Cash: The Autobiography (24 page)

Theologically, June and I are on even ground, but she's a prayer warrior and I'm not. She's so good at it, in fact, that sometimes I catch myself thinking that, well, maybe I don't have to pray, because she's praying for me. Which of course is not a healthy idea and demonstrates one of the reasons she needs to pray so hard for me. Always, though, the first thing I say when I get up in the morning, whether or not June's with me, before my feet hit the floor, is “Good morning, Lord.” Then, by the time I'm on my feet, I say, “Praise God.” I know that's not much—it's not the prayer Jesus taught us—but it's my way of establishing immediate contact with my Creator. At some time during the day I usually manage to recite the Lord's Prayer, if only to myself, silently. The publicity in the 1960s was that June saved my life, and I sometimes still hear it said that she's the reason I'm alive today. That may be true, but knowing what I do about addiction and survival, I'm fully aware that the only human being who can save you is yourself. What June did for me was post signs along the way, lift me up when I was weak, encourage me when I was discouraged, and love me when I felt alone and unlovable. She's the greatest woman I have ever known. Nobody else, except my mother, comes close. I wish the whole world could know how great she is. She's smart and she's brilliant. She's got a great personal- ity. She's easy to live with, because she makes it a point to be so. She's loving. She's sharing. The main thing, though, is that she loves me and I know it. I used to take advantage of that—because I knew she loved me, I could get away with more—but again, that's not a healthy idea, and it demonstrates one of the reasons why she needs to love me so much. I don't do it so much these days.

Perhaps she prayed me out of it. June is formidable; she's my solid rock. She's my spark plug. When there are people to talk to and my shy- ness is welling up inside me, she holds my hand, fronts for me, and makes it possible, though not easy, for me to act with enough grace to avoid hurting people's feelings. As I've said before, I'm just fine on stage in front of ten thousand people I don't know, but I'm all awkwardness backstage with ten. June always sees that I've got the right thing to eat, if I'll agree to eat it. She likes the same kind of movies I do, and the same kind of TV shows. She's got charm, she's got brains, she's got style, she's got class. She's got silver, she's got gold, she's got jewelry, she's got furniture, she's got china .. . she's got a black belt in shopping. She's the easiest woman in the world for me to live with, I guess because I know her so well and she knows me so well, and we get along handsomely. If it looks like there's going to be some tension between us, we talk it out and work it out, or I take a walk and she takes a drive until it's over. Grandfather Rivers taught me that— “Your Grandma and I never fought, but I took a lot of walks,” he said, and that's what I do. By the time I'm back from a walk I'll be looking at the problem differ- ently, and so will June. Whatever I do, I try not to blow up the way I used to, just explode and say angry and hurtful things. Then the pain is there, the damage is done, and there's no taking it back, no matter how many amends I make. These days I don't even have to walk away very often. June and I are usually on a pretty even keel in our home life, our social life, and our work. She's a vital performer, and it's vital for me to have her on my concerts. This thing between us has been hap- pening since 1961, and I just don't want to travel if she can't come with me. She almost always does. She's my life's companion, and she's a sweet companion. She's

very loving, especially with me, and very kind—there are people who can be loving, but not kind, but she's loving and kind. She does everything she can to help me along with my day. She's a good woman. She's got standards. She's got tradition. She's got dignity. She's got china.. .. When we come in from a tour, we both need time and space apart, so I'll pack up my little suitcase and head out here to the farm, and she'll pack her suitcase and head for New York City. It's necessary, I think, for marriage partners to have some free time apart from each other. I've found it to be true in my own marriage, and it's straight from Scripture; Paul exhorted us to spend time apart so that our coming together is stronger. June and 1 don't let it go many days, though. Usually we're ready to be back together after just two or three. She likes to go to New York and shop. She loves wheeling and dealing and haggling with her favorite jew- elers in the diamond district and coming home with all these bargains, all this money saved—she saves me so much money, sometimes, that I just don't know where to spend it. I don't mind, really I don't. She's earned her black belt. It's her right and her prerogative. She puts as much time into the family business as I do, and I'm only too happy to share the whole thing with her. She and I have become so very close, so intimate. I think it might be because of all her prayer. I never see her praying, though, or at least not when it's obvious. Sometimes I'll catch sight of her on a plane, say, moving her lips with her eyes closed, and I think that's what she's probably doing. So yes, we're so close. Whenever I face a professional decision I always put it to her and get her opinion, because I know she'll be both objective and honest with me, and she's always the first to know about everything

