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The Talent Show

KJ Renk

    She took a drag off her cigarette and flicked the ash on the floor. “I was meant to be somebody,” she said, “not the nobody I am. You see I was headed for Opryland but got sidetracked. It weren’t my fault. It was his.” She pointed to the disheveled guy at the end of the bar. “He got me knocked up and how the hell was I going to The Grand Ole Opry totin’ a spittin’-up baby?”
    Even though her application said she was 40, she looked 60 with a scattering of cob-webbed lines on her cheeks. Her bleached platinum hair, accented with a line of gray roots, was broken and split, and ended in an ‘80s rat tail. Her midriff bare and striated with the signs of previous pregnancies, she wore cut-offs cut all the way up to her crotch and her belly swelled from the top of her jeans.
    “I had a Loretta Lynn voice, you know. I could sing better than her and Dolly Parton put together or any of them others, even the new ones; I don’t know their names. Taylor Underwood, I think that’s one of ‘em. They couldn’t hold a candle to me,” she smirked. “I was discovered in the Holiness Church down in Chapman, Alabama and the pastor singled me out to have all the solos in the choir. I sang Blessed Assurance so pretty, just like Angel Gabriel herself. I think my singin’ defeated the devil right then and there. I seen him runnin’ straight for the door, scared out of his ever-lovin’ mind.”
    “I took my voice on the road with that one.” Again she pointed her gnarly finger at her bleary-eyed companion who seemed to have a hard time propping his head up. He was oblivious to her rant. He’d heard it all before.
    “He was my manager and my main instrumentalist. At first he got us good gigs at all them tent revivals in Alabama and Mississippi and eventually moved north into Yankee territory. But we got ran out of a few towns, just cause of him and his boozin’ and carryin’ on with the ladies. I told him and told him to keep his Johnson in his britches, but he ain’t got no sense whatsoever and besides, he’s just a plain bad seed. I’m sure you can tell from lookin’ at him.”
    To me, the man looked no different from all the other drunks at the bar, just more sedate and quiet. He sucked on his bottle like it was mama’s milk.
    “I coulda been somebody – a big star with my handprint in Opryland if weren’t for that no account manager of mine. He dropped the ball when I was invited to sing with Lester Scruggs – said I was sick.”
    “You mean Lester Flatt?”
    “Yeah, that feller.” She lit a second cigarette even before she finished the first and then spit right behind her on the floor.
    “I weren’t sick. He was just afraid that I’d be a big star and leave him for Lester whats-his-name or one a them other fellas, like Woody Williams. ”

