The Incredible Jimmy Smith

Billy Dykes liked to hop into his pick-up truck and take a certain route which led straight out of town and within minutes off the beaten path and onto red dirt country roads. Often, just like this time, he would stop off at the Quick Mart first and grab a cold soft drink or a tall boy beer wrapped in a brown paper sack, or maybe one of those barbecued burritos or a cardboard boat full of hot chicken wings, or maybe even both… just like this time.

Because he was a lot hungry, a little thirsty, and in the mood for some Jimmy.

*****

One of the best things about living in Oklahoma is the fact that no matter where you happened to find yourself, in all likelihood, you were no more than a good fifteen minutes away from entering the natural hinterlands. Oh, he supposed that if you were stuck in traffic somewhere in Tulsa or OKC then it might take you an additional quarter of an hour to escape, but out here in the Grain Belt fifteen minutes would be more than adequate to allow you to absolutely drop off the map, to get real lost, or at least as lost as you wanted to be.

And most times Billy liked to get real, real lost.

There was this little stretch southwest of town nobody else seemed to know about. After a while you’d turn down one dirt road which snaked its way between wheat fields and then proceed for a couple of miles as the road grew narrower and bumpier and suddenly you descended fast, down into some kind of gulley, right over a dry creek bed that no one else even knew existed, and then you’d continue on a for a spell through a tunnel of tall trees and suddenly you were on a crooked road that only a truck should, or could, traverse upon, and then you were all alone, there was nobody down here but for the hobo ghosts or the criminally insane, or so he imagined, so best not to blow a tire or skid off into a deep unforgiving ravine.

He had a shotgun hung in the rack behind him. Shells were in the glove box. Just in case.

But forget all that crazy horseshit.

He cranked up the music and there Billy Dykes was once again, happily lost within The Organ Grinder’s Swing, its pounding thump making his foot tap upon the brake while he scarfed down the rest of that burrito and sipped his beer. The King of Acid Jazz they called Jimmy. Hell yeah. One more bite of that barbecued burrito and they’d be calling Billy the King of Acid Indigestion. Oh well, life is good, there’s plenty of the pink gooey stuff back home, so he dug into the chicken wings and bounced right along, back on up and out of that gulley and into the broad light of day where the wheat sure waved sweet, where the road once again squared itself straight and true like a bespectacled county engineer’s wet dream, where he could either veer back toward the north and then onto the two-lane paved highway ensuring a faster trip back, or proceed to that nice and desolate turnaround point where he could get out, take a piss if so desired, and then turn around and re-trace it all over again.

There was no need to rush back. Not today. It was too beautiful, too damn sweet, and he was perfectly content to be all alone with his own thoughts listening once again to the Incredible.

*****

But it hadn’t been all cream and honey in the land of tall cotton.

Not by a long shot.

Years ago his daddy died in a helicopter crash while his National Guard unit was conducting training exercises down in Texas. To this day no cause had ever been officially given. The weather had been perfect and the chopper recently inspected. What’s more, the pilot was a veteran who could not have been more experienced or respected among his peers.

But still – ten good men died that bright morning when the bird slammed into a hill and his father had been one of them.

Billy was a first grader at the time and doesn’t remember much about his father. But he’d heard plenty over the years, seen a lot of photos. He’d heard about how his father was a great swimmer, loved his Mac and Cheese and the Sooners, could strum a guitar and climb almost any tree. He also heard that a big part of his momma died that day too. A young woman can go one of two ways when her husband dies like that and she went the other way, distancing herself from her child and the world that they had created as a family. Instead of drawing closer, instead of finding comfort in each other’s arms, she’d spun off into the dark night, spending late hours at bars getting trashed and then eventually came the coke thing and nobody knew where she was half the time. One late Saturday afternoon she mercifully dropped little Billy off for good at his grandparents’ farm where he got to stay in his dad’s old room and sleep in his dad’s old bed and there were times that he believed he was dreaming his dad’s old dreams, so vivid and strange they were to him.

