Chapter 12: The Great All American Country Western Opera

Have you ever heard about people being able to become more than they are? You know, like putting five gallons of water in a three gallon bucket and not spill any? Well, this one afternoon we actually had that happen to us.

"You know," I observed, "here we are sittin' around, drinkin' beer and doin' shit, tryin' to come up with a whole different set of routines and numbers for a new tour. And I can't see that it has anything to do with our music. We aren't country western performers, any more, we're fuckin' celebrities. I don't think I like that. When we come off that last tour, I was so sick of it all that I didn't care if I ever sang another song or wrote another verse. Th' whole goddam thing just wasn't about us any more. It was about a bunch of crazies wanting to see bigger and noisier stage effects and if we didn't sing a song, nobody would even notice."

"Uh huh. I feel the same way," Homer said. "Those ass holes didn't know country from jack shit. They felt that since they had bought tickets, we ought to give them somethin' real spectacular. What about that dumb son of a bitch that wanted Em to be shot naked out of a canon while nursin' th' baby?" He shook his head. "I just don't know."

"Well, I think we better just play at the Buck Horn and just take it easy. That fuckin' tour just wasn't us or anything about us. It was just a bunch of flashy bullshit. Fuck 'em." That was from the delicate mouth of my darling gentle Emily.

Connie spoke up and said, "Well, as of right now, if we just split everything we have in the bank accounts four ways, we would be able to live real well for the rest of our natural lives. We are what they call quite wealthy. That video of Emily giving birth on the stage sold thirty million copies. It is the hottest rental in the stores and they are talking about a re release for the foreign market. We got money in foreign accounts that we haven't even counted and the tour netted us a big chunk of change. Now there is going to be a DVD called, "The Best Of The Tour. God only knows how much that is going to net us." Somehow, all that money just didn't seem reasonable or real. It was like it was happening to four other people.

I think this is what a lot of people who make it big in show business have to go through. But where they make it big and don't have anything inside themselves to fall back on and destroy themselves trying to live a crazy life that they can't handle, we had each other.

No, I'm not trying to be some arty farty ass hole mouthing insincere words to sound like what he isn't, not at all. But what I am saying is that we had ourselves anchored to each other in a way that worked for us. And also, we had Reo, the wonder baby. Any way, that's what Homer named him as a joke and it sort of stuck. Connie gave birth to Nadine, who at one year of age already showed promise of the great beauty of both her mammas. Since we all had each other and that should have been enough; but it wasn't.

"Let's just do our own style of music and if it works, fine and dandy. And if it doesn't, fuck 'em. Wilbur can always go back to drivin' a garbage truck and Homer will always be a great mechanic. If nobody wants to come hear just our music, fuck 'em." Sweet and gentle Em always seems to get to the heart of the matter.

Homer drank another beer and didn't say anything. He was sitting there in his boxer shorts, his old Johnson hanging out one leg, kind of like a big, pink old boa constrictor snake just waiting to pounce. He reached over and grabbed up his guitar and started to strum some chords. Then he started to pick out a one-string melody. Then he started to rearrange things and start again. He had this thoughtful look on his face.

"Wilbur, gimme your knife," he said to me. I did and he started all over again, using the body of my old folding buck knife to make sounds like they make on a steel guitar. Then he started all over again. All at once, he turned up the amplifier and let out a god-awful wail from the guitar and started playing some song that almost made my hair fall out.

It was music of a kind I had never heard before. It was all sound effects and sounds of horses and geese and rivers flowing and people crying and souls hungry for love and so much more. It was about bums and whores and people insane for love. It was about sunrise and sunset and moonlight in the Ozarks. It was strange and moving. I didn't know if I wanted to beg Homer to play it some more or kick that fucking Gibson out of his hands. All the feelings he was playing on that six string scared me.

It started all choppy, kind of like that "Sidewalks Of New York" by that Jew boy musician name of Oscar something or other. Only instead of people walking on a sidewalk, this was about people thinking thoughts and feeling emotions that are usually kept well hidden from everybody else. It picked up its tempo, got a little jerky and slowed down. Then a single string was used to pick out a simple melody that became a two string melody and so on until it was as if there were three or four guitars all being played at once. Then a simple melody began to be heard, so sad and plaintive. Almost like all hope was gone and everything was about to go to hell in a hand basket. Then it sort of trailed off and faded out until the very last note was gone.

