THE HORNS OF SEPTEMBER
Wendy Potocki
CHAPTER 1
Strange things happen in September. It’s a known scientific fact. Numerous double-blind studies have proven that it’s true. The odds of things going awry in September far outweigh simple chance. You take January for instance. You can start a project and complete it like clockwork without a hitch or dark cloud even making an appearance on the horizon. You take that same activity and start it in September, and you’ll end up with a cabal, a nightmare, a conflagration, a confluence of potent missteps spelling certain disaster, a Kafka on bennies plague that will travel into the marrow of the idiot starting such an endeavor – roosting until it can blossom into a disease that will lay waste to the fool in the most horrible way imaginable. He’ll be begging for death long before it’s all over. These are just some of the travails that are assured to befall the initiator of such lunacy and, I might add, long before the transgressor of the laws of nature even remembers what the hell he set out to do in the first place. The thing is, I knew all this – even knew about what those in the know call, “The Horns of September.” This charming euphemism stands for the propensity of the unlikely accident of two long, sharp horns perfectly splintering each butt cheek while a thousand more barbed ones – having been shoved deeply under your skin –simultaneously and successfully worm their way to your heart thereby carvin’ you out a new one happening with startling regularity to September’s trespassers. I knew and was well-versed in not beginning things in this malevolent month and thereby inadvertently putting out a welcome mat for horrors to enter one’s life. Horrors of such gravity that they could make the hells outlined in Dante’s Inferno look like starting kindergarten knowing the alphabet, having two peanut butter sandwiches in each pocket and being supplied with enough chewing gum for everyone in comparison. I can only sit here and wonder why in spite of my being cognizant of all the misery that goes hand-in-hand with being so dim-witted as to begin an enterprise in this most unfortunate of months, I threw caution to the wind and chose the month of September anyway.
The day started normally enough. I usually didn’t pay much attention to what was going on outside my small inner world, but I did notice the calendar on the kitchen wall. It was big enough to choke a horse and don’t know how I’d been missing it all these years, but this morning I saw it and it said plain as day Friday, September 1, 1961. It should have set off warning bells. It should have sent off drum rolls and enough Fender feedback to make me, and everyone else in the whole great state of South Carolina, cover their ears in a reflexive, protective move. It should have caused every bloodhound hot on the scent of a dangerous escaped felon on the run, to stop in their tracks and come howling after me instead to try to prevent me from doing what I was about to do. Course, none of that happened. Instead I just sat there eating my sugary cereal that released chocolate when you added milk. My mother thought I had outgrown it, but I’d soon prove her wrong once and for all on the point of my supposed maturity. Let me tell you that years do not equate with intelligence, buddy boy. I was living proof of that because instead of thinking about my non-future that was going to soon dissipate having met its polar opposite, I was just thinking about what I always thought about which was music. My music. Their music. Popular music. Thoroughly hated, rejected and obscure music, which by the way I call hatredcure, but I’ll get to that subject shortly. Instead I sat there a’chewing and crunch, crunch, crunching my cereal to the beat that my foot was tapping underneath the kitchen table.
Why my interest in music? Don’t know. I only know that music is the only thing in the world I gave even half a shit about, but then us Southern boys are raised to be laid-back and cool. We aren’t supposed to be flaring up and running around buck wild even if some parts of the world see us that way. In fine Southern families like mine, it’s just the opposite. Our women are raised to be coquettish and genteel and we males are supposed to be gentlemen – in the Southernly-style. That means politeness and manners coming straight out of King Arthur’s Court. We’re expected to do it all: open doors, say ma’am, treat women like royalty, stick out our pinkies when drinking hoot and holler from a teacup, and tip our hats while say mornin’ to complete strangers who happened within our general proximity. These days those hats are mainly imaginary as very few of my contemporaries even wear them. My dad still does most times – a big straw Panama. He stands as a testament to the old ways of doing things, but then my dad is the perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. He’s the prototype of which I speak. My dad is a judge. A county one and one fine Southernly gentleman. He’s cool as a backyard swimming pool and as good a representative of the Southernly way of doing things as anyone in Longview. And in case I haven’t properly introduced myself, I’m Charles Beckett, son of Lisa Quivers Beckett and Judge Thomas Beckett. Our happy family resides in Longview, or in other words, Longview is where we all live.
Longview is located right outside the barn door of Charleston and to the traverse of Aiken. I usually have to answer that question as to where the hell it’s located since nobody except those that live in Longview even know it exists. Don’t know why it’s not as famous as its neighbors. Maybe it’s just another mystery for Longview is a conundrum in many ways. I’ll start by addressing its size for Longview is too small to properly be called a city and too big to call a town. I call it a towity, but then I make-up words that don’t exist as you’ve seen by my earlier example of hatredcure. I told you I’d get to that subject shortly and we Southernly gentlemen never lie. I’m not talking about down ‘cause we do that quite well and often. I mean lying as in telling a falsehood – it’s on our shortlist. As for making up words, when I was very young, my mother had a theory that she liberally dispensed about why I engaged in such fantasy. She used to say it was because I was a genius. She hasn’t said that in a very, very long time.
