Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (40 page)

Because he was about to mess with an official crime scene,
Jimmy slipped on a pair of gloves before trying to get in.
 
Everything was locked up, so he broke a
kitchen window.
 
Jimmy lowered his camera
bag in first,
then
shimmied in after it.
 
The place was hot, stagnant, and dead
quiet.
 
Dust particles hung in the air,
almost motionless.
 
Suddenly there was a
noise, a tiny buzzing sound coming from behind him.
 
He turned and saw a fat house fly caught in a
spider’s web struggling to escape.
 
He
hadn’t been inside sixty seconds and he was sweating.

Jimmy got the creeps.
 
It was one thing knowing what had happened within these walls, it was
another to actually be there.
 
He pulled
out his camera and looked around.
 
He
took photos of the faded ‘God Bless This House’ needlepoint near the front door
and the unframed watercolor of the cow in the cotton field that hung above the
sofa.
 
He took photos of the taped
outline of Tammy’s body and the small blood stain on the floor.
 
He stepped into the bathroom to get a look at
the medicine cabinet.
 
The glass shelves
were stocked with the typical array of over-the-counter medications, but the
box of Dr. Porter’s Headache Powder was gone, no doubt spirited away to the
police lab for testing.

There wasn’t much else to see at this end of the house, so
Jimmy returned to the kitchen.
  
It was
cramped with an avocado green refrigerator and a rust brown stove, a dishwasher
on wheels still hooked up to the sink faucet, dripped slowly like the sweat
creeping down Jimmy’s scalp.
 
He recalled
Eddie saying he used to sit on the kitchen table while composing his
songs.
 
It was large and heavy, like
something from a butcher’s shop.
 
You had
to scoot sideways to get to the chair at the far end.
 
He sat on the edge of the table wondering how
much of what Carl had said was true.
 
Jimmy couldn’t remember Eddie ever saying anything bad about Tammy,
nothing about her holding him back or anything.
 
He frequently made jokes about being married while he was on stage, but
they were innocuous and aimed at getting simple laughs.

Jimmy sat on the table for a few moments taking in the view
as Eddie would have seen it.
 
It was less
than inspiring — mismatched appliances and a bank of grease-covered kitchen
cabinets.
 
Looking down he saw something
wedged in the corner where the wall met the floor.
 
It looked like a shard from a shattered plate
or perhaps a serving dish.
 
Across the
room was a washer-dryer combo that looked like it got hit by the back door
every time it
opened.
 
Jimmy sat there for a moment before his attention returned to the
cabinets.
 
He slid off the table and went
to the pantry.
 
Inside were some dried
red beans, canned tomatoes, and a box of beignet mix.
 
There were two cast iron skillets and a
non-stick sauce pan in the lower cabinet next to the stove.
 
Next he looked in the small cupboard above
the range.
 
It held a loaded Lazy
Susan.
 
Jimmy gave it a spin — red
pepper, chili powder, and a box of shrimp boil circled past like spicy red
carousel horses.
 
Old garlic salt,
solidified onion powder, and a goose neck jar of Zatarain’s Gumbo Filé chased a
five year old tin of ground thyme, a jar of chicken bouillon cubes and,
bringing up the rear, a fat, round container of Uncle Randy’s Meat
Tenderizer.
 
Then the thing stopped.

Jimmy stared at the cylindrical container.
 
It was cardboard with a red plastic top.
 
He picked it up and shook it like a tiny
maraca.
 
It was nearly empty.
 
He read the list of ingredients
  
— salt, dextrose, calcium silicate, and
bromelain were second, third, fourth, and fifth on the list, but they didn’t
really matter.
 
It was the primary
ingredient that made him shiver in the heat.
 
Big as all get out it said: monosodium glutamate.

67.

The spring on the screen door screeched like an alley cat
when Chester Grubbs walked into the bar.
 
It was lunchtime and he was bad thirsty.
 
He hadn’t had a drink in two days and, as he told the bartender, he
needed a beer.
 
The bartender wrinkled
his nose and went to get a cold one.
 
Soaked in sweat, Chester’s
clothes were ripe enough to sprout legs and walk.
 
The sweat mixed with dirt and formed muddy
troughs in the lines of his face.
 
