Long Way Gone (15 page)

Nobody had made me come here.

I was too tired to protest. I found a gravel spot next to the fence, lay down, wrapped my arms and one leg around Jimmy, and slept in fits over the next few hours. When the sunlight cracked I couldn't stand myself anymore. I had to be at the Schnitzel after lunch, so I had a few hours. I walked down Second Avenue toward Church, where I found
a thrift store. I bought jeans, a T-shirt, a towel, and some slightly used running shoes for three dollars. Then I went next door to the dollar store and bought some deodorant, a toothbrush, and a three-pack of underwear. Call me weird, but I have a thing about wearing somebody else's underwear.

With my new clothes stuffed in a plastic grocery bag, I turned down Commerce to the Cumberland River and a park commemorating Fort Nashborough. Alongside some beautifully manicured grass, the city had built a dog park alongside the river. Complete with an animal bath. I stripped down to my underwear and used the free flea and tick shampoo and accompanying fountain to eradicate the memory of the Dumpster. I was soaping up my pits when a lady in high heels walked by with three high-maintenance yap dogs and gave me the evil eye.

“Morning!” I hollered. “Send those pups over here. I'll wash 'em.” Something about the whole picture did not comfort her, and she did not take me up on my offer.

T
he next couple of weeks didn't see much improvement. That stack of song sheets the bouncer had given me kept me busy for a few weeks. I knew the songs because I'd heard them played and could replay them in my mind. The tough part was figuring out what the symbols meant, or better yet, what they instructed me to do musically. To figure that out, I'd play the song and study the symbols, giving my mind time to add meaning to the symbols on the page. Thanks to Miss Hagle, that transaction took place relatively quickly.

The only benefit to not owning a truck was not having to put gas in it. But now I was without a place to sleep, and that became a rolling nightly question. I slept in parks, commercial warehouses, an area of woods where I found a soggy mattress beneath a rotten tarp, even beneath an overpass. I didn't like shelters or “homes,” and if you really want to know why, it's because I didn't want to have to admit that I'd fallen that far. Those guys had reached the bottom. I had not. Or at least, I wouldn't admit I had.

My singular need was simple: I needed to get noticed. And I had my doubts about that happening at one of two Laundromats or a greasy hot dog and car wash joint. What kind of self-respecting record executive or producer frequents either? For me, Broadway was key.

During my brief time in Nashville, I'd noticed that guys like me who didn't have a stage would perform on street corners. At any given time
on Broadway, there'd be musicians at the intersection of every Hope Circle North and Hungry Street South singing for their supper.

Desperation is a great teacher, so at eight p.m. one Wednesday I chose Second and Broadway. Why there? Because it was empty. Across the street was a three-story honky-tonk packed to the gills with people wearing hats and cowboy boots. The band currently rocking the house was a three-piece country act led by some guy with a big hat and a bad voice. To his credit, he had great stage presence and was pretty good at making you forget how badly he played. I looked through the windows and saw all those people with their beers raised high and I thought,
They have to leave sometime, and chances are pretty good they'll leave through that door.

So I set up shop and started playing. In about twenty minutes I had a crowd of ten to fifteen. After thirty minutes, forty to fifty people were standing in front of me, dropping tens and twenties in my case.

I'd hit the jackpot. I could feel my star on the rise.

An old boy with a black eye and a scab on his forehead walked by and pointed at the cash in my case. “Better tuck that away,” he said. “Take my word for it.” I did too.

By ten p.m. there were a hundred people packed in a tight circle around me, and while I was having fun and taking requests, I was starting to get a bit worried. I was actually pulling people out of the bars, which, I had a feeling, wouldn't make the bar owners or the performers inside them all that happy. 'Course, if they were all that torqued, they could invite me in to play, so I kept at it.

