A Song to Die For (11 page)

They chose a song Luster had written about a Mexican border town. Metro swung his sticks into the complex rumba beat flawlessly, somehow ringing the cymbals and thumping the cowbell with the butt end of his stick along with all the snare and tom shots.

“That's a radical tune, man,” Metro said at the end of the song. “It's a song about Mexico, but it has a Cuban beat.”

Luster was staring at the young drummer, looking a bit perplexed. “You know, on the record, we added the cowbell and the cymbals on two other separate tracks.”

Metro threw his hands in the air, as if he had just discovered a prank played at his expense. “No wonder it was so hard to learn. I thought I sucked, man.”

“He's the one,” Tump said, jutting his thumb Metro's way. “This is the kid.”

“Well, we have a few more waiting to audition,” Creed cautioned.

Tump took his bass off and leaned it against the amp. “Hey, the kid sounds like a damn octopus playing the kit back there. If you don't hire him, I ain't playin' in this band.”

“We've got four more drummers out there. I can't just tell them to go home.”

Tump walked to the living room door, opened it, and said, “We've found our drummer. The rest of y'all can go home.” He slammed the door, turned to Creed, and said, “I can.”

Creed knew the bass player was right about the drummer's talent, but he already found his leadership being tested by Tump. Still, he was grateful not to have to sit through the rest of the percussionists. “You two can go home,” he said to Tump and Metro. “Rehearsal here tomorrow?” He looked at Luster.

Luster nodded. “Noon.”

“Be back at noon tomorrow,” Creed said, looking at the bassist, then the drummer.

“Thanks, dudes,” Metro said, hurrying out with a big smile on his face.

Creed walked up close to Tump and spoke low as Tump put his instrument in its case.”

“Mr. Burnett hired me to run this band,” Creed said. “I'm open to all suggestions. But from here on out, Mr. Burnett and I make the decisions.”

The dark glasses turned on Creed, the eyes behind them presumably sizing up the band leader. “Whatever. I'm just the bass player for the opening act.”

Creed nodded. “See you tomorrow.”

 

10

CHAPTER

After Tump left, Luster put his guitar on an instrument stand and began methodically cracking his knuckles. “It's beer-thirty, Creed.”

“I hear that.”

They walked through the depopulated living room and went to the refrigerator in the kitchen. Luster grabbed two Schlitz beers and handed one to Creed. “Go for the gusto,” he said.

“Don't mind if I do,” he replied, though he had figured Luster for a Lone Star man.

“We're halfway there.”

Creed looked out the kitchen window at the ragtag gathering of musicians on the back patio, smoking cigarettes and laughing. He saw an attractive black woman with a huge teased-out Afro come around the corner, having just showed up. She had charmed one of the other musicians into carrying her bulky cases around back. “I think I see our steel player,” he said.

Luster stepped to the window. “Which one?”

“The chick.”

Luster stared. “The colored gal? I never knew a woman to play pedal steel, much less a colored gal.”

“She's good. Name's Lindsay Lockett.”

Luster chugged about half the beer. “A good-lookin' gal in the band? Could be trouble.”

Creed chuckled. “I reckon I ought to know that as well as anybody. Lindsay's a piece of cake, compared to Dixie. A bit of a prima donna, but I can manage her.”

Luster shrugged. “We already got the Meskin kid. Might as well have a colored gal, too. Hell, why not? The world's changin'. Even I'm tired of white cracker country, and I
am
a white cracker.”

“I'm an East Texas peckerwood, myself.”

Luster laughed. “I'm gonna let you stay in the band anyway. Call her in.” He grabbed another beer from the fridge.

Luster was on his fourth beer by the time Lindsay Lockett got her steel set up and tuned. She seemed to have no concept of the time she was taking, and no idea that anyone might be waiting on her. When she finally got ready, she looked up, and almost seemed surprised to see Luster and Creed in the studio with her. She had not even spoken to Luster yet.

Creed made the introductions: “Lindsay Lockett, this is Luster Burnett.”

“I prefer LockETTE.” As she spoke, she held up her index finger, the silver finger pick pointing upward as if to punctuate the emphasis on the last syllable of her name. “The way you would say BurNETTE.” Again, the spangled fingertip gave visual reference to the accent on the last syllable, spoken in a lush southern-black dialect.

