My experience with Rose in Chapel Hill so devastated me that I decided (once again), “That’s it! I am finished with love once and for all!” So, I packed my Corvair, locked the door to my apartment, dropped off the key, and headed aimlessly (once again) into Arkansas. (If Virginia is for lovers, then Arkansas is for jilted, pissed off lovers looking for a gravel bar to get drunk on.) It was the “taint” of the year, that is, “taint” Thanksgiving and “taint” Christmas,” “taint” nothing but a betwixt and between time to be endured along with Christmas carols and plastic reindeer. So, “with wand’ring steps and slow,” I made my solitary way south to the Buffalo River watershed, and when I saw the city limit sign of Parthenon, I turned onto a rocky road to nowhere. The tainted woods were bleak and bony, and the countryside hiccupped in hillocks all the way to the horizon. Tawny rumps of hills and gray bluffs sloughed into dank valleys whence occasional spirals of chimney smoke rose and dissipated. I drove up the hills and down the hills and crossed three low water bridges and two cattle guards when I saw a windowless cabin with a “Fer Rent” sign nailed to a stanchion and thought, “That’ll do.” I talked to the fellow next door, an old man with one good eye and a face bristling with whiskers, and he told me I could have it for twenty dollars a month “iffen you ain’t a Catlick ner a Jew,” which I told him I wasn’t. He said his name was Jojo, and he invited me over that evening for beans and corn liquor. Then he asked, “Do ye play the banjo?” to which I replied, “No, sir, I do not,” to which he replied, “I’ll teach ye, so yens can back me.” Jojo explained that he played the fiddle but “not so good na more, seein’ as how I ain’t had nobuddy to back me. My timin’s gone awry” (pronounced “AW-ree,” if you care to know).
And that is how I learned to play the banjo. It’s pretty easy if you just strum it and don’t try to clawhammer the damn thing or what’s worse, clink around with those metal finger picks. Every night for the next month we ate beans, drank moonshine, and played music. We celebrated Christmas Day with a double helping of beans, twenty verses of “The Arkansas Traveler,” and a skillet of cornbread Jojo cooked in his fireplace. Half of it was burned and the other half goop, but there were two edible wedges situated at three and nine o’clock. Then came New Years with more beans and more fiddling, and all of a sudden, 1970 rose up before me like a cold and naked corpse of a copse, a despairing landscape fetid with beans, sodden with whiskey, and screeching with “Turkey in the Straw.” Jojo was having a hell of a time, and I was more regular than I’d ever been, but—and here we go again—I was getting sorely peckish for female affection. Not love, mind you, which I had forsworn, but some good old fashioned physical tit for tat. Jojo was dismayed, but he released me from my rental contract and even gave me a banjo that had belonged to his Uncle Teddy and a quart of moonshine that I stowed under my seat. Being thus supplied, I set off into the new decade.
I eventually settled in Batesville, Arkansas, where I got a job playing Uncle Teddy’s banjo in a bordello on Riverbank Road. This particular commercial enterprise was called the Velvet Glove, and in addition to my providing a little “come-on-in” music, Madame Jaundice also expected me to keep order should any of the “gentlemen callers” become unruly. Liquor was most generally the culprit behind their rowdiness and occasional jealousies, though getting jealous over a whore is about the stupidest thing I can imagine.
I learned a few songs for the nonce—“She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain” and “On Top of Old Smokey” and “Down in the Valley.” I sat on a Victorian style couch where I strummed the banjo as I welcomed the patrons. With a smile and a flourish, I would say, “Good afternoon, sir! How about a ditty to brighten your day?”
To which he would inevitably reply, “That sounds good to me! Oh, wait; did you say ‘a ditty’? I thought you said, ‘A titty’! Har-de-har.” Whoever said it laughed as if I hadn’t set him up to say it, as if no one else had ever thought to say it before, as if he was Rodney Dangerfield on the Johnny Carson show. I felt like Doctor Pavlov in a kennel full of dogs.
“Ha! That’s a good one,” I said, “Talk to Mizz Jaundice in the next room, and she’ll fix you right up.”
I actually had a good arrangement because I was paid with food (two meals daily), free affection when one of the girls was available, and whatever tips I got for playing the banjo. We had a terrific cook named Prissy Mae, and she served ham and black-eyed peas and cornbread and greens. Life was good in the Velvet Glove on the green banks of the White River, but nothing lasts forever, I guess.
Well, one day in April I was strumming on the old banjo with the front door open and the fresh spring breeze blowing in. I remember I was singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” when this huge fellow filled up the doorway. Of course, I launched into my spiel—“Good afternoon, sir! How about a ditty to brighten your day?”—when he interrupted me by hollering, “I’m Bubba Dunnes from Toad Suck, Arkansas, and I’m a-gonna kick your ass!”
Oh, boy, here we go, I thought, but in a steady voice, I said, ‘Toad Suck, Arkansas, you say?. I have heard of your hamlet, Bubba Dunnes, but the ambiguity of the name perplexes me.”
“Ambi-what? What the hell er you talkin’ about?”
“Is your town so nominated because the toads are sucked or because the toads do the sucking? I suppose if it were the former, you would be from Toad Sucked, but if the latter, Toad Sucks, but it’s neither, ergo, my confusion.”
Meanwhile, I continued strumming as I gently sang,
Dinah, won’t you blow?
