Sweeter Life (8 page)

She turned to Ruby and said, “The amp weighs a ton. I know. I’ve helped him carry it. So he couldn’t get very far without wheels. He must be at someone’s house. You know, Seth has a car …”

Ruby felt a wave of relief. How could she have been so stupid? Cyrus had stormed out of the house, followed moments later by Isabel. Mystery solved. Izzy had picked him up and offered to let him stay at her place. Then they came to get his gear. What else could it be?

R
onnie couldn’t sleep. He had tucked the boy into bed, gone to check on the rest of the crew and come tiptoeing back to the room just as the sun was beginning to paint the sky pink. But as exhausted as he felt, he still couldn’t close his eyes. It saddened him to see the boy sleeping there so fitfully. The twisted sheets and the grinding teeth reminded Ronnie of another hotel room in another town, and the night he met Jimmy Waters, one of the world’s anxious sleepers.

Back then, Ronnie had anxieties of his own. He had walked out on the Aaron Maxx tour in Staghorn, Alberta, and was renting a room in the Queen’s Hotel, a room that smelled of smoke and stale beer, and throbbed all night with the red glow of neon. He was also running desperately low on cash and wondering what to do with the rest of his life now that he had more or less tossed his career down the dumper. Then one morning he flipped on the black-and-white television bolted to the wall and, there amid the snow and flickers, he saw Dick Clark: the sharp suit, the slicked-back hair, the youthful good looks. Just the sight of him—not to mention those fresh-faced Californian kids with the white smiles and crisp clothes and wholesome energy—made the day seem a little brighter. Better still, Dick was talking to Gil Gannon and sharing a good laugh.

Gil was short, a little heavy and not nearly as handsome as Dick, but he had all the swagger and self-assurance you’d expect of a major star, even though he hadn’t had a hit in years. He had massive gold rings on his fingers. When he laughed, he shook from head to toe.

Dick waggled the microphone playfully and said, “What say we talk to the animals in the band.” Immediately the musicians began to mug for the camera, cutting up like teenagers, even though they had to be thirty or older. They were dressed in identical black suits with narrow collars, white shirts and skinny ties, way behind the fashion curve for 1968. They had short greasy hair.

The drummer held his sticks to the top of his head, like Martian antennae, and Dick laughed and said, “I guess we know why they call you Moonman.” That got a rise out of the girls in the audience. Then Dick angled closer to the keyboard player, a pale, slouching giant whose solemn attitude was entirely at odds with the rest of the band. He had a neatly trimmed beard, black hair and beady eyes. Dick sat beside him on the piano bench and said, “James Waters, I presume.”

“That’s right, Dick. But you can call me Jimmy.”

“Welcome back to
American Bandstand
, Jimmy. What’s it like being voted the best keyboard player of the decade by
Songmaker Magazine
?”

“It’s all right, Dick. An honour, I guess.”

“I bet it is. And well deserved. That solo of yours on ‘Don’t Look Back’? Wow. You’ve been playing how long?”

“All my life, Dick.”

Dick was getting frustrated with the mopey one-note answers. He moved in close, really working, and said, “You fellas have been on the road non-stop, what, going on three years now. Japan, Europe, Australia—I don’t imagine there’s anyplace you guys haven’t seen. What’s it been like?”

A nearly unbearable silence built as everyone waited for Jim to respond. The guys in the band grew watchful. Though Gil was still jiving and posing, his eyes had lost their playful spark. And Jim just sat there shaking his head as if he were in pain.

Dick, the consummate pro, laughed like it was all some kind of gag. He nudged Jim with his elbow and said, “Seriously, now, how’s it going?”

And something strange happened then. Jimmy Waters, the man who had brought music into Ronnie’s life, this sad-faced giant with the bad posture, grabbed the microphone, stumbled from behind his keyboard and edged up to the camera, his face nearly pressed to the lens. And in the hushed smoky voice of an all-night DJ, he said, “It’s going great, Dick. In fact, it’s all gone. I’m done. I’m history.” Then he dropped the microphone to the floor and shuffled through the stage curtains and away.

Ronnie watched the entire scene with a breathless fascination: to finally see the man, the author of his joy, the genius of his time, and to know he really existed; then to watch helplessly as he self-destructed before the eyes of the world. And that much was clear just watching the show; Jimmy had been virtually quivering onscreen.