As he
waited for his beer Chester spotted
half a cigarette crumpled in an ashtray.
 
He picked it up, reshaped it as best he could, and lit the thing.

He’d moved from Broken Bow, Oklahoma
to Lake Village, Arkansas
to get some work.
 
A friend told him
about a guy who needed some day labor for a big landscaping project.
 
The pay was decent and the job was supposed
to last three weeks.
 
Chester had hoped
to get hired on driving a Bobcat or a skip loader, something where he’d be
sitting down in some shade, but he ended up swinging a pick at the hardest,
rockiest acre of dirt he’d ever set foot on.
 
It was nearly ninety-six degrees at
noon
and Chester was forty years older
than the other guys on the job site.
 
One
of the kids on the crew summed it up best when he looked at Chester’s
ashen face after the first hour and said, “You’re way too old for work this
damn young.”

The bartender gave Chester
his beer.
 
“You wanna order lunch?”

Chester hoisted
the bottle.
 
“Just did.”
 
He turned it upside down into his face,
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

The screen door screeched again when another man entered the
bar.
 
He waved at the bartender.
 
“Hey man, how you doin’?”

“Real good,” the bartender said.
 
“Whadja bring me this week?”

The man walked over to the jukebox, pulled out a key, and
opened it.
 
“Got the new single from
Eddie Long,” he said.
 
“Real
nice song.
 
I’ll put it on for
you.”

Chester waved
his empty bottle at the bartender.
 
“Give
me a’nuther one of these?”

The bartender shuffled over to the cooler.
 
Chester
looked at the big jar of pickled pig’s feet on the bar wondering if he ought to
get a little something to eat or if he should just drink his lunch.
 
A moment later the song came on the jukebox
and Chester forgot whether he was
hungry, thirsty, or out of his mind.
 
The
hair on his neck stood up and he felt something twist in his bones.
 
He slowly turned around on his stool and stared
at the jukebox, listening, humming along in his head like he already knew the
song.
 
Halfway through, he stood and
walked over to the jukebox where the man was changing out some of the
tunes.
 
“Lemme see that record,” Chester
said.

“Which one?”

“The one’s playin’.”

“Sure,” the guy shrugged, “soon as it’s done, I guess.”

Something wild flashed in Chester’s
eyes and he screamed at the man.
 
“Now, goddammit!”

The bartender reached for his baseball bat while the jukebox
man did as he was told.
 
Chester
calmly took the forty-five and looked at it.
 
It was called ‘Pothole
In
My Heart’ and in the
parenthesis under the title, where he’d once seen his own name, Chester
saw something he could hardly believe.
 
He handed the record back to the jukebox guy, all calm and
purposeful.
 
“Pardon me,” Chester
said.
 
“I’ve got someone to kill.”

68.

‘Pothole
In
My Heart’ was released
as the second single the day Eddie headlined a show at the Cheyenne Frontier
Festival.
 
Two days later, as they
prepared for a show in Salem, Oregon,
‘Pothole’ was already the number one song on country radio, pushing ‘
It Wasn’t Supposed To
End That Way’ to number two.
 
It was the first time in decades an artist
had the top two singles on country radio.
 
Eddie’s album had sold nearly two million copies so far and, with the
release of the second single, a big spike would soon appear on the sales graph.

The
Long Shot
tour
buses were parked in the lot of the L.B. Day Amphitheater.
 
Some of the guys in the band had gone to see
a movie while the roadies set up the equipment.
 
A sound check was scheduled for later that afternoon.

Big Bill was sitting in the back in the bus, a set of
headphones pinching his fat round head.
 
He was listening to something on an old Walkman, over and over.
 
The expression on his face grew more pained
each time he listened to the tape.
 
After
the fifth time through, Franklin
walked in and motioned for Big Bill to take off the headphones.
 
“We need to talk about Eddie,” he said.

Big Bill pulled the headphones off his head and held them
up.
 
“No shit.”

Franklin pointed
at the Walkman.
 
“Are those the new
songs?”
 
He sounded hopeful in a
desperate sort of way.
 
“Are they good?”

“Let me put it this way.”
 
Big Bill popped the tape out of the machine and held it up for
inspection.
 
“These things suck worse
than a two dollar hooker.”

“Shit.”

“Shit about describes it.”
 
