A Cold Case
I had entertained this crowd, which might be news to them, with old hits nobody wanted to hear. I abided by my rule of no Eagles, Speedwagons, Bostons or Tom Petties. I didn’t back down.
Most songs ended when they evaporated into the winery’s cacophony of conversation and laughter, leaving me with not even a smattering of applause. Even my taciturn version of “Na Na Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye” didn’t bat an eyelash. It was okay — I’m used to it, and refuse to let public indifference defeat me.
That song, often mistaken for a jeering football anthem, ended my four-hour gig. I turned and looked at the sun setting just above the mountain that towered over the vineyard. The sudden darkness and dropping of temperature was a not-so-subtle message to the audience that it was time to wrap things up, get out of here, and maybe sleep it off at home. For me, the majestic sunset was imbued with a sense of danger: My car, my escape vehicle, was having weird problems.
First I’d lost my only key for two-and-a-half weeks. My sons found it on the trail where I walk my dog, Barkley, and returned it to me triumphantly. Thinking I’d dodged a bullet, I used my resurrected Volvo wagon for myriad errands and visits over the following weeks. All seemed fine, until, leaving my sister’s house, I found the key wouldn’t turn in the ignition. When it finally did, I had to force the shifter into Drive and the windshield wipers came on and I couldn’t turn them off. After I’d driven home on that rainless night, wipers harrumphing all the way, I couldn’t get my key out of the ignition. I unhooked the battery and had six hours of restless sleep. I dreamed out talking cars and a canary or something.
My wife’s footfalls, so much like how they sounded when she loved me, woke me, and for the first time in a month I was not wary of going upstairs. I didn’t want to talk about how our divorce was progressing. Instead, I wanted to think about my Volvo wagon.
Somebody on YouTube showed just how easy it was to remedy this problem. Simply squirt some graphite lubricant into the ignition, and you’re good to go. Leaving the house discreetly, I entered my car and was thrilled to find it started right up. The automatic shifter, however, was another story — it refused to leave Park. For ten minutes, car running, I tried gently but firmly to dislodge it. On the verge of giving up, I grabbed the steering wheel to assist me in getting out. I heard the front tires turn, and then, just for what-the-heck, gave the shifter one last try. It moved easily to Drive. I thought I heard a chuckle from the engine compartment.
So I drove to the auto parts store a mile away, left the car running, and bought some of that dry lube. I gave a little squirt into the shifter compartment, and, sure enough, the shifter worked.
For the next few weeks I administered several variations of that cure. My lube had become a cupholder fixture, replacing the usual can of beer. With this new uncertainty threatening to strand me somewhere weird, I needed to be “on my game” and not get even a little tipsy, lest I use poor judgment and force my key or shifter with brute strength.
Yes, I had gotten “a little tipsy” during this performance, but musicians know a few beers can calm the nerves and silence the yips. I waited in line with winos to receive my check. You’d be surprised how much I needed the $250; new Volvo ignitions can run the owner upwards of $800. Though I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, and the lube would work indefinitely — or at least long enough for me to make it to spring, when painting jobs pick up — there was a real possibility of my having to get the car towed to Sanchez Auto.
The worst part of getting your car towed, besides the multi-hour-long wait, is making conversation with the tower. They are, generally, not jovial fellows, and it’s hard not to feel like a hapless fool asking questions like, “How heavy would you say this car is? Two tons maybe?” Or, “Have you ever had a car slide off the bed while you’re on the highway?” Neither question seems to resonate.
I finally got my check, stuck my tip money into my hip pocket, and made my way to my car. Once everything was loaded, all there was to do was start the car, which I attempted after a few deep breaths. The key turned on the fourth try, and I revved the engine for a while before attempting to shift it into Drive. The shifter didn’t budge. I turned the steering wheel right and left to no avail. Park was where the transmission was to remain until I could figure out what to do.
The vineyard closed officially at six this time of year. The gate, about a half a mile away, would remain open until then. After that, anyone inside winery grounds was sealed in for the night unless he’s good at climbing. I quickly took inventory and knew I had too much crap to ferry with me to the gate. I decided to carry my guitar in its case and call AAA at the gate, where there was reception. Wouldn’t you?
I’d owned the guitar since the early eighties, and bought the case soon after. It is customary for guitarists to attach stickers to the cases, so that people can quickly see how enlightened, jaded, critical, over it, outraged, wounded and righteous about various things they are.
One of them displays a slogan: I LOVE YOU AMERICA, BUT I THINK WE SHOULD SEE OTHER PEOPLE. Which is probably funny to folks on either side of the political spectrum.
