The Brunist Day of Wrath: A Novel (20 page)

“Thank ye, lays’n gents! That song, as we like to say down to Nashville town, went out to some very special folks here tonight. I’m fixin’ to take a short break now, but I got a mess more a heart-stoppin’ boot-stompin’ country tunes to lay on your ears, or noses, or whatsomever y’tune in with, so don’ go way. Anybody lookin’ to stand me a beer, I’ll be parked right over here…

“…Whoa! Lookit what’s landed at my table! You settin’ to buy me a drink?”

“No, honey, I’m clean broke. Only popped in here to see if I couldn’t find a nice gentleman who’ll tempt me with one.”

“Ifn I was a nice gentleman, purty lady, I might. What was wrong with that feller who was leanin’ all over you at the bar, the one with the big lump on his forehead?”

“I seen by the way he was tugging at hisself and by the spots on his pants he’s most probably got a dose. So I told him I was with you to shake him off. Hope it don’t offend you.”

“Nope. Wisht you’d worked a drink off him first, though. We coulda shared it.”

“You the sharing type?”

“When it suits me. This where you sprung from?”

“Yeah. But I left here twenty some years ago when I was still a kid. Nobody knows me anymore. Patti Jo Glover, Duke. What’s your handle? The real one?”

“I ain’t tellin’.”

“That bad, hunh? Hey, you got nothing on me.”

“Patti Jo? What’s wrong with that?”

“Well, it’s not Patti Jo. I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

“Awright, you funny-names fans, git a grip. It’s Armand. Armand Rendine. That’s it, darlin’, that’s whom I am. Whaddaya laughin’ at?”

“I’m not laughing. It’s cute. Sounds like it must be French.”

“I like to think I got some bayou in me. It’s good fer the marquee. Thoughta callin’ myself Bayou Duke. Probly jist commonplace everday downriver canuck, though.”

“Bayou L’Heureux rhymes better. What was your mama’s name?”

“Rendine.”

“Uh oh. One of those, hunh? Why they call you Duke?”

“Picked it up back when I was pitchin’ bush league, along with a messa other tags, mostly not usable in polite company.”

“Well, that’s me, all right. So, a baseball player, hunh? You don’t strike me as the athletic type.”

“Wasn’t mucha one. I could throw a purty mean fastball but not mostly where I aimed to. Spent mosta my time out in the bullpen gittin’ blisters on my butt and tellin’ dumb jokes. To kill the time, I picked up a box in a pawn shop and fooled around with it out there, entertainin’ the fans bored with the games, gittin’ a bigger hand than any the players done. So I quit baseball and headed fer Oprytown.”

“Yeah, I heard them announce you as coming direct from Nashville, Tennessee.”

“Oh, I’m
from
there awright. ‘Direct’ might be stretchin’ it. Left that town a whole long buncha years ago. But as I been driftin’ round out in nowheresville without a address ever since, I spose y’could say ‘direct.’ It’s jist took me a while to git here is all, bein’ as I git lost easy.”

“Did you ever play at Grand Ole Opry?”

“Got a backup gig at Ryman wunst when the flu was goin’ round and they was a mite desprit. Had two weeks over to a bar in Madison singin’ with a lady friend. But that was the sum total a my Nashville joys. They was nuthin fer it finally but to pack my cardboard suitcase and hit the road. So I’m still out in the bullpen, as y’might say.”

“What happened to the lady friend?”

“She quit the racket and married a dentist.”

“Smart girl. But you seem to have a lotta fans here.”

“Friday night at the Moon. No place else to go. Most of ’em’d probly rather hear band music.”

“Well, you don’t make it easy on them. That was an awful song about dead mommies you were just singing. Who were the special folks?”

“Them kids over there. The ones puttin’ on the floor show and excitin’ all the patrons. It’s a purty unwholesome weeper, and I ain’t big on religious songs in genral, nor not religion neither, but they’re new reglars and got a amorous hankerin’ fer that tune and the boy sets me up with a beer ever now’n then, so what can y’do?”

“I been watching them. The boy’s gonna dump her.”

“Everbody dumps everbody. What’s important is the moment. They’re havin’ a good moment. I better git back to it and see what I can do fer ’em. Any requests?”

“You say gospel’s not your thing. What is?”

“Honky tonk mostly.”

“Okay, so how about ‘If You Got the Money, Honey, I Got the Time?’ Or ‘Honky Tonk Blues?’”

“You got it.”

