A C&w Song in the Ey of Life 00 Complete

A C&W Song in the Key of Life

CAUTION: In answer to a steadily diminishing number of requests, this story is simply a concatenation of the five separate parts. The content is unchanged (mistakes and all).

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Pore ol' tragic king Lear really whined about his bitchy daughter Goneril:

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child.

Well, okay, Lear didn't really say that, Shakespeare did, but I'll take a thankless child any day over creating just the right cast of characters, only to watch helplessly as the thankless assholes grab the story—

your

goddam story—and run off with it. They take it wherever the hell they want and who gives a shit what you had in mind, you're just the wimpy-assed author. Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of free will, just not for characters I created. I mean, damn!

This was supposed to be a brief, light-hearted romp for the Valentine's Day contest, poking fun at a few of the well-worn tropes of country and western music, but noooo, the ungrateful sonsabitches had to turn it into...well, I'm not sure what to call it. It's still sort of light-hearted— in places, anyway—but read it yourself and call it what you will. Now it's too late for the damn contest and I don't want to wait another year. Hell, I might not even have another year.

I don't mean to insult anyone, but I should probably define few terms.

Cherry Bombs:

Bright red glass-pack mufflers; loud but beloved of adolescents of any age.

dikes:

Diagonal cutters or pliers, usually used to cut wire.

Floore's Country Store:

The primo Texas dance hall (some call it a honky-tonk), in Helotes.

Hooker headers:

High-performance exhaust manifolds designed by Gary Hooker.

Irish pennants:

Loose or untidy lengths of rope or twine.

Muncie 4-speed:

A heavy-duty manual transmission originally manufactured for General Motors.

Turbo Hydramatic R4

: A heavy-duty automatic transmission originally manufactured for General Motors.

rice burner:

(usu. pejorative) A car, often small and economical, manufactured in Asia.

rollback:

A flatbed truck used to transport a disabled vehicle. The bed rolls back off the frame, then tilts until the end is on the ground. The tow truck driver attaches a cable from a winch at the front of the bed to the vehicle that is

hors de combat

, pulls it onto the truck bed, then levels the bed and rolls it back over the frame.

shitkicker:

Music in the C&W canon— there's two kinds of music here in Texas, Country and Western— that often dwell on the vicissitudes with which good old boys with uncomplicated values (

aka

rednecks) too often must deal. Such vicissitudes frequently involve the companionship of a dog (large breed, not some yappy Shih Tzu or Cockapoo); the visceral satisfaction of driving a pickup (with or without a

Goat Ropers Need Love Too

bumper sticker); or the heartache of love (unrequited, lost, or betrayed).

Hank wasn't waiting for me in the kitchen when I shuffled in to make a pot of coffee, he was still lying on his blanket in the corner by the hot water heater. I fired up the coffee maker, then went over and squatted down to scratch his head. "What's wrong, old boy? You look worse than I feel."

He looked up at me and, as usual, I got his message as clearly as if he'd spoken.

Don't feel so hot this morning, Boss. Let's go outside before the coffee's done.

I'd been able to read him that well since the day I brought him home from the rescue shelter, a five-year-old black lab that nobody else seemed to want.

He struggled more than usual to stand, then shuffled to the door. I opened it and we made our usual trek to his favorite tree—hell, the only tree in the whole back yard. His left leg quivered for a few seconds, then his right leg, then he squatted to pee. I swear I heard him sigh. He turned to look at me, his shame obvious.

Sorry, Boss. Just couldn't get it up

.

He was already fixed when I got him, so he had to be talking about his legs. "No worries, Hank, your secret is safe with me."

Instead of searching around for a place to do his duty, Hank just stood for a minute, then turned and walked back to the door. When I let him in he went back to his bed instead of to his bowl. I started to open the cupboard to get a can of his food, but he made a sound somewhere between a cough and a bark, then put his head down on his front paws and closed his eyes.

Time to say goodbye. Thanks for everything, Boss, I'm gonna miss you. Get yourself another dog, a younger one this time.

And just like that, Hank checked out of my life. He was my life's companion for six years, 110 pounds of seemingly boundless energy and devotion.

Hank wasn't sure about Shelley when I first started dating her—more suspicious than jealous—but she quickly won him over with love, massages, and sneaked treats. By the time we got married a couple of years later, Hank's favorite spot was lying on the living room carpet with his head on Shelley's foot. Sometimes I wondered if she married me just so she could spend more time with him.

