Bob rememberaa io 1990:

....... t IleA rtJe had iB.11 open door policy. \'!e j us t .... aoted t re best s eng.s to hcl ve hits, the only t !ling I/e had to do was nave hit records.

Joe Galante was very rude. Chet said, HThey woo't Li s t e n to me al1ymor~~H I think that's the saddest ~ords I ever heard~ It was the craSh of the compdoy and its reputation. Jerr need said, lilt a i n It no family no more. II

I had 81 artists overall. They were trying to get rid ot my artists, one by one.

The foreword to Bob's book was ~ritten by Chet. Bob and Chet could

have written the sequelJon ho~ to get out of the music bUSiness. Chet escaped to the concert stage, and Bob skedadled for the Iodian territory, so to speak, mello~ing do .... n ~ith hid beloved Chocta .... s.

Chet said in 1989:

Bob Eergu30n was a z o od Country producer" }t'13rguson would

let, people hav~ their lIi,ay if t he y knew what they lNIanted.

1 h Lr e d Jerry Brad Le y and t ur ne d everythin~ over: to him. Jerry tended to ',,"ant to g'~~'J rid of a11 the ar t.t et s I had brought along, and that's normal, people .&nt to get credit f or what they tve done.

,Jut I think it's a kind of a cr 1me ~ ... Han ':;00'11 could ~e. ve broken all the re c ord s" if he Id teen t here one mor e ye at'.

Joe Galante told f,/.dliam E. Greer (of rasnvllle I bus i.r.e ss maga-

z i ne , Adyantagel that when he hit his ,sET'ide by the mid-r';·eventles, "I found a different culture t he t 'Ha.S real su i uab l e to me, people you could sit down and talk to, who act.ua,lly had the t i.me to sit

d ow n and t a l,k to y cu-o-tha t '8 great ..... II

Sue has H nk 6no,.,. pe rna ps ,

Jerry "n ' Joe \~hich became Joe '0' Jerry. then Just JJe) J,,'oppea

Hank from RCA in 19dO. lt wa~ his 44th year on the label lY~lt Hank ~no~ sings as well ~b he did ~o l~~l.

Joe Galante would later drop Jaylonv Jennings, Charley ~~~dei

.~,) or

Jerry Brad Le y and Dolly Parton from ti.Crt. Joe I;:;; most dar .i ng act,

hQ-.Yever, was pro oa o Ly his attempted In novat ao n 01 the n inE:_ -song

34.

My mother didn't have over $100 when my father was killed, and 1 don' t belIeve he b'ltriecr-any-money anywhere-.- People to_ld ID.3.ny -wIld !_aies of how .he got ri_c:_h of( hold_Q2~ aog ()_~her 1:~",,! . .l e s s nes s , but m't :mother hGl.d to borrow rnOHG::Y.

--Mary James Barr in Nashville, speaking to journalist Ben West, in "Dau qht e r of J,esse James Returns to Pay

Visit to Place of Her Birth,n N~shville Tennessee,

4, 1933

a April

"Hhere was that Northfield pla.ce?" aJskect Brad.

"Up in Minnesota, It answered this friendly f~llo\tJ ... who looked a little older- t han Brad. "And it I S st ill there. Wh!(~re Jesse and Frank lost their bank robbery--and their budy Cole Younger got captured ... and tossed in prison for a couple of decades. So they had to come back to Tennessee ... and finally down into East Nashville."

"I've never heard how they lived in this city," said Brad.

Not even when I've enjoyed those Jesse James gang published stories. And, t.no se good 01' ,James movies. ,t

"Yeah, they didn't @van use their real names. So they hid out down here. Till around 1881 when they left ... thanks to a capture of a gang friend over on Whites Creek Pike."

"Excuse me, but I don't want; to hear more about that Jam12;s

group," inserted Caroline. "They weren' t t.he Lea s t bi t Christian ... thanks to all their killings. And robbing::::."

"Yeah. They supported slavery. But shooting for money is more on.t.ez t.a Ln i nq , 1T a n swe red this guy.

"And my name's Brad BurgeSS. With my wife Caroline. And

you're ... who?"

"Stephen Reed. And--oh my God, there comes one of those damn James supporters ~ l ! Whj_ch I warried you about ... "

As a second car pulled up--a brown Chevrolet--with a tall, s i.x+ f'oo t vs i x f e I Low , wearing a wildfrfE'st costume, jumping out on the street. With a James Gang label on his chest.

"Hello!" he cried.

"Yeah. What' 53 Up?'1 asked Brad ,

which Vanderbilt tried to ignore. Like his 'To a Dead Lady' poem, which starts like this--

She is dead!

The lovely lady lies Upon her bed;

The alabaster brow Is whiter now

Than when I fed

Upon her eyes, her sighs, And words unsaid.

--and ends by saying that when "The lovely lady dies--/ I bow my head."

"Well, Hirsch wrote lots of other sick poems. And

I'll be publishing a complete collection of his verse. ah,

and we're welcoming students--and even occult accademics,

plus hilarious outsiders. _ . for our-Tuesday eveninghorror

poetry convention."

So Nashville ghost customers should drop on by at Dickerson Middle College--right below Smithson Lake, 1

at the cultural communication office at 2311 Acuff Lane. And enj oy hearing professor .Arthur Floyd addressing Hirsch ... and other fantasy poets.

Maybe I'll be there! thought Brad, wondering if possibly even too much occult verse was asserting him. But how can I

have time for that anti-crime meeting, Wednesday_ .. ? livhat a

shocking life I'm following ...

*** Conversion terminated at this point (TRIAL version of software) .

same col1,e.ge you're joinin.g., •.• today. Hey--we mi.ght even visit them fOJ:" their horror show!"

"oh , th.e pa.peI'"" s right here. Okay, Brad, I'll take it

w i th me. Yeah, Norman n.eeds to read it, too ... .!~teI". Than.ks so much," she said as she hung up.

Heck, I don I t need to leave for my own ·job, for another ten minut2~! thought Brad. So L think I'll re-read this

lovably insane new5spaper history_

THE LATE SIDNEY HI RSCI=I (1885-1962) IS STILL VANDEPBIL'1' UNIV"ER.S ITf' S NUMBEP ON1~ !'WEIRDO" POET

by Vince McWilden

"With all resper:::t to former local professor Robert Penn Warren--with his 1946 Pulitzer Prize novel All the !Cjng 1 ~ t-Ien-- hi s or iginal leader SldnlEY Nttron Hirsch--

is Nashville's best occult poet," says Arthur Floyd atil Dickerson Middle Callegra. Floyd has finished his t.hr.s i s on Hi rsch for hi s Li terary Master"' s degr'e'8.

"Hirsch triggered that nationally famous play The Fire

Regained back in 1913, up in that Greek style Parthenon

thea ter on C@nt€nnial Park . .about those G:ceel~ god:" r one of

whom save a lady from being slaughtered," adds Floyd. "Of

course other gods wanted her killed--with those sneaky

demons and their snakes. That play drew thousands of

watchers ... which brought lots of Ne~'l York pub.Li c.i ty into

Nashville."

Yes, and scholar Floyd reveals how Hirsch had already gone overseas with the u.s. airfores and sucked into the occult-~getting to .love mysticism and Oriental art. Then after World \',Jar I, he star-ted The .. Fugi ti ve poetry maqez.t.n e out of Vander:bil t, 1922-25. "Even British poet T. S _ Eliot praised the publication, along with the Number One American

journalist, H. L. Mencken," adds Floyd. "And while Robert Penn Warren eventually got a 1949 film version of his All1 the Kj.ng's Men novel, h is former university has always--'

ignored-th<?: Fugitive group founder, Hirsch."

"Yet Hirsch Has called a. ! myst i c Rosicrucian' by Vandy fellow Fugitive poet, Allan Tate. He thought his funny middle name'Htrron' might be that of an archangel. ltr"i.,:/wa\y, Hi.rsh kept publishing cr e z y verses .i n that:¥ug~It.TVe magazine

Miss Reag'an said on radio--a stupid story, of Napoleon's body, comin' down the hill. Witn®ssed by that other lady who just met you and me over on the newspaper meeting tonight."

"Oh God, this is too much. Isn1t it?"

"Yeah. It ain't very Christian in this territory. But at least the court is going after those rotten Molechs. So maybe this Salem of the South will get cleaned up. It

"What else do you do? Mo,ce tes t.Lznony ... ?"

"Yeah. Tomorrow morning. For another client ... Robert Malone. He's merely a sad, offensive Vietnam veteran. Disabled ... and somewhat d@structive."

Caroline and Brad then headed for the bedroom ... and fell back into love again. Brad had just finished--when the 'phone rang. And he was shccked at who was now calling both of them ... from Frieda O'Conner's old house.

"Mister Burgess, this is Priest Abernathy. Who keeps seelng you--and I'm still at the house where you joined our mass yesterday. rt

"How may I help you?"

"I just heard you being mentioned on radio. I'm goin' on TV t.oruo r r ow night. Wond@L' if you"d like to be there too ... briefly?"

"Urn, yes, I sure would be glad to?"

"You could even come by and talk first--if you want. Around 5:30 P.M. tomorrow, possibly."

"Heck, yes! 'See you then."

And then Brad friendly hung up. And Brad mentioned to Caroline that since she was a Catholic, she might want to join him at this close house.

"Alright. Where you're client Frieda O'Connor lived. And presumably died there. Right?"

Brad nodded, and then they fell back into bed together.

Where Frid

him, and hung up.

Then he stepped outside,

Brad t.h an ke d

and grabbed his copy of this morning's Tennessee Times off the front sidewalk, and took it back in. Oh my'!'!'!' What's this ... ?" he wondered, noticing the wild article in the Lo-cal News section, about s ome unknown poet named Sydney M. Hirsch. Then he pulled his telephone again, and called Margaret.

"Sorry to reach you so early, but I wanted to catch you

before you left for work.

Please grab a one of today's early

papers. And in the 'Local News' section B, read that story

about a horror poet.

'Cause the expert is a scholar at the

34.

My mother didn't have over $100 when my father was killed, and _! don '!_ belleVehe bUried any mon~ya:n--y:where:-- f~ople told many wild tales S2_!_ how he g-ot rich off holdups and S_)ther lawlessness_, but _TE_Y mother _b._ad to 9_(_)__t_'E(_J_~ I1loney.

--Mary James Barr in Nashville, speaking to journalist Ben West, in "Daughter of Jesse James Returns to Pay

Visit to Place of Her Birth," Nashville Tennessee,

4, 1933

a April

"Where wa s that Northfield place?" asked Brad.

"Up in Minnesota," answered this friendly fellow ... who looked a little older than Brad. "And it's still there. Where Jesse and Frank lost their bank robbery--and their budy Cole Younger got captured ... and tossed in prison for a couple of decades. So they had to come back to Tennessee ... and finally down into East Nashville."

"I've never heard how they lived in this city," said Brad.

Not even when I've enjoyed those Jesse James gang published stories. And those good 01' James movies."

"Yeah, they didn't even use their real names. So they hid out down here. Till around 1881 when they left ... thanks to a capture of a gang friend over on Whites Creek Pike."

"Excuse me, but I don't want to hear more about that James

group," inserted Caroline. "They weren't the least bit Christian ... thanks to all their killings. And robbings."

"Yeah. They supported slavery. But shooting for money is more entertaj_ning," answered this guy.

"And my name's Brad Burgess. With my wife Caroline. And

you're ... wb-_(_J? "

"Stephen Reed. And--oh my God, there comes one of those damn James supporters!! l Which I warned you about ... "

As a second car pulled up--a brown Chevrolet--with a tall, six-foot-six fellow, wearing a wildWest costume, jumping out on the street. With a James Gang label on his chest.

"Hello!" he cried.

"Yeah. What's up?" asked Brad.

"Oh , life r re down here to promote the ,James gang. Not cause we SUPpOI"t 'em, but because \r;le love local h.i.s t o ry . Wi th all respect to Acuff--and Elvis--and Minnie Pearl, we think that this 'Athens of the South' Nashville oughta get into the James boys. Why k~'BP suppressing the fact that Jesse and Frank used to live down on Fatherland street."

"But it looked l~ke you wanted to shoot~tr burst out Stephen Reed.

"Oh, yeah . You saw us wi t h our \t.leapons."

Ludicrously this guy then yanked out his own ancient pistol ... then aimed it at his Own head--AND PULLED THE TRIGGER~! ~ A

simple click ... but no blast! And then he burst out laughing!

"Pretty proud that I carry my single-shot pistols from the 1860s ... these Civil War gun~. But our sports gang keeps 'em empty, so--sorry, we cCln" t kill anyone ~ Same thing with our Nineteenth Century-r:ifles-:- Which we also keep empty from bullets. Since ancient, unloaded weapons aren't illegal. But in case some cop stops LlS, we r 11 show I em how we' ve g~)t only these happy historical guns. Not any current crook shooters."

"Pardon," uttered Caroline, "but why all this Jesse ... stuff." Then she turned her mouth to Brad, and opening her lips, and tung, looked like she was saying "shi!_"--which at least she hadn't vocally said.

"Mam, we're here to promote exciting tourist history," added this wild J~me5 gang stranger. "We corne from the James

si te up in Missouri. But r;,~ood news is that Fcank ,James and Cole Younger even drove down to Nashville back in 1903, to promote some wild west show for these citizens. With Mister Younger having finally gotten out of prison after a couple of decadesthanks to his hilarious Northfield robbery.n Pause. "Now since there's maybe been at least three dozen Jesse movies --or maybe even more--we all now hope that we can promote another wild James film drama."

"Pze t t y good idea. But there' 5 other stuff here that's a littl® more horrible," said Brad. "Did Frank and Jesse do any modest crimes down here in Nashville?"

"Not that we know. Hiding out here, those two crooks tried to be friendly--under their different faked names--and thus wisely managed to stay safe. Heck, this was a more friendly city a century ago ... than it is right now."

"Uh, what's your name?" asked Brad. Thinking privately how back then'.n the 19th Century in the South, elack~~ couldn'! vote ... nor even white women!

--~ -~~

"Sir, I'm Willie Lordfield. From St. Joseph, Missouri.

Where Frank kept living after he used Nashville, in his legal defense of his crime cases. Funny that he was repeatedly judged 'not guilty'.,. and became a free man." Pause. "Anyway, I'm heading over to 16th Avenue where my other pals are. So-called Music Row, you know.'"

"Good look. Hopefully your JaTIlles show will happen ... for

entertainment. And. wn, are you alone ... or not?"

"Oh , I've got two other James gang partners--wi th some .no r e empty pistols, about 110 years old. Which'll keep us

from being moderri deep South shoot.e r s ;" As he broke into

more laughter ... with Brad added humor, also.

"My gosh--not God--but I can't believe how these- James show guys, won I t be firing their: f~.IlC::Y guns! f It ba.:rked Stephen

Reed. IIWow--I gue.ss---l respect the James gang boys. They're

out forent,ertainrnent. .. pe . rhaps ... but not for famous robbery! II

# # #

Back home finally, Brad and Caroline turned on their radio--and shockingly heard an interruption to a gospel music ShO\.-T:

npardon, but we must offer a new dE!sperate news story ... about Music Row.~

Followed by a blasting musical melody--shrilling until out came the policeman's voice:

"Sorry, but this new instant truth about; our 1 Eith. A'J',®nu@ South violates our own happy N.ashville mus i.c business atti tude. Since this street in mind is known as Music Row--thanks to the infinite famous entertainer recording sessions •.. and their songwriting copyright offices."

Pause.

H]l,ndwho I d be l i.eve how'" re we Here wa rned about a wild west gang supposedly down here--to terrorize popular music experts. The F!=:?:nk and Jesse Jame·s showcase! We arrived ... and spotted them with their guns drawn. We pulled our pistols--and to our shock, the leader of the James gang tossed his pistol down, then raised his hands, happily. Now here he is--so please tell us the rest, Sir."

