Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (20 page)

After the fifth ring he started to think she wasn’t
home.
 
And sure enough, a recorded voice
came on the line.
 
“I’m sorry,” she said,
though she didn’t sound like she meant it.
 
“The number you have reached is no longer in service.”
 
What?
 
That’s impossible
.
 
“If you feel you have reached this recording
in error, please hang up and dial the number again.”
 
Jimmy looked at the number pad.
 
Must’ve
dialed wrong
, he thought.
 
He dialed
again, concentrating on the digits this time.
 
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
 
Jimmy
hung up.
 
A lonely feeling grew in his
heart and it made him desperate for an explanation.
 
Maybe some psychotic radio fan had gotten
Megan’s number.
 
Sure, and she’d been
forced to change it.
 
That had to be
it.
 
No problem.
 
Jimmy would just call the station.

“Yes, I’d like to leave a message for Megan Taylor please.”

“Miss Taylor no longer works here,” the receptionist
said.
 
“She got a new job.”

Jimmy grew desperate.
 
“Really?
 
Like over at Z-102?”
 
He asked the
question without any conviction because he knew the answer.
 
He just couldn’t bring himself to say it.
 
So the receptionist said if for him.

“No, some station in Nashville.
 
I don’t know which one.”

Jimmy hesitated.
 
“Yeah, okay, thanks.”
 
He hung up,
shaking his head.
 
What a schmuck.
 
He could hear Megan’s voice.
 
‘
Nooo,
I’m not moving to
Nashville
.
 
Well, it’s not up to me, anyway.
 
He just asked me to send him an air check tape.
 
He didn’t even say they had a job available
or anything.
 
And who knows?
 
The guy’ll probably be working in
Buffalo
by the time this tape gets to
Nashville
.
 
You
know how radio is.’

Yeah, Jimmy knew.
 
Radio was famous for disloyalty.
 
You give your heart and soul to a station,
then
you come to work one day and find the locks changed, the format abandoned, and
the request line no longer in service.
 
It reminded Jimmy of somebody he knew, or someone he thought he knew.
 
Damn.
 
He wondered if she was already there, wondered what she was doing.
 
Was she thinking about him?
 
He wished he could read her mind, just for an
hour.

He sat there thinking about her for a long time.
 
Segments of their relationship popped up on
the screen in his head.
 
He remembered
the time she got the hiccups from laughing so hard at something he did, and he
thought about that day in Vicksburg.
 
God, he’d never forget that.
 
He pulled an envelope from his desk
drawer.
 
It held photos Jimmy had taken
at a party a month or so ago.
 
He flipped
through the photos until he found one of Jimmy with his arm around Megan.
 
He was smiling like a fool drunk in
love.
 
Megan looked like she was just
waiting for the moment to pass.
 
He
hadn’t noticed that before.
 
Now that he
did, he began to fear it was over.
 
She
was gone.
 
Maybe she’d never wanted to be
there in the first place.
 
She’d dumped
him.
 
And now he was alone, sitting in a
small room in a small apartment in a small town feeling sorry for
himself
as the broken-hearted are wont to do.

Like far too many people in this state of mind, Jimmy
started to think his brand of heartache was special and would make a great
song.
 
He quickly came up with a title:
The number you’ve reached (is no longer in service).
 
But what rhymed with service?
 
Nervous?
 
Purvis?
 
No good.
 
Back to the drawing board.
 
How about, If you reached this recording in
error (please hang up and dial again)?
 
No, that was too long.
 
He
struggled with the idea late into the night but he couldn’t make it work.
 
Rhymes were hard to come by and those that
came didn’t say what he wanted.

Outside it was dark but Jimmy didn’t notice.
 
He was preoccupied by his own darkness, a
lonely black melancholy that tended to make him melodramatic and
fatalistic.
 
His girl had left him and he
couldn’t even come up with a song title to express his anguish.
 
Oddly that’s when he saw a faint
glimmer.
 
All things considered, Jimmy
realized he wasn’t as bad off as he could be.
 
At least he still had the book, nonfiction or otherwise.
 
Maybe he could win Megan back with that.

Jimmy stood and went to pack.
 
He’d be leaving for Quitman
County in the morning.

30.

Whitney called Big Bill the Monday after his open mic
performance at the Bluebird and, to his
surprise,
Big Bill
invited him to dinner to discuss his career.

Even though his mama had warned him against it since he was
little, Whitney allowed
himself
to feel a little more
important than he’d allowed the day before.
 
He’d have bet not everyone got invited to dinner with Big Bill Herron
and Franklin Peavy.
 
He just wished him
mom was still alive so he could tell her the news.
 
The restaurant wasn’t far from Whitney’s
place, probably a ten minute walk.
 
Since
his truck was still at the repair shop and the hole in his boot wasn’t getting
any smaller, it was a good thing Mr. Herron had picked a place close by.
 
A guy just couldn’t get any luckier than
that, Whitney thought.

He cut out a new piece of cardboard and slipped it into his
boot.
 
Then he put on his black Wranglers,
a dark plaid shirt, and his dark gray vest.
 
He stood in front of the mirror as he put on his black Lancer.
 
He took a good look and told himself things
were
going to work out, then he headed over to the
restaurant.

Whitney stopped cold on the sidewalk across the street from
the restaurant.
 
The moment he saw the
Mercedes pull up to the valet his outsider status was reconfirmed.
 
