Pretty Paper Read online

  “He still around?”

  “Died years ago.”

  “Looks like he did a helluva job with you. Whatever he taught seems to have stuck.”

  “Compared to him, I ain’t shit. Skeeter could play the thing over his head, behind his back, even with his teeth. Played it right-handed or left-handed, didn’t make him no difference. He liked to say that he played so pretty, women would leave their husband’s bed in the middle of the night, just to hear him.”

  “Sounds like a song,” I said.

  “He lived his life like a song.”

  “A black man, I presume.”

  “No. White man. But he said he’d learned to play from black men like Lightnin’ Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb. His main man was Bukka ‘Bottleneck’ Dupree. Skeeter told me a story about Bottleneck I’ll never forget. One day when Bottleneck was showing Skeeter how to work the slide, a friend of Bottleneck’s passed by and said, ‘You’re wasting your time. That white boy ain’t ever gonna get it.’ ‘If you don’t think white boys get the blues,’ Bottleneck shouted, ‘you’re as stupid as you look!’ To prove his point, a couple of months later Bottleneck put Skeeter in his little band that played in roadhouses for blacks only. But Skeeter didn’t stay long ’cause it turned out he was afraid of playing in front of big crowds. That was his downfall, the reason he never made it big.”

  “But Skeeter could really play the blues.”

  “The man could play anything—Western swing, jazz, you name it. But the blues, he said, was the truth.”

  “And that’s how this whole music thing started for you?” I asked.

  Rather than answer my question, Vernon went back to playing, his head hanging down over the guitar, his eyes shut. He played a little Robert Johnson, a little Lightnin’ Hopkins, a little Leadbelly. He played a snippet of a Mance Lipscomb song called “Mother Had a Sick Child.” He played Elmore James’s “Dust My Broom.”

  “What about Hank Williams?” I asked. “You must have grown up on Hank.”

  “Skeeter claimed to have played with Hank. Said they both came up in Alabama. Skeeter swore that Hank wanted to make him one of the Drifting Cowboys, but a woman got in the way. Apparently him and Hank were after the same lady. You should have heard Skeeter sing ‘Lovesick Blues.’ I love to sing it myself.”

  I’ve heard “Lovesick Blues” a thousand times. Hank owned that song. His version is a thing of beauty. But hearing Vernon do it, I have to confess that I forgot about Hank. Vernon reinvented it. He put so much of himself in his singing that I, a guy who doesn’t cry easily, felt myself tearing up. Inside his voice I heard a lifetime of hurt. God only knows what this man had gone through to sound this way. There had to be an epic story behind his suffering.

  When he was through, all I could say was “That was really something.”

  Vernon didn’t say a word. His eyes were still shut. His guitar remained cradled in his arms. No motion at all. I let a few seconds tick by and then said, “With a voice as good as yours, I can’t believe you never made a record.”

  “Who said I never made a record?” he said, now opening his eyes and staring right at me.

  “I presumed . . .”

  “You presumed wrong.”

  “Tell me about it. You have a copy for me to hear?”

  “Nothing to tell. No copy. No record player. Ancient history.” And with that, Vernon retreated back in his shell.

  “But surely copies exist,” I said.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Just guessing.”

  “Look, buddy, I’m tired of your guessing and I’m tired of your questions. I know Miss Essie meant well by bringing you in here. I appreciate how Miss Essie worries after me. But mostly I appreciate my privacy. So if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

  “Don’t mind at all,” I said. “I’ll be on my way. But if you ever feel the need for company, just holler. I could come over with my guitar and we could—”

  “Thanks but no thanks.”

  “Or if you wanna hear a little of my music, I’ll be down at Big Bill’s on weekends.”

  Rather than reply, Vernon leaned his guitar against the mattress and, with those long, strong arms of his, moved across the room and saw me to the door.

  “Good night,” I said.

  He nodded and said nothing.

  I drove home, thinking that was the end of that. I guessed wrong again.