“Hey, I’m impressed! You can even yodel! Chased those kids right outa here, though.”

“They ain’t goin’ far. Jist down the hall.”

“And thanks for the beer.”

“Thank the kid.”

“Oh. He bought that one for you. I’m sorry.”

“Did it taste good?”

“Best I ever had.”

“There y’go then. Enjoy the moment, Patti Jo, and fuck the rest.”

“I like your grin. It spreads all over your face. I like your singing, too. Didn’t think I would at first. You can’t hold a note for long so the slow stuff’s not so great. ‘White Dove’ was a cooked goose. Likewise, ‘He’ll Have to Go.’ It’ll have to go. But if you can move your voice around, you got something.”

“You sorta jist lean back and let fly, dontcha?”

“I’m nothing if not honest, Duke. If that’s the word for mouthing off like I do. Can’t hold it back.”

“Yeah? Not me. I was a born liar. Who was y’talkin’ to while I was up there?”

“Just to myself. Bad habit I got.”

“Now
you’re
lyin’.”

“Mmm. Dead sister. It’s a conversation we have. I just sorta keep hearing her like.”

“All the time?”

“No, mostly only when I got troubles. Which I suppose is next thing to all the time.”

“Well, we seem t’be playin’ in the same ballpark, Patti Jo. How old was your sister?”

“Just barely borned. She died of diphtheria before I came along. But I happened next and I always felt like she got reborned in me.”

“Reminds me of a guy I knowed in the bush leagues. He played second base and he was always yappin’ away there behind the pitchers, drivin’ us nuts. I ast him who he was talkin’ to, and he said he had the whole St. Louis team inside a him and they was always goin’ at each other and never give him a moment’s rest. I tole him I understood now why they called ’em the Gashouse Gang, and mebbe all he needed was a bicarb. So whatsa funny name? Gimme a laugh.”

“Patricia Josefina Petteruti. That’s the short version.”

“You sound half-cracker, but I thought you had the Eye-talian look.”

“That a bad thing?”

“Hell, no. I love it. The cook in this bedbox is Eye-talian. Cep fer the garlic, I cain’t git enough.”

“My dad was a coalminer here. Got killed in the Deepwater disaster five years back. Ever hear about that?”

“Yeah, sometimes I sing that Ben Wosznik song about it, the one he done down at Grand Ole Opry. The one, y’know, that starts—y’begun to say sumthin?”

“No. Well…no.”

“Well, probly y’don’t like reminders. Sorry bout your ole fella.”

“I’m not. I hope the sick bastard rots in hell. When I was about twelve or so, my mom packed up and left him, dragging us around with her. She had raised us Catholic because she thought she had to, but she dropped all that when we took up traveling. Left us all pretty mixed up on that subject. Only thing left is I still cross myself when I’m in trouble.”

“So you took your ma’s name.”

“No. Well, yes, probably. Can’t remember. Never went to school after that, so I never had to tell anyone my name. She did start calling me Patti Jo around then. When she was sober. Worse names when she wasn’t. She took good care of us but she had a mean backhand and a temper that just took the top of her head off sometimes, especially when coming down or when a hangover’d got the best of her. Haven’t seen her since I first got married, and I don’t miss her.”

“You’ve had a run at knot-tyin’.”

“A few times. You?”

“Nope. When the Lord made me, he made a ramblin’ man. Or else Ma did. She was a great disbeliever in the institution.”

“I can feel for that. My first time was to an older guy when I was fifteen, maybe I got sold to him, who knows, it just kinda happened, and then later, when he kicked me out, to a coupla others, one of them named Glover, I forget which. I sorta blank out a lot.”

“Y’been around the block, Patti Jo. Like them pore little honky tonk angels.”

“Well, ‘angel’ might be like you coming direct from Nashville, Duke, stretching it a speck. Hung out mostly in trailer camps in those years of holy matrimony, washing dishes or waiting tables so as not to starve, picking up the way I talk. I was sick a lot as I remember. One of my husbands, Glover probably, liked to play cards and when he was short on cash he used me as his stake. He wasn’t very good at cards, always drank too much, so I got passed around the camp a fair bit. Apprentice work, as you might call it. Then, when he was sober, he’d beat me for sleeping around. Knocked a coupla teeth out and cracked a rib. Finally one day I just got on a bus and went someplace else. And then just kept moving. Been to both coasts. All through the south. There’s always a bus going somewhere, somewhere better than where you are. So from time to time I just buy a ticket and climb aboard. A bus is a cheap overnight hotel, sometimes you pick up a little trade, and you always wake up somewhere new.”

