Bright Red Devil

Bright Red Devil

By

Ralph Bland

First Published by Mirador Publishing at Smashwords

Copyright 2014 by Ralph Bland

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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All right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the publishers or author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First edition: 2014

Any reference to real names and places are purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflect the reality of any locations involved.

A copy of this work is available though the British Library.

IBSN : 978-1-910530-13-9

O N E

About the only thing my mother ever said to me that made the slightest bit of sense whatsoever came out of her mouth while she was lying on her death bed at Mountain View Hospital.

You tell these doctors, she said, fixating me with one of her all-business old-time religion Fundamentalist gazes, not to keep giving me shots and a lot of pills to swallow. You tell them I’ve had enough of all this and I’m ready to go. Tell them I don’t want to live like this anymore.

I was forty at the time and Mountain View Hospital was then a new facility, having been financed by a local family of millionaires and constructed on a carved-out granite slab overlooking East Nashville as another in a line of profitable business ventures. Mountain View wasn’t really so much a place for healing and rehabilitation but was mostly a good spot for the not so fortunate portion of Music City USA to check into for a spell and take medication and maybe get operated on and get their pockets emptied in a timely and efficient manner before being allowed to die off in a timely and anonymous kind of way.

Being forty—and that was a while back now—I’d spent a lot of time tuning out what my mother had said for most of my life, and at that moment I wasn’t as entirely convinced she was being totally truthful about her situation or was just simply playing the theatrical side with me and my sisters like always. But since I was the oldest of her kids I sort of had the feeling it was in the line of duty for me to talk this wish of hers about ceasing and desisting life here on earth over with her doctors and the immediate family, which was me and my two younger sisters. To tell the truth, I felt fairly resentful about having this responsibility of life and death resting on my shoulders alone, since for a long time I’d done everything in my power to escape the ties and shackles of being a member of any family, this natural one with my mother and sisters and my already-departed father who’d dropped dead five years earlier the first week after his retirement from Nashville Gas, or the two voluntary units I’d visited with the two divorces and the two leftover daughters and the alimony and the child support that never quit. So I wasn’t too thrilled right then with having another item in the line of family matters added to my agenda after I’d worked so hard for so many years to clean my slate of ties to anything other than myself.

Taking care of myself was a fulltime job. I’d found that out the hard way.

Mother doesn’t know what she’s saying, Rebecca said. My sister Rebecca was two years younger than me but had always maintained that she was smarter and much wiser. I know she’s got that living will and all, but it’s up to us to decide what’s best for her. Rebecca looked me over like I ought to be ashamed of myself. You act like this is just another in a series of jobs you’ve got to hurry up and get done.

Besides, my youngest sister Karen said, you haven’t been around Mother nearly as much as we have. You’re gone most of the time. Rebecca and I know what kind of pain she’s in and if it’s manageable or not. The thing is Mother just gets frustrated with the way things are for her now. She doesn’t like being in a chair and not being able to do for herself anymore. She wants to stay at her house and not move in with either me or Rebecca because she knows if she does she won’t get her way with everything the way she always has in the past.

And another thing, Rebecca added, is she thinks because most of her friends have started dying off she might as well go ahead and do it too.

I didn’t attempt to argue with them, seeing how I already knew my sisters were both just like my mother and were going to go down swinging having the whole situation work out the way they wanted it to. I also knew if I got in the way of progress it would be woe unto me for being alive and having a different opinion and being a heartless jerk later on. It turned out I didn’t have to worry about it for too long though, because my mother died in her sleep three days later, managing to fit in some further death bed instructions for all of us she was leaving behind. I found it strange how she’d kept true to her word in the fact she was ready to go and not to continue living in the manner she had found herself any longer, and so she checked out like it was the next morning at the Opryland Hotel and a cab was waiting to take her where she wanted to be.

The only reason I mention all this is to let it be established here at the beginning of this narrative that I haven’t spent my entire life at odds and in total disagreement with everyone in my respective families or the people around me for all my sixty years. Like my mother, though, I too get disgusted with everything sometimes. I get a snootful with the way things are and the way things aren’t, and how, with a little bit of effort, life on this planet might be different and halfway tolerable every blue moon or so. There are times when I, like dear old Mom, am of the opinion I do not want to live in the circumstances surrounding me. There are moments and instances when I also feel like it is time to go, to be somewhere else, to let fall away all the things around me I know are never going to change, and in those times I find myself wanting to tell all the swirling forces circling my being and blowing me to distraction to just quit whatever it is they feel compelled to show me or have me hear, to stop with all the crap they are obsessed and commissioned with having me take every bit of to my heart.