Then there’s Robert Mueller’s image on a sticker, seemingly peeking out the innards of the case. This was back when some people thought he was magical and would bring justice to our government. Instead he used the word “exculpate” several times in his public hearing, thereby putting most viewers to sleep and ending any speculation that he had special prosecuting powers that would put a stop to Russia’s meddling. I left the sticker there for nostalgic reasons; it was nice, having hope.
There are stickers of bands populated by people I know, like the Hobohemians. And there’s the obligatory ‘Black Lives Matter’ sticker, which is a must if you’re going to claim you’re white and not a Trumper. Just to be safe from rural guerillas, yes, I’d Sharpied out part of the “a” in “Matter,” turning it into “Mutter,” which might strike otherwise suspicious folks as a bit of satire. And who doesn’t love satire?
The AAA operator didn’t love satire. When she asked me if I was in any imminent danger, I said, “Stranger danger. Everyone here is a stranger, so I’m in danger.”
If AAA deems you not in danger, you have a four-plus-hour wait for any kind of rescue. I decided to do that in the rustic barn a few hundred yards before the gate with the complimentary bottle of Sauvignon Blanc sticking out from my coat pocket. I’d received it as part of the payment for my gig. Luckily it was a screw top, and, not too proud to guzzle, I drank straight from the bottle. It felt right.
The barn, which smelled faintly of dung, was dark. The farm animals were long gone, at least I hoped.
What if I had to spend the night? Back at the car I had a drop cloth left over from an exterior paint job I’d recently finished. Unfortunately, there were lead paint flakes within it, and if I used it as a blanket for sleep I’d most likely wake up retarded. Though it was neither hot nor cold outside, I am accustomed to having a blanket over me while I sleep. Without one, I might not sleep, and then be a monster on the morning of the day I needed to be at my best or, at the very least, on my game.
I had never received a blow job in my Volvo, much less slept in it. But, looking around inside, I started to envision a scenario where sleep could happen. One advantage was that there was no one around me for miles. I could sleep without fear of interruption, save for the phone call from the tower. I silenced my phone.
After twenty minutes of my mind racing itself around a track made of molten taffy, I realized sleep was not going to happen. Not tonight, and not in a Volvo, at least not this one. I turned on my phone again and was greeted with six messages from the same number: “I’m here.” “Waiting at gate.” “You here?” “Can I open gate?” “Text me back, dude.” “WTF?”
I texted back immediately. “Sorry, was trying to sleep didn’t know you were here give me a sec I’ll run to the gate.”
“K.”
I grabbed my case, left the bottle and took flight. As a youth I was a bit of a track star, though my career ended at the end of fifth grade when I was disgraced after a girl beat me in a footrace on Field Day. I’d limped as if I had been injured, but everyone knew I was feigning. My life was never the same. I lost all confidence and began to run as if I’d been hobbled by an angry overseer.
Tonight, however, I ran like the wind for about fifty yards, then doubled over, completely out of breath. With only 150 more yards to go, I decided to pace myself. I began to walk.
Thousands of years ago, in England or somewhere like that, there were troubadours, who would travel the landscape seeking listeners who were eager for musical storytellers who would tell them what life was like in other lands. Flanked by grape orchards and trees and whatnot, I felt a kinship with those early folk singers who eschewed comfort and technology for the sensual experiences of the times. I took out my phone to photograph myself, hoping to one day parlay this experience into, well, a gig at a Renaissance Festival or something. However desperate my plight, I felt a new sense of purpose.
As I crested a hill I could could see, in the distance, the flashing lights of the tow truck. The tower had waited for me. I would be spared a night of braving the elements and waiting pathetically for the winery to open the next day. I began to run again, this time pacing myself a little, the rhythm of my footfalls, augmented by the case rapping against my thigh, matching that of my favorite folk song, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying.”
When I reached the end of the driveway, I found a posted box with a button that I’d never noticed. I pressed it; the gate opened. The tow truck went through — a bit too quickly and angrily, I thought at the time — and stopped so I could enter. When I opened the door I was hit by an odor of marijuana smoke mixed with methane gas. Of course, I ignored the fetid aroma and sat down in the passenger seat, the guitar case between my legs.
“Thanks for waiting.”
“Yep,” the driver replied. He was a fellow, younger than me, with a thick black beard and a trucker’s cap.
“My car’s in the lot by the winery,” I offered.
“Uh-huh. Where the fuck else would it be?” he asked.
“Yeah, heh heh, good point.”
I had begun using flattery to induce the cooperation of someone vital to my safety. It’s a time-tested strategy that seems to work especially well on the dimwitted, which I assumed this man to be.