  PRETTY PAPER

  Big news: Nutsy Perkins was busted for running the biggest bookmaking operation in Texas. Brother Paul said it happened because Nutsy, a notorious skinflint, failed to give the prosecuting D.A. a piece of the pie. The bar stool where Nutsy sat at Big Bill’s remained glaringly empty.

  “Don’t cry for Nutsy,” said Big Bill. “He’ll be out in a month. His big-time lawyer, Norby Green, owns half the judges in the city.”

  Meanwhile, every time that foxy Barbara Lou waltzed in the club, Brother Paul kept her away from me. He didn’t buy her claim that she and her old man had split up for keeps. Seeing how she poured herself into a pair of skintight jeans, I myself was ready to believe her. But Brother Paul knew better.

  The Big Bill gig went on through February into March. Once in a while, before my first set, I’d stop by Chester’s Chili Rice. I’d always ask Essie how Vernon was doing.

  “Knock on his door and see for yourself,” she’d urge, but I knew that would be pointless.

  So you can imagine my surprise when, on one of those occasions that I dropped in for a double chili rice and extra-large lemonade, Chester shouted back to his wife and said, “Essie, look who’s here. Didn’t you say Vernon had something for this man?”

  “Sure did,” said Essie, wiping her hands on a towel. “Got it right here under the counter.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s a big pile of papers. Vernon said to give it to you next time you came in.”

  “He said that?”

  “Guess he thought you’d be interested in whatever’s written on these pieces of paper.”

  “Who wrote it?” I asked.

  “Don’t know, but I’m guessing Vernon.”

  Essie reached beneath the counter and pulled up a big pile of papers tied together by a string. The papers were in different colors—blue, red, orange and green. There had to be over a hundred sheets. The top sheet was white and had only one word written in a large script: VERNON

  “I can take this home?” I asked.

  “He said it was for you,” Essie answered. “I have to believe that he wants you to read it.”

  Essie put the pages in a shopping bag and handed it to me. I took it to the gig that night and put it in my guitar case for safekeeping. When I got home, I was too tired to start reading. But the next morning, after a couple of cups of coffee, I untied the string that bound the pages and began.

  Vernon’s penmanship was big and bold. His letters slanted to the right and reminded me of musical notes. I’m no literary critic, but his writing had a rhythm that made it easy to read. His style was direct. I could hear his voice loud and clear. Making it even more interesting was the way he used different-colored paper to match up with his different moods. When he was down in the dumps, he wrote on blue paper. When he was angry, he switched to red paper. When he was happy, he used yellow paper. The different colors mirrored his different mind-sets. It was like looking at a rainbow of feelings. The paper stock itself was thick. It was the kind of heavy construction paper kids use to draw on. It felt good in my hands. I half expected to find drawings along with his words, but there were none. Only word pictures. Vernon chose his words carefully. It reminded me of the way he played the blues. Every note counted. Every word counted. He was serious about telling his story. Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop. I kept thinking . . . all this pretty paper . . .

  I’ve tried writing this as a song, �
��cause songs are the easiest things for me to write. But a song can only say so much. A song lasts just a few minutes. I need more time than that. I need to take my time to say what I need to say. I need to remember that back in school, I got high marks at reading and writing. My teachers said I knew how to express myself. In junior high, Mrs. Hatcher, my English teacher, said I was a natural-born storyteller. Well, the longer this story stays inside me, the more it hurts and the more damage it does. I admit it; I’m feeling damaged. That’s why I’m starting on this piece of paper that’s the color of ocean blue.

  I’ve been feeling blue—been feeling like I’m drowning—for so long that sometimes I believe I was born that way. But I wasn’t. I was born in sunshine. Mama said I was born at high noon on the most beautiful May day of the year. So right now I’m switching to yellow.

