Clawhammer (127 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by FunnyAsCancer (View user info) at 2006-09-23 05:01:41 EDT
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Everyone knew Jim.
He was that old black guy who sat on his porch all day and played banjo. Well, at first he was the young colored man who played banjo, then the Negro who played banjo, and I think just last year he worked his way up to the old black guy who plays banjo. Point is, Jim's been playing banjo on his front porch for a very long time.
Way back when I was a kid growing up in Tennessee, where you were just North enough to not be considered a hick, but still Southern enough to get away with saying "reckon," I'd always lean on Jim's white picket fence, and just listen as he sat there playing his banjo. I was too young to really pay attention to the words, much less really care what they meant. I just appreciated hearing a good song. And Jim could sing, too. He'd howl and wail, and put every bit of himself into the words he sang, the notes he plucked. He coulda gone pro, if he'd wanted to.
But I didn't really care about that, back then. I just liked chewing on a blade of grass and listening to the man, waiting until the rest of the gang finished their homework so we could play a game of baseball before the sun went down. And sometimes, when the sun had given its last hurrah for the evening, and the other kids had gone in for supper, I'd go back and listen some more.
My parents weren't around much. My dad, he worked in the city, and came home late and went to work early. About the only time I ever saw him was when Sunday rolled around, and the whole family shuffled off to church. After that, he'd go and visit the local bars for the rest of the day. And my mom...well, she was there, just...not. She drank a lot too, but she didn't have a job to distract her from that.
So homework came when I felt like it, and dinner was whenever and whatever I felt like making.
Jim filled that void for me a little bit. We didn't have a television, and even if we did, I'm sure Mom would have yelled at me for turning it on and giving her a headache, like she did whenever I flipped on the radio. But I could always walk down the street and listen to some good music, without ever having to bug my mom.
I remember one time, Mom had a bit too much, and started throwing things around the house - glasses, bottles, picture frames, whatever was light enough for her to whip around the room and still get a nice satisfying boom at the end.
I ran from the house crying that night, because I was seven, and when you're seven, there's not much more you can do in that situation. And while I ran, I knew there was only one place I had to go.
Even though I was only wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I fell asleep that night leaning up against that white fence, with Jim still playing. It was just the lullabye I needed to calm me down, and it distracted me from the cold I felt slinking up my pant legs and down my sleeves.
Jim was still there when I woke up the next morning, the sun's early rays just starting to pry open my eyelids. And he was still just playing away, as if darkness had never fallen, and sleep was not an issue. I tried to remember if maybe I had woken up in the middle of the night, and he wasn't there, but it seemed I had slept so soundly despite the concrete mattress, that I had slept the whole night through without so much as a toss.
I stood up to leave, to see if maybe anyone at home had actually noticed I was missing, when a flash of light bounced off Jim's banjo, causing me to look in his direction. And just for a second he looked right at me, stopped playing, and waved, a big ol' friendly grin beaming across his face as he gave a slight chuckle. With that, he picked right up as if he had never stopped at all, and I turned and ran home.
Later that day my mom died.
~~~
You don't really bounce right back from having your mom drink herself to death. In fact, you really don't bounce back, ever at all. There's no, "at least she went out doing something she loved," or "she felt no pain." It's really just the most miserable way you can watch someone go, to explain to people she knowingly did this to herself over a couple decades, and we just sat by and twiddled our thumbs.
But her death did come with some benefits, one being that my father finally started spending some time with me, that was nice. And two, that I learned at a very young age what an evil drinking is. I escaped years of torment and guilt at the hands of the stuff, since it was very plain to see I had the alcoholic gene in my blood.
I wish I could have said the same for my father.
After Mom died, Dad *did* spend a lot more time with me...drinking. He'd sit on the couch with a six-pack by his side, watching the game, occassionally yelling for me to come in and see Pete Rose run the bases. And I would, for a couple minutes, until sitting with him just hurt too much. I hated having to be there with him, to see my mother die all over again, except this time she had stubble and a worse smell.
And so I'd go outside and see if Jim was on his porch. He always was, and that made me feel good inside, to finally have something I could depend upon, besides Mom's Thursday-afternoon bender.
I listened to Jim more during those years than I did the radio. When people asked me if I had heard the new Zeppelin single, I'd have to just shake my head and say no, but I had heard the new song Jim started playing.
Even when I turned sixteen, and got my first car, the only thing I listened to were cassettes I had made of Jim. Sure, the quality wasn't that great, and sure, even the radio had better quality, but I didn't really care. The music was what mattered, and Jim's was the best I had ever heard.
About that time, I finally started paying attention to the words Jim was singing, and how they related to my own life. When I got my first crush, on Stacy Lovett down the street, all I could think about was Jim's version of "Shady Grove." I'd sing to myself as I walked down the street,
"Now when I was a little boy
I wanted a Barlow knife,
And now I want little Shady Grove
to say she'll be my wife."