It was just getting light, so I figured I had time to bury him before I left for work. I grabbed a shovel from the garage, and it took me over an hour to dig a decent grave near his tree. Just when I figured it was about deep enough, I hit a tree root. "Shit!"

I chopped at it a few times with the shovel and tried to pry it up, but I got impatient and pried too hard. The handle snapped a foot or so above the ferrule. "Shit!" Maybe it was time I expanded my vocabulary.

I threw the broken-off piece against the garage wall and reached down to grab the rest of the shovel, but didn't see the long, nasty splinter about the size of a chop stick sticking up at the break. Still impatient, I reached down quickly and jammed the splinter into the fleshy pad of my left thumb, which hurt like hell and inspired me to shout a few more expletives and imprecations (I used some very bad words). I stomped off to the house and yanked out the splinter (more cussing), poured some witch hazel on it (smarted, but at least it wasn't rubbing alcohol like Mom would have used), and smeared on some bacitracin. I did a sloppy job of taping some gauze over it and called it good.

It took me another hour to carry Hank outside, lay him in his grave as gently as I could, fill it back up, then go into the garage and cobble together a wooden marker proclaiming the final resting place of Hank the Wonder Dog. After I pounded in the marker I thought I should say a few words, but all I could think of was "Dogs have souls, cats don't." Hank always liked that.

I surprised myself by tearing up as I walked back to the house for a quick shower and shave. I'd pretty much ruined my makeshift bandage, so I tore it off before I got in the shower and did a slightly better patch job after I shaved. It was almost 8:30, so breakfast had to be just a cup of coffee plus a go cup for my drive to work.

Oldest friend and college bro Brian Lafferty and I co-own an auto repair and towing business in Plano. I wanted to call it Two Bros' Snatch and Patch, but that didn't fly with Brian or our wives. We both went to Georgia Tech, so one night after a few two many Shiners we dreamed up Two Ramblin' Wrecks. Way too cute, but the ladies bought it.

(How did two geeks from Helotes with BSEEs from The Georgia Institute of Technology wind up running a car repair and towing outfit in Plano, you ask? Good question, but that's another story.)

I headed out in my '84 K20 Sierra—for you monosynaptics who think pickup is spelled F

something

50, that's a 3/4-ton honest-to-God GMC 4x4. I don't do Fords or Apples. Or stable geniuses (unless we're talking about really smart mules). It was time the day started getting better.

_________

I had Tim Ryan's "Horse Thief Row" cranked up so loud that by the time I finally noticed the

knockknockknock

it had segued into

whamblamslam

then more expensive noises. A rod had separated from the crank, things were falling apart and the sinter couldn't hold. The truck jerked and the rear tires squealed as the engine tried to seize. I shoved in the clutch listening to the gruesome sound of a V-8 doing its best to digest itself; bits and pieces clattered around under the hood, then a few abandoned ship to flounder about on the pavement. I pulled off onto the shoulder.

I called Brian, then picked up the bigger parts off the highway and tossed them in the pickup bed. He showed up with the rollback in just under 15 minutes, a timely response that would have satisfied our triple-A overseers. We loaded up the GMC—now more a paperweight than a pickup—and headed for the shop.

It was a quiet trip. I was thinking about how the day started out bad and was getting worse when Brian looked over at my sad face. "Oh come on, it's not the end of the world. We can find another engine."

"It's not just the truck. I had to bury Hank this morning."

"Shit, Tom. That's...that really sucks." Brian knew Hank, hell, he loved Hank almost as much as his own dogs.

"Yeah, don't it though." I sighed, a pretty unmanly thing to do but Brian wasn't judgmental, then managed a chuckle. "Bad breaks are supposed to come in threes, but maybe I'll dodge a bullet this time. My dog dies, then my pickup blows up, but my girl can't shit on me, Shelley already did that a year ago. Maybe life isn't always like a shitkicker song."

Now why the hell did I have to go and mention Shelley? I still miss her. Every damn day.

"Uh, maybe this is the third one: Hector asked for today and tomorrow off so he can take Juana to Matagorda, so you're going to have to take the tow calls."

Yup, that sure enough makes three. Was this day ever going to get better? "Fucking swell."