"Thank you , dear cop. My name is INillie Lo rd f i.e Ld , Hoping to A.cquire some Music Row exper t s for ou r James Gang showcase ... when suddenly ... horr.ibly! ... I saw some terrorists s hoo t i.nq at some Gospel singers. - One of whom they tried to kill. So--oh, God, I'm crying ... and .1aughing ... on radio! Since we pulled our weapons, and captured those planned mur de r e r s . Yeah, and when the cops arrived, they thought we might be James Gang killers. But we're showecase leaders--and our guns didn't even posses any bullets. Yet we fooled thos@ rctten Satanistic

shQoters ... who dropped their weapons when we aimed our guns. At least they're now captured."

"Yes, we've got ' em," answered the cop. "We po 1 ice wi 11 be hauling I em back to j ail. And .. , how glad ... that this lady wasn't slain. By the:;;;e probable ancient occultists."

!'Thank ~i'OU," responed this woman. "Yes, I was down on Music Row--lookin' for the office I need to visit. When ... how can I

-- -

tell you on :radio? .. what attacked me! But somehow--I will."

"And your name, pl~as@." "Local singer ... Sally Reagan." "But what happened?"

\.

THE

SALEM OF THE NASHVILLE SOUND

SOUTH--

OF SATANISM

(A Novel of the supernatural)

by STEVE ENG

HERO'S NOTE

For legal reasons, this story is presented as fiction.

To avoid reprisals, some characters have been disguised,

altering their. physical appearance, and other superficial

attributes.

Some locations have been shifted. But the name

of the Satanist cult has been preserved, out of respect for

its multi-millenia commitment to diabolism.

Profound thanks must be extended to an unnamed rare book

dealer for loaning the diaries and other manuscripts whence

so much of this narrative derives (he is now wisely re-ensconced

in another community in an unidentified state)--and also to

the librarian who has shared uncirculatable, uncatalogued

material at the risk of her own position.

Both persons have

placed human morality higher than their fear of contemporary

establishment politics.

others who have consented to interviews have done so at

personal hazard, and they too shall remain anonymous.

The author

will accept and bear all results that this book may incur,

however malign.

Courage is not the virtue (life itself

is an indifferent passtime, and irrelevant), once the truth

itself gains two book covers and some library bookshelves.

Hopefully the text will reap some non-fiction cross-references,

especially within libraries a few miles--or in one instance,

a few blocks--from the Satanic massacres.

Author's goal is

to encourage some fearless scholar to research further this

Mid-South topic.

May God protect all us sinners who wish to be saved in

May God protect all us sinners who wish to be saved in

our afterlife. May God forgive those who have transgressed

in the name of Satan, and who ask now for forgiveness. May

God punish all those who still promote the diety of Satan in,

among other cities, Nashville.

Amen.

--East Nashville opponent of Molechs' murder squade

1. "SOMEnAY SOON"

r;UITA~ foilAN

Tf sad and simele sonys are near All l ever J2~,

That' 5 what fpeot>le want to hear Most, and ~eo~le ~.

--John Bredon, from Texas Traveller (Julj-Au~ust 1971)

"You're yoin':::l to this yirl's a!?artment, to 1-'la:{ music?,"

Norman asked in dis~elief.

"Well, heck, that's whe r e she was ho Ld i riq a ud i t.i on s i "

Rrad re~lied, rather de~ensivelj.

"Like 1: told JOU, she ran

an ad in the ~at-ler, lookiny for someone to siny with." He

paused, and si~t!ed some more of his coffee, with some affected

eleyance, as i~ he were on a television talk show.

"In fact,

1 heat out a jazz yuitar Jlajer--and a kefhoard eXJ?ert--or so

she told me later."

Norman Philli~s shook his head, and looked awaj with an

almost disdainful smirk.

"Hell, Carol i n e is all for this I II n.rad quryess cont inued,

alludiny to his wife.

"She knows what I'm uJ? to.

She was

sittiny riyht next to me, when 1 answered the ad.

She wants

me to do mj music more than anyone.

She knows that I need to

t!erform with somehodj.

AnJl;odj.

And this yirl has yot a yood

voice ... "

PaLlse.

"Well, she \'/8S a little o f f k e y ,

~ut I've heen ta!?iny

I, "SOMEDAY SOON"

GUITAR MAN

If sad and simple songs are near All I ever play,

That's what people want to hear Most, and people pay.

--John Bredon, from Texas Traveller (July-August 1973)

/' .-._

L '-1"1~ going to this girl's apartment, to play music? "

)tw ~\~i', , . .,0>1 _I {_I C_/1i}1'_:"~ lvt!\'J'N, \_ (// ·till, ~ \,~

r::! Norman .a s ked In d i Sbel~.ef . -""'~ • ",.--" 1 Yo 10 - 117 ~ (\ I Al.~ __ Vr t~

. "" - - l' r: _, , .,;;, P J ,',1 _~ C A6' I"" ~i/~ >" c t \1'" r- a~/~J vQ./0L.7 u ~ c"/ • j' ''''~

~ t /)'If'~C, (_/v'-'" J-' 0\ . II h, 7).1 1 1)- " ,) ~ , ..... , "-'

!1l\;U}0 ... "wel::vJ~,.,C'k ~l,~la)t I s where she was holding audi tions, " ~v ~ ts.l

<, ~ v'" 'r' \ v \:/"," /(\

- --z:tl"ttd- repl ied tv ra ther defensively, "Like I told you, she ran 0/ ~.

an ad in the paper, looking for someone to sing with," He oJ

I.J\'

(jp.

;71 "

r-, -'. ~

'Vi fi'.-t·C ~ _' \J\J_I S; ,

\""

paused, and sipped some more of his coffee, with some affected

elegance, as if he were on a television talk show.

"In fact,

I beat out a jazz guitar player--and a keyboard expert--or so

she told me later."

Norman Phillips shook his head, and looked away with an

~() .. ~... _ h A"-~ -:- j~./) b-O; rA.h.. ~!J u~ .... alJ1l..ost disdainful smir~. • J-~.2"~O l -., - (j

J~ v~ {~~ )-'L~-..>' \1--!V' ""Hell, Caroline is all

alluding to his wife. ,

sittin1 right next to

for this," Brad Burgess continued,

~\5'~

"She knows what I'm up to, --SJ:.le was

me to do my music more

perform with s9~ebody.

r<:';~e, . V --~ ~

\'~~ause. ~ "~She was a little off key.

'j.ar

~ I've been taping

page 4

us over/and over'and over.

"':7 .. --

She's learning to get on. .;1 If I

I

used to be flatter than the Oregon Desert, myself.

can

learn that intonation stuff, anyone can.

I'm proud to pass

it on!"

,.-: ~

"You going to try to slip her some supernatural lyrics? !"t-.J/ld

You tend to prefer hauntin' tocheatin', you know."

"Well, as a matter of fact, she kind of liked one of

my goofy ghost songs. She·s even read one of my folkie

fantasy stories I wrote for the Scene," referring to The:?ortland Scene,.....-the post-hippie sidewalk tabloid(that told the "rest

of the s t o.ry " against the Establishment's resistance) "She

.I

_,..

kind of liked that graveyard expose I scribbled last month."

Norman smiled.

"Me, too.

I thought, for once, you

were telling the truth. About that corpse that wouldn't stay

in his place in our sacred cemetary. II

Brad grinned, proud that his writing was getting noticed.

Trouble was, his literary light-touch missed the point.

f~had?eXhausted himself getting some interviews, and one old lady Cl ~ ~ the corpse had forced its way in to her cottage. "GOOD TIMES AND OTHER TIMES IN THE CEMETARY'· had been the flippant

headline, supplied by the sardonic editor.

Then Norman got up and poured himself some more coffee.

The two were in the coffee room of the Multnomah County Office

of Public Assistance. Portland, Oregon. They were welfare --/~",,,",-,. ....... r

workers, /f~h'1:.rng p;6verty - -chief ly their own, by hanging on to

,_

employment with their fingernails.

It was only a matter of

time before they would start making good money in the music

I

I .~

page 5

world.

The national magazine Record Times had quoted both of

them in an article about "The Oregon Acoustic Revolution."

f\ Norman ran a bluegrass ba nd s-r a nd Brad Burgess was the booking

-,

agent.

He was also a Sunday night, back-of-the-bar, "drinks-

and-tips" singer-songwriter of the potentially "poetic" species.

But he knew that to win better audiences, he needed someone--

anyone--to sing with.

Brad continued: "As a matter of fact, my mother-in-law used

to subscribe to one of those astrology magazines ... "

#

#

#

"We're

»:

going to make our debut Saturday," Brad said to

his wife Caroline as they finished dinner.

"If you want some more pudding, have some," she responded.

"Remember, it's got almost no calories.

I made it special."

"Thanks, but I'm about full."

She turned her slender body away and would not look at

him.

"You'd better go over and practice, and make sure she

gets it right," Caroline said, her back to him.

She started

the water in the sink and began making as much noise as possible,

piling up the plates to wash them.

"Pretty good pudding, Caroline."

She didn't respond.

Finally she turned and said, "You

know, the Catholic church isn't afraid of all the morbid ghosts

you've been recruiting.

If Jesus can face the devil, what does

a shadowy phantom matter?"

"Honey, it's just something to write about.

Maybe an

article.

Maybe even a song." He got up, and went to his

pay-e 6··

bedroom, and returned with his D-28 Martin guitar, and his portable cassette recorder.

"See you."

#

#

#

Over at Marianne's apartment in south Portland they ran through "Someday Soon" for the three dozenth time, these past several weeks. A song originally written by Canadian Ian Tyson for his wife Sylvia to sing--about her rodeo lover whom her parents hated--Brad had turned it into a duet by giving himself alternating lines.

"Like the Everly Brothers, we don't sing it together so

much, we take turns.

Don't jump on my lines, for shit's sake."

Marianne pouted, then smiled slowly. She put her hands on her hips and said "Let's hit it one more time. The only question is--am I supposed to sound like Joan, Janis, Judy, or Joni?"

"Sing like Marianne, that will be sufficient." He felt like saying "At least you look, but don't sound, like Jessi, Waylon's woman," but he kept his mouth shut.

Then he hit the opening line: "There's a young girl that I know ... " and she chimed in: " .•. my age is twenty-one ... "

He answered that while she came from Colorado, he was going to take her away despite her tough father's objections.

And he replayed the cassette. "I think we've got it •..

finally.

Duets aren't just two people singing together.

It's

two people becoming some third act.

Like Loretta and Conway."

"Or George and Tammy," she responded, coyly: "How 'bout

page

7

them?"

His eyes narrowed a little. He had brought up both examples himself, over and over in the past few weeks. Now she was playing dumb, trying to spoof him a little.

"Yeah, you know what I mean."

"To change the subject, my mother called about your Scene article. She was a little upset. All that corpse

stuff.

Is it true ... ?"

"It was to the witness. know ... II

"Well, weird prose is one thing. Now poetry's another.

Or at least ..• song lyrics. You already have me trying a

I'm just 'reporting', you

fantasy duet," she said, alluding to one of his uncanny songs she'd learned to do with him.

"Yeah, thank you. Prose is second to poetry and verse.

Bookstores don't realize poetry is across the street in the

record store ..• " Pause.

"And neither do ninety per cent

of the English professors."

#

#

#

Saturday night. Brad had already tuned his guitar at home, but now he was back in the restroom, fine-tuning it further. He had learned to put heavy strings on the bass section, and light strings on the treble--to hell with "medium gauge." Then he sauntered forward into the tiny basement room of The Cat's Cradle at 1317 southwest Tenth Street.

There sat wife Caroline at a front table, with a peachcolored sweater, pre-faded tight blue jeans, and her blonde

page a

hair tied back with a yellow silk scarf.

She was clutching

an imported Heinneken's beer in a frosty bottle.

The Cat's

Cradle possessed no hard liquor license ... fortunately, else

it wouldn't have tolerated post-'Sixties folkies.

{If Steve

Goodman and John Prine can follow Bob Dylan, maybe I can follow

them ... was Brad's unspoken, onstage credo.}

Brad and Marianne climbed up onstage--Mariane in her low-

cut scarlet dress,

with her long brown hair cascading over her , ..... -~:c~,

his bell-bottom, designer jeans Caroline

r.

torso, and Brad in

had bought at a flea market.

Plus his favorite--and only--cowboy

shirt: psuedo-buckskin with fake-ivory buttons, even on the

pockets.

The club owner didn't even introduce them.

So Brad did

it: "How do you do? Uh, let me introduce Marianne here.

She's going to sing with me, and by golly, I'm lucky that

she •.. uh, well, let's .9:..Q_!"

They lit into "Someday Soon." Like a country music

syndicated television star, he was the male dominant dictator

at first, starting the song--but just like one of those "girl

" singer" owners, he cleverly slipped back and let her tak.e \1./s,._,

~ more ~n2 more of the song.

-"'---.-----1

She swayed in and out, vocally,

as he covered her like a back-up singer.

"Someday, someday,

someday, some-DAY ... SOON!!!" they finished together. In his fh~;n--

mind. someday not too soon, they might become "Country Duo of

,) --

the Year."

"Now I've got a little song I wrote, that's a lot of

spooky," Brad said.

"It's a polite, respectful little sick

number. II Pause.

"Now here she comes--she's going to do it.1I

He began strumming his guitar, in E minor.

Marianne threw

back her head and started singing.

"Someone's knocking on your dreams tonight, 'Rap-rap' in your head!

Hug your pillow and try to sleep, Tossing and twisting upon your bed.

Someone's lying right next to you, r don't know her name--

Grab her shoulder and kiss her, dear,

You love her ... but she's not the same.1i

Brad stepped in and went into the major chord of G for

the chorus:

iir'll be haunting you, in your memory, The love you left behind;

r'll be haunting you, in your ecstacy--

You make love to her, but r'm in your mind!"

Fittingly, the chorus ended with the minor chord where

the tune started.

Marianne then did two more verses:

"Someone's crying in his bed tonight, That somebody is you;

r'll come like a ghost or a vam~ire, dear, r'll haunt you my whole life through.

The winds may howl on down the years, Your lovers come and go-_"

And then she spoke two lines like an actress:

"A golden band may adorn your hand, But your heart is mine, you know.1I

Then she closed the song by re-singing the chorus.

One woman pulled her husband's hand and they left.

Another

man looked at his watch, and Brad saw him pointing to the jukebox. There were some scowls and some smiles. At least there was also some clapping. "Pretty good sick song!," approved

one lady, laughing next to a fellow at her table. "'Hope it don't corne true for me ... !"

Caroline jumped to her feet and the tiny table jolted,

and her beer tipped over.

Her back was to the Brad-and-Marianne

duo, as she stormed out of the Cat's Cradle into the street. The waitress was embarassed as she mopped the table, and the bartender carne over and swept up the broken glass.

But the tiny audience managed a further faint applause.

"Thank you all, so much, we hope to corne back and play you some more songs. We've got a lot where this carne from," oozed Brad. "Some are about the Wild West ... and some more about the Weird Country. II

As they stepped down, the rather nervous, new manager strolled over. Like many club owners, he was wearing an apron and his hands were wet from washing dishes. A huge percentage of restaurants and bars turn over every year, Brad knew from his booking agent experience--vagabond musicians were usually more "permanent" than the "small business" entrepreneurs who gave them their small stage shows. This fellow had turned a non-music pizza parlor--which had formerly been a Mexican restaurant--into a vegetarian-specialty college haven, spiced with cut-rate live acoustic music. Brad privately figured it would last six, maybe nine, months.