Now our towity is named Longview after the man who founded it – or more likely, found it and snatched it from someone else. Probably a case of another land grab that seems to be so popular in our country’s early history. I suppose it was fun at the time, but not for the people it was snatched from. Course I don’t know that Mr. Long did that ‘cause I don’t know anything about Mr. Long – or his view. Funnily enough, nobody else apparently does either. There’s not even a statue in the town square that would give a glorified hint at what the man looked like. His place in the history of this towity and the reason for it being his namesake have apparently vanished without a trace. Your guess is as good as mine as to what warranted this honor to be bestowed if honor it be, but Longview has another name – one that makes more sense to anyone who actually lives here. It’s an affectionate name that’s actually used more than its official one by its inhabitants because of its relevance. It’s not written down in any book that I know of, but if you live in Longview, you know that we the people have lovingly dubbed it ‘Shucktown.’
This nickname of Shucktown was derived from the main activity in this towity which would be shuckin’. Whether it be peas or corn or potatoes – someone in Shucktown is always shuckin’ something. It could even be your neighbor for amongst us youngsters shuckin’ is also a quaint, none-too-subtle euphemism for making love. Because of the richness of terminology, shuckin’ can mean a lot of things to a lot of people and can be done in most places – in the kitchen, on the porch, in the fields, in the bedroom, on a picnic bench, in the backseat of a sedan, or in the bathroom of any number of fine restaurants we have around the towity. These bathrooms all seem to have at least two locks on the door which brings us to another of Shucktown’s mysteries which is why they’re here in the first place. I mean the restaurants – not the bathrooms.
In Shucktown, there’s at least one of every type of restaurant known to man. Question is why. Why the hell does Shucktown have so many fine dining experiences for sale? It’s not like all this shuckin’ has demonstrably increased our population all that much. The joke amongst Shucksters – another word I made-up denoting youngsters living in Shucktown – is that we must not be doing it right. I can only speak for myself and know I’m not, but then I haven’t had much practice. At least, that’s the excuse I use right now. That and this old chestnut delivered with fervent intensity to the cool drink of water layin’ under my hips, “It’s ‘cause I want you so much.”
As to the reason for the plethora of every conceivable type of restaurant being in Shucktown, the explanation is as shrouded in as much mystery as Mr. Long. And Shucktown is not limited to fine dining – we have it all. Even our own version of New York’s famous Cotton Club. Ours is called Happy’s Club after the guy that built it and still runs it, James “Happy” Enders. He came from nothing, doesn’t have a job, but somehow gets this nightclub built using what? I don’t know, but it’s the same story with a lot of what goes on in Shucktown. How does all this happen in a rural towity that apparently has no discernible commerce unless you can consider shuckin’ a commerce and, son, stop right there if you do cause that would be illegal. Now it would seem to me – the only one that apparently has at least seriously contemplated this subject – that it’s somehow linked to the amount of money per capita for there’s money here in Shucktown. Now if you’re the super organized type and taking notes regarding all the peculiarities of Shucktown, I suggest you use a pencil. I’m not going in any particular order – and in case the spirit moves you – you may want to rearrange them in order of importance and your important may not be mine.
Where was I? Oh, yeah … money. Big money. Towity money. Money to go to restaurants. Money to build museums and privately fund a local ballet company. Piles of filthy money. How it got here or why I don’t know – all I know is that it’s here. You’d have to be blind to miss it. It’s all around Shucktown – apparent in the fine, stately houses; the antiqued furnishings; the imported, expensive haberdashery that’s constantly blowing off the top of some muckety-muck’s head sending them endlessly chasing it down Main Street in a sad attempt to rein it in; the haute couture rags that hang uselessly around the dimpled, card-playing shoulders of our Shucktownesses; and the big, flashy cars that look like tanks. When the fat cats of this towity drive to work in the morning it looks like a flotilla of pirate ships. All they’d need is their wives to jump up on the hoods and do the pageant wave to make it a real spectacle. Like sailors of old, think you’d most likely run into the same problem of being able to discern mermaid from manatee, but most of the wives here would be all too eager to pose like hood ornaments. They’ve all participated and are well-accustomed to the boom-boom grooming of pageantry and know how to throw a wave, but enough about money. Let’s get back to the subject of my dad and being cool.
