Big Man Read online

  I had wandered in here after having lunch at Manny and Ida’s, which was practically next door. I had a Cuban sandwich and conch fritters. I felt good after lunch, and I thought I’d go buy a new book and spend the afternoon reading. I walked in to find a line of parrot-heads lined up waiting to meet the author, who was sitting at a book laden table wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a Hawaiian shirt that looked like it was a thousand years old. I walked up to the head of the line and waited for Jimmy to notice me. It’s very hard not to notice me. Especially in a tiny Florida bookstore a few feet off the highway.

  “You’ll have to get in line with everybody else, sir,” said Jimmy, when he finally looked up.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “I don’t think so, either,” said Jimmy, smiling. “Big Man! Look, everybody, it’s Clarence Clemons!”

  The folks in line smiled. Two big stars for the price of one in a very unlikely setting. Well, one big star and me. They applauded.

  “What are you up to?” said Jimmy. “Are you guys on the road?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We’ll be out till next fall.”

  “Ka-ching!” said Jimmy.

  “Amen,” I said. “Plus I’m working on this book.”

  Now we were sitting on one of the beach couches across the road at Pierre’s. I had a signed copy of Jimmy’s new book. The sun was beginning to sink into the Gulf. I was sipping a beer; Jimmy was drinking iced tea.

  “It’s all about stories,” said Jimmy. “A good book is a good story. Or, from what you’re describing, a series of stories.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Shit, I’ll buy a copy,” said Jimmy.

  “Reason enough to do it right there,” I said.

  “So tell me one,” said Jimmy.

  “One what?”

  “One story. If you’re going to do a whole book of them, you ought to be able to tell me one.”

  I picked up my beer and sipped it. The couches were set in deep, soft beach sand behind the restaurant, and I felt very comfortable. I’d run into Jimmy down here many times over the years. We’d even taken a fishing trip together down into the islands on Jimmy’s seaplane. I feel at home with the guy. We have a lot in common.

  “Rosa Davis,” I said.

  “Who’s Rosa Davis?” asked Jimmy.

  “I’m thirteen, maybe fourteen years old. Rosa was about the same age. I started going to this new school, and she was in the school. I used to walk, and I had to come over this hill just before I got to the school. I used to carry my horn with me ’cause I took band class. You know, music class. I had found music by that time. Anyway, I’ve been going to the school for about a week and I’d seen her around a few times. She was tough. Good looking but kind of a tomboy. Everybody was afraid of her. Anyway, I come up over the hill one morning and she’s standing there waiting for me. I say, ‘How you doing?’ or something and she walks up to me, looks me in the eyes, and pushes me with both hands. She’s a little thing and she’s pushing me. I just laughed.

  “ ‘You think that’s funny?’ she says.

  “ ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I do.’

  “And she hauls off and punches me in the stomach with all her might. She knocked the wind right out of me and I went down like a tree! Boom! I’m on the ground.

  “ ‘See you tomorrow,’ she says, and walks away.

  “So there I am the next morning, and there she is, waiting.

  “ ‘You planning on hitting me again?’ I say.

  “ ‘Yup,’ she says.

  “ ‘I’ll have to hit you back,’ I say.

  “She steps towards me.

  “ ‘You do what you have to do,’ she says, and she punches me again.

  “This time I’m ready, though, so I turn out of the way and I reach out and shove her. She punches me right in the mouth. Boom! My lip is split and I’m bleeding.

  “ ‘See you tomorrow,’ she says.

  “Sure enough, she’s there the next morning. This time I put the horn down and I face off with her. Now I’m a big dude, right? And at the time I was in great shape. She’s a tiny little girl. And she proceeds to beat the shit out of me! I just couldn’t bring myself to really hit her back with a closed fist ’cause I’m afraid I might kill her. So I try to defend myself and just push her away but she keeps coming back and she can hit! Finally I just cover up, and she doesn’t even stop then. She kicks me!