Luster threw his beer can into the trash. “You can call me Luster. Can I call you Lindsay?”

“Oh. Okay, Luster.” She smiled. Her teeth were perfect, like the rest of her ebony doll face. Her Afro possessed a glimmering quality. She wore false eyelashes and ruby red eye shadow that matched the glimmering shade of lipstick on her full lips.

“Unless you'd rather I call you LindSAY, and you can call me LuSTAIR.”

Lindsay put her silver finger pick alongside her chin, and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, as if considering the proposal. Then she began to laugh. “Oh, Luster, you are a cutup, I can see that right now.” Again she laughed, a surprisingly harsh cackle considering her petite frame.

Luster smiled. “Where are you from, Lindsay?”

“I'm a refugee from Mississippi.”

“How long have you been in Austin?”

“Almost ten years.”

“Ten years? You look like a teenager.”

“Thank you!” She beamed. “I'm thirty-four years old, Luster. Good genes. Clean livin'.”

Creed called a tune with a steel guitar pickup riff, and Lindsay played it so perfectly that Creed could almost hear the scratches pop on the old seventy-eight. After a couple more tunes, Creed and Luster were both sold.

“All right, rehearsals start tomorrow…”

Creed cut Luster off there and added, “At eleven a.m., sharp.”

When Lindsay finally got her steel guitar torn down, and packed up, and got Creed to carry it to her car for her—a 1963 Chevy Impala with a trunk big enough for four steel guitars—Creed found Luster in the kitchen, opening another beer.

“You ready?” Luster said, handing him the beer.

“Born ready.” Creed took the ice-cold can.

“I sent the rest of the steel players packin'.”

“I noticed the stampede.”

“You know any of those fiddlers out there?”

“Can't say that I do.”

“I guess we'll just have to wade through 'em like swamp water.”

“Which one do you want to start with?”

“Eenie-meanie-miney-mo.”

*   *   *

The fifth fiddler to audition walked into the studio looking very nervous. He called himself “Trusty” Joe Crooke, and he resembled something out of a Roy Rogers look-alike contest, except that he wore his hair in long, drab-brown locks reaching halfway down his back. His shirt was a Western pearl-snap affair with gaudy roping around the pockets and yoke. He also wore a cowboy hat and boots and a silk scarf tied around his neck.

After the obligatory introductions, he started chattering like a machine gun: “I sure hope I get this job, because I'm probably gonna get fired. I've been playing in a cowboy band at a dude ranch in Bandera for seven years, and I've never missed a show, not even once, but I'm missing one right now. I thought I'd be done here by now. Anyway, maybe it's time I quit, because I'm sick of playing the same twelve songs, three shows a day, six days a week. I want to see some blacktop. I sure hope I get this job.”

“Step one: relax,” Luster said. “You want a beer?”

“No, thanks. I don't drink till after the show.”

Creed picked a Luster Burnett hit that leaned heavy on the fiddle and let Trusty Joe kick it off.

After the song, Luster sighed and looked earnestly at the fiddler. “That sounded just like the original except for one thing,” he said. “Your tone is better. You're almost too good. Almost.”

“It's this fiddle,” Joe said, apologetically. “It's a hundred and fifty-two years old. I can play a cheaper fiddle if you want me to.”

“It's not the fiddle,” Creed said. “It's you. I think Mr. Burnett was giving you a compliment.”

“Oh. Sorry. I mean, thanks. God, I'm so nervous I feel like I'm gonna puke.”

“Take it easy, Joe. You're doing fine. Is that a mandolin in your other case?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bust it out, and let's do some bluegrass,” Luster suggested.

They played a Burnett original called “Bolt from the Blue”—a song that gave Trusty Joe ample opportunity to show off his mandolin licks. Creed watched the picker's right hand as he frolicked through his half of the lead break like wind through a clothesline, thinking that he needed to adapt some of that style to his own guitar playing. The pick action was as clean as any he had ever seen among the A-list Nashville cats.

Trusty Joe looked up at Creed and Luster as if he feared a scolding when the song was done.