"Jesus Fuckin' H Christ, Homer, what in hell was you doin' there? You made my brain itch." I all but yelled at him. "What in hell kind of music was that? You ain't goin' to try to play that on stage, are you?" I mean we was (and still are) a country western trio of some great renown, with a following of devoted fans from coast to coast, except for the perverts in California and New York City who don't count no way because they don't listen to civilized music anyway.

Homer looked me in the eye and said, "I want you to write words to what I just played. You're goin' to tell how the fans like what we give 'em, but keep on wantin' more and more from us and how we could end up givin' them a Fourth of July extravaganza on stage and no music. Ask if that's what they want, because if it is, I quit. Fuck 'em all. I play music and it just seems they want more and more of what don't count. Fuck 'em." He went back to his music and started doing variations.

I never realized it before, but Homer is what they call a real musician, maybe even a great one. I looked over at my sweetly innocent Em and saw she was just sitting there with a look on her face. It was a look that I could not figure out, sensitive as I really am to what she thinks and feels. I looked over at Connie, sitting at the table, wearing nothing but a pair of bifocals, as she did our bookwork. She had a look on her face, too.

Homer started to talk real slow, almost to himself. "I was watchin' a old documentary on Public TV last week about a singer named Ricky Nelson and how he got tired of all the bull shit and wrote a song about it that pissed off a whole bunch of fans and, of course, all them asshole critics. The song was about how if he couldn't sing and play his own music he would rather drive a truck than do shit just because a bunch of hair brained fans wanted it. I think I know just how he felt, because I'm feelin' the same things my own self. I'll go back to bein' a mechanic if I got to play shit and have babies born on stage to please a bunch of drunks. Fuck 'em."

Now Homer and me has been best friends since before we could walk. In fact, some smart assed preacher once called us "the first unattached Siamese twins in the world." But fuck that preacher, what did he know about friendship? I thought I knew just about everything about old Homer there was to know except about him fucking my sweet and virginally innocent Emily over all those years we were married before I caught them by accident. But right then, I realized that there was a part of Homer that ran deeper than I had ever realized. In fact, I discovered that Homer was deeper on the inside than he was on the outside. Now how's that for a thought?

Let me tell you another thing that just might surprise you. I was getting tired of doing uppers and downers and booze and all that shit. Ever since our little Reo was born I been thinking. I decided that I didn't want our son to get all fucked up on all that shit I been taking all this time. And I decided that I had to be a role model or something so he wouldn't. Homer and I had just about given up trying to figure out who the father was so we just sort of accepted that Reo was our baby. That was much simpler. Hell, with two such fine and upstanding daddies as me and Homer, he will probably be the next Elvis if he wants to. Besides, who really gives a rat's ass? It's the baby that counts.

So anyway, I slowed down on what I put in my body and then just sort of quit. What between our musical success and having two kids to care for and raise, I just didn't feel the need to get altered out of my mind. So when Homer said he wanted me to write words to go with that strange music he composed, I sat down there at the table beside Connie and started to write. Connie moved after a while and I never noticed, because I was just too busy composing words to go with my friend Homer's musical composition. Let me tell you that right then I did some of the hardest work I ever did in my whole hard working life.

"Play it again, Homer," I told him. "Just the first part with the choppy chords, right up until you start in on one string."

He did and I wrote. He played it again and again and once more. Every time he played it, I heard something new. I felt like there was a whole new world that just opened up a crack to me and I thought I was having an acid flash back. But it was more than that because this seemed more real than anything I ever did or experienced before in my whole life.

"Go to the next part, Homer," I told him and he did. The girls got restless and left to go on down to the Buck Horn. Little Reo and Nadine was sleeping and so me and Homer had the whole afternoon to ourselves. We worked like a couple of demented hookers at a truckers' convention. The women came back and took the kids and went somewhere. We worked on.

The next day, we hadn't been to sleep yet and I said, "Homer..."

"I cain't," he answered. "My fingers won't work no more, Wilbur."