"Uh, you seemed to have a, well, certain charm there,ll

the man decided.

"May'be--say, how about--well, next Friday

night? Welve ~ot a bluesrass band coming in heee at nine.

But ... majhe you could do an opening 5et?u

He seemed more uneasy, ~rob~bly ~ecause of the money issue .

.") f'~ ~ •• - ~ I.· p .Irl

Brad deliberately stalled, e-va-ding givirh,i; the man an answer.

"Say, you can have a dinner first, and some drinks. Howls

tha t? I,

"Fine.

Oh, fine, fine, f i rie t " blurted ~1arianne.

"Yeah, sure.

'I'ha t's gre.a t! II Brad agreed.

They shook hands.

Now he headed for the sidewalk, to face the bad music.

Caroline was already sittiny

Marianne ke~t a safe distance. '1) i.~ 1 /.~.! h .. L·.

i nEl'rE -faH}'l Ly Ford Fa ir lane station wagon, with the windows J .. t :;":"C~

rolled Ut? ,{4arianne had driven Brad over in her 'I'oy o t a ,

When Brad knocked on the lefthand window, Caroline turned her

head further away.

"I think Till have to yo now," said Marianne.

"We can

talk later about the cominS! :fig ...

Suddenly the station wayan door opened.

"Wait a minute!" shout~d Caroline.

Marianne looked ayhast.

I'Let me tell you, you looked :}reat.

You were really fine

onst~j~. Not too sexy, not too plain.

Just r i q h t c " Pause.

lIMaybe you and Brad can yo on tour together across the country.

You might yet a scven-in-the-morning television show in Arizona

if they donlt have anything better.

That's what music is all

about.

Hard tavelliny.

And wh e n

Well, have a yood time.

I

page 12

CHAPTER 1,

page 1

you're on the road, take turns driving.

Don't let Brad stay

behind the wheel too long. You know, he likes that stupid old Roy Acuff song, 'Wreck on the Highway.' It can happen

to you, y'know.

But I'm not worried.

I've got life insurance

on my husband." Pause.

"Well, see y'around ... uhh, what's your

name.

Marianne? Yeah, that's it."

Brad had grabbed his guitar, and without asking, opened the back of the station wagon and shoved it into the back seat.

To his duet-debut partner, he said, "Marianne, you were

so great. Uhh, I've got to go now. But we'll talk later ... " Her face looked stricken. She wiped her eyes, and managed a "Sure, you call me sometime soon." She turned away and walked off, trying to hold her head high.

"Someday soon," Brad corrected, with a grin. blushed, realizing how stupid that was.

And he forced himself into the front seat and slipped

Then he

his arm around Caroline.

She jerked her shoulders forward,

and turned and glared at him.

"Damn it, honey," he said, "Let's go somewhere and talk.

No, let's go somewhere and eat. honey ... "

Caroline said nothing, but slammed on the gas pedal and

We can work it out over dinner,

pulled out rather recklessly, and squeaked to a halt at the

intersection.

Finally she said, "Very well, hon-nnnn-~!,"

without looking at him.

They pulled into a dinner-bar restaurant, and the plate-

filling ritual seemed to calm her down a little.

Slim Caroline

CHAPTER 1, page~1

page 13

vl~ r-

ate what she liked--meat and rich food--a~d Brad tried to stick

to the vegetarian menu.

"live got to pretend this is nothing

but a salad bar,1I he said cheerfully.

She ate in silence, and he knew better than to start a

conversation sitting down.

IIWe I ve got to leave this town, II she said finally.

IIPortland

is nowhere. No onels had a hit from here since INinety-Six

Tearsl--unnh, when was that?1I

"What about 111m A Truckl by Red Simpson?"

IISure. Yeah. Country music over in Vancouver. But

nothingls ever going to happen again here. Welve got to leave.1I

IIL•A. is the place. The Troubadour is where I could be

an opening act ... some .•. day.1I

Caroline shook her head.

"unnn , I t.h i, nk the t.r a f f i, c· t h . L A T

1S 00 eavy a n . .M~'t,~any

people. Uh, I think your singing style could fit in,./in

Nashville.1I

Brad frowned. He knew she figured he couldnlt play or

sing well enough for Doug Westonls Troubadour.

"Yeah, Kristofferson and Dylan and Joan Baez have cut there.

I guess itls getting better. Loretta and Bobbie Gentry and

some real live women are telling stories. Maybe I could pitch

some of my great musical short stories. II

He figured female singers were what she wanted to hear

about. The male country acts he liked were Nashville exiles

like Merle Haggard, or independent talents like Marty Robbins.

Though her favorite male singers were anybody but country.

CHAPTER 1, page

page 14

She still liked Sinatra and for some reason, black blues man

James Brown, which they never discussed.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I should study their

supernatural underground and write them some ghost songs."

Caroline looked at him coldly.

"Sure, that's real smart. 'I

"Honey, I'm just kidding.1I

Except that he wasn't quite. Brad had already wasted

a lot of postage stamps since their marriage in 1971, mailing

"folk" songs allover America, without one of them being

recorded. Sometimes he just wrote lyrics, and sent them to

tiny "Small Press" fantasy magazines and got them occasionally

printed with never a royalty, just a free copy.

(Such as in

Bizarre Quarterly,

or Supernatural Psycho-zine, etc.) !.t,·5:,~i-

Ci ty';'_ i s._thaL-what-t..bc@y ca-l-L

/ d.Ltl.l,~~

it· wants vampire songs for the / v-

r>:

"I don't th~ Music

, ----. ~ .....--- L"'_

;/"1-~.-----

(Na5hville:~-~I ~t_tJll_nk-

housewives, honey!" Caroline retorted.

"Oh, maybe just once a year, at my birthday ... "

She managed to smile--out of some respect. Brad's

birthday was October 31, 1944.

In spite of Hallowe'en,

he was determined to be a Christian. But it still caused

some trouble ...

They drove home in silence.

As they entered their small apartment on 72nd Ave South,

Brad asked, "Do you really think I have the talent for

Nashville?"

"Well, do you have the talent to stay here? Everybody's

page 15

acoustic, everybody's better than everybody else. So damned

much bluegrass and folk stuff, I could scream. Who's got a

record? Who's got a recording? Other than homemade stuff?"

"Caroline, you've got a point there. Ah; by the way,

this poem by that weirdo, John Bredon, seems accurate." He

handed her a copy of that low-key World Poets magazine-. i·$13Ue_ (NO. 8,) ~(1 973 ) :

NOW

Your life is like a brief Elusive, wind-blown leaf, So grab it, March or May-Don't even wait a day.

For leaves are hard to hold In autumn's coming cold, They crumble to the touch-So never wait that much.

"Well, that's not the scariest poem. But I guess it applies

to us. Or maybe should have, sooner.

Heck, it's late July

already. Yeah, we'd better get rolling this time of year.

Let's not wait till Hallowe'en. Especially since that's birthday J{}

time for you. Better we be in Nashville before then. i\

Brad hugged Caroline and kissed her. Thinking privately crlr't '-Y

to himself, how this guy's poem had helped their relationship! /'

page 16

2. FAREWELL TO "ROSE CITY"

Twist me a crown of wind-flowers; That .I may lli away

To hear the singers at their song, And 12layers at their ~.

--Christina Rossetti, from Sing Song (1872)

Back at the office next Monday, Brad told Norman his

decision.

"Congratulations." Pause.

"You taking Marianne along?

The two of you might make a great duet.

Who knows, you might

get invited onto one of those syndicated Country television

shows as special guests. Maybe you can help sell a laxative."

Norman looked as serious as possible.

"That's a pretty funny joke.

I could maybe write a good

cheatin' song. About a jealous wife who pulls a pistol from

her purse. Titled 'Stand By Your Man Till You've Buried Him'."

But my wife once told me, she'd never kill me if she caught

me messin' around. She'd shoot the woman, and plead insanity

and never get convicted."

"S0 what about the Scene?" asked Norman, changing the

subject.

"You going to finish your series from Nashville?

No one else can write that bizzare shit as well as you." Norman

was always joking about that eccentric tabloid ..• which was on

the streets every Monday in plastic boxes wired to telephone

poles. For free. It was supported by the advertisers. The

latent Marxist editors had launched it as an underground paper

with scant success--for some reason, Oregonians were initially

page 17

bored with feature stories about the virtues of Maoist Red China--but they started picking it up, once it began printing detailed calendars and schedules of every ~ossible art and music event in Portland, especially on campuses and in churches.

Now it had a circulation of over thirty thousand ("100 thousand" according to its hyperbolic masthead), and Brad was writing music concert reviews and a popular series of "Portland Ghost Chronicles." Some he had scraped out of the state Library clipping files, but more and more he was fabricating as "hidden history." Or "folklore."

"I can't wait to get to Nashville, Norm," said Brad. "Maybe I can write some ghost tales there."

But privately Brad pondered his latest ghost yarn. He knew he ought to shovel it into the Scene, since he and his wife might not be leaving for weeks and weeks.

#

#

#

#

#

"What are you doing?," asked Caroline, after he got home and headed for his "office"--a cramped extra bedroom jammed full of record albums and books.

"Honey, you'll really love this. off." He kept typing.

"Another one of those embarassing stories, I'm sure. I hope we get out of town before you get tarred and feathered."

It'll scare your panties

But she smiled.

He felt she had some respect for his fantastic

foolishness, which he never called "creativity."

"Darling, a writer who doesn't get an occasional death

threat doesn't have lastins talent."

(Yes, he'd received one

page 18

anonymous phone call offering to terminate his life for his

graveyard feature story.,

" 1

Here, et me read you some of

this .•. II

He commenced delivering his first draft, in a solemn,

halting voice. About how a married couple moved into a town

house in Portland, and were amused--at first--about the haunting

footsteps heard upstairs. The wife, however, lost her poise

when she learned that a murder had occurred overhead around .;

forty years before. Someone with a hatchet had hacked some

woman to death. A crime never solved, though suspects included

a serial killer whose suspected family was an elite, political,

rich clan, who supposedly stuffed their murdering son into an

asylum to evade investigation. Over the years, no one seemed

able to live in that house for very long.

"Sounds like The Amytiville Horror, if you ask me.1I

"No, honey, itls got different elements,1I he said, looking

a little miffed.

IILook, why not get your songs together? Welve got to

get ready for our move. So much to do."

Brad went back to his typewriter.

He knew The Scene needed

another IIfolkll tale. He had wisely faked a fict:Llious address

down on a real back street, and had fabricated all the proper

names. Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he knew you could make

people look for Sherlock Holmes' 221-B Baker Street address

--with the seventeen steps--if you did it right.

When he finished typing it, he added a poem. Sometimes

they used them, and sometimes not.

page 19

UPSTAIRS

My husband believes I'm hearing things, A woman with daydream ears;

When footsteps rattle the floor above, He thinks I stifle my fears.

My husband ignores the chandelier, Shaking and clinking glass;

He leaves for a ball game finally-I pray the sounds will pass.

Then, mesmerized, I climb the stairs, Drawn and seduced by sound,

Embraced by a phantom ages old Waltzing, cavorting around.

And later I kiss my husband, dear, As he walks in our door.

But I am changed--different-Unlike his wife before, Supernatural now, to the core.

Then he went back and retyped the next-to-Iast page,

cleverly adding a lead sentence that led to the poem. Brad

had learned the hard way that one tactic for smuggling poems

into print was to bury them in the middle of your prose.

#

#

#

#

#

#

"So you're going to Nashville? Uh, what are you going to

do there •.. ?" asked Eliza Lucas, Caroline's mama. Caroline

tried to explain Brad's music genius as a songwriter.

"Well, yes, we've heard some of his songs," said her

mother drily.

"I suppose you can claim some Overton credit,

when you get there ... "

"What???"

"Oh, no one wants to remember. But William Overton bought

this damned town in 1842 or was it '43? Anyway, he sold it

page 20

soon after. diary.1I

IIWhy are you telling me?"

I forget who to, but it's somewhere in granddaddy's

"Honey, he was from Memphis, Tennessee. family was big at Nashville.1I

1I0h. Oh, oh. Well, uh, that'~ nice. I think you told

me some of this when I was little. I guess I never liked history

But the Overton

enough.

Or genealogy. Anyway, it's music or nothing right

now. Go east, young man, go east. Or make that the South, actually.1I

IIWhat's all this ghost stuff, to change the subject? I

just read his latest tale in the Sce~§.

A little much, I must

say.

True or not true, that is the question.1I

IIMother, what does it matter? Writing is writing is writing.

Anyway, supernatural stuff is not exactly public relations news items. I trust Brad told the truth--or else, made up a good

lie.

He believes that the incredible is more believable than

the latest government report.

He says too many journalists

are secretaries, typing up the Chamber of Commerce publicity

or the music companies' bio sheets.

Since investigative

reporting can cost you your job, he claims most journalists want columns with their face at the top. He wants that too,

but with occult chitter-chatter. syndicated supernatural column.1I

IIWell, yes, after listening to Earl Warren on Lee

Maybe he could have a

Harvey Oswald, or Westmoreland and McNamara on victory in Vietnam, I can see why your generation prefers ghosts to wire

page 21

service news."

"Mostly it's Brad,mama. may be to his advantage."

Not exactly me.

Born on Hallowe'en

"Sure.

But I caught you reading about reincarnation, once,

instead of Oregon history like the teacher wanted."

Caroline didn't answer •.. smiling to herself, since her Catholic mother liked astrology so much!

3. THE OREGON TRAIL EAST (TO OUTER SPACE)

If gravity were like weather, fIckle, gird11ng~ planet,

in waves and pockets, there would be days on which we could not move. We would lie helpless, strapped

to the slowly turning earth.

For hours at a time we would consider the nature-Of-such an-eXIStence:

its ~nder2inni~ its weights.

--Bruce Boston, "If Gravity Were Like Weather,"

in his Sensuous Debris: Selected Poems 121Q-1995 (1995)

"I can't understand why we're taking this long route,"

complained Caroline, a month and a half later.

They'd had a "goodbye" picnic with her parents, then a

"music party" with Norm and the gang up at The Gazebo restaurant

in Mountain Park, then a "book party" celebrating horror

. .. ."

"literature" at the Stone Balloon at 1410 S.W. Broadway where

Brad had played a few times himself. He'd even read aloud a

couple of H. P. Lovecraft's "Fungi From Yuggoth" fantasy sonnets,

while Norman attempted to add a banjo melody.

(Not to mention

an "office party" with Norm and a few other "caseworkers" at

lunch time, the day before.)

"Honey, you know we're not coming back to this state

right away. I don't want to leave without visiting the Oregon

Vortex."

"But that's about a day's drive. To hell and gone."

"Gold Hill, you mean. Darling, you're going to l-Qve it."

They pulled out of Portland, hauling a huge trailer crammed

with furniture and books and appliances (behind their Ford station

wagon), down U.S. highway ~, through the Willamette Valley_

The Willamette River was Oregon's mini-Mississippi, up which all the trappers and traders had come in the 1850s. When Brad

first arrived in Portland in '66, doing an effective job of draft dodging, he'd called it "WILL-a-mette" River till someone told him the stock Portland joke: "It's Will-LAM-it, damn it!"

"We're going to come back, next Christmas, aren't we, dear?," asked Caroline as they drove through Salem an hour later.

"Honey, without a hit record where's the money going to come from? We've got to dig into Nashville, and learn how to stay there." He almost quoted 'l'homa s Wolfe--"you can't go home again"--but caught himself. Brad didn't feel he had a

home on the planet.

Nor wanted one, really. More fun to

live in outer space, in the world of the fantastic, doped up without any LSD or marijuana.

"Lewis and Clark came up this way," added Brad. "Lewis died down below Nashville, don't forget. Shot himself. Booze and drugs, I've read."