Dinah, won’t you blow?
Bubba was momentarily befuddled, but then his eyes widened with epiphanic insight. “Hey, I know what you yore doin’! Yore talkin’ a bunch of words to try to keep me from kickin’ yore ass!”
With Bubba being more perceptive than I thought, I said, “No, no, not at all. Shh. Just listen to the song.”
Dinah won’t you blow your ho-o-orn?
Dinah, won’t you blow?
Dinah, won’t you blow?
Such words softly sung in a whorehouse would surely distract Bubba, but he was not to be deterred, and he hollered, “Shut up! I don’t give a damn about you nor Dinah nor your amber-gluity, and I sure as hell don’t give a damn about that damn banjo! I give a damn about one thing: kickin’ yore ass!”
“Shhh,” I repeated, “just listen.”
Dinah, won’t you blow your horn?
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.
Softly, lovingly, I strummed the banjo.
Someone’s in the kitchen I kno-o-ow.
What I was too dim-witted to realize is that the banjo was the problem. I thought I was soothing the savage beast, but instead, I was riling the beast up. The whole episode reminds me of the time Millie, the family cocker spaniel, got fleas. Mama was going to spray Millie with flea poison, but she grabbed a can of Dog Away instead. Dog Away is something you spray on your flowers to keep the dog from digging them up. Anyhow, Mama sprayed Millie with Dog Away, and the poor critter practically drove herself crazy trying to squirm out of her own skin. By this analogy, my banjo was the Dog Away; Bubba Dunnes was the dog; and I was Mama. But like I say, I was too stupid to figure it out at the time.
So, I strummed more loudly and sang,
Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinaaah…
Then came the finale with a crescendo, a fortissimo, and with great gusto:
Strummin’ on the old banjooo!
“Arrgh, I’m Bubba from Toad Suck, Arkansas, and I’ve had it with you and your banjo!” Bubba started towards me with his epiphanic features transmogrified by rage: His hands were clenched, his shoulders hunched, and his stride was fierce. At that very moment, a girl parted the curtain and stood in the doorway like a 5’4” vision in a lavender teddy.
She asked, “What the hell is goin’ on out here?”
“Who’re you?” Bubba yelled.
“I’m Violet. Who’re you?”
“I’m Bubba Dunnes from Toad Suck, Arkansas!”
“And what do you do for a livin’, Bubba Dunnes?”
That caught him off guard, and he stood there thinking. He ventured, “Well, last year I went to auctioneer school over in Little Rock.”
“Great. Let’s hear you auctioneer some.”
“Okay. I’ll do it. But for you, not him.” With that, Bubba tilted his head back, shoved his hands in his pockets, and called out, “Five!”
(Pause)
“Five!”
(Pause)
“Somebuddy give me five!”
(Standing there, thinking hard, scrunching his eyes tight)
“Ten!”
(Pause)
“Somebuddy give me ten!”
(Pause)
“Five!”
He smiled at Violet with an expression of humble triumph, and she was effusive. “Wow, that was something else! Now, tell me: What do you have against our friend here?”
Bubba flared up. “You heard him! He can’t play that thing worth a damn. I heard that racket out in the street, and I says to myself, ‘This cannot and will not stand. I’m a-gonna kick his ass.’”
Violet said, “Ooh, I see. You’re an aficionado.”
He was suspicious. “I’m a fish fer what?”
“Never mind. Do you play?”
“Do I play?” he bellowed. “Do I play? I’m Bubba Dunnes from Toad Suck, Arkansas!”
“Well, then, show us.” Violet was as calm as a lavender kite at the end a white string against a blue sky.
I held out the banjo, somewhat meekly, I must confess, and Bubba snatched it from me with a confidence wondrous to behold. He sat on the sofa, and concentrating hard on the frets, he used his right hand to put his left-hand fingers on the strings. Then, he lifted his right hand over his head and came down so hard it sounded like Prissy Mae dropped every pot in the kitchen.
“Wow!” said Violet. “You’re as good at playin’ as you are at auctioneerin’.”
“You know what I’m really good at?”
“What’s that?”
“Kickin’ this guy’s ass!”
“Oh, for Chrissake, that’s enough!” Hands on her hips and knees locked, Violet scowled and said, “Now, looka here, Bubba Dunnes from Toad Suck. You’ve already ruined his banjo: three strings broken, and you knocked a hole in the drum. He can’t play it anymore. Whyn’t you go on and leave us in peace?”
“I’m Bubba Dunnes from—”
“We know, we know. Go on!”
“I’m Bubba . . .”.
Then that little gal walked up to him and said, “Listen, you stupid, drunk-ass, son of a mud turtle! Go on! Git the hell out of here!”
Bubba kind of drooped his head and walked toward the door, dragging Uncle Teddy’s banjo behind him. Once he turned back to look at me, but Violet said, “Ah, ah! Keep goin’! Git!” Bubba disappeared into the street, and I took a deep breath. Then, I got up and closed the door. I remember thinking, To hell with the banjo; he can have it. Bubba Dunnes from Toad Suck was right anyways; I never was any good.
I turned around, took Violet by the hand, and knelt on one knee. Looking into her amethyst eyes, I asked in adoration, “Will you marry me?”
She said, “Why not?” and that’s how I ended up with my second wife.