Over the next few years his mother drifted out and then back into his life whenever she felt like it and increasingly that became unacceptable for everybody but her. Soon enough her drug dependency got so bad that it all seemed to be boiling down to either prison, the cemetery or rehab and she wiggled her way out of prison and somehow dodged the cemetery and eventually she found Roy at rehab and that was that. She’d gotten herself clean and then hitched to a bonafide asshole who in some respects became her new drug of choice. That’s how most folks saw it. As far as Billy was concerned she was still out there on the edge, spinning away, and he never thought twice about leaving the farm and his grandparents to go live with them in their little ramshackle place on the other side of town and apparently neither did his mother or Roy.

But that’s all dirty water swept under the Cimarron Bridge and flushed down to the Mississippi by now. These days whenever he hears a helicopter chopping through the sky he looks up and is amazed that it somehow stills hovers up there, slicing through the air just like it’s supposed to with all those unknown itinerant lives, and to be honest, maybe he’s even a little bitter that it does. Not that he wishes heartache and tragedy upon anyone – it’s just that he harbors tough questions that never seem to get answered.

Like Why?

And Because just don’t cut it.

Of course he’s heard all those sad tales about soldiers who came back from war and were treated like losers. Like those poor fellas who got shipped off to Vietnam and these days maybe even some of the Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers.

But they still came back.

His dad never even left these shores and he didn’t.

Hell, Vietnam is just a dirty word and a place that most Americans are all too happy to forget. A lot of those men who slinked back from that place were ignored if they were lucky, some were pitied, others reviled. That troubled him, it really did, because his father was dead and somehow that almost seemed preferable. But it wasn’t preferable, no sir – it was just as lonely and as empty as a wheat field in November.

So that’s the gist of it – Billy was capably raised by his grandparents on a Garfield County farm and it was a good thing he liked dirt and wasn’t allergic to hard work. Milking early in the morning and hoeing late into the afternoon and doing a whole lot of heavy lifting in between. He did all of that and more and the whole time he did it with a smile on his face and more recently with his toes tapping to that incredible organic beat.

Hell yeah he did!

*****

There was this huge fire pit out on Mickey’s family farm where all the boys liked to congregate on Friday nights and this is where the tales got told and the beers got drunk and preening feathers often got ruffled. Most of these boys drove pick-up trucks, the only real difference between them being how shiny and how large. A few were slickers whose fathers worked in air conditioned offices and theirs were the biggest and the shiniest of all although, in truth, they were nothing more than soft cowpoke posers. They knew it and so did everybody else but as long as they didn’t take themselves too seriously and rile anybody up then their ruse was amicably tolerated.

Now on this particular night the usual suspects were all there including Buddy Mix, Tom’s nephew three times removed, supposedly, and so the grand authority on all things musical. He touted his opinions as if they were heartland gospel and he some kind of self-anointed expert. Classic cock rock, old-time country, campfire folkies, electronic polka salsa – it didn’t matter what genre, you name it, he thought he knew it. Right now he was pontificating about some lame cowboy rap thing that was playing in the background which was as trendy as the white snakeskin sheen of his polished boots. The music came blasting out of his rolled-down windows, a steady square dance hee-haw kind of beat accompanied by loud electric guitar chords and some hick white guy channeling his inner Eminem.

I ride the range, I rock the mange – r, I fear no danger, I fear no stranger,

Just me and my mare, without a care, don’t you dare, cuz it’s in the air,

I can touch her soul, we’re on a roll, I…

Billy just couldn’t help himself…

“I stick it in its hole!”

You could definitely hear some snickers from a few of the assembled and Buddy Mix turned the volume down with a quick jerk of his wrist and got real wound up.

“Real funny, Dykes… frickin’ hilarious. Hey, why don’t you finish that beer and open your tiny mind? Oh, I forgot, it’s already way too wide open.”

And here Buddy looked over at his own best friend, Teddy Dekker, and they shared a nice mocking laugh.

“Why do you listen to that god-awful cheesy roller rink shit, anyway?” Buddy inquired, not really interested in hearing any answer, more intent on only delivering his implied opinion.

Billy did take a long pull on his beer and then, ignoring the somewhat rhetorical tone of the question, graciously responded, “Oh, I don’t know, I guess it just makes me feel happy.”

He said this with a big old exaggerated grin spreading across his face and a look of wild excitement in his eyes, almost licking his lips in anticipation, as if he’d just tasted something incredibly delicious and knew that there was plenty more from where it came.

Which was true.