A few days later Ronnie found a brief article in the entertainment section of the newspaper, describing how Jimmy Waters had walked off the set of
American Bandstand
and disappeared without a trace. Two concerts had been cancelled so far, and the rest of the U.S. tour was in jeopardy if he didn’t show up soon.

That was all the news Ronnie needed to shake off his dark mood. If ever there was a purpose in his life, a meaning to be grasped, this was it. Maybe there was nothing he could do, but he had to try. At the very least he had to one day tell Jimmy Waters to his face what a difference his playing had made in one man’s life.

Next day Ronnie set off for New York. He thumbed a ride as far as Winnipeg and, with his last few dollars, caught a bus to New York. After one night in his apartment in Brooklyn, he cashed a small bond he’d put aside for emergencies and hit the road again. His first move was to contact Gil Gannon’s booking agent, Nate Wroxeter.

“That bastard is costing me a fortune!” Nate shouted into the phone.

“I understand,” Ronnie said. “That was my thinking exactly. If there was anyone who wanted a piece of Jimmy’s hide, it would be you. And that’s why I called. I thought we could assist each other. I plan to spend the next few weeks tracking him down. It would help to know who else is interested should I find him, and just how interested they are.”

Nate was two-hundred-dollars interested and gave Ronnie all the
information he had on Jimmy: born in Port Swaggart, Pennsylvania, on the south shore of Lake Erie; last known address, Bleecker Street in New York.

It was easy enough to check out the address in the Village. Ronnie spoke to the landlord and found that Jimmy hadn’t lived there for a few years and still owed six months rent. He heard, too, about a wife and kid who had grown tired of waiting for him to return and had gone off in search of a new life.

A week later, with spring just beginning to stir, Ronnie headed for Erie, and then west along the lakeshore, where he discovered that the town of Port Swaggart no longer existed and hadn’t for years, swallowed in America’s post-war sprawl and boom. As he drove along the Industrial Parkway (what used to be Lakeside Drive) he came upon a stretch of shoreline that had once been home to fishing boats and sandy beaches and was now a bleak stretch of toxic industry. About five miles further on, between an oil refinery and an abandoned tire factory, stood a small clapboard motel, all tumbledown and spooky, like something from a horror movie. Ronnie wouldn’t have given it a second glance if not for the sign out front: Waters Inn.

He pulled into the parking lot, which had become a dumping ground for plastic garbage bags, bald tires, threadbare furniture and grimy household appliances. Careful not to brush against anything, he threaded his way toward the motel office where a wooden slammer, completely off its hinges and missing all but a few tatters of screen, leaned against the wall.

Ronnie called through the open doorway and got no answer. Inside he found more trash, and human excrement, but he held his nose and pressed farther into the office, past the front desk. There, a creaky stairway led to a second-floor apartment; and in the front bedroom overlooking the bay, or what remained of the bay, Jimmy Waters lay curled asleep on a bare, stained mattress, his eyes clamped shut, his jaws clenched, his face twitching to the manic rhythm of his dreams.

All that afternoon Jimmy tossed and turned. When he finally opened his eyes, the sun had begun to fade. He looked straight at Ronnie and then sat up slowly, calmly, as if all along he’d been expecting a stranger to appear.

Ronnie offered his hand in greeting. “I can’t tell you what an honour
it is to meet you at last,” he said. “Your playing has made an enduring impression on me, that much is certain. Would you believe me if I said you had changed my life?”

Jimmy leaned forward over his knees, his hands gripping the edge of the mattress. He was dressed in the same clothes he had worn on
American Bandstand
, and they had seen much better days. His beard had grown shaggy, his hair a riot of intentions. “You’re not an American,” he said.

“No, you are right about that, but I love your country more than my own, and I love American music more than anything I can think of. And your solo—”

“Man, I don’t want to hear this.…”

Those words startled Ronnie. “What I mean is your music, your solos, they lift us up, don’t they? They show us the better side of our nature.”

Jim slumped to his side, his head resting on the mattress again, and groaned as if he might be sick to his stomach. But Ronnie pressed on. “Do you … I mean, surely you believe your music has made a difference.”

“Difference? I don’t know what in hell you’re talkin’ about.” Then he turned toward the wall and was soon asleep again.

