Pretty Paper Read online

  —

  I cradled the guitar in my arms, strumming the strings until the sun came up and, shining through the curtains, lit my room in golden happiness. In my mind, holding the guitar was like holding Marla. I didn’t know how to play it and didn’t know any songs, but that didn’t stop me from trying to figure it out. I tried to form a melody. I made up some silly words. Even though the process was new, I felt comfortable working my way around the instrument. It didn’t feel at all awkward or strange.

  I knew that my friend Willard also owned a guitar. His uncle, a musician in Austin, had promised to teach him to play. Willard once said something about putting together a band. Willard was always making plans. He was a six-foot-two laid-back blond-hair blue-eyed kind of guy who was good at about everything he tried. At the gas station where we worked together, he was the best mechanic. At school he made the best grades. He was also the fastest sprinter on the track team. And at the time I met Marla, the first girl to show any interest in me, Willard had already dated three of the prettiest girls at school. His current steady, Cynthia Simone, was head cheerleader.

  —

  I’m seeing a green light, so I’m writing on green paper. Green says, “Get going, put the pedal to the metal, full speed ahead.”

  Two weeks flew by. I saw Marla every day at school. Every night I walked her home from work. We kept kissing in the shadows. Didn’t take long to go beyond the kissing. While I was unschooled, she was experienced. In matters of sweet love, she showed me the way.

  Love and music were all mixed together in my mind. The closer I grew to Marla, the more attached I became to my guitar. By listening to songs on the radio, I could follow along and pick out the melodies. It came easier to me than I would have ever imagined. I was amazed by my progress.

  Willard was the first one I told.

  “Guess what,” I said. “I got a guitar.”

  “Great. Time to put a band together.”

  “But I’m just a beginner.”

  “Me too. But Uncle Skeeter can teach us. He’s coming up this weekend. You still seeing that girl Marla?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s a knockout, but wonder if she can she sing?”

  “I haven’t asked her.”

  “Ask her. Cynthia’s been taking violin lessons for years. She can really play the fiddle. She’d join the band in a minute. A two-guy, two-girl band with two pretty girls—man, we can’t miss.”

  When I walked Marla home from work that night, I brought up the subject.

  “I know this is a funny question,” I said, “but can you sing?”

  “That’s not a funny question. That’s a good question. And the answer is yes. I love to sing. You should hear me sing in the shower.”

  The idea thrilled me. This whole mix of sex and love and making music thrilled me. And when I met Willard’s Uncle Skeeter, the thrills all came to life.

  —

  Skeeter Jarvis needs a blue sheet of paper because the first thing he talked about was the blues.

  “I can play honky-tonk,” he said while tuning his guitar. “I can play bluegrass. I can play jazz. I can play any damn thing you like. But I’m a bluesman, boys, ’cause the blues are the bottom line. Scrape off the fancy dressing, cut out the fat and what do you got? You got the crux of true-life music, and that’s the blues.”

  It was a warm day in May and we were sitting in Willard’s backyard—just Willard, me and Skeeter, a man who looked to be in his mid-sixties. His long face was weatherworn. Full head of gray hair, big ears, big bulging eyes, lanky build, long arms, long fingers, long fingernails. Big sly grin. And an unlit hand-rolled cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. I figured it was tobacco. I figured wrong.

  “I ain’t gonna smoke this shit in the presence of you young men,” he said. “Especially not in the presence of my nephew. I’m not gonna recommend it, but I’m not gonna lie and act like I don’t like it and don’t see it as something a whole lot better than that gut-wrenching whisky that turns sane men crazy. I’ve seen whisky turn peaceful souls into cold-blooded killers. I’ve seen whisky destroy the lives of God-fearing women. Why, a mere half-pint can turn a saint into a sinner. This here weed has none of those devilish properties. All it does is let me relax and that, boys, is what the blues are all about. Like ol’ Lightnin’ Hopkins himself once told me, ‘You play the blues to lose the blues.’ So I’m just gonna start off by playing me some blues.”

