A Guitar and a Pen Read online

  Copyright © 2008 by Robert Hicks, John Bohlinger and Justin Stelter

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Center Street

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook edition: May 2008

  ISBN: 978-1-59995-138-6

  Contents

  In Memoriam

  Foreword

  The Day Jimmy Killed the Rabbit

  Career Day

  How I Stayed a Boy

  Whitey Johnson

  Cybersong

  Gathering Together

  The Point

  Mr. Munch Has a Murmur

  Fork

  The Box

  A Rock

  The Care and Treatment of Camp Cooks

  A Big Batch of Biscuits

  Shiny, Like New

  The Clock Struck Nine

  Of Guitars & Righteous Men

  The River

  Lucky Boy

  Cheeseburger Boogie

  A Burning Bush Will Do

  Born and Raised in Black and White

  He Always Knew Who He Was

  Curtis Loach

  The Elk Hunters

  Will It Ever Happen Again?

  With Gratitude

  An Interview with the Editors

  IN MEMORIAM

  AUGUST CHRISTOPHER BOHLINGER

  requiescat in pace

  Foreword

  Vince Gill

  Like so many folks my age, I grew up on story songs. Those unforgettable tales always cut me to the quick, whether they were heartbreaking or sidesplitting. I carried them with me, humming their melodies while I lived my young years through their stories. They taught me a thing or two about what life was like before mine had even really begun. They’re a real part of what first drew me to country music. I guess I’m not alone in that way. And as they’re at the core of why so many of us were first drawn to the music, they remain at the core—at the heart—of why we’ve never forsaken our first love for it.

  When I finally came to Nashville, I had the privilege to meet and, in time, befriend some of the finest songwriters ever to put words to paper. I count it as one of the greatest honors and privileges ever bestowed on me, to live and work among them. Over the years, after countless songwriting sessions, you realize that some of the greatest songwriters around are also some of the best storytellers. You learn pretty quickly that a beautiful voice will never grab you as tightly if the words aren’t right.

  As one who’s been plugging away at songwriting for a while now, I know for sure when I’m in the company of the “greats.” These songwriters know their craft back to front. They know how to pull a line out of the air that a young child and a grown man can both understand. In less than three minutes, they manage to create a lifetime of emotion. Now some of them have broken loose with these beautifully written short stories for all of us.

  Just as Marty Robbins once told us in two minutes and fifty-eight seconds the epic tale of a cowboy who meets a beautiful girl, kills the rival for her hand in a gunfight, steals a horse, runs away, returns to the girl, takes a bullet, kisses the girl, and dies, these men and women are spinning their tales a little longer this time. If the story-songwriter is the ultimate short, short story writer, then what can he do when he has a bit more time and paper? That question remains at the center of this collection.

  A Guitar and a Pen is a long-overdue celebration of the talent of not just these writers, but of all of country music’s storytellers. Like songs, some of the stories are true, others are fiction, and a few are a bit of both. Looking through these pages, you’ll find the work of many of the artists who made country music what it is. The history of great country songs goes back before any of us were around and will be here long after we’re gone.

  Just like a good country song, A Guitar and a Pen will prove to be the perfect companion for a long winter evening by a fire or a lazy summer afternoon in a hammock. So there you have it, right there in your hands, the words and stories of some of my all-time favorites. Dig in and enjoy!

  The Day Jimmy Killed the Rabbit

  Tom T. Hall

  On television we see that the cold-weather fronts from Canada sweep down into southern Missouri, turn left, and head back north. The day Jimmy killed the rabbit there were no TV sets in rural southern Missouri. At Jimmy’s house, there was no electricity. The lone radio was powered by battery. The house where Jimmy and his father, mother, and two brothers lived was heated with wood-burning stoves.

  It had rained on the crystallized snow. The rain had frozen, and now the countryside was covered with a crusty blanket of ice.

  The old Ford automobile that sat in the front of the wood-framed house had long been inoperative. The battery had been removed from the old car to power the Zenith radio that brought the news of the New Deal era. Every afternoon Jimmy’s father sat with his ear to the radio, listening for news of the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to bring the country out of the Great Depression. Jimmy’s father turned off the radio and turned to his family huddled around the stove in the small living room.

  “They say he’s gonna put poets and artists to work, too. Now there’s a man who’s got crazy on one shoulder and common sense on the other.”

  The mother made an almost inaudible comment. The children took it as bad news if the father thought so. The father continued.“What we need is jobs for the people. All this high talk about building parks and drawing pictures is crazy. They’s folks starving to death.”

  Jimmy got up and left the room. He thought his father might have heard some good news and then let them listen to a good radio show, as he sometimes did.

