Waylon Read online

  Years later I took him up to see her in an old folks home in Lubbock. He stayed with her, and I went and did my business and then came and picked him up. On the way back, he was sitting real quiet, staring out the window. All of a sudden he blew his nose and you could see he’d been crying. “When Lila was young, there wasn’t a handsomer woman alive,” he said. “You never know how things are gonna turn out.”

  The Jennings were a different breed. Irish and Black Dutch, as far as I could tell, and as God-fearing as they come. They belonged to the Church of Christ; my Dad was as close to being a preacher as he could without being a preacher.

  Daddy was truly my hero. He would never punish us kids—me and my three brothers—for something he himself did. Anyway, he could never hurt us. He’d sooner put a foot of quilts over us and beat the hell out of that cover with the belt. His motto was “I’ll never whip one of ’em for what I do in front of them, what I do and they know that I do.” Like smoking. Or cussing. He’d not even say “dang it.” Instead of tobacco, Daddy chewed ice. We just watched what he did and knew we were expected to do the same. He had a quiet strength.

  He was built stockily, like his dad. It came natural from his side of the family. All of them were heavy, and big boned. My grandpa Gus weighed close to three hundred pounds, and always wore his belt buckle to the side. I used to think he liked the look of it better over there, but my cousin Wendell Whitfield says it was probably because there was no room for it in front. He also wore a black hat.

  The Shipleys were slim. When they gained weight, it went to the face and stomach, just like it does to me. When I gain weight, my face gets real wide even if my legs stay thin.

  We had to ride in the back of the truck out to Grandpa Jennings’s place, no end gate to it and just a tarp flapping. We’d ride in the back of that truck all day long; they didn’t go that fast then. If you fell out of one it wouldn’t hardly hurt. You could run and catch up with it, chasing down Route 54 straight as an arrow till it took a right-angle zigzag around Bula High School, near the spot where I first heard Johnny Cash sing “Cry, Cry, Cry,” bouncing over a buffalo wallow that we thought deep as a canyon, and out to the Jennings farm.

  Grandpa Jennings never let anything bother him. He thought no matter how bad it might look today, it’d probably be all right tomorrow. He’d set and twiddle his thumbs and look off in the distance; he was kind of a homebody. His cotton planting day was June 6, unless it fell on a Sunday. Everybody else had already planted twice; they’d be hailed out and have to go back. Grandpa just waited for his day.

  As you’d expect, we ate good there. We’d get up in the morning, always before daylight, and fix big platters of eggs, frying or scrambling them. We’d just scrape off what we wanted. Then there would be bacon, pork chops, sausage, and butter. Homemade butter, that you would churn “frush.” I used to do that myself.

  Breakfast was the big meal. Lunch was called dinner, and we’d have fried chicken and eat the leftovers after five that night. Grandma Tempe would keep the butterbeans going for at least two days. There’s one thing I could never understand about her. After church on Sunday we’d go back to the farm, and she’d put on her old feed-sack dress, grab some poor chicken by the neck, and wring its head off. Now I know it was Sunday dinner, and we all had to eat, but some transformation happened between the hymn and closing prayer and jerking that poor chicken’s neck. Grandma Jennings was a stern woman. I can still hear her muttering “nasty nasty nasty” anytime she’d catch us calking about girls. In later years, after I’d have sex, it seemed like someone ought to come up and shake their finger at me, saying “nasty nasty nasty.”

  Supper wasn’t that important, though it was probably the most fun. You’d dip corn bread into sweet milk, and Daddy was always taking peanut butter and putting it in karo syrup, stirring it up. You’d have a little bread with it. Our staples were coffee, bread, and sugar: We would take biscuits and open them up, butter the breads, pour sugar on them, and pour coffee over that. Momma used to make milk chocolate and pour it over crackers. We weren’t so much poor as pour.

  The depression sure bred some strange things. For greens, we’d eat lamb’s-quarter. It was a wild weed that looked a lot like spinach. We used every part of the hog we could. We didn’t waste anything. We even made tallow and soap out of the skin. Lye soap, like to take your flesh off.

