Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 08:08:23 MDT From: Robyn Meta Herrington Subject: SUB:CONTEST: The car Hank died in The Car Hank Died In It was open-mike night and Honey Bee's Lounge in Nashville was packed. Chairs were pushed in tight around the tables that were not much bigger than the cocktail trays carried by fringe-skirted waitresses. Those in the know arrived early and got all the seats. Those who didn't know stood shoulder to shoulder along the two side walls. The bar area was reserved for the participants -- the singers and guitar pickers who wiped the necks of their instruments while stealing glances at the overturned Stetson hat from which Honey Bee would draw the name of the next performer. The performer on stage was a young cowboy named Jimmie Shirley who hailed from somewhere in Texas. Shirley wore an old style western shirt with arrow pockets and mother-of-pearl snaps. He wore his hat pushed back on his head revealing a dark comma of hair which hung down over his youthful forehead. He strummed a big acoustic guitar while he sang a melancholy song. His voice broke on each chorus. A few patrons left their seats for the exit. A few others called orders to the waitresses. Shirley finished his song to anemic applause. "C'mon y'all," said Honey Bee walking onto the small stage. "You can do better than that. Give the fella a big hand." The applause was only a little louder than before. "Thank you, Jimmie," said Honey Bee. "I have another song I want to do," said Jimmie. "And we'd like to hear it some other time. You come back." # # # Jimmie Shirley nursed a cup of coffee in the Quick Mart across from Honey Bee's Lounge. He'd stayed just long enough to pack his guitar in the case, long enough to pick up a few "atta boys" from the other performers waiting their turn. People were still going into Honey Bee's. Every third one carried a guitar case. You couldn't swing a dead cat in Nashville without hitting a guitar picker. He opened his own guitar case and found the plastic pencil box he kept there with his picks and capo. Inside the pencil box was his emergency stash. He counted it out on the table. There was enough for a bus ticket home and a dollar eighty-five left over. He fished around in his pockets and found another dollar and twelve cents. He sighed and put the money back in the case and pulled out the guitar. The guitar was a wide-bodied Martin. On the neck it said, "Amy," in gold stick-on letters pasted between the frets. Jimmie opened a pocket knife. He carefully inserted the point under the corner of the "A" and lifted it. He worked it completely off, rolled it into a ball and went to work on the next letter. When he was finished he had three little gold balls on the table. "Feeling low, cowboy?" Jimmie looked up at the girl standing in front of him. She was young and pretty, wearing a short fringe skirt like the waitresses at Honey Bee's. "You look kinda low," she said. "Yes, ma'am. Guess I'm about as low as a cat hangin' on the underside of a Latino's Impala." Her face brightened. "That's a line from your song." "Yeah. You listened to my song?" "Of course. I stopped serving just to listen. My customers were yelling for beers, but I said the heck with them. I said, you know Pattie -- that's my name, Pattie -- this cowboy is the best since Hank Williams." "Really? You really think so?" "Cross my heart. Can I sit down?" "Sure, my name's --" "Jimmie Shirley," she said. "I heard Honey Bee announce you." Up close she didn't look as young as he first thought. Her eyes looked older and wearier than her young face, but maybe that was just the late night, the effects of carrying drinks to the yahoos at Honey Bee's. "You're the only one who seemed to appreciate my music," he said. She shrugged and gave a little toss of her head. "You got a bad crowd in there. That group doesn't know good music. They've been reared on nothing but Garth and Alan and Dwight, guys who know how to rhyme but who don't know pain." "I know pain. Pain's what I live." "Is Amy part of the pain?" asked Pattie. "Yeah. How did you . . ." She pointed to the gold balls. "Oh yeah, you saw her name on my guitar. Me and Amy, we were going to be married, but she wanted me to give up my music, to get a job. She told me, 'Don't come around until you put some calluses on your hand.' Now she's living with a guy who sells Amway. I'd like to see his calluses." He took a drink of coffee, but it was cold and he spat it back into the cup. "I came here thinking I could connect with a record producer. I'd show her I could get a contract and she'd come back to me." "You still can." Jimmie shook his head. "Who are you kidding? You saw the reception I got." "It's a different crowd in there, now. You just march right back across the street, Jimmie Shirley, and you put your name back in that John B. Stetson. You can do it." Jimmie caressed the neck of his guitar. "You really think I can?" "Sure. You just sing your pain like Hank would." "Yeah," he said. He strummed a chord and a string broke. He looked at it in horror. "Oh man. I don't have an extra string. Maybe this wasn't meant to be after all." "Hey," said Pattie. "You can still do it. We'll just get you another one." "At 12:30 in the morning?" "Burt's is open. I think you'll like Burt. He's Nashville's number one Hank Williams fan." # # # Burt's Guitar Shop was a narrow storefront on Music Row about a five minute walk from Honey Bee's. The song that flowed out to the sidewalk when they opened the door was Hank's "I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive". Inside were bins of sheet music and walls of instruments. To Jimmie's eye, the furnishings hadn't been updated since Eisenhower's presidency. Neither had the man behind the display case in the back of the store. He wore a red cowboy shirt with white fringe and a white cowboy hat. He looked to be middle aged. His slender frame carried a slight paunch. Jimmie was struck with the thought that if Hank Williams had lived he might look like this man. Pattie said, "Burt, this is Jimmie Shirley. He needs a new string real bad." "I didn't expect to find a music store open this late," said Jimmie. "Well," said