The Bass Player by Drake Koefoed - HTML preview

* * *

When Sarah found out the Diego was sitting around in an old house in West Texas that could be broken into with a screwdriver, she had it shipped to the studio in Houston to be kept in a temperature and humidity controlled vault containing Stradivarius violins and stuff like that, and guarded by people who were very serious about their work.  She allowed it to be rented for truly outrageous rates, from which she did indeed take her percentage.  Most of the players she let near it were classical guitarists who washed their hands before they touched it.

“The problem,” Sarah explained,  “is that the few that have been sold only went for a few thousand because they are nothing much to look at.  Most of them pass by inheritance.”

She got Bert a strange arrangement for an Italian clothing company where she would play various gigs in New England for two months.  Bert would use a very nice leased guitar for the gigs, and then record her music in Houston on the Diego.  It was acoustic and vocal stuff, so the boys would stay home.  Bert's mom said she would be fine, most likely watching soap operas with her next door neighbor.  Sammy would ship CDs, and Keith would rock driveways.  

Jill got in some kind of dispute with Marie, and rock for the yard was not going to happen.  The guy who sold rock to Keith had found out from his wife that she had never questioned Keith's checks.  He apologized, perhaps worried that Tiny might do something.  Tiny only made people nervous.  He wouldn't actually hit anyone except as a last resort, and he certainly would not have hit Syd, who would beat him senseless.  Keith didn't care about all that.  He accepted that the guy thought he was a cash only customer.  Marie brought rock for the yard, and Keith spread it.  Jill got mad at Marie, and Cedric had to resolve that.  Women's disputes are not any sillier than men's.  How could they be?  They are simply incomprehensible to us.  If you made Cedric angry, he would think about punching your lights out, but most likely not do it.  You would see him next week, buy him a beer and it would be over.  With women, it is much more complicated.

Marie decided the price of scrap steel would be low for a long time, and so she and Keith stripped the cars and took them one or two at a time to the steam crusher when she had a return load.  She had the usual crusher guy run down death row.  When she got the yard almost empty, she got the quarry to send Cattie, her motor grader and attitude, and flatten it all out nice.  They stripped some more cars and trashed them.  They moved a few over to the other side, and had Cattie finish the yard.  They got one big truck full of gravel and piled it in the back corner of the lot so Keith could keep the potholes filled.  They got almost all the cars stripped.  Marie took Cattie to the yard at City Salvage to see the steam crusher work.  She was pretty impressed with the sound.  She had them bring one to the quarry, where she free spooled a 116 cubic yard bucket 165 feet down on it with a full load of rock, about 140 tons.  It hit at somewhere around 50 miles an hour, and flattened the car pretty nicely.  Had Cattie not hit the brake at the right moment, she would have tangled up a cable that cost $10,000, but Keith and Marie were blissfully unaware.  Keith got it on video and sent it to Sarah, who thought it was pretty nifty.  The smashed car went to City Salvage.

Cedric found a 9 foot rattlesnake trying to get away from an old shed he was wrecking.  He put it in a 5 gallon bucket and put the lid on it.  Keith called a lady named Cindy he did not know, but had in a directory.  She wanted the snake, and came for him.  She gave Cedric $50 and asked if she could round up the rest of the rattlesnakes on the property.  Cedric was agreeable, and she had him push the shed the rest of the way out of the way and overturn a foundation rock.  Out they came.  Cindy picked them up with a grabbing tool and put them in boxes.  The grabbing tool was a pole with a pair of fingers and a thumb on it.  

“What else are you tearing down here?”

“The little house and that chicken house.”

“Can I have the snakes?”

“Sure.”

Cedric pushed over the chicken house and she picked up more rattlesnakes.  He knocked down the house and bashed the junk with his backhoe and more came out.  Cindy shoveled them into her boxes like they were horse manure.  When it looked like they had all been found, Cindy gave him her card.  “Do you want a hatband?”

Cedric looked at the one on Cindy's cowboy hat.  It had a snake skin coiled around it with the head at one end and the tail at the other.  “Too creepy for me.”

Jill came with the dumper.  Cedric introduced them.

