Fishbone's Song Read online

  Stories are like old cedar shingles on a good roof, Fishbone said. They happen, they look good, but they won’t work. Roof will leak. Has to be other shingles, overlapping, one shingle overlapping the next to make the roof to not leak, to make the rain flow over and not through, to make the story. Make the story flow.

  Same as.

  Same as stories, he said. Story won’t stand alone, can’t stand alone, has to overlap other stories, has to be overlapped by another story.

  Name of Judith Eve was the second Forever Woman who never was, never became but would always be.

  Judith Eve.

  But not alone. She didn’t just happen, didn’t just be there out of nothing. Had to come from other stories, other places. Had to have overlap stories.

  Had to come from cars.

  Fast cars and white lightning. Same as moonshine, ’shine, used to be called white lightning, made back up and in the hills, back in dark hollows and kept in crocks and jars and wooden barrels.

  Old-time people brought the ways from other countries, over there in Europe, Scotland, back in places, and came to the dark hills here, and started stills and made more whiskey from corn and wheat than ever was before. Even to old George Washington, who had a set of stills, made thirty thousand gallons in one year, they said, and then had the guv’ment put a tax on the other whiskey, on all the hill people whiskey, so they couldn’t compete with him.

  Tried.

  Tried to use the army to get the taxes. Tried to use the army to stop other people from making ’shine. Tried to make it illegal and finally did.

  Made it wrong for other people to make ’shine.

  All right for him. Just all right for him and the other rich ones, the big ones.

  But against the written law of the whole country for anybody else, stomped in by the army, same army as won the war, the Revolutionary War, same army that fought eight years to make us all free, all except women and black people and native people and poor people. They didn’t get to be free, no matter what they said or did. Had to take it for themselves. Had to come down out of the hills and take it all or never be free. Had to roll on down and take it, make their own whiskey and sell it in the dark. Never free. Never open.

  But all the rest, all the rich ones and white ones, they were free.

  All free except those who wanted to make their own ’shine and put it in barrels and use it for to barter or buy or live.

  All illegal. All illegal then and kept illegal on down, year after year, same law, same illegal all the way down, and had a war about it. Had a war in the hills, called it the Whiskey War, just stomping down on anybody wanted to make his own ’shine, and the army won it. Won the whiskey rebellion.

  Made it so it was still illegal, and then came Fishbone and Jimmy. Took the tires off the sunken barges and had money for pockets and more, so much there was enough to hide down in your boot, so much that Jimmy bought the ’49 Ford and took Charlene into the embankment when he was beer drunk to start their journey on the spirit path.

  So much money from the diving on tires that Fishbone, he bought his own car. Same kind, same as, ’49 Ford two-door coupe with the big V8 motor, and he learned to mechanic some. Found a way to put a blower, a supercharger, off an airplane over the carburetor to blow down a jet of air with the gas, made the car wild fast, wicked fast. So powerful it would just sit and shred the tires if he up and tromped on it.

  Crazy car.

  And he got to talking to a man over in South Carolina, and the man told him there was a place where a man with a wicked fast car could make even more money, more than what he could even stick in his boot if he wanted.

  Wanted to.

  Wanted to put an iron tank in the trunk of the car, fifty-gallon iron tank, and fill it with white lightning, fill it with moonshine, fill it with ’shine and take it north to another town where they would put it in bottles and add some tea and gunpowder for color and sell the bottles with fancy labels. Call it bonded whiskey. Call it rich man’s whiskey even though it’s made by a poor man. If he wanted to do all that, he could make five dollars a gallon.

  Two hundred and fifty dollars.

  For each trip.

  When a man in a factory slaved hard for thirty-three dollars a week, worked till he dropped every day for thirty-three dollars for a six-day week, Fishbone could make two hundred and fifty dollars for a trip that didn’t take four hours.

  If.

  If the revenuers waiting on the road in their own cars didn’t catch him, didn’t stop him, didn’t shoot him, or burn him down, or wreck him.