  Skeeter leaned back on this rickety wooden folding chair and played a salty string of notes that shot right down from my head to my heart. My heart got warm all over. I’d heard blues on the radio by John Lee Hooker, whose popular songs like “Boogie Chillen” I’d recently begun to learn by ear. But Skeeter, who played on a beat-up archtop blond Gibson acoustic that he said was over fifty years old, offered up a purer deep-down Delta version of the blues—simple but filled with feeling. After noodling around awhile, he reached down and put on a neck rack that let him blow his silver harmonica while at the same time he picked his guitar. This went on for a while—leaning into his mouth harp, plucking those strings. He was giving us a private show, and we were eating it up.

  When he finally came up for air, I asked him about the bottleneck that he had slipped on his finger. He answered with a deluge of stories about Bukka “Bottleneck” Dupree, the black man who’d taught him everything he knew.

  “That’s why I’m schooling you boys,” he said. “I’m schooling you the way Bottleneck schooled me. I’m starting with the blues.”

  When it came time for our instruction, both Willard and I, guitars in hand, sat in folding chairs across from Skeeter.

  “Just follow me,” said Skeeter. “I’ll start the line, and you finish it.”

  Skeeter played a blues line and I followed, but Willard stumbled.

  “You thinking too much, son,” Skeeter told his nephew. “Don’t think. Just shut your eyes and let the feeling come out.”

  “But I need to know where to put my fingers,” Willard protested. “I need to see what notes to play.”

  Willard struggled—this was the first time I’d seen him struggle with anything—while I soared. It wasn’t that I was trying to excel. I was just doing what came naturally. Skeeter heard what was happening and dealt with his nephew patiently. He showed him lots of love. He got him to strum simple rhythm guitar while giving me room to solo. I’m not saying my solos were all that great, but they did seem to make sense.

  “Just tell the story, son,” Skeeter egged me on. “Just say what you got to say.”

  A few minutes later, in spite of what he’d said earlier, he lit his joint, inhaled and started talking about singing. “Now, any man who plays guitar gotta put his voice to it,” he declared, his words starting to slur a bit. “You gotta sing because talkin’ is okay, but singin’ is better. Singin’ is talkin’ made pretty. Birds sing and we love ’em for it. Talkin’ gets tired, but singin’ stays new. Singin’ calms down that devil inside us. Mama don’t talk us to sleep. She sings us to sleep. She don’t talk no lullaby, she sings it. You don’t talk no love out of a lady. You sing it out of her. You sing her into your song. You boys follow?”

  We nodded.

  “I can sing,” Willard said. “I like to sing.”

  “I know you can, and if you’re gonna have a band, you might just do the singing, especially if your buddy here keeps burning up that guitar. You ever hear of Tommy Duncan?”

  Of course we had.

  “Tommy’s the piano player and singer for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Smoothest singer ever. Except for Jimmie Rodgers. That man could yodel. I could sing you some of his songs so you can feel what I’m talkin’ ’bout.”

  “Maybe we should think about someone more up-to-date than Jimmie Rodgers,” Willard suggested.

  Skeeter didn’t like the suggestion. “Now, that’s the problem with you yo
ung folks. Don’t care nothing about what came before. Only interested in what’s ahead. Well, I say you can’t get ahead without looking back. See what worked then. Then figure out how to rejuggle it so as to make it your own. That’s the smart way. That’s why we got history books to study. Except in this here case we don’t need a book since you got history standing right here in front of you. You got me. I done played with Bob Wills. I done harmonized with Tommy Duncan. I rode the rails with Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman. I sang the blues with Leadbelly. I watched these men make people happy with their music. That’s the key, boys—making people happy. You do that and you’ll never have to work a day in the fields or waste your life in some factory.”