“Don't you put any snakes in my truck.  We're not bringing them to the clubhouse.”

Cindy said, “I'll watch.”

“You can't see them all.”

“Remember what I do for a living.  Cedric, bash those boards with your hoe.  They will be better firewood, and the snakes will scatter.”

Cedric bashed, and rattlesnakes are more timid than often thought.  They were not hanging around to see what else the backhoe could do after it pushed the house over.  Jill took the junk to the clubhouse, and the greenhouse night crew fed the wood into the stove.  Some pieces of pipe got welded to old hoes and rakes to become the kind of tool you left in the yard.  Some of the junk went to Patrick's, where he put things in the forge and bashed them on the anvil.  He made tools like a three prong cultivator with a hoe on the back, a steel pipe handle, and a piece of hose on the handle.  

The night crew coiled up pieces of electric cable and burned the insulation off them.  It might have been better if the foundry had done it, or maybe not.  They used an electromagnet to pick steel out of the ashes.  They straightened large nails and spikes on an anvil, and sorted out old square nails to sell on eBay.  

The owner decided not to pay Cedric, because the owner was that kind of guy.  He could have sold it cheap.  He could have sold it to the town, but he just stiffed everyone.  Thomas hit the courthouse and the owner was no longer an owner.  Cedric and Keith smoothed the land out, and got Tony to disc it.  Then they leased it to the town as a park.  The town would never get the taxes, but it would have a park for 10 years paid by money it would never  have collected anyway.  The Roving Troublemakers put up some swing sets with telephone poles to support them.  The town's insurance had to cover it, but that was not expensive.  One of the little bits of mischief the courts have done is to riddle the doctrine of sovereign immunity with holes.  This makes it impossible, even with a town or city to help you, to allow public use of private land and not be liable.  You cannot let people take what they want from a junk house for free and not be liable.  A city needs to hold the landowner harmless, and buy insurance.  Another bit of mischief says air pollution laws, regularly ignored by factories owned by rich people, prohibit volunteer fire departments from burning down useless houses to practice for saving people's lives in real fires.  If your child dies in a fire, be assured the judges who caused it are not liable.  Judicial immunity is alive and well.

* * *

Keith did some driveways.  Bert called.  She was doing well with the folk songs.  She had some nice clothes she could keep.  The church mice were getting some crusts.  Sammy was shipping piles of CDs, a few of which were their own.  Keith had his occasional job, but was mostly just hauling gravel around.  

“I don't want the band to break up, Keith.”

“Nobody does, but you do what you need to do.”

“I'm not going to be a folk singer.”

“Up to you.”

“No.  But up to who?”

“I don't know.”

“This is so hard.  I want to keep us together, but we keep doing what looks like the right thing, and it doesn't work.”

“I don't understand it either.”

“It must be my fault.”

“I don't see that.  You've worked very hard to make it work.”

“But it didn't.”

“If you give up, I won't blame you, but if you don't, I am still willing to try.”

“I'm asking you guys to sacrifice for my dream.”

“We don't feel that way.”

“I'm going to hang up 'cause I don't want you to hear me cry.”

“Don't cry, Bert.”  But she had hung up.

* * *

When Boo came next, the price of crawfish had gone way up, so they were not going to eat them.  Keith, Sammy, Cedric, Jill, Freddie, and Cindy were there.  Shane came and bought two bags of shrimp but didn't want to stay.  Boo looked at the vegetables in the failing light.  “I already sold some stuff to the club.  Let's have some oysters, and I'll look around for whatever else you have.”

They went in.  Boo brought in a bag of oysters, dumped half in  the sink and put the bag in the reefer.  Keith started rinsing off the oysters, which were in the sink that drained to the fish pond.

“Is Bert all right?”

“She is doing the folk singing gig.  She is worried about her mom and the band.”

“Worrying wear you out.”

Sammy leveled out the coals, pushed a couple of logs to the back, and put the grill in the fireplace.  It was still kind of cool and windy out.  Keith brought some oysters over, and Sammy laid them out on the grill.

Keith got a bottle of Cuervo Gold.  “Sammy got you some tequila.”