  If.

  The money was there.

  If . . .

  So Fishbone did that thing. Put a tank in the trunk of his car, and beefed up the rear springs to take the weight of the tank, and put thick truck tires on the rims so they wouldn’t shred with the speed and load, and started up those roads at night with a tank full of white lightning.

  Thunder Road, they called it.

  Thunder Road.

  Not for weather, but because the drivers of the cars back then could let the exhaust out ahead of the muffler to get more power. That last bit of speed. Caused a roar that near made your ears bleed, couldn’t hear for two days later even with cotton shoved in your ears. Crazy, wicked crazy speed. Cars meant to do eighty miles an hour were pushed to a hundred, then one twenty, and over one thirty.

  Always running on moonless nights, leaving at midnight and boring a screaming, roaring hole through the pitch dark, running so fast they like to run over their own headlights, running so fast they outran the gunfire when they barreled through roadblocks, running so fast that it was impossible to do.

  But they did it. Fishbone said they did it. Fishbone said he did it, said he couldn’t not do it, had to do it.

  Had to.

  Lord god, he said, they had to do it because of why? Because of the money, one thing. Money as crazy as the speed, more money than any of them had ever seen, money that kept rolling in, but more. More to it than just money.

  Changed them.

  It all changed them. Some of them country boys, some of them fought in wars, some of them not, some of them could read, some not, some knew a lot, some didn’t.

  Some were all different until.

  Until.

  Until they drove the white lightning road, the Thunder Road, in impossibly hot cars. Fords, Chevrolets, even a Cadillac or two. Basic cars turned into wild things.

  Like turning a housecat into a cougar, Fishbone said. Same animal, in a way, but really not even close to the same. Radiators blowing, seals exploding and covering the roads with oil, axles warping, windshields shattering, wrecks with bodies turned to paste, and all of them, all of them fighting to take the next load up the road.

  Crazy, Fishbone said. It was that they were crazy, but all crazy in the same way, all crazy with the money that they never saved, crazy with the speed of it all. Everybody lived in either shacks or old trailers, stuck back in the brush off the main road, muddy ruts for driveways with a shed for working on the cars. And out in front of the sheds, a spare motor either hanging on an A-frame made out of logs or a tree limb, and somebody always, always working on a motor if he wasn’t on a run. Or hadn’t been caught and sent to federal prison.

  Come a day now and then, or two or three days, when there wasn’t any white lightning to move, to transport, Fishbone said you’d think they’d take some down time. Take some self time and relax. But no.

  No.

  Instead they all headed south down into Florida, where there was a flat place to run, down to Daytona Beach, and they’d race the cars with empty ’shine tanks, race against each other—those that weren’t in jail or prison—race without seat belts or helmets, race the crazy-wicked fast cars for money on a barrel head, all the money, all the money they made running the ’shine north, screaming fast on the beach and drinking beer and sometimes moonshine and fighting and sometimes dying there in wrecks.

  And so to Judith Eve.

  Fish
bone’s second Forever Woman.

  Never called her Judy. Never called her Eve.

  Always called her Judith Eve. Lady, he said, like no other lady ever lived. She’d come down to the races with Bobby J. Never knew his full name. Just Bobby J. Won most of the races with a cut-down-and-built-back-up ’53 Ford. Had some kind of wild engine in it that would outrun anything but light, and he’d show up with Judith Eve in the car with him, set her aside on the crude bleachers they had put together out of planks for local audiences that always showed up to bet on the cars.

  She’d sit . . . perfect.

  It was not just that she was pretty, or beautiful. Thick brown hair that fell to her waist in back. Shined like it had glow heat in it. Huge brown eyes, tipped up at the corners just that touch, always on the edge of smiling, and when she laughed, it sounded like silver bells back in a deep forest. Hear it and you had to laugh with her even if you didn’t know what she was laughing about.