  —

  This yellow paper is the right paper to describe Grandma, the woman who raised me. Grandma was always smiling. Her real name is Joy—Joy Goodson. Grandma would say, “Sad can’t stick around when Happy shows up. And Happy is here to stay.” It’s amazing that she talked that way because her husband, Harry Goodson, didn’t stick around. He left when I was five. Later I learned that he and a neighbor woman ran off to Oklahoma. You’d think such a thing would crush Grandma’s spirit, but it didn’t. “It isn’t my spirit that keeps me going,” she’d say. “It’s God’s spirit. God keeps us running in the right direction.”

  My mom and dad ran off four years before Grandpa did. Those were the days of the Great Depression. Texas got hit hard. My folks saw Texas as a lost land and went to California. They decided I’d be better off with Joy, Mom’s mom, and they were right. Grandma was my heart. She had a small place right on the outskirts of Round Rock, a Texas town twenty miles north of Austin. Grandma worked as a cook at the local Luby’s Cafeteria. Every year at the country bake-offs, her cornbread, pumpkin pie and chili rice won first prize.

  Grandma was upbeat. She didn’t know fear. “The Good Book says a perfect love casts out all fear,” she’d quote. “I’m not saying my love is perfect, but God’s love is. All He can do is love. God don’t know nothing but love.”

  —

  Love wasn’t all I knew. I also knew envy, which is why I’m writing on green paper. Green is the color of envy. I had lots of envy. I envied kids who had brothers and sisters. I envied kids who lived in big houses, and in high school, I envied kids who had their own cars. I envied kids whose parents owned real farms with horses and cows, not like Grandma’s little scrawny plot of land with a few chickens running around. To keep from going hungry, Grandma and I would have to work at adjoining farms, where she’d help out in their kitchens and I’d work in their fields. I envied people who didn’t have to do that. I envied families where the mother and father hadn’t left their kids behind, families where generations of loved ones lived under the same roof.

  —

  I’m using a deeper shade of green paper because the envy got deeper. I couldn’t shake it. And even worse, I had to hide the envy because I knew it was wrong. I was ashamed of feeling the way I felt. Grandma scrimped and saved and sacrificed for me. And there I was, bitching and moaning in my secret mind, thinking how I’d gotten a rotten deal cause Mom and Dad had run out to California. I lived for their letters. They came every once in a great while—from Mom, never from Dad. She said they’d opened a car wash in a city called Carson, just outside Los Angeles, but the water pipes burst and they had to close down. That’s why they couldn’t send me any money.

  “Next time,” she wrote. But next time never came. Instead of money, she sent a photograph of her and Dad standing in front of some fancy movie palace in Hollywood where the stars had put their footprints in concrete. I couldn’t have cared less. “We’ll be home for Christmas,” she wrote, but come Christmastime there was only another letter with another excuse. And no presents—just a greeting card showing Santa Claus in a Corvette convertible driving down Sunset Strip, wearing wraparound sunglasses and shouting, “Ho Ho Ho from La La Land!”

  —

  Envy turned to anger. So I’m turning from green paper to red. I was angry with my parents for living their life without me. And I was angry with my grandmother for not taking her daughter to task. Why couldn’t she just call her up and scream, “A good mother doesn’t desert her son! You can’t do that! Come home and care for him! And tell your husband to do the same!” Why couldn’t my grandmother, who was so close to God, invoke his wrath and tell my mother, “God hates you for what you’ve done! God condemns you! God will send you to hell!” Instead, my grandmother, who couldn’t say a bad word about anyone, made excuses for my parents.

  “Some people are capable of raising children,” she said, “and some aren’t.”

  “Then why did they have me?” I asked.

  “It was an act of love.”

  “Or an accident.”

  “Every human life is a blessing,” she said.

  I wanted to say that I felt cursed, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to hurt my grandmother. I didn’t want to make her think I was ungrateful for all she was doing for me. So I pushed down the anger and went on with my life.

  —

  I think of pumpkin orange as the color of Thanksgiving. On this sheet of orange paper, I’m writing down all I can remember about the amazing Thanksgiving when, out of the blue, my mom and dad showed up in Round Rock.