I wasn't really mad, though. Hector Banuelos, our duty driver and apprentice wrench, was a good guy and deserved the time off. He dropped out of high school after his sophomore year, but a weekend stay in the Dallas County lockup was all he needed to get his shit together. He went back to vo-tech for auto mechanics, got his GED, told the gangbangers to fuck off and made it stick. Two years ago he answered our help wanted ad on Craigslist, moved up to Plano, and never looked back. He and Juana had only been married a month and tomorrow was Valentine's Day.

Shit. Last Valentine's Day was when Shelley caught me in room 414 of the Hilton out by the tollways with my dick in a woman's hand. A naked woman. A naked woman who was doing her best to yank my growing boy into her wide open, drooling mouth and shouting something about needing my love stick. Before I had a chance to explain what was going on Shelley ran screaming out of the room.

She moved out that night. She was so pissed she wouldn't talk to me at all, wouldn't let me explain that it wasn't what it looked like. Yeah, I know, that's what they all say. Except it really wasn't what it looked like, it just looked like what it looked like. When her lawyer threatened to get a restraining order, I finally stopped trying to catch her after work or even call her.

_________

The first triple-A call came just after we unloaded the GMC. Flat tire, black Lexus out on westbound Plano Parkway just west of 75, woman caller. I figured I wouldn't need the rollback to change a tire, so I took the wrecker. Twenty minutes later I pulled up behind the Lexus and walked up to the flat left rear. I spotted the roofing nail without even squatting down, but damn near fell down when the driver got out.

It was Shelley.

She must have been on her way home from work, still in her scrubs, still as gorgeous as the day we met at Floore's Country Store. She's an ER nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian in Plano, probably working three 12s and too tired to change before she left. She didn't look pissed like I figured she would when she recognized me, just puzzled. "Where's Hector? I thought he..." She trailed off.

Fucking Brian, why didn't he tell me it was her. I was going to rip him a new one for that.

"He took Juana to Matagorda. They got married a month ago. Tomorrow's Valentine's Day, remember?" I should have resisted the dig.

"I know what day it is, Tom." The puzzled look went away and her voice went flat. "Would you please just fix the tire?" Now she sounded more like the Shelley who scraped me off the bottom of her shoe—though not as bad our last encounter in the courtroom, when she acted like she wanted me castrated with a pair of vise-grips.

I decided there was no point in apologizing. "No need to fix it, I'll just put on the spare and you can take it to a tire shop." She shook her head.

"There's no spare, somebody popped the trunk and stole it last weekend. Can you fix this one?" When I shrugged she got back in the Lexus.

Well, that figured. Dog died, truck died, tow call turns out to be She Whose Name Must Not Be Mentioned, so of course I can't just switch the damn tires, I've gotta try to fix a flat by the side of the road. Maybe I should start writing shitkicker songs instead of listening to them.

I got the floor jack and toolkit from the wrecker, chocked her car's front wheels, and decided to use the Armstrong™ 4-way lug wrench instead of dragging the air hose all the way over for the impact wrench. When a lug nut refused to break loose, I forgot that I'd speared myself and pounded the opposite leg of the lug wrench with my left hand. Shit! The lug nut sure enough broke loose, but my hand hurt like a sonofabitch and it was bleeding again.

I rolled the tire to the wrecker, pulled out the roofing nail, and used the T-handle to poke a strip of tire patch lubed with stickum through the nail hole. I slow counted to 20, cut off the Irish pennants with a pair of dikes, then held my breath while I inflated it (yeah, I know, a weird image; live with it). Thanks be to Willy, the patch held. Rolled the tire back and mounted it, replaced the floor jack and toolkit, and got in the cab to fill out the paperwork.

The gauze was pretty well soaked with blood and some was running down my arm. I took a red rag from my hip pocket and swabbed off my arm and hand, then filled out as much of the form as I could and walked back to her car. She saw the clipboard and rolled her window down. "Where do I sign?"

I told her I needed her triple-A account number. She dug her card out of her purse, which took a while, of course—like most women, she really needed to prune her inventory. She finally came up with it, but when she handed it to me she saw the bloody bandage.

"What happened to your hand?" Someone who didn't know better would think she was actually concerned, but I knew better: it was just professional instinct.