  Body, Fishbone said, that would make a grown man like buttermilk, and when I asked him what that meant, he said I would know later. Maybe a lot later because I still haven’t figured it out. She wore white T-shirts and shorts, he said, and after racing in the day they would have kegs of beer in stock tanks full of ice and drink beer and argue about the racing and sometimes fight. There would be music from car radios set on country stations, three or four cars set on the same one so it could be loud, and they would drink and fight and dance on the beach.

  But not Judith Eve.

  She’d sit and sip a beer and talk and smile and laugh and just be . . . perfect. Not tangled up in all the mess of racing and fighting. Just come down with Bobby J and go back with him and say hey to other men. Never with them, just to them. Say hey.

  Said hey to Fishbone.

  That was it. All of it. Fishbone was young then, which was hard to believe. That he’d ever been young. And shy. Bobby J was above him, had the best car, was the most, the very most of it all. Black hair in an Elvis cut and combed back in a ducktail, Levis with the belt loops cut out, T-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in the sleeve, black leather engineer boots with a strap and buckle. Looked like they all wanted to look, drove like they all wanted to drive, fought like they all wanted to fight.

  Until.

  Until he got caught by revenuers who laid a welded spike strip across the highway and blew all four of his tires when he had a full tank of lightning, clocking somewhere just above a hundred miles an hour, boring a hole through the night. Spun him sideways, and around twice, and then it rolled him, and he lit up like a shooting star when the gas and lightning blew and there wasn’t anything left of Bobby J.

  Not a thing.

  But Fishbone had gone on by that time. Had wrecked his own car the same way only not as bad. Blew his tires too, the revenuers, with a spike strip, but with Fishbone only three tires blew and he slewed off the road and into the brush, and only half rolled once, and didn’t blow. Just started to drip and burned like a fire, and he got out in time, though his leg was broken. Left leg. Why he limped a bit. He was still young then, and the judge took some pity on him, and he did some time, but not in a federal prison. Only four months in the county jail, which was how long it took his leg to heal anyway, and he got out of jail with a healed leg and no money. None. They took it all, what he had left. Didn’t let him keep more than sixteen cents and a matchbook with a bar name in New Orleans. So he moved on, he said. Thumbed his way back south to New Orleans and took a job sweeping and mopping out flop houses and juke joints and bars and the like. Dark houses, those places, houses called the Rising Sun in songs. Man named Bobby only with no J owned the bar and the flop houses, and gave him a cot in one of the flops, with only just enough money to live on. Barely. If he had had to pay, it would have been fifty cents a night for an eight-hour shift in a cot, hot bunking. While it was all rough, rough trade and tough people, men and women seemed to be mostly made out of scars, he found he didn’t mind it much. Coming from jail where the only food he got was mashed sweet potatoes, one dry hard biscuit, and a cup of black coffee mixed with grounds so strong you almost had to chew it, one time each day, coming from that the red beans and rice he got for a quarter each day, with a cup of soft ginger beer three times a day, was fine.

  He thought a lot about the cars. Fast, wild, crazy cars. And he missed them and knew he would own more cars, drive more of them, but never again running ’shine or racing them the same wild way. It’s not that he grew up so much as that he grew out. Thought wider. Thought longer. Didn’t just see the sunset but thought about where it came from; like a fighter who hits not just to the point but aims a foot past it. Tries to carry the hit longer, make more of it. Saw everything that way.

  Called it stock car racing later. Said it all started then—what became national automobile racing. Stock car racing. But there wasn’t anything stock about the races he was in, the roads he drove. The cars were so far from stock they almost didn’t qualify for the brand name. Fords in those days weren’t really Fords. More like a skeleton of a Ford with a monster put inside it. Cars that ate meat, ate men.

  Still later when they stopped running white lightning and just raced, he watched their names in the papers, heard talk about them on radios, heard how they raced and how many of them died in fiery wrecks and what was called “devastating collisions.”