    “It’s his fault that I ain’t a star, like a shoulda been. He got me goin’ in the wrong direction and made me start smoking,’ drinkin,’ and even snortin,’ if you know what I mean.” She gave me a little wink and a smile crept over her wrinkled face. “He told me it would ease my stress. I know what you’re gonna say. It ain’t good for my health or this here baby. I beg to differ. Look at Junior there. He’s the one wearin’ the Superman t-shirt. See how fit he is? Fit as a fiddle, aside from one minor problem. But when I win this here show, I’m gonna get that fixed.”
    I shifted my attention to Junior who sat by himself sipping on a Coke. Sporting an enormous t-shirt embossed with Christopher Reeves’ likeness, Junior was scrawny and pock-marked and his thin arms dangled awkwardly. His head was gigantic and I wondered how in the world he managed to hold it up. Clearly the child was brain damaged. Even so, he noticed me gazing at him and he grinned, revealing blackened, broken-off teeth.
    “I drank Jim Beam every day when I was totin’ him inside me and he ain’t worse for the wear, is he? I even gave him some as soon as he was birthed and he took right to it. It calmed him down just like my cousin Arlene said it would.”
    “I know they’re talking about me. They think I’m a loser but you know what? They’re dead wrong. When all is said and done, I’m gonna come out on top, you mark my words. They’re the real losers. All they do is gossip and point their fingers at Junior. They’se just jealous of course, since I got me a fine son and they know I can sing their ever-lovin’ pants off.”
    She paused to take a breath, while I continued to take notes on her application for the show, which would air in a couple of weeks. “America Sings Her Heart Out” was competing with “Celebrity Paternity Test” and “Who Wants to Marry a Bachelor Billionaire” and we needed the best but also the most desperate contestants, those who seemed to come from nowhere and seemed to be going nowhere. This contestant, I privately called Lady Bimbo, took the cake so far in terms of desperation and comic relief. The audience would eat her and her story up. We’d dress her up like Daisy Duke and the audience would hoot and holler, just like they do when folks deride themselves when they dress up on “Let’s Make a Deal.” Now that I thought about it, our show was kind of a crossover from “Deal,” only occasionally we found some real talent. I have to emphasize that it was rare and completely unexpected.
    She continued after I asked her more about her herself and her singing experience. “I never been one to gossip cause I got more important things to do, like practice my repertoire. I sing all the big hits, like “Achey Breaky Heart” and “Your Cheatin’ Heart” – you know the real tear jerkers that make everyone blubber. Sometimes when I sing them songs, I almost lose myself and fall apart right on the stage cause I had my troubles. It ain’t so obvious a course, but yeah, I sang the blues plenty a times. That fella there, the no good one, he cheated on me with Crystal Ball, the fortune teller.”
    I looked at her skeptically. Now this was getting really good.
    “Didn’t tell you that I been workin’ in the carnival these days? That’s where he met that Crystal Ball. I guess I oughta forget about him cheatin’ on me, since Crystal, who is my best friend, looked in her orb and told me that I’m gonna be a star. Course she said that before him and her took up with their scruffin.’ But her prediction made me keep practicing,’ even though I don’t usually get to sing in the carnival. I perform as a clown’s assistant – fetchin’ stuff like his whoopy cushion and bicycle. Sometimes Gonzo the Clown lets me belt out a tune, when he’s setting up his act. Gonzo is a good fella, not like that guy over there.” Again, she made me look at her worse half. “Course bein’ a clown’s assistant don’t pay much but it helps keep us from starvin.’ I’m the breadwinner, you see. I gotta be the one who saves us, cause that no-good one over there is a real jackass good-for-nothing-no-account who ain’t got a pot to piss in.”
    Now she pointed her finger at me. “I’m tellin’ the God’s truth. They can keep whispering all they want. I’m gonna win this thing for my Junior, so he can have his little operation and I can show the world who I really am.”

    Lady B made it into the finals, which surprised the hell out of me. She had no sense of rhythm and had several left feet as they say. One of the auditions required the contestants to learn a country line dance and most of them took right to it, just like a duck to water, as they would say, but not Lady B, who seemed not to have ever danced a country dance in her life. Surely a country girl knew about line dancing, but she appeared never to have done a two-step even. Her huge belly didn’t help, since it disturbed her sense of balance and her poor health in general made her huff and puff, when all the others sashayed and doseydoed without a problem. She kept stopping the show because she’d run into other girls and couldn’t keep time, which made her stumble when she ought to strut. The producer and I talked it over. He was in favor of keeping her in the mix. Maybe she’d catch on and if not, we’d go for bathos and the audience would feel good about themselves, since they weren’t as fumbling and lost as she was. Besides there was something comic about watching a middle-aged pregnant lady dance. She looked like an elephant in cowboy boots, not a pretty sight at all.
    “What about her singing? Have you heard her sing yet?” I asked.
    “No, she claims that her vocal cords need rest, since she practiced so much before she arrived. I thought you listened to her.”
    “I did. But only the recording, which was kinda scratchy, on an old personal 45 record she cut. It wasn’t half bad, but kinda hard to hear.”
    “We gotta hear her sing. This may be a comic show, but we can’t have total losers making it into the final show. That would make us look real bad. We can’t have that, now can we?”

    Junior and Mr. Junior sat and watched Lady B as she tried her best to keep up and whenever I asked her to give me a sample of her singing, she shook her head and said that she had to save her voice for the last round. I’d heard her record. It got her a slot on the show and, if I wanted more, I’d have to wait. Either that or I could stand outside their trailer that they’d hauled behind their beat up Ford Fairlane and she’d sing softly so as not to wear out her voice.
    “Why will you sing in there and not out here?”
    “I told you that I have to have the right conditions to sing. I sing in the shower and I sing like there’s no one watchin’. Plus the shower soothes my strained cords so’s that I don’t permanently injure them. Don’t want to end up like that Julie whats-her-name, you know that Mary Poppings gal, who ruined her voice by singing too much. I coulda told her that she needed to protect her gift and not sing every time someone dropped a quarter in the juke box.”