Because there were lots and lots of formal Jimmy releases out there, decades of them, along with all those out-takes and recorded rehearsals and the endless live material – miles and miles of recorded and properly spooled tape just waiting to be reeled in, expertly mastered, sent to the record plant, manufactured and delivered unto his cassette player.

Dekker chimed in.

“Well that organ shit makes me rather unhappy. If you don’t mind my man,” and here he nodded toward Buddy, “crank it back up!”

The beat kicked back in and so did those ridiculous lyrics as sung-rapped by a man who would probably ride a pink horse bare-assed naked down Lincoln Boulevard if it would get him on the cover of PEOPLE magazine.

Billy wasn’t really looking for a fight. True, there were plenty of guys right there who would have gladly stood by his side if push came to shove or came to fisticuffs (or probably more of a timid bitch-slapping, really), not only because they liked Billy more but because they happened to like the other two fellas a helluva lot less, yet most were merely interested in consuming the optimal quota of suds while filling their heads with big ideas before raucously disbursing as they commenced their eternal quest for locating the agreeable girl.

Agreeable, meaning she might agree to sit still in his presence for at least five minutes without screaming bloody murder.

Anyway, there was no point in getting into a pissing contest with Buddy Mix – given the twin states of their overly excited post-adolescent bladders, the whole thing might devolve into an embarrassing stalemate.

“Sure – carry on my men, have it your way – just be sure to get down tonight… with your mare!”

Billy tossed the empty into the back of his truck and strutted off toward a clump of trees to relieve himself… in total privacy.

Yet after all, deep down, he had to admit that his musical tastes were a little, well, out of the ordinary.

It’s true.

So what?

Everybody else around here wanted to listen to some progressive country or maybe even a little harmless rap, some mama and daddy approved hippity-hop, but not him. No, he had the rigged cassette player in the old Chevy pick-up playing his tunes, and what it basically came down to was this hip black guy playing one funky organ and carrying on like a crazed banshee. For this one not-so-guilty pleasure most of the kids thought him a little strange, slightly weird, maybe even a little off his rockin’ horse, but then again, everything else about him was so damn normal. Those stone-pressed Levis, the big silver belt buckle that read Ass-Kicker Deluxe, the well-worn cowboy boots and his familiar off-white cowboy hat. When he spat his tobacco juice it stuck there on the wall just like everybody else’s before beginning that slow inevitable slide downward under its own glistening weight.

He just wished that he could somehow explain it to them, about how listening to The Sermon rightly moved him, how it preached directly to his soul, imploring him to stick to your guns, don’t give it up, that sun is gonna rise again tomorrow. And maybe it was because of his daddy that he had a special spot for When Johnny Comes Marching Home, especially the old Blue Note label version. Look, the guy played with Wes Montgomery who could play Jimmy Page or Chet Atkins under the frickin’ table! Well, maybe not Chet, but still… Wes could flat-out play that thing!

But as he zipped back up he had to accept it.

You can’t explain the love of music to anybody.

Either they feel it or they don’t.

Either they get it or they don’t.

There’s just no explaining it. Never has been, never will be. So just go your own way, enjoy it, and let it forever be.

It was time to depart. The next stage of the evening was set to begin.

Some were heading over to the Dairy Queen parking lot where they would re-assemble and prepare to cruise the main drag. Others were heading to some parent-less house where a supposed party was about to start. Still others were drifting away to points unknown.

The boys exchanged their goodbyes, some with the optimistic yet cheeky I’m gonna get me some banter, others a bit more realistically subdued. Billy merely walked toward his truck and announced to anybody who could hear him “hey, check all you boys later at the chicken shack… I got me a prayer meeting to get to.”

Maybe you couldn’t explain it to anybody else but, then again, there’s no taking it away from the faithful believer either.

*****

Billy Dykes really liked this one girl in school and she was friendly towards him as well, they shared a lot of laughs in class, but he knew she didn’t like him in the way he needed her to. Besides, she had just started going out with Teddy Dekker and he figured that before long she’d probably be gently steered clear of all the things Dekker didn’t approve of, like kids who weren’t exactly popular and worthless dorks… the very likes of him. It wasn’t setting up as a real heartbreak, not really, more of a fleeting crush that would most likely lead to him getting his feelings hurt, his heart duly pinged, if not absolutely grounded back into the throbbing bones of his busted rib cage.

