Pretty Paper Read online

  “This is a softer song,” I said. “It’s a love song that needs to be sung by someone in love.”

  “Willard’s in love with Cynthia,” said Marla.

  “Willard’s in love with Willard,” I said.

  “Come on, Vernon. You’re talking about your best friend.”

  “Nothing against Willard. He’s a great guy. But you know well as me that he’s stuck on himself. He can’t walk past a mirror without taking a long look.”

  “What’s wrong with that? I’m guilty of doing that.”

  “You’re a girl. Girls are supposed to be vain.”

  “And that’s what’s wrong with your song, Vernon. It’s all about how you feel about me. But there’s nothing about me—nothing about the way I look.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  “Then say it in the song,” said Marla.

  I picked the guitar and revisited the same melody, this time sticking on new lyrics. “She’s prettier than Mona Lisa, prettier than Betty Grable . . . Marla’s the princess of my story, the heroine of my fable . . .”

  “Now you’re making up a fairy tale,” said Marla. “You’re making up a silly story.”

  “I never even had a story till I met you.”

  “Of course you did. Everyone has a story. You just didn’t like yours.”

  “Stories have to feel real. They have to make you feel alive. Before you, I wasn’t feeling anything. I was dead inside.”

  Marla moved closer to me. She put her lips on mine and whispered, “Keep playing, keep singing, keep saying how you adore me.”

  “I’ll write you another song.”

  “And then another,” she said, “and then another after that.”

  —

  Can’t decide what color papers to use to describe all that happens next: red for the passion and love I felt for Marla; green for the envy and jealousy that crept into our lives; pink for the pretty parties we played—the sock hops and proms; gray for the long cloudy days we spent traveling around from gig to gig; yellow and orange for all the hope we carried in our hearts; and blue—I’ll need lots of blue paper—for how it all came to a screeching halt.

  I’ll start with red.

  —

  I had never been in love before. I had felt hardly any love from my mother and none from my father. Besides, they weren’t around enough to count. When it looked like I’d get to see my folks more—and latch on to the love I’d been missing—they were dead. Grandma’s love was the steadiest in my life. She said she got her love from God, and I really couldn’t doubt her. Her husband had left her but that hadn’t kept her from loving—loving not just me, but her friends, her neighbors and anyone in need. She showed love by convincing Luby’s Cafeteria to feed the hungry once every month. And she prepared and served the meals herself.

  Godly love, though, is one thing. Godly love is beautiful. But when you’re a teenage boy and those hormones start firing, you start looking for another kind of love. I had never known passionate love, never known romantic love before Marla. She was the first girl to say “I’m yours.” She was the first girl to show me the secrets of the female body. And it wasn’t just her body—as heavenly as her body was. It was her mind. She was quick and witty and smart as a whip. She was unpredictable and daring. She was sassy and self-centered, but that only made me love her more. When I was with her, I was happy. When we were apart, I was miserable. I needed her by my side every minute of every day. She never left my mind. And at night when I went to sleep, she crept into my dreams. When I awoke, I worried that she too was nothing but a dream—that I really hadn’t met her, that she really wasn’t my girl. But she was. And because she was, I considered myself the luckiest guy alive.

  —

  Green.

  Jealousy is like a slithering, slow-moving snake. It hides in the grass, it blends in. You don’t even know it’s there until it strikes. And then it’s too late.

  Looking back, I can see that Cynthia was probably a little jealous of Marla because Marla was a good singer. She kept saying that Willard was coming on to Marla and vice versa. She said that anyone could see that. Well, if that was true, I guess I just wasn’t looking.

  From time to time, though, I could feel Willard’s jealousy of me. By getting good at the guitar, I had won his uncle’s admiration. Musically, I was the standout member of the band—and that didn’t make Willard happy.