"That's nice," sighed Caroline. Brad always brought up the most sensational history he could find.

Then as they drove through Eugene, after more than another hour, Caroline said: "We going to go past the campus? Say goodbye to the library, maybe?"

"No time, honey."

Caroline remembered coming down there in 1970, meeting

Brad by accident at a dance.

Her official boyfriend was swirling

with someone else, and Brad had wanted to talk.to her more than

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST,

page 3'

swirling with someone else, while Brad had wanted to talk to

her more than dance. He had a Vietnam moritorium black armband

on, and was babbling about Kent State where students had been

shot down. He gave her a copy of his "Dispatch From Kent

State" satire poem, published in the Young Oregonian newsletter:

'We had to save the land With armored hand,

We had to empty truth Into our youth.'

We had to take their ground, Until they found

Our patriotic lead

Had splashed them red.

.\..,~ .. --,---.~

\

\.

And he told her no one cared about the black kids shot by all

the gunfire at Jackson State University in Mississippi that

\

\

\

\ \

\

/ L

May--"a thousand shots in seven seconds" he insisted. Two blacks

dead.

They finally got around to dancing, to a Creedence

Clearwater Revival fast number, "Bad Moon Rising."

Brad said,

"They sound like a beer joint group, don't they?"

And she then admitted to him she was a secretary at her

father's lumber yard. They started seeing each other in

Portland, and Brad managed to get along with her dad alright,

despite his support of Nixon's Cambodian invasion. Brad barely

got out of college, re-taking courses he'd flunked, and working

as a part-time waiter at a local restaurant. They let him play

songs on Sunday night, for dinner and tips. His vague "American

Studies" degree mixed history and literature, and Brad enjoyed

dragging Hemingway quotes into his history papers. His fight

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST

page 4

for old English ballad style poetry got him nowhere with so~e of his professors, who said rhymed-and-metered verse was sadly outdated. Too "sing-songy." He got a C":minus when, in one paper, he compared poet Robert Frost with Nashville's songwriter-entertainer, Tom T. Hall.

Caroline snapped out of her memories.

"Just drive past

where we used to .•. used to stay," she blurted. Brad swung past his old apartment building near the college, and paused. He leaned over and kissed her, then started driving again.

"I ain't forgiven Nixon for Larry Rubenstein," he said angrily. Larry had taught Brad his first four guitar chords upstairs in that room: C, F, D and G7 for "Your Cheatin' Heart." "It doesn't take more than four chords to lure a girl," was Larry's axiom. That would get him through an hour or two in

a honky-tonk--and C, A minor, F and G would bring back 'Fifties

memories to the housewives, Larry had assured him. must be twenty hits with that riff," he claimed.

But Larry never came home from Cambodia. Maybe he was

"There

still there as a prisoner. No one seemed to care anymore.

Except some wild-ass businessman named Ross Perot.

"Larry--he

helped Nixon get re-elected. That's what Cambodia was for," Brad said as they drove out of town. "And Ivy-Leaguer

Dick Helms, of the C.I.A. They needed young guys to die every week, so they could keep their day jobs. Helms got supported by the body count of us kids."

Then he didn't talk for a long time. Once he'd told Caroline how he'd wished Nixon had been at the watergate Hotel--and how

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST

he himself would have liked to have been the watergate building

guard.

"Would you have pulled the trigger?" Caroline had asked.

(Brad, unlike most of his generation, loved pistols and firing

ranges. )

"NO, I would have pulled my camera!"

#

#

#

#

#

Hours later, below Eugene, they were swerving west through Grant's Pass along the Rogue River. Brad remembered Western novelist Zane Grey had written about it.

"This state is so desolate, anything's possible up here," he exuded. Over the car radio speakers blared his eight-track tape of Gordon Lightfoot. The bizarre "Don Quixote" was one of Brad's favorites.

"Watch out!!!"

Brad slammed on his brakes, to stay behind a logging truck that seemingly couldn't go any faster as it neared a sharp mountain curve.

"Didn't you tell me once about the Rogue River Indian massacre down this way?"

"Yeah, we could go over to the Jacksonville cemetary

but that's not on my schedule. That's where the victims' graves from those killings are. And hangings. John Ross is there, too. He died of natural causes."

"John who?"

"Ross. Sort of a Cherokee. Mostly Scotch-Irish. He stood up to that damned Andrew Jackson who ran the Cherokees out of Tennessee. Thanks to the Nashville business support. But we're

not looking for victims' ghosts.

It's something else. More

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST

page 6

like science fiction."

"Not sasquatch ... ?"

Another of her husband's obsessions had been the "bigfoot" legends of the Northwest. Brad liked to remind her that yeti were taken for granted in the Himalayas in Nepal. They weren't apes, just some missing-link prehistoric men. The Northwest Indian tribes knew them--called them sasquatch

--and feared them.

"No, those are real. We're talking something weirder."

Brad had issued a 45 rpm single in '72, recorded at Gene Breeden's Ripcord studio across the river in Vancouver, titled "Big Foot Song" with lyrics like "A snow-man and an ape-man,

and a monster and a myth/ But he's no one a man would ever dare to battle with ..• " He'd gotten token airplay, two radio interviews, and sold twenty-five, maybe thirty copies, on the sidewalk in Vancouver and at The Stone Balloon. And a couple of dozen

in the stores.

"What's it all about?"

"Oregon Vortex, like I told you. It's 'Forbidden Ground,' dear. At least that's what the Rogue Indians called it. Their horses used to freak out over the bad vibrations."

They were now in Gold Hill. Brad hooked a right turn

past the Old Oregon Historical Museum and they drove four miles down Sardine Creek ••. then up to the House of Mystery.

"Looks like a bogus tourist trap," said Caroline. "It was an old miner's shack. Yeah, it's tilted at

an angle. It slid down the mountainside around seventy years

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST

page 7

ago."

They creaked to a halt.

"Careful, I don't want us to tip over." The U-Haul was

perilously slanted on the side of the road. [pp. 28-29]

IIIf it dumps, it'll be your books I fault," chided Caroline, who enjoyed joking, occasionally, about Brad's too many books (and many-too-many magazines).

Hand in hand, they walked up to the House of Mystery.

They paid their entrance fee at the door, then sauntered in.

"Welcome, folks!," said the tourist guide.

"You Ire stepping

into the assay office of Gray Eagle mine ••• of gold quartz, back in 1904." He took a broom and stood it up, and showed how it seemed to stand by itself at a forty-five degree angle.

"Try it yourself," he offered, and Brad did.

"It sure doesn't

seem to obey Newton's law of gravity, does it, dear?," smirked Brad. Then the mystery house-host rolled a ball up the floor, and it slid strangely sideways, then lingered awhile without rolling back. "It's supposed to be all bizarre vibrations," Brad said. "Magnetic force field."

"Yeah, it doesn't look normal," agreed Caroline.

"Look at that, will y'?" He pOinted to a ball weighing maybe twenty-five pounds, hanging on a rope, apparantly at an angle. "You can push it south, but you can't push it north,"

laughed Brad. Then he walked up the slanted floor.

"Look at

me now."

Carolina looked a little shaken.

"I look taller while 1'm further away, don't I?"

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST

page 1:

Then he took her outside. "Look at those slanted trees."

"What's this all about? What's your explanation?" "Well, it might be radiation. Tilting everything, and

upsetting the light waves. I admit, it could be an optical illusion inside, 'cause of that crooked building. But watch this."

He stalked away about twenty feet. "God, you do seem taller."

"Yeah, but am I? I think it's the light waves. Of course there are plenty of professors and bureaucrats who swagger in here and try to prove it's a fake."

"How'd this dang thing get started?"

"Some Scottish guy bought it back in 1914. He claimed he corresponded with Einstein on it, but he burned all his papers before he died. He opened it for tourists in 1930."

Pause.

"A good subtle recreation during that Great Depression."

Caroline looked confused.

"Don't worry, honey. Just hope the radiations will do me some good. Good vibrations might help my creativity."

Caroline shook her head.

"The flying saucer fans--fanatics--think the UFOs hover over the Vortex, and soak up energy to send their flying saucers flying."

"Let's prove it. Here, take the camera. Now snap me

once while I walk over there."

He walked away, then stood

and waved his hand. She clicked the camera.

"Now wait till

THE OREGON TRAE EAST

page 9

I come back." As he drew closer he stopped--she snapped again. He went back--halted, and she took yet another picture--then returned, and even took a fourth.

"They encourage you to photograph this stuff, y' know." "Honey, let's go. I'm feeling funny."

Down the hill they drove, and Brad was now strangely silent.

"I don't think I could write a song about this. No one would believe it, or even know what I'm singing about."

#

#

#

#

An hour later they pulled into a motel in Klamath Falls. While Brad was out looking for something to read in

one of the stores--he never had enough to read--Caroline called

her mom.

Impulsively, since she'd seen her only the day before.

"I don't know how we're going to get back on the road to Tennessee. 'Don't know where we are to begin with. Ha, ha, and it doesn't matter. We're happy •.• I guess."

"Caroline, I know you're going to be successful when you get there. You husband's getting some good response to his latest ghost story. I've had several phone calls. And there's

been one letter to the editor.

Not angry, like those two were

about his graveyard corpse piece "Can you read it to me?"

"I don't have it here. But I'll send it sometime. Some

"

woman wrote in, and said Brad's story was more true than

he knew. As a little girl, she'd seen the ghost in that building. Her brother had taken her in there to scare her-and then he came running out, terrified."

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST

page 1.0

"Well, that's sweet. Of course, Brad made up the fictitious address, and the ghost as well. That's one of his theories,

that if something is preposterous enough, the witnesses come forth, lusting for publicity."

IIWell, to change the subject, when do you think you'll get to Tennessee."

"Mother, I don't even know where we are. Or where the roads go. You might say that we're on th~ top of the world. Even the gravity is different up here. Well, I can't really explain it. Maybe I can send you a photograph. You'll, uh, be surprised at it."

"How's Brad's mom doing?" Caroline didn't know what to say.

"Uhh--well, Brad will be talking to her shortly.

r'll

let you know. So how's Dad •.• ?"

Her mother said he was off with some of his workers at a party. She and Caroline talked about Caroline's sister, Becky, for a moment. Becky was doing better in high school, finally.

When Brad finally came back, she said:

"'Just finished talking with Mom. She wondered about your mother. I couldn't tell her anything."

Brad look perplexed. Not the least of their marital conflicts was his ambivalence toward his own mother. His daddy had been a college drop-out in Seattle. A low-level insurance adjustor, who hated his job. An alcoholic. He left when Brad was seven and his mother started work as a nurse's aide. Brad's

THE

OREGON

TRAIL

EAST

page

11

younger brother and him made their own breakfasts, and went to school on the bus. In 1961, his brother Rickie had been hit by a car and killed. Brad said for years he could hear

his voice in the night. His mother even got him some counseling for awhile, since he already seemed so "crazy,1I to use Brad's

own favorite self-description. "Yeah, crazy. I like the Beatles instead of those housewife-preferred, middle-of-the-road music. No, I don't hear Rickie in the middle of the night anymore ••. "

"Alright, I'll call her up. In Seattle."

So he cialed. "Hi, mother. Brad again. We're just past

Grant's Pass, right now." But she seemed rather distant.

"Just

got me a story published in The Portland Scene. One of those true ghost stories I've made Up.1I

Martha Burgess expressed her concern that they would drive safely to Nashville--and she wondered just when he might come back to Seattle. Well he couldn't say. They talked a little more, then Brad hung up the 'phone. He fell silent and Caroline said nothing. She knew he felt uncomfortable.

"Brad, we need to get to bed. We've got a long way to go, don't we? And by the way, I don't even know which

II way .•.

Brad laughed and loosened up a little.

IIYes, we're

lost, aren't we? Who cares? We'll read the map in the morning."

They took a shower together, and fell into bed. An hour later, Caroline said matter-of-factly, "I've been feeling funny for weeks. I just wonder if--if maybe 11m pregnant .•• "

THE OREGON TRAIL EAST

page 12

"Oh, why--?"

"I missed my menstruation two days befo:;:-~ we left Portland.

I should have told you. Maybe I wouldn't have wanted to leave our hometown •.. Oh, heck, a child is a child. Maybe Nashville'll be a good place for our first kid."

Brad almost said "Oh, shit!" but caught himself. A baby wasn't the last thing they needed--or at least he wouldn't admit that--but it'sure wasn't the first thing they needed. Hell! Well, Heaven for her. Shit!

"Uhh--well--maybe ... maybe ... "

"Ha, ha, haD

You don't know what to say, do you?"

"I'd say maybe the Oregon Vortex has exerted some magnetic force on your womb .•. "

She slapped him in the face but she was laughing when she did it.

PART ONE:

PORTLAND, OREGON PROLOGUE

Of all the songs you write and sing Bef~re your woman~efore your king, You wonder: which will still be known When you are under sod and stone?

Not the ones for coins in hand, Nor for flag and fatherlancr;Just the one or two you play

To ease yourself, at end of day_

--John Bredon [Portland], World Poets, No. 10 (1973)

The Gothic schizophrenia, with physical as well as psychological manifestatio~is the effect~ .. God-like power and bestiality.

Each monster is recognizable as some sort of extraordinary hUman being ... superhuman and/or supernatural power ... More often th~n not, we see mad scientists like Baron Fran~ stein USIng-rheir-god-like powers to create human monsters.

--Thomas L. Ferte, assistant professor of humanities

at Oregon College of Education, Monmouth, Ore., "The Lamentable Decline of Modern Monster Movies," Northwest Magazine in The Sunday Oregonian [Portland], February 3, 1974

Should man happen to survive another ~,OOO years, 1974 will probably be considered the dawn of man as far as psychology and psychiatry are concerned.

The normal person, whatever normal is, can resist temptatIOns to the bizarre, only rarely succumbIng. What of the person who is sufficiently disturbed? .. Some say

the target of the possession is the exorcist, that Satan wants to demonstrate his power-and, if all goes well, humiliate ~ holy person-called in to-Coffibat him.----

--Ted Mahar, "The Devil, You Say?," Northwest Magazine, June 2, 1974

[untitled]

•

Faded roses sadly flung, Graves and ghosts and grue

Er o.n ancient balladry, now sung One more time for you Nostalgically anew.

ONCE AGAIN

When caring is like a cancer, Car~ing u~ the heart,

The highways always answer:

"Frien:'is are born to part."

I'd rather wander crazy, All alone instead

Of following a lazy ~oser who is dead.

But anything l'n sayin3 You could say to .ne :

We'd better let the greying Twilight cut us free.

•

"John Bredon" (United Roets, January-February-March 1973)

"NOTHINGII

Nothing from the night-tine lives, All the black goes grey;

Like a traitor, .no r n i nq gives

All your dreans away.

Once your d r ea.ns were chiseled stones Fitted in with care,

Now they c r u.nb Le , once you're grown I Falling from the air.

Castles topple from the sky, Bett3r they are gone; ~art~ is firm enough to try Building new ones on.

"Steve Eng" (United Poeins, July-August-Septelnber 1974)

RED RHYME

Another would-be writer Fastening a fist

Of fingers fading whiter, Razoring his wrist.

•

Instead of decent dyinSI He begins to think Excitedly of trying Cri~son-colored ink.

He's prettying the pages Scarlet, with a spurt, Imagining the Ages

Care about his hurt.

--John Bredon, Texas Traveler, Vol. 5, No.1 (Spring 1974)

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"LULLABY"

"You'd better finish eating this!"

Your mother threatens you, Whenever Sunday dinner is

A nauseating stew.

A little later in your room A Princess of the Night Is weaving wishes on a loom Of eerie yellow light.