  “ ‘See you tomorrow,’ she says.

  “So now I can’t sleep thinking about what the hell I’m going to do about this. I could walk a couple of miles out of the way and avoid her but shit, I’m not going to run from some tiny chick. That’s nuts! So I figure I’ve got to fight back. I still don’t think I can actually hit her, but I can use my size and my weight to fight back. That was the plan, anyway. I dreaded getting up in the morning. I felt like I was walking into rat city wearing cheese pants.

  “There she is the next morning. I put the horn down and we face off. She tries to kick me in the balls, but I grab her foot and spin her to the ground. She gets up quick and dusts herself off. She looks at me and laughs. She actually laughs. Then she attacks me like an insane person. This time I grab her before she can do any damage, but she stomps on my foot and we fall on the ground. We’re rolling around in the dirt now, and she’s scratching and punching and biting, and I finally roll over on top of her and pin her hands back. It was like trying to hold a cat down. Finally she stops twisting and turning and she looks up at me.

  “ ‘Why are you doing this?’ I say.

  “And she lifts her head up and kisses me.

  “At first I’m too surprised to even realize what’s happening. But after a few seconds it becomes pretty clear what’s happening. Thing is I’ve never been kissed like that before. She was a hell of a kisser. So I start kissing her back. Then she starts ripping at my clothes, and well…

  “Anyway, that’s the story of my first real love.”

  Jimmy wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and finally composed himself. He let out a big sigh and picked up his glass of iced tea. He raised the glass in my direction.

  “Big Man,” he said.

  New York

  Don

  Clarence was being rebuilt in New York that week. He had his first knee-replacement surgery on Monday and was looking at an autumn filled with hospitals and rehabilitation. But the alternative became intolerable.

  “My knees are the worst they’ve ever been,” he said on Sunday. “Maybe it’s because I’m so close to the operations, but the pain this week has been off the charts. I’ll call you as soon as I can. I might not know what I’m saying and I probably won’t remember it, but I’ll call.”

  The Big Man moved forward into the adventure of advancing years with the same positive attitude and optimistic outlook I have always known him to possess. That attitude rubs off on you and explains why hanging with Clarence is such a good experience.

  “I hate traveling now without the band,” he said before leaving for the airport to head up to New York. “I’ve got so much metal in my body I set off all the alarms. And they always pull me out of line and wand me. It’s a royal pain in the ass.”

  Then he had the operations.

  I was back in Los Angeles. I got a call from Bruce’s “body man,” Wayne Lebeaux, who had a weekend break from being with Bruce in Atlanta, where he was continuing work on the album. Wayne’s mom was hospitalized in Boston, and he was headed there to see her before going back to Atlanta on Monday.

  “I talked to Clarence briefly,” he said. “He’s in a lot of pain. He has to go on this machine that flexes the new knee, and it sounds like it’s a bitch. He’s out of it on painkillers right now. There’s not much point in calling him yet.”

  He went on to say that he agreed with Clarence that the new music was great. He also confirmed what Clarence had told me weeks before—that the rumored appearance of Bruce and the Band at the Super Bowl in Tampa had been confirmed.

  I put in a call and
sent an e-mail and waited for news. Waiting never gets any easier.

  A few days later I got the following e-mail from Victoria:

  Hi Don and Judy,

  C is getting better and better every day (better and better good looking every day too;)) the surgery went fantastic. His right knee was replaced with a black implant (not because he is black) The wound looks dry and sealed. His doctor is pleasured with the result. His knee has not been bothering him too much. He takes pain medication every three hours. I am with him all the time. We spent two days in a nice room on the 8th floor overlooking the East river. Then he was brought downstairs to a recovery room where they bring patients right after surgeries to monitor their blood pressure, oxygen level etc…. He was in the same room right after surgery. We’re stuck here for several reasons; low blood pressure, low sodium level, slow kidney function, dehydration. He is on an IV. He got a blood transfusion yesterday. A lot is going on in his body. Doctors are trying to get everything back to normal. Everything is getting back to where it was before the surgery. His doctor didn’t know that he had a chronic kidney disease. Neither did C. His doctor in Florida never mentioned it to him. The blood work C did in Florida showed a mild kidney problem as we found out. His doctor didn’t take it seriously enough to point it out even knowing that C is undergoing a big surgery.