  But these were masked feelings. On the surface, Good Friends sailed along. By our senior year in high school, we were playing dances not only in the little towns outside Austin, but in Austin itself. Skeeter started talking about taking us to San Antone and Houston, where he knew people who owned music studios. He thought that a few of the songs I’d written were good enough to record.

  Grandma always said I’d be the first in our family to go to college. I hated to disappoint her, but the idea of a music career was too good to resist—especially since me and Marla could pursue that career together. Marla’s folks didn’t seem to care what she did, as long as she could earn money to help them out. Willard’s dad, a corn merchant, believed his brother Skeeter, who said the band had a good shot at making it. It was Cynthia’s parents who balked.

  Cynthia’s mom had been president of a fancy sorority at the University of Texas and expected her daughter to follow suit. When Cynthia quit the band and headed off to college, we got another fiddler to replace her, a friend of Stick’s called Jason. Marla liked that. She liked being the only the girl in the band.

  Then things changed again when, during Cynthia’s freshman year, she got her sorority to hire us to play a dance. When we showed up and she heard how good we’d gotten, she figured she’d made a mistake. She wanted back in. She also learned that Willard, with his roving eye, had been meeting ladies on the road. That made her want back in even more. So, despite her parents’ protests, Cynthia up and quit college. Since Jason was a better fiddler than Cynthia, that caused a problem. I wanted to keep Jason, and so did Marla. Ever since Cynthia had become a sorority girl, her friendship with Marla had gone bust. But Willard had the most power because he was the only one with a car. In fact, his dad had traded in the old Hudson and bought him a wood-paneled Ford station wagon. That car was our lifeline, so Willard and Cynthia got their way. Jason was out and Cynthia was back in the band.

  —

  A red sheet for a red light outside the little music studio in San Antone. The red light meant we were actually cutting a record. We were recording two songs, both written by me. The first was “Something You Got,” a tune, like most of my tunes, about Marla. She sang it. “I was a lonely soul with nothing to do . . . but everything changed the day I met you . . . you grabbed my attention and cold turned to hot . . . all ’cause of that certain something you got.”

  The second song, though, wasn’t a love song. It was a song I’d written for Grandma. It was called “Faith.” I didn’t intend to write it, but it just happened, on a gray lonesome morning in mid-December. We were in Odessa the night before, where we’d played a high school dance. My mind was on the upcoming Christmas season. An early West Texas snowstorm had covered the land and turned the highway into a sheet of ice. The road was closed down to Abilene, our next stop, and me and Marla were alone in our motel room. Marla was still asleep. I was sitting up in bed, pen in hand. I remembered another such morning when I was a little kid. Couldn’t have been older than five or six. That week, the principal of our little elementary school had died, a man who had showed great kindness to me. It was my first encounter with death. It was the first time I felt terror.

  “Are we all gonna have to die?” I asked Grandma on that morning.

  “Yes, sweetheart. I’m afraid so.”

  Being afraid of the dark, I asked her, “And when we die, what will it be like? Will it be dark? Will it be like turning out all the lights?”

  “No, child,” she said.
“It will be like turning on all the lights. There will be more light than you can ever imagine. You will be in God’s everlasting light. And that’s a light that never goes out. That’s the light of love.”

  “But how you do you know that, Grandma? How can you be so sure?”

  “Faith,” she said. “I have faith.”

  Those words came back to me on that bleak Odessa morning. It started out as a postcard to Grandma. I was telling her that after Abilene, we had to drive up the Panhandle to Lubbock and Amarillo before heading home—but we should be back in Round Rock by Christmas. Before signing off, I wrote these words, “Thank you for your faith.” I looked at what I’d written and heard a song. I picked up my guitar and played very softly, so as not to awaken Marla. I didn’t sing out loud, but mouthed the words that flowed from my heart.

  “Thank you for your faith . . . I’m not sure I deserved it . . . thank you for your faith . . . not sure I’ve preserved it . . . but I know it’s a gift . . . I can feel it pure and true . . . thank you for your faith—I’ll always have faith in you.”