in my life. She's never judgmental. She lets me keep my small measure of dignity and prestige in both our rela- tionship with each other and our relationship with the world. She's become everything that a wife should be, in my mind. We sleep together, we play together, we travel together, we work together, and we've both found our particular place where we totally belong, in every avenue of endeavor. I'm not bad at shopping myself—not in June's league, but not totally untalented either. I built up a pretty impres- sive gun collection in my younger days, mostly classic nineteenth-century American pieces, Colt single-action revolvers and the like, mostly gone now, and these days I love to look for books. When I go to New York, one of the main attractions is the variety of antique and spe- cialty bookstores. Usually we stay in Midtown Man- hattan, in one of the hotels around Central Park South, and that's a great location for a bibliophile. A walk along 57th Street and down Fifth Avenue can turn up all kinds of treasures. The last time out I bought a very good edition of Treiil's Works ofjosephus, to my mind a much better translation than Whiston's. I was walking down 57th Street with June one Sunday morning when we happened on the First Baptist Church of New York, which we hadn't noticed before because its entrance doesn't look like a church's. We saw from a sign outside that services were just about to start, so we went in, and the strangest thing happened. The congregation was seated as we entered, but about halfway down the aisle a young boy was turned around watching the door. He saw us, immediately jumped up, and yelled, “JOHNNY CASH!! Johnny Cash has come to church with me!” As it happened, the only free seats were right next to him and his parents, so we took them, and that's when we saw that the boy was mentally handicapped. He was so excited. “I told you!” he kept saying to his parents. "I

told you he was coming!" The preacher came over and explained to us that, yes, the boy had told his parents, and the whole congre- gation, repeatedly that T was going to walk into that church, sit down beside him, and worship with him. And that's what I did. Being next to him was such a pleasure. He was so happy. When the service was over, we walked down to the corner with him and his parents, and they filled in the story. They were Jewish, they said, but their son had decided to become a Christian after listening to some of my gospel recordings. That's why they were in a Christian church on a Sunday morning. They were in that particular Christian church because that's where he knew I was going to walk in the door. I've been a Christian, as I've said, all my life. My father didn't experience a conversion to Christianity until my brother Jack's death in 1944. The question is, what was he converted from? In his later years he became one of the sweetest, kindest souls I've ever known—particularly during the final few months, when he showed his love and concern for everybody who came to see him in the hospital—but I had memories of times when his ways could be harsh. At the most basic level, the first time he ever told me he was proud of me was after I became a recording artist. He never once told me he loved me, and he never had a loving hand to lay on any of us children. He said once that he didn't have to tell people he loved them for them to know it, and perhaps that was true. Still, it would have meant an awful lot for me to have heard it, just once, before he died. Some of my strongest early memories, and certainly my worst, are of the times when he'd come home drunk. I can remember waking up early one morning when I was

eight to hear him yelling at Moma, raging and cursing. He went on and on, storming around, cutting her off when she tried to talk back to him until he said he'd had enough; he was going to beat her. He started toward her to do just that, but Jack was up by then and he stopped him. Jack was only ten, but he stood up from his seat at the table and said, “You may hit Moma, but you're going to have to hit me first 'cause you're not gonna hit Moma. You may think you're gonna hit Moma, but you're not, Daddy. You're gonna have to hit me first.” Daddy stormed out the back door and into the fields. He never laid a hand on Jack, or me either. I still remember that as the greatest nightmare of my young life, hearing my mother and dad fight. The subject of the argument that began the fight was Moma's desire to move back to the hill country where her people lived. Daddy wouldn't do it. He also killed my dog. It was a stray that I'd picked up on the road into the Dyess town center when I was five. Daddy called him Jake Terry after the Farm Home Administration man in Dyess. Daddy didn't think too much of Mr. Terry, and he killed his canine namesake after I'd had it about a year because he said it was eat- ing scraps that could go to fatten up the hogs. He didn't admit it at first. I came home from school one day and called Jake Terry, but he didn't come, so Jack and I set out looking for him. We asked Daddy as we passed whether he'd seen him. He said no. Eventually we found him at the far end of the cotton rows across a shallow ditch, dead, with a .Z2 bullet in his head. I guess I don't have to tell you how I felt. I was five, and he was my dog. I was scared to say anything to Daddy, but Jack wasn't. He went straight to him and said, "We found Jake Terry

