Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (7 page)

His daughter was dead and he’d have to grieve, but that
could wait.
 
God would pass judgment on
what Tammy had done, but unless Henry did something about what lay in front of
him, every voter in his district would pass their own judgment on Henry and his
suitability for the Board of Supervisors.
 
After all, this would be the third Teasdale suicide in the last fifteen
years.
 
The rumors, already bad, would
become unbearable.
 
Henry knew he’d never
get elected if his opponent started raising the question of insanity in the
family gene pool.
 
He had to do
something.
 
He decided to make it look
like murder.

He went to the kitchen and got the rubber gloves.
 
They were small but he managed to squeeze his
hands into them.
 
He returned to the
bedroom and pocketed the suicide note.
 
Next, he wiped the gun clean.
 
Then he wondered what to do with it.
 
Put it across the room?
 
No, there
were powder burns on her head.
 
Why would
a killer shoot her at point blank range and leave the gun across the room?
 
Now that he thought about it, why would he
leave the gun at all?
 
Henry decided he’d
take it with him and drop it off the Talahatchie
Bridge.
 
That was fine, but still, something seemed
wrong.
 
But what?
 
Oh.
 
Tammy wouldn’t have just stood there and let the intruder shoot
her.
 
She’d either have something under
her fingernails from putting up a fight, or her hands would have been tied or
something.
 
Reluctantly, Henry went to
the back yard, pulled down the wash line, and returned to the bedroom.

After wrestling Tammy’s stiff arms behind her back and tying
them, Henry set about making it obvious that Tammy had walked in on a burglar
with anger control issues.
 
He rifled
through all the drawers, throwing stuff on the floor, overturning lamps, taking
jewelry.
 
Having achieved the desired
walked-in-on-a-burglar effect, Henry picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1.

9.

Nashville
,
Tennessee

Whitney Rankin sat in Owen Bradley Park wide-eyed and
wondering if he’d come to the right place.
 
He was an unknown songwriter, just arrived in Music
City after spending ten years
honing his skills in thankless places.
 
He was sitting at the north end of fabled Music Row, directly across
from the original Country Music Hall of Fame.
 
It wasn’t there any more, having moved downtown a year or two ago.
 
Whitney wondered if that was symbolic of
anything.

His tight-lipped smile was in conflict with the vague sense
that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but he wasn’t sure where else
to go to do what he did.
 
“Damn,” he
whispered as he looked around.
 
“Now what?”

Whitney knew Owen Bradley was one of the most important producers
in the history of country music, having made Patsy Cline and Brenda Lee huge
stars by applying to country the songwriting and production techniques of pop
music.
 
Depending on your point of view,
Owen Bradley was the man who deserved either credit or blame for having paved
the way for what became known as the Nashville Sound.
 
Whitney gave him credit.
 
He didn’t subscribe to the notion that one
type of country music was better than another.
 
They were just different.
 
They
were all part of the music’s evolution where the worst thing that could happen
was stagnation.
 
So it was no wonder to
Whitney they’d honored the man with a park of his own, even if the park itself
wasn’t much to speak of.
 
It was small
and unassuming and brought to mind Hal Ketchum’s notion about how country music
was just three chords and the truth.
 
It
consisted of some trees, several pine straw-lined flower beds, a few concrete
benches, and a life-size bronze sculpture of the man himself seated at the
piano.
 
It was a nice little patch of
calm, Whitney thought.

He was twenty-nine and dressed like a songwriter who’d never
had an appointment on Music Row, which was okay since he’d never had an
appointment there.
 
The standard dress
code up and down The Row was country club casual and golf course ready.
 
Every now and then you saw someone wearing a
suit and tie or dressed in full country regalia, but not as often as the
tourists expected.

At first glance Whitney looked more-or-less like he
belonged.
 
But on closer examination he
somehow
looked.
. . different.
 
He was six foot three and, as his mama used
to say, he was so skinny he had to stand in the same place twice to cast a
shadow.
 