Growing up, the only way I could tell my dad was alive was because each time I saw him, his body was in a different part of the house – and in a different position. It was almost like he was playing a perverse game of statue with me. At least that’s how I used to see things. I tried to be logical, but it was hard for a tyke of my tender ears to not be freaked out by the whole affair. I knocked on the left side of my head several times to wake up sleeping neurons and gave it a try. I narrowed it down to two possible scenarios. Either he was moving under his own volition, or someone was hoisting him around the house and posing him. Since I wasn’t doing the latter and there was only one other occupant of the household, it fell on my mom to be the culprit in the body hoisting conspiracy and that meant it wasn’t happening. Now I’m not saying my mom isn’t strong, but let’s just say she hasn’t been since I’ve known her. And as long as the subject of being cool and knowing someone is alive is now being discussed, I’d say my mom and dad are a matched pair. However, to determine my mother’s viability, I’d use a different litmus test. With her it would be that each and every morning she’d waft down the staircase wearing a different outfit ala Loretta Young. Being the only youngster in a household that made enough to afford a couple of TVs, I couldn’t help noticing that my mom’s behavior sort of mimicked her favorite program. And don’t be having some sort of emergency in the middle of her watching that program or you might just be having to transport yourself to the hospital. For me in my formative years, that would have meant on a tricycle. Don’t even want to think about how long it would have taken for me to pedal there, especially if I was gushing blood from some main artery. Mortal woundings will slow you down each and everytime. I suppose I could have waited with tongue touching the carpet next to her feet until her program ended, but I was sure she would have stuck it clear through with those stiletto heels she constantly wore thereby lancing my taste buds and ruining my enjoyment of ice cream forever.
As to why she watched The Loretta Young Show – didn’t know. I was stuck trying to figure out how they got all that star personae shrunk down to fit onto that tiny screen. I figured the process they used must be similar to making a juice concentrate. I don’t know what thoughts were passing through my mom’s head. All I know is that she got this almost transfixed look when watching that show. Like she was there, but nobody was home – or like she was hypnotized. I thought that because I saw a hypnotist on television once. He selected a person he didn’t know from the audience and hypnotized him. The participant got that same exact expression on his face that my mom got watching Loretta. I got curious to find out if she was hypnotized or just looked like she was so I tried a bit of an experiment. When her face went blank, I tiptoed up to her and whispered, “You are a chicken” in her ear to see if she’d get up out of her chair and start clucking. All I got was an icy stare.
In terms of my mom watching Loretta’s show, there didn’t seem to be a high point for her, but then again, I do remember hearing an appreciative sigh when Loretta came through that door and did her twirl. Come to think of it, it was after Loretta’s entrance that mom seemed to sort of drift off somewhere, but then that was what she did most of the time, so I don’t know if it was proper to connect it to that occurrence or even to the show at all. I do know that my mom wore some real inspired apparel and that she must have gotten her ideas from somewhere. Maybe it was the price tag that influenced her purchasing decisions more than watching Loretta cavort ‘cause those cowdiggity outfits my mom would show up in sure appeared to be expensive – not that I’d know since I never paid any bills which brings us to the current sticky situation I found myself in. It was causing endless friction between me and my daddy-o, and I was just wishing it would go away so life could return to the way it was before I turned into this adult that apparently had responsibilities.
1961 had ushered in the end of my childhood as far as my dad was concerned while to me, my youth was just beginning. Sure I was taller – I’d give him that – but I was positive that I was no wiser. Just goes to show you how two individuals can look at the same situation and reach markedly different conclusions. What brought things to a head were two things that happened earlier this year. The first was that on March 12th, 1961, I turned 18. The second was that later in June, I graduated from Longview High. Both of these events signaled to him that I should get give up my membership in the ‘I live rent free off my parents and I’m having fun’ club and join the ‘I’m boring, serious, old, married, have a dead-as-dirt job and responsibilities and am working on having grand kids for the folks’ club. I didn’t feel that way. I felt that I was finally free to do as I pleased. Why he thought my hair had turned white and that I walked with a stoop overnight had me confounded, baffled and confused. He even went so far as to assume I’d want to cut off the sideburns I’d been cultivating since school ended. This made things even more perplexing. I was willing to put it down to two different people having two different perspectives, but he was pushing it. He was asking me to make all these decisions and concessions, but they were his decisions – not mine. How the hell would he know what it would take to make me happy? I didn’t even know that yet, but I knew it had to include music because that’s what I wanted to do and I was sure enough willing to give it a shot.
My love of music had been the only constant in my life, but somehow my dad thought a career in music was a crazy idea. I knew that music was my cup of tea laced with a shot of Jack Daniels. Consequently, I took the summer off and used the time to ignore my father and perfect my art. More specifically, I used the time to practice with my band, The Doo Whop Ditty Kings. That’s what we currently called ourselves, but the name was very subject to change. If the wind was blowin’, our name was up for revision.