I'd spend all my days thinking of her, secretly replacing Shady Grove's name with Stacy's when I knew no one was around to hear me sing. And of course, I wanted Stacy to say she'd be my wife, too.
Well luckily for me, Stacey and I fell in love, and one day we eloped off to Las Vegas, leaving my drunk-ass dad and savior Jim far, far behind, never to return again.
~~~
But that's the thing about saying you'll never go back, you always end up right where you left off. You can't help it, whether curiosity gets the best of you, or some unfinished piece of business ends up dragging you back in, kicking and screaming.
I experienced the latter.
About a week ago, I got word that my Dad died. Apparently his liver kinked out on him, after being in and out of the hospital for several years as he drank his sorrows away.
And so I found myself in my old house once more, seeing the same furniture, the same awkward family pictures, the same stains and nicks that one comes to familiarize with after many years in one place. And with those things, those possessions, came the feelings, the memories that never really leave you. There was the bed in which both my mom, and eventually my dad, passed away, two old drunks who bottled up their pain, ironically with a bottle. There was the closet where I hid the night my dad came home drunk, to find an even drunker mom. There I heard the screams and grunts that naturally come during the massacre that is a husband beating his wife, until finally there was only the piercing slap and hollow thud of a 140-pound woman hitting the floor, hard.
But the thing I found in that house that shook me most of all was my old tape recorder, which I found buried deep in my old closet, along with about half a dozen cockroaches. Beaming in amazement, I blew the dust off it, wondering if it still had any life in it. After setting it up, I pressed "play" with a trembling finger, and a soft click/whirr combination let me know that maybe this house wasn't totally dead.
At first there was only static, but soon the first notes came in, the jangle and twang of a banjo, the plinks, the plunks, the slides, the bends, they were all there, exactly as I had heard them growing up. Then the words, the words I stopped singing long ago, when I finally forgot the life I once called my childhood:
"Shady Grove, my little love,
Shady Grove I say.
Shady Grove, my little love,
I'm a-bound to go away."
I ran from the house just then, leaving the spools spinning as I bolted out the front door, hoping to God that this wasn't the only bit of Jim left alive.
It didn't take me long at all to hear the familiar old sounds, the deep husky voice I had heard so often on a weekday afternoon. And the white picket fence was still there, still gleaming in the midday sun like the body of Jim's banjo. And there was Jim, a bit more wrinkled, and a lot more gray-haired, but still the same familiar man I had always loved and respected.
Yet, as I slowed my pace, and neared his fence, I realized, yes, I worshipped the ground this man walked on...but other than that, I knew nothing about him. And it made me wonder, what had I based my developing years on? A neighbor's banjo songs? And then I realized, how do I even know his name is Jim? Do I really know that, or did I just call him that when I was young because I couldn't think of any reason not to?
It seemed right then, that everything I knew was wrong. I had based the most important years of my life on this man's music, and I just honestly had no idea who he was.
And I think that ultimately, that said something about who I was. If I didn't know this man, how did I know myself?
Maybe that's why I found it so hard to talk to him. Because it meant I was questioning myself, that I wasn't sure who I was. Self-realization never comes easy, and I think the fact that I had to realize someone else first made it a bit more difficult.
"Sorry to bother you," I began as he looked up at me, knowing the first words in thirty years' worth of listening would undoubtedly be the most important. "But I don't know if you remember me. When I was a kid, I adored your music. I was out here almost every day, listening to you play that banjo. I even recorded it, so I could listen to it when I couldn't be here. It helped me meet my wife, and it's pretty much shaped every aspect of my life in one way or another, and..."
It hit me right then, and I felt my confidence slipping as I finished that last sentence.
"...I sound like a total lunatic. Wow."
The chuckling started off soft, but soon, Jim was guffawing like a pro, whooping it up at the crazy white guy who came outta nowhere professing his platonic man-crush of over thirty years. But soon he calmed down, and wiping the tears from his eyes, he motioned for me to come over and sit at the empty seat at his side.
"Son, have a seat," he started. "It sounds like you've got quite a yarn to spin, and the best way I know to tell a story is with a banjo goin' off in the background."
I smiled, knowing full well after all these years what he said was true. Walking up the porch stairs, I headed over to the chair, sighing nervously as I sat next to the strangely optimistic old black guy, who's been playing the banjo since I was a kid.
"That's better," he said, picking up the banjo and starting to plunk out a little melody. "What's your name, Son?"
"Michael," I said, beaming.
"Well, Michael, nice to meet you. People used to call me Clawhammer, cause of the way I play this here banjo." He paused for just a moment, as he reached the main riff, his brow concentrating as he let the music speak his soul. Up close, I realized I had never really noticed how much he physically put himself into this music, that this wasn't just a pasttime for him, this was his job. This is what he was put on this earth to do, and damn if he wasn't gonna do it the way it should be done.
When the music finally settled into a more steady tune, he turned and looked at me, his bright white smile matching the gleam of his banjo, and said,
"But you can call me Jim."
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