  Now we know.

  C’s condition is stable now but the kidneys need to be followed up by his doctor later. His right ankle is swollen and has some redness on it. It seems like this is normal after a knee replacement surgery.

  He is just very tired. It is hard to get some rest in a hospital. Every 10 minutes different doctors, their assistants and nurses come to ask him questions, check on him etc.

  I heard Don had some health problems too. I don’t know the details. I hope everything is fine. I wish you all the best.

  V.

  I called him later that day and assured them both that I was fine other than a mild case of food poisoning a month ago. It turned out that he was in intensive care and would remain there until things stabilized.

  “The list of things that are working inside you is shorter than the list of things that aren’t,” I told him.

  “Sad but true,” he laughed. “I hate this shit but I really had no choice. I wore out the old knees totally. It was this or a wheelchair. This is better. The new knee is going to be great. It’s just that the rest of my shit is fucked up.”

  A week later I sat with him in his hospital room and found him in incredible pain. His spirits were as low as I’d ever seen them. I was very worried for my old friend.

  A week after that disturbing visit in the hospital, he had moved across the street into a suite at the Bel Air Hotel. He was feeling a little better and the doctors had cut back on the painkillers. He was learning to walk again.

  “Ain’t this a bitch?” he said.

  “I’ve seen you better,” I said.

  “This is the hardest shit I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “They put me on this machine that bends my knee for hours at a time. This is what they do to terrorists when waterboarding doesn’t work.”

  He was propped up on the bed. Victoria had gone out to pick up some movies for him to watch. He put his head back and closed his eyes. He sighed deeply then looked at me.

  “There’s this guy in Florida named Big Dick. He works a strip joint in Islamorada called Woody’s, and he’s got his own band and they play there every night. They’re called Big Dick and the Extenders, and when I’m down there I sit in with them. I’ve known Dick since he first got to town. He’s one of the funniest motherfuckers I’ve ever met in my entire life. He insults the audience. I’ve seen him get into fistfights with the audience. He’s a huge guy, maybe six four, and he’s well over three hundred pounds. He’s fast for a guy that size and he’s tough. Anybody gives him shit and he says, ‘I don’t come over and fuck up your job at Wal-Mart, do I?’

  “He calls the girls who work there ‘cheap whores’ to their faces and they all love him. In fact the whole town loves him. He’s actually a supernice guy and does a lot of charity work. He says he has to or they’ll shut down his pussy palace. Anyway, when I first met him back in the early days, it wasn’t that common to see a black man in a nightclub. Especially a club filled with naked white women. But Dick invited me to sit in with the band, and I’ll never forget that. It was a bold thing to do at the time. He didn’t much give a shit what people said because he was my friend. But when I showed up there and started playing, somebody got nervous and called the cops.

  “Well, this lady cop shows up. She was Cuban and she was smoking hot and we hit it off. When the club closed, Dick stayed behind to count money, and she drove me to his house. I was staying in his guest room.

  “When Dick got home he sees this cop car parked in his yard. He goes into the house and finds this trail of clothes going from the front door all the way up the stairs to the door of my room. It was her uniform and all of my clothes. I made her keep her gun on, though.”

  He rubbed his hands over his face and laughed.

  “He had some bad-looking women working there,” he said.

  “Bad as in good or bad as in bad?”

  “Bad as in they looked like they’d been smacked in the face by a thousand cocks,” he said.

  “That’s bad.”

  He sat for a while and touched his knees. He winced and sighed.