We had gone through a string of names before this one – The Beat Stompers, The Time Keepers, The Back Porch Rockers, the Bee Hive Boppers – and many others that I’ve forgotten. Because of the precedent set, there was no telling if this name would stick even though we had all agreed that this was the best name ever. I really didn’t care. The name never did matter to me. What mattered to me was the music. Music is something I put my whole heart into and I’d found three guys that felt the same. The four of us were unified by our love of music. For the past 3 years, we’d spent ever single night – except Sunday which was the day Bubba’s mom would insist he spend with his family – practicing. We would have gone ahead and practiced without him but, ironically, it’s Bubba that needed the practice the most. Bubba’s our drummer and helps out on vocals. When drumming, he has this odd habit of speeding up or slowing down. I think it’s some kind of pattern because he also drifts off-key when singing harmony now and again. Both habits drive me crazy to no end. I’m serious about my music. Serious about making it in the biz and you can’t make it with a drummer that can’t keep a beat or a tune, but Bubba is sure enough part of the group and if you’re part of the group it’s all for one and one for all. You have to have that mentality because music demands you have an ‘us against the world’ mentality. We do. The music biz is a tough nut to shuck so you have to be tougher, and I knew I was at least. I’ve my doubts about the other guys and have wondered whether they have that inner core of steel needed to just keep at it. I think my doubts about them are partly based on the fact that we’re all so different. It seems the only thing we ever agree on is the music. We all feel music is in a person’s heart and soul, and in my humble 18-year-old opinion, you’re either born with it in you or you’re not. Me? I‘ve had it a driving, stompin’ and kickin’ away inside of me ever since I can remember. It’s like a fever that’s been rampaging inside me, so much so that I’ve even dreamt about songs and rhythms and backbeats and downbeats. Some of my best songs came to me while asleep. I’d just wake up and write ‘em down. They always came out just the way I had heard them in my head.
I’d always known I wanted to play the guitar. Started playing when I was 5, but I’d been begging for a guitar since I was 3 – before I could even properly pronounce the word. I’d just stand there and pantomime someone strumming one. I must have looked downright pathetic, but my parents ignored me anyway. I didn’t give up though, and it wasn’t long before my vocabulary increased and I was asking for a guitar the proper way. It’s not surprising they didn’t jump on my request considerin’ how conservative they are, but somewhere along the line they caved in to my frequent pleadings.
I still remember that Christmas. I figured I was just going to be disappointed again and put on a happy face to mask the face crying inside. I had already scouted out all the packages under the tree, and not one of them was the right shape to contain a guitar. Socks, sure. Board games, yup. Guitars, nope, but just when I got through opening the last gift, my mom got up and reached behind the couch. She pulled out this big old package that was hallelujah big enough to contain the magic word. She placed it in front of me and then sat back down being careful to recross her shapely legs at the ankle. Wouldn’t want to give a family member a free peek of what went on under those crinolines. I raised myself from a cross-legged position to one on my knees as I slowly began to open the package.
I’m almost ashamed to admit that there was something else going on in my none-too-mature head. As I stripped off the red, shiny foil, it crossed my mind that this was all a trick. That my mom and dad had put a new shirt and a rock in a big ole box just to make me think it was a guitar. Put it down to a youngster’s dementia at being confronted with getting the wish of his dreams. It must have been a part of my unformed frontal cortex that clung to the thought that it was impossible for my parents to have come through for me. This denial of fact forced me to mentally disparage them by entertaining the notion that they were involved in skullduggery. On Christmas no less. Crazy. Cowdiggity crazy.
After I had removed the last of the wrapping paper, my mom waited for my big reaction. My dad, too. Instead, an odd silence pervaded the room as they both shifted uncomfortably waiting for something to come out of me other than warm, carbon dioxified air. They were probably expecting the same type of enthusiastic response from me that I’d given for my other gifts, but I was so overwhelmed, I just went silent. I remember this odd feeling going on inside me. It felt like none of what was happening was real. I suppose I just needed time for everything to register and sink in. Three or four minutes went by before I actually moved and when I did, it was to touch my brand new guitar. I lifted it by its neck ever so gently – right up and out of its blue velvet lined carrying case. I placed it in my lap and rubbed my fingers over its body like I was Aladdin and it was the magic lamp that would make all my wishes come true. I just wanted to keep staring and rubbing, but my mother kept interrupting my internal conversation by asking if I liked it.
Was she crazy? Did I like it? How could I not? It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life, but answer her? Nope, couldn’t. I was speechless. Even my dad was unsettled by my silence. He had been filming the whole thing on some complicated camera he’d bought. He wouldn’t let my mom or me near it for fear of ruining it. He had a projector set-up in his study, and behind closed doors I’d hear whatever he recorded running all times of the day and night, but the library and the camera were verboten territory. I didn’t dare knock on the door and ask to take a gander although I was most sorely tempted. All that morning he’d been using that camera to film my mom and me, but when I went silent, he stopped. He put the camera down and waited. I guess he didn’t want to document the fact that he and my mom gave their son a lousy gift that he hated for Christmas. I suppose anyone would have figured that ‘cause I sure as hell wasn’t smiling. We all just sat there– my dad looking to my mom, my mom looking me, and me cradling my new guitar that I was dying to christen with my first riff in my lap. To anyone looking through the window, which I doubt very many perverts in Shucktown did, it would have looked for all the world like we were frozen in time – and maybe we were in a way. That memory is in me – at least for forever. I will always remember my mom and dad giving me that guitar that Christmas morn. I must have realized it was a momentous occasion even then because it was around that point that I did the strangest thing. I don’t know why I did it, but I did. It is preserved – thanks to my dad ‘s quick action – on film.