He hadn’t dressed for this sort of place, but
it was too late to turn back.
 
Inside the
hostess took one look at him and tried not to smirk.
 
She’d seen an untold number of hopefuls come
through here looking for their future, but she’d never seen one dressed so
mal à propos
.
 
Sometimes she wished they’d just stop coming
to town.
 
All they did was muddy the
water for real singers and songwriters like
herself
.
 
“Welcome to the Sunset Grill,” she said.
 
“Can I help you?”

Whitney took his hat off and ran his fingers through his
long hair.
 
“Yes ma’am.
 
I’m here to meet Mr. Bill Herron and Mr.
Franklin Peavy.”
 
He could tell by the
way she looked at him that she disapproved.

The hostess smiled mechanically.
 
“Right this way.”
 
She took Whitney to the table where Herron
and Peavy were waiting.
 
More than a few
heads turned to eye the skinny kid in the belligerent outfit.

“Hey now!”
Big Bill said as he
stood to shake hands.
 
“We was startin’
to worry you’d signed with Fitzgerald-Hartley or something.
 
C’mon, sit down.
 
Thanks for joining us.”

“Thank you for inviting me.”
 
Whitney turned to Franklin
and shook his hand too.
 
“I
mean,
both of you.
 
I
appreciate it.”
 
Whitney generally wasn’t
the nervous type, but he’d never felt so out of place.
 
Here he was, shaking hands with two people
who were, by his reckoning, among the most influential in Nashville.
 
He didn’t know what to say.
 
He spoke best through his music and never had
to talk business with anyone more influential than the bar owners who usually
hired him.
 
He sat down and looked
around.
 
He’d never seen a crowd of
people like this.
 
They all looked and
dressed different from what he’d been expecting.
 
Whitney sensed the disdain.

Big Bill saw Whitney was somewhat unsettled.
 
“I gotta tell ya, I hadn’t been able to get
your song outta my head since I heard it.”

“Which one?”

“Oh, the, uh, slow, pretty one,” Big Bill said.

“Night’s Devotion?”

“That’s it,” Big Bill said.
 
“You know, it all starts with the song.
 
Sure does.
 
A good song can do a
lot more for a mediocre performer than a good performer can do for a mediocre
song, if you know what I’m sayin’.
 
And
your song is a good one.”

“Well, thank you,” Whitney said.
 
“I got more of ‘em too.”

“You got a gift,” Big Bill said.
 
“No doubt about it.”
 
After seeing Whitney in a better light, Big
Bill made a career decision for him.
 
It
wasn’t fair but, given the importance of videos in marketing music these days,
he sometimes had to steer some kids toward songwriting from the beginning so
they didn’t get it in their heads that they might be on a big stage some
day.
 
“You are one helluva songwriter.”

“I appreciate that,” Whitney said.
 
“Especially coming from
you.”
 
He began to relax and enjoy
the unlikely situation where he found himself the center of attention.
 
Big Bill pulled a bottle from the bucket of
ice next to the table.
 
“Wine?”

 
“Uh,
sure.”
 
Whitney had never been a
big drinker, and he preferred beer on the occasions when he did drink, but he
didn’t want to seem like a rube.
 
It was
bad enough he felt like one.

“You like chardonnay?”

“You bet,” Whitney said, not knowing chardonnay from
shinola.
 
“
It’s.
. . real nice.”

For the next hour, Herron and Peavy blew enough balloon
juice to float Whitney over the Cumberland River and
into Adelphia Coliseum on the other side.
 
They predicted his songs would be at the top of the charts and that he
was looking at a big money future with more beautiful women than you’d find at
a Miss Mississippi pageant.
 
The two
industry giants poured it on thick, insisting over and over that Whitney had
that something special.
 
Actually, the
only thing they were sure of was that Whitney had a couple of songs, one of
which Big Bill felt was a hit.
 
If it
turned out the kid had more than that, well, there might end up being some
truth to what Herron and Peavy were saying.
 
But for now they just wanted the one song.

Whitney absorbed everything, including the chardonnay.
 
He found that sipping the wine only
accentuated
it’s
bitterness, so he took to gulping
it.
 
“Well, that’s flattering and all,
but—”

Big Bill held up his hand and gave Whitney a serious
look.
 
“Son, we’re not in the flattery
business.
 
We’re in the music business so
don’t think we’re here to blow smoke up your skirt and buy you dinner.
 
We wanna sign you as a client.”

Big Bill poured more wine while Franklin
reached into his briefcase and pulled out a contract — one that Big Bill had
already checked for covert producer credits.
 
“This is our standard agreement.”
 
Franklin flipped page to
page, pointing as he spoke.
 
“It covers
publishing rights, mechanicals, sync rights, compulsory license,
all
the boilerplate that’s in everybody’s contracts.”
 
Franklin
pulled a pen from his coat and clicked the push-button with his thumb.
 
“By the way, what’s the name of your
publishing company?”

Whitney shrugged.
 
“Uh, I don’t think I have one, really.
 
Should I get one?”

Big Bill smiled broad as a double-wide.
 
“It’s no big deal, some writers use
publishers, most of ‘em just let their managers handle that kind of stuff.”

“All this is real standard,” Franklin
said.

Whitney nodded.
 
He didn’t
have the slightest idea if any of what they were saying was true, but he
couldn’t see any reason they’d lie to him.
 
“I’m just a songwriter and a singer.
 
I figure you guys know all that other stuff.”