Pretty Paper Page 3

  I understood Vernon’s hostility. I was a busybody, invading the man’s privacy. At this point I had to figure out once and for all what it was I was doing there. What did I want from this guy?

  I finally said it plain: “To tell you the truth, man, I’m just damn curious about you.”

  “You ain’t the first,” he shot back.

  “And I suspect I won’t be the last.”

  “And what does all this curiosity get me?”

  I didn’t have a ready answer. I had to think about it. A few seconds later I gave what I thought to be a reasonable answer.

  “A chance to tell your story,” I said.

  For the first time Vernon focused his eyes directly on me. His eyes were filled with suspicion.

  “There’s nothing in it for me,” he said.

  “There’s a chance for you to unburden yourself.”

  “Who says I’m burdened?” he snapped.

  I took a chance and said, “I do. It’s something I feel in your spirit.”

  “Oh, so now you’re some kind of mystical reader of spirits.”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said that I’m sensing something heavy that maybe could be lightened.”

  Rather than respond to me, he sang out his sales song to a few people passing by. “Pencils! Pads! Pretty crayons!”

  One lady, accompanied by identical twin girls, stopped to peruse the merchandise. She liked what she saw and so did the kids. They bought a bunch of stuff with a twenty-dollar bill and told Vernon to keep the change.

  “Nice sale,” I said. “Standing here, I must be bringing you good luck.”

  “Standing there you’re blocking the sun.”

  “I’ll move.”

  “Good. And keep moving.”

  Well, that was it. Vernon couldn’t have been clearer. He had no interest in making a new friend, no interest in opening up, no need of me. The only polite thing to do was to leave the man alone. So I did.

  “Sorry if I bothered you,” I said. “Good luck.”

  I waited for him to extend his hand or at least look up and say good-bye. But he did neither.

  CHILI RICE IS VERY NICE

  A day later I drove over to Big Bill’s. Felt the need, I suppose, to hang out with some people who, unlike Vernon, wouldn’t mind seeing me.

  Bill was busy supervising the installation of a large piece of glass for his front window, which had been blown out in the storm. After the repair had been made, he invited me in for a beer. On the jukebox, George Jones was singing “Tender Years.”

  “Once I fix that busted drainpipe in the back, I should be open for business tomorrow,” he said. “Tuesday nights are slow, but if you and your boys wanna play for tips, have at it.”

  “Might be a good way to keep us out of trouble.”

  “Talking of trouble, the other night before that trouble broke out—before that jackass came at you with a knife—I was fixing to ask you about that song you sang, the one about Christmas shopping.”

  “‘Pretty Paper’?”

  “That’s the one. You were writing about Vernon, weren’t you? The guy with no legs who’s always out there in front of Leonards.”

  “Yeah, he did inspire me. Fact is, I’ve been trying to talk to him and learn his story.”

  “Good luck,” said Big Bill sarcastically. “He don’t say nothing to no one. Been living down the street for nearly two years. Comes in once in a blue moon for a shot a whisky. I give it to him for free. But he don’t say a word. I’m lucky if I get a ‘thanks.’”

  “When you say ‘down the street,’ where exactly do you mean?”

  “You know Chester’s Chili Rice?”

  “I know where it is.”

  “Well, Chester and his wife, Essie, live upstairs, and they let Vernon stay in a shack out back. Don’t ask me why.”

  Knowing it was pointless, I didn’t ask Bill any more questions about Vernon. Instead I asked, “How’s the chili rice over there at Chester’s?”

  “Never tasted better chili. Man, you gotta try it.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  Maybe it was a sign—me stopping in at Bill’s to learn, without asking, where Vernon lived. Maybe the universe was trying to tell me something. Or maybe it was just a bunch of coincidences. Whatever it was, my curiosity was rearoused. And besides, I was hungry as hell. A big bowl of chili sounded good.