  The ice melted and the roads became passable. We drove up to Lubbock and Amarillo, where we performed at holiday parties for kids in the Future Farmers of America. We played songs like “The Tennessee Waltz” that had everyone dancing. Everyone was upbeat. But my mood was different. My mind was on this “Faith” song that I’d begun in Odessa. The song wouldn’t leave me alone. I wanted it to be perfect, so I kept rewriting until it was. I finished it the night we drove back to Round Rock. Willard was driving, Cynthia was next to him, and me, Marla and Sticks were in the backseat. I played it over and over again until I drove my bandmates crazy.

  “Doesn’t sound like the kind of song we could play at a dance,” said Willard.

  “It’s a downer,” said Marla.

  “I don’t hear a beat,” said Sticks.

  “Maybe if you change the words to make it more like a love song,” said Marla out loud before whispering in my ear, “and make it about me.”

  “It’s about Grandma,” I said. “It isn’t for the band. It’s just for her.”

  “I think it’s sweet,” said Cynthia. “I think it’s beautiful.”

  Other than Cynthia, no one had anything good to say about the song.

  We arrived home December 24, in time for everyone to spend Christmas Eve with family. Willard dropped off Sticks, then Marla, then Cynthia, then me. It was early evening. Grandma was still at work. Luby’s Cafeteria closed at eight, so I knew she’d be home by eight thirty. I couldn’t wait to play her this song. This was a Christmas gift I knew she’d love. By nine o’clock, though, she still wasn’t home. I got worried. I decided to run over to Luby’s and see what was wrong. It was cold and overcast. No moon, no stars. The faster I ran, the more fright I felt. My heavy breath looked like trails of smoke in the frosty night air. My fright turned to panic. I tried to calm down. Sometimes there were extra chores Grandma had to do. There had to be a reasonable explanation. No reason to panic. But as I picked up my pace, my panic got worse. I felt panic in my gut, panic in my head. The panic was lifted a little when I saw Grandma’s Chevy in her usual parking space. I ran to the front door of the cafeteria. It was locked. I saw Lee, the custodian, mopping the floor and tapped on the window. He came and let me in.

  “Where’s my grandmother?” I asked.

  His troubled eyes said it all. “They had to take her to the hospital, Vernon.”

  “Why? When? What was wrong?”

  “She fell down. She was back there in the kitchen around six o’clock when, just like that, she collapsed on the floor.”

  Before Lester could say another word, I was out of there and racing over to the hospital, a mile or so away.

  “What room is Joy Goodson in?” I asked the nurse on duty.

  “Two-ten. Second floor.”

  I got there just as Doc Swartz was leaving the room. Doc was the man who had delivered me. He’d been our family physician forever.

  I didn’t need to hear his words because his eyes spoke first. His eyes said, “She’s gone.”

  —

  I’m writing on blue paper and thinking about the song “Blue Christmas.” Elvis sang it later in the 1950s, but it was Ernest Tubb’s version that was popular during the time I lost my grandmother. She was only sixty-five, the youngest of four girls who had all died before her.

  The church was packed with people of every description—all the folks she worked with at Luby’s; dozens of loyal Luby’s customers she had served with patient kindness; three black families who lived down the road from us and loved her like one of their own; Mexicans—men and women—who in the early years had worked with her in the cotton fields; the adults who were once children she had taught in Bible class; and all the people she had given free meals, either from the cafeteria line or our own kitchen, because they had fallen on hard times.

  I sat on the first pew, inches away from her casket covered in red poinsettias and green and white Christmas flowers. It was just a few days after Christmas. The fragrance from the flowers had me dizzy. I was afraid I’d faint. Marla sat next to me. Willard and Cynthia were in the pew behind us. Grandma’s friend, Meg Newberry, sang a hymn called “When Time and Eternity Meet.” The words didn’t register. Instead, inside my head, I heard Ernest Tubb singing about how it will be a blue Christmas without you, how I’ll be so blue just thinking about you. I only half heard Reverend Olan’s eulogy. Everything the reverend said was true—Grandma loved the Lord, she loved people, she followed the Golden Rule, she had a generous and humble heart. He spoke calmly. He was completely composed, while I was on the verge of losing it.

