Passage III

HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the memoir My Heart is in the Earth: True Stories of Alabama and Mexico by Wayne Greenshaw (©2001 by Wayne Greenshaw). Hank Williams was s popular singer and writer of country music in the 1940s and 50s.

In the summertimes of my youth, my younger brother, Donnie Lee, and I rode with Daddy, a traveling salesman, when he traveled Alabama and east Mississippi, stopping at barber and beauty shops, bringing them the latest stainless steel razors, smelly perfumed wave lotion, the fanciest new dryers, and a tonic that would plaster hair to the scalp while turning it dark brown.

It was on a highway in south Alabama that we were passed one afternoon by a pink Cadillac with a pair of cowboy boots sticking out the rear window. "That's ol' Hank," Daddy said.

Donnie Lee and I looked at each other, puzzled.

"In a minute or two there'll be another one just like that," Daddy said.

Donnie Lee questioned his statement.

But, sure enough, in a few minutes, the first car's twin, down to the snazzy fins shining brightly in the sunlight, passed us with a beep of its horn. Daddy answered and shot an abbreviated wave.

In the next town we found the two Cadillacs parked side by side facing the curb outside the drugstore. Daddy pulled his car parallel to them. We followed him inside, where a skinny man wearing a white cowboy hat rose from the table where he sat with three friends and, grinning from ear to ear, greeted Daddy like a long lost relative. They hugged and carried on, Daddy introducing us as his "number one assistants," and told us, "Boys, this is Hank Williams, the most famous singer and songwriter ever to come out of Georgiana."

The skinny man hooted. "Now, that's about the best introduction I've ever had," he said, and ordered a round of soft drinks, which we accepted with thanks. We slunk back on the edge of the shallow breeze from the slow moving fan centered over the marble-topped table. In the shadows of glass-squared display booths we sipped our drinks while the men talked about "the road," Daddy asking where they'd played, Hank and his boys saying they'd had a big crowd down in Andalusia the night before.

With his bladed face cocked just so, the shadow of his wide-brimmed hat muting his features, Hank caught my eye and grinned and said, "What kind-a music you like, big 'un?" and I tried to hide behind my glass of soda, pushing back shyly against the glass case. "Cat got yo' tongue?" he asked, and I put my mouth to the edge of the cold glass to keep from saying anything, feeling the heat of all their eyes on me. I wished we'd never seen the Cadillacs or the men, and I wondered when Daddy was going to take us on down the road, where he said he had more shops to call on.

When I finally did glance up, I looked directly into the bluest eyes I'd ever seen on a man. His thin mouth stretched into a generous smile. "How's about you boys coming out here to the car with me?" He pushed his chair back. "I got some things for y'all."

From the trunk of one of the pink Cadillacs he took two black-and-white eight-by-ten glossy photographs of himself, scratched out, "For Wayne, a fine young man," and signed it, then did the same for Donnie Lee. As we moved to Daddy's car, he called, "You got a Victrola?" I nodded. Then he handed me half-dozen 78 rpm records. "Y' all share 'em, okay?" I nodded.

When we returned home to Trussville on Friday, Mama questioned us about our week with Daddy. We showed her the photographs. We took the records to our room. As the first started to play, Donnie Lee made a face. I frowned and shook my head.

In memory, that trip with Daddy unwinds in shades of black-and-white colored with a streak of pink. Today, as I listen to the powerful poetic slur of his music, hitting notes that even he could not find on a scale between five parallel lines, sounding words that ring against the heart like coins dropped into a deep clear pool at the bottom of a deep dark cave, I am so moved that I am stunned almost senseless with its beauty. Somewhere between then and now I learned to fathom the depths of his genius.

"Did you hear that lonesome whippoorwill? He sounds too blue to fly. The midnight train is whining low. I'm so lonesome I could cry."

How could any eleven-year-old ever know the naked strength of such words prayed to such sounds? The plaintive voice cuts to the heart that knows the secrets of being twisted and torn, battered and bruised, where the scar-tissue grates against old feelings that cannot—will not—remain hidden.