Let me go, I want to say. I am ready to not be a part of your world any longer.

*

Two years after his wife of thirty-six years died, Drew Graves decided to get married again.

I got informed of this intention on several occasions, just, I suppose, to make certain I was aware of it. I received one wedding invitation at my place out in the boondocks--or Morningstar, Tennessee, as it’s known by the post office—and another invitation came as an identical document at the radio station where I work. The third instance came in the form of a voice message left on my home phone, which hardly ever gets answered, and I’m positive I would have found a fourth on my cell if I hadn’t lost it somewhere a month or so before. But as it was, I did receive a correspondence from my old buddy Drew, my childhood pal who seems these days to get older every time our paths happen to cross. I got the message loud and clear, whether I really wanted to get it or not.

It was on the Saturday after Easter somewhere near April when the gentle winds of spring are supposed to be caressing your cheek but are actually slapping you across the chops like you’ve said the wrong thing to a woman with a temper. I was in my car driving the long straight pavement of 65 South toward Franklin, Tennessee, rumbling by the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest in his Rebel garb on his rared-up steed who symbolically announced to the traffic coming in to Nashville and going out that whoever you are you have just entered or left a place that has not abandoned the dreams of the Confederacy, and if you don’t like that idea, then you just don’t understand history, that’s all. I was leaving Nashville and headed past Brentwood to Franklin, where people God liked better than me resided and the Cool Springs Galleria and Mall stood nearby ready to help a person find most anything they could possibly want for about double the price of anywhere else just for the privilege of shopping there. I was listening to Mildred Graves in the seat beside me talking in my right ear while Rod Stewart was singing Maggie Mae in the left, and I was thinking how I might be considered a fairly tolerant and patient guy if I managed to make it through the end of Rod’s signature song and Mildred’s unwavering opinion of her nephew Drew getting married again without having to pull over to the side of the interstate and get out of my Jeep Wrangler for air.

Rod, of course, like everybody else in the world, didn’t stand a chance against Mildred. I flipped the radio off, but there was nothing I could do about Mildred. She was all wound up again, but I guess she had the right this time. I guessed I’d be the same way if I had a nephew doing this sort of thing, marrying somebody thirty-five years younger, probably giving away most of the family riches for the sake of a pretty face and a nubile body. Luckily, there are not that many males left in my own family, no nephews or sons in my lineage walking around, which I guess is a good thing, because the chances are good that if there were any of these male Maynors in existence they might have turned out something like me, and there are a lot of folks who’d testify that wouldn’t be too pretty a sight.

In my next life I’m going to be smart and have no family whatsoever, Mildred is saying. I’m going to get my tubes tied and have nothing but dogs living in my house, preferably Corgis like Queen Elizabeth and I both have. I’m not going to marry anyone, and I’ll spend my money on making myself gorgeous through whatever means I have to do it. That way I can have any man I want, and when I’m through with him I’ll throw him away like last week’s pot roast. Into the disposal, then I’m off to find someone new. What a wonderful existence that will be, Jacob. No ugly divorces, no offspring or troublesome family to cause me ulcers and acid indigestion.

Sounds a lot like the life you’re leading already, I said. Besides, think of all you would have missed this time around without dear old brother Samuel and Drew along for fun and giggles.

I’ll be a lot happier, Mildred says. Richer, for certain. All my brother and his rotten son ever gave me is grief and a constant fear of falling into insolvency. If I wasn’t so smart and wise about financial matters our entire family would have gone under a long time ago. She shakes her head and pulls down the visor to peer at herself in the mirror. I can’t believe I have a nephew marrying a girl who ought to be somebody’s granddaughter.

She probably is. Maybe she’ll slip up on the honeymoon and call Drew Gramps.

Mildred gives me her most disgusted look.