Eventually I saw a police car stopped in the street just west of me, and a cop routing traffic around the crowd that had spilled over into the street. The officer seemed happy enough, which let me know this was not his first rodeo, but I couldn't shake an uneasy tickle on the back of my neck. And when the big-hat-and-bad-voice cowboy walked out of the bar and made a beeline toward me, pointed at Jimmy, and said, “Nice guitar. It's a shame they don't make them like that anymore,” and then disappeared into the crowd, the hair stood straight up on my neck.

At eleven o'clock I thanked everyone, closed the case, and hurried up First Avenue, looking over my shoulder. Problem was, that's not the direction I should have been looking. I remember stopping at Bank Street and looking both ways, taking one step out into the street, and then I remember feeling a real bad pain in the back of my head and somebody turning out the lights.

The next time my eyes opened it was morning, and a police officer was shaking me with his toe. “Hey, fellow, you alive?”

The blood had caked on the back of my head and neck, and everything from my shoulders up was in a lot of pain. I tried to open my eyes, but one was swollen shut. The only thing I saw were six empty pistachio shells scattered on the street next to me. Like someone had tossed them down with the same indifference and disdain with which they'd handled me.

Then I reached for Jimmy.

But Jimmy wasn't there.

The paramedics doctored my head and offered me a ride to the hospital, but I turned them down, knowing I couldn't pay my bill. Plus, they had no remedy for the pain inside me.

I wandered the streets for weeks. Without a guitar, I had to give up my car wash and Laundromat gigs. One night I found myself standing at the apex of a tall bridge that crossed the Cumberland, staring down at the water. The only thing that kept me from jumping was the knowledge that when they found my body,
if
they found my body, somebody would call my dad. Given everything I'd taken from him, I couldn't stand the thought of him receiving that call. So I walked back down the bridge.

The next morning I found myself in Printer's Alley eyeing the Dumpsters. While the bars all faced outward toward Broadway, a single shop faced the alley—a guitar repair shop. Based on the looks of things, it'd been there awhile. As I stood there with my stomach growling, a
guy walked by me, raised the roll-up door, and began turning on all the lights. In the window hung a sign. Help Wanted.

I knew I couldn't apply for a job in my present condition, so I bathed in the dog fountain, and once my clothes had mostly dried I pulled my hair back in a ponytail, knocked on the door, and pointed at the sign.

The owner said, “You know anything about guitars?”

“Only how to play them.”

“Ever worked on them?”

“No, sir.”

“How's your ear?”

“It's okay.”

He handed me a guitar. “What's wrong with the B string?”

I plucked it and let it ring. “It's flat.” Then I tuned it by ear and handed it back to him.

He pulled another off the rack. “And this one?”

I ran my fingers across the strings, then tuned it. “Strings are old. Need to be changed. Whoever played it last has real acidic sweat. And I think that half the strings are lights while the other half are mediums.”

The man smiled and handed me a third guitar. “One more.”

This one was a little different. It was mostly in tune, but when I tried to tune it, something was off. I played it briefly and discovered the problem. “This one has a warped neck. Can't help you with that.”

“Would you like to learn?”

“Yes, sir.”

He extended his hand. “Riggs Graves. Welcome to Graves's Guitars.”

“Peg.”

“Peg your real name?”

“Does it matter?”

He laughed. “Only if you want me to pay you.”

Riggs handed me an apron, and thus began my education into the fascinating world of guitar repair. Twenty-five years earlier Riggs had come to Nashville with dreams, like most everyone else. When those didn't come true, he fell back on the only thing he knew to do. Repair
guitars. He'd been doing it ever since and had a pretty solid reputation, as evidenced by who walked in and out of his door day in and day out.

While working for him solved my income problem, it didn't solve my housing dilemma. After a week Riggs picked up on the fact that I wasn't one to clock out early. He also noticed I wasn't one to shower often. He said, “You live nearby?”

I pointed in a northerly direction. “Couple miles that way.”

I'm not a very good liar.

He pointed toward the river. “You got to walk over that bridge to get there?”

I nodded.

He looked right at me. “Long way down, isn't it?”

I didn't respond.