  I believed Skeeter’s every word. I believed him not only because his words made sense but because of the music that accompanied his words. He played while he spoke. His fingers ran over the guitar with such ease that I could only marvel. He inspired me to go off and practice. From then on, I practiced all the time. I practiced at school during lunch. I practiced at work at the gas station when business was slow. I practiced when Marla and I took long walks into the woods outside town. We had our hidden spots—an abandoned barn, a secluded meadow—where I practiced before we made love. Then I practiced after we made love. Marla would sing along while I practiced. I was getting good enough to pick out popular songs we heard on the radio, like Dinah Shore’s “Buttons and Bows.” Marla could match her voice perfectly to the melody. Her singing voice had the same cuteness—the same coyness—as her speaking voice. When Skeeter heard her, he said, “She’s a natural. Both of y’all are naturals.”

  —

  I’m still using green paper because I’m feeling the let’s-get-going excitement of those first days of falling in love with Marla and music. It all happened together. It all happened magically. Marla brought out the music and the love in me, and she swore I did the same for her. Grandma also loved Marla and was convinced that God had brought her to me. Marla’s parents were less enthusiastic about our courtship. Her mom was a pretty woman who seemed sad all the time and stayed in her bedroom with the curtains drawn. Her dad was mostly gone. The few times I met him, he had nothing to say to me and never looked me in the eye. He reminded me of my own father.

  Skeeter Jarvis really became our father. He was our teacher and our ringleader, an old man with a young heart. When Willard got his dad to give him the old family Hudson, the four of us started driving down to Skeeter’s place in East Austin.

  He was a lone white man living on the black side of town. His ramshackle house was filled with old instruments. He said he repaired the instruments of the most famous musicians in Texas, but I never saw any of those musicians at his house. I also wondered why, given how good he was, he wasn’t in a band. He said he was. He said he was alternating between three or four bands, but he never invited us to hear him. Only later did I learn from Willard’s dad—Skeeter’s brother—that Skeeter, for all his bragging, had a crippling phobia about playing in front of more than three or four people. He was stricken with stage fright. Maybe that explains why he devoted all this crazy energy to prepare us to perform in public. He needed to get us to do what he couldn’t.

  Every band has its own strange chemistry, and ours was no different. Among four people, talent and drive are not evenly distributed. Everyone knew that I’d become Skeeter’s protégé, just based on how quickly I’d learned his lessons. Because it seemed only fair, I was happy to let Willard, who’d switched over from guitar to bass fiddle, do the singing along with Marla. Their voices matched up in a pleasing manner. Willard’s pitch wasn’t as good as Marla’s, but good enough. They got along great. To see them singing together, you’d think they were an actual couple in love.

  Cynthia could play decent fiddle. Besides, in those days a girl fiddler was a novelty—especially a raven-haired beauty like Cynthia. I liked Cynthia. She was popular for a reason. She was a nice girl with a good heart. There were times, though, when Cynthia got jealous of the tight harmony between Marla and Willard, but Willard reassured her that they were playacting. It was a musical act and nothing more than make-believe romance.

  Skeeter also found us a drummer, a short red-haired kid our age nicknamed Sticks. Sticks had lots of nervous energy. He played in a high school marching band. He also worked as Skeeter’s instrument repair apprentice. And best of all, he had his own set of drums. Sticks didn’t say much, but he had a positive energy and a strong beat.

  Willard, Marla, Cynthia and I had one powerful thing in common. We liked attention. Marla and Cynthia were more than just pretty girls. They were knockouts who knew the effect they had on the opposite sex. In their snug sweaters and skirts, in their Western boots and frilly earrings, they loved being onstage. Same for me and Willard. Because he’s a handsome guy, standing tall as he plucked the bass, Willard attracted the girls. I attracted the people who were into music. Progressing by leaps and bounds, I was eager to show off my new skills.

  We called ourselves Good Friends. Wasn’t a fancy or clever name, but it fit. We were good friends. Marla and Cynthia had become close, in spite of the fact that Cynthia still worried that Willard had feelings for Marla. I could have worried about that same stuff, but I put it out of my head. I stayed focused on the music.