down there across the ditch.“ Daddy looked up and said, ”Yeah, I lolled him. I didn't want to have to tell you boys, but we just didn't need another dog around here.“ We already had a dog called Ray, named after Daddy. I thought my world had ended that morning, that nothing was safe, that life wasn't safe. It was a frighten- ing thing, and it took a long time for me to get over it. It was a cut that went deep and stayed there. Daddy quit drinking after Jack's death, and in 1945 he took on duties as a deacon of the church. When he was called on to preach in the pastor's absence, he said, ”You've called on me to preach today and I can't turn you down, but I don't deserve to be here. I'm an evil man. I always have been. I don't deserve to stand in this pul- pit.“ I thought he did. His subject was a passage in Second Chronicles—”If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land“—and he was very effective. He didn't shout; he was calm, contained, reserved. I was impressed, and I think the congregation was, too. It was such a wonderful thing for me, seeing him in the pulpit. He stayed completely dry for many years, but even- tually he started drinking again. He couldn't do it in the regular course of business because my mother wouldn't allow alcohol in the house, but whenever opportunity knocked, he answered. I don't have to bear my father's sins, and I don't bear any of his guilt. Sometimes I feel as if I'm not even related to him. Other times it's, ”Now, there's a guy after my own heart." In degrees of male mania, I guess there's not much

difference (though there is some) between killing dogs and smashing up hotel rooms. And I suppose I inherited my addictive nature from my father. It's his legacy, but it's my responsibility. In some ways my father is an enigma to me. His presence in my memory is awesome, yet it's fleeting, something I can turn my back on and even, sometimes, laugh about. On stage the other night, for instance, I decided to do “These Hands” and said, “I'll dedicate this song to my mother and father, who worked so hard to put me through school and encouraged me to go out and sing.” Right then I felt my father's presence beside me protesting, “I didn't encourage you!” He was right, of course—his attitude had always been, “You won't amount to a hill of beans. Forget about that guitar”— and I almost laughed out loud right there in front of everybody. I don't know. I don't think much about him any- more. I pass the cemetery almost every day when I'm home at Old Hickory Lake, but I don't visit his grave. I'm not haunted by him. On the other hand, he is the most interesting specter in my memories, looming around in there saying, “Figure me out, son.” I've certainly tried. Most of my life I did my best to remember the man who delivered the sermon, the man who held me on his knee, but in more recent years I've had trouble accepting his conversion and especially his atonement. I've thought, Is my father redeemed or not? What happened to him to make him fit for the Kingdom of God or failed to happen, mak- ing him unfit? Was he justified? Was there justification that led him to sanctification? For that's the whole point in justification and forgiveness. The line goes from redemption to justification and then to eventual sanctification through righteousness with God.

Was Daddy's conversion real, and if it was, why didn't I see that all the time, not just when he stood up and preached from Second Chronicles? The question doesn't stop safely with him, either. Is that how it is with me? Was I evil, but then made a change, walked the line, and was a godly man, but then slipped and fell and became an evil man again? And how many times has God picked me up, forgiven me, set me back upon the path, and made me know that it was all right? Did all that happen to Daddy, too? And if so, where was the justification? Was he justified in his own mind? Was he ever justified in his own mind? I can never really know, but I don't think he was. And how about me? Can the line possibly stretch all the way for me, from redemption to sanctification through righteousness with God? No, responsibility for my deeds begins with me. I don't believe I can inherit heaven or hell from someone else.