You’ve got to remember I was only 5, and one would expect the little shit that I surely was at that age, to start to cry or run around and jump on furniture out of sheer joy like I did with every other present I’d ever received. Well, you’d be wrong ‘cause I sure enough didn’t do any that. What I did do was get up shake my dad’s hand. Yup! Gospelity. My parents were surprised and I was, too, not that I remember doing it. The only reason I even know about it is because my dad treated us to a special showin’ of that little bit of history. I think it was only because both sets of grandparents were over for some major holiday – maybe Thanksgiving. It was the last time we had that sort of gathering. Now they just exchange cards, but that year they were over and there in the living room, we all watched the film he took of the previous Christmas. He had moved the projector out of his study. I’m guessing he moved it to cover up the fact that he watched these films alone and not with his family. Practically every night, he’d get home from work, have some dinner and then go directly to his study, lock the doors, and sit there privately viewing his family’s history, but that was for us to know and for the others not to find out. He and my mom were of the old school where you kept up pretenses no matter what. Not that this made them bad people – on the contrary. Did bad people buy their five-year-olds expensive guitars for Christmas? No, so let’s just say they knew how to keep private things private, and making a big production out of showin’ and sharin’ home movies was my dad’s way of saying that he didn’t want them to know any different. My mom and I helped him pedal that particular bicycle up the hill.
When I watched the film, I felt kind of odd ‘cause I didn’t really understand why I had chosen to shake his hand. The only way I began to understand my reasoning was to look at the incident in a very detached way. So I watched the kid – me – as if it wasn’t me, but someone else. From there, I tried to figure out why this other kid did it – if that makes sense. The only reason I could come up with was that I think that kid on film shook his father’s hand because the gift of music is an honor – both on the giving and receiving ends – and if you’re given that honor, you sure as hell better treat it that way, quid pro quosi. To this day, I still have that guitar and polish it till it shines like new even though I don’t play it much these days. What I’m trying to say is that I’ve outgrown it, but I haven’t outgrown the gesture.
Course once I was received the guitar, it was for me to learn how to play it. My parents kicked in for some music lessons from some nice lady that lived up the way. Mrs. Vaughn taught me notes, chromatic scales, and open chord progressions, but that wasn’t real music – at least to me – and it wasn’t long before I was riffing, picking and shuckin’ my little heart out. For my real musical education, I listened to all the greats: Chet Atkins, Carl Perkins, Link Wray and Mr. B.B. King hisself, yes sirree, Gospelity! It was my foray into the blues that seemed to move me inside even though I was a still a little kiddity, God Bless my hairless behind. The blues is what started me singing and talking ‘cause I sure didn’t have a lot to say back then. I was unnaturally quiet and my kindergarten teacher had threatened to flunk me due to my non-participation and vocalization in class. My dad interceded on my behalf and guess who ended up in first grade the next year? All I can say is that she should see me now, ‘cause once I started singing – I started expressing myself. And once I started doing that – I never stopped.
In the South, you hear the blues all the time, but I not only heard them, I felt ‘em. Them blues was in me, man. I mean, although I was of tender years, I felt the pain. Didn’t know how it got there, but it was. Up in my room, day and night. I’d play till my little fingers bled – and then I’d play some more. I developed calluses quickly and that only allowed me to practice longer, which in turn helped me get better.
I’m sure that my mom and dad were surprised with their little chipskip tooting out such gutwrenching sounds let alone moaning and a groaning about some woman that done him wrong. I think they reconsidered indulging their baby with the Christmas present of his dreams, but it was way too late. The old chipskipper was out of the barn and shuckin’ barefoot in the woods and I wasn’t going to stop for no one or nobody. Gospelity, doowanky doo.
My musical stylings really came together when I heard rock n’ roll. It was a whole new beat and approach and it excited me. It was like a million trillion chords being struck all at the same time inside me. The wham tang tingle shook me, and I knew then I wanted to combine what I knew with what was happening in the real world out there. Somehow figure out a way to put Bill Haley together with B.B. King. It was then I put together my first band. I immediately started incorporating the new sound into my songwriting. I was devising and diabolicking a way to blend the two together in what I hoped would be innovative and unique. In the beginning, it didn’t sound like much. It took a few years to get it right, but the result was good. Real good. A few changes of personnel in my band helped and now the Doo Whop Ditty Kings were ready to get going and set the world on fire. We even got a few paying gigs. They sure didn’t earn us a lot of money, just enough for us to pour what we did earn into getting new equipment. For me, it meant only one thing and that was finally being able to afford my dreamdiddy - a Stratocaster. Not a new Stratocaster, but one of the originals so right after graduation, I drove my dad’s graduation gift to New York and bought one. Luckily for me, my dad’s graduation gift was his old car –a 1957 Tee Bird two-seater. The gift of wheels allowed me to go where I pleased. It also allowed me to pick-up chicks, ‘cause that car was sure a crowd pleaser. The paint color was Starmist blue and it had this blue canvas top that could be removed by snappin’ it on and off. My friends and I called it My Cloud Nine and I was on one every time I got behind the wheel and headed out into the unknown. Gospelity.
