Bill Fitzhugh - Fender Benders (19 page)

“We set up a website attributed to a woman named Frances
Neagley,” Eddie said.
 
“She lives on a
farm somewhere in the Tecumseh Valley.
 
Her website is dedicated to an unknown
musician, the identity of whom Miss Neagley is trying to discover.
 
According to the information on her site,
this unknown musician — apparently a young man — is the artist behind the
most beautiful song Frances Neagley has ever heard.”
 
Eddie sounded like he was sitting around a
campfire telling an old story.

The story, as Miss Neagley related it on her website, was
that she was surfing the net one night looking at the web sites of popular
country music artists when she stumbled on an otherwise unidentified site
called ‘Mysong.com.’
 
According to Miss
Neagley, the mysterious site had a little text and one small MP3 file free for
the downloading.
 
Here’s a song that came
from deep within my heart, the mysterious musician had written at
‘Mysong.com.’
 
Please listen to it and
pass it on if you like it.
 
Miss Neagley
downloaded the file but promptly forgot about it as she continued surfing that
night.

A week later, according to the story, she remembered the
file and listened to the song.
 
What she
heard was so moving she could hardly believe her ears.
 
She sat there, at her computer, mouth agape,
as this stranger probed the aching parts of her heart.
 
She felt like he was singing to her the song
she would have written about her worst heartache if she could ever write a
song.
 
Her sense of wonder at all this
suddenly turned to shock when, halfway through the refrain, the song stopped
cold.

At first, Miss Neagley wrote, she thought she’d accidentally
hit a wrong button or something.
 
She
played the song again and, just as it had the first time, the song ended
abruptly before it was half over.
 
Miss Neagley
assumed she had done something wrong in downloading the file.
 
She immediately went on line searching for
‘Mysong.com.’
 
But the site was gone
without a trace, as if it had never been there.

“‘I listened to this fragment of my heart over and over that
night,’ Ms. Neagley writes.”

“Now wait a second,” Jimmy interrupted.
 
“Is this for real?
 
How did you find this woman?”

Eddie laughed.
 
“There
is no woman,” he said.
 
“Well, there is a
Frances Neagley.
 
She’s a friend of mine,
she’ll be the webmaster for the site, but the rest is just story telling.”

“Alright, alright, keep going.”
 
Jimmy had been sucked in.

“She was so haunted by this song that she’s been trying ever
since to find out who and where the mystery musician is and where she can get a
complete version of the song, because she has to hear how it ends,” Eddie
said.
 
“Now, somewhere on her site, Frances
gets a little confessional, and she tells us about herself.
 
She’s a woman in her late thirties, raised in
the country, moved around a bit over the years.
 
Had her share of relationships, good and bad, but she finally met the
love of her
life.
 
They got married and bought a small farm and on their first anniversary
her husband was killed in a tragic accident.
 
Frances
had no other family and she was left with little more than a mortgage and a
hard heart.
 
After her husband died, she
thought her capacity for feeling had died with him.
 
Until she heard that song.”
 

“We’re talking about ‘It Wasn’t Supposed to End That Way’
right?”

“Of course,” Eddie said.
 
“At any rate, she’ll start writing letters and emails to country music
radio stations asking about this unknown artist, citing lyrics from the song,
asking if anyone knows who the musician is.”
 
Eddie paused again.
 
“Are you
gettin’ all this?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said.
 
“This is the best chapter so far.”

“Like I said.”
 
Eddie continued with mounting
enthusiasm.
 
“Okay, in the meanwhile,
music directors and programming consultants in other parts of the country are
going to start getting letters and faxes from the general public asking about
this MP3 file that’s been floating around the net.
 
They want to hear the whole song, they’ll
say.
 
People will start writing to
country music magazines and record labels and sooner or later, somebody in the
business is going to have to hear this song.”

“What if nobody writes these letters?”

“Jimmy?” Eddie sounded like he was speaking to a child.

“Yeah?”

“Wake up!
 
We’ll be
the ones writing the letters, people we hire.
 
They’ll mail the letters, and send the faxes, and zap E-mail from all
over the country.
 
It won’t cost much
more than the price of stamps and some long distance charges.”

“Clever boy.”
 
Jimmy had never thought of Eddie as devious,
but this was certainly in the neighborhood.
 
It was an inspired deceit but it raised a question.
 
“How ethical is this?”

“This is a marketing campaign.
 
What’s ethics got to do with it?”
 
Jimmy snorted a laugh. “Anyway,” Eddie
continued, “assuming this works and we get the attention of the marketplace,
we’ll move to phase two where someone posts a message on Miss Neagley’s site
saying they think the mystery musician is a guy named Eddie Long who wrote the
song after his wife died and no one’s seen him since.
 
Now, one thing we want to do, but we haven’t
figured out how to do it yet, is to get promotion directors at country radio
stations to turn this into a ‘Find Eddie Long’ contest.
 
But we’re working on it.”

“Interesting,” Jimmy said.
 
He was impressed by the quirky possibilities of the plan, but he was
skeptical of
it’s
viability.

“Again,” Eddie said, “assuming
all this
works, Herron and Peavy eventually contact the record labels to announce that
they represent this Eddie Long guy, the artist behind the most wanted song in America.
 
And any record label that wants me and my
song is welcome to make offers.
 