  If you had any left, that is, after they got finished with you in Sunday School. We were staunchly Church of Christ, especially my dad.

  Of all the religions I’ve run into, the Church of Christ has probably got it wronger than anybody. They’re self-righteous, narrow-minded, and truly believe they’re the only ones going to Heaven. If you don’t believe the way we do, they say, you’re going to go straight to hellfire and damnation. With a side order of brimstone.

  They don’t allow women to speak in the church. They think it’s a sin if you have music in the church. They say, bring your organ over here. Mr. Organ, would you lead us in prayer? If it leads us in prayer, then it’ll be all right. Well, what’s the whole building for—the pulpit, the pews, the carpet, the microphones—if not to lead you in prayer? It’s people that do the singing.

  Once I even gave preaching a shot. Momma wanted one of her boys to be a preacher. I was trying to please, but it was the scaredest I ever was in my life. On Wednesday nights they let you give talks. My mouth was so dry, I thought I was going to pass out. I thought, if I don’t do it I’m going to hell, and if I do do it, I’m going to stunt my growth. I knew what I was saying was fear, was instilling terror in people, and when I got up to speak, I was living proof.

  Their concept of God was of a Father who told His offspring, “I created you, but I’m not going to be there ever. You’re not going to see me or hear my voice, and I’m going to give you a book that is not easy to read at all, it’s hard to understand, but you are not to question it. It’s a sin to question it. If you don’t follow my words, and do everything that book says, even though you’re my child and I love you, and I’m your Father, I will throw you into a lake of fire and you will burn eternally and I’ll hear you scream for the rest of eternity.”

  That’s what the Church of Christ teaches, and it’s not my concept of believing. If God knows yesterday, today, and tomorrow, why would He cause us so much misery in this world? I don’t think God would destroy the earth and let Satan live again. Or blame us for the Forbidden Fruit. That’s our sacred knowledge, the emotion that we’re able to give back to God. It’s what makes us human.

  I’ve read the Bible. There are thousands of religions derived from this book, and it seems to me that the inspiration of that book lies in what it says to you, individually and as a person. You should live your life, and your religion, according to that.

  Love is one of the truest feelings in the world, and it’s based on the attraction a man feels for a woman, not to mention vice versa. The Church of Christ called it lust and said it was a sin. You should only make love for the purposes of procreation. That’s bullshit. I’ve never been able to believe that. I look at Jessi and have to watch myself. I want her every day of my life. And as for playing music…

  I thought, man, I’m going to hell, ’cause everything they tell me is a big sin is something I like. A lot.

  Of course, once outside of church, everybody pretty much went about their own business. Me and some of my friends would go over to where the Holy Rollers met and find the tobacco where they’d thrown it out the window when they’d get saved, and we’d get it and smoke it. A lot of times we’d be there the next morning and find they’d been out there looking for it themselves.

  My dad was a good man, and he didn’t need the Church of Christ to tell him to do right. He was solid as a rock. He just tried to live the best he could, the way a Christian should, and I never knew him to get really mad. He was a disciplinarian, but he was kindhearted. He’d sooner give you the back of his hand than grab a belt if you pushed the wrong button. I’d be in the back seat fussi
ng with my younger brother Tommy, and he’d say “I’m going to slap the slobbers out of you, boy,” and we knew to duck ’cause that hand would be swatting back at us. We’d hit the floor and keep quiet for the rest of the trip.

  About the maddest I ever saw him get was one evening when I went to the movies on Sunday afternoon, and we were supposed to go to church that night. It was a double feature, and Wendell and I watched it twice. Walking home, my dad pulled alongside us in the car. “You shain’t go to the movies anymore on Sunday” was all he said. Anytime he said “shain’t” you could tell he was angry.

  I always knew he would protect me. One time I saw something nobody ever gets to see out of their dad. This kid, Billy Stewart, was a little younger than my brother Tommy, and they’d gotten into it. Tommy was maybe ten, and Billy had run home crying. He was a little crybaby anyway. So here comes Strawberry, his older brother, who was about twenty-two years old and a Golden Gloves boxer, a big guy standing at least six foot two. He grabbed my little brother, and Tommy’s screaming bloody murder, and Strawberry said he was going to give him a whipping.