However dimwitted he probably was, he knew how to do his job. He attached a metal rope to the Volvo’s frame and used this big cranky spool thing to draw the car up onto the bed of the truck. I saw from the embroidered patch on his work shirt his name was Curt. Curt got back in and off we went.
“So…” I stammered. “Uh, where are we taking the car?”
“Outside Clarkesville. Shop there.”
Did he mean we shop outside Clarkesville for things like clothing and bath towels? Or was he referring to a garage where several skilled men were waiting to fix my car and send me on my way? I chose the latter interpretation and vowed to listen more closely to the man’s intonation.
“Is that near here?” I asked warily.
He blew out a tuft of air and gave me what looked like a sidelong glance. I pretended not to notice and struggled to keep a cheerful look on my face.
At the intersection with a dirt road up ahead, a Beverly Hillbillies type of overloaded pickup truck threatened to pull out in front of us and drive 25 miles per hour all the way to Clarkesville, wherever that was. I thought if the driver did so I would burst into tears, right next to Curt.
That was exactly what happened, and I suppressed a sob. “Goddamn fucking asshole idiot shithead,” said Curt, loud enough to be heard over the Clampett truck’s lack of muffler. “Shit for brains.”
“Yeah,” I gulped. “Schiffer brains.” (I had known a boy back in school named Nate Schiffer, and he actually was stupid.) I really didn’t know why I said this now, but luckily (for me) Curt depressed his horn at the same time, and I was drowned out by a blared sound of flatulence coming from Curt engine compartment, intended for the driver of the hillbilly truck, who probably didn’t hear it because his own engine was too loud.
But I did. “Is that your….?”
“Yep,” said Curt looking pleased with himself to have such a unique horn that expressed far more succinctly what conventional horns have tried to express for years. I think if someone directed that sound at me, I would chastise myself for days after my vehicular infraction.
Puttering down the highway, unable to pass, Curt grew bored and began to look at my guitar case. “I LOVE YOU AMERICA,” he read aloud, which was encouraging. “BUT I THINK WE SHOULD SEE OTHER PEOPLE.” A near-smile crept over his face and he shook his head.
At that moment I thought maybe we weren’t as ideologically far apart as I had at first suspected. Maybe we had things in common. “Did you see the “BLACK LIVES MUTTER” sticker?
“Mutter?” muttered Curt. “S’posed to be matter. If you’re a fuckin’ libtard, that is.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, thinking it best to. “Is that a moose?”
A silhouetted, large animal appeared ready to leap from behind a tree and get hit by us. Curt gave his little, airy chuckle and said, “Deer. Fuckin’ deer. Hit seven of ’em already this year.”
“Any of ’em keepers?” I asked.
“Keepers? More like pizzas. I don’t eat meat anyways.”
Uh, what? This rural gudong was actually a vegetarian? My mind struggled to grasp that idea. This guy was a walking — well, towing — contradiction.
“Shit man that fucking sucks,” I chimed. No liberal would ever use such profanity. “Why do ya think they call them deer, anyways? They’re not very deer to me, that’s for goddamn sure.” It’s always advantageous to adopt the speaking style of the stranger who holds your life in his hands, even if he’s a hapless hillbilly.
Another sidelong glance, then an eye shift to my case once again. “Mueller?” Curt muttered. He pronounced it “Mewler.”
“Yeah.”
“Russia Russia Russia.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Remember that guy? Did he ever even write that stupid report? If he did I sure as hell didn’t read it.” I had actually read it three times.
“Why’s his face on your fuckin’ case then?”
“Oh, you know, I think it’s funny. Makes fun of him. Stupid ole Mueller.” Mewler.
“What about ‘Do Real Things?’ That a joke too?”
“Well, not really,” I said, scrambling a little. “I mean, don’t we all want to do real things? Like, you know, jigsaw puzzles, or taking a walk along a creek, looking for edible mushrooms. Shit like that.”
The hillbilly truck driver turned left into a dollar store, probably to purchase sundries to add to the top of its mountain of things. We were free — but Curt didn’t increase our speed all that much. It was as if he wanted to prolong this agonizing journey to outside of Clarkesville.
I mean, yeah, he’d most likely never met anyone the likes of me, and he probably wanted to pick my brain a little bit. Get my take on things. But I wasn’t at my mental best at that moment, and he should have known that.
He turned on the radio, unleashing into our cab a barrage of countrified twangs, pedal steel guitars, cliched platitudes, check-the-box pandering to hapless masses, and thinly-veiled contempt for anyone who lives near a city.
“I love this song,” I said, whacking my knee in rhythm. “Just awesome.”
“I’ll bet,” Curt replied, with something just short of a sneer.
“I mean, just listen to that lead guitar.”