I might as well have you in my family too, she says. You’ve cost me money and given me ulcers just like my brother and that damned spoiled son of his. The only thing you’ve got going different is you’ve always managed to be somewhat entertaining along the way. At least when you screwed up your life you did it in a grand and colossal way.

Thanks, I tell her. I always do my best to put on a good show.

*

The wedding is supposed to start at five, but knowing Drew and his crowd like I do I figure if I make it right on time I’ll end up sitting in a chair having god knows who coming up to say hello and see how I am doing and wondering why it is no one hears too much or sees too much of me anymore. I suppose if I was still socially relevant I’d have brought someone with me to fend off all the enquiring overtures from well-wishers, acquaintances, and outright ghosts from the past, but since the only female I’m amiable with these days is Mildred, all eighty-five years of her, I consider myself lucky to be able to show up for this with her at my side. Mildred is always more than okay, which is high praise coming from the likes of me.

Drew Graves is close to being the biggest agent and promoter in Nashville. If he isn’t the biggest then he’s probably the richest, which if you ask anyone that matters they’ll tell you rich is the more important of the two. Drew has a stake in most of the town’s current big stars, although for my money too many of them are the Billy Joes with cowboy hats and gold chains around their necks and Patsy Lous with white boots and mini-skirts and runoffs from American Idol and beyond who keep popping up on the CMA Awards show every year like poison oak. Drew is not only their agent and promoter with his percentage piling up on every hit but doubles also as a financial advisor. After he takes his cut he tells his drones where to place the rest of their money, and most of the time that part has a way of wandering back his way again. It hasn’t always been this way, not at first, not back when Drew was a bust until he hit it big, until the artists who did have a smidgen of talent started fading from Billboard and the new wave of country artists who truly weren’t so country but were more Redneck Garage Rock began oozing through the cracks and crevices and throwing in their lot with him. It was like a busload of future Opry legends discovered my buddy Drew was the only person around who felt like going to war with talent that was fairly minimal to begin with, and there was also the word on the street that he wasn’t a crook, so it didn’t take long for everyone in the trade—the clients, the publishing companies, the radio stations, the papers, the studio musicians, even the governor of Tennessee—to know the music dollar in Music City had to first and last work its way through Drew Graves, and everyone soon accepted this fact and made Drew richer and richer.

Women knew about Drew too, and had known about him for a while now. They’d known him in the years he was happily married, and nobody had to be blind or deaf or dumber than a Loveless biscuit to know Drew always got things the way he wanted, just like his rich daddy Samuel before him had. I imagine dearly-departed wife Susan knew all about Drew too, but from what I ever gleamed from her she was happy enough being rich and getting her picture on the society page every Sunday and being married in name to Drew as if he was the most faithful guy on the face of the earth, which he for damned sure wasn’t.

The vows were due to get spoken out in the backyard of Drew’s new McMansion on the fringes of Historic Franklin, as the denizens like for it to be called, in a neighborhood where you never have to see or hear your neighbors unless you particularly want to. I began spotting Mercedes and Lexuses and BMWs parked along the side of the winding road about a half mile leading up to the circular driveway, where the house stood back about two football fields from the street. I pulled up to the door and let Mildred out, then went back down the road a piece to park. With the northwest wind snapping my cheeks it wasn’t like I was going to break a sweat with the long walk back. The chances were better I’d just suffer a spell of frostbite and collapse in a ditch and lay there a while, and somebody would find me in the morning after the cars had cleared out, all blue and stiff like I’d been lost on the Appalachian Trail for a week or two. I couldn’t use that as an excuse for not returning to the house, though. Mildred was there waiting for me, and a little thing like death from exposure wasn’t a good enough reason to stand her up. I might be dead and expired and all, but she would look me up in Hell to give me a piece of her mind for leaving her alone at an affair like this.

I parked the Jeep and walked on back to the gates that looked like they belonged someplace where Roy and Dale rode Trigger and Buttermilk out just to fetch the mail. There were SUVs and high-end vehicles everywhere leading up to the door, and I wondered if Drew had valets for this event or was allowing the rich and powerful to just fend for themselves for once in their lives. I followed some more beautiful than me types of people up the front steps and through a door I could have driven the Jeep through that was standing open and allowing even the likes of me to enter. I wondered if my being on the guest list was the wisest way Drew could cement he and his new bride in the register of high society, but I guess Drew is so rich and mighty and entrenched these days he doesn’t have to worry too much about what anyone says or thinks anymore.