Burt, "I figure most musicians do most of their playing at night and need a friendly place to visit from time to time. Just like yourself." "You need to hear this guy, Burt. He's got a sound just like Hank and that's no lie." "I'm probably wasting your time," said Jimmie. "I don't see how I can pay for a string. I barely got enough money to get back home." "Jimmie was about to give up, but I talked him out of it." "Well," said Burt, "I believe I can stake you to a guitar string. Least I can do for someone who sings like Hank. Come with me, son. I got something to show you." Burt led Jimmie through a curtained doorway in the back wall. He flicked a wall switch, flooding the room with light from artfully placed recessed and track lights. Unlike the front of the shop, the furnishings in this room were modern and expensive-looking. It was part museum and part shrine and the object of worship was Hank Williams. The walls gleamed with photos, plaques and framed mementos of the singer. There were pictures of Hank by himself, Hank with the Drifting Cowboys, with the Louisianna Hayride crew, with the Hadacol Caravan, and, of course, Hank at the Opry. There were pictures of Hank with Audrey and Hank with Billie Jean. "I told you Burt was Hank's number one fan," said Pattie. "He's the custodian of Hank's memory." "The keeper of the dream," said Burt. One display case held two bashed-in guitars, a blackjack and a steel bar. Burt explained that honky-tonk crowds can get a little rough. "Hank gave his band the blackjacks," said Burt. "If a blackjack wasn't handy, the steel guitar player's chord bar was just as effective." Another prominent display case held a single guitar. It was old, scarred, and lacking a manufacturer's label. Jimmie said, "Is that --" "His first," said Burt. "The one Lillie paid three-fifty for. This was how the dream started." A new song came over the store's sound system, Hank singing, "Just a Picture From Life's Other Side." The farthest wall was hung with guitars and cowboy hats. It was not lit as brightly as the rest of the shrine. In fact, most of it was in darkness. Jimmie wandered over to it. "Whose are these?" "I call that the Wall of Broken Dreams. A lot of young singers come here with pain in their voice and a dream in their heart. The pain stays and the dream disappears. They're down to their last dime and all they want is a ride home. I give them that ride for their guitar. Sometimes they give me their hat, too." "Guess I was pretty close to that myself, 'cept Pattie talked me back up." Jimmie looked closer at the guitars. "Some of these strings are broken." "Really?" said Burt. "I never noticed." "Yeah. Nearly all of them have a broken string." He looked down at his own guitar and shuddered. "Jeez, that's scary. You don't think this is a sign or something?" Burt shrugged. Pattie said, "I bet Jimmie would like a ride in the car." She pronounced "the car" with reverence. Jimmie understood immediately. He said, "You have the car? I thought it was --" "Oh, I don't have it, but I have access to it." "Like I told you, Burt is Hank's number one fan in Nashville." Burt unlocked a drawer in a small cabinet and withdrew a set of keys. He handed them to Pattie. "Give the boy a good ride," he said. # # # The car was a baby-blue, 1952 Cadillac convertible. It was a monster car, the beginning of an evolutionary line of behemoths, already sporting Werner von Braun tailfins. It had a 385 cubic inch powerplant that unleashed 310 horses under a hood as long as a picnic table. It had power steering, power brakes and automatic transmission. Pattie let Jimmie drive. She directed him out of the city while she tuned the AM radio until she found a station playing a Hank Williams tune. The song was "Lost Highway." "Man, I can't believe I'm driving the car Hank died in," said Jimmie. They were out in the country, now, on a two-lane blacktop, going past fields and stands of trees, with the top down and the stars shining in a clear sky. "This the ride of my life." Jimmie pressed the accelerator to the floor. The beast under the hood roared and the car sprang forward. Wind whistled around the windshield, filling his eyes with tears. The scenery raced by in a blur. Hank sang "Six More Miles to the Graveyard." They passed a small white frame church with a stone-walled cemetary. Even with his vision blurred, Jimmie saw a man, illuminated briefly in the headlights. The man was standing by the stone pillars. He wore a red fringed shirt and and a white hat. "Hey! That looked like Burt," he said. "Where?" said Pattie. "Back there at the church." "We left Burt back at the guitar store," said Pattie. "Why don't I drive and you stretch out in the back seat the way Hank used to do?" Jimmie pulled over and climbed into the back. Pattie took the wheel. Jimmie shut his eyes and lay back on the long seat. They were going fast. The wind roared and whistled above him, but deep in the back seat, Jimmie felt peaceful and calm. Hank's voice on the radio sang "Going Home." "Man," he said. "I'm ridin' this big ol' car just like Hank used to." "Like Hank's last ride," said a voice from the front seat, but it wasn't Pattie's voice; it was Burt's. "Huh?" said Jimmie. He opened his eyes to see Burt leaning over the back seat smiling at him. It was then that he saw Burt's long, sharp canine teeth. Pattie turned to look at him, too, and he noticed that she had similar teeth. "Your pain will be over soon," she said. "This is your ride home." # # # "Well," said Burt, as he hung Jimmie Shirley's guitar on the Wall of Broken Dreams. "There's one less singer trying to challenge Hank's legacy." "There'll others," said Pattie. "We'll be doing this forever." "Forever," said Burt. He hung Jimmie's hat next to the guitar. "Close the blinds darlin'. It's almost dawn." -- THE END -- ================================================================= -- -------+++++++-------+++++++ +++++++-------+++++++------- Robyn Herrington Operations Manager, Microforms Services University of Calgary, MacKimmie Library Ph: (403)220-6903 http://www.ucalgary.ca/~rmherrin rmherrin@acs.ucalgary.ca -------+++++++-------+++++++--------------+++++++-------+++++++-------