“Sammy, you don't need to do that.”

“You should see his store.  He sells a bike here and there, but the place looks like 'Mailboxes and Stuff' until the postal carrier comes.  She pulls her truck in the bay and they have coffee.”

“Ah, come on, Keith.”

“Bert thinks we are on the long slow load to breaking up.”

“You never had problems.”

Cindy said, “The elephant in the room is telling you Bert thinks she has failed.”

“Call Kent Kirkpatrick and have him tell her how hard the music business is.”

Sammy said, “Boo, we just can't call him.”

Kent Kirkpatrick was a country music legend.  Kent might pick up the phone for the President of the United States.

“Call this number in the morning.  Kent play his first gig for my great uncle Sazz.  Now you tell me what wrong with Bert.”

Sammy turned the oysters.  “She is playing folk music for a clothing company.”

“I know that.”

Keith was crushing garlic.  “She is modeling, really.  She takes a break and comes out in a different outfit.  She walks around their 'event' and plays Joan Baez type stuff.”

Sammy took the oysters off the grill.  Most were open, the rest would open from the heat in the shells.  When they open, they are cooked.

Boo said, “She has a gig.  You have played alone more gigs than she has, she takes that all right.  Now she is out making money, you are putting rocks on driveways.  What's the problem?”

“She thinks we have 'sacrificed for her dream.'  If not for her, I would be a Hollywood plastic surgeon, and Sammy would be a dentist at a prestigious Park Avenue location.”

Freddie said, “Give it a rest.  She thinks she is Meriwether Lewis and she just found out she has taken us to Mexico.”

Cedric said, “It might be, like, a crisis of confidence.”

Jill said, “She might think she has not only made a mess of her own life, she has taken the two best friends she has down with her.  You trusted her to pilot the ship and she just ran it aground.”

Freddie said, “That would be almost the worst thing you could imagine.”

Cindy said, “You are going to have to talk this out.  On the phone is not so good.  If she has really lost her will, you can hit the road with Boo, go to work for Cedric, or go to Argentina and get a spot by the fire with Jorge.  Sammy can do his shipping thing, or find another band.  A good drummer is a 'you never know what you had till it's gone' thing.  With some luck, he might find a hot band whose drummer just had a little too much white stuff.  He would be priceless.  Bert hasn't ruined your lives, but if she gives up hope, she still might.”

 

Chapter 11 Crisis of Confidence

 

 

When Bert got back, The band had a conference with Thomas at Keith's.

Thomas said, “We have been trying to figure out how to have you guys back.  Lennie, the CPA, went over the books Al left us.  He looked at receipts for the days you played and for the similar days you did not.  What he came up with is, the bar could generally sell as much more as what it paid you.  But when you put in cost of goods sold, he couldn't pencil it out so that it was worth having a band.  We don't have New Year's Eve figures because he always had a band then, and there are good reasons to think you would fall on your face that night without a band.  So the club says, 'well, we want live music.'  But everyone is thinking they would pay a few dollars cover charge even though they own the bar.  Thing is, that will not really make it.  Al had the advantage of a paid off mortgage, which the Troublemakers do not have.  We can get a very nice juke box on a percentage lease, and that looks like the best choice from an economic point of view.  We can book private parties in the little room, and we might even just flat insist that they hire your band.  Still, in the foreseeable future, it will not be what it was.”

Bert said, “We're going to be replaced by a juke box?”

“We are all resisting that conclusion.  Lennie likes it less than most.  But it's logically the best way to go.  No money up front, nothing to lose.  We told them they didn't have you on their play list, which is streaming media.  They called Sarah, she talked to the publisher, and they agreed to put everything you have on it.  So you will be finding an item on your monthly checks for Kensington streaming media jukeboxes.”

Bert said, “But we won't have a gig like that again.”

“I hope it doesn't happen like that, Bert.  Some of the guys think they can get you some real good short gigs, like playing rodeos.  We might be able to get an old time rodeo announcer who has emphysema to teach you how to do that.  Can you sing the Star Spangled Banner?”

Keith said, “She can, with a full octave to spare.”