  My dad was chopping weeds in the garden, about two fences away, with an empty lot in between, and after that stretched the grass and wildflowers of the prairie. Daddy said, “What are you doing with him? You turn that boy loose.”

  “Well,” answered Strawberry, “he hurt my little brother and I’m fixing to kick his little ass.”

  “No, you’re not,” Daddy replied in a low, even voice.

  “Old man, stay out of this.”

  Daddy dropped the hoe down, didn’t even take it with him, and he climbed over the first fence. He was pale as a sheet. “You touch that boy and I’ll break your back.”

  Strawberry said, “Old man, I make my living fighting. I whip people twice the size of you every night. You better stay away. I’ll hurt you if you come over here.”

  All Daddy would say is “You touch that boy and I’ll break your back.” He went over the next fence.

  “You come here and I’m going to kill you,” Strawberry shouted. My dad didn’t even slow up. Finally Strawberry looked at him and turned Tommy loose. “Aw, old man, you’re crazy,” he said, and backed off.

  I knew right there what my daddy was all about. I was twelve years old, and I knew he would shield me from harm, would walk through fire if he had to, and that he was a brave man. A hero. He wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of him and his child. He never even stopped to think twice; he just kept on going, one foot after the other, telling Strawberry all the time he would break his back. And I believe he would’ve.

  Momma was, and always will be, restless. She has a lot of energy, and like me, that’s worked both for and against her in a lot of ways. I feed that urge for going by traveling on the road. Momma gets high-strung and flighty, and sometimes I think she doesn’t allow herself to be happy.

  I got my determination from her, and maybe my sense of perfection. Momma doesn’t bend, and she would always know when I wasn’t telling the truth. “You’re lying and I can see it written all over your face,” she’d say. My cheeks would be turning all sorts of colors.

  When I was little, it seemed like we moved every three or four months. Momma had pneumonia once, and we relocated to the Rio Grande valley in South Texas, but Littlefield had a hold on us. We lived at the corner of Austin Avenue and Reed Street, a long shotgun house with no bathroom, and then settled across from the high school on North Lake. By the time I was in grammar school, we were back on Austin, at number 123, in the heart of town, in a twenty-four-by-twenty-four house that my daddy built.

  It was the first house we ever owned, and our first inside bathroom. Previously, we had taken our baths in galvanized washtubs. The back bedroom was mine and Tommy’s, Daddy and Momma had a room, and we had a living room and a kitchen. That was it, and when years later the family moved to Sixth Street, they just took the house with them and built onto it.

  Momma worshipped her boys, and after Tommy and me—quite some time after—along came James D., who was eight years younger, and then Bo, who was born when I was sixteen. His name was Phillip Doyle, but Daddy started calling him Bimbo because of a song Jim Reeves had out at the time, and he was Bo forevermore.

  Brothers do work at being as different from each other as possible, and I guess our family was no exception. Tommy’s more outgoing than me, at least when we were growing up. He’d talk the wheels off a Volkswagen. He wanted to be an entertainer, and he’s a pretty good songwriter; he played bass with me for a while in the sixties. James D. is a lot like my daddy, honest and upfront as the day is long, running a Conoco station diagonally across from where Daddy had his service station for a time; but he was the gripiest kid. Lord, he didn’t let any of us off easy. I remember the first time I ever brought my first wife home. Daddy let me use the car, and James D. was just sitting there, pouting. It was a Saturday night, and as I started out the door, he come right behind me hollering “Dadblame you, and that dadburned girl. It’s because of you we gotta stay home on dadblamed Saturday night because you want to go somewhere with that dadburned girl.” He followed me all the way to the car, just chewing my ass out. What a character.

  There was a big gap between James and Bo. Me and Tommy were practically all gone and grown when Bo grew up, so he was really like an only child.

