Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (3 page)

Tammy muttered, “Who gives a fart?”
 
She turned on the water full blast and threw
the dishes in hard enough to chip one of them.

Without looking up, Eddie gestured at the sink with the head
of his guitar.
 
“Just leave ‘em, Sugar,
I’ll get at ‘em later.”
 
Eddie didn’t see
Tammy turning a nasty shade of red but, the thing was, he didn’t need to see it
to know it was happening.
 
It seemed to
happen a lot lately.
 
He knew it would
pass just as soon
as.
. . a plate whizzed by his head
and shattered against the wall.
 
“Jumpin’ Jesus!”
 
Eddie looked up just in time to see the second plate leave her
hand.
 
He twisted his torso to shield his
precious Gibson from the flying dish.
 
“Ow!
 
Shit!
 
That hurt, Puddin’.”

“You don’t know about hurt, buster!”
 
Tammy set her jaw and squinted in a way that
only rural women can.
 
“I’ll show you
hurt!”

“Whoa, Sugar, let’s talk about this…”
 
Eddie scrambled off the table and ducked
behind the solid backed chair.
 
“. .
.whatever
it is.”

Eddie and Tammy had been high school sweethearts with no
long-term plan.
 
They were just young and
ultimately incautious.
 
As Eddie’s Aunt Theda
had said, they’d been eatin’ supper before saying grace, and sure enough Tammy
pulled up pregnant the summer after graduation.
 
So they got the Justice of the Peace to tie the knot before Tammy’s dad
found out and tied a knot around Eddie’s sweet neck.
 
A few weeks later Tammy miscarried.
 
That was three years ago.
 
Things had been tense as a D string ever
since.

With her long blonde hair and dreamy, half shut eyes, Tammy
had always been languid and slinky, but ever since her ‘misfortune,’ she
carried herself like a dying succulent, a thirsty blonde houseplant with a
terminal case of the vapors.
 
So it
surprised Eddie more than somewhat when she managed to throw the heavy serving
bowl across the kitchen like she did.
 
Crash!

“Sugar, wasn’t that the bowl your Cousin Minnie gave
us?”
 
Eddie had an easy going Southern
country accent, not too twangy, not too flat.

Tammy began screeching.
 
“Shut up, Eddie!
 
I am sick of you
and your songs and having to do all the work around here, and bringing in all
the money in this house on top of it all!
 
If you don’t take that job Daddy offered you, I’m gonna pack my bags and
move right out and then who you gonna find to pay your rent?
 
Huh?”

Tammy’s daddy owned The Dollar Store in town and was ready
to give Eddie what passed for a decent job in this part of the country.
 
Eddie would never say it, because he liked
the old man, but the truth was he’d rather have a catfish bone stuck in his
throat than put on one of those idiotic polyester vests with the smiley-face
button on it.
 
Eddie knew you didn’t
become a country music sensation standing on the sales floor of The Dollar
Store in Hinchcliff, Mississippi.
 
“Sugar, I thought we settled this before we
got married.
 
You promised me…”

Thwick!
 
A steak knife
lodged in the wall behind Eddie.
 
“That’s
right, you just keep throwing that in my face,” Tammy hollered.
 
“I got the right to change my mind if I want,
especially after what I went through.”
 
When it suited her needs Tammy used the miscarriage as an excuse for
neglecting everything from her appearances to the promises she had made.
 
“I gave you all the time you needed,” she
said.
 
“You just ain’t done it, and you
ain’t man enough to admit that you ain’t got what it takes to make it in
Batesville, much less Nashville.”

“Now, Sugar, let’s be fair,” Eddie said in his sweetest
voice, “even Elvis had to leave Mississippi
to get discovered.”

“Elvis?”
 
Tammy raised her voice a notch.
 
“You ain’t Elvis, Eddie, and you never will
be!
 
Do you even hear what’s comin’ outta
your mouth?
 
You got a perfectly good job
just waitin’ for you and instead of takin’
it,
you’re
hiding behind the kitchen table comparing yourself to the King.
 
When are you going to give up on this
nonsense and do right by me?”

Eddie poked his head out from behind the chair.
 
“Sugar?”
 
Another plate flew by, knocking Eddie’s hat
off.
 
He ducked back behind the chair
wondering how come his life had turned out so bad.
 
He put up with Tammy the best he could but he
was running out of patience.
 
Episodes
like this one made him want to slap her clear into Coahoma
County but his long-term plans
prevented him from giving into that temptation.
 
Eddie picked up his hat and held it out to see if it would draw
fire.
 
A plastic John Deere coffee cup
flew past and bounced off the wall.
 
Eddie knew he had to calm Tammy down before she ran out of dishes and
went for the gun, even if it was just a .22.
 
He pulled the Gibson into playing position, strummed a familiar chord,
more slowly than it was usually played, and sang in his softest voice, “
Stand by your man
…”

“Stand by where?” Tammy shrieked.
 
“In the damn welfare line?”
 
She hurled a small cast iron skillet Eddie’s
way.
 
“I’ve had about all of this I can
take, Eddie.
 
It’s time for you to start
taking care of me the way a man’s supposed to.”

“Tammy,
sugar, that
was a real good
throw.
 
Now listen, I was going to
surprise you with the news tonight, but I guess now’s as good a time as any to
tell you…”

Tammy had another steak knife raised over her head ready to
throw.
 
“Tell me what?”

Eddie strummed the guitar, flamenco-style.
 
He spoke like a big city radio announcer,
rising slowly from his crouch as he spoke.
 