I drove my Cloud Nine straight to Manny’s in New York. It’s the only real place to buy anything related to music. I only took one member of the group with me because that was all that would fit in the two-seater. I tell you, me and Jesse boy walked into Manny’s and just gawked like the couple of rural Southerners we were. I didn’t mean to, it’s just that all my idols were hung up on the walls, and I felt like dropping to my knees and praying ‘cause I sure felt like I was in church.
Everything looked good to me, but nothing stuck out. It wasn’t until I saw this 1955 Stratocaster that I got weak in the knees. It was red - wild, crazy red. The salesman said that they just got it in and that it been owned only once – by the guy that brought it in. I can only think that the guy was forced to sell it ‘cause no one would voluntarily give that redheaded devil-doo up. The salesman took it off the wall and handed it to me. I held it in my hands. It felt like a shaman’s tool – like some magical piece of wood that could cause oceans to rise and fall. It felt that powerful. I sat down and played – just to get the feel. The notes came from somewhere inside my soul, and all I can tell you is that I just closed my eye and let them flow. When I finished, I opened my eyes and saw that every single customer in the store had gathered ‘round me. They had tears in their eyes – even Jesse and he doesn’t cry for nobody or nothing, man. Not even when he was playing football and broke his arm. It just hung there limp as hell as they carried him off the field, but he didn’t shed one tear. Not even when they popped it back into place. The man is a brick so I was surprised to see him going all misty. I was even more surprised when my appreciative audience started to applaud. I just smiled and knew that this redheaded wonderbird was the one. I kissed her and plunked my money down so I could whisk her off to Shucktown. Wasn’t a girl in Shucktown as pretty as my reddie devilidoo which brings us to the source of contention that was making me and my old man draw the old battlelines and turn our happy household into a divided camp. I’ve been giving you the clues as to what the problem was, but in case you ain’t catching my drift, I’ll spell it out for you.
A:
I’m a musician
B: I’m not in school and not employed
C: I’m
18 and
D: my dad is a judge and to be a judge, you need to go to
college.
Now you getting what I’m trying to say? If you need me to make a housecall and make it any clearer to you, I will. All I got is time these days. Gospel do-whop diddy.
The thing is my music was interfering with my dad’s plans. He wanted me to follow in his footsteps and go to his alma mater and get a degree in some unknown cookie lookie screechhopping art or science and I all I want to do is play my music. Stalemate or stalebread, no way in hell I’m going to school and give up what I love. Now my dad is cool – we’ve been through that. I don’t now if I’ve impressed upon you how cool so I’ll try.
Everyone in town likes him. Everyone. I’ve never heard anyone say anything bad about him. Oh, I know, why would anyone saw anything about my daddy-o in front of me? Well, you know, man, people do that sort of crudiddity all the time. Start saying this or that about someone or repeat what somebody else says. It gets back to you, but nothing got back to me. Ever. And why should it? I’ve never even known my dad to raise his voice. Never. My mom neither. Nice people my parents. Good people. I think some of it rubbed off on me. Everyone seems to like me and I keep my thermostat on cool. In other words, I try not to get mad. Just don’t see a need or a reason. All that anger and fighting is stupid. It’s not for me. Never was. All I want to do is play music and not get caught up in all the bullshit.
The subject of college was raised awhile back – when I was 13. I was practicing upstairs when my dad called me into his study. He mentioned how there was a place at his alma dalma tuniveristy that was all primed, pumped and ready for me to sit my scrawny ass down and learn. Although this was the first official talk we’d had about college, I’d gotten the feeling that that’s what he wanted way before it occurred and that feeling never went away. Why would it? I knew all my friend’s fathers were trying to force them to do this or that. There were all these barroom brawls sporadically erupting in living rooms all across the townity over what to do after graduation. These power struggles would continue happening all the way through the turbulent teens and most times, the dads would win. It was most likely due to their added girth and size, but none of this happened in my household. My dad wasn’t into behaving like I was his punching bag. He merely mentioned he wanted me to go to his school and follow in his footsteps and when I said no, he dropped the subject. That’s strange right? I think so now, but at the time, I didn’t and it’s partially a great big faux passé on my part for not getting how important it was. Wasn’t long before he pressed the matter a bit when he told me to move out of the house this summer. Guess I forgot to mention that. It was right after I graduated from high school, and right after I drove to and back from New York City. Bringing that redheaded woodshucker into the house somehow sent him over the edge, but I’m guessing here because the thing is, he didn’t exactly tell me to leave. I got the message nonetheless. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to get across to you. In my household, things were very rarely spoken and yet they were conveyed. Or interpreted. It was as if our family was comprised of a small band of three intuitives interpreting some oracle. We were three psychics who were supposed to just know what each other wanted by osmosis or reading clouds in the sky or something. It seemed we were supposed to figure out what we wanted in every other way than actually verbalizing it. Having been raised in this household and learning to read the signs, I got the message and moved out.