  There was a long line outside the door of the narrow little store. Above the open door, the sign crudely carved out of rough wood simply said GOOD EATS. Nothing about Chester and his chili. I peeked inside and saw there were no tables, only a small counter running against the back wall that allowed seven or eight people to stand up and eat. No stools. Most everyone was ordering takeout. I was also interested to see that the crowd was mixed between white and black, something of an oddity for Texas in the early 1960s. An old brown Crosley Bakelite radio was blasting KNOK, the Fort Worth rhythm-and-blues station. Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Stormy Monday” felt like the right song at the right time. So did B.B. King’s “How Blue Can You Get?” The blues was brewing, and so was a huge pot of chili, whose spicy fragrance was enough to make a ravenous man dizzy. Once inside, I looked around and saw that the walls were plastered with train schedules and punched-out train tickets. There had to be thousands of them. Made for fascinating wallpaper.

  As I approached the counter, I studied the face of the black man taking orders. I presumed this was Chester. He looked to be in his sixties. His hair was sprinkled with gray and his eyes were an unusual shade of green. He stood over six feet and, although hefty, was not fat. His manner was calm. The big hungry crowd hardly threw him. He just kept taking orders and shouting ’em out to the woman behind him who was stirring a huge pot of chili and serving it up in cardboard cups. She was half his size, a petite lady with lightning-fast hands, whose concentration was fierce. Your choices were basic—a single or double. Most everyone was ordering doubles, so when I got to the head of the line and found myself face-to-face with Chester, I followed suit.

  “A double, please.”

  “You probably want a lemonade to go with that.”

  “What else you have to drink?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Then lemonade it is.”

  “Extra-large?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “For here or to go?”

  “I’ll eat it here. I like how you’ve decorated your place,” I said, looking around. “You work for the railroad?”

  “Forty years. Proud member of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Enjoy your food.”

  “Chili rice is very nice!” the lady at the stove suddenly cried out.

  “Eat it once and you’ll eat it twice!” several of the in-line customers yelled in response. I presumed this was a ritual.

  I watched the woman prepare my order. She took a couple of dollops of chili and dropped ’em over a mountain of rice. Then she added chopped onions, a thick slab of butter and a rich red salsa. The final topping was a generous layer of freshly grated cheese. The double chili, plus the lemonade, was a buck and a quarter.

  Big Bill was right. The dish was crazy good. So good, in fact, that I had to go back for a single.

  “Liked it, huh?” asked Chester.

  “You bet. Helluva recipe you got there.”

  “I know. It’s a blessing how it came about.”

  “How did it come about?”

  “Lemme wait on these customers behind you. The dinner rush will be over in a few minutes. Stick around and I’ll tell you the story.”

  I stuck around. I even toyed with a second single but managed to restrain myself. The stuff was addictive. I enjoyed watching Chester and his cook working in perfect tandem. Harmony’s a beautiful thing, and not jus
t in music. The music from the old Crosley radio kept pouring out sounds that I found soothing. This was around the time that Ray Charles had released his country album, and they were playing it on all the stations, black and white. Who doesn’t love Ray singing “I Can’t Stop Loving You”?

  Didn’t have to wait more than a half hour before the place started emptying out. I went over and introduced myself to Chester.

  “That’s my wife, Essie,” he said. “My wife and my sure-enough partner.”

  “Is she the lady I need to congratulate for this fabulous chili?” I asked.

  “Can’t take no credit for that,” said Essie.

  “She cooks it up better than anyone,” said Chester. “But it wasn’t her idea. Wasn’t mine either. Came about in a strange way. You see, while I was working the trains all those years, Essie was working as a cook for the Zale family, the ones that own all those jewelry stores. Damn good cook, too. Her idea was to retire when I retired. Then we’d open a chicken and waffles restaurant. You see, we never had kids and, given how we’re both tight with a dollar, we’d put some good money away. This is some five years back. Essie’d been cooking this fried chicken, mind you, her whole life. People swore by it. And the waffles were light and fluffy. We opened our place right in this here location, but for some reason, try as we might, we couldn’t catch a fly in here. We put up flyers on the telephone poles, even gave away free samples in the barrooms, but we just didn’t catch on.