He was adjusting the truss rod, lowering the action on a Gibson. “Back when I was about your age,” he said, continuing to work, “I was trying my best to play all the famous places up and down this street. When my level of play proved that I would no longer be able to do that, the guys at the bar next door offered to sell me this space. Somehow I got a mortgage and set up shop. Had no other place to sleep, so I rolled out a foam mattress right there on the floor. That turned out to be a stroke of good luck, 'cause the headliners at the Ryman would knock on my door at all hours of the night. I got to know some of the greats. And little by little, I built an apartment on the second floor. It's not much, but it's empty. It's dry. It's got a hot shower.” He smiled. “And if you listen closely, you'll never miss a show at the Ryman. It's yours if you like.”

When Riggs walked me up the narrow stairway and showed me the single-room apartment with a bed, a shower, a sink, and a window that overlooked the Ryman, I could have kissed that man on the mouth.

W
hoever had stolen Jimmy had stolen more than my father's guitar. He'd stolen my desire. Making music was too much of a reminder of my own idiocy. So I tuned guitars and mandolins and banjos, but I didn't even think about performing. For several months I lived my life within a few city blocks. I spent my days and many evenings working with Riggs. When I clocked out, I'd climb up to the roof, sit in a chair, and eat my dinner while listening to the sounds of Broadway. None were better than those coming out of the Ryman. One story up, I lived above the horns and business and cutthroat world below me. If I wanted peace, I climbed to the roof. From my perch I didn't see many people, and I'm pretty sure no one really saw me. There was a tall hotel a block away, and occasionally I'd see someone standing on the balcony, but for the most part that world above the street was mine alone.

Six months into my new job, Riggs was watching me play scales on a guitar as I tried to figure out what was wrong with the sound. As I grew more comfortable with him, I loosened up and would allow myself to dig into a guitar every now and then to see what kind of sound it put out.

One day he nodded toward the Ryman. “You been to a show?”

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never been.”

“One of the acts there tonight is an old customer. Gave me a couple of tickets. You want to go?”

I didn't have a lot in the way of clothes.

He was leaning over his workbench straightening his tools. “I've got to run to the store this afternoon to pick up a few shirts. Why don't we close up early, and I'll buy you a new shirt or something. You can't very well go to the Mother Church of Country Music dressed like that.”

“I'd like that. I'd like that a lot.”

While he drove, Riggs asked, “You ever listen to the Opry?”

“Growing up, I listened with my dad thousands of hours.”

Riggs was always reading biographies. Loved history. He and my dad would have gotten along fabulously. “You know the history?” he asked.

“Looks like an old church.”

He switched hands on the steering wheel. “Around 1890 a fire-and-brimstone preacher named Sam Jones was holding Holy Ghost tent revivals along the river for the rough-and-tumble riverboat crowd. Fellow by the name of Ryman owned about thirty-five steamboats, and he, like everyone else in town, had heard about the charismatic Jones. Ryman was a total skeptic, but he ambled down the docks one night to see what the fuss was about. Something happened, and he walked away different.

“He leveraged his fortune to build what he called a ‘tabernacle' for Jones, and in 1892 the Union Gospel Tabernacle was completed. Aside from being a popular church, it hosted musical acts. It had excellent acoustics, and pretty soon everybody wanted to play there. Folks called it the Carnegie Hall of the South. Wasn't just musicians. They had ballet. Political debates. Broadway musicals.

“Then in 1943, when the world needed a shot in the arm, the Ryman rented out its venue on Saturday nights to a local radio show. The Opry played there for thirty years. Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash . . . even Elvis. All of them played right here.” He tapped the dash with his index finger. “By '74 the Opry had outgrown the Tabernacle, so they up and left—of course Sam Jones was long gone by then too.

“For twenty years the Tabernacle sat locked up, leaking and rotting. I used to sneak in through the backstage entrance and walk through
her, smelling damp mildew and rotting wood and trying to listen for an echo of the greats, but the only sound was pigeons. I'd creep up on that hallowed stage and look out across all those empty seats and wonder just what in the world had gone so wrong as to uproot something so good. So right.” He paused.

