Mr. Good

I could’ve kicked myself for chasing a woman bass player all the way to Cincinnati: a month after I got there, I left her for a twenty-three-year-old grocery clerk. A few weeks later that was over, too, and I didn’t even have money for a bus ticket back to Dallas. I hadn’t been able to find a gig since I’d moved. I tried finding work in a music store, and then started applying anywhere and everywhere—fast food, motels, convenience stores—and finally to stay out of a homeless shelter I had to pawn the only one of my guitars worth much, a 1965 Gibson Hummingbird. I stayed drunk for two days. Then I started working day labor so I could get it back. I was mixing mortar and carrying bricks, which I hated because it messed with my hands. The second week I smashed a thumbnail.

Everyday I went to the pawnshop to make sure the guitar was still there. The owner looked like a vaguely degenerate antique dealer in a movie. He wore a vest.

Every morning I got up at five and made the half-hour walk to the temp service, a trailer set up in a gravel lot. The place looked like a used car dealership without any cars and the owner was a big thick guy named Purcell who was quick to let you know he was retired Navy. The whole set up was pretty shady. Pay was always in cash and you had to get there before dawn to get a job. Except for me the crowd was all Mexican, illegals I’m pretty sure. They stayed to themselves, so I’d stand alone while we waited for Purcell to show up and smoke and drink coffee and think about how I was going to smash the guitar over a low brick wall once I got it back. My father gave it to me when I was eighteen. One afternoon, 1979, when my high school let out he was in the parking lot sitting on the hood of an old Lincoln he’d parked sideways across five spaces. You couldn’t miss him any way you looked. He was dressed in the same outfit Hank Williams was buried in. I hadn’t heard from him for seven years.

I told my friends I was supposed to meet with a teacher and went back inside and hid in the bathroom—I figured if I waited long enough he’d leave. The janitor ran me out of there so I wouldn’t interfere with his drinking. I killed some time walking the halls, then fooling at my locker. Finally the assistant principal who was locking up made me leave.

He was still outside. It was deserted now. He smiled and waved.

"Thought that was you I saw," he said. "Figured I’d wait."

I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.

"I hear you’re getting ready to be a high school graduate," he said.

I nodded again.

"That’s real good." He cocked his head, looking at me and smiling. "Your grandma don’t mind your hair being that long?"

"She hasn’t said anything."

"First time I came in with a duck tail she chased me with the scissors." He took a pack of cigarettes from his inside coat pocket and rapped it on his knee and a single cigarette jumped halfway out, and if he hadn’t been my father that would’ve been cool as hell.

He wanted to go get a hamburger. The inside of the Lincoln smelled like a strip club at six AM. The radio was missing. I reminded him how to get to McKenna’s, a place that had curb service. After we got our drinks he poured part of his Coke out the window and filled it back up from a pint of bourbon he pulled from under the seat. He offered me the bottle but I shook my head.