Okay… so yes, it might hurt more than just a little.

And the very idea of this coming hurt made him think of the day when he just might do it.

Yes sir, he just might empty the ATM machine and veer off that red dirt country road and hit the highway that would eventually feed onto the interstate and take him a long way north and then even further east and a thousand miles later he might even roll up into Jimmy’s driveway, that is if the man actually had a driveway, or more likely he’d go and wait outside the juke joint where Jimmy was jamming until that late hour when he came stumbling out after closing time. He needed to shake the man’s hand and touch those magic fingers, he needed to look into those eyes that had seen so much and just say thank you.

He wanted to say that Earl Jasper says hello and then watch those yellow buttermilk eyes light up and defog in some kind of faint recognition.

*****

As you might have already guessed there was indeed a single person who introduced Billy to the man and his music. How else could such a lad stumble upon this rather mysterious and, at least in these parts, obscure musician? After all, out here in the heartland boonies it is extremely rare for a young white Ass-Kicker Deluxe to gain any exposure at all to black urban organ grinders.

The answer is revealed by the fact that there was this little five-lane bowling alley on the other side of town where Billy worked after school and on week-ends a few years back. A lot of his co-workers came and went but there was one mainstay, Earl the Squirrel Jasper, an old black gentleman who had lost most of his hearing due to his participation in some long-ago war and was blind in one eye and given to sudden tremors. The man worked those lanes mopping up other people’s messes, righting the random stuck pin, cleaning the filthy bathrooms, and always with a smile on his face and a sparkle in those mostly only ornamental eyes. Now every once in a while he stepped into a lane while a live ball was rolling down it and he was known to press a reset button at absolutely the very worst time on occasion but despite all that he was fondly embraced by most of the patrons.

Now what Earl embraced most fondly was his old-time jazz men but especially the Incredible Jimmy Smith. He had a bunch of home-made cassette tapes that he constantly played in the little cluttered break room in the back where he’d eat his sack lunch of pimento cheese sandwich, one piece of fruit, and a mason jar full of sweet tea. He couldn’t hear the music very well anymore but you could tell that he sure felt it deep down in his bones. He didn’t say much, especially if he didn’t know you, but he’d just keep on smiling, that was his natural way, and eventually he’d warm up and draw you in to his fold if he deemed you worthy.

It took Billy only a few weeks to be so included, mostly because he was a respectful kind boy but also because he got into the habit of staying with Earl in that tiny break room and tapping his own foot to those funky rhythms, asking questions about all the artists, showing some genuine interest in this strange new world of mister Earl the Squirrel.

Now his grandparents never really knew about the influence of Earl Jasper, and if they had they might have urged the boy to find employment elsewhere. Not that they considered themselves racist in the least, just very comfortable in their beliefs of who belonged where and when. It just seemed like the natural order and there was never any provocation for them to consider otherwise.

But they didn’t know about Earl and it was just as well.

Besides, just like Earl, grandpa was nearly deaf after decades of working around loud farm equipment and when spoken to all he could usually muster was a quizzical look into the speaker’s eyes, offering a sheepish grin and then a terse reply that most likely had nothing at all to do with anything the speaker had just uttered, and then grandpa would wander off somewhere and work half of the daily crossword puzzle. Grandma could hear just fine and she actually kind of enjoyed the Incredible’s organ playing, but in her mind’s eye all she ever saw was some old white feller with a Slim Whitman coif and a hairy gold-adorned chest playing gaily in front of yet one more catatonic Lawrence Welk audience.

So no harm, no foul… play on brother, play on.

But sure, there were plenty of folks who knew the truth, schoolmates and such, his own estranged mother and as an unfortunate corollary pretty boy Roy, who couldn’t fathom why a boy like Billy could be smitten with Negro spirituals. All them songs ever did was rile folks up, he declared, make them do things that they wouldn’t normally do, like flipping cars over and ransacking neighborhoods.

Recently his mother had gotten herself together somewhat, Billy guessing that one morning she might have looked herself in the mirror and decided to change a few things, and she had become suspiciously more cordial. Out of guilt or motherly instinct or maybe even a pang of honest to God love he couldn’t be sure, so for the most part he deemed it prudent to be polite but keep his distance.