  We followed Skeeter’s advice when he said our first gigs should be homegrown. “Play for your schoolmates and friends,” he urged. “Get the people you live with to like you. Make sure the home crowd is behind you.”

  That’s just what happened. When we played local high school dances, we were a hit. Skeeter had made sure we could cover a lot of the current hits—like Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On” and Lefty Frizzell’s “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time.” Marla sang a version of the Andrews Sisters’ “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” and she and Willard dueted on Teresa Brewer’s “Music! Music! Music!” But Skeeter also encouraged me to write. He saw that I had the ability.

  “It’s good to be able to copy songs from the radio,” he said. “Everyone loves hearing those songs. But if you ever wanna have your own song on the radio, you’re gonna have to write it.”

  “How do I do that?” I asked. “Never have really written before.”

  “Have you ever dreamed?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, all that stuff that happens in your dreams, all those stories you’re making up in your mind—that’s writing.”

  “It is?”

  “Hell, yes. That’s pure creativity, boy. Proof that the mind is a fountain of ideas that won’t ever dry up. Only thing stopping the mind is overthinking. When you try too hard. When you rack your brain. When you stop thinking and stop racking and get to relaxing, why, the ideas just pour out of you.”

  “They do?”

  “They will, Vernon. You’ll see.”

  —

  I saw. And what I saw turned out to be one of the biggest surprises of my life. Ideas came to me just the way Skeeter predicted. That’s why I’m writing on yellow paper. When I see yellow, I see lightbulbs bright with ideas.

  The best ideas came to me when I was with Marla. She was at our house more often than her own. Grandma had become her second mother. Grandma wouldn’t even object if she went with me into my bedroom—as long as we left the door open. I’d be on my bed, guitar in hand, and Marla would be sitting across from me, our toes touching. I’d start strumming and Marla would start humming.

  “This guitar stuff is too easy for you,” she teased. “You need to get a harder instrument, like a tuba. I’d like to see you lugging a tuba around town.”

  “I’d make you carry it for me.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “I’m sticking with guitar,” I said.

  “All right, then play something pretty.”

  I plucked a pretty melody out of pure air.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I lik
e it—if the song’s gonna be about me.”

  “All my songs are about you.”

  “I know, but this one, this pretty one, this one has to be especially about me.”

  “Used to be sad,” I began to sing, wedding the words to the notes, “used to be lonesome and blue . . . then someone came along . . . someone like you . . .”

  “Someone like me, or me?” asked Marla. “I don’t want you wanting someone like me. I want you wanting me.”

  “Of course the someone is you,” I said. “Who else could it be? Lemme start over again.”

  I took the same notes and sang over them. “Used to be sad . . . used to be lonesome and blue . . . didn’t know what love was . . . till I found you.”

  “That’s better,” said Marla.

  “Let me go on. Let me sing . . . thought I’d be alone the rest of my days . . . living life in a dark foggy haze . . .”

  “That sounds too sad,” Marla interrupted.

  “People like sad songs. But this sad song turns happy. Listen to this . . . the fog done lifted . . . the sun’s shining through . . . and it’s all because . . . God gave me you.”

  “You sure you want to bring God into it?”

  “That line will make Grandma happy. Besides, what do you have against God?”

  “You were the one who said you really weren’t a believer.”

  “That was before I met you. That’s the whole point of the song.”

  “Will you call it ‘Marla’s Song’?”

  “Why not?”

  “But then you gotta mention me in the lyrics.”

  “What rhymes with Marla?”

  “Let’s ask Willard. He’s the one who’s gonna sing it.”

  “Maybe not, Marla. Maybe I’m gonna sing this one.”

  “I can hear Willard singing it. He’s the one with the big voice. You saw what happened when he sang ‘Mule Train’ the other night. The girls went wild.”