He wore tight black Wranglers, a
black t-shirt with a dark gray vest over it, and a worn pair of black Tony Lama
ropers.
 
He wore a ragged piece of an old
red bandana tied around his wrist.
 
He
had a turquoise stud in one ear and a dangling silver earring in the other.
 
His hair was long and dark and dangerous as
it fell from under a black Resistol Lancer with a thin leather lariat hatband
with a small red feather in it.
 
He had a
dark patch of stubble on his chin but it wasn’t enough to spoil his narrow,
still boyish face.
 
It added up to an
off-kilter country look that tended to draw queer looks but, having always been
a little different than others, Whitney was used to the stares.

He suddenly hopped to his feet to stop a woman who was
walking by.
 
“Excuse me, ma’am.”
 
He sounded southern as fried okra.
 
“I’m sorry to bother you, but could you do
me
a favor and take my picture?”
 
He handed her a disposable camera.
 
“Over here by the statue?
 
I appreciate it.”
 
Whitney was creating a photo chronicle of his
journey to wherever it was he was going.
 
The woman took Whitney’s picture then smiled at him.
 
She saw his guitar case and knew why he was
here and what he was up against, especially dressed the way he was.
 
“Thank you, ma’am,” he said as she went on
her way.

Whitney was alone in the world, but he was all right with
that.
 
He figured every good songwriter
needed his share of bad fortune.
 
Whitney’s mom had died two years ago and his dad had disappeared long
before that.
 
He didn’t know much about
his father.
 
His mom told him only that
he was a good man, but troubled.
 
She had
remarried, to a man named J.C. Rankin who adopted Whitney and gave him a new
last name, but that was about all he’d given.
 
He hadn’t wasted much gas on being a father to the boy.
 
Whitney was all right with that too, after
all J.C. hadn’t fathered him, so it was enough that he’d fed and housed him
until he was seventeen.
 
And he rarely
hit him.
 
You couldn’t ask more than that
from a stranger, really.

 
Whitney had grown up
with a guitar in his hands, a guitar that his father had left behind.
 
Whitney could play it too.
 
And ever since he was fourteen, he’d been
writing songs.
 
He had a suitcase full of
them but, like many songwriters, Whitney had one in particular that was his
favorite.
 
He couldn’t wait to play it
for somebody in Music City.
 
And now here he was.
 
Now he’d find out one of two things.
 
Either he had what it took or he’d come to
the wrong place.
 
Either way, he hoped
his mama was looking down, watching him.
 
He wanted to make her proud.

Whitney was sitting on a concrete bench, so uncertain about
his future that all he could do was look around and say in a funny way, “Oh
boy.”
 
He didn’t know exactly what to do
next, but it was time to do something.
 
So he stood and picked up his guitar case.
 
Just as he about to leave he heard a splash
come from behind the tall wooden fence that bordered the south end of the
park.
 
Whitney wandered under a magnolia
tree and looked for a spot in the fence where he could see through.
 
He wedged the toe of his boot between a
couple
of slats in the fence and pulled himself up to look
over the top.
 
What Whitney saw sent a
tingle up his spine.
 
It was the crystal
blue water of a swimming pool in the shape of a great big guitar.
 
He shook his head slowly.
 
“Well, check it out,” he said slowly.
 
It even had strings painted on the bottom.

10.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol did the decent thing, sending
a patrolman out of the Gulfport
substation to break the news.
 
Eddie was
in his hotel room working on a new song when the knock came to his door.
 
“Mr. Long, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad
news.”

Eddie blanched when he heard Tammy had been shot.
 
Of all the things he might have imagined the
patrolman
saying,
that his wife had been shot would
have been way down the list. The patrolman reached out to catch him when it
looked like Eddie’s legs might give way, but he made it to a chair and sat
down.
 
“She was shot?”
 
He couldn’t believe it.

Eddie canceled the rest of his shows and made the long drive
back to Quitman County.
 
The whole way back he thought about what his
future held now that Tammy was gone.

It was a bleak day in the Mississippi
delta when they laid Tammy to rest, overcast with thunder rolling in the
distance.
 