Still, she’d drive out on some Sunday afternoons, ask him if he wanted to go for a cheeseburger and a limeade, and occasionally he’d go but only if she was alone. She often was, it seemed like more and more he was seeing less and less of Roy and that was gratifying indeed.

So just what did they talk about on those afternoon drives?

Oh, nothing really, just the weather, baseball, college choices, the meaning of life… and, regrettably, the last time about his taste in music.

It had escalated quickly.

Why do you listen to that… that black music? Because Roy thinks it’s a little strange, odd – okay, we think it’s goddamn weird to be totally honest with you.

Billy couldn’t decide if she seemed more alarmed for him or embarrassed for herself.

Truth was a lot of both. Because Roy had kept asking her and anybody else who happened to be within earshot what’s wrong with that kid anyway?

At such times she could only smile and say, oh it’s just a phase, he’ll grow out of it.

Then she would bite her lip and hope like hell.

But just now the horrified look on Billy’s face told her that he had not grown out of it just yet, no mam, not by a long shot, and most likely he wouldn’t be growing out of it any time soon.

So much for cheeseburgers and baseball and the meaning of life.

*****

One day toward the end of Billy’s tenure at the bowling alley Earl confided with him that he’d actually grown up in Philly with little Jimmy Smith, played stick ball in the streets and got into all sorts of trouble with him, but then Billy couldn’t help but wonder how many black kids back on the east coast were named James Smith or Jim Smith or even Jimmy Smith.

Hundreds?

Thousands?

But he liked the idea of it, little Earl and little Jimmy, and Earl was not much of a fibber although he certainly could exaggerate from time to time. Billy didn’t think that Earl would make up a story like this one though. It was too personal, it cut a little too close to the bone.

Still, he couldn’t fight off the urge to ask, to pry a little deeper.

“Are you sure you’re talking about the same Jimmy Smith? I mean, the real Jimmy Smith? Because, you know, there must have been a lot of them out there. Hell, there’s even one here, Jim Smith, works on trucks over at the Shell station.”

This was the only time Earl Jasper ever really got short with him.

“Yeah, well, let me tell ya somethin’ – there might have been plenty of Jimmy Smiths runnin’ around alright, but there was only one incredible Jimmy Smith. And he was my friend and you can believe it or not but I suppose it don’t make much difference – he don’t remember me now anyway. No sir.”

Billy felt bad. Earl had teared-up, his almost blind eyes turning glassy as he tried to set his quivering jaw. Then he turned off the tape machine and limped out of the cramped room and into the bowling alley with all its reverberating clunking noise and that indelible smell.

There were lanes that needed sweeping, balls that had to be polished.

*****

So why did he love the music of Jimmy Smith?

Well, Billy thought, why does anybody love anything?

It just made him feel happy, made him feel relaxed. It put a little joyful snap into his everyday step, it was the cherry on top of the sundae, that is if you happen to enjoy chocolate sundaes, which of course he did, but not like this – what he liked the most was the smooth groove of mister Jimmy Smith.

He even had a favorite album. Home Cookin – just saxophone, guitar, drum kit, and Jimmy’s sweet organ. He didn’t know exactly why… there was just something about it. The sound, the atmosphere, the feeling those magical souls were trying to conjure. Maybe it was just because he happened to be in such a great mood the first time he ever heard it. He even told Earl about it.

“Yes sir, that’s one of my favorites too. A real Jim Dandy… yes sir.”

Now it was nice to receive Earl’s concurrence but why was he always referring to him as sir? It bugged him, this obvious habit of bestowing deference onto the blatantly undeserving, a particular group which happened to include Billy as well as just about everybody else Earl came into contact with. Billy figured a man like Earl was too old to worry about appeasing uptight white folk and that day told him so.

“You don’t have to call me sir, Earl.”

“Okay ass-wipe. I won’t call you sir anymore, okay?.. sir?”

Billy never mentioned it again.

*****

There was this one party that he got invited to at some junior’s house. The folks were out of town and the hot tub was primed and filled to the max and the sound system was just ridiculous – loud, pristine, hell, even louder! The ground was shaking. He wondered how long it would take for the neighbors to call the cops. Not long, he reckoned, but in the meantime he might as well kick back and indulge.