“And that’s how ye ended up in this burg?”

“Sort of.”

“How’d y’git all the way out here to the Blue Moon Motel?”

“Well, no place to stay downtown. The old hotel’s closed up and all its windows are busted out. They told me where this place was and I just walked out. Nice day. Even took a stroll through the old neighborhood. Which is just as ugly as I remembered. Only dirtier and more shrunk up.”

“Memory lane. Ain’t what it’s cracked up to be. I got a song about it.”

“You write your own material?”

“Sometimes. That song I just ruint bout a drunk mournin’ his dead sweetheart fer a sample. Got that from that feller with the spotted pants who was introducin’ hisself to you earlier on. So how long y’plannin’ t’stay round?”

“Hard to say. Got a room here for tonight, but they’re filling up. Those religious people. Everything’s booked for next week. A coupla busloads from Florida.”

“Yeah, I know. I gotta change my repertory for ’em. But they gimme a bunk’n mornin’ grub here as part a the deal. You kin crash there a coupla nights ifn worse comes to worst.”

“I sorta feel like that just happened, Duke. I had one real friend when I was in grade school here. She was a little older, like the big sister I never had. She was very pretty, not much bigger than me, a little strange, kinda poetical as you might say, but very sweet and loving. Well, she’s dead now. I miss her a whole lot and I went around to all the places today we used to play and talk. Went by her house. It’s all messed up and fenced off. Made me sad.”

“That’s what brung ye back here?”

“Not exactly. It’s a long story. Sure you wanta hear it? When I get going I’m pretty hard to turn off.”

“I got all night, Patti Jo. First, though, I gotta crank up another set. Anything y’wanta hear? I swear, no slow stuff. I know enough t’stick with my money pitch when my change-up ain’t workin’.”

“So, let’s keep right on honky tonkin’. ‘Lost Highway.’ ‘Walkin’ the Floor Over You.’ You into Elvis at all?”

“Who ain’t?”

“How about ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ then?”

“Okay. I don’t have his moves.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to.”

“Hey, where’d the beers come from?”

“I figured I could stand us a round. Specially if I can start saving on my room rent.”

“Mmm. That goes down a treat and a half. Y’hongry?”

“Haven’t eaten since yesterday. Or maybe day before that.”

“The cook always brings me a sandwich after my last set. One a them fat Eye-talian ones with the thick bread. I’ll ask fer two. What’d your sister have t’say while I was away?”

“She said that’s one handsome fella who can really sing his socks off.”

“Your sister’s got good taste.”

“Well…it’s really not my sister. That’s the problem…”

“I’m waitin’…”

“When I was little, especially after we left town, I used to talk to my dead sister to beat back the loneliness. You know. Like other kids talk to their pets or stuffed animals. But I never had any pets or stuffed animals—all I had was this dead sister. I did sometimes have the weird feeling she was somehow living out the life she never had inside of me, like I owed it to her, or she thought I did, but mostly she was just somebody imaginary to tell my troubles to. Then, one day, she started talking back. Or it seemed like she did. Mostly saying she wanted me to come home. Now, from here on, it gets a little spooky…”

“I kin roll with it.”

“Traveling around like I been doing, cut off from most everybody, you don’t always get the news right away. It was only a year or so ago that one of those end-of-the-world preachers come through the town I was in and some working girls I knew talked me into going with them to hear him preach in a little storefront church nearby. And it was through the stories the preacher told that I learned that my friend from childhood, the one I was telling you about, had been killed. I didn’t know that. I couldn’t hardly believe what I was hearing. I just started crying and everybody thought I was getting religion, and maybe I was. She’d been killed and there was something important about it, almost like Jesus getting killed. When I got the dates sorted out in my head, I realized she’d died about the same time my dead sister had started talking back. And I knew then it wasn’t my sister. It was my friend Marcella Bruno.”

“Bruno? Y’mean this group that’s gatherin’ here now? The gal in that song Ben Wosznik useta sing?”

“Yes, and that’s the really peculiar thing. When I finally got on the bus and come here like Marcella kept telling me to, I didn’t know about those people moving back to town. I didn’t even know who they were except for what that preacher told me or that they were from here or that they’d ever left. That so many more were on the way, like something was about to happen, was downright scary. I learned that here at the motel this afternoon and it almost took my breath away. It’s like they all been listening to the same voice I been listening to.”