  There was a small barn and a separate chicken house behind the residence. The barn was long lonesome of cattle, and there were no chickens left. A late afternoon sun glanced across the sparkling ice and snow, hurting the eyes. Jimmy pulled the old door of the chicken house aside. He walked into the cold darkness of the building. In a far corner, surrounded by several old bales of hay, there stood a crudely crafted rabbit hutch. The top was covered with an old board. Jimmy lifted the board and reached inside the hutch and retrieved a little white rabbit. The animal kicked once with its powerful back legs; the boy struggled to hold it. The rabbit settled in the arms of the boy as he called it by name and stroked its downy fur. The rabbit had been an Easter present to a friend of Jimmy’s. The friend could not feed the pet, and so Jimmy had brought it home. The boy was delighted to find that the rabbit would eat the bran cereal that came in plain white boxes from the relief agency that supplied the area families with food. A government official had decided that the rural people needed the bran because of the high fat content of their diets. After having choked on the cereal, Jimmy’s father had banned it from the table. And so, the rabbit ate.

  JIMMY’S UNCLE, on his father’s side, lived a few hundred yards up the dirt road. The uncle was a dying man of sixty-seven years, a retired railroad man of considerable means, if one compared his worth to the average of the area, and that amounted to comparing his worth to poverty. There’s hope in a dying uncle who has money, and such was the hope of Jimmy’s family on these cold winter days of want and need. The family cared for the old bachelor uncle in a fashion that made the uncle suspicious of their motives. He would say, “When I was a well man, it seemed like you-all never paid me no mind at all. Now that I’m sick, it seems you-all are running up here with something or ’
nother all the time. I’ve got my will made the way I want it made and ain’t got no intention of changing it for a bowl of dried chicken soup and a two-day-old paper.”

  The contents of the mysterious will struck fear into the hearts of the family. Jimmy’s mother had said more than once, “That old whoremonger probably got his will made out to some roundhouse hussie somewhere.”

  The father said, “I don’t want none of my brother’s money. I want a job and a chance to pull myself out of this hellhole we’re into. He’s lived a sinful life. His soul is of more concern than his stock.”

  Hope glimmers brightest in the darkest night. On a dark Sunday morning when the old battery that powered the radio gave up its last notion of life, Jimmy’s mother returned from delivering hot food to the ailing uncle; she removed the heavy wool coat from her shoulders and announced, “I met Doc Witherspoon on the road. He says we ought to get your brother to a hospital if he’s gonna live another day.”

  The father sat up on the sofa where he had been lying.“How’s he expect us to get him to a hospital? He won’t go, anyway, and I can’t carry him on my back.”

  “Well, you better get up there and sit with him then. I don’t want none of the kids there when he dies. It’ll give ’em nightmares.”

  The father cursed under his breath; he walked to the window and peered out at nothing.“I ain’t no good with dying people either. I reckon he’d be just as well off alone. Lord knows he’s managed to live alone. Don’t see why he can’t die alone.”

  “Don’t you even think of that. That old man is your full blood brother and he’s dying and you need to be there whether you like it or not.”

  “Don’t shout at me, woman! I know who’s my brother and who ain’t. I’ve been around that man longer than most I reckon.”

  “Well, he’s dying. It’s on your shoulders. I’ve looked after him for more’n a year now. He ain’t none of mine.”

  The children huddled in a corner of the room as the argument raged. The father picked up a coat from the floor and stormed out the door. The mother went to the window and watched her husband walk up the road toward the brother’s house.“Reckon I was a little hard on him. But the truth’s the truth, and it don’t hurt to say it sometimes.”

  The youngest of the three boys spoke up.“How did Uncle hurt his heart?”

  The mother turned and smiled at the child.“He hurt it by living too long and carrying on too much. Don’t you think about it, honey. We’re gonna be all right when your daddy finds work. Wait and see.”

  The father returned in less than an hour. He came quickly through the door and went directly to the kitchen. He spoke from there.“Ain’t no coffee up there, and he’s out of wood for the stove. Jimmy, get some wood and drag it down. I’ll chop it. He wants a fried rabbit.”

  The mother went to the kitchen door.“He wants a fried rabbit?”

  “That’s what he said. He said his last request was a fried rabbit. I think he’s getting out of his head a little. All he talked about was a fried rabbit.”

  “There ain’t a rabbit in a hundred miles of this place. People have hunted down everything fit to eat.”

  The youngest boy spoke up.“Jimmy’s got a rabbit.”

  All eyes turned to Jimmy. He was openmouthed.“It ain’t no eatin’ rabbit—it’s a pettin’ rabbit.”

  Jimmy stood and walked to the door.“I’ll drag down some wood.”

  The youngest said, “A rabbit’s a rabbit, if you ask me.”

  Jimmy turned at the door.“Well, nobody asked you, did they?”

  Gray, low-hanging clouds surrounded the hilly countryside as Jimmy trudged up the hill behind his uncle’s house. He carried an ax to cut free from the ice the fallen trees that he would bring down the hill for his father to chop into firewood. He spotted a limb he thought he could manage. He chopped away at the ice and snow that held it to the ground. Having grown up in the countryside, he knew instinctively what caught his eye as he swung the ax. It was a brown furry texture partially hidden by the snow and the limb. He swung the ax quickly. The furry creature kicked violently for a few seconds before settling into a motionless ball. Jimmy reached down and picked up the rabbit; he stared at the dead animal in awe. He turned and looked back down the hill as if he had been watched. Smoke rose from the chimney of his uncle’s house. There was no one in sight.