A few of the already thoroughly inebriated were dancing by the pool and acting foolish and Billy fantasized what it would be like to put some Jimmy on, maybe the joyful swirl of Bluesette because that just might provoke him to jump up onto the old wood picnic table over there and kick up some real boot heel noise, thumping this way, thumping that way, twirling some pretty young thing all around and showing the awe-struck crowd that this here is how it gets done.

That’s what he wanted to do.

Not what he was going to do.

He was knocked off this pleasant pedestal of idle reverie by the appearance of Teddy Dekker and his new girlfriend.

The loud music played on amid random splashes from the pool while the moon sneered down through a veil of suddenly-eclipsed delight.

Teddy and his girl walked right on by.

She didn’t even look at him.

Later that evening he pulled into a travel stop and really thought about it.

Memphis to the east or Kansas City to the north? Either direction, he could be on his way, getting closer to the source.

After a few minutes more of indulging the fantasy he wiped his eyes clear and put the truck in drive and took his time making his way back to the farm, feeling like an old hound kicked in its wormy guts with its mangy tail tucked behind its legs.

*****

In the seven or eight months Billy worked at the bowling alley he got to know Earl well, but only within the confines of those walls. Their relationship only went so far as the front entrance, maybe the crunching gravel of the parking lot, where Billy would slip into his truck and Earl would be left there waiting until his son-in-law eventually found the time to drop by and pick him up, either that or if the weather was reasonably good and the knees willing he’d begin the long walk across town to where his daughter worked at a laundry mat. And that was it, there was never any mingling off the premises, and the one time Billy had asked him if he needed a ride the old man had just looked away as if he hadn’t heard him.

In truth, maybe he hadn’t.

Earl was prideful, he understood and appreciated the uncomplicated nature of solitude and keeping to one’s self and was perfectly content to let his working relationships remain working relationships. He found that that’s where they worked best. But despite the limited nature of their relationship they did share many memorable moments. There were things said in that little break room that left an imprint on Billy, things that he would never forget. Earl spoke a lot about the war without ever getting too specific about what he saw, what he endured. He just said enough to let Billy know that some things are better left unsaid, those particular details a fuzzy patch mercifully drifting away into the fog of time.

Billy would talk about his life too, about the supposed rigors of the classroom, not to mention the lessons often dispensed out in the school hallways and in the parking lots. He also spoke about his grandparents, life on the farm, his mother and even Roy. Eventually he told him about the death of his father, the separation from his mother, and it was an easy connect-the-dots exercise for Earl to piece together the young man’s emotional distress. One thing about Earl, once you had entered his fold you got the royal treatment – he was fiercely loyal and often colorful in his emotional support.

“Now don’t you let that son-of-bitch bother ya none,” he said once. “He’s just an asshole.”

Now of course that was sweet music to Billy’s ears and he gave Earl the biggest smile right back which made it abundantly clear that Earl was absolutely free to continue on if so inclined.

He was.

“Let’s face it. He’s just jealous of your daddy. Anybody can see that. Your daddy was a good man… I’ll bet everybody around here liked him.”

Billy perked up.

“You didn’t know him, did you?” he asked, and Earl chuckled and answered, “No sir, I didn’t need to know him – I seen his own boy right here, right now… that’s all I need to know he was a good man.”

That was the first time, and maybe even the last time, anyone connected Billy so honorably to his very own flesh and blood – to the father that he never knew – and it made him feel so good that it would be impossible to attempt to explain the joy that surged throughout his entire body. It brought tears to his eyes and Earl could see that.

“Now I told you not to concern yourself with that asshole,” he pointedly proclaimed, and it was all Billy could do to maintain that smile as he squelched those tears and assured his friend, “don’t worry, I’m not.”

Then Billy reached over and turned up the music.

*****

Like most of his friends Billy could have gone off to the larger state universities in Stillwater or Norman but he decided that neither was really a good fit for him. Too big, too loud, and ever since that party by the pool he’d acquired a more low-profile and somewhat staid disposition. Instead he opted for a smaller college in eastern Oklahoma, a place on the other side of the cross timbers where the trees grew a little fuller and the water ran a lot more pure, quite frankly an undiscovered country for him which was vastly different from his own rolling wheat belt plains. It was also a place where the faces were fresh and the start was new.