  But he had moved on.

  Still he never forgot about Judith Eve and how she would sit on the end of the bleachers. Sit there just exactly right. Brown hair falling down, eyes tipped up a bit at the corners, lips like the red of life, body . . . body arched and taking the sun so it seemed the light came from inside her. Sat there just exactly right.

  Perfect.

  And he loved her still in his mind the way she had been then. Didn’t try to look her up or write to her or know more about her or see what had happened to her. Owned her in his thinking, knew her in his thinking, was with her in his thinking, would always be with her in his thinking.

  Like me with the doe standing by the pond with the jewels of water going out and out. I would own, would see her, know her all the rest of my life.

  Fourth Song: The Long Road

  Burning, burning,

  up the long, long road.

  Burning, burning,

  up the long, long road.

  Never knowing day by day,

  whether to swear or whether to pray.

  Moonshine makes a heavy load,

  up the long, wrong road.

  5

  * * *

  Greenroom

  Fishbone has a lot of rules where he makes things right in your head, but some of them you don’t understand at first.

  If you kill it, you eat it.

  Don’t think about bad things if you don’t want bad things to happen.

  If you think something is red, it’s red.

  If you think about something small a lot of the time, it will get bigger, but if you think about something big, a lot of the time it will still get bigger. Like fish. Or debt.

  A house is something to keep things out, not to keep things in. Like weather. And biting flies. And some snakes.

  Always stay hungry. It makes you see things better. Especially if you’re hunting. Or trying to think up a new idea. Orville and Wilbur Wright were always hungry when they were working on how to fly. Stayed in a shed, Fishbone said, with slab walls, and had eggs to cook and eat, eggs in a board shelf with a hole for each egg, and every egg was numbered. Number said when it was laid, told how fresh it was. That was hunger, Fishbone said—fat, full people don’t number eggs. Just eat them. Anybody who numbers his eggs is hungry. All the time. When I asked how he knew about Orville and Wilbur and their eggs, he looked at me like I was going to be the big part of a wise guy and then shrugged and smiled and said he saw it in a magazine picture of the inside of their shack. Was still true, even if Fishbone wasn’t there to count the eggs himself.

  A room is as big as you want it to be in your head.

  A
nd there it was. A change had started in me just before that about the room. Not the same change as later but a change. The thing is, what with one thing and another, it seemed like everything was changing for me. On me. About me. Don’t know how old I was because I never quite knew when I was born. Might have been twelve, plus a little. Fat side of twelve. But I’d taken to having dreams I didn’t understand about families I’d never had, about girls I’d never known, about parts of girls I’d never seen. About parts.

  About.

  Dumb dreams.

  But I couldn’t seem to stop them and one evening on the porch I told Fishbone about them. About the dreams and he said, what else?

  What else what, I asked.

  What else would you dream about? Comes a time, comes a time when you’ve never had a car and your voice is changing. What else are you going to dream about? Came to me, came to me later than you because I never knew peace until I was older. Still young when I went to Korea and got shot some and then cars and running white lightning up that damn road and never knowing time for real dreaming until later, older, when I was in New Orleans swamping out the flops and juke joints, and then it was all there, all there in flat light night and day for to see and smell and feel. Touch. Couldn’t dream. Didn’t dare to dream. Too real.

  Too real.

  Remember one woman, lady, one lady named Clair. Called herself C. Just that, C. Hard to say if she was pretty or not. She was . . . everything. And nothing. Hit your eyes, your brain, your breath like a storm. Worked in one of the houses he cleaned and sold everything about herself. Sold what she was for what you had. All that she was for all that you had. Used to sit and play soft music on a guitar, everything propped on top of the guitar. Had a snake tattooed around her neck. The tattooed snake ran down the center of her chest, down and down and you didn’t see where it was going unless you were someone else. He never saw where it went. They said she used to have a live snake there, around her neck and down, but it died so she had the tattoo done.