Ronnie found a small wooden chair that had somehow been overlooked in the general fouling of the place, and he sat for hours and watched Jimmy sleep. Sometime before dawn, he slipped away to an all-night convenience store and bought plastic-wrapped sandwiches and beer. He brought in his suitcase and covered Jim with a sweater.

Next morning Jim accepted a sandwich and seemed genuinely pleased when Ronnie handed him a quart of Schlitz. But he still wasn’t talking much. About noon, Ronnie tried another approach. “You’re originally from around here, aren’t you?”

Jim’s only answer was to take a bite of sandwich. Then, with a grunt, he struggled to his feet and walked to the window that overlooked the bay. He leaned against the frame and touched his index finger to the jagged spikes of the broken panes, one by one. Finally he said, “My daddy moved us here from Arkansas. Got hisself a little fishin’ boat. Back then, we rented a cottage not too far down the shore from here. Hardly remember it myself. So long ago it’s like a dream. Trouble was he never could make the payments on the boat and
he lost it to the bank. Bit of a drinkin’ problem. Drifted around some. Ended up on the docks down in Erie. Wasn’t a big man, you understand, not what you’d think of as a longshoreman, but he was stronger ’n a team of mules. I guess that’s how I remember him best, like Marlon Brando in that movie there.
You
know …” He turned to fix Ronnie with a questioning look.

“On the Waterfront, you mean?”

“That’s the one,
On the Waterfront
, that was my daddy. Coulda been a contendah …” He laughed darkly and then turned away from the window. “Where you from, if you’re not American?”

Ronnie was in a space and time that seemed to vibrate with unseen possibilities. He cleared his throat and said, “I was born in Scotland, but even when I lived there it never really felt like my home.”

Jimmy snorted, a grudging acknowledgement that he, too, had known the feeling of rootlessness. “Where does, then?”

“Feel like home? I don’t know. Maybe nowhere. But I always thought I’d know when I found it. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention.”

They continued to talk throughout the afternoon, continued drinking. Jim seemed most interested in reminiscing, his stories jumping all over the place so it was hard to follow. In return, Ronnie told Jim about his early days in Glasgow and the way he had dashed his father’s dream that they would both one day be men of the church. When he described that pivotal evening in Oxford and hearing the solo on the jukebox, Jim grunted in disbelief. “You’re some kind of fool,” he said.

Maybe it was the air of decay that hung about the place and the quantity of beer he had consumed, but as the day wore on, Ronnie began to agree with Jim’s assessment. It
was
foolish to have come all this way to rescue Jimmy Waters when his own life was a complete shambles. Walking out on a tour the way he had, nearly throttling the star of the show, these were things that would not be forgiven. All things considered, it was unlikely he would ever land himself another gig.

At one point the darkness overcame him. He touched his forehead and said, “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here. I don’t know what got into me. I suppose I had some half-formed notion I might be able to help you through your current troubles. But the sorry truth, my friend, is that I
am in trouble enough myself. Everything is ashes. I don’t know what on earth I’m going to do.”

Jimmy, who had been slumped against the wall, opened his eyes and stared at him a long while without blinking. Then he slowly got to his feet and placed his hands on Ronnie’s head, his fingers tapping out a familiar but crazy rhythm on his skull. He said, “If your life is over, then start again. If you’ve lost your strength, use your weakness. If you can’t find your way, then it’s time to get lost. If you can’t look forward, look back, look back. If you can’t look forward, look back.”

Jim stopped talking then, stopped tapping, and wandered over to the window where he stared into the darkness. But Ronnie knew immediately that he had glimpsed the first vague outlines of something glorious, possibly the grandest thing he had ever conceived of: The Jimmy Waters Revival.

THE IDEA WAS REALLY VERY SIMPLE
. He wanted to hear Jimmy play The Solo one more time, that was all. It didn’t have to be with Gil Gannon. It didn’t have to be anywhere special. But just once Ronnie wanted to hear that magic played live. Just once and he could die happy.

Jimmy was resistant to the idea, even though he had never stopped playing The Solo in a way, had even tapped it out on Ronnie’s skull that day. In the weeks that followed, he played it on kitchen counters and car dashboards and just about any surface he touched. Even so, it took Ronnie more than a month of browbeating to get him in the same room with a keyboard. They had made their way back to New York by then, back to Ronnie’s apartment. One day, Ronnie asked him to play something, and Jim became agitated.