  The boy took his pocketknife from his trousers. He cut off the rabbit’s head. He slit the skin on the animal’s back and pulled the warm fur from its back, legs, and neck. He cut off the feet and gutted the animal, throwing the intestines into the brush.

  The boy walked into his uncle’s house and held the rabbit aloft. The father stood from where he sat by the dying uncle.“Well, well, I’ll be.”

  Jimmy continued to hold the rabbit aloft. The father came forward and took the rabbit from the boy.“Jimmy, that’s a mighty big thing you done for your poor old uncle.” He turned to the sick man and said, “Look what Jimmy’s brought you. His own rabbit that he had for a pet. He wanted you to have what you wanted the most, and now he’s brought you his own rabbit, much as he liked it.”

  Jimmy turned and walked out of the room and back to his wood-dragging chore. The old uncle leaned forward in his bed.

  “That’s a mighty fine boy, that Jimmy. Always said he was the best one of the bunch. Fine young man.”

  “I’ll get the wife up here to cook this for you. She can make some biscuits and gravy to go with it.”

  “Fine, fine. Ain’t had a meal like that since I don’t know when. Don’t know what’s got into me. I’ve been hungry as a bear for some fried rabbit.”

  The old uncle and his brother sat talking as the mother fried the rabbit and made the biscuits and gravy. The father had fetched a jar of moonshine from the top of one of the cupboards. The house had a festive air. The brothers drank and seemingly became closer and more understanding as the jar of whiskey was passed back and forth. The mother cautioned against whiskey for the sick man. Her protests were laughed away.

  The uncle became melancholy. He settled into a remorseful mood as the drinking continued. He began to apologize for his past sins. He hollered into the kitchen to tell his sister-in-law of his wrongdoings in life.

  The afternoon’s festivities ended with the uncle admitting that he had never had a will, but would now like to make one. He asked for pen and paper. He asked his brother to go up the road and bring down a neighbor to witness his last will and testament. With all of this done, the rabbit eaten, and the old wood-burning stove glowing, the uncle died at seven-fifteen that same evening.

  As the undertaker drove past the house with the body of the old uncle, the father read the last will and testament of the man. The will left all of the uncle’s earthly belongings to his nephew Jimmy. They would later learn that the inheritance included the house, thirty-six hundred dollars, and a gold railroad watch.

  Jimmy stood in the middle of the room as the hero. His mother bragged, his brothers hugged, and his father made plans to spend the money on a new battery for the radio and a complete overhaul on the old Ford automobile.

  Monday morning brought sunshine. The wind had calmed. The gray clouds had gone. Jimmy slipped quietly out of the house and walked toward the little building that housed the rabbit hutch. He entered the room with a heart that ached as much as the heartache that had killed his uncle, or so he thought. It was in writing. Jimmy had killed his pet rabbit to answer his uncle’s last request and had thereby fallen into favor of his will.

  The boy cried as he carried the rabbit up the hillside. The small white bundle of fur nestled under his arm as the wide eyes gazed at him in seeming admiration and trust. The boy trudged on. He was far atop the hill when he set the little white rabbit on the icy ground. He fully realized that left there, the rabbit would starve or be eaten by its natural enemies of the wild. The boy watched as the little white animal sniffed the air. The rabbit hopped around in a playful circle and looked back at the boy just as the heavy stick ca
ught the back of its head, breaking its neck.

  As the years passed, when the family automobiles became newer, when radios were plentiful, when color television brought pictures of the weather front coming down from Canada, they still talked of the day Jimmy killed the rabbit.

  Tom T. Hall

  A member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Tom T. Hall is known for his vivid characters and narrative strength. Born in 1936 near Olive Hill, Kentucky, he has had a long and varied career that includes more than fifty chart hits on forty albums, Grammy and CMA Awards, and over twenty top-ten successes. In 1971 he became a member of the Grand Ole Opry, and has been named Songwriter of the Year and called “the poet laureate of country music.” He has also published six books, including a novel, a short-story collection, and an autobiography.

  His classic songs include “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine,” “I Love,” “The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,” and “Homecoming.” He has created a solid body of children’s music, some notable political-satire pieces, and some of Nashville’s rowdiest beer-drinking anthems. His “Harper Valley P.T.A.” sold 6 million singles, inspired a movie and a TV series, crossed over to become a number-one pop hit, and became a nationwide sensation.

  Hall has been almost as potent as an interpreter. His voice immortalized the bluegrass standard “Fox on the Run,” revived chestnuts like “It’s All in the Game” and “P.S. I Love You,” and originated such country staples as “Song of the South” and “Old Five and Dimers Like Me.” He has also forged some remarkable musical bonds, collaborating with Johnny Cash, Patti Page, Earl Scruggs, Dave Dudley, and Bill Monroe.

  A national TV celebrity and a notable commercial spokesman of the 1980s, in the 1990s he has become known for his charitable activities, creative-writing workshops, and one-man shows. And through it all he has remained a man of the soil. Today he lives just outside Nashville, Tennessee, where he continues to write songs and stories. You can visit his Web site at www.tthproject.com.