  “We were just about to close up shop when one day this man comes in—a white man without no legs. He moves along on a wooden board with wheels, using his arms. Got him these real powerful arms. You can’t help but feel sorry for him, so I tell him don’t worry about paying for his food. Naturally he’s grateful. While he’s eating his chicken, he overhears me and Essie talking about closing down. Very polite-like, he asks why would we do that when the food’s so good. ‘Probably ’cause there’s so many other places where you can get fried chicken.’ ‘Have you ever thought about chili?’ he asks. ‘I like chili,’ I say, ‘but it’s not one of Essie’s specialties.’ Then he proceeds to talk about this recipe his grandma used and he’d be happy to give it to us. Can’t explain why, but something told me to listen to this man. Something about how downright genuine he was. So right then and there I ran out and bought all the ingredients he told me to get. Step by step, he told Essie what to do. A little bit of this, little bit of that, stir it, dice it, salt it, sweeten it—you know. I’m no cook, so I can’t even tell how it came together.”

  “I can,” said Essie. “I knew straight off that this man knew what he was talking about. When I whipped up the first batch, he tasted it and said, no, it wasn’t exactly right. I’d oversalted. So I tried it again. Can you believe it took nine or ten times before it got the flavor he said was right.”

  “That’s when I tasted it,” said Chester. “And, man, that’s when I was sold. No doubt. This chili rice was a winner.”

  “And the man who gave you the recipe is Vernon, the same man who sells pencils and paper?” I asked.

  “Oh, you’re a friend of Vernon’s?” asked Chester.

  “Didn’t think Vernon had any friends,” said Essie.

  “Not exactly a friend,” I said. “An acquaintance. Big Bill from down the street told me he lives here.”

  “That’s the least we could do for Vernon,” said Chester. “He wouldn’t take no money, not a dime. Said as long as we let ’im eat that chili for free, that was enough.”

  “But it wasn’t enough,” said Essie. “Not when I followed him home one day to find out he had no home. Poor soul was living out by the railroad tracks in some nasty ol’ toolshed. I said, ‘Vernon, this will not do. Not after you helped us the way you did. We got a little one-room apartment back of this building we bought with our savings. We were thinking of renting it out, and it looks like we done found a tenant.’ ‘Can’t afford it,’ he said. That’s when I put my foot down and said, ‘Decision’s been made, Vernon. God has blessed us by bringing you in our life, and all we are doing is giving back the blessing. You ain’t charging us nothing for your recipe and we ain’t charging you nothing for a decent place to stay.”

  “When did all this happen?” I asked.

  “A year this past Christmas. Yes, sir, it all happened around Christmas. And then in January, this writer wrote up something nice in the newspaper about our chili rice and suddenly we went from going broke to landing in high cotton.”

  “Beautiful story,” I said.

  “Beautiful man,” said Essie about Vernon.

  “I tried to get him to talk about himself,” I said, “but I didn’t get anywhere.”

  Essie laughed. “When it comes to saying anything personal-like, he clams up. I learned that right away. You can’t help but be curious about what happened to him, but out of respect I stopped asking. Cannot for the life of me, though, understand how a human soul can live without the comfort of some company, at least every once in a while.”

  “I got the idea he’d been a musician,” I said.

  “What makes you think so?” asked Essie.

  “Being a musician myself, ma’am, I heard the way he sang out when he was selling his paper and pencils.”

  “I thought the same thing myself,” said Chester. “He don’t say much, but when he do, you can hear music in what he’s saying. One time I thought I heard guitar music coming from his room out back. Sounded mighty pretty, too. Be good if he had him a musician friend. Someone to bring out the music in him.”

  “I’d like to talk to him about that.”