“Starting
this
Wednesday at
the Gold Coast Extravaganza Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, for five straight
nights, ladies and gentlemen, the next superstar of Nashville, Tennessee — Mr.
Eddie Long!”
 
He ended with a flourish on
the guitar.

A second passed as the news sunk in.
 
Suddenly Tammy squealed and began hopping on
one foot.
 
“Eddie!!!”

“I’m talkin’ regular paychecks for six weeks, Sugar.
 
Playing the casinos from
Biloxi
to Lula.”
 
Eddie pushed up the brim of his hat with his
index finger.
 
“What do you say to that?”

There was a pause as Tammy put her hands over her mouth in
amazement.

“Careful with that knife,” Eddie said.

Tammy slid her hands from her mouth to her cheeks.
 
Her voice took on a sudden sweetness as her
eyes went wide.
 
“Eddie,
how much?”

Eddie strummed the Gibson.
 
“Three-fifty a week.”

Tammy laid the steak knife in sink, real gentle.
 
“Before or after taxes?”

“That’s take-home, sugar.
 
I’ll be sending most of that back to you.”
 
Eddie picked a couple of notes and improvised
a lyric.
 
“
I’ll be sending you the money, ‘cause I love you so much
honey
.
. .”
 
Eddie put the guitar down and crossed to
where Tammy was standing.
 
There was one
more thing he knew she wanted to hear, even if he didn’t want to say it.
 
“And I tell you what.”
 
He pulled her close.
 
“You come up when I’m playing the casino in
Lula and we’ll get started on making those babies.”

Tammy squealed again.
 
“I knew you were going to make it, Eddie!
 
I told you I believed in you, didn’t I?
 
Haven’t I always said that?
 
You are going to be such a star!”
 
She kissed Eddie’s neck while hopping around
squealing.
 
Then she suddenly
stopped.
 
Her mouth opened wide.
 
“Eddie, I just had the best idea!
 
Let’s drive up to Memphis
and go to that Chinese restaurant I like.
 
I think we need to celebrate!”

Eddie thought about it for a moment before a smile crossed
his face.
 
“Yeah,” he said.
 
“That’ll work.”

4.

Lee
County
,
Alabama

It was
three o’clock
on a stifling afternoon.
 
The air wasn’t
moving.
 
The oppressive heat was battling
the humidity to see which could do the most damage.
 
Sheriff Bobby Herndon of the Lee County
Sheriff’s Department was driving north on county road 147 with his windows
sealed and the air conditioning chilling the cruiser.
 
Having lived in this part of Lee
County all his life Sheriff Herndon
knew the 147 was lined on both sides by cotton fields even though he couldn’t
see them.
 
All he could see was the tall
bushy shrubs the Highway Department had planted along the property lines most
of the way between Auburn and Gold
Ridge.

For the past hour Sheriff Herndon had been testing the new
UltraLyte Laser gun but traffic had thinned out and everybody was doing the
speed limit so he switched the gun off, sat back, and tried to enjoy the
drive.
 
He was gazing down the road
thinking about where he was going fishing that weekend when his peripheral
vision suddenly picked up some movement in the tall shrubs on his right.
 
As he turned to look, a bright red 1995
Massey Ferguson 8150 with the big 18.4R 42 duels in the back came roaring
through the bushes, hellbent for crossing the road about thirty yards ahead.

Sheriff Herndon could see the driver struggling terribly
inside the tractor’s big glass encased cab.
 
The man’s face was red and hideously twisted as he fumbled desperately
to open the door.
 
The sheriff recognized
the man as Hoke Paley, one of the richest men in Lee
County.
 
He owned half the land that bordered the
147.
 
Mr. Paley was famous all across Alabama
for his unscrupulous business dealings.
 
Word was he had screwed half the people in the county without having sex
with a one of ‘em.
 
He was a mean, hard
man who didn’t lack for enemies.

Sheriff Herndon hit his lights and brakes at the same time
as the big red tractor lurched onto the roadway.
 
Hoke managed to open the door and, looking
skyward with his hands clutched around his own throat, he stepped out of the
tractor’s cab as if to walk a plank.
 
Unfortunately he was eight feet above the ground and there was no
plank.
 
He tipped over like a cartoon
character and landed flat on his terrified face.

The big red tractor continued, driverless,
across the road, through the big shrubs on the other side, and on through the
field.
 
The sheriff called for an
ambulance but it didn’t matter.
 
Mr.
Paley was already dead when the sheriff rolled him over; several of his teeth
were on the pavement.
 
His face was
covered with pinkish spit and gravel and there was a box of Dr. Porter’s
Headache Powder poking out of his shirt pocket.

5.

Biloxi
,
Mississippi

Jimmy Rogers was a member of the Fourth Estate, but only in
the loosest sense of the word.
 
He was
really just a freelance writer with a fondness for music and a girl named
Megan.
 
Jimmy had been a reporter for a
couple of the state’s newspapers but had quickly tired of the assignments they
foisted on him — puff pieces on this year’s debutante fashions, that sort of
crap.
 
He knew the only way to get the
assignments he wanted was by surrendering the security of a paycheck and going
freelance, so he had resigned and started writing concert reviews and artist
profiles.
 

Jimmy had been doing it long enough and well enough to
become the unofficial ‘official’ reporter-and-photographer covering the entire Mississippi
music scene.
 
At one end of the spectrum
this meant reviewing the occasional big concert at the Coliseum in Jackson
or the one in Biloxi.
 
At the other end of the continuum he covered
small clubs, like Mr. T’s, where local talent got its start.
 
But he spent most of his time at the state’s
thirty-some-odd casinos.