“Just listen to you,” muttered Curt. “Think I don’t know how to listen to a damn song?”
I answered carefully. “I think…you know exactly how to listen to a, um, damned song.”
We passed a sign that warned, “CLARKESVILLE, 2M.”
“Hey, look at that!” I blurted, probably too enthusiastically.
“It ain’t in Clarkesville,” Curt said, then flipped on his blinker. We turned left into a muddy driveway that led to a shuttered old Gulf station with two vintage gas pumps in front. I wanted to tell Curt about the Edward Hopper painting of the same subject matter, but stopped myself. A mere mention of the mid-20th century painter might send him into a rage.
A light came on inside the small wooden building. Our headlights illuminated a long, grizzled face looking out from the doorway. “There’s Carl,” Curt muttered. (It seemed as though he was muttering everything at this point.)
Carl seemed as if he’d been pacing the place for years and had just smelled fresh meat. His smile was a hungry one. I remained seated and watched Curt for what was the right thing to do. He got out and walked slowly toward Carl, truck still running. As I climbed out I heard Curt say, “Woke y’up didn’t we?”
Carl’s smile only grew bigger, then evaporated when he saw me approaching, so I stopped approaching and pretended to examine the old pumps. The last time they’d been used as such, I learned, a gallon of regular cost $1.28.
“He’s all right,” said Curt, which shocked me. That interaction in the truck, that was how he talks to people who are “all right?” Curt smiled at me and said, “He might even sing you a song if you ask nice.”
Carl pulled a lawn chair from out of nowhere, and sat in it as if expecting a show.
“Go on,” said Curt. “Git yer guitar.”
Unable to think of a reason not to, I fetched my case, pulled out my guitar and strapped myself to it. What was a country song I knew? “Country Road?” “Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song?” “Crazy?” I thought that latter song might be taken personally by my audience, so I did a fair job singing a George Jones hit, “She Thinks I Still Care.” I’d learned it from a live version of the song, which ended abruptly when Jones seemed to slide off his stool, after which there was a collective “Oh!” from the audience.
So I sang it like drunk George Jones would have, even adding the clever touch of forgetting some lyrics. When the last chord rang in the twilight air, Carl stared at me as if I’d just pissed in his toolbox. Then he got up, shuffled to me, and gave me a hug, with only my guitar preventing uncomfortable invasion of my space.
“That’s my story, man,” he blubbered.
“Yeah?” I tried to remember what the story actually was. Something about human contradiction?
He let me go and faced Curt. “Well, you gonna get this car off your goddamn truck and let me look at it?”
Having never, over all my minutes knowing Curt, seen anyone speak to him that way, I backed up a few steps, expecting an explosion of some sort. But the glowering tower dutifully obeyed, even whistling while he worked. Soon my car sat astride the pumps, and Carl was taking apart the center console, talking to Curt while doing so, as if he’d done it a million times. After taking a good look at the console’s innards, he pulled a rag from his pocket, dabbed it around a little, then pointed a spray can of something that he sprayed into the console. “Gimme ye key,” he said, holding his hand out without looking at me.
I placed the key in his hand and he started the car up, put it in drive, pulled out of the station and drove away. As the tail lights disappeared into the night, I looked warily at Curt, thinking the expression under his black beard would tell me whether or not he’d towed my car to a man who fixed it and promptly stole it.
Curt held no expression, just a cigarette of some sort he’d pulled out of some pocket. He lit it and the smell of marijuana wafted to me. It was not objectionable. “Looks like your car’s gonna live to see another day,” he said.
“Who do you think is going to be driving it?” I asked, with a nervous laugh that followed.
“Oh, you think he stole your car.”
“Well, I’m not seeing any headlights coming our way.”
“Maybe he went out for a drink.”
“With my car?”
“How do you know if it’s fixed unless you drive somewhere, stay there a while, come back to the car and it starts?”
I had no good answer to that. But this would mean more face-to-face time with someone who had already demonstrated he wasn’t interested in any kind of light conversation.
“How long you been livin’ in these parts?” I asked.
“Years.”
“I live down in Athens.”
“Good for you.”
“But I’d rather live up here.”
“It ain’t for you.”
“Why?”
“Just ain’t.”
“Well, thanks for the advice.” I was starting to get the hang of North Georgia bluntness.
“No problem.”
“May do it anyway,” I warned.
“Do what you want. Do real things. Like it says on your case.”
We both burst into laughter.
Headlights appeared in the distance, then closer, and of course it was Carl. He hadn’t absconded with my car; nor had I written these guys off because they didn’t drive Volvos or Outbacks or read Heather Cox Richardson. We’d made assumptions, an act necessary for the preservation of life. Sometimes it leaves folks behind.