“Finally the performers raised the money and reopened the Ryman. Today all kinds of people play there. Some deserve to. Some don't. But there was a day, not too very long ago, when folks would stand on that stage and sing out a song that was not about them. It was something beautiful that blanketed the people. I'd like to think that there are still folks around who can do that, because that kind of song is something special. Folks like that don't come around all that often.”

That night I sat in the balcony with Riggs and tried to hide my tears.
My dad would love this.

After the show, as we were walking out, Riggs introduced me to a lady.

“Jen, this is Cooper O'Connor. Goes by the name Coop, and if you really get to know him he'll let you call him Peg, for reasons I've never quite understood.”

She shook my hand while Riggs continued. “He works with me and lives atop my store. He's pretty handy with most anything, is honest as the day is long, and might be a good guy to know if you need someone close by.”

The following week, on my nineteenth birthday, I started working nights at the Ryman.

I started in the stage crew. We'd tear down one set only to set up another for the next night's show, often long into the night. Many times I got only an hour or two of sleep before I heard Riggs roll up his security door.

Working with Riggs brought with it another benefit. He was well known, had a thriving business, and as a result had a constant stream of some of the world's greatest guitars coming through his door. All of which I got to play. Martin, Gibson, Taylor, Collings.

I really fell in love with a handmade guitar called a McPherson, but given that they started at about seven thousand dollars, I just enjoyed those from afar. The McPherson was designed and built by an engineering genius who offset the sound hole. Most guitars have a sound hole right in the middle beneath the strings. McPherson argued that center-hole placement removed much of the resonance, so he positioned it off to the side, giving the top more resonating surface.

He also made one other change that was fundamentally different from every other guitar; he cantilevered the neck. Most guitar necks joined the body in a dovetail joint, but McPherson argued that had a way of deadening the sound. Why not cantilever the neck above the body to allow more sound travel and resonation? It worked. It was one of the most melodious, ringing, bell-like guitars I'd ever played. Almost had a voice-like quality. A lot of the bluegrass guys didn't care too much for it, because it had too much resonation. Bluegrass guys like to play a note and then let it die so they can get on to the next. But finger-pickers or singer-songwriters or rhythm folks or studio guys who needed something to fill in, who strummed to create a blanket of sound, loved McPhersons.

Playing so many guitars made me think of Jimmy a good bit. Every time I strummed a guitar, I compared the sound to Jimmy. I wondered where he was. Was somebody taking good care of him? Did they play him? Had they pawned him? Thrown him over the bridge? Stuffed him in a corner? Of all the things I'd done to my father—striking him in the face, stealing his money, stealing his truck—the deepest pain in me had to do with Jimmy and my failure to take care of him.

I could never go home without him.

Working with Riggs in the daylight and at the Ryman at night became my life. I got to know some of the regulars at the Ryman, and before I turned twenty I'd seen maybe a hundred shows and begun to appreciate music from the audience side of the stage. Which was good. It taught me a lot that experience from the stage had never taught me. How to interact with an audience. What draws them in. What turns them off.

Most of all, I learned one thing that my father had told me early but I'd never quite appreciated: “Great music, the kind that moves people, is an offering. Anything less is a counterfeit, and those who hear it know it best.”

I also confirmed for myself another of Dad's truths—the great players aren't great because they can dazzle you with hummingbird wings for fingers. They dazzle by knowing what notes to leave in and what notes to leave out. And more often than not, it's the leaving out that makes them great.

Almost three years had passed since I left home. Riggs fed me dinner every Sunday and introduced me to his family. His wife. His son. His house outside of town. His midlife-crisis Harley, which his wife wouldn't let him ride. During those years I tried to put thoughts of Colorado behind me. Dad. Big-Big. The tents. The sound of the highway beneath the tires of the bus. The sun coming up over the mountains. My dad's voice in the aspens. Snow on my face. Jimmy.