She has a silver lizard who Is asking to be fed,

Until you send him drooling to Your parents' r oo.n instead.

--"John Bredon" (United Poets, January-February-March 1972)

He's prettying the pages Scarlet, with a spurt, Imagining the Ages

Care about his hurt.

--John Bredon, Texas Traveler, Vol. 5, No.1 (Spring 1974)

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THE (~

SALEM OF

NASHVILLE Novel of

SOUND the

by STEVE ENG

THE

SOUTH--

OF SATANISM Supernatural)

HERO'S NOTE

For legal reasons, this here story is presented as fiction.

To avoid reprisals, some characters have been disguised,

altering their physical appearance ... and other superficial

attributes. Some locations have been shifted. But the name

of the Satanist cult has been preserved, out of respect for

its multi-millenia commitment to diabolism.

Profound thanks must be extended to an unnamed rare book

dealer, for loaning me diaries and other manuscripts whence

so much of this narrative derives (he's now wisely re-ensconced

in another community in an unidentified state)--and also to

the librarian who has shared uncirculatable, uncatalogued

material at the risk of her own position. Both persons have

placed human morality higher than their fear of contemporary

establishment politics.

Others, who've consented to interviews, have done so at

personal hazard--and they too shall remain anonymous! This

author'll accept (and bear) all results that this book may incur,

however malign. Courage is not the virtue (life itself

is an indifferent passtime, and irrelevant), once the truth

itself gains two book covers and some library bookshelves.

Hopefully the text will reap some non-fiction cross-references,

especially within libraries a few miles--or in one instance,

a few blocks--from the satanic massacres. Author's goal is

to encourage some fearless scholar to research further this

Mid-South topic.

May God protect all us sinners who wish to be saved in

our afterlife.

Maj ~od foryiv those who hay transyressed

tn the name of Satan, and who ask now for for~iveness. May

God ~uni5h all those who still ~romote the diety of Satan in,

among other cities, Nashville.

Amen.

East Nashville opponent of Molech's murder squade!

THE C~~E OF EAST NASHVILLE:

A Novel of the Supernatural

hy

STEVE ENG

[Novemher 17, 1991]

PART TWO: WELCOME TO NASHVILLE

I heard a mournful melody of despairing love full of that wild, mad, hopeless longing of ~ bereaved soul which the mid-night raven mocked at with that bitterest of all words--"Nevermore!" It was the weird threnody

of the brilliant, but ill-starred Poe, who, like a meteor, blazed but for a moment, dazzling ~ hemisphere, and then went out forever in the darkness of death.

--from Tennessee Governor Bob Tay lor r s "Dreams, II in his Gov. Bob Taylor'~ Tales, published in Nashville (1896)

SEPTEMBER SHOWERS

Summer weeps and grieves, Rain tears moisten leaves, Grey replaces blue-Autumn cries anew.

--Brad Burgess, un~ublished verse (1974 diary)

PART TWO: WELCOME TO NASHVILLE

SEPTEMBER SHOWERS

Summer weeQs and grieves, Rain tears moisten leaves, Grey r~places blue-Autumn cr~~, 9new•

--Brad Burgess, unpublished verse (1974 diary)

4. MUSIC CITY MOTEL

There are young men in this city who are in the habit

of visiting drinking saloons, gambling houses and houses of prostitution at night, while their parents imagine they are as far away as possible.

--Republican Banner and Nashville Whig, November 18, 1858

\~~ClY ~:~~_ that the motel: ~~~rl~~wn on Murfreesboro Pike," Brad ,s,ai~~:-earoline, after cOlll...i.u~ out of a gas station

6 r-,

on Church Street in Nashville. Asaturday night, September 28,

She nodded.

,-rj

They checked into the Royal Inn at 628 MurfeesboroBike. \\.1 J'(

I .... ~ ~ ... ,j

Caroline crash&El into bed. /.. Brad stayed up a while, picking

1974.

Caroline looked vague and barely coherent.

his guitar softly. Arpeggios, not flat-picking.

About one in the morning he woke up.

Sirens were blaring

outside. Caroline looked terrified.

"Let me see what it is,"

he promised, jumping into his jeans.

Outside he saw police surrounding a room eight doors

down. Pistols drawn. One officer wore a suit instead of a

midnight blue uniform.

He was yelling in a friendly voice.

Suddenly the door opened and a rather rugged-looking young white

man stepped out, his hands over his head. The officer guided

him gently over to one of the patrol cars.

"Take it easy.

h

We'll have just do this to your wrists," /'

he said sweetly, as they snapped on some handcuffs.

Brad strolled up behind one of the uniformed cops, who

happened to be black.

.. '

j

MUSIC CITY MOTEL

page 2.

"Hey, uh, what's the problem?"

"The usual. Just the usual," the cop laughed.

Nothing less."

"Coke sales.

Brad went back to their room.

"Nothing to worry about,

Caroline. Just a drug bust. Welcome to Nashville."

"I'd better go back to sleep. That road has really bent me out of shape. And I didn't do half the driving, I realize."

"Well, I can't sleep."

"Good. This will keep you up. A surprise i?ackage." He handed her a photo file he had slipped through

a one-hour photo shop when they were in Memphis. For some reason, he had kept them secret.

"My God, you are taller when you're farther away ••. " "Yeah. I don't trust that whole Gold Hill operation.

But at least part of it's true. One thing's for certain.

The National Geographic's never going to do a pictorial story on that place. Part of American education is to keep kids ignorant of the ... well, the _g~lls.l:l_9:1."

"Say, how're we going to survive in this town? We need a house to crash in, with all this crap--I mean all the albums and books--in the trailer."

"Yeah, but we've got to find some jobs first. if there's a kid on the way ••• "

Caroline tried not to smile. Finally she asked, "Did

'Specially

you find where a cathedral is?"

Brad looked perplexed.

"Heck, no, we just go to it here.

~U;IC CITY MOTEL

page,

But don I t worry. Let I s look in the phone book ..• II

He found the Cathedral of the Incarnation down on west

End Avenue. They went there at 6 o'clock in the evening.

Brad liked the Rennaissance internal architecture--he imagined

that the old time priest who gave the sermon would at least

agree with him ••• that there were demons out there, who needed

to be exorcized.

#

#

#

#

"We can move out of this place, thank God! II Brad burst

in the motel door. A week and a half later.

"They want me

at the state Resource Center.

I passed their damned test.

It won't be a lot of fun, but by God, at least we can sink

some roots.1I

III have an interview myself, t.orno r r ow j " Caroline said

smugly.

"With some Mid-South Bi-Centennial Committee."

"Gee, thatls not till ISeventy-Six.1I

"Well, they need a head start. It wonlt happen again

for a hundred years.

Itls just a secretarial spot."

IINow lim supposed to help process the damned paper work

on disabled folks. Physical and mental.

live got to be

crazy myself to work with the weird.

I can hardly wait.1I

"Weird?"

No answer as they looked at each other.

"Well, when do you start?" she finally asked.

IINext Monday. So welve got to find ourselves a place

to live. And love."

IISO· let I s go have a bite to eat. II

MUSIC CITY MOTEL

page 4

They went west down Murfreesboro P.ike~t, a few hundred yards toward downtown Nashville. Then on the left side of the street, they pulled into the Steak and Egg Kitchen at 605, and sat down. Brad looked at the jukebox. "Good, they got old ones still."

He put in a quarter and punched three keys--Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues" and Hank Williams': "Lovesick Blues, II plus a newer one by Dolly Parton: "Jolene."

The waitress brought Brad his salad plate, and Caroline her barbecue dinner.

"We used to hear that 'Jolene' song last winter up in Oregon," he said.

"Ha! She used to work here, you know," replied the waitress.

"Really?"

"Around ten years ago. They say she was pretty thin! Thej paid her and fed her too. She never got on our jukebox till

a couple years ago." Pause. "Used to live in a trailer park down the road." She pointed to the right, back up r1urfreesbqro to the east. "Just a few hundred feet away."

Caroline didn't look up.

Brad said, "Yeah, it ain't easy for anyone who comes to this town. At least we're getting off MurfreesboYike, Caroline. We got some kind of luck, eh??"

Caroline smiled but said nothing.

The waitress laughed. "Used to be, there was good old gambling and pay-offsto the authorities. But now--oh, don't

want to upset you.

'Can tell y'all are newcomers."

MUbIC CITY MorEL

page

"Ma'am, you can't scare us.

Please finish.1I

"Well, it's kind of funny. groups are around, these days.

Some young folk occult

Even some girls who think it's

neat to be witches. I wouldn't say they're dangerous. Just more different than normal."

"Yeah, I know about that in other places," Brad responded.

"But the real weird monsters--you'll never know--they act more normal than you or me. Like actors, they get away with their satanism by pretending to be arch-conservative good 01' folks."

She looked sad, all of a sudden. "Yes, I guess that's true around here. More than we want to know."

#

#

#

#

Back at the motel, Brad began scanning the real estate

columns in the morning paper, The Nashville Times.

"I just

wonder what part of town we should live in?"

Three days later they'd visited over fifteen rentals --apartments, duplexes, and two houses. Late Saturday the

'phone rang in their room.

"Mr. Burgess, this is Miz Latham

again from Music City Realty.

'Think I may have found you

something special. It's another house. But this one is maybe

t ; within your means.

"How much?!!

"Well, let's look at it if we could.

I think we could

get it at $200 a month if you're interested."

Within half an hour they were meeting in front of 1497 Robertson Lane.

"Looks kind of dumpy," said Caroline.

It was a rather

MUSIC CITY MOTEL

page '-'

unkempt house, with an oddly tacked-on wing, making it into a sort of duplex. Bricks with loose mortar--gutters sagging full of leaves--and some cracked windows.

"Buil t back in the 'Twenties, I guess," said Brad. "Well, it's roomy, at least," Caroline answered. "It just might be big enough for all your stuff,"

said Mrs. Latham. "Not too far from the Cumberland River. About half a block. You can drive over and enjoy the view. You could walk there every now and then if you stay here."

"Let's go inside," Brad said.

Old paneling, cobwebs, one stained glass window, some

extra rooms.

More space than even Brad needed or wanted.

But

there was a kind of archaic coziness to it all.

"This might inspire some good writing." And he turned to Mrs. Latham. "Is this neighborhood safe?"

"Oh, all neighborhoods have their little risks. Everywhere in America. I think a locked door--a well-locked door--is the

answer to family security," she said with a smile. smile back.

Brad didn't

But Caroline grinned. but wouldn't.

"We'll talk about it some more.

As if she had something to say

I've got to get back to

the motel, and get changed." Caroline had her job interview in about an hour.

"We'll think about it and get back with you. Today,"

said Brad.

They got back in the car, and drove up Robertson

Lane rather aimlessly, trying to check out the neighborhood.

MUSIC CITY MOTEL

}?age .7(.

"I like the older architecture, honey ..• "

Caroline: "Listen, I read in the paper the Nashville murder

rate is higher than it's been in many years. This isn't the

nicest neighborhood."

Silence as they drove back to the motel.

Caroline left for her interview, and Brad called Mrs.

Latham back. It seemed that the old lady owner who lived in

Florida might want to sell it. Her son was a Vanderbilt law

school graduate, who'd hoped to renovate the house and make

money by reselling it. But somehow he'd gone to Fort Worth,

Texas, where he'd just gotten married. Now he was practicing

law with his new wife's own father. So his East Nashville

house was surplus baggage. All of a sudden it was in the wrong

state.

Even better, it was now possible that Brad and Caroline's

rent money could go against their down payment. If they could

but raise a couple of thousand dollars.

"Honey, the interview went pretty well," Caroline said ~\.~~

around ® o'clock. "I sounded, uh, real scholastic about history

and all. It may have worked."

l1you probably got the job. We can rent this house, but

I'd rather buy the place.

If we've both got jobs, we can borrow

some bucks. Or Caroline, could you ... ?"

"No! I'm not going to call my mother for money, Brad!

No way!"

"You read my mind! No matter, let's get moving. East

Nashville, here we come.

Near the Cumberland River. At least

MUSIC CITY MOTEL

page 8

it's more space for the money. Freedom for us to get something going," Brad was expounding.

"Brad, I feel a little queezy. more of this. Can you help?"

"Sure, honey," he said, hoisting her suitcase into the

I wish I could lift

trailer.

"In a few months weill have a Nashville-born son.

Or daughter."

Caroline looked a little scared. Brad didn't want to discuss the danger over there, except if he joked. He kept

his .357 magnum in a box full of tape cassettes. It was loaded,

with the hammer down on an empty chamber.

"Honey, things will

be safe for us. We'll have security in that house, I guarantee.1I live got enough songs in my tape collection, and live got enough heavy-loaded cartridges for my pistol!"

Caroline glared at him. She hated his gun jokes more than anything else.

5. MOLECH CITY, USA

And thou shall not let any of thy seed

pass through the fire to MolechL neither shall thou profane the name of thy God ..•

Leviticus 18:21, King James Bible

"Honey, you can't believe who one of my clients is."

Caroline was clearing the table. On Saturday, October 26,

the following week.

She'd gotten the secretary job, only to have it transformed

initially into "receptionist" for fifty dollars less a month.

So what? She was glad to have grabbed it on such short notice.

"Tell me about it, Brad," she said with scant enthusiasm.

"Well, for one thing, this lady is a fellow Catholic.

Number two, she's really mediaeval."

Caroline tried not to glare. Not least in their two or

three dozen marital differences was Brad's flippant treatment

of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. She had enough trouble being

a good Catholic all by herself. Some people said she should

never have married Brad, but she told them she'd cleared it

with Jesus first. Still, marital times could be tough--when

talking to Brad about Him and especially about His church.

"That's okay. Whatever she is, is alright." Caroline

knew he wanted to tell her a whole lot more.

She wasn't

interested.

"You'll love hearing about this. I went over to her house

to interview her for her disability. She has concrete statues

of saints out in her front yard. Her living room looks like

MOLECH CITY, U.S.A.

page 2

a chapel. She and some other righteous renegades hold their own services there. Mostly in Latin. They are too good for

the post-Vatican II church, she tells me." Pause. a lot more, but it might scare you to hear it."

"Where does she live?"

"A cottage about a mile south of here. On a very secluded back street. Called Spring Road."

"She's got

"Look, I need to lie down right now. This pregnancy is taking away some of my energy."

Brad didn't say anything. He put the forthcoming baby-birth out of his mind. He wouldn't be able to think about anything else if he let that concern him.

He had no responsibility to return to his client's home, but he had a good reason to do so, all the same. He left without telling Caroline anything but "goodbye." She didn't see him

take his guitar. He stopped at a pay 'phone and called: "Hello, Mrs. O'Connor. This is Mr. Burgess. Your, uh, disability worker. I'm--ah, off duty at the moment--just in the area. Don't live too far away. I could swing by and let you finish what you wanted to tell me •.. "

"Oh, yes! That's simply wonderful," answered Frieda O'Connor.

Brad knocked, and she told him to push the door open.

She was seated in her deep easy chair with a red and white blanket stretched up over her legs, and wearing her bathrobe

like she always did. Her face was permanently pale--her long dyed hair was ultra-black--and she wore too damned much lipstick.

MOLECH CITY, U.S.A.

page 3

And hiyh cheekbones enhanced her more or less artificial, permanent smile. She was forty-eight--but she had looked more like seventy-three for probably the past five years.

"How're you feeling?"

"Oh, my arthritis is worse than usual."

She had a half-full glass of champagne on the lamp stand next to her right elbow. Her husband used to beat her, then abandoned her about ten years ago--she'd learned how to outdrink him, so her liver problems and alleged heart problems constituted "disability." No oge in modern civilization would have hired

her for an hour'~ work at minimum wage.

"Oh, you brought your guitar. How •.. nice •.• "

He opened the case and let her request a couple of songs.