Sadly his grandfather passed away in November of Billy’s sophomore year and then his grandmother died two months before his graduation, right after he had informed her that he’d been accepted to graduate school at a prestigious university in California. That had made her happy and filled with pride, if not also a little sad. Those two years of living alone had taken their toll on her because for too long of a time she had known nothing except the role of wife, mother, nurturer and companion – even her old dog had run off and left her all alone. She had thrived on her purpose and without it the will to live had withered.

One day shortly after her husband’s passing she had wandered into Billy’s room and rummaged through the stuff he’d left behind. Old magazines, school and 4-H mementos, assorted balls and books, an old shoe box filled with cassette tapes. She played those tapes in an old cassette deck she’d dug out of his closet and most days listening to that nice organist man made her feel better, some days it made her feel worse. But whatever she felt she knew it was okay because it was always better to feel something more than just numbing loneliness.

Billy never knew about this but then there are so many things in this life folks never know about.

Shortly after her funeral Billy was contacted by an attorney regarding the disposition of the estate and in particular the farm. It seemed that there was a lot of interest regarding it, especially since the town had been growing outwardly in that general direction. In the weeks leading up to his graduation he received phone calls and letters from realtors, potential buyers, even his mother who had wondered out loud and a little too casually, hey, just what are you going to do with all that money, anyway?

He told the attorney, “I’m not dealin’ with it now. What’s the rush? The land aint goin’ nowhere.”

The attorney, who had initially called in a spirit of helpful sympathy but which had too soon devolved into impatient pragmatism, sighed and then groaned into the phone, “No son, I suppose it’s not, but you’re wastin’ time and time, as you will eventually find out, is money.”

By the first of July he had settled on an auction that would be conducted by summer’s end, just in time to pay off some old school loans and fully absorb the upcoming grad school tuition bill. The rest of the funds, and according to the auctioneer there could be a significant amount, would be tucked away in a bank account until such a time Billy was sufficiently prepared to invest it wisely. He had no problem with any of that but he did have one request. He insisted that the auctioneer and the estate attorney not discuss any of the specifics with anyone else – not his mother, not Roy, absolutely no one else – without his explicit consent. Maybe one day down the road he and his mother would truly reconcile, but if so, he didn’t want the catalyst for such a reunion to be money. And maybe even more importantly, he didn’t want money to be the reason why they never would reconcile either.

Best to keep it out of the equation, go on with your life, and allow what will happen to naturally happen.

*****

He came back home a few years later for a cousin’s wedding and could hardly believe it was the same place. The streets and the buildings which had once meant so much to him seemed unfamiliar, just your typical middle-America presentation of concrete mixed with mortar as spruced up with a few tacky artifacts. The railroad tracks and the boundaries that had once seemed so formidable were in fact only what they had ever been, invisible social delineations, the slightest of bumps in an otherwise smooth road. Billy wished that he could have considered it all so quaint but he couldn’t even muster that puny belief.

At least not until he passed the bowling alley and a surge of emotion shot through him.

These days he occasionally still listened to the Incredible and whenever he heard a Jimmy Smith song he couldn’t help but also hear the humming roll of a spinning bowling ball and then the inevitable clink-clink-clunk of those wooden pins as they got banged all around, then the accompanying cry from the fellow who just tossed a strike or the one-syllable expletive from the tosser of a nasty split, but a lot of those old tunes had been squeezed out of his head by the fresh California folk and the Pacific smooth jazz that he and his new friends fancied so much.

He pulled into the parking lot, surprised that he still knew where the pot holes were, not so surprised that they were still there, and parked in a corner space facing the crumbling building. He just sat there for awhile and thought about it. It was a late Thursday afternoon, not normally a busy time for a bowling alley, and there were only a few other cars in the lot.

In an instant he decided why the hell not? He turned off the ignition and popped out of the car in one compulsive spasm.

Inside it looked the same, it smelled the same – but somehow, some way, he knew it wasn’t the same. He couldn’t quite put a finger on it but in an instant he felt it – he had formed a meaningful bond with a man and somehow that connection had loosened and come undone. Not like the quick snip of a taut ribbon with scissors, more like the slow unfurling of a huge ball of string. Like the turning of seasons or the aging of a man, each single frame of change is not meaningful or recognizable, yet once they are all stacked up side by side by side it becomes undeniable – summer’s long gone folks and now it’s winter, and your friendship was quietly, gently, hardly even noticeably, set aside and allowed to blow away in the cold relentless wind.