  “You know what,” Essie said decisively, “I’m gonna tell him that. No, I’m gonna do more than tell him. I’m gonna bring you back there and let him know what I think.”

  “He’s home?”

  “He came in a few hours ago. Lord knows what he’s up to all alone. ’Bout time he had him a friend.”

  “Now, Essie,” cautioned Chester, “you best leave well enough alone.”

  “I can tell this man standing in front of me has a good heart,” Essie answered. “Besides, somewhere in the Good Book, it says to do for others what they can’t do for themselves. This here is one of those times.”

  A STELLA HARMONY

  Taking charge, Essie led me around back. She knocked on the door of a freestanding building no bigger than a two-car garage.

  “Who is it?” asked a deep voice from within.

  “Essie.”

  The door opened immediately. I looked down at Vernon and Vernon looked up at me. He was standing on the stumps of his legs. And clearly not happy to see me. But before he could complain, Essie chimed in.

  “He’s a musician,” she said, referring to me, “and him and me were both guessing that somewhere in your soul there’s music waiting to come out.”

  As she said that, I spotted a Stella Harmony guitar leaning against a mattress in the back of the room.

  “Hey, I got one of those,” I said, pointing to the instrument. “Was my first. Fresh out of the Sears catalogue. Wouldn’t part with it for the world.”

  “There are a lot of Stella guitars around,” said Vernon.

  “Those damn things are indestructible,” I said. “They mellow with age.”

  “Well, while you boys go on talking about guitars,” said Essie, “I’ve got a kitchen to clean up.” And with that, she was gone.

  “So you managed to chase me down,” said Vernon.

  “Chalk it up to coincidence,” I said. “I was over at Big Bill’s, who mentioned that you live here. Then the chili rice called to me. Blame it on the chili rice. Chester and Essie say you’re the man behind its magic.”

  “No magic,” he said. “Just an old recipe.”

  “They said it was Grandma’s.”

  “Yup, she was the woman who raised me.”

  “Funny,” I said. “I was raised by my grand
mother. Where was your mom?”

  “Where was yours?” he asked.

  “Sowing her wild oats. Not ready to raise kids.”

  Vernon nodded his head. I waited to hear about his mom, but he wasn’t talking. As he turned his back to me, I had a few seconds to look around his apartment. The setup was simple. Not far from the door, a low-to-the-floor armchair faced a battered Emerson television set. Behind the TV was a long table that held his supply of papers, pencils, ribbons and notepads, all neatly arranged. Next to the table was his four-wheeled board. On one side of the room was a small stepladder, a sink and stovetop. Over the stovetop was a cabinet and, just beyond that, a door that I presumed led to a bathroom. Although sparse, the place was spotless—no dust, no dirty dishes in the sink.

  With his arms, Vernon lifted his body off the ground and, in a series of short quick maneuvers, propelled himself to the back of the room where his guitar was resting. He picked it up and started to strum. I took that as the first positive sign he’d given me since I first set eyes on him in front of Leonards. As he played, though, his eyes weren’t on me. His eyes were far off in the distance.

  From the first few notes, I could hear that he was a serious guitarist. He wasn’t playing any particular song, just a slow-moving deep-feeling blues. But unlike a lot of blues guitarists who fall on clichés, Vernon chose his notes carefully and creatively. His phrasing came from his heart, not his head. I heard him crying through his music.

  “Where’d you learn to play like that?” I asked.

  “I had a teacher when I was a kid.”

  “He ever record?”

  “Nope. He’d say to me, ‘For every Robert Johnson and Django Reinhardt, there are a dozen guys just as good that you never heard of. Well, Vernon, I’m one of ’em.’”

  Saying that, Vernon, for the first time in my presence, broke into a small smile. The smile, though, didn’t last long. Focused on the guitar, he dug deeper into his blues.

  “What was your teacher’s name?” I asked.

  “Skeeter. Skeeter Jarvis.”