    I took her up on listening to her outside the trailer. I stood right next to the bathroom and although it was faint her voice was clear and high and sounded a lot like Emmy Lou Harris. When she finished, she strutted out of the trailer with cigarette in hand.
    “How’d you like it?” she asked as she poised the cigarette, waiting for me to light her up.
    I didn’t want to give her a big head, so I didn’t answer. “You know that smoking’s not good for the voice,” I said, as I obliged.
    “Maybe so, but I ain’t about to quit. I been smokin’ since I was eight years old. It’s the smoke that makes my voice what it is, the notes and the song rise up because of that fire I got burnin’ in me, see? But it really ain’t about the voice. It’s the spirit that sings, you know what I mean?” she said as she returned to the dance line and tried to kick up her heels with the rest of them.

    My partner and I were fearful of what would happen when we turned Miss B onto the world. She would either be an utter failure and we’d be mocked on ETV or she’d be like that Welsh singing sensation that everyone initially laughed at. Miss B feigned a sore foot, claiming that she had twisted her ankle and had a bunion from her dancing escapades, but she stood in the Green Room and rocked back and forth on her heels as she hummed, saying that this was her warm up. Junior and Mr. Junior sat on the sofa and seemed tuned out as they both were plugged into their devices. Mr. Junior sported a transistor radio and Junior rocked away on his Sony Walkman. Miss B, dressed like Daisy Duke, was poured into her cutoffs and had a gingham shirt on, which was tied around her belly. Blonde extensions were gathered into braids and her face was dotted with large freckles. She looked ridiculous, kind of like a pregnant Pippi Longstocking, but she didn’t seem to care. Probably in her mind, she looked like a veritable country siren.
    “You ready to go on? You’re on in two minutes,” I said. I felt bad about making this poor woman a laughing stock but felt worse for us, if, indeed, she ruined the show. Advertisers might pull out, if the show ended up being a total bust.
    “You betcha,” she said, smugly. “Light me up, will ya?”
    “Are you kidding me? You aren’t going to smoke as you sing, are you?”
    “Why the hell not? It’s my lucky charm,” she said, as she struck a match and inhaled deeply.

    The spotlight made her look completely washed out, even though we’d piled on makeup like nobody’s business, practically using a putty knife to hide the deep crevices in her face. The audience hooped and hollered as she stood center stage. She dropped her cigarette and crushed it under her boot and then stood up tall. The band began to play the first four measures of “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and Miss B pulled in her breath but nothing came out. The band paused but then started up again, ready for her to bellow out the first lines. Again nothing. She stood there with her mouth open and she seemed startled that no sound came out. The audience was stunned and I was ready to turn in my scout badge and find another line of work; clearly, she couldn’t sing a note.
    As I was about to give up and yank her off the stage, like they used to do in the Gong Show, Junior and Mr. Junior walked on stage, as if they were part of the act, and they each took her arm. The audience roared when they saw those two devils, the one with the enormous head especially and the old man who could barely walk. I felt ashamed that the audience was so scornful, but what do you expect when they’re the same people who love Jerry Springer.
    She looked into Mr. Junior’s eyes and he looked into hers. The audience was pointing their fingers and snickering to beat the band.
    “Now, mama,” Mr. Junior and Junior both said simultaneously, “Show ‘em you ain’t no fool. Show ‘em your stuff. You got what it takes. Don’t let ‘em laugh at you.”
    That was it. The moment. She gave them each a peck on the cheek, patted her swollen abdomen, and as she opened her mouth, they opened theirs, as if on cue. The three of them sang as sweet as the angels, in three-part harmony, with Junior singing bass, and Mr. Junior singing tenor. The devils ran for the door as the Lady B Trio brought the house down.

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