  Littlefield can be a tough town, and I was a grown man before I left. I guess if you went back with anybody and traced where they came from, you’d figure out a whole lot about them. I spent all my early life there, and there’s a lot of me still walking those streets.

  Once only inhabited by buffalo herds and Indians, West Texas was thought “unfit for cultivation” as late as the 1830s. What would become the town of Littlefield grew from one of the largest ranches in the world, the XIT, which covered over three million acres across nine panhandle counties and had been given to the Chicago financial syndicate that had built the state capitol in Austin. Texas had more land than cash in those days.

  When the XIT spread finally went under at the turn of the century, the first tract—the southern Yellowhouse Division—was sold to Major George Washington Littlefield, an Austin banker and cattleman, who paid two dollars an acre in 1901. The town, laid out by Arthur P. Duggan, officially opened on July 4, 1913, and was given a commercial shot in the arm when the Panhandle and Santa Fe Railroad made it an official station. Today it’s the seat of Lamb County, named after a Lieutenant George A. Lamb, who was killed at the Battle of San Jacinto, and contains almost eight thousand persons, about double that of when I was born.

  It’s never been easy to make a living in Littlefield, and we had it harder than most. I don’t think anybody had anything in reserve for a rainy day. Even the more well-to-do farmers lived from one harvest to another. When we got up in the morning, all we had was the daily prospect of hitting the cotton patch, or getting in a truck, or going down to the warehouse.

  You’d make fifty, sixty cents an hour. That’s all the money you had to look forward to. You might be dreaming about going away to some far-off land of opportunity, but you also might be building hen houses for Buck Ross, or doing something for one of the local contractors, Carlisle Russell or Bob Jennings (no relation). You could be working down at the local service station, six weeks there, six weeks across town hauling trash. Next month you might not have anything to go to. You lived for that day, and that day only.

  Saturday night was when you let it all out. Whatever little money we had, we put it in a box for groceries and rent, and then took a couple of dollars out for Saturday night. That was the entire life of Littlefield. There was none of this long-range planning, stock markets, investments, retirement benefits. We never put away money for vacations because there wouldn’t be any vacations. You never even thought in those terms. My folks needed to get the house paid for, have a car that would run, and try to keep everybody healthy. They were just making it from one Saturday to another.

  When you thought success, it was to show
people in Little-field. We didn’t know any better. We’d go to the store on Saturday (Sunday was for church only) and put a pair of boots on layaway; buy a jacket or a belt buckle, put it on layaway. A dollar down, a dollar a week, and when you got it all paid off, you’d pick it up. That was the little rewards in life. Get a little carry-out barbecue, a stick of baloney, a few groceries. Next week there would hopefully be work that’d last until the weekend. Nothing beyond that.

  We didn’t know any better. There’s a charm about Littlefield, and there’s a lot of things we would laugh about when we were growing up. Most of the time we tried to be happy with what little we had. We never begrudged anyone anything. We had a good time, but we didn’t know what was out there.

  Home improvements? In those days, a house was just a place to keep you warm and dry. I remember the first time I ever saw linoleum. I thought it was the slickest stuff; we still lived in a place that had a dirt floor.

  Sometimes I don’t know how those houses would stand up to the changes in weather. It could get above a hundred in the summer and below zero in the winter. It might rain two inches in the morning, and then a sandstorm would blow in the afternoon, and sometimes last for days at a time. In the winter, the wind changed direction; we called them blue northers, and they’d carry blizzards.

  In the late summer and fall, we’d have tornadoes. They’re the weirdest storms imaginable. If a tornado struck a house, it would look like somebody had taken a fist and crushed it right on top. It always seemed like tornadoes had a thing for cotton gins and trailer parks. Once a tornado hit these caged chicken coops, and they found chickens for miles. The force of those things would put a straw through a telephone pole, all the way through, or an egg through a two-by-four. It would take a tractor and put it on top of a barn. You’d hear that it blew a baby out of a woman’s arms, or a woman’s arm off and left her standing there. We had six touch down one night, all around the county.