The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (22 page)

He snickered. “You’d be better off if you’s the devil.”

29

1952

A BIT OF CATCH-UP NOW (OR AN “ANACRUSIS,” THE NOTES
that run up to the first downbeat of a song, like the “happy” in “Happy Birthday”).

Frankie ran away from the orphanage after reuniting with the hairless dog. In the months that followed, he found work in the Black Bottom section of Detroit, where, despite his age, he played nightly shows with jazz groups in exchange for plates of food for himself and the dog, and a mattress in the club basements. It was there he befriended the trumpeter Marcus Belgrave, sat in with his quartet, and, one night, saved the life of a young blond girl by distracting her attacker with his astonishing guitar speed.

And, although she looked much older now, Frankie believed this blonde was Aurora York, the girl in the tree. The man with the knife had confessed that he’d just met her and said that she was visiting from Tennessee. Which is why Frankie stowed away in a car headed south.

Next thing he knew, he was sleeping on the couch of Hampton Belgrave, Marcus’s cousin.

Everyone joins a band in this life.

Some are by accident.

Six months after that ride in the trunk, Frankie had secured his first solo engagement, in hopes of drawing Aurora to him: singing in front of a Nashville automobile dealership.

Cars, cars, cars,

We’ve got cars, cars, cars . . .

The owner, Mr. Rutland Vines, of Vines Fine Cadillacs, was a baldheaded, double-chinned businessman who liked to hook his fingers around his suspenders. He had hired Frankie (in hopes of luring buyers) at the urging of his mechanic, Hampton Belgrave (who had inadvertently transported the boy to Tennessee).

“My Cadillacs ain’t no different from the Cadillacs over at Shimey Motors,” Rutland said. “Only difference, I reckon, is the customer experience I give ’em, y’understand?”

Frankie hadn’t really understood. But Hampton said the man would pay him and Frankie understood that part.

“Just do the good churchy music, some gospel, like Red Foley, but also that hillbilly boogie like Tennessee Ernie Ford and maybe some honky-tonk, too,” Rutland instructed. “Keep ’em happy. Ya got it?”

Frankie nodded.

“And you need to dress right. Get yourself a nice tie. And pomade that hair. You got too much of it popping up. Ya hear me?”

That evening, back at Hampton’s house, Frankie planted himself by the radio while Hampton cooked a stew of pork, corn, and onions. The two had been staying together for months, after Hampton phoned his cousin Marcus and Marcus confirmed that Frankie was not, in any way, the devil.

Hampton was a squat man with a short neck and thick elbows, fond of sweet cake, bowler caps, and the blues. He always dreamed of making music, even though, for a living, he fixed automobiles. He played a little harmonica (he took a small amount of me at birth) and at night he put on records as Frankie strummed along.

“You got good ears, boy,” he told Frankie. “You hear it, you play it.”

That evening, Frankie turned the radio dial from one station to another, teaching himself a fast country repertoire. Much of the music the announcers called “honky-tonk” or “hillbilly” was simple enough, three or four chords, pick the bass note, strum. But the singers weren’t easy to imitate, they warbled or drew out the words in a southern accent. Still, Frankie liked this music, because it told stories of heartbreak and love and drunkenness. Also, it was much easier to play than the twelve études of Heitor Villa-Lobos that El Maestro used to put him through.

“Yodel-ley-ee-hee-ho,” Frankie sang, trying to mimic a yodeling sound in a song called “Chime Bells” by Elton Britt. “Yodel-ley-ee-hee-h—”

Hampton rushed in carrying a large soup spoon and snapped off the radio.

“Quit that! You about to drive me crazy!” He shook his head. “Get dressed, boy. I’m gonna take you someplace and show you some real music.”

The hairless dog rose to its feet.

“Can’t take no dogs,” Hampton said.

The dog sat back down.

“Yodeling,” Hampton grumbled. “Lawd help this world.”

That night, Hampton walked Frankie through the streets of Nashville. They passed a redbrick building called the Ryman Auditorium. “That’s where they do the
Grand Ole Opry
show,” Hampton said. “It’s on the radio clear around the country. That place make you about as famous as you can get.”