I got this place along with the other Doo Whop Ditty Kings – Jesse and Bubba and Micah – since they were also thrown out of their homes by their dads for gross insubordination and paternal disobedience. We rented this little one bedroomer from a landlord that was never around. Mr. Edgar Thames was always vamooseramshackle. This was my word for him. It meant that he was always somewhere other than in his dilapidated house, and also always drunk. In other words, it was a perfect situation for four extraordinarily energetic, music-crazed, shucking obsessed young men.
The one bedroomer we rented was this small shack in the back of his house. Since he was never home, we could bring people over and throw parties and pretty much do whatever we wanted to do. It worked out great except that there was never any hot water … or food. Then there was the incident that happened at this one particular party we threw. One of the participants – after having chugged down way too many beers – got a might upset and said the wrong thing to this guy that we hadn’t even invited to attend. The uninvited guest popped the invited soused guest right in the kisser giving him two black eyes. Now the guest that got slugged was the son of a friend of my father and I ended up moving back home the next day. Again, I was never directly told to move back home, I just knew that’s what he wanted me to do and I sure enough tried to oblige my daddy-o every chance I get.
That’s why I was sitting in my parent’s home eating breakfast staring at the calendar on the wall. Why I didn’t know that something was in the air and that I should just cool my coolipops and stay put til things blew over, I do not know. I was most likely all caught up in the frenzy of youth when anything seems possible and hope is consistently on the horizon. It skews your perspective and makes you invalidate the certainties of the way things actually are. My thoughts and actions were proof of the fallacy of hysterical, youthful, wishful thinking. I was further inflamed and excited because I got word from the wind or air or water that my daddy-o was giving me a full year to see if I could make it in the music biz before I had to acquiesce and start pursuing a higher education. The year was his way of saying thanks for keeping my grades up throughout high school and guaranteeing my spot in any college of his choosing. I interpreted all this to mean that I had one last chance to prove myself to him by becoming a successful musician. If I made it, it meant I could do things my way. I might as well have tried to walk through a brick wall and it was trying to accomplish the impossible, that I inadvertently brought the horrors of The Horns of September upon my sad, pathetic soul.
Gospelity and a doo-wop ditty do.
CHAPTER 2
After I finished my chocolaty breakfast mess, I went on upstairs to collect my gear and get myself together. Getting myself together meant giving myself the usual one, two, three through the old looking glass; running the comb I kept in my back pocket through my locks; and putting on my usual uniform that I wore when not occupied with such mundane matters as education in formal institutions. My usual uniform consisted of a pair of broken-in hip-slinging jeans that had been washed about a million times, a white t-shirt and my well-worn black leather jacket that I had dragged behind Micah’s pony by means of a rope so that it would attain a certain patina. A pair of shit kickers straight from the great state of Texas completed my attire and Lordy, did I love those boots! My custom Italian suited dad eyed me with disapproval everytime he saw me in my uniform, but it sort of added to the sheer joy of wearing it and thereby partly encouraged me to do so all the more.
There was another reason that I loved my uniform so much and it was purely delusional. When I had it on, I imagined I looked like a cross between Elvis Presley and James Dean. I’d seen the latter in Rebel Without a Cause and wanted to be as cool as what’s forever preserved on celluloid. I know it’s an odd choice for me because he wasn’t actually a musician, but he really was – if you think about it long enough. He had soul and if you have soul you’re a goddamned musician whether you can technically be considered one or not. Course the fact I didn’t look a lick like him or Elvis or any other of my idols didn’t worry me none. That’s how idols got to be idols – because they didn’t look like anyone else. I fit into that categorization.
The best thing that could be said about me and my appearance is that I looked smooth. As for the details, I’m a squidge under 6 feet tall, have blue eyes and sandy brown hair. My hair has a loose curl that’s just perfect for getting that pom-pom up in the front to form a crest and stay all day without using all that pig grease that some have to put in their hair. I think my main problem in stopping me from being considered devastatingly handsome is my weight. I’m stick thin – 155 on a good day if the doctor taking my weight took it with my shit kickers on. How do I know that? Because I left them on one time and now insist on it. Course I’m trying my best to remedy the situation by chowing down ungodly piles of food, but my mother discourages me from eating the crap I crave. She does this because she thinks all the greasy garbage and sticky sweet stuff I shovel down my throat will flare out my skin into a sea of pimples, but that won’t ever happen. I have good skin that seems to be a might slow in developing anything beyond peach fuzz. Still I shave every morning if only for show. I easily could rub it off by using two fingers and a little spit.