Thomas said, “Well, I'm sure you could do it all.  It's just a witty comment here, a little teasing there.  You tell everyone, 'Next we have Keith Thomas, who thinks he can ride a bull, and Midnight Terror, who knows he can't.'”

Bert said, “Thank you, Thomas, and thanks for your offer to help.  We'll look at anything we can do so long as these guys still want to play.”

“We believe in you, Bert.”

He went back across the street.

“Well, guys, I think we're just not going to make it.  I'm not gonna be able to go on the road with Mom here.  Sammy has his shipping gig, his shop and his house.  It may not pay much of anything.  But he can make it, and if he gave it up, he couldn't live in a place where his housing costs him almost nothing.  Keith, you could keep this little house, and nobody will mess with it, with your private police department across the street.  You can play studio gigs, and so can Sammy.  I'm just holding you back.”

Keith said, “Seems to me most of what we have going came out of our association with you.”

“I'm dragging you down.  You could be doing studio work in Houston or something.”

“Bert,  do you still want to play music?”

“Of course.”

“Then let's take a little while to figure it out.  We should talk to Sarah right away.”

“Let's do that.”

Keith dialed.  He got Sarah on speaker.  “Sarah, Bert is having a crisis of confidence.  She is thinking of quitting music.”

“Just when I had you guys covering my pickles.  Why, Bert?”

“We're not making it.  I have my Mom to take care of.  I'm dragging down the people who have helped me most.”

“So what should I do?”

“Tell everyone I've quit.  I'm beat.  I can't make a living doing this.  Let me go.”

“That is exactly what you should not do.  You have a contract.  It's a recording contract.  You got a sign on bonus, and you would have every reason to expect the publisher to want it back.  The minute you tell them that if you record something for sale you might go outside the contract, you are the enemy.  You will meet their lawyers.  As long as you don't have anything, they will just sit like alligators with their eyes and nostrils showing, and do nothing.  The execs are as disappointed as you are.  You need to be an ally and cry in your beer with them.  If you don't get any gigs, or just a few, and no new songs, they will still like you.  You tried, you were dedicated to the label.  Disloyalty is what will set them after you.”

“You don't know what it's like, Sarah.”

“Because I'm a lawyer, that would be?  I'd have to be a musician to understand, I suppose.”

“It's one thing to listen, and another to try to play.”

“Well, then, maybe I know more than you think.  I play in bars here in the Big Apple.  I play piano, sax, violin, guitar, and trumpet.  Now back to the issue.  I can tell them you are in a crisis of confidence, and that will go fine.  Is there a place to stay in Blue Cat?”

“An overpriced bed and breakfast.”

“Is it any good?”

“Don't know.”

“Keith, are you still inspired?”

“I have a few tunes we have not done much with because they are sort of, not really Texas.”

“Sammy?  Would you do studio jobs in Houston, assuming mileage payments, meals, housing and all that?”

“Sure.  I would just need someone to mind the shop, and there are a few people who would.”

“Everyone.  What does it say on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?”

“Don't Panic.”

“Bert, I think the publisher will want you to talk to its star guy for making people feel better about things.  His name is Ira Levine.  Probably this week.”

“All right.”

“Keith, I feel another big fat box set coming.  Try to write us a good little bunch for a regular CD.  An hour if you can do it.  We're going to use the car crushing.  Lots of that kind of stuff.  Make a kind of trademark of it.  When you buy a Bert McCall album, you get some fun stuff with it.  That steam crusher is amazing.  And the running over death row stuff, too.   See what else is available.  You're a good cameraman and most of your stuff is well into professional publishable quality.”

“We'll see what we can do.”

* * *

They took a trip to Texas A&M, where one of the Troublemakers had a daughter studying arachnids.  It had turned out that once Bert knew a tarantula was not biting, she didn't mind it walking on her.  They filmed a comedy song where everyone tells her something is on her shoulder, in her hair, walking down her arm and she keeps playing a folk song, telling them it isn't anything.  Some college students did the audio and visuals.  They had good equipment and they wanted to be mentioned in the credits.  Bert played with pythons wrapped around her arm, Her feet resting on wolves, and stuff like that.  Another university provided access to film a huge mass of rattlesnakes, who were stimulated by the sight and smell of a rat.  