  In planning the service, Reverend Olan had asked me to say a few final words about Grandma. I told him I couldn’t. When he wanted to know why, I was honest. I said that I didn’t think I could hold it together.

  “You’re a musician, Vernon,” he said. “Maybe you could speak through your music.”

  “Just before she died,” I said, “I wrote a song for her.”

  “Would you sing it, son? Would you honor her with your song?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Before the service began, I had placed my guitar underneath an easel that held a large photograph of Joy Goodson as a young woman. Her smile and her eyes had not changed over the years. Her smile and her eyes revealed all the love she held for the world. I thought of the love that she held for me. I thought of how she cared for me when no one else would. I thought of the pain she must have felt when her husband had abandoned her, when my parents had left me and when my mother—her daughter and only child—had died during another horrible holiday season.

  I heard the preacher call my name. As I rose up from my seat, Marla squeezed my hand. I got my guitar, took a few seconds to tune it and faced the congregation. I stood in front of Grandma’s photograph. I felt her holding me up. I felt her love. I sang . . .

  Thank you for your faith

  I’m not sure I deserved it

  Thank you for your faith

  Not sure I’ve preserved it

  I know it’s a gift

  I can feel it pure and true

  Thank you for your faith—

  I’ll always have faith in you

  —

  Back to red paper for the red light in the San Antone music studio.

  I was singing “Faith” because I wanted to. Because I had to. I was singing “Faith” over the objection of everyone except Cynthia.

  “You got better songs,” said Willard.

  “Prettier songs,” said Marla.

  “Happier songs,” said Sticks.

  “Songs people can dance to,” said Ring Dawson, the man who owned the studio and the little label he called Ring’s Records.

  “Besides,” said Willard, “you ain’t our singer anyway. You got no business singing on this record.”

>   Only Cynthia was on my side. Only Cynthia said, “It’s a lovely song. And it feels like something Vernon has got to sing. Let him sing it.”

  I sang it in one take. Everyone knew I’d nailed it.

  Although “Something You Got” was the A side, it was the B side that disc jockeys around Texas started playing. Against all odds, “Faith” became a modest regional hit. “Faith” put Good Friends on the map.

  —

  Back to green paper means that Good Friends was moving ahead. Back to green means that “Faith” was a big enough record to get us work outside Texas. Back to green means that Marla said yes when I asked her to marry me.

  Christmas had become the season of death—the death of my parents, the death of my grandmother, the death of any hope for happiness if I stayed in Round Rock. I couldn’t wait for the holidays to pass so I could take the band and get the hell out of town. By the second week of January, I’d been able to sell Grandma’s house for enough money to buy a big station wagon and, for the first time in my life, put a little savings in the bank. By the second week in February, we were in San Antone cutting “Faith.” Even if Cynthia hadn’t backed me up, I’d have sung that song anyway. I had to do it for Grandma and close off that chapter in my life. The new chapter that opened—the chapter kicked off by the success of “Faith”—took me by surprise and changed the game.

  It wasn’t until summer that “Faith” began getting airplay around the state. We were shocked. When the A side—“Something You Got”—was released in March, it sank like a stone. I was sure that our dealings with Ring Dawson were history. And then Cynthia’s mother called to say she happened to be in Houston when she heard the B side on the radio. We thought she was confusing it with another song that sounded like “Faith.” But then other calls came in from friends and relatives around the state saying the same thing: They were hearing “Faith.” Finally Ring himself called to report that he was shipping out a thousand copies of the single to meet the demand.

  “Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Some deejay plays the wrong side of the record in Wichita Falls, and suddenly his phone lights up with requests.”