Whaddya
think?”

Jimmy thought about it for a minute.
 
“It’s different, I’ll say that.
 
But, I don’t think that’s how record
companies work.
 
I mean, I guess I’m
having a hard time imagining that a record company would sign an artist based
on Internet buzz.”

Eddie paused a moment.
 
“I’ve got three words for you, Jimmy.
 
Blair.
 
Witch.
 
Project.
 
Remember that a few years ago?
 
No
major Hollywood film distributor would ever consider
picking up and releasing a feature shot mostly on videotape by a bunch of
nobodies from Florida,
right?
 
Never happen, right?
 
Not in a million years.
 
But it did happen, and the
damn thing made over two hundred million dollars.”

“Well, I’ll give you that.”

“We’re just trying to find a new way to skin the cat, that’s
all.
 
If it doesn’t work, we can still
take our tape to the record labels, we just won’t be in as good a negotiating
position.
 
No big deal.
 
See, even though the Internet’s ready to be a
means of music distribution, the general public isn’t ready to use it that
way.
 
But the public is already using it
to get information, even if the information isn’t genuine, so that’s what we’ll
use it for.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Jimmy said.
 
“Could be a great way to
get the labels’ attention.”

“That’s the plan,” Eddie said.
 
“So what about the book?
 
How’s it coming?”

“It’s shaping up pretty good,” Jimmy said.
 
“Especially now.
 
I mean you getting hooked up with Herron and
Peavy, well, I know it doesn’t guarantee anything, but that’s a major
step.
 
Right now I’m still working on the
first three or four chapters and I’m heading up to your old neck of the woods
to find out about the young Eddie Long.
 
You know, interview some of your old teachers, friends, and neighbors,
that sort of thing.”

“Oh?”
 
Eddie’s tone
changed suddenly.
 
He sounded unenthused.

“Yeah, who’s most likely to tell embarrassing stories on
you?”

“No shortage of folks to do that,” Eddie said.
 
“Most of ‘em’ll make shit up if they think
it’ll get their name in a book.
 
Fact
there ain’t no tellin’ what kind of crazy shit you’ll hear about me from those
folks.
 
Best advice I got is, don’t
believe everything you hear.”

29.

Jimmy felt like someone had plugged him in.
 
He pushed back from his desk and spun around
in his chair a few times.
 
Then he leaned
back and closed his eyes and let things take shape in his mind.
 
He could see the cover for the book — a tall
backlit figure wearing a Stetson, arms outstretched with a guitar held aloft in
the right hand, a glint of light starring off the pearl inlay of the
fingerboard.
 
The title stretched boldly
across the top:
The Long and
The
Short of It.
 
The
Eddie Long Story
cut a path through the middle of the backlit figure.
 
Finally, in a slightly larger typeface across
the bottom, the author took his place:
Jimmy
Rogers
.

Someone called his name.
 
The curtain pulled back.
 
Jimmy
strode onto the stage to warm applause.
 
“Oprah!
 
So nice to see you,” he
said, bussing her cheek.
 
No, it wasn’t
really an Oprah book, was it?
 
“Dave!”
 
Nah.
 
“Jay!”
 
No, none of the network shows ever promoted authors.
 
“Charlie Rose, such a pleasure.”
 
Unlikely.
 
PBS was probably too snooty for the
book.
 
“Crook and
Chase!
 
So nice
to be here!”
 
Syndication was
better than nothing.

But what if Eddie didn’t make it?
 
What if he was a complete failure?
 
Jimmy couldn’t afford to waste a year writing
a book about a guy no one ever heard of, unless he recast it as a work of
fiction.
 
Hmmm
.
 
On the one hand, if Eddie succeeded, Jimmy
had a great biography.
 
If Eddie tanked,
Jimmy simply had to add a few small elements, a murder or two, perhaps some
sex, a little betrayal, and voila!
 
He
had a novel.
 
It was a great story either
way and Jimmy could end the fictional version however he wanted.
 
Country superstar rides off into the sunset
or failed artist dies by his own hand.

Inspired by the possibilities, he spent the rest of the
afternoon writing.
 
He fell into a state
as everything Eddie told him poured out of his head.
 
Jimmy had never been to the Bluebird Cafe, so
he was forced to add some imagined details.
 
He wrote up Eddie’s account of the negotiation at Estella’s, softening
Eddie’s portrayal of Herron and Peavy as obsolete country buffoons, rendering
them instead as crusty old music industry sages.

Jimmy then got into the chapter on Eddie’s marketing
plan.
 
The more he considered the
details, the more he came to see how canny the idea was.
 
An alternative fictional ending abruptly
presented itself: Eddie fails in Nashville,
then moves to New York and
becomes the most successful marketing strategist in the advertising
industry.
 
Nah, if he fails, it’s better
if he hangs himself.
 
Dramatically
speaking.

Several hours later Jimmy came out of his state.
 
His eyes were red and dry, his neck hurt, and
he longed for Megan.
 
He wanted to call
her while still exhilarated from his writing.
 
He wanted to tell her about Eddie.
 
He wanted to tell her he loved her and he needed to hear her say it
back, so he picked up the phone and dialed.
 
No apologies this time
, he
told himself.
 
No one’s to blame
.
 
He’d just
ask if she wanted to go down to