Ira Levine came, and talked with Bert very late at night.  He was a psychiatrist, and could give her a few pills to help her get to sleep on a bad night, and that sort of thing.  The students got to go around with her to make her folk song album, which eventually ran to 110 minutes.  They were supervised by their professor, and an engineer and Ira, who got the publisher to pay for a new engine in the tour bus done in 24 hours.  The shop overbid the job, and got a new engine and transmission.

They made stops at some famous bars, and Bert played them until she almost had to be carried out.  Everyone had a high resolution digital camera, and everyone blasted away with them.  The publisher sorted through half a million stills, and a thousand hours of video to make the bonus disks. Juan invited the band to the ranch, where they mastered the songs as a band.  He made no demands, but they did the the 34 minutes of new tunes as a band.  There were some interviews in the set with the band members walking on the Pampas, or riding with Juan, looking over some great cattle.  The box sets showed up in a movie with Syd Silver.  They were just there on the shelf, but the implication was that the guy who had them had taste.

The implication of the whole campaign was that the band was going somewhere, although only little segments showed Bert playing with Keith and Sammy.  They were fine with that, because they wanted to play some music, and neither felt the need for recognition Bert did.  

* * *

The album did all right, but it was nothing special in the scheme of things.  Bert went home.  She talked with her Mom.

“I found out that Big Al was giving us a gig when it really didn't pay.”

“Bar owners like to have live music.  If you do, you are a cut above a juke box bar.”

“He didn't have money to waste.  Thomas said he was not making a whole lot any time, really.”

“He loved that bar.  Loved being there with his bands and all that.  Then you came along.”

“Another band.”

“Bert, something I never thought I would tell you.  But I don't think I can leave it where you never know.  I won't be around much longer, and I have to decide if I tell you now, or you never know.”

“What is it, Mom?”

“Big Al was your father.”

“Woody was my father.”

“Al wanted to recognize you.  At that time, having a child without a marriage would have been scandalous.  He said he would not tolerate an abortion, but he would support my child.  Woody was long gone and worthless, and that made it easy.  I could be forgiven for what I did.  You see, I told Al I was taking birth control, but I wasn't.  I wasn't thinking, either, but maybe God was thinking for me to make you.  My treasure.  Bert, you are the only good thing I have done.”

“That isn't so, Mom.”

“We won't argue.  You are the best if not the only.”

“I called him a nigger, Mom, and I said I hated him.”

“Was there a reason for that?”

“No.  Not anything, I can't justify it.”

“Every child hates his parents at some point.  Care becomes oppression, but you don't know when they will feel that, and you are afraid for your children.  If you ever have children, you will know how scary it is to let them out of your sight.”

“I didn't know he was my Dad.  I thought it was Woody.  I guess maybe I never trusted men because of that.”

“Woody screwed us over enough to cover any mistrust you had laying around, but maybe you should find a good man before you get old, and they don't care any more.  Men are not bad, but they want that pretty little thing.  They get used to it when you get old if you have a real bond.  Or they just wander off into the wilderness, which is not as scary for them as it is for a woman.”

“So are you telling me I need to look harder?”

“If a man is what you want, yes.  Get one whose wife crashed a car or joined the dark side of the force or whatever.”

“I wish you had a family, Bert, but if you don't want one, don't do it for anyone else.”

Bert cried herself to sleep, and got up determined to see what Keith could tell her about all this.  Keith was gone.  He was taking a car to Alamogordo on the skid truck.  She called Ira, but it didn't seem he had much to tell her.  She went to Sammy's shop.  Sammy had just bought 20 for real racing bicycles from an Italian company that relied on bicycle racing for publicity, much as American companies advertised with “Stock car” racing.  Sammy was switching parts around to make ready to race bicycles, and figuring to tune down the least desired to ordinary people's use.  

“Hi, Bert.  You look kind of down.”

“I am.”

Sammy put a bike in a vise like implement that could hold it at various angles. He put a wrench on each side of a wheel and spun it loose.  “Why so?  Your solo album is good.”