“Can I play there?” Frankie asked.

“I reckon you could, once people see how fast you is.”

Hampton rubbed his chin.

“That something you want to do?”

“Sure.”

“All right then. Maybe you will.”

He walked Frankie to Printer’s Alley, an area of nightclubs that featured country music. When the doors opened they heard fiddles mixing with guitars and upright basses.

“You catchin’ that sound?” Hampton asked.

“Can we go in?”

“You can. Colored clubs is up the block a’ways.”

Frankie didn’t fully understand the “colored” rule Hampton often spoke about. But he knew it was unfair. He wasn’t even from America, and he could enter places Hampton could not.

“Let’s go to those other clubs, then,” Frankie said.

Hampton smiled. “Awright, boy. But you can’t be playing none of the music you hear up there at the car lot. Rutland will throw you out on your rump.”

That night, Hampton took Frankie up and down Jefferson Street, to places called Club Baron, the Del Morocco, Maceo’s, Sugar Hill, and Pee Wee’s. The boy’s eyes bulged at the music he heard, rambling guitars and basses, growling singing, piano players who seemed to be running and walking their fingers at the same time. There was laughing and wailing and people rising from their seats and swinging their hips or yelling, “Go, go, go!” Frankie loved it. It felt as if the music and the crowd were all on the same stage. Even Hampton, wearing his bowler cap, went out and danced awhile, coming back sweaty and waving his hand like a fan.

“Well, now, Hampton, who’s this boy?” asked a man who wandered over holding a drink. “You find yo’self a white son?”

Hampton laughed. “Petey, this boy can play a rope around most pickers in this city. I’m fixin’ to manage him. Get him into the Opry.”

“Manage him?”

“That’s right.”

“You a car mechanic.”

“For now.”

“You know music?”

“I know enough.”

“When you gonna start managing him?”

“Once he find what he’s looking for.”

“What he looking for?”

“What all boys his age looking for?”

They exploded in laughter. Frankie felt himself blushing.

Of course, Frankie had not forgotten the reason he’d come to Nashville: to find Aurora York. He was sure she was the girl in that Detroit nightclub. But he had no idea this city would be so big. The world, to Frankie, just kept getting larger, and everyone in it was getting harder to find.

Each weekday morning, he would walk up and down the Nashville business streets, stopping in stores to inquire about a girl named Aurora. Many asked if he had a picture.

“No,” he’d say, “but she talks funny. With a British accent.”

“Son, you talk funny, too,” they would answer. Still, no one could recall her. Pretty soon, having exhausted the businesses, he began to knock on house doors, asking mothers or old ladies if they had seen a blond girl his age. He took the job at the Cadillac dealership and told everyone he was from Spain, hoping someone might get word to Aurora. Surely she would be curious about a guitar player from that country.

As the weather turned hot, Frankie noticed other teens in convertible cars, heading to amusement parks or lakes. He felt pangs of loneliness. Hampton was nice, but he was old, his children scattered, and his wife had passed away. And no one at work really spoke to Frankie. Only the hairless dog gave him hope for happier days. Frankie played constantly with that creature, rolling on the ground and scratching behind its ears.

Of course, when he was truly sad, Frankie came to his guitar. Hour after hour. Day after day. Practicing, playing, practicing some more, honing the blues progressions that he heard in the clubs on Jefferson Street. For my disciples, the map is simple. All lonely roads lead back to music. I embrace you. I forgive you.

I will never leave you.

Can humans say the same?

One day, Frankie was standing out in front of the dealership, singing a gospel tune that Rutland was particularly fond of called “By and By.”

Temptations, hidden snares

Often take us unawares,

And our hearts are made to bleed

For a thoughtless word or deed;

And we wonder why the test

When we try to do our best,

But we’ll understand it better by and by.

A car pulled up and a tall thin man in a cowboy hat stepped out of the passenger’s side. He drank from a flask, then wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Frankie noticed his ears, which pushed out, and the strangely thin line of his lips, which seemed drawn from one end of his cheeks to the other.