving, too, and it wasn’t long until Tonilynn was bent over the kitchen sink spilling her supper and Bobby Lee had upchucked onto his plate and little Jennifer onto the floor by her feet. Then everybody was up, swishing out their mouths with tea and spitting into the sink.

I could tell everyone believed Tonilynn’s story. She was rifling like a madwoman through the trashcan underneath the sink and then through a pile of empty Glad containers in the sink, waving a fairly big rectangular one, saying to Bobby Lee,
“Ain’t this what you put your worms in to freeze them?” and he was bug-eyed, nodding. It was like a scene from a horror show. Several minutes passed with no one talking, and the only creature that seemed happy was Erastus as he was enjoying licking the floor clean.

I sat there feeling pretty mad. Thinking if someone had fixed me supper out of the goodness of their heart, and I’d seen a hair or something in the food, or I just didn’t like the way something tasted, I definitely wouldn’t mention it. I would just quietly spit it into a napkin or slide it to the edge of my plate. That’s just good manners, and I thought I’d instilled good manners into Tonilynn. I don’t have no use for rudeness. Finally, Jennifer sat down, never said a word, and Bobby Lee kept saying, “Wow, man. Wow,” and shaking his head. I knew I had to say something. I didn’t care if she was forty-eight years old.