"The shovel handle broke and I wasn't paying enough attention when I reached down to pick it up. It's okay, just a splinter." I started writing her account number on the form, but she was stuck in Nurse Nancy mode.

"You should have that looked at. You're still bleeding."

I started getting pissed because she was pretending to give a shit about me. "Let it go, Shelley. I'll take care of it back at the shop."

"God, why do men always have to play hero? I'll put a proper dressing on that. The first aid kit in the wrecker has everything I need." She was full-on Florence Nightingale now, and it was beginning to sound like maybe she didn't totally hate me.

I shrugged again, and she followed me to the wrecker. She started rummaging around in the first aid kit—she'd gone on a few tow calls and knew where it was stowed—to find what she needed. I wondered why she wasn't using the first-responder kit she always carried. "Where's your kit?"

"This isn't my car. It's...uh...I borrowed it this morning because mine's in the shop and I forgot to take my kit out of it." She found the scissors, antiseptic cream, dressings, and tape, then started cutting off the bloody gauze. "This looks fresh. What were you digging this morning?"

Jesus. I was trying not to think how good her hands felt on mine, and now she reminds me about Hank. I had to swallow a couple of times before answering. "I buried Hank this morning."

She looked up at me, and for a second it almost looked like she really cared, just a little. So I took a chance. "Shelley, I wish you'd let me explain_"

The soft look disappeared and she cut me off. "I saw what I saw, Tom. There's nothing to explain." She said it the same way she'd tell me that I just tracked dog shit on her new carpet. My temper flared and I had to choke off a nasty comeback. I was pissed at her because wouldn't ever give me a chance to explain and pissed at myself because I'd resolved never to beg her again.

_________

That cold voice reminded me of the night she left, after we got back from the hotel. It started with an ugly shouting match as she was packing a suitcase, but by the time she had stormed down the hall the tears and shouting were over. With her hand on the doorknob, she had turned and spit her final words in a cold voice that froze me to the kitchen floor.

"When you said let's get married, you bastard, you promised that you were through fucking around, that you'd keep your dick in your pants.

Promised

, remember?" She gave an unladylike snort. "I should have known better. We're through, Tom. I never want to see you again." She hadn't even slammed the door, just walked out to her Camaro, tossed her suitcase on the passenger seat, and tore off.

_________

I shook my head to clear the memory as she pressed the last strip of tape on my hand. Her patch job looked a helluva lot better than mine, but it should: she's a professional. She started stuffing the items back in the first aid kit, almost tossing them so I'd know that she was still mad.

It dawned on me that after a year she still had no intention of giving me a chance to explain, probably never would. My temper finally got the better of me "Well shit, Shelley! If you won't let me explain what was going on, why don't you ask Rob? "

She paused holding the scissors over the kit, then slowly tucked them away. After a few seconds she spoke quietly, without looking at me. "Why ask Rob? What's he got to do with it?"

I took the kit and closed the lid more firmly than necessary, but not quite slamming it. "He's the reason I was at the goddam hotel in the first place." I had to take a deep breath to keep from yelling. "Never mind, you wouldn't believe him any more than you'd believe me. Besides, you'll never get the chance. That night he told me he had quit and was heading out the next morning for parts unknown. Too bad you chose to believe the lying sonofabitch who killed our marriage instead."

She still hadn't signed the paperwork, so I picked up the clipboard, handed her the pen from my shirt pocket, and pointed to the signature line without saying anything. She stared at me for a few seconds, then looked down and scrawled her signature. I gave her the top copy, touched the bill of my Asleep at the Wheel cap in mock salute, got in the cab and headed back to the shop.

I kept checking the rear-view mirror. When I turned on Central Expressway she was still standing by the side of Plano Parkway.

_________

When I got back to the shop, Brian was smart enough to get all apologetic before I had a chance to let him have it. "I'm sorry, Tom, triple-A didn't tell me who it was, just the location and what kind of car and that it was a woman. Shelley called right after you drove off and asked me to tell you she's sorry she got mad." He shrugged. "Shit, I really am sorry. How'd it go?"

"About what you'd expect. We pissed in each other's Cheerios and I had to fix the fucking flat because she didn't have a spare." I gave him our copy of the paperwork. "My dog, my pickup, now my ex gets to pick a scab. My life isn't a cluster fuck, it's a shitkicker song." I gave him a half-assed grin to let him know we were still okay.