  It was the late 1940s. I was a teenager working weekends at the gas station out on the highway when an old Packard pulled in. At first I didn’t recognize the man rolling down the window and offering a smile. He had whisky breath and an untamed beard.

  “Vernon!” he exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you don’t know your own father!”

  I didn’t. I hadn’t seen him in five years. I looked over and saw my mother, who was wearing a bright orange dress. She jumped out of the car and ran over to hug me. She’d gotten heavy while Dad was rail thin.

  “You handsome devil, you,” she said. “My son. My beautiful son.”

  She was crying and, though I tried not to, so was I.

  I filled up their car with gas and paid for it myself. We met up that night at Grandma’s. The next day was Thanksgiving.

  “I didn’t want to tell you they were coming,” said Grandma, “on account of sometimes they change their plans. But they’re here and tomorrow we’ll all be together.”

  “How long are they staying?” I asked.

  “I expect through the holidays.”

  That Thanksgiving was the first holiday I remember spending with my parents. Watching Mom and Grandma working together in the kitchen made my heart sing. Dad tried talking to me, but booze got in the way. He couldn’t keep his thoughts straight. By early afternoon he was so plastered he fell asleep on the couch. He woke up in time to eat the most delicious Thanksgiving meal ever: turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberry sauce, creamy mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, green beans, hot-water cornbread, buttermilk biscuits and two freshly baked pies—pumpkin and apple—for dessert.

  After dinner, Mom announced that she and Dad had decided to leave California and were thinking of relocating to Dallas, only a few hours north of Round Rock, where they were looking to buy a motel that had just gone on the market.

  “It even has a swimming pool where you can come and swim whenever you like,” said Mom.

  The truth is that, even though I was excited to be sharing Thanksgiving dinner with my folks, I really didn’t know them. They were strangers. But I still loved the idea of their living nearby. I imagined that I would move into their motel. I’d get a car of my own. Life would be great.

  At the end of the evening, Mom gave me a big hug.

  “Everything is changing,” she said. “Everything is getting better. Now that we’re all together, we’re gonna stay together.”

  Dad, who had overeaten, was back on the couch, snoring his head off. When he woke
up, he got into a screaming argument with Mom, accusing her of hiding his wallet. His face turned beet red, and I thought he was gonna haul off and hit her. I wouldn’t allow that. I’d knock him out before he touched her. Fortunately, Grandma found the wallet and the old man quieted down.

  In bed that night I couldn’t sleep because of the fantasies dancing through my head. I kept thinking of that motel. Dallas was a big city that always seemed out of my reach. Now, with my parents living there, Dallas would be part of my life. Finally my parents would be part of my life.

  But when I woke up the next morning, my parents had already packed their things into the Packard and were fixing to say good-bye.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Driving up to Dallas today,” said Mom.

  “Can I come?”

  Mom turned away from me. She couldn’t even look at me when she said, “We’re staying with some friends while we work out the details on the motel. We need to get settled first. But you’ll hear from us. Oh, and before I forget, we left your Christmas gift with Grandma.”

  “Aren’t you gonna be here for Christmas?” I asked.

  “Gonna try.”

  “We need to get going, babe,” said Dad.

  And then they were gone.

  I can’t write what happened next on an orange page. I need to go to black and find white ink where my writing can show up.

  —

  There won’t be much written on this black page. I’ll make it simple.

  Me and Grandma weren’t worried when we hadn’t heard from my parents a week after Thanksgiving. That was normal. But then the phone rang and Grandma answered. As she listened, her eyes seemed to widen. Her eyes, usually calm, had an expression I’d never seen before. I heard the sound of a silent alarm. There was alarm in her eyes. There was panic.

  She put down the phone and called me to her side. She put her arms around me and said, “There was a fire. A terrible fire.”

  “What kind of fire?” I asked.