He felt nervous, a little embarrassed, wondering what he was going to say to Earl when finally in front of him, hoping that the door to the break room was already cracked open a bit so he wouldn’t really even need to knock. Just poke his head inside with a sheepish grin and hope for the best.

He approached the kid at the front desk and asked him if he knew where Earl was although it was obvious to Billy that if he wasn’t in clear sight out there working the lanes he was most likely taking a break.

“I suppose he’s still where they left him a few months back. Six feet under out at the cemetery.”

A couple of loud-mouthed middle-aged men dropped off their shoes at the desk. One of them was giving the other a good-natured ribbing, laughing and carrying on like a playground bully, and Billy slowly backed away in a daze giving them plenty of room to square their tab.

The kid saw the look on Billy’s face and reconsidered his previous apathetic approach.

“Sorry about that. But yeah, it’s true. Earl died a few months back… not really a heart attack. Just stopped breathing right over there, back in the break room.”

Billy looked over at the little door beyond Lane One and it was closed.

It would forever remain so in his mind.

“Say, you wouldn’t be Billy Dykes, would ya?”

Billy nodded.

“He left all his tapes for you back there, in a shoebox. Let me take care of these gentlemen and I’ll go get them for you.”

*****

Billy drove away from the bowling alley caught within a sad stupor thinking that there was way too much dying going on around here for his money, realizing only too well that he needed to somehow shake this damned forlornness and acquire a proper celebratory mood. For crying out loud, he had come back for a wedding, not an impromptu wake! He wiped away the last of his unexpected tears, hoping, believing, that Earl had left this world while listening to Jimmy.

Had it been an orange or an apple that day?

Billy would never know for sure but he felt certain that the Incredible’s long lost friend had died with a smile upon his face. And yet soon after the first shockwave of grief had receded Billy could not fend off the roiling shame of regret left in its place.

That summer after he had graduated from college, just weeks before the auction and his departure for graduate school, he had driven down this very street and seen Earl there walking all alone. It had been extremely hot that day and the old man’s shadow in the late afternoon sun had been long and thin and hardly moving. Billy had thought about stopping, turning around, going back to offer his old friend a ride, or maybe just say hello, shoot the shit for a spell.

But he had just driven right on by.

He didn’t even look at him.

And just right now he thought, it doesn’t seem fair, eyes that can no longer see can still so easily weep.

*****

There are some things that happen in this world that almost seem inevitable, as if they were pre-ordained, the natural coming together of one distinct entity with another, like peanut butter and jelly, like wine and cheese… and like horseflies on a cow patty. It’s best to step out of the way and appreciate them, or in some cases, to just let them be. But then there are those other things that somehow manage to bump into one another, an unlikely collision of opposites, or the wayward asteroid plunging into the meandering planet, and the result may be disastrous, a calamity, or it may be viewed as only wonderfully meant to be.

Like regret begetting enlightenment

Billy Dykes looked once again at that faded classroom photograph that had also been left inside that box with the tapes… two young faces circled by a pen, one with the familiar grin from an old friend, the other the unmistakable smirk of a musical legend.

He had always believed him, anyway.

Whatever view is ultimately taken of such unlikely collisions, rest assured that the resulting union shall manifest some kind of new start, pushing that which comes after it in a slightly different direction, effecting the tiniest of changes and lifting our evolution upwardly, encouraging latent observers to stop simply watching and feel free to join in this unlikely parade.

So if you’ve never seen a tall lanky cowboy high-stepping to the Organ Grinder’s Swing in white Stetson and black boots, then it must be asked, where sir have you rightly been? He’s out there even now, the red Okie sun setting fire to a golden wheat field, and his bouncy strut among those cow patties is at once alarming and delightful, amusing and totally absurd, not to mention abnormally rhythmical for a rawboned white kid in stiff stone-pressed Levis, a wooden toothpick jutting from the corner of his grinning mouth.

Earl Jasper might have called such a vision holy enlightenment.