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originally published January 17, 2008

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Long Gone Blues
by Sam Martin

(a Down in the Dirt chapbook)

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this writing is in the collection book
Decrepit Remains
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Decrepit Remains, the 2008 Down in the Dirt collection book
Hank’s Guitars

Sam Martin

    Jess Barnacle was on shore-leave from the Merchant Marines during the Korean War, so he decided to visit a girl he knew in Nashville. He knocked on her back-door step at eight o’clock one summer morning.
    “Why, Jess, you old son-of-a-gun! Come on in this house!” She was all smiles, not because she was sweet on Jess, but because she loved life. Jess smiled back because he liked pretty girls, and she was just another one. “You want somep’n to eat?” He didn’t, but while she cheerfully scarfed up bacon and eggs and toast and jelly, he drank a cup of Scotch.
    After breakfast, they were resting in the bedroom (Jess had been up all night on the bus ride from his port of entry to her town), and things were going real good, when they heard a scratching on the window screen. Trixie pulled back the shade and smiled. “It’s a friend o’ mine!” she exclaimed. Oh, Shit! Jess said (to himself).
    She motioned to her “friend,” then slid out of the bed and pulled her robe together. Jess followed her through the house to the same back door he’d come in at. She opened it, and there stood a slim young guy with fresh scratches on his face. He wore a cowboy hat tilted back, a torn Western shirt, and Levi’s, the bottoms of which almost reached the soles of the stylish Cowboy boots with the blue stripes down the sides. His nose was long and straight, and his brown eyes showed more knowledge of sorrow than young eyes should. His ears resembled the handles on a water-pitcher, and the lobes were conspicuous by their absence.
    “You been in another fight with a woman!?”
    “Yeh. And a man.”
    Jess then noticed the bruises on Hank’s swollen hands.
    Trixie said, “J. B., I wan’chou to meet a good friend o’ mine, Hank. Of course, he’s a friend to all women.” she admitted grudgingly.
    “Jis’ the good-lookin’ ones.” Hank responded, half-heartedly.
    “Are you a performer?” (Jess winced at his own word.)
    “Yeh. Somep’n like ‘at.” Hank answered.
    The rest of the day, Trixie and Jess walked and talked softly, because Hank slept all day in the only bed in the house. Jess did nap a little, on the floor, using his sea bag for a pillow. Trixie went to sleep on the couch, but woke up when Jess approached her.
    About dusk, Hank got up, spent a few minutes in the bathroom, and asked Jess to lend him a shirt. Jess never saw the shirt again, but considering what happened later that night, he wasn’t surprised.
    They cruised the main drag for a while in Trixie’s car; Hank seemed to be looking for something, or somebody. Suddenly he said, “Stop!” They did, and he got out, and they got out and followed him. He had hocked his guitar and went to get it out.
    “Come on, Joe! You know I’m good for it.”
    “Sorry, Hank. You’ve done this before; I caint carry you no more.”
    “Dam’n, Joe! You’re a poet. Maybe you could write a song for me.”
    “NO, Hank.”
    So they hit the bars, guitar-less, but that didn’t keep Hank from performing...or drinking. People bought for him, and most of them traded a drink for a favor, a memory. “Here, Hank. Play my guitar.” one aspiring C & W star would demand, then another. And he played them all, a little, and sang a little, each request, so that Jess then understood the pain behind the brown eyes, not from the words rendered, but from the sound of them, not from the brief glimpses of Hank’s eyes, but from the scarred soul revealed in even his quick, partial glances.
    They ended up in a crowded dance hall where nobody paid them much attention. No sooner had they sat down than Hank staggered up, bowed from the waist to Trixie, and invited her to dance. As the duo swung away from the table and onto the dance floor, Jess, who hadn’t been able to get drunk no matter how much he drank, began to grow intoxicated with Trixie’s figure, both concealed and revealed by her crinoline skirts and petticoats. Although she wasn’t particularly shapely, or even pretty, and couldn’t boast even one outstanding feature (like two big, beautiful eyes, for example), she still attracted men. Jess decided it must be her personality that allured them; she was simply always cheerful; she could help a man lose the blues.
    While dancing, she flailed her arms around and waved her hands, shuffled and slid her feet across the sawdust-covered floor, and circled and swirled, screaming, and pushing down on her flaring skirts, but only after everybody had seen everything. Meanwhile, Hank guided her, mainly staying in the same small circle, and executing only the tiniest of moves and steps. After the set ended, she lurched, laughing, toward the Ladies Room Area, and Hank found his way back to the table where Jess sat waiting.
    “Boy!” Hank said. “I made her look good, didn’t I?
    Jess laughed out loud, and decided he could get drunk after all.
    “Hank,” he declared, “After they made you, they broke the mold.”
     “No, Jess,” Hank said, with the saddest look of their short history, “They broke the mold before they made me. I come from a broken mold.”
    This was a knee-slapper for Jess, and when he raised his head from down between his knees, Hank was gone. Jess almost instantly grew sober.
    At that instant, the announcer stepped up to the microphone in front of a crowd silent except for scattered female screeching. He proudly boomed out over the mike,
    “And now folks, the one you all been waitin’ for....” (He waited patiently through protracted, loud applause, and interspersed whoops and hollers, and after it nearly all died down, he continued),
    “And now folks, here ‘e is, the pride of the Hayride, the star of the Grand Ole Opry, Mr. Hank Williams!”
    To great applause, a man walked out onto the stage, followed by several men in cowboy outfits, carrying musical instruments, and before the applause died down, launched into a country ballad with a driving rhythm and a sweet delivery.
    Jess stared at the stage for a moment, then shook his head and looked again...at Trixie’s Hank’s near-identical twin! Jess solemnly arose, and soberly and carefully threaded his way through the now-rapt fans to the Men’s Room. Hank wasn’t there, and when Jess couldn’t find him or Trixie anywhere, he went outside and caught a cab to Trixie’s house, but when he and the driver together couldn’t find it, the cabbie took Jess, at no extra charge, to a nearby flop house.
    The next morning brought both light and clarity to Jess, so he knew how to get to Trixie’s on his own. This time, he knocked on the front door, and he at first look believed he was at the wrong house when finally the door creaked open and there stood Trixie nearly unrecognizable, not solely due to her puffy face and red eyes which Jess couldn’t decide had been caused by crying or by punches, but because her essence had apparently been polluted, her equilibrium upset.
    “Yeah?”
    “Trixie?”
    “Yeah?”
    “You okay?”
    No answer.
    “Where’s Hank?”
    “Disappeared.”
    Jess paused. “Don’t worry, Trixie. He’ll come back.”
    She stared at him. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
    On the Greyhound, headed back to his ship, Jess was awakened from a shallow sleep by the sound of singing. He opened his eyes wearily, and saw a cute young girl swaying from side to side, and moving her mouth to the words of the song. Jess looked around, but couldn’t find the source of the music. “Where’s that comin’ from?”
    She reached inside her shirt pocket and pulled out a small plastic rectangle. “From my radio.”
    “That?”
    “Yep, it’s a new transistor. No tubes. You never seen one?”
    “I been in Korea. In the War.”
    “I’m sorry, Mister.”
    “That’s okay, kid. Who’s that singin’?”
    “Luke the Drifter. He’s singin’ ‘You’ll never get out of this world alive.’”
    Just then, the D. J. cut in with an announcement.



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