  “One night we were doing a show someplace and… you know how Jo used to toss me my fedora halfway through the show? Well this one night, I’m pretty sure we were in Manchester, England, I turn to get the hat and it’s already in the air and it lands perfectly on my head.”

  “I was there,” I said. “Jo turned and looked at me. We were both in shock.”

  “Me, too.”

  “He said, ‘Did you see that?’ and I could only nod.”

  “I have no idea why I thought of that,” he said.

  “Who cares? A good story is a good story,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Did I ever tell you how I used to run five miles in the morning before school? I did it every day. I used to pass this guy who was loading a produce truck in the morning, and he stops me one day and says he’ll give me five bucks to load the truck for him when I passed by. So I said great. I’m getting exercise and I’m making money.

  “Then about a week later another guy stops me and asks me if I’d like to make a few bucks every day by feeding his turkeys. He had a turkey farm that I ran past. So I did that, too. Then after school I worked a few hours for a fishmonger and a few hours for the racist butcher. I had four fucking jobs while I went to high school.

  “I made more money a week than I did during the first three years with Bruce. We were broke. We’d sleep on the floor in these cheap motels, the whole band in one room, ’cause that’s all we could afford. We were doing that even after the second album! Can you imagine that shit? We’ve got two albums out and nobody has any money. We didn’t start making real money till after Born to Run, but then things started looking up. And they haven’t looked down since. That’s why I’m always careful with money… I never had any.

  “It was fun, though, you know? We didn’t realize that we were poor ’cause we had the music. Plus we developed a following and there were always girls around. It was a wild time. I hung out with Danny most of the time. We shared an apartment eventually. We got to be like brothers.

  “He always did everything first. And then he’d turn me on to whatever he’d just discovered. That was true of my first joint, my first drink, and my first time hearing classical music. He could play all the classics. He always led the way. He was also one crazy son of a bitch. I really miss him. I really do.”

  Later we sat in the living room and watched Blade Runner, which Victoria had never seen. Then we ordered dinner from room service and talked some more. Once you get Clarence going it’s like an iPod on shuffle. The stories and lines come out in random order but they’re always entertaining.r />
  “Twice in my life I’ve gotten great deals on real estate ’cause people wanted to spite their racist neighbors. Once in Sausalito and once in Sea Bright,” he said.

  “You told me that before,” I said.

  “Bears repeating,” he replied. “Besides, how am I supposed to remember what stories I’ve told and what I haven’t told? I’m on drugs and I’m old. I can’t remember shit anymore. I can’t even remember what I can’t remember.”

  “Let’s forget it,” I said.

  “You know what’s fun? Melting urinal ice. I wish there was a way to turn that into a game or a sport or something. I’m having a urinal put in the new house so I can melt ice whenever I feel like it. There’s something very satisfying about the whole process.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “You’re not supposed to bring bananas on a boat, you know.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s like no peanuts in the pit at the races. No bananas on a boat. It’s ’cause bananas are heavy, and when they started shipping them from Hawaii a bunch of boats sank, so they started to fly them out. True story. It’s also true that when business is up at the racetrack the stock market goes down. When the market goes up the take goes down. Basic economics.”

  “No kidding?” I said.

  “Nope,” he said, smiling slightly. “These are all facts that most people don’t know. The Who were originally going to call that song ‘The Kids Are All White,’ but they thought better of it.”

  “You should put all this stuff in a book,” I said. “Little-Known Semifacts, by Clarence Clemons.”

  “Albert Einstein got tons of pussy,” he said. I could see him changing gears. “People need to spank their kids. And they should go to church.”

  “Who? The kids or just people in general?”

  “Everybody,” he said. “And you should listen to your heart ’cause your heart will never lie to you.”

  There are times when I’ve been in Clarence’s company when he uses words and thoughts like musical notes. He riffs, letting one thought flow into the next no matter how far they’re separated by content. It’s fun when he gets like this. It’s like turning the dial on the world’s hippest radio and listening to the voices.