He'd been playing country hits in beer jonts for awhile in Oregon, not just folk songs for collegiate kids. Not very well, he personally thought, and often with the wrong finger-picking. But on a Sunday night this dive or that one, might let him sing for five dollars, or--more likely--for a couple of beers and

tips (coins in the jar). So he could do female songs on request.

Freida wanted to relive Kitty Wells's breakthrough hit--"It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," plus Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter." She sang along with both of them, humming when she didn't know a particular verse, mostly offkey. He was glad she didn't ask for Patsy Cline's "Crazy," usually every older girl's request--or every young girl's song for an audition.

Brad laid down his Martin guitar, finally.

"Let's talk

, .. , ..... -.I. , ........ ...... -- -- .' ,

some more about the ... neighborhood problem ..• 11 She waited a long while before answering. "Well-l-l-l •.• I don't know where to begin.

I just don't

understand it all." Brad was professional enough to know that vagueness didn't last long with someone who held deep secrets. "Eight years ago, I first became aware," she finally said. "Over on Ramsey Street, in an older house. The lady had met

me at church one day--back when I was still attending our local church" alluding to Saint Peter's on Russell Street. "We were having coffee and doughnuts after Mass, down in the basement. She told me she needed a bishop, real bad, to protect her.

But she didn't think anyone would believe her." Shepaused--and

sipped some more champagne.

"So I went home with her, to her

house.

She showed me some most unusual drawings.

She even

gave me one, and I've still got it."

Frieda told Brad where to look, so he went back into her bedroom and found the green envelope in her bottom dresser drawer. The drawing was of a creature not quite human.

"r don't know what to make of it," he said.

"It seems that in a field down in the woods off Cumberland

Drive she had sketched them.

She said she'd been invited by

a rather far-out fellow from San Francisco.

He had no business

being in Nashville--they didn't want any of his 'Sixties folk

songs, at least not back then.

He was real anti-war, but a

lot more pro-occult. They held rituals down in this ravine where the creek runs under Cumberland Drive."

"Tell me about them."

MOLECH CITY, U.S.A.

page 5

"I wasn't supposed to know. But his name was Maurice Eddison. I sort of shuddered, when I realized they were

dressing up in these outrageous costumes." Pause.

"But

what already scared me -;~ca'rEi.4 IJI~ /were the memor ies of when I was younger. As a little sirl, I remembered a murder back in

1934. Dorothy Ann Distelhurst. She was only six.

She'd been

walking down Scott Avenue near Cahal Street, during the day. Near Riverside Drive. People saw her. She disappeared. They found her two months later, on Ben Allen Road near the Davidson County Tuberculosis Hospital. Her face was ravaged with acid. And her eyes were burned out. My mama tried to keep me from reading about it in the paper. My daddy knew a detective and

I wasn't

that guy said it was some kind of a Satanist gang. s uppo se d to hear Daddy telling mother about it."

"Why are you telling me that?"

"Part of our heritage. Volunteer State history. You

want to hear more? We had at least three kid killings in the 'Sixties. One of 'em was down on Music Row--hey, that's a song

title, isn't it?

'Down on Music Row.' Anyway, some little

\

girl--I don't remember her name, but I remember the year. It was 1965. Down on Sixteenth Avenue South, by the RCA building. She was beaten to death by a metal pipe in her sister's apartment. Really smashed up her skull. I was working in a drive-in restaurant nearby. We talked about it for days. Was it a songwriter? Who knows! There were two more murders. One up

in North Nashville, a little girl knifed. And another girl coming horne from some skating rink on Thompson Lane, a year

MOLECH CITY,

U.S.A.

page 6

later, maybe.

Down in that Woodbine area."

"I don't know this town very well."

"South of town. Off Nolensville Road. She was bound and *

gagged to death. Naturally they never solved any of 'em.

Law enforcement ain't a Nashville precedent. Gambling is part

of the establishment, and pay-off bribes. Though I feel sorry

for the cops who try to do their job, and can't because of lack

of financial support. Of course some cops get paid off to keep

quiet by our respectable gamblers."

She sank back into her chair, looking exhausted. Then

she forced herself to sit up again.

"But to get back to this,

you understand, I've got memories and I've got suspicions.

I've always figured there was some weird gang of wizards. I

don't always buy this lone-wolf 'serial killer' theory. I figure

there's some kind of sick occult group behind some of our

crimes.if

"So anyway--here it comes again. To make a long story

uncomfortable, I was invited down in the ravine there to kind

of spy on these damned Satanist worshippers. The lady asked

me. Cathy Curtis was her name. She thought we should watch

it and testify to the Bishop or something. A:bout this terrorist,

f1Iaurice Eddison."

Brad had trouble following all this. Why would two ladies

go watch something blasphemous and dangerous?

"Here's what was so bad. I don't know how to tell you this."

*Murders: 34-5062, Dorothy Ann Diste1hurst, 1934; 65-93837, Wanda Jane Anderson, 1965; 66-71593, Reba Kay Green, 1966; 69-124859, Kathylene Jones, 1969. Reported by Jacque Srouji,

"Who Killed Marcia Trimble (and Other Unsolved Murders)," Nashville! magazine, Vol. 4, No. 10 (January 1977).

MOLECH CITY,

U.S.A.

page 7

Her face was ghastly white and tears were filling her eyes.

"Oh, why am I even talking to you? You don't need this.

Youlve

got a wife.

It'll just make you sorry youlve even been here ... "

Brad felt a chill, and all of a sudden sensed that he

was betraying himself ... and his wife ... with all of his juvenile,

eccentric curiosity.

"Well, youlve set me up with those other

murders. What next?"

"Remember her?" Frieda had pulled a record album up out

of a jumble of old discs and magazines on a bottom shelf.

Lorna

Hendrick.

One of his absolute favorites.

Her album: Lord,

live Got 12 Need For You And Other Christian Songs.

"Donlt tell me!," blurted Brad.

"Too late--you're too late. The rest of the story someone

has to know."

Brad nodded, sort of inanely.

"After that Country Gospel Grammy she won--and, oh, what

was it called? Yes, 'How Can I Give Jesus Everything That He

*

Deserves?," that was it.

Anyway, she was slipping back.

That's

how it is, sometimes.

You can get a gold record and they say

'Next' for whomever. They didn't even promote her next single

very well. But this same friend from Los Angeles got her a

deal." Pause.

"I don't think you III believe this.

It wasn't

with the American Music Society, which Nashville worships and

supports.

Whose Country & Western committee is supposed to

be so big.

She won their nominations for Female Entertainer

... but never an award. No.

He had her join an organization

tha tis a trif le older. II

*

Lorna Hendrick, "How Can I Can Give Jesus Everything That

He Deserves?" (by Arthur Aldis), b/w "Hapt?Y Times Are Coming Again, In Heaven" (by Hank Druff), BFC Records (#3307), Number

~on"e·~ i~=Rec~rd~Times (March 4, 1972).

MOLECH CITY, U.S.A.

page 8

She was almost smirking.

"Was Lt; that L.A. group, the C t S H' t

oun ry ong er1 age

Foundation? That makes all that noise on public television?"

"Well, let's change the subject. Perhaps you'd better

go now. You've got a lot to do if you're going to get your

songs even listened to in this town."

"WHAT DID HE DO WITH LORNA HENDRICK?"

Brad stood up and began pacing around.

"Unhhh, well, she signed up. He had everything she needed.

Record promotion, and new album deal o~t of L.A. I guess he

was like a manager."

"So, was he like Colonel Parker for Elvis? Going to make

her happen again ... ?

That's not believable, if he's some occult

hippie punk doing rituals down in that ravine off Robertson

Road. Uh, what's that name?"

"Maurice Eddison. Hell, he's still out there. You hear

about him in the music press. Oh, they overlook his Vietnam war

opposition. Of course there's two sides to that mess. Pause.

"But his Molech group was about three thousand years old. with

all respect to the Pope, they're here to stay."

Brad sat back down, looking a little chagrined. This was

more than he needed.

"You check the Old Testament.

Second Kings. It's the

Molecb bOis. They're good at human sacrifices. She promised

to stick with 'em. He cut her a contract. She had to slash

her wrist, ever so lightly, and sign with blood on a toothpick.

But ... she showed it to Cathy Curtis. So she wasn't a safe

MOLECH CITY, U.S.A.

page 9

'girl singer' after all. So she deserved to die •.. at least

by their standards. She wasn't loyal to the Molechs--they found out she was becoming a Christian bitch. Cathy got her to meet with a priest, and they learned it somehow. Us country followers know the official ending."

Freida leaned back her in chair looking relatively exhausted, even considering her already-deflated appearance.

Brad felt-nauseated.

It was national new!s in .Auqu s f of

'73: Lorna Hend'r Lc k passed out dead in a motel room in st.

Louis, ,hours after a concert.

"t remember she had a crucifix'

on her neck, that was in the paper. For her, that wa~ someth~ng new. But--but they didn't really say how she died. 'H~art failure' which is the standard big-nothing of the coroners,

when they don't know--or won't tell you--the rest."

"You're damned right. Well, the Molechs didn't lay a hand on her, if you know what I mean. They sat back and called in

the demons. I mean, you don't have to be present to kill someone if you know what you're doing. And they knew what they were doing. Unnh, do you know how to kill somebody at a distance?"

"Come on, Frieda, this is too much!"

"Well, you get some companions together and you start concentrating on the topic. You invoke the Devil and get

your malevolency going. If you've got enough hate and enough togetherness when you sit there all at once, and you can pull it off. I'll bet they were playing her record while they were warming up their ritual. ESP--that extra-sensory projection subject--works. Add some sadism to it, and you can at least

MOLECH CITY,

U.,S.A.

page 10

injure somebody.

Maybe kill 'em, if you've had some practice.

Of course your victim has to have some weakness and uncertainty. A tough Christian or, for that matter--or someone else who's

got a good gOd--can't be blasted dead long distance. But

me??? I'll bet someone could kill me without laying a hand

on me. Just hit my brain with an extra-sensory impact."

Brad shuddered, at wondering how his supervisor at the disability office would respond to some of this. He'd have to cover up as much as he could.

"Anyway, Lorna had a new album out, and a part in a major movie. God, Nashville hated her for crossing over. But she didn't make it. Oh, shit, she crossed over just fine. Out

of this damned Hell to a pretty good Heaven, don't you think?

It's alright.

Christians ~in in the end.

Her records are

getting reissued, and she's got back-up angels upstairs in Jesus's studio. Those Molechs will have to recruit some other girl s~ngers. God knows who they already have in their booking agency. They're always looking for some sinners they can seduce. But they don't know one thing. That the Christian executives want to sign some singers to their label!"

Brad felt a gnawing fascination, countering his sickening dismay. He admired her ironic humor.

"Molechs? I don't know about them. most informed Christian."

"Well, good 01' Molech was a 'fire-god.' He needed dead

Uhh, I'm not the

babies, and so the old--wh~t's their name~ Amoonites, that's it--well, they provided him with enough. I read that Solomon

MOLECH CITY U. S .A.

page 11

even built an altar for Molech. All I know is ••. the groutJ has never died. They tried to stomp 'em out, but they kept coming back. Son, human sacrifices are not a fleeting fad. They Ire here to stay. They just take on different images from time

to time, down the centuries." Pause. "I'm just glad I knew

who it was. Lorna told Cathy it was the Molechs. She hadn't heard of them, but you can guess, we looked it up after she died. Maybe that's why I love the Old Testament. Good 01' Moses put out the death penalty on any parents who offered their kids to Molech."

"I think I'd best go. We've got a good relationship, and 1'11 be assuring your disability grant .•• "

"You haven't heard the rest. I don't think you

want to. But if you can stand the truth, here it comes."

Brad sucked in his belly involuntarily and stood more or less at attention.

"There's a Molech statue down in the woods below

Old Due West Drive, carved out of stone. said that's where the sacrifices occur.

It's an altar. Lorna She had a little boy

that was attending Isaac Litton school up on Gallatin Pike.

She kept it quiet, since the boy's father never wanted to marry her. Typical privacy for a girl singer. The school was told that her boy was going back to Alabama to see his daddy. They got a letter from some imposter who claimed to be his father

in Mobile. You can guess the rest." Pause. Brad felt himself

shaking.

"After the sacrifice, I presume they put the bones

MOLECH CITY, U.S.A.

page 12

in their collection. live heard they think baby bones have special magical power. Satanism is most scientific. They know just what they're doing."

"Now let me read you the old Jewish testimony." She opened an old Bible encyclopedia from the Nineteenth

Century.

"His face was that of a calf, and his hands

stretched forth like a man who opens his hands to receive a gift from a neighbor. And they kindled it with fire, and the priests took the babe and put it into the hands of Molech, and the babe gave up the ghost."

"I can't believe half of this."

"You drive over there and you look. You go up Gallatin Pike, take a left on Due West Drive. Then take another left on Old Due West. It's down in the trees. Keep driving and you end up on Dickerson Pike. It's parallel to Gallatin. The statue stands way down in the woods. But there's no other evidence. They clean up the blood and the bones, so there's

no treat for the police. The cops don't know shit about what's been going on these past several years. What's funny is the sign that says $50 fine if you dump things. From the local health department. Pretty cute. Fifty dollar fine for dead babies, I guess."

"WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME ALL THIS???"

"It takes an outsider to kill these insiders. And I don't mean with a loaded gun. Maybe with an old-time priest. These Church of Christers are righteous but they don't know the history. And our Catholic priests are, most of 'ern, too damned

MOLE~H CITY, U.S.A.

page 13

soft these days. Well, you've got your hands full, ehhh???"

She was smiling rather eerily.

IlUhh, I've got to go now. This has been real nice,

talking with you, Frieda.

If you know what I mean."

"Real nice," she echoed, with a mocking smile.

Then

her face clouded.

"Be so careful.

It's all out there,

waiting for us.

On both sides of Gallatin Pike."

"on , yes.

One more question.

I don't quite grasp how

this folkie, anti-war guy, Maurice Eddison, would get her a

record deal.

Then get her into the Molechs.

I guess he has

two careers ... ?"

"Well, he thought she'd record his far-out stuff. But

she swung back into gospel. That's what turned him.

That

God-damned God stuff, if you know what I mean.

I'm sure his

bosses in the Molechs decided she needed to be dropped.

Down into her grave.

He had to live with it, getting some

royalties from her probably, at the beginning. Then having

to eliminate her, to support his Molech's team."

"You never know. He might turn around and confess."

"Maybe, but not likely. They'd take care of him, if he

opens his mouth.

That's for sure."

Brad nodded, abruptly, waved his hand, and left. He

drove home with a strange feeling of helplessness. What good

would his .357 mangum be, under the front seat, against a

3,OOO-year-old organization like the Molechs?

"Shit!," he said out loud.

"Here comes All Hallow's Eve

in a few days. Well, welcome to Nashville, Brad, and, uh,

Caroline."

6. REMEMBER ... TRE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

Thus Satan, talki~ to his nearest mate, With J1ead_ ~-_lif~ abo_y~:the wave I and eyes That§parkliIlSl plazed ..•

---John Milton, Book 1, Paradise Lost (1667)

"I've really got·some awfully good news," gushed Caroline

after Brad entered the living room.

Then she lowered her voice.

"You don't look so great right now--is something wrong?"

"Oh, no, tell me the good stuff!"

"Well--" she said, beaming, " ... um, where do I begin?

There's going to be a warmup conference next week.

I can't

believe the same week as Hallowe'en.

They've kicked me upstairs,

thank the Lord.

I'm the secretary, after all.

They got a

new receptionist.

A black lady.

So I'm supposed to take

notes while some experts talk about Tennessee history. They

want to re-live some Southern stuff.