It was a lonely time.

That does not mean its education was lost on me. I kept my eyes and ears open and became a pretty quick study of people.

Either through experience or condition, we think of a bar as a good-time hangout. It's primarily a function of flashing neon signs and media bombardment, but think about the names we give them. Lounge. Speakeasy. Watering hole. Club. Do any of those sound like someplace you don't want to go? 'Course not.

Think about every advertisement you've ever seen for wine, beer, or spirits. Very intelligent and well-paid executives have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to cause you, Pavlov's dog, to salivate at the sight or sound of their ad. Television shows with catchy theme songs do the same. Who doesn't want to go someplace where everybody knows your name? Where you can pull up a chair and laugh with your friends. Take
a load off with total strangers. Turn your back on the outside world, even if just for an hour.

But the longer I lived on Broadway, the clearer it became to me. Truth is, folks frequent bars to medicate something. That something is one thing when they walk in. It's another after a few drinks. Usually less shrouded. Alcohol is the great unveiler. The backstage tour. The thing that pulls back the curtain on Oz. Most who walk in that door drink to drown. Or drown out.

The second major lesson I learned is that an entertainer lives three lives. They occur in descending order. And like gravity, no one escapes the inevitability. The first is the best. It's the ascendancy. The rocket shot. Where they feed daily on the all-you-can-eat buffet of hope and promise. That's the one everybody talks about and likes to remember.

The brilliance of the flame varies, but for a star to be made, a rocket must take off. Some possess the blast of a bottle rocket. Some the
Endeavor
. Stars vary in their brilliance, and some shine longer than others. Whether a long, slow burn, a trip to Mars, or a self-inflicted flash-in-the-pan, they all eventually run out of gas. It's the nature of being the rocket. And as their sustainability fades, the has-been entertainers are left orbiting the casinos, which are filled with broken people who have hung their hope on the lever, the wheel, the dice, or the cards, praying, “Please, dear God . . .” And because casinos are really good at taking people's money and making them feel worse than they did when they walked in, they offer live entertainment to medicate the malaise. Or lessen the blow.

No matter how bright the marquees, the casino stage is the entertainer's second life. And while there are exceptions, casinos are cemeteries for entertainers. Where stars go to flame out. From Biloxi to Atlantic City to Vegas, casinos pay the has-beens to be, once again, what they once were. Which they never are. Fading stars take the money—which they swore they'd never do when they were riding high—and gig to thinning crowds and tired memories, in clothes that are too tight, with voices that don't carry. Because some applause is better than no applause.

The casino circuit lasts longer for some than others, but it too must come to an end. Those who can no longer play casinos, play bars. Life number three. Where an entire stage has been replaced with a single stool. Where sound crews have been replaced with a pedal at your feet. Where pyrotechnics and lasers have been replaced with a sixty-watt bulb hanging from a frayed cord above your head.

Whatever the case, no matter how it's spun, bars are the bottom. The last stop before the black hole. While many launch a career from honky-tonks and roadside speakeasies, nobody rebirths a career from a bar. Those who return to play bars are played out. Done. For the singer, songwriter, musician, entertainer, pop star, once-was-has-been-never-will-be-again clinging to life support, the bar scene is hospice, and the drunken, muted applause all the morphine they're going to get.

The third and possibly most valuable bit of information I gleaned from my life in these years was this: a lot of contemporary thought and criticism is given to gauging and critiquing voices. Comparing one to another so we know where their pedestal ranks in relation to others. Inside us, there is an incessant need to segment and compare. The experts who joust in this field use words like
vocal quality. Timbre. Nasality. Range. Head notes. Neutral larynx. Chest register. Vibrato. Tone. A list. B list. C list. Star.
When the critics are done tearing apart a single set of vocal cords, trying to understand what makes it sound the way it does and what its limitations are, the voice they were cutting on is left a twitching corpse on the sidewalk. Disconnected parts with little resemblance to the whole. Roadkill. Not enough left to sing “Ring around the Rosie.”