He tossed the headphones onto a table.

Franklin sat
down and rubbed his eyes.
 
“I saw Eddie
about an hour ago.
 
He looks worse than I
do,” Franklin said.
 
“And I look like
hell.
. . or at least I feel like it.
 
He’s
been going hard for seventeen straight nights.
 
If we don’t start getting him out of these after-show parties earlier
he’ll never finish the tour.”

Big Bill nodded.
 
“
He’s
not gonna like it.”

“They never do.”

Franklin and Big Bill had seen it more than a few
times.
 
It was a natural response to an
unnatural situation.
 
Coming offstage
after a show wasn’t like leaving the office at
5
o’clock
.
 
After an hour or
two in the spotlight, one couldn’t simply switch off the power and call it a
day.
 
Eddie was swimming in a cocktail of
adrenaline, flashbulbs, adulation, sex, and drugs.
 
It was like living in your own personal
x-rated music video.
 
Eddie was a young
man with appetites.
 
He couldn’t help
himself and they knew it.
 
They had to
help him.
 
That was their job.

Big Bill looked up at Franklin
and their eyes connected.
 
After a second
they both smiled.
 
Big Bill half rolled
his eyes while Franklin shook his
head.
 
They both laughed a little, but
neither said anything.
 
There was no
need.
 
After thirty-five years of butting
heads with one another, with artists, record labels, indie promoters, and
everyone else they had to battle, the two had a bond, like guys who’d been to
war together.
 
And now, after all that,
they had a goose laying golden eggs and they knew they’d have to work together
to
keep
‘em coming.

“One of the problems is that damn Megan,” Big Bill
said.
 
“She’s convinced him he has to
attend all the after-show parties to schmooze the radio guys.”

“Yeah, and then she schedules radio call-ins to the morning
shows and has goddamn magazine interviews in the afternoons.
 
She’s gonna burn him out if we don’t do
something.”

Big Bill placed his hands flat on the table.
 
“I’m open to suggestions.”

Franklin
nodded.
 
“Look,” he said, “from here on
out we let him make a short appearance at the after-show parties for a quick
schmooze, get his picture taken with the radio guys and some fans, then we
leave.
 
Just drag him onto the bus and
go.”
 
He pointed at Big Bill.
 
“And we tell Megan, in no uncertain terms,
that she’s got to ease up on his goddam media schedule.”

Big Bill threw his hands up,
then
slapped them down on his legs.
 
“Whatever.
 
But we’ve got to do
something and, more important, we gotta get another record ready while he’s
still hot.”
 
He gestured at the cassette
tape.
 
“Problem is he’s not writing any
decent material.”

Franklin looked
shocked.
 
“Well, we’re not putting a
notice in
Row Fax
, if that’s what
you’re getting at.
 
We are
not
going to solicit songs.”

Big Bill waved the thought away.
 
“Hell no!”
 
Big Bill leaned over to confide with Franklin.
 
“We’d have to be dumber’n a barrel of hair to
put a single song on his next record that we don’t publish.”

Franklin nodded
solemnly.
 
“Might as
well throw money out the damn widow.”

“Okay,” Big Bill said as hoisted himself up.
 
“I’ll go talk to him about the songs and—”

Franklin held up
a finger.
 
“Another thing,” he said,
folding his arms.
 
“You’re gonna love
this.
 
I finally talked to the people at
the Country Fanfare Awards.”
 
Franklin
looked especially oily as he smiled.
 
“They want to give Eddie a special award at this year’s show.”

“They can’t.
 
Record’s
not eligible ‘til next year.”

“Tell them that.
 
Board of Governors voted to create a new category.
 
They figure Eddie’s hot right now so right
now’s the right time to have him on the show.
 
They’re calling it the Tall Cotton Award.”

“Get outta here.”
 
Big
Bill snugged his hat on his head.

Franklin
shrugged at the silliness of it all.
 
“Henceforth to be awarded to any debut album going double platinum or
better.
 
They want to meet with us to
discuss some things.”

Big Bill chuckled.
 
“Fine,” he said.
 
“We’ll go back,
take care of some business then rejoin the tour in LA.”
 
Bill headed for the door but paused to look Franklin
in the eye.
 
“We need to do whatever it
takes to keep this train from derailing,” he said.