Itlll be up near the

state Capitol in some meeting room. And, yes, fifty dollars

more a month."

"That's nice.

Nashville is real nice.

I just did some

research myself.

That Mrs. O'Connor had some swell stories."

"Tell me."

"Oh, not really that interesting.

About my 01' girl

hero singer, Lorna Hendrick. And how she worked on getting

the right songs recorded.1I

"Didn't she die in a big tragedy that was in the news?"

"Oh, yeah, that's separate.

Can't help that.

That's

just the way it goes."

REMEMBER ••. THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE

page 2

Caroline looked at him rather sharply.

"So what are you doing with your music? •• or should I say, our music--" Brad hoped she was hinting at royalties!

"Writer's Night tomorrow. Down on Church Street. I'm going to do three of my best songs."

"Have you knocked on any doors yet? I mean, how long wi 11 it take you to get something cut? II ,

III've got a new friend. From Louisville. Walter Crain.

He's got a song on Red Richards IS album from last year, The Mood of the Mountains. He'll be there and he's telling me what to do. You want to corne?"

"Sunday night? live got to get rested for my job. I confessed to my boss I Imay' be pregnant. He was sympathetic. They won't fire me, he said, they'll give me time off and I can come back. That's months away. They're glad to have me right now."

Brad didn't seem to be listening.

"Well, live got to go work on one of my songs ... " And he headed for their back room "den." It had a

fireplace, and an old sofa. Brad had filled up some bookshelves with his books, as well as his own cassettes, in alphabetical order. He unpacked his D-28 Martin acoustic guitar, and sunk into the couch and started picking, with the Carter Family lick on the bass strings that his rock friends disliked. Walter Crain had said that Monarch Records signed some girl, Sally Reagan, after Red Richards. Sally was from Gatlinburg,

Tennessee, on the edge of the Smokies.

"She's a crossover act,"

REMEMBER ... THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE

page 3

Crain advised.

"She wants to travel from the Nashville Sound

back to the mountain sound." Monarch Records was called

"progressive" at times, but Crain said they were regressive.

"If you know how to go backwards, sometimes you can fool Music

ROw," he said.

"After all, Nashville isn't country music, it's

city music anymore. Monarch's getting reviews in New York and

L.A. because its songs are more primitive. They can't figure

that out, downtown."

Thinking about Sally, Brad laid back on the couch. A

song had been running through his mind all week. Kind of

an escapism from East Nashville. Someplace he'd never been .••

the Smoky Mountains. The words bubbled up as he played the

chord progression over and over.

"Which comes first, the

wqrds or the music?" was the old Tin Pan Alley query.

"Neither

one,1I Brad liked to say.

"Just the rhythm." Which wasn't quite

true in this case--some of the lyrics had come first, but he

made sure he kept his guitar riffs repeating themselves as he

sang out the words without any planning.

He scribbled them down in his songwriting notebook,

a spiral-bound school tablet purchased at the grocery store.

He called it "Four Kinds Of Heartbreak."

In three-quarter

time, though it was scarcely a waltz number.

It started with

its chorus, like a pop hit. But it was country-sad.

"There's four kinds of heartbreak, and I know them all, One of them's summer, and one of them's fall,

One of them's winter, and one of them's spring-There's four kinds of heartbreak, to each one I sing."

REMEMBER ..• THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

page 4

ITIn springtime I think of that year when we met, In summer I think how you hadn't left yet,

In autumn I think how you left like the leaves--

In winter I hear you, when the wind hits the trees."

Then he repeated the chorus--and sang the next (and last) verse:

!lIn springtime I look at those flowers you grew, In summer I walk through the woods we once knew, In autumn I climb to the top of the hill--

In winter I stand by your stone in the chill.!I

He recited the last vers~ instead of sang it, then repeated

the chorus once more.

"Gee, that's sure a nice song!"

Brad looked up over his shoulder. There was Caroline.

"Yes, a nice positive love song. Airplay sweet," she

said.

"Shit, why do you have to be so sarcastic???1T

She blushed.

II Alright, it's not a happy housewife song," Brad growled.

IIBut hell, it might be good for an album. Well, the secret

to songwriting is that you just write that next song you feel

like writing. And then the next one. No one knows what's going

to be a hit, half the time." Brad had to stifle his anger at

all the songwriting discussion of how to write a hook, and

whether or not to have a chorus and/or a release, or bridge.

"Anyway, it's done."

"Well, I've got to go do some more reading. Trying to

brush up my local history knowledge. So I can be prepared--

like a good Girl Scout--for my meeting. Good 01' boys don't

completely trust a good young girl, not till she proves herself.

We're not in Oregon anymore, you know."

· .. " '" __ ...• , .-' •. II __ • ..J __ ....... '\ J ............

page 5

"Ah, well, uh--sure."

"If we're going to live in this state, I'm going to have to learn as much as I can. Their big clich~ is 'Tennessee

pride. '

I've heard it a dozen times at work.

So I've got to

get into it and start feeling it."

"Pride in what? Indian removal? Or the Civil War? I'll

take Hank Williams, thank you.

I can live with his chloral

hydrate, at least to read about--"

"What???"

"That's what he died from. At least officially.

Maybe

he just lived too long in the music.

It ages you, you know.

Twenty-nine was like sixty-eight, for him. Andrew Jackson, all the same.1I

"Look, Brad, the music isn't in conflict with the Tennessee

I prefer him to

heritage.

They're going to give it some credit.

For the right

reason.

It makes them some money."

"Unnh, yeah.

Sure. Well, honey, it's time for bed."

And don't forget, tomorrow's Sunday. It's not

just writer's night.

It's also Mass down at the church."

Brad nodded.

He tried to look sincere and convinced

that going to Mass was the right thing.

Come to think of

it, maybe it was, thanks to the evidence about the Molechs.

#

#

#

#

They overslept, and missed the morning Mass. As usual.

Brad wasted his time reading the Sunday paper, and then walked around the house strumming his guitar. Back in his "music room" h2 kept practicing "Four Kinds of Heartbreak." He wasted more

REMEMBER ... THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

page 6

time typing up lyrics from the old notebooks he'd brought from Oregon, then stashing them in his used (and dented) file cabinet purchased at a yard sale. Therein he also kept his occult clipping files, with labels like "OCCULT: Oregon (vampires)"

and the like. Finally he dressed for the six o'clock Mass.

"Caroline, do you want to come to the writer's night?" "Well, that would be nice."

So they put the guitar in the car, and parked outside

of St. Peter's on Russell Street. Brad remembered that here was where Frieda had tried to alert the priest to the Satanic rituals off Cumberland Drive.

Brad liked the older hymns. They were traditional. Up

in Oregon, their Catholic church had used a modern, folkie

band with soft melodies that sounded just like Joni Mitchell. Strangely, Brad didn't want to hear his kind of music in church. Not all those minor chords and major-sevenths. "Why go to church if it ain't traditional?," he used to say. At least these Tennessee Catholics had a little old-time taste.

"Now folks, I've got some especially bad news for you," uttered Father Behan with a smile. Brad figured that Behan liked jokes--felt that if you didn't enjoy the show, Catholicism

wasn't commercial.

"Here's the problem," Behan continued.

"You've all got a special friend you don't seem to ackowledge enough. He regards me as a friend, as well. Unnh, let me clarify--I'm his friend, but he's not exactly mine. At least not consciously. And I want to share this information."

Some of the congregation smiled. They were ready for his

REMEMBER ... TRE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

page 7

joke.

"It's an old fellow with a lot of tradition. He deserves

respect at least for his accomplishments." Pause.

"Now if

some of you are prejudiced against this fellow, please listen. You need to know more about him. After all, he cares about you." Father Behan paused for as long as possible.

"Folks, he's that superstar from the Bible. With so many awards from governments and establishments over the past several millenia. No one other ••. than .•. you know who he is ••. SATAN!"

Laughter and a few heads shaking. Brad snickered and Caroline smiled.

"Now you're on his side, potentially. He wants to help you make it into his powerful institution. Goodness, he's

big and the money he can get you--well, it's really worth it from a worldly point of view. I mean, who the Hell needs Heaven? At least not on Earth. All you need to do is sharpen up your skills at pleasing him. You've all got the opportunity. And you've already made the first step. You cannot even get into this cathedral without having a credit card with sin on your budget. He counts on that, and you'll be vastly rewarded if you just improve your sin-ability."

Guffaws and chitter laughter--and a few people looking around, not amused.

"One of the first things you can do to help your approval by Mister Satan is to start bad-mouthing your neighbors and your relatives. If you don't have someone you know you can

REMEMBER ... THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

page 8

criticize or condemn, you must be a recluse in hibernation. And if you're married--heck, you know about half the overall marriages end up in divorce. So a little bit of cheating here or there will win you some profound respect from Mister Satan. You'll be on his waiting list for consideration. He might provide you some Hell right here on Earth."

"Here's the hard part. No matter how decent you are, or decent you just were, Satan has faith in you. That you'll give him what he's waiting for. He knows some of the bad things I've done. Of course he resents the fact that God knows it all--but he's counting on me to slip and fall into his hands. Let me tell you, I don't trust myself. Not one bit."

He was no longer smiling. He looked as grim as possible. "So don't let me depress you too much more, but the fact remains. He's there. You're here. And I can't protect you. There's only one person who can. I think you know his name."

There were smiles, and nodding heads. "Someone tell me!!! Come on ... 11

A lady raised her hand and he beckoned her ("say it") and she said "Jesus" rather loudly.

Then Father Behan had them bow their heads and recite the Lord's Pray~r. Brad always thought it amusing that the Catholics had tacked back on those last two lines of the prayer they used to leave off. One more thing the Protestants had been doing right all along!

More singing followed, and the collection plate passed around. Caroline dropped in five dollars. Brad wasn't sure

~~£J~,1

. %1/F.1 _./.

( _ _\ ~- .

criticize or condemn, you must be a recluse in hibernation.

REMEMBER ... THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

page

And if you're married--heck, you know about half the overall

marriages end up in divorce. So a little bit of cheating here

or there will win you some profound respect from Mister Satan.

You'll be on his waiting list for consideration. He might

provide you some Hell right here on Earth."

"Here's the hard part. No matter how decent you are, or

decent you just were, Satan has faith in you. That you'll give

him what he's waiting for. He knows some of the bad things

I've done. Of course he resents the fact that God knows it

all--but he's counting on me to slip and fall into his hands.

Let me tell you, I don't trust myself. Not one bit."

He was no longer smiling. He looked as grim as possible.

"So don't let me depress you too much more, but the fact

remains. He's there. You're here. And I can't protect you.

There's only one person who can.

I think you know his name."

There were smiles, and nodding heads.

"Someone tell me!!! Come on ... "

A lady raised her hand and he beckoned her ("say it")

and she said "Jesus" rather loudly.

Then Father Behan had them bow their heads and recite the

Lord's Prayer. Brad always thought it amusing that the Catholics

had tacked back on those last two lines of the prayer they used

to leave off. One more thing the Protestants had been doing

right all along!

More singing followed, and the collection plate passed

around. Caroline dropped in five dollars. Brad wasn't sure

REMEMBER .•. THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

?C page £{J'

(

she should have given that much, considering their current

tight times. But he knew enough to keep 4uiet.

Leaving the cathedral, Caroline suddenly looked pale. She

grabbed hold of a parking meter. "Honey, what's wrong?"

She shook her head. "I feel nauseated.

'Think I'd better

go home and rest. God, I hate letting you down, Brad. You

need me to listen--well, I need you to entertain me with some

new songs. But this damned pregnancy is killing our writer's

night together."

Brad got into the car, and they took off. He said nothing

as they drove home. Pulling in, he saw a note taped to their

mailbox. Caroline had her head down, so Brad jumped out

and snatched the note, out of his protective instinct--then

stuffed it into his pocket. He kissed Caroline goodbye at

the doorstep. "Just lie down, honey. And don't worry. I'll

call you just to see how you are."

Back in the car, he opened the note:

BETTER TO GO HOME TO OREGON WHILE YOU'RE STILL ALIVE THAN AFTER YOU'RE DEAD. SAME GOES FOR CAROLINE AND FETUS--FIRST AND LAST WARNING. HAVE A NICE DAY--BUT THINK THIS OVER. YOU'LL GET SOME MORE NICE DAYS BUT NOT TOO MANY MORE.

NEXT WEEK IS A BUSY WEEK BUT WE'LL FIND TIME FOR YOU.

After calling this his first terror threat, Brad said

further to himself: Well, this ain't worse than Vietnaml Since

that priest's "Devil is on your side" axiom was true in more

ways than one. Brad told peo~le, sometimes, how he'd been a

teenaged atheist for awhile •.. to Hell with church. Then

gradually, he'd seen so much evil, that at least he began to

believe in the Devil. Only later did he add God ... and Jesus

REMEMBER ..• THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

page 16J

--which some of y'all think are one and the same. But the

Devil ..• Hell, he was scientifically provable. He'd helped our

boys rape their women at My Lai before they killed 'em.

One of Brad's friends, who'd gone to school at the Uni-

versity of Portland, told him about the "Operation Phoenix."

And how he'd seen American guys in black costumes tatooing "Kill

the Communists" onto Vietnam women's chests, so those gals would

not fail to support the U.S.

"They weren't U.S. Army guys,

they were secret agents," he told Brad.

"But we knew 'em."

Yeah, and the Phoenix boss-man was a pseudo-Catholic himself.

A guy named William E. Colby who'd set up the "Phoenix" torture

* program.

Now the Devil's out to get me, all by myself. With or

without Caroline, Brad decided.

He drove up Gallatin Pike, and cut across Due West, than

down in the gully on Old Due West. He didn't expect to see

the Molech's altar in the dark, but he wanted to test his courage

anyway. He wanted to sharpen his nerves.

Then he turned left on Dickerson Pike, while glancing to

his right with some reverence. A few hundred yards to the north,

by the main Due West highway, stood the Starday-King recording

studio, paid for probably by the publishing rights to "A

Satisfied Mind," Walter Crain had told him. A company that

came up from Texas, one that had launched George Jones down

there. Starday had released five old Dolly demos, and Crain

wondered if she'd cut them in there.

Songs she had no copyrights

to.

*

"Kill the Communists" tattoos revealed by Robert D. Schulzinger, A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam l2il-1975 (New York: Oxford Univ~~. ~Press, 1997), page 198.

REMEMBER ... THE DEVIL IS ON YOUR SIDE!

page ~

) /

I; !

Brad headed south on Dickerson Pike toward Nashville.

After he crossed Trinity Lane he remembered Crain had also

told him that over there, off to the right, in the 1900 block,

Opry star Roy Acuff had lived in a trailer park in the 'Thirties.

Amusing, that the "King of Country Music" had dwelled about

four miles from where the Molechs supplied their "Music City,

U.S.A." human sacrifices down in the gully.

But Brad's efforts at staying jubilant and cynical were

failing. A car cut in front of him, and he screeched to the

right into the gravel off Dickerson Pike. Was he going

too fast? Actor James Dean had died the same way, going too

fast when someone drifted across in front of him.

Brad slowed down, and his heart was cold. He had to

face unreality. The death threat note on his dashboard

was twisting an imaginary blade in his gut. Maybe they'll

kill me before ~ ever get ~ song recorded, he mused. At least

he was going to drive more carefully. The Devil's on ~ side,

he realized. He'll give me all the help he can, that'E._ for

sure ...

7. WRITER'S NIGHT,

W"RITER'S FRIGHT

All of the amateur talent and abi 1 i ty of the_ ~i ty wi 1~_ be nut in requlSITon to render this performance the most striking and successful ever given in this city ... ne~ musicians-oi the highest talent will make their debut.