“That's some of the smoothest flat-pickin' I've seen in years,” Luster said, reading Creed's mind.

“The key to mandolin is all in the right hand,” Trusty replied, nervously. “Like the fiddle—all in the bow.”

Luster looked at Creed. “You satisfied?”

“And then some.”

Luster switched his guitar amp off. “You can tell that cowboy band to kiss your trusty ass, Joe. You got the job. Rehearsals tomorrow at noon.”

“Oh, my God!” Trusty blurted. He buckled, catching his weight with his left knee and his right hand on the floor of the studio. “Oh, thank you, God!” he said, an actual sob escaping from his chest. Then he began to cry real tears, which quickly transmogrified into a blubbering torrent.

Creed and Luster looked at each other as if the new car they had just driven off the lot had lost a wheel.

“Are you all right, big 'un?” Creed asked.

Trusty held a hand up and nodded, wiping his cheeks on his shoulders, trying to compose himself. “Yeah. I'm just so happy!” Another gush of tears poured forth.

“Let me give you a tip,” Luster said. “Cry equals sad. Laugh equals happy.”

“I'm sorry,” the fiddler said, pulling himself upright by sheer will. “I'm just real emotional right now, that's all. I prayed for this gig. Prayed and prayed.”

Creed was growing increasingly disgusted with Trusty's outburst. “Well, quit blubberin', or you're gonna piss God off.”

“I'm already pissed off,” Luster said. He chuckled to himself then raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Forgive me, Lord,” he said, under his breath. “Just a little joke.”

Suddenly, Trusty began to heave like a dog about to cough up a bad piece of meat. He burst out through the living room. Creed followed, watching Trusty scramble out the back door, past the three remaining fiddlers on the patio. There, he leaned against the trunk of a large pecan tree and puked on the rhododendrons.

Trusty turned on the astonished hopefuls waiting to audition. “I got the job!” he announced.

Creed shook his head. Well, at least he wouldn't have to tell them to go home. They were already picking up their cases.

 

11

CHAPTER

Hooley pulled up to the plastic, clownlike dummy situated over the menu alongside the drive-through lane at the Jack in the Box. The cracking voice of some adolescent kid blared from the speaker:

“Welcome to Jack in the Box. May I take your order?”

“Cheeseburger and a Coke.”

“Would you like fries with that?”

Hooley figured he'd joke with the kid a little. “You got calf fries?”

There was a pause. “Sir?”

“Mountain Oysters!”

“Uh … Sir?”

Disappointed, he could tell the boy had neither a sense of humor, nor an understanding of what calf fries even were. “Never mind. No fries.”

“Okay, drive up to the window.”

He stopped at the sliding glass portal to what he considered a greasy hell. There, he paid an overweight kid who gave him his change and a drink sealed in a waxed paper cup with a plastic lid. The kid then shut the window on him. Hooley waited. He tasted the drink. Coca-Cola. He hated Coca-Cola. According to Hooley's West Texas upbringing, the word
coke
was synonymous with “soda pop” or “soft drink” or whatever people said in other parts of the country when they referred to a store-bought carbonated drink. To Hooley, there were several kinds of cokes from which to choose. His favorite was Dr Pepper, but he could easily settle for an R.C. Cola or even a Grape Nehi.

The kid opened the window and handed Hooley a paper bag without so much as a thank-you before he spoke to someone behind him in line:

“Welcome to Jack in the Box. May I take your order?”

The window slid shut.

Hooley looked the bag over. The kid, or somebody in there, had stapled a receipt to the top of the bag. The receipt named the location of the business, and the date. He sure wished he had that piece of evidence from Rosa's burger bag. He knocked on the window, and the kid opened it, making eye contact for the first time, a perplexed look on his face.

“You need something else? People are waiting behind you.”

“You didn't ask me what kind of coke I wanted. What if I wanted a Dr Pepper?”

“You asked for a Coke,” the kid replied, his facial features bunching into such an extreme sneer that his pinched brows drove a droplet of sweat down his nose like a flash flood down a mountain slope.

“Do you sell Dr Pepper or not?”

“We have Coke, Seven-Up, and root beer. You asked for a Coke.”