“This can stay between you and me?”

“You, me and Keith?”

“Yeah, duh, you, me and Keith.”

“What's up?”

“I, uh...”

“That bad?”

“My mom just told me who my dad was.”

“Woody, she hates for good reason?”

“Much worse.”

“W. Bush.  Billie Sol Estes.  Edwin Edwards.  Dick Cheney, Carl Rove, Osama bin Laden, No, I know, you are a wicked witch descended from Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao, No let's go all the way to a Syd Silver movie, and it's the Archangel Lucifer.”

“Big Al.”

“Get out.  Big Al would be a father to be proud of.  But how?”

“My Mom just told me.”

“I would rather hear my Dad was Al than Woody.”  He took off the derailleur.  “I sell this kind of stuff on eBay, and make some pretty good bucks.”

“What about the band?”

“Everyone is eating.  We can still find a key and I can still keep a beat.  We all want to see the band continue.  We need to put our force outward.  If we work against each other, that will do us in.  Otherwise, maybe your solo album gets something going for all of us.  At least, it puts a little money in your grocery budget, so you will be able to keep on.”

A big coal black tomcat came down the stairs and looked Bert over.  “This is the bike shop's cat, Coal.”

“Where did he come from?”

“Two kids had to sell their bikes because they were moving, and their Dad said they would not fit in the truck.  The Dad would not sign the receipt, but I have his picture, and a nice close up of his license plate.  The kids said the Dad was going to dump their cat in the wilderness and they wanted him to have a home.  What would happen in a Syd Silver movie?”

“Dad would end up in the wilderness.”

“What I did was beat Dad down to $15 and then sneak a $10 into each kid's pocket.  

Coal got up on Bert's lap and kneaded his way up, ending up purring in her ear.

“Sammy, I don't see how anyone could abandon a cat like this.”

“Cruelty, inconsideration, something on that order.  I told the kids I would take care of him, and they have the bike shop website, so they can look at him sitting in the window and stuff.  Cedric is going to make a cat door.”

“Do you think we can survive to make it as a band?”

“Maybe.  As it stands, we all have paid off houses, none of which will be in Architectural Digest any time soon.  But they are ours, and we have friends who will help us if we need a new furnace or something.  We have income from the albums that will probably keep coming in.  I got $143 last month.  Not a lot, but we live on the cheap here.  90% of the world does not have what we do.”

Bert stared into the distance.  “Some things came together for me, but also some things came apart.  I didn't respect my father.  Can you imagine someone who loved you all your life, and never felt that he could say it?”

“He chose to do what he did.”

A little girl came in with a ten speed.  “Mr. Sammy, I want to get my bubba's bike fixed for his birthday.”

“What's wrong with it, Cassandra?”

“Im dere.  He doan move de chain.”

Sammy pulled the derailleur, and put another much like it in it's place.  “This is a Campagnolo, made in Italy.  Much better than the one we took off.”  He turned the vise.  “Now what I want you to do is to go through the gears.  Keep pedaling, don't stop suddenly.  Don't use the cross gears, like low 5 and high 1.  Use the brake to slow it before you stop pedaling.  Remember you are not on the street.  Brake.  Stay right there.  OK, go again.  Rear shift to second.  Third.  Fourth.  Front to high.  Take the rear to fifth.  All right, now one step at a time, down to second.  Brake and stop pedaling.  I think you're good.  Take it around the courthouse and see.  Try every gear except high 1 and low 5.”  She took off.  

“This is what you do to pass the day, Sammy?”

“This is my job.  Music, well, if we can make it, we will put some hard working deserving guy in this shop, and fly around in our Lear jet.”

The girl came back in with the bike.  “It's perfect, Mr. Sammy.”

“$15.  If it won't shift right, come back.”

“I have $10.”

“We'll take it in eggs.  To me, here, or to Bert, or Keith, or to the clubhouse.”

“My mom wouldn't let me go to the clubhouse.”

“If she changes her mind, Angelo and Tiny have some helmets for kids, and they would be happy to take you for a ride around town.”

“Cassandra, tell your mom that the teller at her bank is a bi