--Nashville Republican Banner, May 16, 1869

"You're just in time," said Billy Lottis, host of "Downtown

Writer's Night," at The Nashboro Lounge at 1713 Church Street.

He handed Brad a small spiral notebook.

"Just sign up, and

you'll be on by eleven." It was eight-fifteen, October 27;

the show hadn't started, and Brad noticed that he was tenth

on the list.

He tried to smile. Writer's nights were so much fun.

You had to sit and sit--and sit, waiting for your turn.

Theoretically, this would earn more money for the club, assuming

you drank and drank--and drank.

In fact, writers tended to

be cold sober, partly out of their nervous fear for performing

--but mostly out of the dire lack of coins in their pockets.

In' the few weeks he'd been in Nashville, Brad had noticed

writer's nights were always starting and stopping. He doubted

they could possibly be profitable.

He moved his Martin guitar to the side of the stage, where

a huge conglomeration of cases was stacked. Some Gibsons, some

Martins, and a hell of a lot of Jap guitars. Brad was amused

that the Pearl Harbor-Hiroshima graduates could produce a guitar

two-thirds as good as a Martin, for one-fifth the price!

"Hey!" cried Walter Crain.

WRITER S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page 2

"Alright!" said Brad. They shook hands. Walter was wearing

a cowboy hat and red flannel shirt, and mandatory blue jeans.

His pony-tail hair was already out-of-style, thanks to the

anti-Vietnam victory of the Woodstock generation. Plus the

opening of Country Music magazine in 1972, which gave hippies

their passport to hillbillydom.

And next to him was Sally Reagan.

IISally, how're you doin'?11

IIOh, please, I forgot your name.1I

"Brad--Brad Burgess. Uh, haven't been in town too 10ng.1I

He knew that two-thirds of the writers' nights performers were

like him--fresh off the bus--and the remaining one-third were

bitter hangers-on, who'd been pitching songs for maybe even

ten years, to no avail.

"Brad, Sally's going to have a special spot. Because of

her album deal. She won't just be one more writer on a three

song gig.1I

Sally almost bowed her pretty head. Thin face, high

cheekbones, long black hair.

"Uh, Sally, who're your heroes? Or should I say,

heroines •.• ? Music, that is."

"Well, Carolyn Hester never made it big. Maybe that's

why I identify with her. Her voice went different ~aces where

others' didn't.

She came out of Texas via New York City. She

had a back-up harmonica player named Bob Dylan on one of her ear Ly albums.

He was a nobody at the time.

I always felt that

a woman entertainer, just like Caroly· n, should

never turn loose

WRITER I S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page '3

of her guitar, once she's got it."

"You can say that again! ," interrupted Walter.

"Soon as

a woman has a hit, somebody wants her to hang up her guitar, run around onstage with a microphone and a low-cut blouse. It's permissable to start out like Kitty Wells--but you're supposed to make Cher your destination, and eventually even Barbra Streisand. It may be mission impossible, but you're supposed to try. Or else there's guys who pass you over."

"Shit, the country fans ain't that way. Yet.

They

still want to see a somewhat normal singer out there,"

"Yeah, and you too can say that again!," laughed Sally.

"I'd rather play in a club, than in an over-dubbing, re-mixing Nashville Sound session of super-pickers and corporate producers, giving you the same intro' licks they did on someone else's record yesterday." Pause. "I'm a hillbilly, and they'd like

me to be a hillbelly and expose my navel!" She then reached down as if to unbotton her blouse, and then lifted her hands

back up.

"I ain't gonna be a Smoky Mountain slut."

"Well, speaking of song production," said Brad, "I WOUldn't give a damn how they messed up one of ~ songs, at least if

I wrote it for someone else." He grinned. "Just send me my royalties and 1111 love it. Each time I cash the check."

"Buddy Holly would say, that'll be the day," laughed Walter.

"Do you know what the odds are at getting a song even listened to, downtown? Maybe one chance in ten." He smiled at Sally. "Now if you're cute enough, and on their label, you'll have

a chance to cut a song no one wants, but theylll own the

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page '14

publishing of it. Shit--I mean, shoot, publishing beats singing. Why do the producers cOincidentally have their publishing names on half the songs on those albums? Your hit may have come from somewhere else--but they try to control the other nine songs,

or as many as they can. Good, mediocre, or bad."

The waitress brought Brad his first beer. He gauged it

as worth one hour. More than one beer an hour and he wouldn't do a good job. He and Craig talked and talked about songwriting, and what they might accomplish.

Then around nine-fifteen, Billy Lottis climbed onstage once more, and waved.

irListen up. This next singer is someone from east of here, up near the Smokies. From Monarch Records •.• let's hear it for ••• SAL-L-L-L-Y REA-A-A-GAN!"

Without saying a word she lit into a mountain love-hate song, "What's He Selling Besides Tobacco?," about a farmer who marketed more than tobacco when he went downtown to, presumably, Sevierville, and left his wife back in her Little Pigeon River cabin. Followed by a gospel number, "A Message From Heaven," about a baby saying hello to her parents from her new home up

above.

"Thank you all so much," she said for the applause.

Somehow, she got away with saying so little, but looking so intent, that the audience seemed hypnotized. Then Sally did some routine love songs, necessary for any wonman's career.

But her closing number, "Pittman Center Road stop" was a humorous truck-driving love song, a Dollyesque spoof of lust down by

the creek.

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page 5

"Sally, those were pretty good," said Brad, which is what every writer-says-to-every writer, at writer's night. nlA Message From Heaven' sounds like a true story. I sure hope it don't come true for me. My wife and I are going to have

a baby pretty soon. Well, she'.§. going to have it. But

is your's a true family number?"

"Well, there're Reagans allover the Smokies, in the hills and in the valleys. So I'm sure the song happened many times. But what inspired it was my trip up to one special graveyard. Half of the tombstones were for infants. No one remembers why they put them all there."

Brad didn't know what to say. Finally he managed, "Well, I'll bet some of the ghosts up in the mountains are nice little phantoms. Not nasty ghosts, at all."

She laughed and he felt she was looking closer at him than with mere professional courtesy.

In fact, he remembered he was married. outside to the pay phone.

"Uh, how's it going, honey?," he asked Caroline.

So he headed

"Just fine--at least I feel better. But something odd about this neighborhood. Someone came by looking for you. Left his card. Says he's a music consultant."

"I guess that's good news!" exulted Brad.

"Well, we'll see." She sounded a little diffident. "Is something wrong?"

"My mother called. She wonders if she can help us with this house ... "

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT page 6

"My God, that's even better. Ah, how can I thank her--

and •.• urn ••• you? "

Whoom .•• a large truck rolled past on Church Street. "I can hardly hear you, there's so much traffic. Gee, we've got a lot going. Well, I'll be home in a while. Got to get ready for my set. In just a few minutes."

"Bye bye, dear."

Brad felt split in half. The threatening note versus their possibly firm foundation in Nashville. Success--or annihilation, thanks to the Satanists??? He forced his brain back onto his songs, and headed inside.

And grabbed his guitar. Then he stepped back onto the sidewalk and into the parking lot. To tune his six-string acoustic instrument. Unlike his friends, he didn't trust his tuning--he wanted to tune up finally, right before his gig.

He liked to play one string off against the other, and he never. used a pitch pipe. When he became a millionaire superstar,

he still wasn't going to buy an electronic tuning device.

About twenty minutes later, Billy Lottis climbed onstage and announced him: "This guy I know you're going to love--well,

really admire.

I mean respect, but his songs are so original ... "

Lottis seemed to be running out of what to say, and Brad tried to keep from laughing. Ninety-five per cent of all sidewalk songwriters are "original"--and are until they die, mostly with unrecorded songs.

Brad announced his first one: "Unhh, about half of you 'all are going to fit into this first song ..• someday." It was his

WRITER S NIGHT, WRITER S FRIGHT

page I

divorce anthem, IIFifty Per Cent Of The American Dreams

Get Busted.1I He pounded it out with a syncopated rhythm--and

lines like lIone half of the brides and grooms pay lawyers'

fees/ Fifty per cent of the couples are coming un-coupled/

But the exact percentage of tears, nobody sees" was his

repetitive chorus.

Laughter resulted, and some couples looked at each other.

No doubt some fathers and mothers felt the song was about

them .•• or maybe would be, once their marriage got finished,

IINow here's a little song in waltz time. But don't none

of you dance to it.1I And he thumped out IIFour Kinds of

Heartbreak." Sally Reagan clapped hard after he finished

it.

IIAnd now, here's a little song out of reverence to

Nashville ," Brad said I with his typical sardonic humor. He

performed one held written in Portland called IISupernatural

Country Troubadour,1I parodying, slightly, the ancient country *

hit, liThe Wreck of the Old 97."

IIHe walks into the bar

And he unpacks his guitar,

His face is hol~ow-eyed and oh, so pale; He sends a tremor through your soul

When he makes those train songs roll--

You can hear old '97 down the rail,

You can hear old '97 down the rail."

IIHe doesn't give his name

But he sings good, just the same,

He's a country music phantom floating by.

So you throw those dollar bills And his pitcher quickly fills,

But you can see right through his body, if you try-You can see right through his body if you try. "

*

Vernon Daihart's 1925 hit (he recorded six versions).

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page 8

"He's the spirit of the heroes who've sung their songs before,

He's the supernatural country troubadour; He's the spirit of the heroes

who've sung their songs before,

He's the supernatural country troubadour."

"All those stories he could tell-He knew Stephen Foster well,

He knew the Carters, and Woody Guthrie too!

Now his guitar's back in the case-Where he stood, there's empty space--

It's a Tennessee ghost story coming true."

"He's the spirit of the heroes who've sung their songs before,

He's the supernatural country troubadour, He's the spirit of the heroes

who've sung and died before,

He's the supernatural country troubadour ••• And the wreck of the '97's on the line, And the wreck of the '97's on the line."

He left the stage with a smirk. The audience paused

and gradually began applauding.

Several people were looking

l

\

\

I

at each other, and there was some whispering.

"Very good.

There's nothing like being weird," exclaimed

Billy Lottis, who then seemed to blush over maybe saying the

wrong thing.

"Well, there's nothing better than being weird."

Pause.

"And, uh, you give Nashville credit.

Now that's nice!"

Back at the table Sally Reagan was smiling.

"Maybe you should come to the Smokies sometime. And

find some ghosts to sing about."

Brad grinned. But Caroline's face was flashing in his

mind.

"Well, that might be a good idea," he said vaguely.

"I've got a sister who's trying to write some kind of ghost

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page 9

novel.

She thinks it's a latterday Wuthering Heights.

We've

got a drunken uncle who used to pitch his songs on Music Row.

He got one recorded.

One of my brothers thinks that he'~ going

to be a Smoky Mountain rocker. The first.

I just don't know.

Some journalist in Gatlinburg calls us East Tennessee Brontes.

Calls my uncle Branwell Bronte.

I'd never heard of him, but

I looked him up down at the UT [University of Tennessee] library

in Knoxville.

He was the Brontes' drunken brother who

committed suicide.

He supposedly wrote uncanny poems.

I don't

mind being a Bronte, if I can have a best-selling album."

"You writing any bizarre songs?"

She smiled.

"Maybe •••. "

"Well, you don't need !!.!y help.

Women can be just as weird

as men if they decide to be. Weirdness is good for art and

l

I

especially for money."

"Oh? I don't think ghost songs go over on the jukeboxes.

Or the car radio."

"Well, what about 'The Long Black Veil'? That's one of

those ancient English ballads written in Nashville way back

many yea&rs ago--"

"Oh yeah.

Caused by some Catholic priest who really got

murdered.

And the wild song says it happened ten years ago,

with someone slaughtered.

Co-written by a man [Danny Dill] ... and

some woman, named Marijohn Wilkin."

"Oh, I think I've heard of her," responded Brad.

"And she used to hold ESP sessions up in her house," added

Caroline.

"Brought in lots of the big songwriters.

But she

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page 10

finally woke up.

She's a committed Christian, these days--

tlith that 'One Day At A Time' she wrote with Kris Kristofferson."

Then she looked down at her drink.

"But--I'm not so afraid.

Maybe I'll still write one or two unusual tunes.

Just to get

some Smokies' stuff out of my system." Pause.

"My grandmother

knows too much about the White Caps. They were a vigilante

bunch of citizens, that, hey--tried to clean up the mountains

by killing wanton women. Whores, they claimed. Now up in the

mountains, if a man runs around, he's just a 'rounder'--but

if a woman does, she's 'trash'--a 'slut. I

The redneck men rule

our language.

Hell, journalism and everything else is run by

the men.

For good reason. Money. They like us to go to church,

to keep happy, and stay out of their extra-lives. Men are nice

at horne, but the rest of their story ain't ours." Pause.

"Oh,

I hope you don't think I'm too mean.

Anyway, up in the Smokies

after those women were murdered, by the White Caps, they are

eternal. You see them in the woods, sometimes.

They're nice

ghosts, they don't mean you any harm.

But they remind you of

who killed Whom."

"Gee, that's a sweet story. Murdered hookers becoming

nice ghosts. A happy ending, I guess." ,

"Well, I'm going to write something about that for my next

album.

If I have a next album." She looked at Walter Crain

with a faked frown.

"But I'll do 'ern anyway.

If just to upset

the White Cap descendants "ho are so nice these days."

"Uhh, I think I've got to yo," said Brad.

He disliked

looking at a clock but it was now 11 :48 P.M.

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page 11

"I've got to go to work in the morning."

"What do you do, Brad?," she asked.

"Oh, just some government stuff.

I work with those

disabled folks .•• "

"One of my brothers is disabled. According to the

Feds. He's unstable thanks to Vietnam.

I don't want to tell

you the rest. The government might 'dispose' of me if I let

you know. At least he's alive. He wasn't supposed to be where

he was, or doing what he was. They lied to my parents and said

he was dead. When he showed up alive, they had to change their

paperwork. It's understandable ... you got to payout more money,

to a live veteran instead of to his parents, if he was dead.

I'll bet we got a lot of prisoners in North Vietnam who are

'dead' according to the stinking government."

Pause.

"They *

paid my parents $4,000 for his 'death.' Death is cheaper."

"Well, be careful. I might be a secret team agent. You

might mysteriously disappear."

"Come to think of it, I'm not afraid of being 'disposed

of.' Women in the Smokies are braver than the men. Anyway,

here's the rest--he was helping our South Vietnam allies run

opium. That was their business, and we supported it. Opium

leads to heroin, you know. He got hooked on the patriotic drug **

he was running. He's off it now, however. Cleaned up."

Brad started to blurt out that Coleridge used opium, so

*

"'Dead' war agents sue u.S. for back pay," The Tennessean, June 9, 1 996 .

**

Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972); rev. expanded ed. The POlitics o~Heroin: CIA---Complicity in The Global Drug Trade (1991).

\,

(

I

I

f

J

i

)

WRITER'S NIGHT, WRITER'S FRIGHT

page 12

maybe some of his poetry came from there, but he stiffled his latest bad taste joke. Shit, even Keats took some opium .•• "We got a lot to talk about," he said finally. "Well, let's get some more songs written. Separately. And maybe someday ... together. II

She must be trying to attract me, Brad thought. She must have guessed that his number one priority was curiosity_ No doubt he was supposed to bring his guitar and notebook up to the Smokies--not to mention, his pistol.

He loaded his guitar into his car, and pulled out of the parking lot. His body trembled with chill, as all his vanity over his songs evaporated--and in his mind he began re-reading the note he found in the mailbox. And he felt some self-hatred at leaving Caroline alone in their house. If he told her the whole truth, she'd lose her mind in fear. Not to mention, maybe her job, maybe their marriage. Oh, yes, and their baby. Yet

if he kept it secret, she'd die in the house, thanks to the colorful neighborhood Satanists.