A formal dining room that is not so quaint two or three defensive lines from the NFC East couldn’t sample the digs without laying elbows on each other is off to the right, and on the clothed table are enough fixings for Godzilla and Mothra and the survivors of the latest onslaught on Tokyo to get filled up on. There are circular tables set up in the living room and the den and in what looks to be another dining area but is probably considered a nook or breakfast room in this neck of the woods. This joint being new, I haven’t been here before this day, and I have the feeling I’m going to get lost in this maze of rooms if I don’t pay attention and maybe carve a notch in a mantle or two as I pass.

The formal ceremony will be outdoors, and I wonder if Drew and his betrothed have made provisions for the weather this afternoon is delivering, since it isn’t aerie or a tiny bit springy. Out in the yard, though, there are canopies assembled and heaters from every hardware store in Williamson County procured and plugged in and loaded with kerosene and blowing out hot air for all they are worth to make sure not even somebody like me who doesn’t know what in god’s name he is here for won’t get a case of the sniffles to take back home and feel all sickly later too.

Pete West is standing by a group of chairs spread out in front of a gazebo big enough I could move into and live comfortably. He is waving his fingers like he is a magician trying to prove he has nothing up his sleeve, but I know Pete better than that and know there is always something hidden from sight. He is here with his wife Linda, who stands beside him, and I steer Mildred their way so we can finally sit down somewhere before getting lost forever.

I don’t know if you want to get closer to the front or not, I tell Mildred. You are considered part of the family, you know.

Lower your voice, Mildred says. I don’t want to advertise it.

Glad you could make it, Pete says. He looks at me with eyes that are bright and lit up, and I know the rest of him is probably that way too. It’s not unusual to meet up with Pete on social occasions and find him juiced already—him or Linda, and up to fairly recently, me too—but lately I’ve been a good boy and tried to behave somewhat. This is something different from our collective past experiences together. I’ve known Pete and Linda since our days at Long College, and since we got together all those ions past there haven’t been that many lucid moments we have the wherewithal to recollect.

You’re just in time, Linda says. She squeezes my elbow through the patch on my sport coat, which is the only formal wear I own these days. The music hasn’t started yet. I was hoping you wouldn’t miss out.

With this much hoopla I’d think Drew will be bringing in Diana Ross and Lionel to sing ‘Endless Love.’ If I have to sit out here in the dead of winter freezing my tail off I at least want the kitchen sink of musical royalty thrown at me. I turn to look at Mildred, who is staring at the gazebo to see if Drew is actually going to go through with all this. You remember Linda, don’t you, Mildred? And her homely husband, Pete?

We’ve met before, Mildred smiles. I think it was someone’s birthday or a wedding or something. It couldn’t have been yours, she says, blinking at me. You always disappear when it’s your birthday, like you don’t want anyone knowing you’re getting older, so it couldn’t have been that. And you stopped having weddings a long time back. She shakes her head. It’s a good thing too. I got tired of seeing you in my courtroom.

You’ll be lucky if you get Diana and Lionel, Linda whispers. You’ll be lucky if you get anybody older than thirty. Have you seen how young the bride is?

She’s twenty-four, Mildred states. I have leftovers in my refrigerator older than her.

In the meantime I am glancing around to see who might need to be avoided later. Since Drew and I go all the way back to grade school together and have occupied slots in the music business also the opportunities for auld lang syne are boundless, and if I don’t take proper precautions and evasionary measures the chances are I could find myself sharing drinks and not so fond memories this afternoon with some folks who’d be ever so glad to see me again, who on top of all that cheer would be inquisitive as hell as to whatever happened to me and why I disappeared off the face of the earth so quickly and completely, and how they dearly miss hearing me on the radio after listening to me for oh so many years.

I could, of course, mention how I am still on the air, still out there on the air waves from four until eight five days a week, but that would require some explanations as to where and why, and after all this lengthy interval of peaceful anonymity I still don’t have the words to clarify it.

Linda is right about there being no Diana. What appears instead is a black guy who could have been Johnny Mathis in another life playing a keyboard and a middle-aged redhead in a blue dress that shows