As for the color of my skin, well, it’s pale – real pale. However, the sheer paucity in the color of my skin is natural enough considering both my parents are as white as ghosts so this didn’t seem particularly unusual, but it does seem unfair. In the summer, I do get a crispy waffle golden brown on my face and arms which I much prefer. The only problem is that it makes the parts not exposed to Ole Seňor Sol all the paler and more sickly in comparison, but hey, Shucktown isn’t into boys walking around au naturale. If we were allowed to do that, it would mean putting Shucktown damsels at risk of getting a full salute when one of us pole vaulted in front of their shocked faces. You do that in this towity and you might end up permanently disabled from walking around at all – wrapped or unwrapped – by their big strong daddies. With my physique, I couldn’t have prevented being pummeled by a pappa bear doggedly determined to protect his little cubbesses from such vulgar displays of horniness. I can thank my momma for that. My father is as solid as the courthouse he works in. If a hurricane wind passed through this towity, it’d be a toss-up as to whether it would easier for it to uproot that 200-year-old oak tree in the Towity Square or lift my daddy-o off his feet. That same wind would have no trouble at all with bouncing my ass around because, unfortunately, I inherited my mom’s physique and metabolism. She can’t seem to keep weight on either, but then very little food makes it past her lips these days. Don’t know why she had begun waging a war on food, but it seemed that’s the way she was going. Maybe that’s why she suddenly started to scrutinize my food so carefully.
After checking out my appearance and finding it comely, I picked up my guitar and drove to our rehearsal space that was Jesse’s father’s sister’s cousin’s, uncle’s brother’s barn. Well, glorified barn. It had been fixed up a bit in hopes of turning it into a domicile and renting it out, but it never got past the barebones electricity/plumbing stage. The electricity was evident from the one light bulb hanging from a long, black cord in the center of the room. The plumbing was less apparent, but there was an old toilet with a Johnny cord that usually flushed off to the side behind a door that jammed. The kindness of Jesse’s kin afforded us a nice, big area to work, but personally I thought the acoustics sucked. I’m not really complaining – just saying. At least it was ours to use as we pleased until Jesse’s father’s sister’s cousin’s, uncle’s brother put the effort into finishing the project and became a landlord and lord of his land to the sucker that rented that big drafty, old barn – or used it for raising hogs which I heard was the latest use being considered.
I left that possibility for another day. Right now I was just glad to be alive and doing what I loved. As I drove in my convertible, I felt the sun on my face heating me up and the wind in my hair cooling me off. Couple that with the fresh, clean pine scent and you have a perfect day. And, yes, I said pine. People always think of Magnolia trees when they think of the South, but right around here in Shucktown – like in our neighbor Aiken – we had lots of pine trees. It made for some pleasant surroundings. Guess that’s why Aiken was quite the spot for bigwigs and rich people like the Vanderbilts to visit. At one time, they all kept second or third or fourth homes there. One could only conclude that the combination of altitude and fresh air made for restorative and restful vacations. They could recoup and gather the strength to go back and lug their money around. Rumor had it that quite a few notables made their way into Shucktown as well – most especially of the politicking variety. Don’t know who they were or why they were here, but I suspect someone knew something. One of these days maybe someone would talk. Until then it was just another Shucktown mystery that should be added to the list I’m compiling. Maybe it could account for Shucktown having built all these places for people of that ilk to throw their cash around, but it couldn’t account for why they were here in the first place.
I saw the barn in the distance and pulled off the road. Micah’s pick-up truck was parked right next to Bubba’s car – if you could properly call that broken-down piece shit that Bubba drove a car. I knew that Jesse had to be here and figured he had hitched a ride with Micah. He usually did. The Doo Whop Ditty Kings did also. Micah’s old pick-up was the band’s main source of transportation since it was the only vehicle between the four of us that was big enough to accommodate the group and all our equipment, but it was not why Micah was in the group. Micah was in because of his vocals stylings, and his ability to play a mighty fine rhythm guitar. He was also not half-bad looking and did attract the ladies. Bands gotta look for something to bolster audience attendance and customer loyalty.
I took my redheaded beauty off the passenger seat and went inside. The guys were set-up and waiting. Setting up meant plugging our guitars in the amplifiers and making sure they were tuned. The amplifiers stayed in the barn. We’d long since stopped lugging them home every evening. Shucktown was one of those places where you could just leave things, come back the following year and find it in the same place you left it. I can’t remember the last time anything went missing. Is that unusual? Add it to the list. As to why we didn’t leave our guitars, guitars were personal. They were like steadies –like girls you don’t just date once, but marry. My redhead was a keeper and she went home with me every night. The other guys felt similarly about their instruments.