The humid air was dead still
and thick as two dogs’ heads.

Eddie did his best to be strong.
 
He walked on one side of Mrs. Teasdale
offering support while Henry was on the other.
 
There was a good turn out at the church.
 
The preacher kept it simple and let anyone speak who was of a mind
to.
 
Carl sat in the back of the church
with his wife and toddler.
 
He kept his
mouth shut and felt guilty about everything he’d ever done.

After the funeral, family and friends gathered at the
Teasdale’s home just outside of Hinchcliff.
 
Everyone agreed
,
it smelled good up inside that
house.
 
It was the largest gathering of
green bean casseroles ever recorded north of Yazoo
City.
 
There wasn’t a can of cream of mushroom soup
on a grocery store shelf in a four county radius.
 
And God alone knows how many chickens had
been fried.
 
And the pies!
 
The flakiest crusts, the
sugariest fillings, the best fruit and nuts, butter, lard, and shortening.
 
Pure comfort for the
mournful and two tons of saturated fats.

A group of women gathered around a vessel of Miss Lexie’s
pineapple casserole, a dish notable for its unique combination of a sweet
tropical fruit, sharp cheese, butter, sugar, and a pile of Ritz cracker
crumbs.
 
They ate the entire thing
straight from the dish.

Another group of women, this one cattier and less particular
than the casserole group, stood to the side of the room making derisive
comments about the diameter of certain thighs over at the buffet.
 
They also talked about how great Eddie looked
in his all-black suit.
 
They knew it was
tacky, what with the dirt still being fresh on top of his dead wife and all,
but they couldn’t help themselves, and they meant it in the nicest possible
way.
 
He really did look good in his
grief.

Carl was there, still with his wife and toddler.
 
He had surrendered to what he assumed would
be a lifetime of guilt and fear of exposure.
 
He was drinking bourbon by the tumbler and weeping uncontrollably.
 
The sheriff was there too.
 
He had come as a friend to express his
condolences but at one point late in the afternoon Mr. Teasdale pulled him
aside.
 
“What can you tell me about the
investigation?”

“Now, Henry, I’m not here on business,” the sheriff
said.
 
“But if you insist, I’ll tell you
what I can.”

Henry looked him in the eyes.
 
“Let’s step outside.”

They went to the back porch and lit cigarettes.
 
“Henry,” the sheriff said, “I gotta tell you,
this is got me stumped.
 
I got evidence
indicating both murder and suicide.”
 
He
lowered his voice.
 
“And I don’t mean to
be disrespectful, but not too long before she died, Tammy had sexual relations
with someone other than Eddie.”

“What’re you saying?”

“All I’m saying is this thing ain’t on all fours.”

“It sure ain’t.”
 
Henry looked away, ashamed that his daughter had sinned by cheating on
her husband and had compounded the matter by taking her own life.

“I can’t make head
nor
tails out of
it, Henry.”
 
He dropped his cigarette on
the ground, stamped it out.
 
“Now, the
medical examiner hasn’t finished all the toxicology tests, but I tend to think
the simplest explanation’s the best and that gunshot wound in the head’s as
simple as it gets.
 
I’ll know more in a
few days, but for now I’m telling the district attorney it’s an open murder
investigation.
 
We got no useful
fingerprints and no weapon.”
 
He
hesitated a moment, then looked at Henry.
 
“Did Tammy own a gun?”

Mr. Teasdale nodded as he flicked his cigarette away.
 
“She had a twenty-two.
 
A pistol.”

“Hmmm, ‘at’s the caliber what killed her, but there weren’t
no
gun at the house.
 
That’s what got me thinking it was a murder.
 
You know, like someone broke in the house and
found the gun and then Tammy walked in on him…”
 
He rolled his shoulders to say ‘you know the
rest.’

Mr. Teasdale looked off at the horizon and squinted.
 
“You said you got evidence of suicide
too.
 
What’s that about?”
 
Henry thought he’d cleaned things up pretty
good.
 
He didn’t like hearing the word
‘evidence.’